Trump's attacks on media have real-life consequences
Updated 0604 GMT (1404 HKT) October 25, 2018
Almost as soon as the bombs arrived in the mail, the debate began: What role does violent political rhetoric have on these real-life acts of violence?
Well, truth be told, a version of this debate has been raging for a while. Witness the reactions to President Trump's recent praise of a congressman for body-slamming a reporter.
But the debate has been renewed now, in the wake of the threatening deliveries to CNN's New York office and several prominent Democratic politicians on Wednesday. The intended recipients all had something in common: They were frequent targets of right-wing criticism.
Or as the Washington Post succinctly put it: "Amid incendiary rhetoric, targets of Trump's words become targets of bombs."
Tommy Robinson and the far right’s new playbook
The former EDL leader is one of a new breed of entrepreneurial activists who are bringing extremist myths into the mainstream – while also claiming they are being silenced.
In the last few years, a new kind of far-right activism has emerged. This new activism, comprised largely of online anger and offline protest, crosses borders yet is heavily nationalist. It has figureheads but no formal leadership structure. It asks for little long-term commitment from its participants, yet is able to mobilise large amounts of money and attention, throwing its opponents into fierce disagreement about how to respond. Its icons tend to be entrepreneurial social media personalities, celebrities of a sort, who use their following to exert pressure on mainstream politics. And nobody embodies the dynamics of this new movement more than Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the founder and former leader of the English Defence League (EDL), who usually goes by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson.
Ireland referendum: Blasphemy laws and punishments from around the world
Amid contemporary debate over the boundaries of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, Ireland is going to the polls in a referendum which could see blasphemy removed as an offenceBen Kelly
On Friday, voters in Ireland are going to the polls in a referendum to decide whether the offence of blasphemy should be removed from the country’s constitution.
Blasphemy is generally defined as the act of insulting or speaking sacrilegiously about God or other sacred things. In an era where religious freedom and freedom of speech often find themselves coming into conflict, it’s no surprise that blasphemy is back as a point of debate.
While this is seen to be another step on Ireland’s road to modernising its law – and indeed highlighting the separation between church and state – over a quarter of countries around the world are still maintaining and introducing laws prohibiting blasphemy.
Migrants crammed into 'inhumane' Moroccan police car parks
The FRANCE 24 Observers team has received a series of videos, filmed between late September and early October 2018, showing sub-Saharan African migrants detained in a police station in Tangier, Morocco. Crammed in between the station’s courtyard and its car park, they are detained there for days and sometimes even weeks while they wait to be deported. All of this happens without their going through the official judicial process. A Cameroonian man who was deported back to Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, told us about his experience.
In one video, we can see a crowd of people in the courtyard of the Tangier police station. A lot of the men are bare-chested, waiting at the entrance of the car park, and shouting in unison: “Freedom! Freedom!” In another video, there’s a man lying unconscious on the ground, blood pooling by his head, surrounded by other migrants, while policemen nearby watch over the crowd. The last two videos show the migrants inside the car park, with a few foam mattresses and light blankets. In one of the videos, they are protesting in front of the police officers again, still with the same chant (“Freedom!”), while in another, they are crammed in together, pressed inside a carefully barricaded area.
UN investigator says Myanmar genocide against Rohingya 'ongoing'
UN Security Council urged to take action as 'most severe' repression of remaining Rohingya minority continues.
Genocide continues to take place against Muslim-majority Rohingya in Myanmar and the government is increasingly demonstrating it has no interest in establishing a fully functioning democracy, a UN investigator said.
Marzuki Darusman, chair of the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Rohingya who remained in the Buddhist-majority country following last year’s brutal crackdown "continue to suffer the most severe" restrictions and repression.
"Atrocities continue to take place today," Darusman told reporters as he prepared to brief the UN Security Council on the situation on Wednesday. "It is an ongoing genocide that is taking place."
Here’s What Happens When The Migrant Caravan Gets To The U.S. Border
As the Central American immigrants proceed through Mexico, Donald Trump remains left with limited options.
By Elise Foley and Roque Planas
As a widely publicized caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico toward the United States and sets off a new round of fury from the White House, President Donald Trump has threatened to use the military if necessary to repel them.
But the reality is that for now, Trump can do little more than complain.
Most of the ideas Trump has floated in response to the caravan seem unlikely to flourish as U.S. policy. He’s vowed to cut off aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, where most of the travelers are from. But that would require congressional approval and runs the risk of exacerbating the regional instability that caused many to leave in the first place. He’s threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, but that would be disastrous for trade and for the roughly 500,000 people who legally cross into the U.S. every day for work, school, shopping and tourism.
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