Far-Right Senselessness > Neo Nazis Attack Gay Bar in Kiev; Far-Right Terrorism in Finland

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Two stories from almost a year ago. The first gives us a view of Kiev before the Russian-NATO proxy war. The second shows us what happens when far-left governments are out of control.

Vicious 'Neo Nazi' attack on Kiev 'gay bar'

28 Nov, 2021 09:09

© YouTube / Sergiy Slipchenko

A Kiev bar, frequented by members of LGBT community, has been attacked by a group of masked assailants, believed to be neo-Nazis, who smashed the establishment’s windows and destroyed outdoor seating.

The HvLv bar, located in the central part of Ukraine’s capital, was targeted late on Friday. The venue was set upon by around 20 masked men, some of whom were armed with telescopic batons and pepper spray.

Surveillance footage from the scene circulating online shows the assailants skirmishing with two bouncers, with both parties dousing each other with pepper spray. Heavily outnumbered, the security staff retreated into the bar, leaving the outdoor seating area at the mercy of the attackers.

The angry crowd (the assailants, or the customers?) then proceeded to break windows, as well as destroying outdoor chairs and tables. Some of the assailants tried to force their way into the premises, but staff had managed to lock the doors in time, and some of the patrons also reinforced them, footage from inside shows.

The rampage lasted for about five minutes, with the attackers ultimately retreating after they failed to gain access to the bar itself. During the attack, the masked men shouted homophobic and neo-Nazi slogans, the business claimed in an Instagram post, specifically “Death to the f**gots,” “Let’s get the f**gots,” and “White power.”

Some five minutes after the mob dispersed, a private security company contracted by the establishment arrived at the scene, followed by Kiev police. Later in the day, law enforcement said it had apprehended 12 suspects, and a criminal investigation was launched over “hooliganism.”

While no motive for the attack has been officially announced, the bar's management alleged it had been targeted by neo-Nazis. The venue said it had been harassed by the extreme-right for some three weeks prior to the incident, with purported neo-Nazis repeatedly showing up at the establishment, scribbling offensive graffiti on its walls, and scaring patrons away.

The troubles began earlier this month, following a call for a “crusade” shared on the social media channels of extreme-right groups in Kiev. The proclaimed goal was to battle the drug trade, which is allegedly rampant in multiple nightclubs across the Ukrainian capital, including the HvLv. The bar itself has vehemently denied such allegations.

Of course they did!

It was not immediately clear what group exactly was behind the attack, with no one taking responsibility for the rampage. A sticker of an extreme-right group named ‘Centuria’ has been reportedly recovered at the scene, yet it denied any involvement, claiming it was merely merchandise that anyone could have obtained.

Apparently, no-one was hurt seriously enough to warrant hospitalization, or even EM care.

Finland records first-ever case of suspected far-right terrorism

4 Dec, 2021 07:40

Terrorist suspect poses with machete and gun. © Police of Finland

Five men have been detained for allegedly having planned gun and bomb attacks in what the Finnish police believe is the first case of far-right terrorism in the country’s history.

The members of the group, which operated in the southwestern town of Kankaanpää, were arrested on Tuesday, having been under surveillance for two years. On Friday, the court ruled that they should remain in custody.

The suspects are aged “around 25,” and most of them have a previous criminal record, the police said in a statement. Weapons, ammunition, and fertilizer – which can be used to make explosives – were seized in the raid during which they were detained.

Extremist materials found among the men’s possessions, and other material unearthed in the course of the investigation “reinforce the impression that they have become radicalized and gives reason to suspect them of terrorist offences,” the statement read.

The group appears to have been motivated by “accelerationism” – a white supremacist ideology that rests on the idea that Western governments are irreparably corrupt and seeks to hasten their demise by sowing division and interracial strife. The ideology has been linked to several high-profile shootings in the US as well as to the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand in 2019.

The police didn’t reveal the targets the men had planned to attack, but said they had operated independently of any large far-right organization. They are currently being investigated for involvement in terrorism, the illegal possession of firearms, and aggravated theft.

The prosecutors have given the police until March 31 next year to press charges.

Detective Superintendent Toni Sjoblom described the case as “worrying” and urged the Finnish public to help his officers counter the far-right threat.

“If you see clear signs of radicalization in your loved ones, you should react as quickly as possible, for example, by telling the authorities about your concerns,” he said.

Venezuela Government 'Terrified' of Calling Election - Heading to Dictatorship

Venezuela is in a desperate with double digit inflation, food and

medicine shortages. The ruling party is so terrified of losing

power because of pervasive corruption and the fear of prosecution

Votes for governors, councils, other public offices on hold

as support for ruling party collapses

By John Otis, CBC News

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, seen here sitting in front of an image of late president Hugo Chavez, contends that elections are not a priority amid more pressing matters, such as food shortages and triple-digit inflation. (Miraflores Palace/Reuters)

The late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and his allies triumphed nearly every time voters went to the ballot box. But Chavez's successor, President Nicolas Maduro, appears to have lost interest in testing the will of the people. 

Amid a severe economic crisis, opinion polls show that support for Maduro and for ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) politicians is collapsing. In response, electoral authorities — whom analysts claim take orders from the executive branch — have over the past year shelved or delayed elections large and small. 

'We are not going to have elections....

What we are going to have here is revolution,

and more revolution.'

- Diosdado Cabello

In October, the Maduro government abruptly cancelled a recall referendum that could have removed the president from office. Gubernatorial elections scheduled for December have been postponed. Even voting for the leadership of many labour unions, professional organizations, public university governments and neighbourhood councils has been suspended. 

For Chavismo, the leftist political movement founded by Chavez and which has ruled Venezuela for the past 18 years, "elections used to be sacred when they knew they could easily win them," said Eugenio Martínez, a Caracas journalist who specializes in electoral issues. "But as soon as elections became uncomfortable, they have tried to avoid them or to change the rules." 

Venezuelan officials contend that elections are simply not a priority right now because they are dealing with more pressing matters, such as food shortages and triple-digit inflation they describe as part of an "economic war" being waged against them by the opposition.  

In a January speech, Diosdado Cabello, a congressman and a key power broker within the ruling PSUV, bluntly stated: "We are not going to have elections.... What we are going to have here is revolution, and more revolution." 

Opposition supporters hold placards that read 'Elections now' during a rally against Maduro's government, in Caracas, on January 23, 2017. (Christian Veron/Reuters)

'There is a dictatorship'

Critics call these moves troubling signs for democracy in Venezuela and wonder whether the 2018 presidential election will be free and fair — or whether it will be held at all. 

Last week, Luis Almagro, who heads the Organization of American States, said that Venezuela must hold general elections immediately, and if it doesn't, member states — including Canada — should suspend Venezuela from the Washington-based regional body.

According to Almagro, phobia of elections is just the latest sign of Maduro's turn toward authoritarianism. His government holds more than 100 political prisoners and has cracked down on the media. It controls nearly all branches of power. Although the opposition holds a majority of seats in congress, the executive branch has neutered that body by using the judicial system to nullify new legislation.   

In a column published Tuesday in the Bogota, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, Almagro declared: "Today… there is a dictatorship" in Venezuela. 

The electoral impasse has left opposition leaders in limbo.

'The government is terrified of measuring its popularity

through a popular vote.'

- Jose Graterol

Jose Graterol, a lawyer who is trying to run for governor of western Falcon state, has spent the past year visiting towns and villages, shaking hands and giving speeches about his vision of the future. But now, he says, it's unclear whether there will even be a vote. Sitting governors have so far ruled an three extra months beyond their normal four-year terms, and electoral authorities have yet to set a date for new elections. 

"This shows that the government is terrified of measuring its popularity through a popular vote," Graterol said. 

The PSUV currently controls 20 of 23 state houses. But polls indicate that if elections were held now, the opposition could win about 16 governorships, marking a huge shift in power. In the last nationwide elections, held in December 2015, the government suffered a humiliating defeat, with opposition candidates winning 112 of 167 congressional seats. And since then, both the economy and support for the government have eroded further. 

"The government controls nearly all levers of power while the opposition has the support of the voters," said Phil Gunson, a Caracas analyst for the International Crisis Group. "That's why the opposition needs to have elections and why the government doesn't." 

December 2018 election uncertain

Besides delays, the Maduro government is trying to weed out the competition in case of future elections, said Martínez, the journalist. For example, the National Electoral Council declared that all political parties must gather thousands of member signatures in order to maintain their legal status, but each party gets just two days to carry out this process. 

When a centrist party called Avanzada Progresista recently tried to sign up members in Caracas, the electoral council changed the location of the registration sites at the last minute, creating chaos, said party activist Maribel Castillo. Avanzada Progresista maintained its legal status but several small opposition parties have already lost theirs. 

An opposition supporter holds a placard that reads 'Wanted for destroying a country. Reward: A free Venezuela,' with images depicting Maduro, left, and Diosdado Cabello, of Venezuela's United Socialist Party (PSUV), during a rally in Caracas, September 1, 2016. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

In recent elections, opposition parties fielded candidates through a coalition known as the Democratic Unity Roundtable. But now the Supreme Court is hearing a lawsuit brought by a ruling party politician alleging that the coalition committed fraud. A guilty verdict would effectively outlaw the opposition coalition.  

All of this manoeuvring has many Venezuelans wondering whether the government intends to comply with the constitution by holding presidential elections by December 2018. Gunson said that cancelling the vote would be a major step toward pariah status, as the Maduro government would be widely be considered a de facto regime propped up only by the military. 

However, Martínez said many high-ranking government officials have been accused of drug trafficking, human rights abuses and corruption, and they fear prison or extradition to the United States should the opposition win the presidency. 

He predicted: "If Chavismo doesn't think it has a way to win the elections, it will not hold elections." 

Arab Spring Turns into Spring Cleaning in Tunisia

Secular government closes some mosques and cleanses others

Tunisians arrive at Carthage's El-Abidine mosque, on the outskirts
of the capital Tunis, to attend the Eid al-Fitr prayer

Gulf News
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times News Service

Tunis: Among a flurry of security measures the Tunisian government began after a gunman massacred 38 tourists last month in Sousse was a crackdown on dozens of mosques, creating concerns that the secular government may be falling back towards the authoritarian ways of the former dictatorship.

In the middle of Ramadan early this month, the government closed 80 mosques and barred two preachers. But neither the men nor most of the mosques had any known connection with Seifeddine Rezgui, the gunman who carried out the June 26 massacre, officials acknowledged.

It was another sign that the divisions between secularists and Islamists that threatened to tear the country apart in the years after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising are still playing out.

In a recent interview with the daily newspaper La Presse, Habib Al Sid, who heads a government led by the secularist party Nida Tunis, described the battle to control Tunisia’s 5,000 mosques as a “long-term fight”.

“We change a radical imam from a mosque and the next day he is replaced with another extremist,” he said. “But we will not give in.”

Notably, the main Islamic political party, Al Nahda, which holds a token Cabinet post in the coalition government, has supported the government’s stance against terrorism and even its regulation of mosques. Its leaders have condemned the terrorist attacks and told followers that supporting the government, and the country, is more important right now than party support.

“We are all in agreement that no one is allowed to preach violence,” said Ziyad Ladhari, 39, the Al Nahda Cabinet member and the minister for vocational training and employment. The closed mosques are ones that were built without permits in a somewhat “anarchical way”, he added. “No one is closing regular mosques.”

But other officials say some regular mosques have been closed, and deep ideological differences exist among the main parties over how to combat extremism. The secularists leading the government, many of whom have connections to the old dictatorship, lean towards tight control of mosques and preachers. The government has replaced many Al Nahda appointees in the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Those in the mainstream Tunisian religious community warn that government controls enforced by the police send religious followers underground and stifle efforts by moderates to counter the ideology of religious extremists.

Religion was strictly controlled under the dictatorship of Zain Al Abidine Bin Ali. Thousands of Islamists were imprisoned, and the outward display of religion, such as head scarves and beards, was banned in government offices, under a policy of forced secularisation.

Zain Al Abidine Bin Ali, former dictator of Tunisia

Al Nahda members, and some independent scholars, say the repression actually encouraged extremism, and that removing mainstream Islamists and reducing opportunities for religious education left a void the extremists were able to fill. Thousands who fled the repression under Bin Ali in 1991 ended up in Afghanistan and were recruited by extremist groups.

Another wave fled to Libya when the government outlawed the ultraconservative Islamic movement Ansar Al Sharia in 2013, said Habib Al Louze, a former Al Nahda legislator who runs a religious organisation, the Preaching and Reform Association. “It is very well known now that a lot went to Libya,” he said. “Thousands escaped.”

In Libya, Tunisians can find work but many have joined extremist groups, compounding the security problem at home. The men behind the country’s two recent attacks on foreign tourists received weapons training in Libya, the government has said.

In the freewheeling period after Bin Ali’s overthrow in 2011, communities forced out many of the clerics who were seen as loyal to him. But there was a shortage of imams, and Salafist clergymen, some of whom were extremists and even Al Qaida loyalists, joined the rush to take over mosques.

Amor Mighri, a quiet-spoken imam and former political prisoner, led the monitoring commission for the Religious Affairs Ministry and began a campaign to weed out the extremists. He toured the country, listening to complaints from the public, interviewing imams and evaluating their sermons.

During a visit to the holy city Kairouan in summer 2013, he noted the implicit militant references in a sermon by Saif Al Din Rais, a young and charismatic spokesman of Ansar Al Sharia who drew a large crowd of youthful followers to a neighbourhood mosque. Mighri said he invited the professed imam to his office and discovered that he had not even completed high school.

“His qualifications were weak,” Mighri said, adding that the spokesman was a hardliner who demanded that all Muslims fight all non-believers. “He only knows the Quran for the things that go with his vision. He is very selective.”

Many of the Salafists were aggressive and resisted efforts by the authorities to remove them. Some of them were armed. The ministry could not reason with them and had to ask the police to intervene, Mighri said. Relations between Al Nahda and the police were tense at the time and cooperation was poor, but the Ansar Al Sharia spokesman was eventually arrested amid some violence in March 2014.

Under the next government, cooperation with the police improved, and by the end of 2014 the government had removed all those considered extremists, Mighri said.

Shaikh Taieb, 73, imam of the Great Mosque of Oqba Ibn Nafa in Kairouan, Tunisia’s most venerated place of worship, said Ansar Al Sharia had come close to occupying the central mosque in 2013. The Salafists, in the meantime, took over three mosques in the city, and the police managed to push them out only six months ago.

“Over the past year, the state backed the mosques and things got relatively better,” Taieb said. “If we are in this situation, it is because the state is still not strong.”

But the problem of the radicalisation of young Tunisians remains.

“There are no extremists who are imams,” Mighri said, but it does not mean the country had eliminated the extremist mentality. He and others in the ministry are worried that the government is addressing the threat improperly.

The newly appointed minister for religious affairs, Othman Battikh, is an old-school cleric who served as chief mufti under the dictatorship. He has disbanded Mighri’s monitoring commission, replaced several senior Al Nahda appointees to the ministry, and handed the oversight of mosques largely to the police.

“There is a decrease in extremist discourse,” he said in an interview. “The preachers realised the need to back down.”

But ministry workers have strong objections to his methods.

“We appreciate the police and the important role they play in fighting terrorism, but we want them to stay out of religious affairs,” Abdul Salem Atwi, secretary-general of the Union of Preachers, said during a recent protest outside the ministry. “If you bring back the interior ministry, it is the police that will evaluate the sermons.”

Mighri warned that the ministry must tackle extremism with vigorous debate and not just with the police.

“The current dialogue is very general, it does not go deep enough,” he said. “You have to use solid debate, deep dialogue, in mosques, on the radio, everywhere, so we use our solid arguments so that people can hear and people can be convinced. The minister is not using strong arguments.”