EDL leader Stephen Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, (left) with EDL supporters outside The Queens Arms pub in Woolwich

The drunken racist British yahoos known as the English Defence League took to the streets and rioted yesterday following the attack on a soldier in London: Woolwich: Riot Police Contain EDL Supporters.

The EDL are allies of our home-grown Bigot Brigade, led by Anti-Muslim demagogues Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and these two hateful thugs are now doing their damnedest to incite similar violence against Muslims in America. Thankfully, we don’t have fascist groups like the EDL in this country, but it’s not for lack of trying by Geller, Spencer, and their nasty friends.

English Defence League supporters have thrown missiles at police in Woolwich after a machete attack that left one man dead.

A group of between 75 and 100 men gathered at The Queen’s Arms pub on Burrage Grove, where they sang nationalistic songs.

Sky News correspondent Alistair Bunkall, who is at the scene, said: “As soon as the EDL got into the town centre … it became not only a lot harder for the police to try and contain anything, but also the aggression (increased) quite considerably.

“A few missiles have been thrown, glass bottles and the like. The police are trying to surround them and they’ve been charging them as well with batons.”

Also see:
Woolwich Attack: More Than 100 English Defence League Supporters Gather Near Scene of Killing

Right wing loon Pat Dollard, a writer for Breitbart.com, calls this a “feel-good story:”

Feel-Good Story Of The Morning: Anti-Muslim Reprisals In England bit.ly/13LvRDt#tcot #lnyhbt #tgdn #resist44 #teaparty

— Patrick Dollard (@PatDollard) May 23, 2013

A horrible crime in London is being treated as a terror attack.

A man believed to be a soldier has been beheaded in an attack on a street near the Woolwich barracks in London, witnesses report.

Metropolitan Police Commander Simon Letchford confirmed tonight that two men were shot by armed officers.

Exclusive ITV footage shows that one man was filmed wielding a bloodied meat cleaver and saying: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

He adds: “We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

The Government is treating the attack as a terrorist incident.

Photo from havanatimes.org.

Former Guatemalan dictator José Efraín Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity today at his trial in Guatemala City. He was immediately sentenced to 50 years imprisonment on the genocide charge, with an additional 30 years on the charge of crimes against humanity.

“The damage incurred is irreperable,” said Judge Jazmin Barrios, reading the court’s verdict to a packed courtroom. “As de facto president, it is logical that he had full knowledge of what was happening and he did nothing to stop it.”

The 86-year-old former General and head of state was charged with the crimes over a counterinsurgency campaign in 1982-1983 that resulted in the deaths of 1,771 Maya Ixil.

[…]

More: Rios Montt Found Guilty of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity - Boing Boing There are links to earlier coverage and good background information at this link too.

Xeni Jardin provided excellent Twitter coverage of the trial, and took fantastic photographs. Here’s a link to her Instagram page so you can see for yourself. A sample:

Above, Maria Sajiq (L) and Ana Laynez Herrera of Nebaj, Quiché, Guatemala (R). Photo: Xeni Jardin

The New York Times article about the verdict is here. It dovetails well with the article linked above. This excerpt is from the end:

[…]

The involvement of the United States in Guatemala’s politics received scant attention during the trial.

The American military had a close relationship with the Guatemalan military well into the 1970s before President Jimmy Carter’s administration cut off aid. When General Ríos Montt seized power in March 1982, President Ronald Reagan’s administration cultivated him as a reliable Central American ally in its battle against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and Salvadoran guerrillas.

Those interests influenced the way American officials treated evidence of the massacres. They were quick to accept military explanations that guerrillas had carried out the killings, said Kate Doyle, a Guatemala expert at the National Security Archive, a Washington research group that works to obtain declassified government documents.

By the end of 1982, however, the State Department had gathered evidence that the army was behind the massacres.

But even then, the administration insisted that General Ríos Montt was working to reduce the violence. After a regional meeting, President Reagan described him as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”

As Xeni Jardin points out in her last two paragraphs, this isn’t over yet.

David Fowler / Shutterstock.com

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died after a stroke, according to multiple media reports. She was 87.

BREAKING: Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died from a stroke -BW— The Associated Press (@AP) April 8, 2013

Margaret Thatcher, known as the “Iron Lady,” was 87. Her spokesman says she died peacefully in her sleep— Cadillac News (@CadillacNews) April 8, 2013

Baroness Thatcher died this morning following a stroke, her spokesman Lord Bell said.— Press Association (@pressassoc) April 8, 2013

An interesting post at ThinkProgress by Zack Beauchamp: Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chavez.

While even Chavez’s critics admit that he did attempt to address the plight of Venezuela’s poorest, the decline in economic inequality in Venezuela reflected a broader egalitarian trend in Latin America, and can’t be fully credited to Chavez’s policies. However, Chavez’ policies harmed Venezuela’s poorest in other ways: the value of the Venezuelan currency dropped while prices soared, making it harder for people to buy basic necessities, and crime skyrocketed.

Moreover, Chavez hurt the vulnerable in Venezuela in other ways. Chavez’s state-run media hounded Venezuela’s small, beleaguered Jewish population — he himself once said “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews.” A study released by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University found that Chavez’s rule “witnessed a rise in antisemitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions.” Indeed, roughly half of Venezuelan Jews fled the country because of “the social and economic chaos that the president has unleashed and from the uncomfortable feeling that they were being specifically targeted by the regime.”

Chavez also attacked Venezuela’s democratic political system. Human Rights Watch reported in 2012 that “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.” Contra Serrano’s implication that Chavez’s elections were generally certified as “free and fair by international monitors,” Chavez had not invited international election monitors to observe Venezuelan elections since 2006 (though a delegation from the Carter Center did conduct a limited audit of the 2012 election).

You know that universal wingnut talking point that President Obama is “antisemitic” and despises Israel?

Well, here’s the reality: On Israel Trip, Obama to Get Medal.

(CNN) - When President Barack Obama visits Israel next month, he’ll be awarded the Presidential Medal of Distinction, Israeli President Shimon Peres’ office announced Monday.

Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to receive the recognition, will be awarded the medal for making “a unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the security of its citizens,” according to a release announcing the news.

Also see:
Peres to Give Obama Medal of Distinction | the Times of Israel

What might America look like if the Republican Party’s anti-science agenda were enshrined into law?

For an answer, let’s look at Turkey, where religious fundamentalists in the government recently took a very dangerous, tragically misguided step, a step that many in the Republican Party would like to take in the US: Turkey’s Science State Council Halts Publication of Evolution Books.

The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported.

The evolutionist books, previously available through TÜBİTAK’s Popular Science Publications’ List, will no longer be provided by the council.

The books have long been listed as “out of stock” on TÜBİTAK’s website, but their further publication are now slated to be stopped permanently.

Books by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin [sic] and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to the Turkish readers.

Related:
Audio: The Discovery Institute Collaborates With Turkish Creationists
American Creationists Collaborate With Turkish Islamists

This horrifying story from Ireland is a grim warning of what’s in store for the United States if the Republican Party’s anti-abortion agenda is allowed to succeed: Woman ‘Denied a Termination’ Dies in Hospital.

Two investigations are under way into the death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant, at University Hospital Galway last month.

Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

Note the hospital’s reason for refusing this poor woman an abortion: a heartbeat was present.

This is exactly the kind of law the Republican Party is pushing in many states - to define human life as beginning when a heartbeat is audible.

It’s no exaggeration at all to say this is what the GOP wants for America. They’re working hard to make it happen, right now.

The latest report from the investigation into the Benghazi attack finds no evidence of Al Qaeda involvement, and no evidence of advance planning.

WASHINGTON — The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

The circumstances of the Sept. 11 attack have become a matter of heated political debate, with President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney clashing in their debate Tuesday about when Obama termed the assault an act of terrorism. But the emerging picture painted by intelligence officials and witnesses differs from the assertions of both sides.

Republicans have zeroed in on possible Al Qaeda ties to the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and have criticized the Obama administration for not saying early on that it was an act of terrorism. But after five weeks of investigation, U.S. intelligence agencies say they have found no evidence of Al Qaeda participation.

The attack was “carried out following a minimum amount of planning,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under investigation. “The attackers exhibited a high degree of disorganization. Some joined the attack in progress, some did not have weapons and others just seemed interested in looting.”

In the wake of protests and riots as well as a terror attack against the US consulate in Libya that resulted in dozens of casualties and the death of US Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans ostensibly over a video denigrating Islam and the prophet Mohammed, a French satire magazine is publishing a series of cartoons in its latest edition that is likely to result in new protests and riots.

The French government warned the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, to not publish the cartoons for fear of causing a new wave of protests, riots, and attacks. The magazine is going ahead with publication, as is its right under the freedom of press and free exercise of speech.

The magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Mohammed in an issue that hit newsstands Wednesday.

Magazine director Stephane Charbonnier said his staff is “not really fueling the fire,” but rather using its freedom of expression “to comment (on) the news in a satirical way.”

“It happens that the news this week is Mohammed and this lousy film, so we are drawing cartoons about this subject,” Charbonnier told CNN affiliate BFM-TV on Wednesday. “It’s more turning in derision this grotesque film than to make fun of Mohammed.”

The “lousy film” he’s referring to is “Innocence of Muslims,” an amateurish, 14-minute video that mocks the Prophet Mohammed as a womanizer, child molester and killer. The video drew international attention last week and spawned heated protests in more than a dozen countries.

France will be closing embassies and schools in many countries with large Muslim populations this Friday, and is boosting security at those facilities. That the French government has made such moves shows that they understand that there are those who will use the Friday prayers to incite others to violence, using the cartoons as a cudgel against the French, and the West in general. Militant Islamists consider any vision to be blasphemous, and these cartoons violate that precept.

It’s the clash of freedom of speech and the religious views that blasphemy warrants a death sentence. Something has to give, and it has to be the religious views - but as we all know, that’s not going to happen so long as Islamists whip their followers into a frenzy.

Those in the West who think that Islam is the enemy of all that is good and right in the world will use these riots and deaths as proof that they’re right when they pursue an anti-Islam agenda. Those in the Islamic world use these same acts as a means to further inflame passions and as a call to violence.

They are flip sides of the same coin. Both do not wish for accommodation or tolerance, but rather a clash of civilizations and war.

Freedom of speech has to win out over violence and the calls to violence. Protests against offensive speech should not resort to violence, and those who make the calls to violence need to be held accountable for their actions. Criminalizing free speech isn’t the way to go either.

At the same time, there are those who are purposefully engaging in hate speech so as to bring about conflict. These agent provocateurs are behind the offensive film that few have actually seen, and know even less about. The purpose of that film was designed to create conflict - and an entire nation was blamed for the act (the US) when it was an individual/group that took advantage of our nation’s right to free speech to inflame passions and led to protests and riots.

While the French government pressed the magazine to refrain from publishing the cartoons, the French Prime Minister indicated that freedom of expression is a fundamental principle of the French republic:

A press release issued by the French embassy in Beirut said that French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault recalled that freedom of expression constitutes one of the fundamental principles of his Republic.

‘This freedom is exercised within the framework of law and under the control of the courts when referred there,’ the statement quoted Ayrault saying.

The French PM also said that the principle of secularism is at the core of the French republican pact, along with the values of tolerance and respect for religious beliefs.

‘That is why, in light of recent development, the Prime Minister is keen on stating his disapproval of exaggerated reactions, and calls on everyone to act in a responsible way,’ the statement said.

Hizbullah’s Nasrallah has called for nationwide protests across Lebanon on this coming Monday, so it will be interesting to see what develops next week.