Monthly Archives: February 2022

We have met today to discuss the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades. We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine, enabled by Belarus. We call on Russia to immediately cease its military assault, to withdraw all its forces from Ukraine and to turn back from the path of aggression it has chosen. This long-planned attack on Ukraine, an independent, peaceful and democratic country, is brutal and wholly unprovoked and unjustified. We deplore the tragic loss of life, enormous human suffering and destruction caused by Russias actions. Peace on the European continent has been fundamentally shattered. The world will hold Russia, as well as Belarus, accountable for their actions. We call on all states to condemn this unconscionable attack unreservedly. No one should be fooled by the Russian governments barrage of lies.

Russia bears full responsibility for this conflict. It has rejected the path of diplomacy and dialogue repeatedly offered to it by NATO and Allies. It has fundamentally violated international law, including the UN Charter. Russias actions are also a flagrant rejection of the principles enshrined in the NATO-Russia Founding Act: it is Russia that has walked away from its commitments under the Act. President Putins decision to attack Ukraine is a terrible strategic mistake, for which Russia will pay a severe price, both economically and politically, for years to come. Massive and unprecedented sanctions have already been imposed on Russia. NATO will continue to coordinate closely with relevant stakeholders and other international organisations including the EU. At the invitation of the Secretary General, we were joined today by Finland, Sweden and the European Union.

We stand in full solidarity with the democratically elected president, parliament and government of Ukraine and with the brave people of Ukraine who are now defending their homeland. Our thoughts are with all those killed, injured and displaced by Russias aggression, and with their families. NATO remains committed to all the foundational principles underpinning European security, including that each nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements. We will continue to provide political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend itself and call on others to do the same. We reaffirm our unwavering support for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders, including its territorial waters. This principled position will never change.

In light of Russias actions, we will draw all the necessary consequences for NATOs deterrence and defence posture. Allies have held consultations under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty. We will continue to take all measures and decisions required to ensure the security and defence of all Allies. We have deployed defensive land and air forces in the eastern part of the Alliance, and maritime assets across the NATO area. We have activated NATOs defence plans to prepare ourselves to respond to a range of contingencies and secure Alliance territory, including by drawing on our response forces. We are now making significant additional defensive deployments of forces to the eastern part of the Alliance. We will make all deployments necessary to ensure strong and credible deterrence and defence across the Alliance, now and in the future. Our measures are and remain preventive, proportionate and non-escalatory.

Our commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is iron-clad. We stand united to protect and defend all Allies. Freedom will always win over oppression.

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Statement by NATO Heads of State and Government on Russia's attack on Ukraine - NATO HQ

In addition to official government sanctions, bars and liquor storesacross theU.S. and Canada are attemptingto economically hurt Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraineby refusing to sell Russian vodka and other Russian liquor.

Ontario joins Canadas allies in condemning the Russian governments act of aggression against the Ukrainian people, and will direct the[Liquor Control Board of Ontario] to withdraw all products produced in Russia from store shelves, Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy tweeted,adding the hashtag #StandwithUkraine.

The people of Ontario will always stand against tyranny and oppression, Bethlenfalvy later added.

Bethlenfalvys announcement came shortly after the Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation said that it would also remove Russian products.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation, along with other Liquor jurisdictions throughout Canada, has made the decision to remove products of Russian origin from its shelves, the NLC Liquor Corporation tweeted.

The Corporation will no longer sell Russian Standard Vodka or Russian Standard Platinum Vodka in an effort to condemn Moscows recent actions.

Liquor stores and bars in the U.S. have also boycottedthe sale of Russian-made liquor.

Jamie Stratton,manager of the Jacob Liquor Exchange in Wichita, Kan., told The Hillthathis store removed more than 100 bottles of Russian vodka from its shelves, referring to it as atiny sanction.

He also noted that the store plans on displaying Ukrainian vodka more prominently.

Meanwhile, aski resort in Vermontposted a videoof a bartender pouring Stoli vodka down the drain while saying "We don't serve Russian products here."

Sorry @Stoli lovers. No more," Magic Mountain Ski Area tweeted, along with an emoji of the Ukrainian flag.

Bill McCormick, owner of Pine Tavern in Bend, Ore.,also shared avideo sharedof himpouring out two bottles of Stolichnaya vodka, KPTV reported.

Russia is acting as though its 1939 and going into Europe with a full force that they have in the Ukraine. I am so concerned about it metastasizing into other countries, he told the outlet.

Lisa Conley-Kendzior contributed.

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Liquor stores in Canada, US refusing to sell Russian vodka | TheHill - The Hill

The Freedom Convoy bitcoin fundraiser received a lot of positive attention, gathering almost 1 million CAD in bitcoin donations. After all, what better tool could there be to circumvent the censorship of payments while protesting a government than a censorship-resistant currency free of state control? But the tactics used to distribute funds may tell a different story.

When a Canadian judge froze millions of dollars in GoFundMe donations to the Canadian trucker protests in the end of January, Bitcoiners were quick to set up a donation campaign of their own via the bitcoin crowdfunding platform Tallycoin. As the campaign gained traction, numerous prominent Bitcoiners voiced their support, while some even consulted organizers on aspects related tos distribution, taxation, and possible legal threats.

This all changed with the enactment of the Emergencies Act in response to the blockade on February 14 2022, in which Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland specified the broadening of Canadas anti-money laundering and terrorism financing rules to cover crowdfunding platforms and all forms of transactions including cryptocurrencies, with the goal of strengthening law enforcements abilities to impose fines and imprisonments and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades. On the same day, a user by the name JW Weatherman called for the immediate distribution of funds, vowing to take legal action against prominent supporters if donations were not distributed before the protest disbursed. Naturally, many prominent supporters went AWOL in fear of legal threats, with some even going as far as deactivating their Twitter accounts.

Link to Tweet.

Not long after, discussions started to form around the smartest process to distribute funds to protesters, with many calling for accountability to prove that the funds had actually reached the protesters they were meant to support. A user called Nick, who goes by NobodyCaribou who has been highly active in the Freedom Convoy bitcoin campaign, consulted with JW Weatherman. Their goal: set up a plan to distribute funds to truckers, while maintaining full transparency over where the funds had gone.

While gathering ideas for disbursement in a public Google doc, concerns mounted. Not only were people encouraged to openly commit a crime in a public document, but they were proposing tactics which would pose serious risks for the seizability of funds. One such tactic is the video documentation of the handing over of envelopes containing bitcoin private keys to truckers, allowing recipients to be identified with the use of facial recognition software.

As the funds were distributed, videos of recipients and the handing over of bitcoin donations began circulating the web. The problem: bitcoin is censorship resistant, not censorship immune. Doxxing recipients on the world wide web can lead to the seizure of bitcoin once individuals have been identified. This is where the positive narrative for nation-states comes in seizing a money deemed to be unseizable, scaring those who may think of using bitcoin for donations against government oppression in the future. While it's obvious to most that possible seizures would not be a result of a failure of bitcoins censorship resistance but of how the disbursement of donations took place, a possible seizure of funds would give governments and media outlets grounds to claim FUD about the failure of Bitcoins censorship resistance itself.

The spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) has been a prominent tactic to alter public perception for decades, often seen as an extension of the concept of propaganda. By creating FUD, actors spread wrongful information through third-party contenders, creating no directly obvious connection between the actual initiators of a misinformation campaign and the misinformation spreading. The goal is to create lasting irritation amongst the public, as wrongful information causes fear and uncertainty even after being identified as such. While the fundraiser was arguably launched with good intentions to support those executing their right to protest against government mandated vaccinations, it is unclear why NobodyCaribou and JW Weatherman proceeded with their distribution plan even after concerns piled on.

Whats clear is that with the identification of recipients and the consequential possibility of seizure of funds, the narrative of Bitcoins failed censorship resistance has been handed to governments and media on a silver platter, and that such a narrative can have long-lasting discouraging effects for all those in desperate need of a money to bypass oppressive state regulations. What is also clear is that all those who have aided the donation campaign can be prosecuted for terrorist financing under Canadian criminal code part 2.1 since the invoking of the Emergencies Act, which states that Every person is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years who, directly or indirectly, wilfully and without lawful justification or excuse, provides or collects property intending that it be used or knowing that it will be used, in whole or in part, in order to carry out (a) an act or omission that constitutes an offence referred to in subparagraphs (a)(i) to (ix) of the definition of terrorist activity in subsection 83.01(1).

As of the 22nd of February, Nick, AKA NobodyCaribou, tweeted that he is now the defendant in a class action lawsuit, likely regarding the organizing of the bitcoin fundraiser. For now we can only hope that all those affected by the donation campaign will remain safe, and that not all bitcoin donated will fall into government custody.

This is a guest post by L0la L33tz. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Bitcoins Freedom Convoy Threat Vector - Bitcoin Magazine

For anyone still nave, stubborn, or fanatical enough to believe the Covid tyranny weve been suffocating under for the past two years is about a virus, let the events unfolding in Canada disabuse you of that illusion.

Invoking the Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts, conduct mass arrests of peaceful demonstrators and protest organizers, target reporters and photographers, and establish red zones and checkpoints, all in response to a mobilized citizenry that is weary of ineffective, illiberal, and discriminatory Covid restrictions this all smacks of dictatorship, not democracy. It certainly has nothing to do with public health.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walked back his use of the Emergencies Act this week, but the Canadian government continues to keep protesters in jail and push banks to freeze nearly C$8 million in the personal and business accounts of people who peacefully contributed to the protest before it was criminalized. Banks also have threatened to suspend loans of those on government blacklists of Canadian citizens who peacefully participated.

Meanwhile, jurisdictions around the world are hastily rolling back Covid edicts, lamely pointing to the usual fake science. Behind the scenes, governments understand what their counterparts in places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France seem determined to ignore: the people are no longer buying their narrative. Instead of bingeing on Covid fear porn, the real plague we should have been freaking out about is totalitarianism, the 20th centurys deadliest scourge.

The Canadian government declared war on a grassroots, non-violent protest against compulsory vaccinations and other Covid restrictions. Enabled and emboldened by a complicit press, the regime demonizes those who demand the protection of fundamental individual rights over submission to collectivist oppression. Trudeau ludicrously and disingenuously labeled protestors racists and misogynists.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland threatened that recalcitrant truckers would have their bank accounts frozen and their vehicle insurance suspended. She also announced the broadening of terrorist financing rules to encompass crowdfunding platforms, and warned that Big Brother would be coming for their cash.

Ottawa police are threatening protestors with criminal charges and financial retribution. Last week, an elderly, mobility-impaired woman was shockingly trampled by Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Police have even been targeting citizens in their own homes over social media posts.

Around the world, other aspiring dictators and their henchmen are using one hand to smother their subjects with public health love and the other to trample, beat, detain, and arrest those who disobey. Western governments are reverting to the abhorrent trends of technologically enabled totalitarian ideologies that shaped the European continent for the better part of a century.

Australia was at the cutting edge of crushing dissenters long before Ottawa. As early as September 2020, Victoria Police barged into the home of a pregnant woman and arrested her in front of her husband and two children for a Facebook post encouraging people to attend an anti-lockdown protest.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern laughed off the estimated 1,500 protestors gathered outside Parliament demanding an end to her repressive health dictatorship, as spreaders of misinformation and disinformation. Like Trudeau, Ardern is dishonest and deranged enough to keep rabbiting on that her number one priorityroughly 700 days and 56 deaths into slowing the spreadis steering New Zealand through the pandemic.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who infamously said he wanted to use the vaccine pass to piss off the unvaccinated by making life as hard as possible for them, is doing just that. French authorities responded to their countrys own Freedom Convoy by banning the demonstration, threatening heavy fines, license suspension, and jail time for unauthorized protestors. They deployed 7,200 police officers and armored vehicles, who resorted to firing teargas at bystanders including families with children, all for the peoples health and safety.

The West didnt win the day over communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 because of democracys deep roots in European soil. There were none. On the contrary, Europes interwar experiment with parliamentary democracy following the World War I collapse of the great autocratic empires was a blip on the radar.

By the mid-1930s, a crisis of capitalism and loss of trust in liberal institutions left many Europeans feeling that democracy had done its dash and individual freedoms were overrated, thus paving the way for both the tyranny of fascism and the specter of Communism. Theres a similar feeling enabling Covidianism today. Under the last centurys violent New Orders that followed this public acceptance, which led to the deaths of tens of millions of people in Europe alone, rapid technological advances enabled a self-perpetuating elite to use terror and ideology to dominate the mobilized masses in an unprecedented manner.

Significantly, the authoritarian regimes that supplanted democracy craftily used and abused democratic freedoms and institutions in order to abolish democracy itself. The National Socialists, under Adolf Hitler, rose to power using legitimate elections and the parliamentary process, then exploited an unstable and neutered legislature, a strengthened executive, and a disturbing pattern of emergency orders to trash the whole system. Across Eastern Europe after World War II, the Communist Party relied on coalition governments to get its boot in the door, then systematically began kicking out the other parties.

Theres no such thing as it cant happen here. We must always be vigilant given these terrifying lessons from history.

Seventy-five years down the track, Gen Xers, millennials, and even boomers, who grew up taking for granted that democracy is the norm rather than the status quo, are now learning in real time that liberty must be shaped, won, and preserved. This reckoning is throwing a spanner in the works of the Covid-powered totalitarian machine.

Contrary to Trudeaus propaganda about a small fringe minority with unacceptable views, protestors have turned out en masse in Toronto and Calgary to express solidarity with those demonstrating in Ottawa. Two-thirds of Canadians say its time to end Covid restrictions and learn to live with the virus.

In the United States, only one-third of Americans list Covid as a top-five issue for 2022, and 59 percent of voters support the truckers. European leaders and democratic governors and mayors across the United States, who glimpse electoral annihilation on the horizon, are spending Bidens winter of severe illness and death quietly archiving their blueprints.

It would seem that the gig is up. Twentieth-century philosopher and writer Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarian regimes cannot survive without a fanatical mass cult, unshaken by reason, argument, or experience, that identifies with and conforms to the movement, even at their own expense.

It may be dawning on petty tyrants like Trudeau that there just arent enough Covid cultists to sustain the beast. This would explain his astonishing about-face when he announced the revocation of the Emergencies Act. After sniveling literally two days before, he had no choice but to invoke these powers, employing the abusive spouses textbook trick of I didnt want to hit you but you made me do it. The national emergency has apparently now evaporated.

On Monday, it was all about misinformation, disinformation, foreign funds, ideologically motivated violent extremism, and urging the Canadian Parliament, Weimar Republic-style, to take an ax to democracy in order to safeguard democracy. Within 48 hours, it was back to the were all in this together sweet talk about healing, working together, and fighting a virus, not each other.

Only its not about fighting a virus, and it never was. Covid-19 is a smokescreen for the most lethal plague of all. Thats the ever-present evil by which men seek to dominate the masses, smash and rebuild their minds, and bend them to some relentless dogma or ideology. Victims of this devilry invariably respond by collaborating, conforming, submittingor resisting.

Carina Benton is a dual citizen of Australia and Italy and a permanent resident of the United States. A recent West Coast migr, she is now helping to repopulate the countrys interior. She holds a masters degree in education and has taught languages, literature, and writing for many years in Catholic and Christian, as well as secular institutions. She is a practicing Catholic and a mother of two young children.

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The Plague You Should Be Freaking Out About Is Abuse Of Power - The Federalist

White silence has always played a pivotal role in the perpetuation of systematic racism here in the United States.

The sentiment of it doesnt affect me, so why should I care? plagues privileged households.

Using their white privilege as a means to blind themselves from the struggles people of color face is just as damaging as the embarrassingly conservative uncle and his outwardly racist tirades at family dinners.

Anne McCarty Braden was a journalist and organizer who worked with Rosa Parks and is mentioned in Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

John Brown was an abolitionist who assisted in the Underground Railroad.

Possibly most popularly and recently, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is another individual who was actively involved during the early parts of the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s.These are all important examples of white figures who were pivotal in the anti-racism movement

While we may be critical of white people for their lack of participation or interest in standing up for people of color, especially Black Americans, there is another group who deserves censure for their behavior: Asian Americans.

The model minority myth paints Asian Americans in a very specific light.

It describes Asians to be hard-working, intelligent, humble and dedicated.

It illuminates us as the pinnacle of the American Dream, people coming from nothing and achieving monetary success.

After all in our cruel capitalist society, that is the only metric for achievement.

However, there are many issues with these stereotypes, many of which play into the divisive racial tensions that have plagued America for decades. Most notably, the concept of the model minority does not only create a glorified stereotype of a certain group.

It also creates a problem minority, in which government bodies blame and target one group as more problematic more often: Black Americans.

The model minority myth was part of a government propaganda campaign following WWII, creating a racial hierarchy and further oppressing Black people in America.

The worst part is we, as Asian Americans, perpetuate this practice. Centuries of colorist ideologies, stemming from our ancestral countries of India, China, Korea and more, result in a disturbing sense of pride for perpetuating these stereotypes.

Many Asians, especially in the generation before us, believe people with darker skin to be lesser, even within their own ethnic groups. When people dont necessarily disagree with its claims, myths continueto live on.

When some Asians themselves have those internalized racist ideologies, they are disinterested in standing up for Black Americans because they buy into thisgovernment-sanctioned hierarch.

They enjoy seeing themselves on top. Others, who may be less conservative and traditional, are simply disinterested in standing up for Black Americans because the issues do not affectthem personally.

While my parents are sympathetic towards the Black Lives Matter Movement and were deeply concerned in 2012 when George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin and in 2020 when Derek Chauvin mercilessly killed George Floyd, they are still hesitant to stand up and speak out against these issues publicly.

They witness these brutalities and the dangerous reality of being Black in America, and though they are dismayed by what they see, to them, this is not their issue.

Some of my Asian friends have admitted to me that their parents struggle to even comprehend the point of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

While their parents understand that problems like systemic racism exist, they are unable to understand why people dont just work hard to escape poverty or move neighborhoods to escape a dangerous lifestyle.

This is the real result of the model minority myth. It has created a deep separation between minorities in America. In moments when various minorities should band together and fight systematic oppression as a team, opposition wins by pitting these groups against each other.

Further, the model minority myth actually hurts Asian populations as well.

For example, many Asian students are assumed to not need help when struggling academically.

This stereotype creates an academic standard that is difficult to live up to and actually can result in even worse performance. It also pushes the idea that being Asian is a monolith.

In reality, the term Asian refers to so many ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, and cannot even begin to encompass their vast differences.

I, as a South Indian woman, am not even close to culturally synonymous with my Bengali roommate, let alone a Japanese or Hmong peer. This all brings us back to the real issue at hand.

Asian Americans need to destroy the model minority myth. In divisive times like the current, it is imperative that all minorities work together to overcome systematic oppression and discrimination.

It is even more important that we use our voice as the model minority to speak out against the systematic dehumanization, mass incarceration, police brutality, discrimination and all other modern-day subjugation against Black Americans.

Protesting against anti-Asian violence alone is insufficient.

If we allow this myth to continue, can we truly say we are any better than the silent white populace?

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The harmful myth of the model minority - Technique

4 min read24 February

During LGBT+ History Month, it is only natural to reflect on the advances we have made as a society.

The announcement earlier this year that, after the tireless campaigning of my colleagues Lords Lexden and Cashman, pardons and disregards would finally be extended to all who had historically been convicted of consensual same-sex activity, was a mark of just how far we have come.

But while the UK is doing so much to remove the stain of state-sponsored prejudice, Governments around the world continue to actively oppress or stand idly by while LGBT+ people continue to be persecuted under their jurisdiction.

The APPG on Global LGBT+ Rights was founded in 2015 to promote and protect the rights of LGBT+ people around the world and ensure that issues of sexual orientation and gender identity are permanently part of the UK Governments agenda.

While the fight for LGBT+ rights in the UK is by no means over the current debate about the Governments proposed conversion therapy ban is proof that sadly still too many people in the UK do not believe that LGBT+ lives are of equal validity and dignity to those of their heterosexual and cisgender peers even more work remains to be done globally.

In 2020, the APPG on Global LGBT+ Rights launched our very own Parliamentary Liaison Schemeand so far, 81 MPs and Peers have volunteered to participate.

Perhaps the most significant development for LGBT+ people globally since the foundation of the APPG was the 2018 decriminalisation of homosexuality in India, when the decision of the supreme court liberated an estimated 104 million LGBT+ people from the treat of prosecution. And every year more countries still decriminalise last year alone Bhutan and Botswana removed their oppressive laws from the statute books.

However, in 69 countries LGBT+ people still remain criminalised and in 34 of those as a result of oppressive laws introduced under British colonial administration. Even more worryingly, the picture globally is not one of predictable, if slow, progress towards greater justice. In Europe alone, Hungary has seen the introduction of its anti-LGBT law which echoes many of the injustices of our own Section 28, dozens of authorities in Poland have declared themselves LGBT-free Zones and Belarusian authorities have targeted LGBT+ organisations during the recent crackdown on anti-government protests.

Elsewhere, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban represented an all too tangible threat to LGBT+ people, as well as women, girls and religious ethnic minorities, and I am proud of the work the UK Government has done with Rainbow Railroad to bring LGBT+ Afghans to safety and a new life in the UK.

In the face of all of this, it is reasonable to ask, what we as UK parliamentarians can best do to help, especially given our own legacy of colonial oppression. In 2020, the APPG on Global LGBT+ Rights launched our very own Parliamentary Liaison Scheme (the PLS) and so far, 81 MPs and Peers have volunteered to participate. The scheme is built upon the belief that UK parliamentarians are uniquely well placed to engage with fellow parliamentarians around the world who want to advocate for and protect the rights of LGBT+ people as well as scrutinise the work of the UK Government and its diplomatic missions to advance the rights of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.

Each parliamentarian is assigned a jurisdiction where LGBT+ people still encounter oppression. Every member of the scheme, who we hope will be supported by an identified member of their staff, is then briefed on the current state of LGBT+ rights in that jurisdiction and connected to civil society groups and local activists, and from this year on will be invited to attend regional progress updates with the relevant FCDO minister, where they will have the opportunity to bring up the concerns of local activists.

As Parliamentary travel becomes once again feasible, the PLS will begin to facilitate fact-finding missions to countries of unique concern like Hungary. If you find yourself, this LGBT+ History month at a loss as to what you can do to empower LGBT+ people in the present, please get in touch with my office and we will happily sign you up.

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LGBT+ History Month is a time to empower those in the present - PoliticsHome

Charities have urged the UK government to welcome refugees from the conflict in Ukraine on the same scale as the thousands of families from the Balkans resettled during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.

In a letter to the Times, the charities, which include Save the Children, Amnesty International and the Refugee Council, asked the UK to lead international cooperation to handle a sudden increase in the number of people forced to flee the conflict, which threatens to be the most significant in Europe since the collapse of Yugoslavia.

The US has warned that 5 million people could be displaced by the conflict.

The UK government said its priority was to support British nationals and their families in Ukraine, and the government position was that people fleeing persecution should seek safety in the first safe country they reach.

An estimated 100,000 Ukrainians are already internally displaced after fleeing their homes to escape attack, while footage on social media shows lines of cars heading west into neighbouring Poland, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. The UN has appealed to neighbouring countries to keep their borders open to people seeking safety.

The letter from dozens of charities urged the government to implement a well-resourced initiative working with councils across the country to support Ukrainians in search of sanctuary, similar to the evacuation and resettlement programme during the Balkan conflict.

Visa applications from Ukraine for people who are not related to British nationals are currently suspended, meaning there is no legal route for them to enter the UK and claim asylum. A source told the BBC the government was scenario-planning for an increase in asylum seekers from Ukraine.

The charities said the crisis illuminates the crucial flaw in the nationality and borders bill, which discriminates against refugees who reach UK shores by illegal means, such as by boat across the channel.

The charities wrote: We urge the government to rethink this harmful bill and uphold our proud record of helping those fleeing war and oppression.

The prime minister has announced that the UK has 1,000 military troops on standby to support a humanitarian crisis in Europe, should they need to be called upon.

On Thursday, the Home Office confirmed that work, study or visit visas would be temporarily extended for some Ukrainians in the UK, or they would be able to apply for family visas or points-based immigration without leaving the country. This would grant them additional time to potentially find a job and stay in the UK for longer.

Those already on the point-based system will be able to stay longer and seasonal agricultural workers will have their visas automatically extended until the end of the year.

A government spokesperson said: Our priority has been to support British nationals and their families in Ukraine. This has included temporarily waiving application fees for those eligible under the family migration route, allowing entry for 12 months for others who did not meet the requirements and fast-tracking visas.

We continue to work with our international partners on a range of issues as the situation develops, including migration.

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Charities urge UK to welcome refugees fleeing Ukraine conflict - The Guardian

Republished: Tribune writer's story still an true to Ukrainian people's thirst for religious freedom

EDITORS NOTE:In 2001, South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits joined a Niles bike builder on a bicycle tour of Seventh-day Adventists churches in Ukraine. They heard stories of religious oppression under communism and saw churches reborn after they gained freedom in 1991.

Here is that story again, republished as it ran on July 9, 2001. It is a snapshot in time. Since then, religious freedom has shifted to some degree, especially in certain parts of Ukraine. But this story is still true to what Ukrainians suffered under communism, plus the religious rebirth they started to experience in their first decade of freedom. It's also true to the enduring generosity of the people.

In 2001, news media spelled the capital Kiev. Today, of course, it is known as Kyiv.

KIEV, Ukraine We rolled out of inky black croplands that look like the Midwest. On the edge of the nation's capital, Kiev, our bikes began to swish and dance around countless puddles on a muddy road into the town of Borispol.

Ukrainians navigated their way on foot and in boxy Ladas, the four-door jalopies made in neighboring Russia.

Rain-soaked foliage almost hid the small homes of concrete, but not the boring, Soviet-era apartment high-rises that flood the nation and that badly need new concrete, new tile, new everything.

Our tires nudged into the garden gate of a Seventh-day Adventist church. It was lunch, and the church folk had been expecting us for a couple of months.

Five cyclists from South Bend, Niles and Buchanan and six other Americans had just begun a weeklong tour of Adventist churches in this former Soviet nation. The generosity of the people humbled us. But so did the price they've paid for their faith. It was easy to find people who've spent years in jail for practicing Christianity. Neither the growth of churches we witnessed nor the tour itself was possible 10 years ago, when communism held its final grip.

The beaming pastor in Borispol showed us his unfinished church building. Exposed bricks held up a roof over a dusty floor cluttered with boards. He's struggling to raise $10,000 to finish the $35,000 project.

The fee for our tour brought a few hundred dollars to that cause. It was time to thank us. Cloth-covered tables were plastered with red borscht, bread, potatoes, salad, sweet rolls and fruit drinks in colorful mugs and plates. We snapped pictures. This surpassed our simple expectations. Then church women brought more goodies cabbage rolls, cabbage pancakes, strawberries and sweet, doughy desserts filled with fruit and cheese.

Latest on fighting in Ukraine: Hundreds of casualties reported amid shelling, airstrikes in Ukraine, Zelenskyy pledges to keep fighting - live updates

Our tummies packed, they led us into the lower-level room that they used for worship and seated us on one side. Church members glowed at us from their seats. More than 5,000 miles and a mountain of riches divided our cultures, and all of that had been reduced to a few feet. As one Ukrainian woman said, "We are brothers and sisters."

They gave each of us a hand-painted wooden container or candlestick.

Such feasts and gifts repeated themselves throughout the tour breakfast, lunch, dinner. We all wished we had something small to give back. In fact, we often laughed while trying to get our translators to explain: "We are not worthy!"

We could have expected divine care on this fund-raising trip. We were ambassadors from the land of milk and honey on a first-ever tour. But, as I found traveling to people's homes after the tour, Ukrainians love having visitors, and they express this by cooking.

Doug Fattic assembled the mid-June trip when he wasn't building or painting bikes out of his Niles home or serving on the finance committee of the Adventist church in Niles.

He worked with Adventist church leaders in Ukraine.

The fee helped to raise money for the churches and for a project to give bikes to pastors. Many of the nation's 500-plus Adventist clergy can't afford cars, yet they have to minister to small communities that are 3 to 15 miles from where they live. So far, the project has gathered 350 bikes, 250 of which were bought from a bike factory in Ukraine, Fattic said. Much of his financial help $30,000 recently comes from his camping buddy, Debbie McKee of the "Little Debbie" snack cakes.

I was among two non-Adventists in the group. I'm Catholic. I came because I love to cycle and see out-of-the-way countries. I knew Fattic from years of cycling with him in a club.

Even the American Adventists were touched by the Ukrainians' devout faith and penchant for prayer throughout the day. Maybe it's the old truth about converts being the most fervent Christians; new religious freedom has drawn thousands of newcomers to the faith.

Or maybe it's because the Ukrainians' faith has endured bloodshed and anguish. Nazis murdered an estimated 700,000 Jews here in World War II, almost half of the Jewish population, and Soviet leaders killed, tortured or imprisoned thousands more for religious reasons.

About 140 years ago, a Catholic priest wrote the melody to fit a poem, "Ukraine Has Not Perished," which the Parliament chose as the national anthem in 1992. It begins:

"Ukraine has not perished, neither her glory, nor her freedom,

Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.

Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the morning sun,

And we, too, shall dwell, brothers, in a free land of our own."

Growing up, the Rev. Michael Skrypkar used to climb into the mountains with other youths so they could escape the eyes and ears of the KGB and learn about their faith. When he turned 19, the army called, and, like all men his age, he was required to enlist. It was 1978. He refused to work on Saturdays, the Sabbath, which Adventists reserve for worship and rest. The army quickly found out and sent him to prison for three years.

The food was terrible, but Skrypkar prayed with many other men who were behind bars for their faith. He said he became a "good friend" to, and converted, a man who'd spent 15 years in prison for killing 31 allegedly corrupt policemen.

Now Skrypkar serves as pastor for the church in Belaya Tserkov, which means "White Church."

In a general sense, his heritage reminds me of the dual life Ukraine had to live under communist atheism. Skrypkar's brown hair and brown eyes, his rounded cheeks and jaw line reveal a Romanian ancestry. He speaks Romanian and enjoys the native food and music at home. But his passport says he's Ukrainian because he's from Chernivtsi, a Ukrainian town on the southwest border, which originally was a part of Romania.

He doesn't seem to mind. Many residents of western Ukraine have a split or mixed heritage because various parts of the area had belonged to neighboring countries.

It's more painfully ironic how communism tried to force atheism on a country that, in fact, had such a rich religious history.

Ukrainian churches go back to the 10th century. Ukraine was the first Eastern region to receive the Christian rites from Constantinople that shaped the Orthodox churches, the most prevalent of the Christian denominations in Ukraine and Russia today.

Kiev's medieval Pecherska Lavra, the "Monastery of the Caves," is a color- and gold-splashed assortment of Orthodox churches and buildings that was the site of many cultural firsts, among them the printing of the first Ukrainian dictionary. The western city of Lviv holds more medieval churches than you can see in one day, including Roman Catholic, Byzantine Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.

Communists took direct control of the Russian Orthodox church during their reign and outlawed all other faiths.

Adventists recall how they'd knock out the wall between two apartments to hold Sabbath in secret, and how KGB members would appear at the services. Officials tolerated services but cracked down when the faithful began to teach their children.

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One of our translators, Svitlana Kryshtalska, recalls what happened to children who were found going to church: "Teachers would …gather the whole school and would start shaming you before the whole school audience that you believe in God and are visiting churches," she said. "God was a myth, and the communists were doing everything in order to make people consider it as something ridiculous. …Such things happened a lot of times. But, thank God, it never happened to me."

Kryshtalska, now in her 20s, said her father used to paint icons in Orthodox churches, but he never told her what he did for a living until she was 13 or 14 old enough to keep it a secret. She knows of another man who went to prison for 10 years for doing the same. Yet another was jailed for baptizing too many people.

Every typewriter had to be registered with the government so that, if religious material or counter-propaganda arose, officials could track down the author. Many Christians typed church papers inside closets, where they could muffle the clicking of their keys.

Youths used to go to a wooded camp and building called Bucha on the outskirts of Kiev to learn about communism. Adventists have turned it into an institute of higher education. Our group joined 300 or more young Adventist adults who gathered there in Sabbath suits and dresses for a conference of music, Bible school discussions and talk of church trips and evangelism.

Church buildings are still coming out of their shackles. The government had turned many of them into warehouses and, in one case, a museum to atheism.

There aren't enough old churches to meet the demands of growing denominations. Adventist numbers have tripled from about 20,000 over the past decade. Now there are more than 800 Adventist congregations throughout Ukraine, plus about 375 prayer groups that aren't large enough to be considered congregations, said the Rev. Vladimir Krupsky, president of the Adventist church in Ukraine.

The Adventists are erecting 15 to 18 church buildings in each of the eight conferences in the country, Krupsky said. Four out of the eight churches we visited were still being built. Tour organizers, no doubt, wanted us to see this for fund-raising purposes. But I saw many churches of other denominations being built, too.

Not all of this is for evangelizing. Adventists also talked about meals and clothing they provide for the needy.

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Ukrainians can build a church for the price of a high-end sport utility vehicle in the United States.

The pastor in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky sold his car to raise money for his church building. It couldn't have been a fancy car; pastors typically make less than $50 a month. Church members bought an unfinished house, and, little by little, they have installed what they can as collections trickle in from the members' also-meager incomes.

Their unfinished building is made of a white, concrete brick. Brick is cheaper and easier to come by than wood. The floor is still dirt, walls and ceiling are missing, but the garden outside is full. The side building has a garage, a small gathering room and a second story for storage that you reach by ladder.

The congregations we met borrowed money from relatively wealthy neighbors. Many people don't trust banks, one young pastor told me, because they have been known to close unexpectedly.

The churches tend to hire a handful of men with versatile building skills who are the ones who slap the cement, pound the nails, run the wiring and do everything else.

The Rev. Krupsky relaxed at his home with Doug Fattic and me to reflect on the tour we'd finished and the prospects for another tour next year. As Adventist president, Krupsky told Fattic that the bike tour would have been unimaginable seven years ago, at least for Krupsky. He and others were still shaking off years of thinking in the old Soviet way. Had Fattic come then, Krupsky said, he would have returned to the United States and warned others, "Never go there, never do business with those people."

The Ukrainians on our trip delighted in our 300-mile adventure, whether they were following in our three support vehicles or riding alongside us on their own bikes. Touring dozens of kilometers a day on a bike was common to us, totally new to them.

They and the pastors we visited took their cues from the Rev. Yuri Kusmenko, the fussy and clever man who masterminded our course. A lean man with raw Ukrainian cheekbones, Kusmenko oversees all of the Adventist pastors in Ukraine. He drove one of the two vans and watched the cyclists like a worried shepherd.

His intensity paid off. Rarely were we off schedule, and when we were, it wasn't by much. Pastors at several churches asked us to forgive their imperfections, whatever those were.

The Ukrainians overcame limitations with ingenuity.

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Take the bad water pressure that plagues the entire nation. Hot water is pumped to some homes, although it often fails or stops at a certain hour. One family's water stopped completely after 10 p.m. Water is expensive, so if you don't live in a high-rise, chances are that you have a pit toilet.

But our hosts built showers just for us. These consisted of two wood-frame stalls wrapped in wood or black plastic. Volunteers climbed a ladder to dump buckets of heated water into a barrel, from which the water flowed into shower heads. In Kaniv, youth group volunteers ran water from the heat of a fire up to the church's second floor, where it flowed from a tank down a long tube to the showers.

Ingenious or hospitable? We had brought sleeping mats and sleeping bags but never got to use them as the faithful cleared room in their churches for beds or mattresses, sent us to a hotel or to members' homes.

Not all is broken. City markets thrive without long lines for food. All of the highways and country roads we rode were paved. City streets are free of litter. Kiev is building a new, modern train station. The city's subways are not only full of art; they help many of the 5 million citizens get around with great efficiency.

Dignity lives in Ukraine, too. Village houses may be small, but they are immaculate and brightly painted. Many live in Soviet-built high-rise apartment buildings, hundreds of which fill Kiev's skyline. From the outside, they shock the eye like old public housing in Chicago. Front steps have holes big enough to catch a child's foot. Poorly lit hallways look like dungeons. Elevators chug along like old cars.

But open the door to someone's home and you find tidiness and warm-colored paint, wallpaper, carpets, lacy curtains and perhaps a book of worship.

Like stepping from hell into heaven.

Follow Outdoor Adventures columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures. Contact him at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

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We saw Ukraine churches reborn after communist oppression in this 2001 bike trip - South Bend Tribune

During the four long years of Donald Trumps presidency, many Canadians looked to the New York Times as an important beacon of reason and decency. Now that Canada is having its own Trump-esque moment, one thats been amplified by the Trumpist instruments of Fox News and Facebook, the Times appears to have abandoned its post. Instead of serving as a crucial bulwark against the spread of misinformation and populist fear-mongering, its now unintentionally aiding and abetting it.

On two separate occasions, the Times made fundamental errors of fact that skewed the way millions of people saw what was unfolding in Ottawa. First, they claimed in a tweet that the invocation of the Emergencies Act was a de facto suspension of civil liberties, one that it eventually walked back after nearly every constitutional expert in Canada pointed out its mistake.

Then on Saturday, as police were clearing out the remaining protesters, it ran a headline suggesting police arrested demonstrators at gunpoint despite that happening only once when police suspected explosives were inside a vehicle. The Times eventually softened the headline, but the damage was already done, and the story itself remained conspicuously biased towards the perspective of the protesters.

Our award-winning journalists bring you the news that impacts you, Canada, and the world. Don't miss out.

But the recent episode on the events in Ottawa of its widely followed The Daily podcast might have been the biggest problem of all. To add insult to injury, it was a Canadian Catherine Porter, the New York Times Canadian bureau chief at the heart of it.

This is not the first time Porter has painted a picture of Canada for her American audience that many people found at odds with reality. On Oct. 17, 2018, when cannabis became legal across the country, she wrote: Canadians are calling it C-Day. That was, as the kids say, not a thing, and much Twitter mockery ensued.

But her depiction of the Ottawa encampment is no laughing matter. The podcast is marbled with language that seems conspicuously complimentary towards the people who assembled illegally near Parliament Hill holding the city hostage for weeks. She described the trucks that were gumming up the citys traffic as brilliant protest machines and suggested the protests had the feel of a huge tailgate party or festival.

Porter paid brief lip service to the existence of a menacing element that was telling Trudeau where to go (she declined to tell listeners they were telling him to go fuck himself), but she didnt spend much time on it. Instead, she talked to a 24-year-old beekeeper who said he was there to spread love and peace, a truck driver from northern Ontario, and a former yoga studio owner who she apparently heard yelling on the street and decided to interview. There was some real healing going on there, Porter said.

Portraying the protest as an act of collective grieving rather than a bacchanal of vandalism and constitutional hooliganism was a choice. So too was the willingness to employ the same framing some of the convoy organizers were presenting, that the more radical elements associated with the protests had latched on to the plight of the truckers. As Justin Ling tweeted, This is just wrong. It's entirely backwards.

She wasnt the only Times journalist to present an incomplete version of what was happening in Ottawa. In their coverage of the police crackdown on the remaining occupiers, reporters Natalie Kitroeff and Sarah Maslin Nir described Pat King as a prominent online champion of the protests, which is a bit like referring to Steve Bannon as a free speech enthusiast. In reality, King is a known white supremacist who made racist comments about NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh just last week.

All of this calls into question the newspapers basic competence in accurately reporting information about the U.S.s closest neighbour and ally. If they cant get it right about Canada, a country with which they share a language and the worlds longest undefended border, why should anyone trust the Times reporting from anywhere else in the world?

Canadians certainly dont seem inclined to trust the Times as much as they did before it botched its coverage of the occupation of Ottawa. Many of them, including plenty of high-profile ones, publicly cancelled their subscriptions last week. The hashtag #NYTunsubscribe was even trending in Canada on Saturday.

But all the cancelled subscriptions in the world wont repair the damage the New York Times did with its coverage of Canada last week. It validated a narrative of the protest that its organizers desperately wanted to telegraph, one in which they were fighting for freedom and resisting government oppression rather than agitating for the removal of a democratically elected government and the imprisonment or worse of the prime minister.

At a time when misinformation is poisoning our democratic discourse and being weaponized by those who want to undermine it, the self-anointed newspaper of record has to do better than this.

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The New York Times is failing Canada - National Observer

Turkey is heading toward another election. More precisely, it is heading toward its make-or-break vote like a car with no brakes, a faulty steering wheel, and an engine on fire. Discontent at runaway inflation is allied with question marks over a taxpayer-funded construction spree with President Recep Tayyip Erdoans prestige projects inevitably tendered to gang of five firms that keep getting tax breaks and debt write-offs. Yet while economists claim that Turkey is two steps away from crashing and burning, Erdoan resorts to calling them treacherous accomplices of foreign powers.

While elections are due by June 2023, coinciding with the centenary of the republic, constant instability makes it impossible to predict when they will occur (Erdoan or his coalition partner will get to choose, in their own best interests). The actors in the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary contests are, however, similar to previous elections. Erdoan is backed by his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), together constituting the right-wing Peoples Alliance; they are opposed by the Nation Alliance, consisting of the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the center-right, nationalist Good Party (IYIP, itself a split from MHP). Several other minor parties, ranging from center-right to far-right and from liberal to Islamist, seem likely to join or give support to the Nation Alliance.

More hopefully, from the Lefts perspective, there is the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Having achieved 11.7 percent in the last elections, this force, led by the Kurdish civil rights movement, has also incorporated several left-wing movements and parties. Its ambitious Turkeyification project which aimed to transform it into a party of Turkey rather than of Kurds and their issues alone came to a halt as AKP resorted to overwhelming political oppression and violence in the Kurdish-majority areas. This growing hostility impeded the HDPs aim of an all-encompassing vision extending beyond Kurdish politics and forced it to retreat to its initial priorities. The government used this turn to further isolate and criminalize HDP: such measures have included the jailing of its members and leaders, constant defamation, and complete media censorship. This vilification reached new heights when HDP member Deniz Poyraz was murdered in the party headquarters in zmir by an assailant intent on mass murder as it happened, she was the only person in the building. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor filed a lawsuit for the Constitutional Court to close down the HDP and ban 451 of its politicians. It remains unknown whether HDP will be shut down, but the pressure coming from all sides is at an all-time high.

Despite the varying degrees of oppression, censorship, and suffering brought by Erdoans rule, the opposition seems energized and is calling for early elections. The presidents support is slowly crumbling, alongside the economy and the general welfare of the population. The main opposition bloc is on an upward trend and gaining ground. The HDP is showing great resolve and preserving its political base and influence. But where is the Turkish left in all this?

With the recent exception of HDP, left-wing politics in Turkey has been sidelined, if not slid into relative obscurity, in electoral politics and popular mobilization in the last forty years. Since Turkey was proclaimed a republic in 1923, the far left has been ostracized, obstructed, and prosecuted at every possible opportunity in the staunchly US-aligned NATO member state.

The Turkish lefts last limited parliamentary breakthrough came in 1965, when the Workers Party of Turkey (TP) gained 3 percent of the vote and fifteen seats in parliament. For a brief period, it successfully attracted young urban voters alongside intellectuals and blue-collar workers. Even this meager score was enough to scare the establishment to change the election system and avoid such radical movements gaining a parliamentary foothold. As the far left was pushed out of parliament and legal politics, several movements and parties took their struggle to the streets, factories, and universities, with some groups even turning to armed struggle. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the country became sharply polarized between right- and left-wing politics, as armed conflict between numerous groups became a part of daily life. Meanwhile, TP and multiple other left-wing parties were shut down by courts throughout these decades for a myriad of undemocratic reasons.

All this polarization and political struggle came to a screeching halt in September 1980 with a coup dtats. Here we cannot delve into the vast scale of the oppression and the unhumanitarian treatment that the Turkish left faced but, from bans to persecutions, obstructions to coup dtats, as hundreds were killed or executed while thousands were arrested, jailed, and tortured, the Turkish left was scattered, exiled, or simply languished. The military coup of 1980 traumatized left-wing movements, which again received a significant blow a decade later with the fall of the Soviet Union. These movements retreated, hoping to recover and reassess, as many movements and parties worldwide did during and after the 1990s. Yet the Turkish left became marginalized, both in terms of public resonance and political relevancy; more puritan and theoretical attitudes took over its discussions, separating it from the mass of the population.

Attempts were made to revitalize the Left; several parties merged, only to split again. They also contested elections, only to crumble before the draconian barrier set by the 10 percent election threshold. The United June Movement, which emerged after the Gezi Park protests in 2013, looked like a possible basis to build a meaningful left-wing coalition, only to succumb to infighting, factional differences, and disagreements over strategy.

Among all this tumult, the Workers Party of Turkey (TP) was reborn in 2017 out of a split in the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) dating back three years earlier. Another party splitting in the vast constellation of the Turkish left is not necessarily noteworthy. But TP has managed to break out of the wilderness, at least to some degree. This also owed to the HDPs cooperative attitude. As part of its ultimately unfulfilled Turkeyificiation process, HDP opened its lists to other socialist movements and figures, hoping to solidify its support beyond the Kurdish population. TP was one of the beneficiaries, whereas some left-wing parties refused.

TPs strategy henceforth was to act and vote together with the mainly Kurdish-led party but sit under its own name an approach that the HDP welcomed. In all fairness, the latter also had several socialist and far-left MPs under its umbrella; however, the party was (and still is) a coalition of numerous forces with differing inclinations and ideological stances. In this sense, TP taking its first steps to stand on its own was a small but considerable initiative. Its leader, Erkan Ba, and actor-turned-politician Bar Atay were elected on HDP lists in 2018, but took their seats as TP MPs, ending the almost fifty-year lack of a far-left party in Turkeys National Assembly.

Although these parliamentary activities started only recently, Erkan Ba is a somewhat familiar name, especially in left-wing circles. Part of the socialist movement since his teenage years, he came to prominence as an organizer and provincial and national Communist Party leader; he was expelled from his academic position for organizing striking workers at Istanbul University.

Making their voice heard in parliament provided a launchpad for further progress the TP started to gain traction and membership, especially from the younger parts of Turkish society. Two MPs became three as the well-known journalist and author Ahmet k joined TP ranks after amicably leaving the HDP to sit as an independent. The TPs parliamentary presence grew further when Sera Kadgil, an activist and lawyer popular among Turkish youth, defected from the center-left CHP last summer. Although small in number in a parliament of six hundred, these four MPs made a name for themselves for their fierce opposition, which the centrist opposition parties have failed to match.

It would be premature to speak of a revival of the Turkish left. But certain opportunities suggest that the TP and the Left can make a real comeback in the national political arena.

First, while the electoral system has been developed by the AKP-MHP coalition for these parties own benefit, it has backfired massively, for it invalidates the 10 percent threshold that had, since 1980, aimed to keep specific (mostly Kurdish, Islamist, and left-wing) movements out of parliament. The threshold is still there in name, but the possibility of contesting elections in broad alliances makes it much more easily surmounted, ensuring votes are not wasted on sub-10-percent parties. This is important given that with almost all other sites of politics so oppressed and intimidated making your vote count has long been the primary way to express oneself politically in Turkey.

Currently, HDP, TP, and several other far-left parties and movements are in discussions to organize an alliance for the next elections and beyond. Amid the widespread vilification and criminalization of HDP, an alliance with this party certainly generates unfavorable responses from certain parts of Turkish society, especially center-left nationalists and conservative circles. The Kurdish question is evidently one of the key divides in Turkish politics. That said, TP seems to be unfazed by those reactions: its position revolves around a nonviolent peaceful resolution of the conflict and equal citizenship for all groups in the country.

The more mainstream opposition hopefuls, Nation Alliance, come from both center-left and center-right, and seek votes from across all possible sections of society. Still, they seem most intent on winning over conservatives former AKP voters who are now undecided. The center-left CHP is trying to maximize its votes as a party of the center, and YP is set on being the new center-right catchall force in the post-AKP era. Whether CHP will be successful in such outreach remains unknown, and the strategy is itself rather controversial. Indeed, these overtures seem to push CHP toward rather two-faced economic policies, watering down proposals for nationalization and committing to minor tweaks to the economy, thus eroding the partys social democratic positions. Moreover, an excessive focus on shopkeepers and rural voters two overwhelmingly pro-government groups leads them to neglect blue- and white-collar workers, the precariat, and those working in the rising gig economy. Meanwhile, minor right-wing parties around the Nation Alliance are also hoping to cater to core AKP voters with varying degrees of liberalism and conservatism.

As Turkish politics center of gravity shifts to the right, TP can thus be an alternative for the left-leaning electorate that finds CHP too focused on moderate conservatives and HDP too specifically Kurdish-oriented. The radical left benefitting from such a realignment is hardly exclusive to Turkey: forces abroad like La France Insoumise and Denmarks Red-Green Alliance have similarly sought to mobilize the former voters of center-left parties that set off on a neoliberal or openly conservative trajectory.

The politics of Turkey somewhat fit into this shift, too: since the country transitioned to multiparty democracy after 1945, the ruling parties have (with brief, exceptional interludes) overwhelmingly been right-wing (with differing inclinations), with an increasingly conservative-leaning population. As the election looms, the center-left CHP and secular center-right IYIP are flirting with the conservative electorate by adapting their rhetoric and assuring these voters that there will be no revanche-minded secular policies such as banning headscarves in education or discriminating against the pious in civil service or employment.

While TP is not for a secular-revanchist agenda either, it also stands firmly against the shift toward conservative rhetoric and the diluting of the secularist roots of the republic. For example, its reaction to religious sects and their influence over public life came under the spotlight after a student who resided in an apartment funded by one such sect committed suicide. TP advocated the nationalization of all sect-run dormitories and flats and argued that religious sects must be precluded from providing public services and running private enterprises.

TPs left-populist discourse largely reflects its audience: blue- and white-collar workers, the unemployed, students, women and sexual minorities, environmentalists, and so on. Erkan Ba uses left-wing populist rhetoric to unify these groups against the establishment, calling for measures to resolve the division between the 99 percent, naturally including the groups above, and a privileged handful, the 1 percent, referring to the business people, government officials, and, of course, Erdoan and his AKP. The rest of the TP MPs share this discourse with different emphases; Ahmet k, for example, primarily focuses on government corruption and shady dealings within the state.

TP thus aims to mobilize these core groups, becoming an influential organizing force as well as an electoral one. Their attraction to TP, compared to more centrist opposition parties, is also because it is not afraid to scare off different electorates; hence its aggressive opposition comes across as uncompromising yet on point. TP can build out its base by doing what it has done best in the last three years: mounting a formidable opposition to privatization, inequality, and corruption while developing a coherent party program with sound alternative solutions.

The publics perception of the Turkish left is essential here. In the decades when the Left lost its place in mainstream politics, it became perceived less as running possible candidates for change than as overtly marginal pressure groups. To resist such an impression, TP must focus its policymaking on peoples everyday lives, and not get stuck on grandiose claims and aspirations. Its quiet break from the confines of theoretical digressions and political puritanism is a good first step, but not enough by itself. From radical tax reform to solutions to corruption, from access to social services to a nationalization program, there are several areas where TP can make radical proposals for a future secular, democratic republic. This can allow it to lead public discourse, increase its stature, and develop a plausible vision of an alternative Turkey. It is also helped by a changing context: as social inequality soars and both the pandemic and misguided policies deepen the economic crisis, policies once deemed fanciful can strike a chord.

The future of the Turkish left may not be as rosy as it sounds. Its political reflexes and instincts for policymaking also went missing in the wilderness years, and this poses extra barriers, given its lesser resources under an oppressive regime with a stronghold over the media. It may be an exaggeration to expect any meteoric rise of votes or mobilization like some left-wing parties have seen in Europe. However, considering the historical precedents and troubles of the Turkish left, a new peak and a new start with a vision of what Turkey can be, and a voice that refuses to accept right-wing hegemony, may very well be on its way. TP, with the cooperation and support of HDP, can be a dark horse in the upcoming elections, a political force in the post-AKP era and possibly push the political center of gravity to the left.

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After Decades of Repression, the Workers' Party of Turkey Offers Hope for the Left - Jacobin magazine