This is a repeat of history. 1930s German with an authoritarian leader with a compliant congress with a plan to take over the government functions to end rights and liberty for some people while making others a superior race. Damn it people wake up. We have seen this movie before. The fascist are the bad guys. We had to stop them then, we have to stop them now. They did not have permits yet they marched and paraded anyway. They vandalized public property, costing taxpayer money to repair. They threatened people, rule by violence, by gang thugs, brownshirts, tRump soldiers. Hugs. Scottie
For the second time in just nearly as many weeks, a hate group stationed themselves in downtown Nashville and passed out flyers against those who were Jewish and in the LGBTQ community.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — For the second time in just nearly as many weeks, a hate group stationed themselves in downtown Nashville and passed out flyers against those who were Jewish and in the LGBTQ community.
The group kept passing out flyers that labeled Jewish people as pedophiles and screaming that those who are LGBTQ needed to “get the f—k home.” Their shirts read “pro white” on the front. On the back of the shirt, it read “whites against replacement.” They stood alongside a Nazi flag and a sign that said Let’s Go Brandon, a moniker against President Joe Biden.
“Joe Biden’s cabinet is 80% Jewish,” one of the group told our camera crew.
Men in the group were raising their arms in the same salute as Nazi soldiers did to Adolf Hitler during his fascist rise of power in the 1930s and 1940s.
“The Holocaust never happened,” they told our camera crew.
Justice Kennedy/WTVF
A man holds a flyer in the face of another while a hate group stood at Third and Broadway in Nashville, Tenn., on July 14, 2024.
Those at Third and Broadway identified themselves as the Goyim Defense League, and they are defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are a group that primarily lends their hate to the Jewish community, though the group on Broadway was screaming about the Jewish, LGBTQ and the Black community.
“It’s time for white people to stand up for themselves,” the group told pedestrians walking by.
We captured a woman who was gay screaming at the group for being out there in front of her child. They screamed at her that she shouldn’t have any children.
“My daughter is scared of you!” the woman screamed, who said she had just come out of a restaurant.
Metro Nashville police officers were near the group on Lower Broadway.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville posted on Sunday about hate groups continuing to hand out flyers that show hatred against Jewish people, including Saturday night in Nashville.
“The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville is disgusted that once again our beloved city has been sullied by antisemitic instigators,” Jewish leaders said in a statement. “Last night, a group of roughly 15 Jew-haters handed out antisemitic literature in downtown while spewing loathsome rhetoric. We condemn this activity in the strongest possible way and denounce the perpetrators. Antisemitism — the irrational hatred of Jews — continues to escalate here in Middle Tennessee and around the country (and world). We are in constant contact with local law enforcement and thank them for their hard work and partnership in ensuring that the hateful words being espoused do not turn into violent actions against our community members or institutions.”
Previous hate groups in Nashville
The hate group the Patriot Front didn’t have a permit to march in the city, but they did so anyway last weekend.
The group went through the streets of downtown Nashville a “Reclaim America” banner, American flags, a Confederate flag and passing out flyers while chanting on their way to the front of the Capitol. Some also held red, white, and blue shields.
They also spray-painted their logo under the Woodland Street Bridge, which is vandalism.
In February, the group defaced the retaining wall in Brentwood on the side of Interstate 65. The Tennessee Department of Transportation had to paint over it.
Other racist flyers were passed out in downtown in February.
On Sunday, once again, a hate group put on a demonstration in downtown Nashville. This time, it was the neo-Nazi “Goyim Defense League,” shouting “Hitler was right!” and other vile words! 1/ pic.twitter.com/CcP59f7mIk
'They see Tennessee as a battleground.' New data points to dramatic rise of hate in Tennessee (From my “Hate Comes to Main Street” investigation) 3/3 https://t.co/23UouVF05H
JUST IN: Video of a fight in downtown Nashville involving the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League. MNPD was on the scene. It’s unclear if any arrests were made. https://t.co/EOmA1VwGBvpic.twitter.com/PHJdaFYr7m
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The top United Nations court said Friday that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and called on it to end, and for settlement construction to stop immediately, issuing an unprecedented, sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured 57 years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly denounced the nonbinding opinion issued by the 15-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, saying the territories are part of the Jewish people’s historic homeland. But the resounding breadth of the decision could impact international opinion and fuel moves for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.
The judges pointed to a wide list of policies, including the building and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, use of the area’s natural resources, the annexation and imposition of permanent control over lands and discriminatory policies against Palestinians, all of which it said violated international law.
The court said Israel had no right to sovereignty in the territories, was violating international laws against acquiring territory by force and was impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination. It said other nations were obliged not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s presence in the territories. It said Israel must end settlement construction immediately and that existing settlements must be removed, according to a summary of the more than 80-page opinion read out by court President Nawaf Salam.
Israel’s “abuse of its status as the occupying power” renders its “presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful,” the court said, saying its presence must be ended as “rapidly as possible.”
The court’s opinion, sought by the U.N. General Assembly after a Palestinian request, came against the backdrop of Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza, which was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7. In a separate case, the International Court of Justice is considering a South African claim that Israel’s campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide, a claim that Israel vehemently denies.
The court said the General Assembly and Security Council — where staunch Israeli ally the United States holds a veto — should consider “the precise modalities” to end Israel’s presence in the territories.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will promptly transmit the advisory opinion to the 193-member world body and “it is for the General Assembly to decide how to proceed in the matter,” U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said.
The secretary-general reiterates his call for Israel and the Palestinians to engage “on the long-delayed political path towards ending the occupation and resolving the conflict in line with international law, relevant U.N. resolutions and bilateral agreements,” the spokesperson said.
Guterres also stressed that a two-state solution is “the only viable path” to seeing Israel and “a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian state” living side by side in peace and security, Haq said.
Israel, which normally considers the United Nations and international tribunals as unfair and biased, didn’t send a legal team to the hearings. Instead, it submitted written comments, saying that the questions put to the court are prejudiced and fail to address Israeli security concerns. Israeli officials have said the court’s intervention could undermine the peace process, which has been stagnant for more than a decade.
“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land — not in our eternal capital Jerusalem and not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office, using the biblical terms for the West Bank. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”
Speaking outside the court, Riad Malki, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the opinion “a watershed moment for Palestine, for justice and for international law.”
He said other nations must now “uphold the clear obligations” outlined by the court. “No actions of any kind … to support Israel’s illegal occupation.”
Hamas welcomed the court’s decision and said in a statement that “serious steps on the ground” need to be taken in response.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three areas for an independent state.
Israel considers the West Bank to be disputed territory, the future of which should be decided in negotiations, while it has moved populations there in settlements to solidify its hold. It has annexed east Jerusalem in a move that isn’t internationally recognized, while it withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but maintained a blockade of the territory after Hamas took power in 2007. The international community generally considers all three areas to be occupied territory.
The court’s decision strikes at the heart of the ambiguity of Israel’s administration of the territories. Israel hasn’t annexed the West Bank — though settler groups have pressed it to do so — but it calls it part of its homeland and has effectively treated it as an extension of the nation. Along with the settlements, it has appropriated large swaths of the territory as “state lands.” At the same time, Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly rejected the creation of any Palestinian state. Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has been restricted to control over divided enclaves scattered around the West Bank.
The Palestinians presented arguments at hearings in February, along with 49 other nations and three international organizations. In the hearings, Malki accused Israel of apartheid and urged the United Nations’ top court to declare that Israel’s occupation of lands sought by the Palestinians is illegal and must end immediately and unconditionally for any hope for a two-state future to survive.
Erwin van Veen, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael think tank in The Hague, said before the decision that a ruling that Israel’s policies breach international law would “isolate Israel further internationally, at least from a legal point of view.”
He said such a ruling would remove “any kind of legal, political, philosophical underpinning of the Israeli expansion project.” It could also increase the number of countries that recognize a Palestinian state, in particular in the Western world, following the recent example of Spain, Norway and Ireland, he said.
It’s not the first time the ICJ has been asked to give its legal opinion on Israeli policies. Two decades ago, the court ruled that Israel’s West Bank separation barrier was “contrary to international law.” Israel boycotted those proceedings, saying they were politically motivated.
Israel says the barrier is a security measure. Palestinians say the structure amounts to a massive land grab, because it frequently dips into the West Bank.
The court said that Israel’s construction of settlements in the West Bank violated international laws prohibiting countries from moving their population into territories they occupy.
Israel has built well over 100 settlements, according to the anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now. The West Bank settler population has grown by more than 15% in the past five years to more than 500,000 Israelis, according to a pro-settler group. Their residents are Israeli citizens governed by domestic law and served by government ministries, services, banks and other businesses — effectively integrating them into Israel.
Israel also has annexed east Jerusalem and considers the entire city to be its capital. An additional 200,000 Israelis live in settlements built in east Jerusalem that Israel considers to be neighborhoods of its capital. Palestinian residents of the city face systematic discrimination, making it difficult for them to build new homes or expand existing ones.
The international community considers all settlements to be illegal or obstacles to peace since they are built on lands sought by the Palestinians for their state.
Netanyahu’s hard-line government is dominated by settlers and their political supporters. Netanyahu has given his Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, unprecedented authority over settlement policy. Smotrich has used this position to cement Israel’s control over the West Bank by pushing forward plans to build more settlement homes and to legalize outposts.
Thanks to politicians are poody heads for the link. Their link below. Destroying public education has been a goal of the right for a long time. They want to make it for profit and use it for public indoctrination in both right wing ideology and in the Christian religion. The one thing they don’t want to use school for is an educated public. The well off do not send their kids to public school. They want the public school to educate workers to follow orders and not to think for themselves. Hugs. Scottie
Ohio Senate President, Matt Huffman has been trying to hide behind the gerrymandered power of the Ohio GOP to avoid being deposed in court about the lobbyists he talked with privately as the Ohio Senate was getting ready to insert an especially lavish, last minute expansion of EdChoice vouchers into the state budget bill in June of 2023.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Laura Hancock explains: “A judge can’t force Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman to answer lawyers’ questions about which private school lobbyists he speaks to outside of legislative chambers, the Republican has argued before the Ohio Supreme Court.” Huffman doesn’t want to comply with a subpoena to testify in the case of the Vouchers Hurt Ohio, brought by 200 school districts to demonstrate that private school tuition vouchers violate the provisions of the Ohio Constitution. Hancock continues, referring to the step Huffman took to discourage school districts from joining the lawsuit: “Huffman’s battle has lasted over a year, and even included a request from Huffman during last year’s state budget season that every school district provide the legislature and Ohio Auditor Keith Faber the amount of money they’re spending on the litigation…. Huffman believes that a portion of the Ohio Constitution that privileges lawmakers’ speech and debate from questioning applies not just to speech and debate on the Senate floor but to all discussion on bills…”
And the gerrymandered legislature’s attempt to wield power isn’t limited to trying to avoid testifying in court about the voucher expansion. Marilou Johanek just penned another bombshell Ohio Capital Journal column about the debate last week as the legislature finished up work for the summer and autumn: “Nobody, but showboating extremists in the Ohio legislature, gives a damn about which school bathroom is used by a minuscule number of transgender students… Same goes for the nonsense cooked up in the Ohio Senate to wield an authoritarian hammer over the state’s highly regarded colleges and universities. It’s a kneejerk response to a long-running Fox News narrative about leftist indoctrination ruining higher ed. The MAGA Republican fever dream to own campus libs by censoring them lives in the Senate bill stalled in the Ohio House that nobody—except gerrymandered ideologues—wants or needs…. It doesn’t improve life for students or faculty and threatens to make it worse with tyrannical rule over great academic institutions.”
The best one can say is both of these bills have been passed by only one chamber and can’t be acted on again until the legislature reconvenes for a lame duck session right after the November election.
But Ohio’s GOP dictatorship pales compared what’s happening this month in Oklahoma—the state where, The Oklahoman‘s Murray Evans reports,“Oklahoma State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters sent a letter to state school districts… ordering them to incorporate the Bible ‘as an instructional support into the curriculum’ for grades 5 through 12, citing its importance as a historical document. ‘Adherence to this mandate is compulsory,’ Walters’ letter read…. ‘Immediate and strict compliance is expected.’…. Walters announcement came two days after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a contract between the Statewide Virtual School Charter Board and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have been the nation’s first religious-based charter school, violated both the state and U.S. Constitutions and state law.”
Evans provides evidence that Walter’s new order does not seem to represent the will of the voters. In 2016, they rejected “by more than 200,000 votes,” a state constitutional amendment to remove Section 5, Article 2 of the Oklahoma Constitution, “which states, ‘No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.’”
It is hard to understand why Oklahoma’s state school superintendent is prioritizing mandating the insertion of Bible teaching into the public schools when, as in Ohio, needed school funding and other immediate issues for the state’s public schools are apparent. For years, for example, we have read about teachers leaving Oklahoma for nearby Texas, where teachers’ salaries are higher. In the most recent in a series of reports tracking teachers’ salaries, the Economic Policy Institute showed that in Oklahoma, the disparity between the salaries of teachers and other comparably trained professionals is forth largest in the nation. The only states where teachers’ salaries are more inadequate are Colorado, Arizona, and Virginia.
The President and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rachel Laser released the following statement about Ryan Walter’s act to command Bible teaching in all of Oklahoma’s public schools: “Public schools are not Sunday schools… This is textbook Christian Nationalism. Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else’s children… Christian Nationalists and their lawmaker allies want to replace school counselors with religious chaplains, allow teachers and coaches to pray with students, teach Creationism in science classes, and ban books and censor curricula that feature LGBTQ+ people and racial and religious minorities.”
Two sociologists, Philip S. Gorski at Yale University and Samuel L. Perry at the University of Oklahoma, define the mythology of white Christian nationalism in their excellent book, The Flag and the Cross: “White Christian nationalism is a ‘deep story’ about America’s past and a vision of its future. It includes cherished assumptions about what America was and is, but also what it it should be… America was founded as a Christian nation by (white) men who were ‘traditional’ Christians, who based the nation’s founding documents on ‘Christian principles.’ The United States is blessed by God, which is why it has been so successful; and the nation has a special role to play in God’s plan for humanity. But these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from ‘un-American’ influences both inside and outside our borders.” (The Flag and The Cross, pp. 3-4)
Gorski and Perry conclude: “White Christian nationalism is our term for the ethno-traditionalism among many white Americans that conflates racial, religious, and national identity (the deep story) and pines for cultural and political power that demographic and cultural shifts have increasingly threatened…. (T)he term Christian in white Christian nationalism is often far more akin to a dog whistle that calls out to an aggrieved tribe than a description of the content of one’s faith.” (The Flag and The Cross, p. 44)
In an opinion piece for CNN, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, Amanda Tyler succinctly defines how Christian nationalists like Oklahoma State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, “threaten the careful balance worked out over more than half a century by the courts, presidential administrations from both parties and a diverse set of interest groups about how best to recognize the religious freedom rights of students, teachers and administrators in our pluralistic public schools. These recent developments are… just the latest examples of a concerted strategy to inject the political ideology of Christian nationalism into public education. Christian nationalism, which merges Christian and American identities, relies on a false narrative of the U.S. as a ‘Christian nation’—a country founded by Christians and for Christians. Such mythology betrays our history and constitutional framework, which created a separation between the institutions of religion and government so that all religions could flourish without the state’s control.”
Ukrainian authorities say the number of children abducted by Russia since the start of the war, stands at more than 19-thousand. Few have made it back home. DW went to Ukraine to speak to one of those who did.
Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance as his running mate, the former president announced on Monday.
Vance, a first-term Republican senator from Ohio, was widely expected to be Trump’s vice presidential pick as the pool of potential hopefuls narrowed earlier in the day. Just hours before the announcement, several outlets reported that Gov. Doug Burgum (R-N.D.) and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were informed by the Trump campaign that they would not be on the 2024 ticket. Others previously thought to be on Trump’s short list included Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), U.S. House Rep. Elise Stefanink (R-N.Y.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
In a post on his own tech platform, Truth Social, Trump lauded Vance as the “person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States.”
“J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association,” he said, adding that he “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”
The choice of Vance, who rose to fame as the author of the controversial memoir Hillbilly Elegy, was likely intended to help Trump shore up support among white, lower-income voters in the Midwest, where President Joe Biden is considered vulnerable in the 2024 race. According to poll averages from FiveThirtyEight, Trump leads Biden by more than nine points in Vance’s home state of Ohio, and Biden also trails in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Biden would likely need to win all three of the latter states to stave off a second Trump term, with swing states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada also looking vulnerable in 2024.
A former critic of Trump who recast himself as a politician in the MAGA model, Vance’s LGBTQ+ record differs very little from the man at the top of his ticket. During his two years in the U.S. Senate, Vance opposed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified federal same-sex marriage rights in the event that Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2004 ruling legalizing marriage equality, is repealed by the Supreme Court. He also authored the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would make it a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, to provide gender-affirming surgery to trans minors. (This despite the fact that transition surgeries are rarely offered to patients under the age of 18 and only in cases of extreme medical need.)
Additionally, Vance is a supporter of the so-called “parent’s rights” movement, which advocates that LGBTQ+ students be outed to their parents and seeks to remove queer-affirming resources from classrooms. He has repeatedly referred to opponents of those actions as “groomers,” such as in an April 2022 post on X. “I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children,” he wrote at the time.
The 39-year-old politician has also opposed diversity and inclusion in the U.S. armed forces, suggesting that he is likely to support re-banning trans servicemembers from the military should Trump be elected. “American political leaders should stop using America’s military as a social justice side project,” his 2022 campaign site reads. “Troops don’t need to focus on diversity or equity or any other progressive buzzword; they need to focus on fighting and winning America’s wars.” The removal of trans troops from the military is a major component of Project 2025, a set of far-right policy proposals shaped and promoted by the anti-LGBTQ+ Heritage Foundation, which Trump has sought to distance himself from in recent days.
Vance’s anti-LGBTQ+ background also includes claiming that Biden supports Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin is anti-trans and blaming the “childless left” for America’s decline, specifically citing U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. Furthermore, he once accused U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) of making up the term “Two-Spirit,” which is broadly embraced by LGBTQ+ Native Americans to describe their identities. “Would love if progressives just stopped inventing words,” Vance posted on X in February 2021.
In repeatedly opposing LGBTQ+ equality, Vance has found a perfect match in Trump, whose administration was responsible for more than 200 attacks on queer rights in four years, according to GLAAD. These assaults included repealing protections for trans students, removing resources for LGBTQ+ Americans from federal websites, decimating funding for global HIV/AIDS prevention, and appointing a record-number of judges opposed to LGBTQ+ equality. His administration also made it harder for marginally housed people to find safe shelter and opposed workplace protections for LGBTQ+ employees.
Trump, whose own supporters threatened to kill his last vice president for refusing to support Trump’s 2020 bid to remain in office, is likely to resume many of those policies if reelected in November.
I am posting this video for those that think sex and gender is assigned at birth. That the birthing person simply has to look between the legs to see it a new baby is a boy or a girl. As I repeatedly say that has been replaced by more advanced medical understanding. If a baby has a dangle or an innie don’t mean it is one sex or the other, one gender or the others. Also for those who will shout those people are anomalies and rare. Not many of them. There are more of those people, intersex people than there are red heads in the world. And even though she is genetically a male she still feels, acts, and goes by female pronouns. Where are all those saying pronouns are offensive. Going to call this girl him / his and send her to the boy’s bathroom. Hugs. Scottie
Wanted to share something very important and personal to raise awareness and hopefully help someone who’s struggling with similar feelings I felt back when I was diagnosed as intersex.
Justice Kennedy/WTVF
Scottie's Playtime 