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Irony of Weinstein story being carried by Bloomberg: Elizabeth Warren Targets Mike Bloomberg For His Company’s Non-Disclosure Agreements | NBC News

Salvini quotes Ezra Pound, “If a man is not ready to fight for his ideas, either his ideas are worthless, or he is,”

Italian ethnonationalist leader Matteo Salvini is to stand trial on charges of illegally detaining migrants at sea after senators voted Wednesday to strip him of his parliamentary immunity.

The Globe Post, 12 Feb 2020:

A court in Sicily recommended that former interior minister Salvini stand trial for blocking migrants from disembarking from a coast guard boat last July.

But ministers cannot be tried for actions taken while in office unless their parliamentary immunity is revoked.

The Senate’s decision sends the chief of the anti-immigrant League party to trial for abuse of power and illegal detention, charges for which he faces up to 15 years in jail.

“I have defended Italy. I have full and total faith in the justice system,” Salvini told ANSA news agency after the vote.

“I am not worried at all, and I’m proud of what I’ve done,” he said, adding he would “do it again when I get back into power.”

Salvini had refused to allow 116 rescued migrants to leave the Gregoretti coast guard boat – where they had been languishing for about a week in insalubrious conditions – until a deal was reached with other European states to host them.

A Catania court accused him of “abuse of power” in blocking them on board from July 27 to July 31 last year, and of illegally detaining them.

Salvini insists the decision had the backing of the government and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

‘Head Held High’

Before the debate began, Salvini took to Facebook to say he had his “head held high, with the calm conscience of those who have defended their land and people.”

“If a man is not ready to fight for his ideas, either his ideas are worthless, or he is,” Salvini wrote, quoting Ezra Pound, a 20th-century American poet known for his fascist sympathies.

The Gregoretti on July 25 took on board 140 migrants who were trying to make the perilous crossing from war-torn Libya to Europe – the same day 110 migrants drowned off the Libyan coast.

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Prior to his arrest in 2003 Khodorkovsky (in photo with first Russian President Boris Yeltsin) funded several Russian parties, including the Communist Party, most of which were in competition with each other. Voltairenet.org

EURACTIV.com with Reuters, 18 Feb 2020:

A Dutch appeals court on Tuesday (18 February) overturned the annulment of a $50 billion award to shareholders in the now defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, a surprise ruling 13 years after the assets came under control of the Kremlin.

Yukos Oil went bankrupt in 2006 after its former chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky fell out with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the government began demanding billions of dollars in back taxes that ultimately resulted in its being expropriated by the state.

Tuesday’s verdict reinstates a decision by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ordering the Russian state to compensate shareholders in the company once headed by fallen oligarch Khodorkovsky. That decision had been overturned in April 2016 by The Hague District Court.

Russia’s Justice Ministry has said it will challenge the appeals court ruling at the Dutch Supreme Court.

“The (lower) court ruled in favour of the Russian Federation, but the court of appeal in The Hague today ruled that the court’s verdict is incorrect. This means that the arbitral award is again in force,” the appeals court said in a statement.

Most of Yukos’ assets were absorbed by the Kremlin’s flagship oil producer Rosneft, and its former owners have for years been trying to recover their possessions.

Legal proceedings seeking damages have been brought by GML, formerly known as Group Menatep Ltd., which held around 70% of shares in Yukos.

Rule of law

Tim Osborne, GML’s chief executive, said the latest ruling was “a victory for the rule of law.”

“The independent courts of a democracy have shown their integrity and served justice. A brutal kleptocracy has been held to account,” he said.

The PCA had ruled in July 2014 that four plaintiffs – not including Khodorkovsky – were entitled to compensation for the loss of their holdings, enabling them to go after Russian state assets.

France, Belgium seize Russian assets to compensate Yukos shareholders

Russian government assets in France and Belgium including bank accounts have been frozen in a row over compensation for shareholders of defunct oil giant Yukos, officials and a claimant representative said yesterday (18 June).

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MintPressNews.com: February 10th, 2020

By Alan Macleod

After refusing to sign a pledge of allegiance to the state of Israel, the state of Georgia shut down a media literacy conference featuring journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin at Georgia Southern University. Martin had recently released a documentary critical of the Israeli government called “Gaza Fights for Freedom.” Now she is suing the state, claiming the decision is a violation of the First Amendment. Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), today she filed a federal free speech lawsuit against the university system of Georgia.

Martin was dismayed by the university’s decision: “This censorship of my talk based on forced compliance to anti-BDS laws in Georgia is just one level of a nationwide campaign to protect Israel from grassroots pressure. We must stand firmly opposed to these efforts and not cower in fear to these blatant violations of free speech,” she said.

Abby Martin
✔
@AbbyMartin
After I was scheduled to give keynote speech at an upcoming @GeorgiaSouthern conference, organizers said I must comply w/ Georgia’s anti-BDS law & sign a contractual pledge to not boycott Israel. I refused & my talk was canceled. The event fell apart after colleagues supported me

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2:49 AM - Jan 11, 2020
3,013 people are talking about this

Twenty-eight states have already mandated loyalty pledges to Israel as a means to outlaw dissent. But in December, President Trump passed legislation effectively criminalizing the Boycott Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement that aims to put pressure on the Jewish state through economic action, along the lines of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The law mandates that any public institution would be subject to losing all funding if the government deems that they are not doing enough to stamp out anti-Semitism, which, it explicitly states, includes any criticism of the Israeli government. In December, MintPress reported that the British government under Boris Johnson is planning to introduce similar legislation.

“The hyperbolic notion that conservatives are the ones being persecuted on college campuses has made blatant censorship campaigns against people for criticism of Israel, or other progressive protests, go completely ignored,” Martin wrote:

CAIR’s Legal Defense Fund Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas said,

“There is no place where free speech is more important than on campus. And this attempt to suppress Abby’s views ­– denying students, academics, and others from hearing her lecture – is as brazen as it is illegal. In adopting this anti-BDS law, Georgia has prioritized the policy preferences of a foreign country over the free speech rights of Americans, like Abby, who speak on this state’s college campuses.”

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Israel court upholds DNA testing to prove Judaism

MEMO, 27 Jan 2020

The much-derided and controversial discipline of using DNA to prove one’s race, religion and nationality has been upheld by the Israeli High Court following a legal challenge to its use in the determination of Jewishness. A panel of High Court justices rejected a petition against the Chief Rabbinate and the rabbinical court’s ruling that DNA testing to prove one’s Judaism should be allowed.

In the legal challenge, which according to Haaretz was filed by Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Lieberman and several private petitioners, the judges dismissed their case that the rabbinate acted in a discriminatory manner by demanding DNA tests to prove one’s Judaism.

The case re-opens an ongoing feud over conducting genetic tests to determine who is and isn’t a Jew. With Israel electing to define itself in racial terms by declaring itself to be a “Jewish state”, conception of race as something existing in the blood, crushed civic notions of race and nationality, upon which modern democratic states are established.

READ : Netanyahu uses DNA claim to deny Palestinian right to homeland

Israel’s matrimonial law which is religious, not civil, has also meant that couples are required to prove their Jewishness through DNA testing if their heritage is in doubt. In Israel Jews can marry Jews, but intermarriage with Muslims or Christians is not permitted. This means that when a Jewish couple want to tie the knot, they are required by law to prove their Jewishness to the Rabbinate according to Orthodox tradition, which defines Jewish ancestry as being passed down through the mother.

According to the court’s decision DNA, “testing can only benefit the person being tested, whether he accepts the testing or refuses to undergo the test”. The judges debated the need for compiling a set of written rules around DNA testing, which they claimed would avert disagreements over its use.

During the hearing, the representative of the rabbinical court agreed to bring the matter of setting the rules in writing before the Chief Rabbinical Council.