President Donald Trump bullies Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, February 28, 2025. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Musk salutes Trump on his inauguration day, January 20, 2025. credit... SnackSafely.com Nazism has ten attributes: Racism with White supremacy Nationalist xenophobia Big lie propaganda that denies or reverses truth Loyalty and obedience to an authoritarian leader Imperial conquest as national destiny Militarism and glorification of guns and war Religious intolerance with exclusionary bigotry Male supremacy with oppression of women Contempt for democracy and elections Contempt for judicial independence, law and human rights The left-right spectrum is a systematically misleading expression. It misleads people into thinking that Nazism and Communism are opposites. They are not. Nazism and Communism are twins.   The political spectrum is a circle, with one axis, promotion of equality, and the other axis, tolerance for liberty. On that circle, Nazism and Communism are right next to each other.   Nazis, Communists, white supremacists, colonialists, Islamists, Christian nationalists, and America-Firsters have no tolerance for liberty. They are freedom's foes. They forbid teaching of honest history. They ban books. They oppose diversity. They deport asylum seekers and immigrants. They arrest, imprison, or kill opponents.   They drag nations into the dark dungeons of tyranny.   Nazism replaces Christianity with worship of the Nazi party and the state. Hitler’s Nazis made genocide state policy. The Holocaust murdered six million Jews and another six million people from other "inferior races."   Communism replaces the worship of God with worship of the communist party and the state. Exclusionary atheism is the communist state religion.   Marxists believe that capitalism causes oppression. But Marxist regimes have murdered over one hundred million more people than all capitalist nations combined. Leninists believe that imperialism is the final stage of capitalism. But the only remaining empires are two post-communist empires, the Russian Empire and the Chinese Empire.   Communist and Nazi dictatorships are actually the successors to feudal monarchies and theocracies. They are counter-modernization movements.      Today Nazi, fascist, monarchist, theocratic, and communist regimes rule a third of the world.   China commits genocide against Tibetans and Uyghurs with impunity. It has built a totalitarian surveillance state with cameras, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition that George Orwell could only imagine.   Putin is trying to reassemble the Soviet Russian empire. Russian missiles destroy Ukrainian cities in a new form of genocide, Urbicide, the intentional destruction of cities, substantial parts of the Ukrainian nation. Putin orders imprisonment, poisoning, or murder of anyone who opposes him.   Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates finance and arm the Arab genocide in Sudan and across the African Sahel. They bomb Yemen. They finance jihadist conquests in Africa and the Middle East. They torture, murder and dismember their opponents. They reject religious freedom while controlling Islam's holiest shrines.   Turkey and Azerbaijan have invaded Syria, Iraq, and Armenia. They are trying to reestablish the Ottoman Empire. They commit genocide and forced deportation against Armenians, other Christians, and Kurds.   Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Iran openly declares its genocidal intent to destroy Israel.   India's Modi and his BJP party are building a Hindutva state that will exclude Muslims and Christians from full Indian citizenship. India is classifying Muslims as non-citizens to deport them from Assam.   Many of America's founding fathers were White supremacists. Many of them owned slaves. The ideology of Manifest Destiny that gave White Europeans the justification for genocide by White settlers against Native Americans is a White supremacist ideology. The southern states maintained that official ideology with segregation and laws against miscegenation (marriage or sexual relations between races) into the 1960s. Elon Musk grew up in South Africa at the height of Apartheid , a system of racial separation and exploitation that was only ended in the 1990s. Musk attended all White schools and adopted the racist attitudes of South Africa before he came to Canada and the USA. Following in the footsteps of his father, Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump refused to rent to Black people in the apartment complexes The Trump Organization owned in New York City. Donald Trump and Elon Musk believe White supremacy in America must be maintained. Both men fit the definition of Nazis. Racism & White supremacy: 24 cabinet nominees: 20 white, 1 Black. Asylum for South African Whites. No asylum for African "shit hole countries." End diversity programs. Ban schoolbooks on slavery, segregation. Nationalist xenophobia: Migrants are “criminals”, rapists, murderers, “invaders.” Expel them all. Big Lie propaganda: "Ukraine started Russia's invasion." "Trump won the 2020 election." Loyalty and obedience to authoritarian leader : Litmus test - "Trump won in 2020. Election was "stolen." Imperial conquest as national destiny: Take Greenland, Gaza, Panama Canal. Make Canada 51st state. Militarism & glorification of guns and war : 2nd Amendment = no gun control. Pardon US war criminals. Religious intolerance: Ban abortions; no LGBTQ+ rights; no Trans medical care. Support Christian Nationalism that says America is a divinely ordained Christian nation. Exclude Muslims. Male supremacy & women's oppression: Grab women's privates. Practice serial adultery. Appoint sexual predators to cabinet positions. Bring the sex trafficking Tate brothers to Florida to escape from Romanian justice. Drastically restrict women's reproductive rights by leaving abortion laws up to the states. Contempt for democracy: Publicly bully Zelensky. Praise authoritarians like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong Un, Orban. Contempt for judicial independence, law and human rights. Pardon 1500 Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol invaders.   Donald Trump is the only US President who has ever attempted a coup d'état.     Trump’s Narcissistic Personality Disorder drives his Big Lie that he really won the 2020 election. He is psychologically unable to admit he is a “loser.” ” In medical terms, Trump would almost certainly be diagnosed as a pathological narcissist and sociopath.   Trump has trapped the Republican Party into a cult of personality addicted to election denial.   The leaders of these racist, nationalist movements are the New Nazis.   Nationalism is racism on steroids.   The combination of racism and nationalism is at the heart of the New Nazism. It is the ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil that, when ignited by hatred, explodes into genocide.   We must fight this New Nazism. We must reject Trump’s Darth Vader darkness.   We must become translucent channels for freedom’s light that still shines in America. Updated from 2024 Article, The New Nazism by Gregory H. Stanton Copyright 2025 Genocide Watch, Inc.

‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias The New York Times Aug. 27, 2016 Fred C. Trump with his son Donald visiting a tenant in one of their apartment buildings in Brooklyn in January 1973.Credit ...Barton Silverman/The New York Times   By  Jonathan Mahler  and  Steve Eder   She seemed like the model tenant. A 33-year-old nurse who was living at the Y.W.C.A. in Harlem, she had come to rent a one-bedroom at the still-unfinished Wilshire Apartments in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. She filled out what the rental agent remembers as a “beautiful application.” She did not even want to look at the unit. There was just one hitch: Maxine Brown was black. Stanley Leibowitz, the rental agent, talked to his boss, Fred C. Trump. “I asked him what to do and he says, ‘Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there,’” Mr. Leibowitz, now 88, recalled in an interview. It was late 1963 — just months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act — and the tall, mustachioed Fred Trump was approaching the apex of his building career. He was about to complete the jewel in the crown of his middle-class housing empire: seven 23-story towers, called Trump Village, spread across nearly 40 acres in Coney Island. He was also grooming his heir. His son Donald, 17, would soon enroll at Fordham University in the Bronx, living at his parents’ home in Queens and spending much of his free time touring construction sites in his father’s Cadillac, driven by a black chauffeur. “His father was his idol,” Mr. Leibowitz recalled. “Anytime he would come into the building, Donald would be by his side.” Over the next decade, as  Donald J. Trump  assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle. The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. It  was front-page news , and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.   “Absolutely ridiculous,”  he was quoted as saying  of the government’s allegations. Affidavit of Donald Trump in 1973 About the Housing Bias Case In a 1973 court filing, Donald Trump denied allegations by the government that Trump Management had engaged in racial bias in its renting of apartments. The document was contained in the National Archives. Looking back, Mr. Trump’s response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle — as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier — he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to “welfare recipients” and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation. When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt. But an investigation by The New York Times — drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors — uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond. That history has taken on fresh relevance with Mr. Trump arguing that black voters  should support him  over Hillary Clinton, whom he has called a bigot. While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally set the rental policies at his father’s properties, he was on hand while they were in place, working out of a cubicle in Trump Management’s Brooklyn offices as early as the summer of 1968. Then and now, Mr. Trump has steadfastly denied any awareness of any discrimination at Trump properties. While Mr. Trump declined to be interviewed for this article, his general counsel, Alan Garten, said in a statement that there was “no merit to the allegations.” And there has been no suggestion of racial bias toward prospective residents in the luxury housing that Mr. Trump focused on as his career took off in Manhattan in the 1980s. In the past, Mr. Trump has treated the case as a footnote in the narrative of his career. In his memoir “The Art of the Deal,” he dispensed with it in five paragraphs. And while stumping in Ohio, he even singled out his work at one of his father’s properties in Cincinnati, omitting that, at the time, the development was the subject of a separate discrimination lawsuit — one that included claims of racial slurs uttered by a manager whom Mr. Trump had personally praised. As eager as he was to leave behind the working-class precincts of New York City where Fred Trump had made his fortune, Donald Trump often speaks admiringly of him, recalling what he learned at his father’s side when the Trump name was synonymous with utilitarian housing, not yet with luxury, celebrity, or a polarizing brand of politics. “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy,”  he said last year . Coming Under Scrutiny Fred Trump got into the housing business when he was in his early 20s, building a single-family home for a neighbor in Queens. During World War II, he constructed housing for shipyard workers and Navy personnel in Norfolk, Va. After the war, he returned to New York, setting his sights on bigger, more ambitious projects, realized with the help of federal government loans. His establishment as one of the city’s biggest developers was hardly free of controversy: The Senate Banking Committee subpoenaed him in 1954 during an investigation into profiteering off federal housing loans. Under oath, he acknowledged that he had wildly overstated the costs of a development to obtain a larger mortgage from the government. In 1966, as the investigative journalist Wayne Barrett detailed in “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth,” a New York legislative committee accused Fred Trump of using state money earmarked for middle-income housing to build a shopping center instead. One lawmaker called Mr. Trump “greedy and grasping.” By this point, the Trump organization’s business practices were beginning to come under scrutiny from civil rights groups that had received complaints from prospective African-American tenants. People like Maxine Brown. Mr. Leibowitz, the rental agent at the Wilshire, remembered Ms. Brown  repeatedly inquiring about the apartment . “Finally, she realized what it was all about,” he said. Ms. Brown’s first instinct was to let the matter go; she was happy enough at the Y.W.C.A. “I had a big room and two meals a day for five dollars a week,” she said in an interview. But a friend, Mae Wiggins, who had also been denied an apartment at the Wilshire, told her that she ought to have her own place, with a private bathroom and a kitchen. She encouraged Ms. Brown to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, as she was doing.   “We knew there was prejudice in renting,” Ms. Wiggins recalled. “It was rampant in New York. It made me feel really bad, and I wanted to do something to right the wrong.” https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004614065/applying-for-housing-at-a-trump-property-in-the-1960s.html?smid=url-share     Applying for Housing at a Trump Property in the '60s In the 1960s, Mae Wiggins and her friend Maxine Brown applied for housing at the Wilshire Apartments in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens, N.Y. Ms. Wiggins recalled her experience. It was 52 years ago. My friend and I applied for an apartment at the Wilshire in Queens New York. [00:12:20] and we were both told that there were no vacancies. [00:07:06] I realized that there were vacancies because they still had the ad still running. [00:21:51] And I was pretty sure it was because of the color of skin. [00:18:31] We were professional people with good credit rating; no reason to be denied apartments. 14.33 When we first filed a complaint, they sent out testers — a white couple, and they were told that they could that they had a vacancy. [00:21:35] I felt really really angry and hurt. And after that we were told that we could go into the vacant apartments, but I could not go because my mom was sick at that time. I thought it was was worth to fight for both of us. [00:20:59] I have an activist nature as you probably have picked up. Through the years I felt that the Trump Organization was biased, [00:23:41] And I will go to my grave with that thought. Mr. Leibowitz was called to testify at the commission’s hearing on Ms. Brown’s case. Asked to estimate how many blacks lived in Mr. Trump’s various properties, he remembered replying: “To the best of my knowledge, none.” After the hearing, Ms. Brown was offered an apartment in the Wilshire, and in the spring of 1964, she moved in. For 10 years, she said, she was the only African-American in the building. Complaints about the Trump organization’s rental policies continued to mount: By 1967, state investigators found that out of some 3,700 apartments in Trump Village, seven were occupied by African-American families. Like Ms. Brown, the few minorities who did live in Trump-owned buildings often had to force their way in. A black woman named Agnes Bunn recalled hearing in early 1970 about a vacant Trump apartment in another part of Queens, from a white friend who lived in the building. But when she went by, she was told there were no vacancies. “The super came out and stood there until I left the property,” Ms. Bunn said. Ms. Bunn testified about  the experience  at a meeting with the New York City Commission on Human Rights in 1970. According to a summary, recovered from the New York City Municipal Archives, she told a Trump lawyer that it was known that no “colored” people were wanted as tenants in the building. The lawyer concluded that the episode was “all a misunderstanding.” Ms. Bunn and her husband, a Manhattan accountant, soon became the building’s first black tenants. Unlike the public schools, the housing market could not be desegregated simply by court order. Even after passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited racial discrimination in housing, developments in white neighborhoods continued to rebuff blacks. For years, it fell largely to local civil rights groups to highlight the problem by sending white “testers” into apartment complexes after blacks had been turned away. “Everything was sort of whispers and innuendo, and you wanted to try to bring it out into the open,” recalled Phyllis Kirschenbaum, who volunteered for Operation Open City, a housing rights advocacy organization. “I’d walk in with my freckles and red hair and Jewish name and get an apartment immediately.” The complaints of discrimination were not limited to New York. In 1969, a young black couple, Haywood and Rennell Cash, sued after being denied a home in Cincinnati at one of the first projects in which Donald Trump, fresh out of college, played an active role. Mr. Cash was repeatedly rejected by the Trumps’ rental agent, according to court records and notes kept by Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Cincinnati, which sent in white testers posing as a young couple while Mr. Cash waited in the car. After the agent, Irving Wolper, offered the testers an apartment, they brought in Mr. Cash. Mr. Wolper grew furious, shoving them out of the office and calling the young female tester, Maggie Durham, a “nigger-lover,” according to court records. “To this day I have not forgotten the fury in his voice and in his face,” Ms. Durham recalled recently, adding that she also remembered him calling her a “traitor to the race.” The Cashes were ultimately offered an apartment. At a campaign stop in Ohio recently, Mr. Trump shared warm memories of his time in Cincinnati, calling it one of the early successes of his career. And in “The Art of the Deal,” he praised Mr. Wolper, without using his surname, calling him a “fabulous man” and “an amazing manager.” “Irving was a classic,” Mr. Trump wrote. The young Mr. Trump also spent time in Norfolk, helping manage the housing complexes his father built there in the 1940s. Similar complaints of discrimination surfaced at those properties beginning in the mid-1960s, and were documented by Ellis James, an equal housing activist. “The managers on site were usually not very sophisticated,” Mr. James, now 78, recalled. “Some were dedicated segregationists, but most of them were more concerned with following the policies they were directed to keep.” Battling the Government Donald Trump said he had first heard about the lawsuit, which was filed in the fall of 1973, on his car radio. The government had charged him, his father and their company, Trump Management Inc., with violating the Fair Housing Act. Another major New York developer, the LeFrak Organization, had been hit with a similar suit a few years earlier. Its founder, Samuel LeFrak, had appeared at a news conference alongside the United States attorney, trumpeting a  consent agreement to prohibit discrimination  in his buildings by saying it would “make open housing in our cities a reality.” The LeFrak company even offered the equivalent of one month’s rent to help 50 black families move into predominantly white buildings. Donald Trump took a different approach. He retained Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting counsel,  Roy Cohn, to defend him . Mr. Trump soon called his own news conference — to announce his  countersuit  against the government. The government’s lawyers took as their starting point the years of research conducted by civil rights groups at Trump properties. The Wilshire Apartments complex in Queens, once owned by the Trump family…Credit...George Etheredge/The New York Times   “We did our own investigation and enlarged the case,” said Elyse Goldweber, who as a young assistant United States attorney worked on the lawsuit, U.S.A. v. Trump. A former Trump superintendent named Thomas Miranda testified that multiple Trump Management employees had instructed him to attach a separate piece of paper with a big letter “C” on it — for “colored” — to any application filed by a black apartment-seeker. The Trumps went on the offensive, filing a contempt-of-court charge against one of the prosecutors, accusing her of turning the investigation into a “Gestapo-like interrogation.” The Trumps derided the lawsuit as a pressure tactic to get them to sign a consent decree like the one agreed to by Mr. LeFrak. The judge dismissed both the countersuit and the contempt-of-court charge. After nearly two years of legal wrangling, the Trumps gave up and signed a consent decree. As is customary, it did not include an admission of guilt. But it did include pages of stipulations intended to ensure the desegregation of Trump properties.   Equal housing activists celebrated the agreement as more robust than the one signed by Mr. LeFrak. It required that Trump Management provide the New York Urban League with a weekly list of all its vacancies. This did not stop Mr. Trump from declaring victory. “In the end the government couldn’t prove its case, and we ended up making a minor settlement without admitting any guilt,” he wrote in “The Art of the Deal.” Only this was not quite the end. A few years later, the government accused the Trumps of violating the consent decree. “We believe that an underlying pattern of discrimination continues to exist in the Trump Management organization,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote to Mr. Cohn in 1978. Once again, the government marshaled numerous examples of blacks being denied Trump apartments. But this time, it also identified a pattern of racial steering. While more black families were now renting in Trump-owned buildings, the government said, many had been confined to a small number of complexes. And tenants in some of these buildings had complained about the conditions, from falling plaster to rusty light fixtures to bloodstained floors.   The Trumps effectively wore the government down. The original consent decree expired before the Justice Department had accumulated enough evidence to press its new case. The issue was becoming academic, anyway. New York’s white working-class population was shrinking. Shifting demographics would soon make it impractical to turn away black tenants. By the spring of 1982, when the case was officially closed, Donald Trump’s prized project, Trump Tower, was just months from completion. The rebranding of the Trump name was well underway. As for Ms. Brown, she still lives in the same apartment in the Wilshire. Over the years, she has watched the building’s complexion begin to change — along with some of her neighbors’ attitudes toward her. During the 1990s, one man who used to step off the elevator whenever she stepped on suddenly started greeting her warmly.   On a recent afternoon, she reminisced about the unlikely role she played in breaking the color barrier of the Trump real estate empire. “I just wanted a decent place to live,” she said. Kitty Bennett contributed research. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 28, 2016, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks’   Copyright 2016 The New York Times Company   https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html

Elon Musk Is South African. It Explains a Lot. The New York Times Feb. 28, 2025 Credit...Photo illustration by The New York Times. Source photograph: Eric Lee/The New York Times   By William Shoki   Elon Musk is everywhere. He is  firing  federal employees, gaining access to important  government data , popping into the  Oval Office , appearing on  Fox News  alongside President Trump and even attending a White House  cabinet meeting . For some, his rampage through the institutions of the American state augurs a replacement by  private interests ; for others, it amounts to a  Big Tech  takeover. For many looking on, it’s above all a  baffling bromance  at the heart of power. However one understands Mr. Musk’s role in the Trump administration, it has cemented his reputation as one of the most powerful people on the planet. But discussion of Mr. Musk, especially in the United States, often misses something: He is a white South African, part of a demographic that for centuries sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That history matters. For all the  attempts  to describe Mr. Musk as a self-made genius or a dispassionate technocrat, he is in fact a distinctly  ideological figure , one whose worldview is inseparable from his rearing in apartheid South Africa. More than just an eccentric billionaire, Mr. Musk represents an unresolved question: What happens when settler rule fails but settlers remain? That’s what is playing out in America today. Born in Pretoria in 1971, Mr. Musk had an  upbringing  typical of the white South African elite. The family was wealthy, despite his parents divorcing when he was young, its economic standing shaped by a system designed to assist whites. Mr. Musk doesn’t appear to have enjoyed his private education — there are stories of bullying and loneliness — but he still benefited from the advantages it conferred. Though his father, an engineer, was for a time a member of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party, there is little evidence Mr. Musk inherited his political convictions. Like many white South Africans, Mr. Musk left the country before the collapse of racial rule, settling in Canada, where his mother was born, in 1989. He never returned, but South Africa clearly stayed with him. Take his recent intervention into the debate over the country’s  land reform  as an example. In response to a bill passed in January that allows in specific circumstances the expropriation of land without compensation, Mr. Musk used his platform to suggest that white South Africans are uniquely persecuted. Never mind that land restitution is a broadly accepted norm in post-colonial societies or that eminent domain or compulsory purchase laws do something similar in the United States and elsewhere. The Trump administration —  amplifying fringe voices,  promoting distorted narratives of racial victimhood and using Mr. Musk’s claim as a symbolic cudgel — was only too happy to play along. Mr. Musk’s role in the controversy suggests he has not so much moved beyond the logic of apartheid as absorbed it. His ideological commitments —  deregulated markets , hostility to  labor organizing  and  Trumpist nationalism  — bear its trace. In effect, his politics reprise apartheid’s economic principles on a global scale: maintaining zones of privilege under the guise of “free enterprise” while resisting any moves toward redistribution as threats. You can hear it in his exhortations for others to work harder and his pleas for him and his businesses to receive special treatment. Mr. Musk is one of a number of reactionary figures with  roots in Southern Africa  who found an unlikely home in Silicon Valley and now wield disproportionate influence in shaping American and global right-wing politics. These men, such as  Peter Thiel  and  David Sacks , emerged from a historical tradition that revered hierarchy and sought to sustain racial and economic dominance, only to find themselves in a world where that order was unraveling. Their politics reflect an instinct to preserve elite rule, cloaked in the language of meritocracy and market freedom, while channeling resentment toward new power structures they view as threats to their position. For them, Southern Africa is never very far away. They are part of a global right that has  long been fascinated  with Rhodesia and its successor, Zimbabwe. For them, the loss of white-minority rule in Zimbabwe represents the model of civilizational decay — a formerly “successful” colonial state plunged into chaos through decolonization. The specter of “Zimbabwefication” is wielded as a warning against any redistribution of power. Now South Africa — “openly pushing for genocide of white people,” according to  Mr. Musk  — is being made to take on the mantle of scare story. The implicit argument is that settler power, once displaced, leads only to ruin. It doesn’t help that South Africa has stood against Israel’s  genocidal aggression  in Gaza, leading the charge in attempts to hold it to account under international law. This outspoken opposition has further alienated the country from the Western powers that support Israel, reinforcing the perception of South Africa as a rogue state in the eyes of the global right. One of the front-runners to be Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to the country, the South-African born Breitbart commentator Joel Pollak,  certainly believes it is . For figures like Mr. Musk, South Africa’s stance against Israel no doubt confirms their view of the country as a lost cause — a once “civilized” outpost of white rule now succumbing to the chaos of majority rule and decolonization. This reaction is both ideological and deeply personal. For all his vehement opposition to “woke” identity politics, Mr. Musk is actually an ardent identitarian. He has boosted claims from far-right South African groups that the government is “race mad,” with  142 “race laws”  on its books. But their method for defining a “race law” is laughably broad: Any law that makes race legally relevant supposedly qualifies. By this metric, even laws that prohibit arbitrary racial discrimination or repeal apartheid-era discrimination would count. Given Mr. Musk’s aggressive dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, this obsession with one identity group is more than a little ironic. It’s dangerous, too. The fixation has led to Mr. Trump ending, by  executive order , America’s financial assistance to South Africa, with potentially  devastating effect  on treatment for H.I.V. and AIDS. South Africa is now anathema: Secretary of State Marco Rubio is  refusing  to travel there for the Group of 20 summit later in the year, saying that it is a hotbed of “anti-Americanism” that is “doing very bad things.” Given the administration’s fascination with old-style colonialism — epitomized most starkly by its putative plan to  resettle Gaza  with “the world’s people,” along with the desire to buy Greenland and annex the Panama Canal — it’s no surprise that it sees South Africa as a dystopian prophecy to be resisted. Mr. Musk, ever the entrepreneur, is happy to supply the propaganda. But South Africa’s history tells a different story — one where white dominance was not inevitable, where settler rule did not last and where a different future, however uncertain, remains possible. From his exalted position of power, Mr. Musk may do all he can to reverse or subvert this story. But he won’t be able to. History, unlike Mars, is not his to colonize.   William Shoki is the editor at Africa Is a Country, an independent online publication. Copyright 2025 The New York Times Company

After the Republika Srpska Assembly passed a set of laws challenging the authority of Bosnia's state-level institutions in the Serb-majority entity, Bosniaks have denounced what they called a 'coup d'état'. Azem Kurtic, February 28, 2025 The National Assembly of Republika Srpska votes on the bills without the opposition’s representatives. Photo: NSRS As tensions over the conviction of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik continue, Bosniak representatives in the Serb-dominated entity’s legislature announced on Friday that they will contest new attempts by Serb lawmakers to challenge the authority of the country’s state-level institutions. Bosniak lawmakers said they will appeal to the entity’s Constitutional Court after the Republika Srpska National Assembly voted to ban Bosnia’s state-level court and prosecutor’s office, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council and the State Investigation and Protection Agency from exercising jurisdiction in the entity. Alija Tabakovic, president of the Bosniak caucus in the entity’s Council of Peoples, said the Constitutional Court of Republika Srpska would ultimately decide on the matter. As a result, implementing and enforcing the newly-adopted laws could take up to two months. Serb lawmakers adopted the new legislation late Thursday in a response to the state court’s first-instance verdict convicting Dodik. He was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding the presidential office for defying the decisions of the High Representative, the international official overseeing Bosnia’s post-war peace agreement. Lawmakers in the Republika Srpska National Assembly also adopted legislation to establish a ‘special register’ for non-profit organisations – the so-called ‘foreign agents law’ that critics believe will target NGOs and independent media. Opposition parties boycotted the vote. Members of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, in Bosnia’s state parliament have called for an urgent session to respond to the new Republika Srpska laws. “The only way these laws can be amended or repealed is through the proper procedure in the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the SDA stated, calling the Bosnian Serb moves a “coup d’état”. During the same session, the NSRS voted changes to the entity’s criminal code, allowing the prosecution to process “any Serb who stays working in these [state-level] institutions”. The Bosniak member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Denis Becorovic, has said he will hold a meeting on Friday with High Representative Christian Schmidt, international ambassadors from Bosnia’s Peace Implementation Council and commanders of the peacekeeping force EUFOR and the NATO office in Sarajevo. Critics of the Bosnian Serb legislation have called on Schmidt to intervene and annul the new laws. Copyright BIRN 2007

The Washington Post February 28, 2025 President Donald Trump speaks to reporters and signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 4. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By Maegan Vazquez President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, marking the first time the country will have a federally recognized national language in its nearly 250-year history. A draft White House fact sheet obtained by The Washington Post states that the order will rescind a federal mandate issued by then-President Bill Clinton “that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide extensive language assistance to non-English speakers.” The fact sheet also states that the order will give agencies discretion to keep their current language policies allowing documents and services in other languages, “but encourages new Americans to adopt a national language that opens doors to greater opportunities.” The White House order, the sheet stated, will help foster “national cohesion” and “establishes efficiency in government operations.” The Wall Street Journal first reported on the order. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said at a news conference Friday that the Trump administration could be taken to court over the incoming order. “Like dozens of the other executive orders and actions that have been taken, we’re going to have to examine if what he’s doing is actually in compliance with the law and the United States Constitution. And to the extent that it’s not, I’m confident that he will be sued,” Jeffries said, noting how courts have halted many of the president’s executive actions so far. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) is set to deliver the Spanish-language response to Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday. At Friday's news conference alongside Jeffries, Espaillat suggested the order would undercut the country's global competitiveness. “Of course, we would like to see the details of the executive action, but it’s mind-boggling if the intent is to suppress the ability of our young people to be proficient in other languages,” Espaillat said. “I think that that doesn’t make us competitive as a country.” Trump has sought to make immigration enforcement a foundational component of his presidency. Although hundreds of languages are spoken in the United States, on the campaign trail last year Trump repeatedly expressed concerns about migrants coming into the country speaking foreign languages. “We have languages coming into our country. We don’t have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington last year. “These are languages — it’s the craziest thing — they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a very horrible thing.” Trump also told rallygoers in Virginia that classrooms in New York are being overwhelmed with students “from countries where they don’t even know what the language is.” “We have nobody that even teaches it. These are languages that nobody ever heard of,” he claimed at the time. Shortly after Trump took office for his second term, the White House took down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. The official X account for White House communications in Spanish, @LaCasaBlanca, was archived. Republican groups have in recent years invested in Spanish-language messaging, and during both the 2020 and 2024 election cycles, Trump ran Spanish-language ads. Some 78.3 percent of the nation age 5 and older reported speaking only English at home, according to a 2018-2022 American Community Survey (ACS), five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Recent ACS data also found that 8.4 percent of people living in the U.S. report speaking English “less than ‘very well.’” Trump and Vice President JD Vance have long expressed support for adopting English as the official language of the United States. While serving in the Senate, Vance sponsored the English Language Unity Act, which sought to establish English as the official language of the United States, require that government functions are conducted in English and introduce a language test as part of the naturalization process. On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump criticized former Florida governor Jeb Bush — who was running in the GOP presidential primary at the time — for speaking Spanish while campaigning. “He should really set an example by speaking English in the United States,” Trump said. During a debate in September 2015, when asked about criticism over his comments about Bush, Trump argued, “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.” “We have a country, where, to assimilate, you have to speak English. And I think that where he was, and the way it came out, didn’t sound right to me. We have to have assimilation — to have a country, we have to have assimilation,” Trump said at the time. Natalie Allison and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 The Washington Post

Rains lash an internally displaced persons camp in northern Myanmar. (file) © UNICEF/Minzayar Oo 28 February 2025 I  Human Rights Myanmar is mired in one of the world’s worst human rights crises, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Friday, describing conditions there as “a litany of human suffering.” Addressing the Human Rights Council on Friday, he detailed the devastating toll of the ongoing conflict and economic collapse on civilians – many of whom have been displaced by the fighting. Earlier in the day the Council discussed the deteriorating situation in South Sudan, having heard a report from rights investigators serving on the Commission on Human Rights in the country. “Conflict, displacement and economic collapse have combined to cause pain and misery across Myanmar and civilians are paying a terrible price ,” Mr. Türk said. The number killed in violence last year was the highest since the military coup in 2021. Over 1,800 civilians were killed in 2024, many in indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery shelling, with attacks on schools, places of worship and healthcare facilities having become routine. Mr. Türk condemned the military’s brutal tactics, including beheadings, burnings, mutilations, and the use of human shields. He also noted that nearly 2,000 people have died in custody since the coup, most due to summary executions and torture. Deepening humanitarian crisis Fighting between the junta forces and opposition armed groups has fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe, with more than 3.5 million people displaced and 15 million facing hunger – two million of whom are at risk of famine. In Rakhine state, clashes between the military and the Arakan Army have intensified, with thousands of civilians killed and Rohingya communities caught in the crossfire.   Tens of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2024, despite border restrictions. More than 8,000 fled by sea  – an 80 per cent increase over 2023 – but at least 650 people, nearly half of them children, perished on the dangerous journey. Economic collapse Myanmar’s economic collapse has fuelled corruption and crime , with one global tracker ranking it the world’s biggest nexus of organized crime . It remains the top producer of opium  and a major manufacturer of synthetic drugs. Furthermore, scam centres in eastern Myanmar have become notorious for human trafficking, where victims are coerced into cybercrime and subjected to torture, sexual violence, and forced labour. Military conscription Mr. Türk also condemned the junta’s activation of military conscription laws, which have led to arbitrary arrests and forced recruitment, particularly targeting young men and women. Fear of conscription has driven many to flee the country , exposing them to trafficking and exploitation. “Given the humanitarian, political and economic impacts fuelling instability across the region, the international community must do more ,” Mr. Türk underscored. He reiterated his call for an arms embargo, coupled with targeted sanctions – including on jet fuel and dual-use goods – to better protect the people of Myanmar. He also stressed the need for accountability, citing efforts  at the International Criminal Court  (ICC) and the International Court of Justice  ( ICJ ) to hold Myanmar’s military leaders accountable for atrocities. Displaced South Sudanese people arrive at a camp in Upper Nile State. (file) © WFP/Eulalia Berlanga South Sudan: Leaders failing their own people The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan presented its latest report to the Human Rights Council earlier in Geneva, detailing widespread violations, including extrajudicial killings, forced recruitment of children and systematic sexual violence. Despite South Sudan winning independence over a decade ago and repeated commitments to peace during years of civil war, the Commission found that the same patterns of abuses persist, often implicating high-ranking officials. “ It is unconscionable that so many years after its independence, political leaders continue their violent contestations across the country and are abjectly failing the people of South Sudan ,” said Yasmin Sooka, Chair of the Commission. Extreme ethnic violence The report described the situation in Tambura, where armed forces and militias inflicted extreme violence along ethnic lines in 2024, reigniting tensions from the 2021 conflict. Political elites at both local and national levels have actively fuelled this violence while remaining in power despite past crimes. The Commission also raised alarms over the “Green Book” law introduced in Warrap State in 2024, which authorizes extrajudicial executions for suspected cattle raiding and communal violence. Address corruption South Sudan’s leaders agreed in September 2024 to extend the transitional political arrangements by two years, citing funding constraints. The Commission’s report noted that the government generated $3.5 billion in revenue between September 2022 and August 2024, while essential institutions – such as courts, schools, and hospitals – remain underfunded and civil servants go unpaid. “Financing essential services and rule of law institutions requires an end to the corruption. The theft of national wealth robs citizens of justice, education, and healthcare,” said Commissioner Carlos Castresana Fernández. “ Without addressing this systemic looting, no peace agreement will ever translate into meaningful change ,” he added. The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is an independent body mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. First established in March 2016, it has been renewed annually since. Its three Commissioners are not UN staff, they are not paid for their work and serve in an independent capacity. © 2025 United Nations.

Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik vowed to defy a Bosnian court verdict sentencing him to a year in prison and banning him from holding the presidential office - a ruling condemned by Serbia, Hungary and Russia. Azem Kurtic, February 26, 2025 President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik waves to supporters in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, February, 26, 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE/NIDAL SALJIC At a rally of his supporters in Banja Luka, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, Milorad Dodik, vowed to defy Wednesday’s state court verdict convicting him of defying the decisions of the High Representative, the international official overseeing the country’s post-war peace agreement. In response to the ruling, Dodik promised that the state-level court, prosecution, State Investigation and Agency, SIPA, and the State Intelligence Agency, OSA would be banned from having any jurisdiction in Republika Srpska. Dodik described the verdict as politically motivated and driven by “racial and national hatred” against Serbs. His condemnation was echoed by his close ally, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who condemned the verdict and described the situation as “the biggest crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the war”. After a meeting of Serbia’s national security council, Vucic flew to Banja Luka to show his support for Dodik in person. “I am going to Banja Luka after the shameful verdict against Milorad Dodik—unlawful, anti-democratic, aimed at undermining Republika Srpska and weakening the position of the Serbian people,” Vucic said in a statement issued while he was on the plane. Dodik’s other regional ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, also condemned the verdict. “The political witch hunt against President Milorad Dodik is a sad example of the misuse of the judicial system against a democratically elected leader. If we want to preserve stability in the Western Balkans, this is not the right way,” Orban stated on X. The Russian Foreign Ministry described the trial of Dodik, who is politically close to Vladimir Putin, as “a parody of justice and a blatant mockery of the foundations of the rule of law”. The Bosnian state court on Wednesday sentenced Dodik to one year in prison – plus a six-year ban on being president of Republika Srpska – for knowingly defying decisions issued legally by High Representative Christian Schmidt. Dodik’s co-accused, the former acting director of Republika Srpska’s  Official Gazette,  Milos Lukic, was acquitted. Schmidt had blocked the implementation of two laws adopted by the Republika Srpska authorities – one preventing enforcement of state-level Constitutional Court rulings in the entity, and another amending legislation on publishing official acts. Despite this, the defendants allegedly continued legislative procedures in defiance of Schmidt’s decisions. As this was a first-instance verdict, both sides can appeal. The second-instance verdict is expected to be delivered by the end of this year. The lead-up to the verdict raised tensions inside Bosnia, with Dodik rallying his supporters for two days in a row and warning of a serious response. In Belgrade, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic claimed the situation was “the result of a general attack by Sarajevo and the West on Republika Srpska, aimed at redefining and eliminating it”. Dacic called for “unity and solidarity among the entire Serb people and all political parties, both in Republika Srpska and in Serbia”. In Zagreb, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic called for calm. “In Bosnia and Herzegovina, political and legal solutions should be found to make the state functional and its peoples equal. The verdict against Milorad Dodik is not final, so we should calm things down,” Plenkovic said. Meanwhile on Wednesday evening, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, the entity’s parliament, voted to adopt a statement claiming that the state court “acted contrary to the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina by issuing a verdict based on a decision of the High Representative rather than a law passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. The National Assembly stated that it “does not recognise any decisions made by the High Representative”, claiming that German politician Schmidt “lacks legitimacy as he was not appointed in accordance with the procedures outlined in the Dayton Peace Agreement”. Republika Srpska does not recognise the legality of Schmidt’s authority as he was appointed without a UN Security Council resolution – a view also held by Russia. Copyright BIRN 2007

Ukraine Genocide Emergency Alert By Genocide Watch’s Ukraine Advocacy Task Force     Genocide Watch is issuing an emergency alert regarding statements made by US President Donald Trump about the war in Ukraine. President Trump has falsely accused  Ukraine of starting the war with Russia. He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr   Zelensky a dictator  and excluded  Ukraine from negotiations with Russia to end the war. The Trump administration has proposed  that Ukraine should surrender occupied territories to Russia. This is appeasement.      President Trump has repeatedly called  Zelensky an illegitimate leader and demanded that Ukraine hold new national elections. In fact, Zelensky is an elected President. Trump ignores the fact that Ukraine’s constitution prohibits new elections during martial law, which has been in effect since February 24, 2022. Millions of Ukrainians have taken refuge in Europe to escape Russian bombing and genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are in daily combat . E l ections cannot be held in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Ukraine's parliament has voted  to extend martial law in a democratic process that has widespread popular support.   Trump has lied  that Zelensky has a 4 percent approval rating. Recent polls show Zelensky has a 57 percent  approval rating with Ukrainians, which is considerably higher than Trump’s current standing with Americans of 47 percent .     President Trump has called for the readmission of Russia  into the Group of Seven Nations (G7), claiming it was an error to remove Russia. Russia was expelled when it illegally invaded   Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. The Trump administration has objected  to including the phrase “Russian aggression” in a G7 statement about the war. The US   opposed   a UN Security Council Resolution that reaffirms Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemns the Russian invasion. The US even voted with Russia against   a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow's invasion.   President Trump has expressed his admiration  for President Putin many times. His policy on Russia’s aggression is a startling reversal of decades of bi-partisan US foreign policy  opposing aggression. It is a sharp contradiction to his administration’s approach towards other nations committing crimes against humanity, notably Iran   and China . Abandoning Ukraine in its defense against Russian genocide  is directly contrary to US leadership on human rights .     European NATO states  may continue to support Ukraine. But Ukraine is also heavily dependent  on US aid. As of January 2025, the US has provided Ukraine with $65.9 billion in military assistance . This includes $27 billion from Department of Defence stockpiles , including weaponry, training support, and medical supplies.    Trump’s appeasement of Putin is a repetition of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. “ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” – Santayana.   Russian aggression and genocide will worsen if the US abandons Ukraine.     Russia is engaged in every stage of genocide in Ukraine. Genocide Watch considers the statements made by the Trump administration to be aiding and abetting genocide. They are evidence of  Stage 4: Dehumanization,   Stage 5: Organization  and Stage 6: Polarization.  Trump’s rhetoric reflects Russian disinformation.   Genocide Watch recommends:    The US Congress should adopt the bi-partisan H.Res.16 - Recognizing Russian actions in Ukraine as a genocide .   The US Congress should oversee and investigate  how Trump’s business interests influence US foreign policy.   Both US parties and NATO should condemn Trump’s false accusation that Ukraine started Russia’s aggression. Both US parties and NATO should demand that negotiations to end the war must include Ukraine.  Because of Russia’s aggression and genocide, Russia should not be readmitted into the G7. Canada, as host of the 2025 G7 summit , should lead condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. The US should reinstate USAID funding to Ukrainian and Russian media that counter Russian propaganda.

70 Christians murdered in DRC Open Doors International 24 February 2025 Village in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: Open Doors International On February 13, 2025, militants rounded up 70 Christians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), took them to a church, and then killed all 70 of them.  Open Doors field sources say the violence began at about 4 a.m. on Thursday, February 13, 2025, as militants captured and tied up some 20 Christians in the community of Mayba. The militants are suspected to be members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group with ties to the Islamic State group. " [M]ilitants went door by door saying, 'Get out, get out and don't make any noise,'" says an elder in another town about 40 km from Mayba. "Twenty Christian men and women came out, and they tied them up for an unknown destination." Mayba is predominantly Christian and is located in the North Kivu province in eastern DRC, which has also been home to fierce fighting as another rebel group has taken over territory.  After the 20 were taken, the rest of the village was agitated and began to try to figure out how to free the people who had been abducted. They gathered together to develop a plan, but by the time they met, militants had surrounded their village. Open Doors sources report that the extremists captured about 50 other Christians and tied them up. All 70 captives were taken to a Protestant church in Kasanga where they were killed inside with machetes or hammers.  Field sources say that even several days after the attack, some families had not been able to bury their dead because of the insecurity in the region. Many Christians have fled the area to somewhere deemed safer. "We don't know what to do or how to pray; we've had enough of massacres," said an elder in a nearby church. "May God's will alone be done." "Open Doors strongly condemns this heinous act of violence against civilians and calls on civil societies, governments and international organizations to prioritize civilian protection in eastern DRC where armed groups such as the ADF are operating," says John Samuel*, Open Doors' legal expert for our work in sub-Saharan Africa. "The violence takes place in a context of impunity, where almost no one is held accountable. This massacre is a clear indicator of widespread human rights violations against civilians and vulnerable communities, often targeting Christians, perpetrated by ADF—an ISIS affiliate.  "We further call on the international Christian community to remain in prayer for Christians and vulnerable communities in eastern DRC," Samuel continues. "Pray for an end to violence and that government at all levels will diligently, impartially and transparently address the violence and its effects. Pray for the church in the Lubero territory as she seeks to bring physical and spiritual assistance to the families affected."  This is one of the deadliest attacks in the Lubero territory since the ADF started attacks there recently. ADF fighters have killed more than 200 people in this part of the DRC, according to a local news website. The ADF has long carried out brutal attacks in North Kivu province. Thousands of Christians have been displaced multiple times or killed, houses have been looted and burned down, schools have been relocated, churches and health facilities have been forced to close, and several Christian villages have been abandoned because of the violence.  Urgent prayer request from the DRC   Pray with believers in the DRC: Pray that God will comfort those who have lost loved ones and possessions.  Pray that God will strengthen the faith of Christians living in areas threatened by the ADF.  Pray for insecurity in the east of the DRC, that the Lord's intervention will stop the attacks and calm the situation.  And pray for the ADF, that the Lord will bring them to repentance and into relationship with Him. If they harden their hearts towards God, pray that He will confuse their plans.    info@opendoorsus.org 1-800-896-5285 Open Doors US  PO Box 685 Bridgeville, PA 15017-0685  EIN: 92-1154296 Contact Us Media Contact: Melany Ethridge A. Larry Ross Communications Melany@alarryross.com 972-267-1111 © Copyright 2025 Open Doors

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in Belgrade, Serbia, on Jan. 17, 2019. MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP via Getty Images Genocide Warning: Verdict in the Trial of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik By Kolby Phillip On February 26, 2025, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina will issue a verdict in the trial of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik  and the former acting director of Republika Srpska’s Official Gazette , Milos Lucic.   Milorad Dodik became Republika Srpska’s president in 2010 . He was re-elected in 2022 , and is serving his third term. His secessionist  and anti-western  rhetoric, such as calling for the “unification”  of Serbs in Bosnia with neighboring Serbia, led former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to label him as being on a Putin-esque authoritarian path.  Dodik is a vehement denier of the Srebrenica Genocide , which he describes as a “fabricated myth.”     The Charges Against & the Trial of Dodik   Dodik was indicted in August 2023  for defying the rulings of Christian Schmidt , the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Accords . The  position of High Representative was created in the aftermath of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War   to oversee the implementation of the Accords. Annex 10 of the Dayton Accords  gives the High Representative power to cancel laws or remove officials threatening Bosnia’s peace.   Dodik proposed two laws to the Bosnian National Assembly that would weaken the Bosnian federal government’s authority. Schmidt blocked both laws.   The first law would have prevented enforcement in Republika Srpska of the rulings of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitutional Court.   The second law would have allowed Republika Srpska to disregard all decisions made by the High Representative.     Dodik’s defense lawyer Goran Bubic has labeled the trial as overtly “political” ,  with the “clear aim…to eliminate…Dodik from political life in Bosnia.”   Prosecutor Nedim Cosic is seeking a prison sentence of five years for Dodik and a ten-year ban on Dodik holding public office.  In his closing at trial, Cosic argued, “The defendants acted with full awareness that they were obstructing the decisions of the High Representative, which is a criminal act.”   Dodik has already announced  that he will not attend the reading of the verdict. He will also not obey the verdict.   Threats Coming from Republika Srpska Officials and Authoritarian Foreign Leaders   Threats of secession from Bosnia are common among Dodik and Republika Srpska officials, but they have never been acted upon. Dodik’s looming conviction, imprisonment, and removal from office make the threats from Dodik’s allies of a “swift reaction” to the verdict appear increasingly likely.   On February 17, 2025, Republika Srpska officials issued a public statement announcing that “in response to every verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina,…all Serb representatives…as well as all [Serb] employees…will withdraw from the joint institutions [of Bosnia and Herzegovina] and stop working." “The verdict will be against Republika Srpska, [not Dodik].”   Dodik has received political support from fellow authoritarian leaders. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, “political attacks on Dodik should stop now, and he should stop being punished.”    Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić  stated his hope that the Court “would make ‘wise decisions’ in order to prevent Bosnia’s further destabilisation.”     On the trial’s final day, Dodik directed an ominous message to the trial judge: “Your verdict will determine the future of Bosnia.”  He also said he was “not threatening anyone, but…[he is] ready to go all the way.”   Bosnia and Herzegovina is threatened by Dodik and the Republika Srpska’s secessionist rhetoric. Bosnia is at Stage 6: Polarization , and Stage 7: Preparation , for possible ethnic violence following the Dodik verdict. Genocide Watch recommends that: The Bosnian Court should issue a verdict unaffected by threats from Republika Srpska officials. The verdict should be based solely on evidence at trial and should uphold the rule of law. The US and EU should impose new sanctions on Dodik and Republika Srpska officials for undermining and violating the Dayton peace agreement. NATO should monitor potential ethnic violence in Bosnia and offer full support to the Bosnian government.

The Washington Post February 24, 2025 Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa speaks Monday during a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York to mark the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images) Washington’s shift on the conflict marks a major break with Europe and coincides with the Trump administration’s bid to appease Moscow. By Karen DeYoung and  John Hudson The United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Iran and 14 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday against a resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly. The U.S. delegation also abstained from voting on its own competing resolution that simply called for an end to the war, after European-sponsored amendments inserting new anti-Russian language in the resolution also passed the 193-member body by a wide margin. The amended U.S. resolution also passed. The votes, taken on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, were an astounding reflection of the deepening split between the Trump administration and its major allies over support for Ukraine and disapproval of President Donald Trump’s unilateral outreach to the Kremlin to settle the war on terms favorable to Russia. Trump has falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war, called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator,” spoken directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin about normalizing Washington-Moscow relations, and implied that strong U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine may be lifted. A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the fast-moving diplomacy Monday, said the United States would introduce its resolution at a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council later Monday and would veto any attempts to amend it. General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding but reflect world opinion, while Security Council votes, which require nine members in favor and no vetoes by the permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — have the force of international law. The U.N. votes came as Trump met at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron for bilateral talks and a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, and prepared for a Thursday visit from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Both Britain and France voted for the Ukraine-sponsored resolution and the French-sponsored amendments to the U.S. measure in the General Assembly. The Trump administration has opposed phrasing in a statement on Ukraine that the G-7 — which comprises the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and Japan — has been preparing to issue this week. In a social media post after the Monday virtual meeting, Trump referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the G-7 chair, as “Governor” Trudeau, a reference to the president’s ongoing call for Canada to become the 51st U.S. state, and repeated his contention that the war in Ukraine “would have never started if I was President.” Trump also expressed hope for an agreement with Kyiv on what he called “the vital ‘Critical Minerals and Rare-Earths Deal,’” in which he has asked Ukraine to sign over the rights to 50 percent of its mineral wealth to “recoup” U.S. money spent on Ukraine’s defense. He said he was “in serious discussions” with Putin on ending the war and “also major Economic Development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia. Talks are proceeding very well!” Asked by reporters ahead of his Oval Office meeting with Macron why the United States opposed the Ukraine-sponsored resolution condemning Russia, Trump said: “I would rather not explain it now, but it’s sort of self-evident.” The Ukraine resolution, co-sponsored by dozens of other nations, was the seventh approved by the General Assembly — and the first not supported by the United States — since the war began. “This is a moment of truth,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa told the assembly Monday, “a historic moment not only for Ukraine” but also for Europe and “for the entire democratic world. The way we answer to Russian aggression today … to Russian atrocities and crimes … will define … our entire future.” The United States’ interim U.N. ambassador, Dorothy Camille Shea, told the assembly that “multiple resolutions … have failed to stop the war.” Urging support for the unamended U.S. measure, she called it “a simple statement … that looks forward, not backward, focused on one simple idea of ending the war.” In remarks to the General Assembly before the votes, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya repeated Putin’s contention that the war was in response to attempts by the West to expand its own influence and territorial control at Russia’s expense, and by Ukraine to violate the human rights of its Russian-speaking minority. After completion of the votes, Nebenzya voiced Russia’s appreciation of U.S. efforts and said, “I think today that the American colleagues have seen for themselves that the road to peace in Ukraine will not be an easy one, and there will be many who will try to make sure that peace doesn’t come for as long as possible.” Kyiv was informed in advance that the United States would vote against Ukraine’s resolution, and U.S. demands that Zelensky’s government take its proposal off the table continued as late as Monday morning. The Trump administration also pressured other nations, including through messages sent by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to all U.S. embassies, to vote against the resolution or to abstain. “We told them we would not surrender,” a Ukrainian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive diplomatic discussions. “This is a really unpleasant surprise, but it’s not for us to judge, it’s for the Americans themselves.” The official noted that Haiti was among the nations that aligned with the United States and voted against the resolution. If Washington is treating Ukraine with such pressure, the official said, “what will they do to Haiti?” In addition to Haiti, countries voting against Ukraine’s resolution included Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Hungary, Israel, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Nicaragua, Niger and Sudan. The required two-thirds majority was reached with all of Western Europe — with the exception of Hungary — and Australia voting for the resolution. Sixty-five countries abstained, including China, the Persian Gulf nations, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Yemen, Vietnam and much of Africa. Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, said the divide between the United States and Europe marked “the biggest split among Western powers at the U.N. since the Iraq War — and probably even more fundamental.” Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv and Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 The Washington Post

Hindu extremist Aadesh Soni calls for atrocities against Christians Hindu militants have posted on Facebook and YouTube calling on Hindus to attack, rape, and kill Christians across 3 villages in Chhattisgarh state on March 1, 2025.  One local Hindu extremist, Aadesh Soni, declared on social media that the plan was to “kill all Christians, play with the honor of their daughter and daughters-in-law, to do obscene acts with them, to forcibly enter Christian homes and not to spare anyone but corrupt them all.” Another, Shankaracharya Shri Avimukteshwaranad, declared that Hindus need to “kill all Christians and none should be spared.” © 2024 Indian American Muslim Council