There’s this girl in my tax class

every time she starts talking everyone groans

seriously

we were talking about business loans and she asks about war

then

we were talking about casualty and theft losses and she spent 5 minutes asking about what would happen if there was cholera epidemic or a plague

stitchmedown:

nilecrocodile:

gnimaerd:

nilecrocodile:

golden-zephyr:

In a February 12 interview on Canal Plus TV, François Hollande, Socialist Party candidate for president in the upcoming elections, proposed as a “solution” to the presence in France of Roma European Union (EU) citizens “the creation of camps … to accommodate them”.

The association of a “solution” in relation to specific racial groups with special camps can only bring to mind the period of Nazi rule in Europe, during which not only Jews and homosexuals, but also Roma and gypsies were rounded up and sent to extermination camps. This was not lost on many French people.

Hollande called for the establishment of “European rules to avoid our experiencing this constant to and fro [of the Roma]. Let there be camps that we can decide on, that is, to avoid these people settling just anywhere … [to] enable these people to go back to Romania … and not then return to France”.

Put more concretely, the Roma would be rounded up, and after their improvised encampments were broken up, they would be sent back to Romania, the same policy the present right-wing government of President Nicolas Sarkozy is pursuing.

The “Socialist” Hollande’s innovation is to suggest the building of internment camps and then preventing the Roma from returning by some sort of frontier control. Hollande is here attacking the free movement within the EU of these European citizens, one of the few progressive measures European capitalism temporarily conceded in the Schengen agreement in 1985.

Ruling UMP (Union for a Popular Majority) deputies pounced on Hollande’s statement to justify the brutality of the governments’ current policy. On RTL radio, minister for apprenticeship Nadine Morano, a rabid racist, claimed that she was “profoundly shocked” by this “outlandish proposal … We [the government] were the ones who organised the dismantling of the Roma camps with legal procedures, in accordance with French law”, while “Mr. Hollande is proposing the creation of camps for Roma in France.”

An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Roma, citizens of Romania and Bulgaria, have legally come to France since their countries joined the European Union in 2007. According to the BBC, ten other EU countries, including Germany, Italy, Denmark and Sweden, which also welcomed Roma, are likewise introducing deportation policies. Measures adopted by a number of European states, including France, limit access to work and residence rights for Romanian and Bulgarian migrants until December 12, 2013, when the restrictions will end. It is clear that Hollande would not want to end these restrictions but, rather, extend and reinforce them.

It is difficult to distinguish Hollande’s statements from Sarkozy’s infamous Grenoble speech of June 30, 2010: “We’ll examine the rights and welfare entitlements, currently available to foreigners living in suspiciously irregular circumstances.… The general rule is clear: illegals must be directed back to their own countries”, said Sarkozy. He had already asked the interior minister “to put an end to unauthorized gypsy settlements. These are lawless zones not to be tolerated in France”.

EU commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding accused the Sarkozy government of “discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin or race” and of calling into question “the common values and laws of our European Union”. She described the French policy as a “disgrace”. She implicitly compared the actions of the French government with those of the fascists during the Second World War. In the event, she backed down and Sarkozy has been able to continue with this “disgrace”.

Hollande is currently justifying Socialist Party-dominated town councils’ current practice in relation to Roma settlements. Essonne Info reported that on February 13, his campaign manager Manuel Valls, mayor of Evry, “by a mayoral municipal decree … called on the préfet [police chief] to clear by force the children and their parents and bulldoze their encampment”. There is no report that the mayor offered them alternative accomodation.

Discussion about the closing of frontiers between EU countries flared up in 2011, when Tunisian refugees fleeing state repression and devastated living conditions through Italy were prevented by the French government from crossing the Italian border, where they were legal, into France where many had family and friends.

The announcement of Hollande’s Roma “solution” came only days after the controversy created by Martinique deputy Serge Latchimi, who said that minister of the interior Claude Guéant’s comment that some civilisations were superior to others was close to Nazism. Hollande refused to support Latchimi’s position.

Hollande is appealing to the most backward elements in French society and distancing himself from wide layers of the population deeply opposed to the brutality of the state’s attacks on fundamental human rights.

When accused of being “soft” on illegal immigrants, Hollande likes to cite his election programme: “I will conduct an implacable struggle against illegal immigration … Legal residence will be granted case-by-case on objective criteria”.

The Socialist Party candidate did not offer any criticism of minister of the interior Guéant’s proud achievement of expelling 32,912 undocumented immigrants in 2011, up from 28,026 in 2010, a 17.5 percent increase.

In response to a remark by Sarkozy suggesting that Hollande favoured mass legalisation of undocumented immigrants, the Socialist Party’s Mireille Le Corre, in charge of “immigration-integration” policy, insisted: “François Hollande … is not for carrying out mass legalisations, but for re-establishing a fair and transparent procedure. Foreigners whose circumstances do not comply with a possible legalisation will go through an expulsion procedure, under conditions which respect their rights and their dignity”.

Hollande’s anti-immigrant positions are reinforced by the fact that the entire bourgeois and petty-bourgeois “left”—the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Left Party and New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA)—worked actively with Sarkozy in Islamophobic campaigns to ban the burqa and, before that, the Muslim veil in schools. They are now all mobilising behind Hollande in the presidential elections in April-May to enable the French bourgeoisie to ride out the economic crisis by destroying the rights and living standards of the working class as is now under way in Greece.

holy

shit

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that another European genocide on par with the Holocaust is a real possibility given the current political climate on the continent (and increasingly in parts of the UK as well). It’s going to be Roma and Muslim people who are hit, followed by any other inconveniently brown ethnic group or religious minority.

Anyone who has studied the run up to the second world war knows that a great deal of what is currently flaring up (the economic hardship, the laws prohibiting certain kinds of religious expression, the increasing presence of bigoted racist nut jobs on the political scene who no one takes seriously until OOPS THEY’RE IN POWER) is eerily reminiscent of what happened in the run up to the Nazis implementing their ‘final solution’ in Germany.

People seem so fucking sure that because it happened once so recently it can’t possibly happen again - that attitude is making us complacent. The holocaust isn’t some distant nightmare. It isn’t a symbol or a point of collective catharsis. It isn’t something that just happened in films and on the history channel - it was REAL, millions of people ACTUALLY suffered and died, there are people still alive who remember the concentration camps. If it happened once, it can happen again, and I don’t understand why the prevalence of this kind of hateful xenophobic rhetoric in Europe isn’t setting off more alarm bells. This is how it started the last time. 

EXACTLY

that is EXACTLY what the “never again” means. It doesn’t mean that it’s not ever going to happen again. It’s a reminder that it can and will happen again if we let it (there was a really good post about this a while back but idk how to find it since I didn’t tag it properly). And, uh, it looks like we’re letting it.

I mean, look at this post. It’s got like…10 notes. 10.

This makes me feel really gross. I always thought I lived in a better part of history than this. Ugh, and I thought I couldn’t be surprised by anything any more…

(Source: wsws.org)

thedailywhat:

Crazyass Japanese Thing of the Day: “Shōwa Generation” mock K-popsters Girls’ Generation with a parody of their 2009 hit song “Gee.”

tl;dr: Japan.

[reddit.]

[Source]
You Need to Pay Attention to Michele Bachmann
I know a lot of us aren’t that political, and many haven’t been paying much attention to the Republicans clawing all over each other for the presidential nomination next year, but if you have a Twitter account or read the news you have probably heard of Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota who is quickly floating to the top of the short list of GOP bigots likely to face Barack Obama at the ballot box next year.
You know Bachmann—she’s the one who married her queeny husband Marcus (who runs a clinic that offers “ex-gay” therapy for self-hating homos) after both of them experienced a vision from God. Well, despite the fact that she is a religious extremist with virtually no record of accomplishments in congress besides forwarding her hateful moral agenda, she won the Iowa Straw Poll over the weekend, one of the first real litmus tests to determine who is a “top tier” candidate for the 2010 election.
Here’s the thing about Michele Bachmann: she is not Sarah Palin. She is smarter, she’s more highly regarded, she has a more drive and she has none of Palin’s political baggage. She’s also about twice as crazy.
Want to know just how Bachmann feels about you? Here’s what she said in 2004 re: the gays:
“It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say that this is ‘gay.’ It’s anything but ‘gay.’ It leads to the personal enslavement of individuals. Because if you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that’s why this is so dangerous. We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life, and sexual identity disorders.”
Bachmann was faced with this gem as recently as this past weekend, when she appeared onMeet the Press after her Iowa victory, and she stood by it, adding stupidly, “I am not anyone’s judge.” In it, she displays her profound ignorance (or worse, her straight up denial of facts) by calling homosexuality a “dysfunction” and a “disorder”, despite the fact that the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a disorder in 1973, with the American Psychological Association following suit a few years later.
We need to face a scary reality, guys. Barack Obama’s approval ratings have dropped below 40 percent, the lowest they have ever been. Meanwhile, Michelle Bachmann, even with her long history of documented bigotry, is well on her way to securing the nomination (with only Texas governor Rick Perry posing much of a threat now, and he’s about as bad as she is). Remember what happened in 2010, when the GOP took back the senate and the house? We need to face the real possibility that Michele Bachmann could be the next president.
She supports a federal ban on gay marriage. She has vowed to reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. She opposes ENDA, which would defend you from discrimination in the workplace. She thinks the love you share with your partner is Satanic, dysfunctional and sad. Under President Bachmann, you can expect the momentum toward full civil rights we have achieved over the past few years (with little thanks to President Obama, it’s true) to be rolled back. You’d see full Republican control of government, and the introduction and passage of who knows what kind of hateful legislation aimed and subjugating LGBT people even further.
You need to pay attention to Michele Bachmann in the coming months, as she calculates her way to the presidency. And you need to be terrified.

(Source: ih8religion)

lumos-maxima:

karpiwillpeeonyourface:wizardinglife:

 

The letters for J.K. Rowling’s recently released Secret Street View puzzle have been cracked. By taking a look at the data being received by the website, the letters “TEOORPETRM” have been extracted. Rearranged, this anagram spells out MORE POTTER, likely indicating that there is more Harry Potter stuff on the horizon. With the final movie coming soon, it’s a perfect time to keep Harry Potter fans interested.

The data currently being served by the site could be a red herring, but we’re pretty convinced due to the nature of the puzzle that this is the real deal. The plan was to roll out the remaining coordinates over the next few days, but no The full JSON extract from which this data was found can be seen below.

“POTTERMORE“, a trademark, is owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. in Burbank, CA, 91522.

What is POTTERMORE?

POTTERMORE Trademark Information Website defines its purpose as:

Providing multiple-user access to a global computer information network; providing on-line chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among users in the field of general interest; providing on-line communications links which transfer the web site user to other local and global web pages; providing on-line facilities for real-time interaction with other computer users concerning topics of general interest

pensacolas | thelovehater:

 

House GOP Unanimously Passes Anti-Abortion Bill That Redefines Rape, Raises Taxes, And Creates Rape Audits

wootoshio:jungyonghwa:tae-rex:lateryears:m-paoword:desireerenay:marielleisthirsty:liveonlyonce:skippadiablocanon:xrevenantwings:(via highexpectationsasianfather)