Comments on: Empire Strikes Back http://blogs.euobserver.com/rakhlei/2013/02/07/empire-strikes-back/ Maryna Rakhlei is a programme coordinator at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She used to report on Belarus-EU relations for Belarusian news wire Belapan in Minsk and now analyses regional developments in Central and Eastern Europe from Berlin. This blog is devoted to Belarus and the Brownian developments of its politics. Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:06:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Andrea http://blogs.euobserver.com/rakhlei/2013/02/07/empire-strikes-back/comment-page-1/#comment-11214 Andrea Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:06:58 +0000 http://blogs.euobserver.com/rakhlei/?p=680#comment-11214 I don’t know whtr it’s more funny Belarusian-point-of-w being impressed by Italian Police’s brutality – or if it’s more disturbing (however never funny for real). Even, this report dsn’t show any awareness of such an amount of local news about these kind of facts – Policemen having raped a prostitute or killed a homeless, or ferociously beaten a man simply passing by (this just to stay around Milan) – but it neither says that all of these fake-Policemen have been prosecuted and jailed. Italy has an excellent Police and an excellent system of Justice, if only we hadn’t such polticians whose main job is not to make this Justice faster (even, they need it to be even longer), but to cheat people about what they would gain from voting them: that is no “Politics” – just Satanism. And if you lived in Italy you might perhaps be among those who think that the sentence (for libel) againts the journalist A. Sallusti be not enough, for such an insulting way to abuse of the freedom of press, insulting those themselves who on the opposite side, try and defend civil rights against the building of immense and impossible bridges and useless channels, when our schools’ ceilings fall onto children! What I instead fear (which hasn’t been pointed out enough but in the report about Hungary) is – due to the clear lack of values and the political emptiness – the rising up of a far-right-wing ideology which claims to carry on “humanitarian purposes” (see it as in Greece) but which has even turned out to be an international “fashion” for teens: a fashion which allow to carry Nazi symbols and to deny Shoah (but what’s the matter with Jews?); to break immigrants’ shops, to set afire Roma settlements or a bum sleeping in the station (“… we felt bored”), the fashion of feeling members of a nationalist army, to beat people in the streets and to start again what in 70′s Italy has been called “The Lead Years” because of the everyday murders. The real problem in Italy in not whtr Police is brutal, it is the lack of actual care towards its Youths. (AP)

]]> By: jon livesey http://blogs.euobserver.com/rakhlei/2013/02/07/empire-strikes-back/comment-page-1/#comment-11162 jon livesey Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:16:09 +0000 http://blogs.euobserver.com/rakhlei/?p=680#comment-11162 UK:

“In March, the Cabinet introduced a ban on wearing body crosses and crucifixes in public.”

This is complete nonsense. The cabinet simply issued an *opinion* that wearing a crucifix to work isn’t a guaranteed right, and subject to agreement with the employer.

There is no “ban” and the case remains to be tested in Court.

I can only imagine that the human rights “violations” listed for other western countries are similarly nonsensical.

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