[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
The Jewish community of Amsterdam-Zuid are concerned about the arrival of a refugee center in Amstelveen-Noord, which local residents were informed about on Monday night. The proposed shelter will house 400 refugees, mostly from Syria and Iraq.
This weekend it was announced that the municipality of Amstelveen intends to shelter refugees in the office building on Laan van Kronenberg – less than a kilometer away from Buitenveldert, home to the largest Jewish community in the Netherlands.
The Central Jewish Board is concerned that there will be incidents. “Let there be no doubt that the Jewish community is overwhelmingly for the reception of war refugees. But we have major concerns”, chairman Ron van der Wieken said to NU on Monday. “These people come from countries such as Syria and Iraq, who traditionally take an extremely harsh tone against Jews. These people are largely brainwashed to hate Jews. You should not underestimate it.”
Ron Eisenmann, president of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel and faction leader of VVD Amsterdam-Zuid, also raised his concerns on Twitter. “Not a good plan, Syrian refugees in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.”, he tweeted. This tweet was met with opposition from, among others, GroenLinks alderwoman in Waterland Laura Bromet. “Maybe you can point out a Syrian neighborhood where they can go”, she replied to his tweet.
VVD Amsterdam Zuid also released a statement on their website saying that they are concerned about support among residents of Buitenveldert. “Given the disquiet among residents in the area and the importance of social security, the VVD insists that adequate security and surveillance will be present in the district.” The party also wants the emergency shelter to only accommodate families.
Oh, okay. They are now concerned, they say. There might be incidents, they say.
The Social Democrat Prime Minister announced an initiative called ‘Sweden Together’ (‘Sverige tillsammans’) on Thursday morning.
He said that municipalities, religious groups, sports associations, unions and public sector employers would all be invited to a major conference in October to discuss how to help refugees better integrate into Swedish communities.
The Prime Minister told Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Radio that he wanted a more even distribution of refugees across all 290 municipalities in Sweden, a policy that has been pushed by Sweden’s integration minister Ylva Johansson in recent months.
At a press conference in Stockholm at midday, ahead of cross-party talks on the refugee crisis, Löfven said there would be a large focus on getting refugees into schooling and the work force.
“This is about them having a speedy entrance into our society and getting a job, education, and housing,” Löfven told reporters.
“For us to be able to get through this demographic challenge, we need to get more working. This means we need to quickly get those who have newly arrived into the work force. This is what our investments are aiming for.”
One concrete change that was announced at the press conference was an increase in the compensation for municipalities per refugee, which will be raised from 83,100 kronor ($9,867) to 125,000 kronor ($14,873).
The government said it would earmark 1.8 billion kronor for the entire package to be spent over the next year. 870 million kronor of this will go into helping refugees find work quicker, offering speedier translation and validation of foreign education
The leaders of Sweden’s centre-right Alliance parties which made up former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s previous government are set to attend discussions with Löfven later in the day, along with the leaders of the government’s coalition partners the Greens and the Left Party. The nationalist anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party has not been invited.
“We must have a political gathering, both about what we’re doing here at home in Sweden, but also what Sweden stands for in the EU,” said Löfven, adding that it was currently “unhelpful” that Sweden and Germany were currently sharing the bulk of responsibility for new arrivals.
Sweden’s Prime Minister met Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin earlier this week. Both leaders told a press conference that they backed the introduction of new quotas to force other European countries to take in more refugees, as is being proposed by the European Commission.
The Nordic nation currently takes in more refugees per capita than any other EU member state.
Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) received a total of 11,743 applications for asylum last month, up from 6,619 in June and 8,066 in July, as an increasing number of refugees headed for Scandinavia over the summer.
Colleagues are alleged to have said that reporting the crime would set back their struggle for a borderless world.
The ‘No Borders’ activist had dedicated a month of her life to helping migrants. Her group was stationed between Italy and France in Ponte San Ludovico in Ventimiglia when the atrocity occurred, according to reports from local papers La Stampa and Il Secolo XIX, and now reported in the major Italian national Corriere Della Serra.
One Saturday night, as loud music played at a nearby party, the woman was reportedly trapped in a shower block set up near the camp in a pine forest know as Red Leap.
A gang of African migrants allegedly raped her there, and her cries for help are said to have gone unheard because of the music.
La Stampa reports that the woman, around 30 years of age, would have reported the horrific crime were if not for her fellow left-wing activists, who convinced her that if the truth got out it could damage their utopian dream of a world without borders.
But Corriere Della Serra also reports that some of her fellow activists are now accusing the woman of reporting the rape out of “spite,” because her group was withdrawn from the camp following a separate controversy.
The town of Ventimiglia, where the alleged crime occurred, has been a flashpoint in the ongoing migrant crisis.
On the 30th September around 50 migrants and 20 activists were cleared from an illegal camp there. The activists organised a protest, whereby 250 migrants conducted a “sit in” on the shoreline.
Yesterday, Osman Suliman, 20, a Sudanese asylum seeker who had been in the UK for just five months, appeared in court.
He was charged with the rape of a Nottingham woman last weekend, the 26th of September, The Nottingham Post reports.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 07 October 2015 09:12.
Seriously, Estonia, Luxembourg & Sweden are to be thronged within days, as invaders are directed northward from their Mediterranean beachheads:
(ANSA) - Brussels, October 2 - EU sources said Friday the relocation of asylum seekers from Italy to other EU nations including Estonia, Luxembourg and Sweden will begin “within days”. The idea is to get it done before the next EU summit on October 15, the sources said. EU interior ministers agreed in September to resettle 120,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy - where most refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean usually make first landfall - to other member States.
Of auguries, apparitions and specters.. .
With the help of the Swedish government, Barbara Spectre set-up a non-denominational institute of Jewish learning with the Greek name of Paideia -
She believes Jews have a key role to play in a country undergoing profound change:
“I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural; and I think that we’re going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which much take place. Europe is not going to be the ‘monolithic’ ..uh, uh, societies they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that - it’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multi-cultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role.”
She adds….”but without that leading role and with out that transformation, Europe will not survive.” - ??
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 03 October 2015 16:27.
Even where not required by EU quotas, Ireland’s Catholic bishops are calling for Irish parishes to accept and settle refugees who “will be arriving for months and years to come.”
Prelates seek reform of direct provision for asylum seekers to avoid two-tier system
The Catholic bishops have called on parishes throughout the island to mobilise resources to help with the resettlement of migrants who come to Ireland.
They have also called for urgent reform in direct provision for asylum seekers to avoid the emergence of an unjust two-tier system.
In a statement on Thursday afternoon, the bishops encouraged “all members of our parish communities to explore how they might offer their services, talents, time and commitment to supporting the resettlement of refugees through practical parish actions such as friendship and welcome schemes, English language classes, trauma counselling and medical services, as well as legal advice services”.
Demanding solidarity
They noted how “local communities across the island of Ireland have reacted to the worsening refugee crisis by mobilising to demand greater solidarity from European political leaders. The swift and enthusiastic response to Pope Francis’s appeal to parishes shows a ready willingness to help and a recognition that our parishes need to be places of welcome to all.
“Bishops are working with clergy and other diocesan personnel, as well as faith-based organisations, to assess our capacity to contribute to the national and international response.”
They said that “given the magnitude of the current crisis, refugees will be arriving for months and years to come, and it will be some years before they can safely return to their country of origin. Co-operation and clear sharing of responsibility across relevant Government departments, to address different types of need, is a necessary foundation for strategic planning.”
Move is aimed at atoning for the ‘historic mistake’ of forcing Sephardic Jews to leave on pain of death
October 2, 2015
Spain granted citizenship on Friday for 4,302 Sephardic Jews under a new law aimed at atoning for the expulsion of their Jewish ancestors five centuries ago in the Inquisition.
The law allowing dual citizenship for descendants of Jews who were forced to flee Spain in 1492 or face burning at the stake was approved by the Spanish parliament in June and came into force on Thursday.
But Justice Minister Rafael Catala said Friday the government had approved an extra measure to save paperwork for thousands who had already filed applications for nationality before the latest law came into force.
The new decree “has allowed us at one stroke to grant nationality to 4,302 people of Sephardic origin” whose applications under previous legislation were already pending, Catala told a news conference after a cabinet meeting.
“This is one more step in developing the law for granting nationality to the Sephardim,” he said in reference to the descendents of Spanish Jews forceed into exile.
“It seemed fair, rather than making them go through the process of filing their applications again, to speed up the process.”
The measure aims to correct what the Spanish government has called the “historic mistake” of the country’s Catholic monarchs sending Jews into exile in 1492.
Jewish groups welcomed the law in June, though some Jewish leaders complained the requirements are too burdensome.
Applicants do not have to be practising Jews but they must have their ancestry vetted by Jewish authorities and prove a “special connection” to and knowledge of Spain.
Historians believe at least 200,000 Jews lived in Spain before the monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand ordered them to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country on pain of death.
Up to 3.5 million people around the world are thought to have Sephardic Jewish ancestry.
A secret document from Austria’s finance ministry, which was leaked to the Austrian broadcasting company ORF, forecasts that if Austria takes in an estimated 85,000 asylum seekers in 2015 and a further 130,000 in 2016 it will cost a total of €6.5 billion over the next four years.
This is much higher than earlier official calculations, and is based on a projected 25,000 positive asylum applications per year.
The figure includes the costs of primary care for asylum seekers, integration, social security, and helping recognised asylum seekers access the labour market. The document estimates that if the cost of family reunification is included this would almost double the figure to €12.3 billion.
In comparison, the 2015 budget for the defence ministry amounts to around €1.8 billion, which corresponds to 0.55 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
In September, almost 200,000 refugees arrived in Austria, and 8,000 of those have applied for asylum. The interior ministry has said it expects a total of 80,000 asylum seekers this year.
The conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) has argued in favour of granting refugees “limited asylum” and restricting family reunification - where family members of a recognised refugee are given permission to join him or her in Austria.
Austria’s upper house changed the constitution Friday to force local authorities to accept a quota of migrants equal to 1.5 percent of their population despite opposition from the resurgent far-right.
The move, mirroring EU efforts to oblige member states to accept more migrants, is aimed at relieving Austria’s overcrowded main refugee centre at Traiskirchen, and comes into effect on October 1.
It was put forward by Chancellor Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats and the centre-right People’s Party, which form Austria’s governing coalition, and votes from the Greens gave it the necessary two-thirds majority.
The far-right Freedom Party, which wants to restrict the number of migrants entering and which is currently topping national opinion polls with around 30 percent of the vote, opposed the move.
In recent months Austria has become a major transit country for tens of thousands of migrants entering from Hungary—having travelled up the western Balkans—bound for northern Europe, in particular Germany.
But 8.5-million-strong Austria also expects around 80,000 asylum claims this year, putting it high compared to other European Union countries on a per capita basis, and Vienna has been a major proponent of EU quotas.
Senior conservatives are urging a flexible application of Germany’s new minimum wage in relation to refugees, arguing that those with minimal qualifications could struggle to find jobs at the 8.50 euro ($9.60) hourly rate.
Deputy finance minister Jens Spahn, a senior figure in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Reiner Haseloff, conservative premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, both called for exceptions to the minimum wage in comments to German daily Die Welt.
For the Social Democrats (SPD), the introduction of a minimum wage was a condition for entering a coalition with Merkel’s conservatives and they are likely to resist any changes to the law, which took effect at the start of this year.
“For entry level or training positions the minimum wage should not apply,” Haseloff told the newspaper.
Spahn said hundreds of thousands of refugees were likely to land on the jobs market and exceptions were necessary to ensure they found jobs, particularly in the services sector.
“Industry must offer internships, training and entry level positions to the many young people who, as refugees, have the right to stay,” Spahn said.
