Short day of trial about the “Everything for Germany” statement by AfD man Björn Höcke. Now it’s a question of whether explosive videos can be used for the procedure.
Does Björn Höcke have to watch on a huge screen in the courtroom in Halle how he took part in a neo-Nazi demonstration in 2010? The prosecution wants this, the defense doesn’t want it – and the court doesn’t want to make a decision until the next day of the trial. On May 14th there will also be a verdict in the trial against the Thuringian AfD state chairman, who is accused of using license plates of a former National Socialist organization.
In 2021, at the end of a speech in Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt, Höcke said “Everything for Germany”, the slogan of the SA (Sturmabteilung) in National Socialist Germany. In order to classify the scope of Höcke’s statement, the public prosecutor and defense have submitted new applications for evidence. The prosecution is concerned, among other things, with three videos:
Höcke chanted on video: “We want to march”
A video from February 2010 from Dresden is intended to serve as evidence. The right-wing extremist Junge Landsgemeinschaft Ost organized the rally to ostensibly commemorate the victims of Allied bombing raids. Höcke can be seen on the video chanting “We want to march”.
This video is intended to play a role in determining the amount of the sentence in the event of a conviction because it could show Höcke’s motives and attitude: The public prosecutor sees it as possible evidence that Höcke is a criminal whose sentence was deliberately passed.
An ARD contribution will also be shown. In this video you can see how Höcke criticized a conviction of Ursula Haverbeck in 2016 as a blatant injustice. The very old Haverbeck is one of Europe’s best-known Holocaust deniers and was sentenced to eleven months in prison shortly before Höcke’s speech after various incidents. Höcke had criticized the fact that some people were put behind bars for years for “so-called opinion crimes”. The court has signaled that he himself is at most threatened with a fine as things stand.
The prosecution also wants to show another video that is much newer, but which raises many legal questions. Can it even be used in this process? Höcke defender Philip Müller protested because it violated the ban on double use.
The video is about a scene on December 12, 2023 in Gera. In Gera, Höcke reported to around 350 supporters about the accusation because of his sentence, which he did not fully enunciate: “Everything for…” was followed by an encouraging hand gesture; the audience completed. According to the public prosecutor’s office, there were 65 “Everything for Germany” comments under a video of the event on YouTube.
A second trial awaits Höcke in Halle
The speech in Gera brought Höcke another charge, which was then initially linked to the proceedings regarding the statement. Because Höcke had replaced his defense attorney at short notice, this happened too quickly for his new legal team and the charges were severed again. And it remains that way: Public prosecutor Benedikt Bernzen withdrew an application to re-combine the proceedings “for procedural economic reasons”.
It is also clear that there will be further proceedings against Höcke at the Chamber in Halle because of this incident, again under the chairmanship of Jan Stengel. And he has to decide with the chamber by the next day of the trial whether the video from Gera can now be shown in the ongoing proceedings. For the public prosecutor’s office, it is evidence of Höcke’s behavior during the crime – from their point of view, it shows that Höcke shows little insight.
The prosecution wants to have explosive videos shown in the trial – 2024-05-04 02:45:55
The great anti-constitutionalists – View Info
– 2024-05-04 01:19:46
/ world today news/ “Deputy hunger strike”, 30 years later
The hunger strike of the 39 deputies in the spring and summer of 1991, 30 years after which has passed, is a unique phenomenon for Eastern European transitions. The history of the 7th Grand National Assembly (1990-1991) was generally marked by the continuous purposeful efforts to erode the extremely difficult to build pro-constitutional majority. It was a great battle for Bulgaria. A battle that BSP won but failed to develop.
On April 4, 1991, 44 SDS deputies with a bluff declaration demanded the dissolution of the parliament. The first shot against the still unfinished constitution was fired on May 16. SDS did not manage to develop concrete normative objections against the emerging draft text. There was sharp reaction to the definition of Bulgaria as a “social” state and it did not enter the text, although it was mentioned as a national goal in the preamble, in the spirit of the modern triad “democratic, social and legal” state. After all, even according to the Turkish constitution, the state is defined as social.
In our country, the supposedly “moderate forces” began to recite the ultra-liberal thesis of a “state without a constitutional definition”. The general public never understood that this was against its basic interests.
The Bulgarian radical right
In 1990-1991, a bouquet of poisonous ideas with a focus on the preparation of the new constitution and the activity of the VII Supreme Court as a political institution captured a radical right-wing minority. The nation listened to his words and became auto-intoxicated. The anti-constitutional poison was well absorbed by our social organism. Neither then, nor in the following three decades, this minority was not able to exceed one third of the citizens, but it effectively managed to block dozens of positive public intentions and legislative initiatives, countering them with bluffs that satanize the constitution. The extreme right has won the freedom to process public opinion with all forces and means, through all informational and educational channels. At first under the false flag of fighting the “spectacular falsification of the ’90 Elections’, and then – for the “communist” (“Dertlilov” from Dertliev – Lilov) constitution. Radical anti-constitutionalism broke out in Bulgaria, which blocked the serious political and legal debate during the next decades. There are more right-wing parties in Europe, but none as wacky as in our country.
The mystifications and satanization during the Supreme Court ran along several lines: against the BSP as history and as modernity, against the projects for a new constitution that did not come from the right (the right did not propose its official project at all), and in general against every meaningful decision that the Supreme Court was about to take. Already in the first weeks of the life of the Seventh Supreme Court, the efforts to discredit the body of the constituent power and ultimately to dissolve the assembly, without fulfilling its mission, strongly erupted.
The day of leaving the parliament is bright
black and brown date
in our national calendar. This was an attempt to kill the budding Bulgarian democracy.
The general public proved susceptible to the insinuating presentation of parliamentary developments and constitutional debate. One illustration – people without strict political convictions, the entire right and some part of the intelligentsia willingly adopted the ironic slang for the chosen ones: “the Great Ones”. Radical right-wing anti-constitutional populism broke out in Bulgaria and it has not been overcome even today.
In the end, the pro-constitutional forces prevailed – the Constitution was signed by 313 deputies out of a total of 400 – a remarkable result, but in the editorial teams of the media, the ratio was different. The ability to over-mobilize an anti-constitutional platform was extremely strong.
The 39 left the Supreme Court under the false pretext that the majority there did not want to accept the Constitution, that it was only delaying (“to gain time”?). On the contrary, the left-wing and centrist MPs most wanted a new basic law to be adopted. Long after July 12, 1991, the 39 rejected the Constitution because it was “undemocratic and communist.” Mean!
The hunger strike failed, but its poisonous effects were not overcome. Constitutional nihilism is still alive today. And then – 30 years ago, and today the left paradox is this: the left forces maintain socially more productive, correct positions, but they do not know how to defend them in front of the public. The leftist positions somehow remain at “Positano” 20, in DUMA, now also in BSTV, but they do not reach two thirds of the nation.
When, in the first half of 1991, the VII Supreme Court drafted the new democratic Constitution and when it adopted it on July 12, 1991, it was drawn up and evaluated according to the best examples of European constitutionalism, of European parliamentary republics. As a text and as a normative substrate, it is consonant with the main democratic constitutional principles and achievements of the modern world, harmonizes and reproduces the main international legal acts on human rights. But it turned out that this was not at all decisive in the construction of the public judgment about her. Public misunderstanding and brutal negativity towards the Constitution, as a rule, dominated all public (i.e. media) discussions.
The most important feature in the adoption and approval of the 1991 Constitution is that it was signed and adopted without winning over the public, without taking place the debate about the new ideas in it, about its democracy and marketability, and in this sense – for its “non-socialism”, if we understand it as a pushback from the nineteenth-century model.
It is evident from the National Round Table throughout the process of drafting the Constitution
the idea of consent
Consensus political philosophy is something extremely important in a modern democratic political system. Consensualism is not an abstract moralistic call for understanding. It is a practical principle. And today its first manifestation is the general recognition of the Constitution. It is the basis of consensus, the basis of political and institutional understanding. But before the policy is negotiated, it is necessary to recognize the equality of the negotiators, and from there – to agree on the form and procedure by which the policy will be implemented. Consent is essentially desired, but it is not always possible and necessary. It is normal for political forces and actors to judge things differently. They argue and compete about what is best – according to their values and experience. However, agreement on the form, on the procedure, on the equal right to participate in the political debate and in governance is always desirable and attainable.
In Bulgaria, during these 30 years, formations and activists of the right contested in principle
the right of the Left to participate in the debate
to propose policies, to govern. This is the most important reason for national transition failures.
The Constitution was evaluated both at the beginning and later “as a whole”, as a document of institutionality, compiled by some political forces – its signatories. Therefore, it was accepted as a political project with the suspicion that a text was created that went against the interests of other political trends. The new ideas that entered it gave the Bulgarian people numerous opportunities for democratic action that people in other Western societies have received after decades of hard debates and sharp socio-political struggles. And there they learned to value and protect them, while in our country many people perceived them somehow as “dropped down from above”, “for free”, created as if by themselves. New ideas of state law are created in the course of debates, contestation and inevitable clashes. The radical right in Bulgaria has built a regime of intolerance towards all leftist and patriotic positions, if it has not previously conquered them institutionally.
Using the novelty of ideas as a coherent explanation of whether or not they will take hold does not answer the question of how new ideas themselves came about (by themselves) and why old ideas fail. This is part of the reasons for today’s drama of constitutionalism in Bulgaria, and of Bulgaria itself. The political success – the adoption of the Constitution – was not developed into a civil success. Venomous anti-constitutionalism was not born with the hunger strike, but it gave it an unsuspected power. The creation of the current Bulgarian Constitution is a practical lesson for our society on how democracy actually functions. Not as a counterpoint, but to outline contemporary realities, I will quote a statement by the esteemed Henry Kissinger, a great realist diplomat. Years ago, he gave instructions: “We will do the illegal things immediately, for the unconstitutional things we will need a little more time.”
Anti-constitutionalism is
social vice
at least as dangerous as criminal crime. However, the public interest and public judgment on a number of unconstitutional acts are much more lenient than on trivial offenses. This is a paradox that needs to be understood. People are sensitive to the outrages that the neighbor or the mayor does, but as a rule it is difficult for them to grasp unconstitutionality as an excessive trampling of the legal order. Moreover, unconstitutional actions are often publicly justified with dubious grounds of (illegal) “expediency”.
The hunger strike of 1991 failed, but it damaged the entire transition. It established a spirit of legal nihilism, which, combined with the media overdominance of the radical right, gained stability and did not meet the due public and legal resistance. And who lied to us that constitutionalism and democracy would be achieved without a struggle?
#great #anticonstitutionalists #View #Info
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The great anti-constitutionalists – View Info – 2024-05-04 01:19:46
Fact Check: The video of the woman sitting on the wheelchair falling down the street is not from Karachi – Pakistan
A recent video is going viral on social media, in which it can be seen that the motorcycle-riding robber did not even spare the woman sitting on the wheelchair. This incident is being attributed to Karachi.
In the video, it can be seen that an elderly woman in a wheelchair is being carried by a young woman in the street. Meanwhile, a motorcyclist comes and snatches the woman’s purse. Meanwhile, both the women fall due to a push. The wheelchair overturns and the elderly woman cannot get up off the road.
The young woman runs after the robber but then returns. Meanwhile, no one passing by in the street helped them both.
The old video was shared by writing ‘Karachi’ on Instagram account named ‘Infils’ and the video has received more than 1000 likes within 2 hours.
However, today News checked the fact through reverse image search and found that this sad incident is from Lahore and the video is almost 2 years old.
This video has been attributed to Karachi and has been posted at a time when street crime has become rampant in Shahr Quaid and several incidents of street crime are being reported daily.
Regarding the above video Express News posted on his website on 10 November 2022 and detailed the incident in the video.
According to the news, the incident took place in Iqbal Town area of Lahore. The robber forcibly took away the victim’s wallet, which contained Rs 1 lakh, from the victim Naveed.
According to the same news, SP Iqbal Town had also instructed SHO Iqbal Town to arrest the accused.
#Fact #Check #video #woman #sitting #wheelchair #falling #street #Karachi #Pakistan
2024-05-04 01:39:28
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