| -Land of the Free |
| Judge Orders Antifa Activist Yvette Felarca to Pay Judicial Watch Legal Fees for Her ‘Entirely Frivolous' Lawsuit |
| 2019-05-22 |
| [JudicialWatch] Judicial Watch announced that a U.S. District Judge in California awarded Judicial Watch $22,000 in legal fees in a case filed by an Antifa organizer in an effort to block Judicial Watch from obtaining information about her activities. Yvette Felarca, a middle school teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), and two co-plaintiffs were ordered to pay Judicial Watch $22,000 in attorney’s fees and $4,000 in litigation costs. Felarca had sued the BUSD in federal court to keep the school district from fulfilling its legal obligation to provide Judicial Watch with records of their communications mentioning: Felarca, Antifa, and/or BAMN. Judicial Watch also asked for Felarca’s personnel file. Felarca is a prominent figure in By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a group founded by the Marxist Revolutionary Workers League that protests conservative speaking engagements. In 2016, Felarca and two of her allies were arrested and charged with several crimes, including felony assault, for inciting a riot in Sacramento. Earlier this year, Felarca was ordered to stand trial for assault. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, Northern District of California, who had previously ruled that Felarca’s lawsuit was “entirely frivolous,” wrote in his ruling awarding legal fees to Judicial Watch that Felarca and her co-plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims were “premised on the obviously baseless assumption” that the First Amendment condemns the speech of some while condoning the ideological missions of others. Judge Chhabria added that “The plaintiffs also mischaracterized the documents under review” and that the plaintiffs “failed to grapple with the role Ms. Felarca played in making herself a topic of public discourse through her physical conduct at public rallies and her voluntary appearance on Fox News.” Judge Chhabria’s order also states that “a significant portion of the documents the plaintiffs initially sued to protect from disclosure had been publicly disclosed months earlier in another suit brought by Ms. Felarca against BUSD, where she was represented by the same counsel. (See generally Felarca v. Berkeley Unified School District, No. 3:16-cv-06184-RS). The plaintiffs, therefore, had no reasonable argument to protect those documents from disclosure.” Along with Felarca’s $20,000 payment, co-plaintiffs Lori Nixon and Larry Stefl were ordered by Judge Chhabria to pay Judicial Watch $1,000 each (Yvette Felarca, et al., v. Berekely Unified School District, et al. (No. 3:17-cv-06282-VC)). |
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| Bangladesh |
| Bangladesh Workers Vent Fury, Disaster Toll May Top 500 |
| 2013-05-02 |
| [An Nahar] Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis joined May Day protests Wednesday to demand the execution of textile bosses over the collapse of a factory complex, as rescuers warned the final toll could be more than 500. Despite calls by the prime minister for "cool heads", tensions over the country's deadliest industrial disaster showed little sign of abating and there were fears of more violence and vandalism at textile mills. Workers holding red banners and flags chanted "Hang the killers, Hang the Factory Owners" as they erupted into the streets of Dhaka at the start of a series of nationwide demonstrations during the public holiday. Police put the number of protesters at the main rally in Dhaka at more than 20,000, and there were smaller-scale protests elsewhere in the capital and in other cities. Kamrul Anam, one of the leaders of the Bangladesh Textile and Garments Workers League, said the demonstrators were angry at "the murder" of their colleagues in the April 24 disaster at Savar on the outskirts of Dhaka. "We want the severest punishment possible for those responsible for this tragedy," he told AFP. "Enough is enough," said Liakot Khan, another of those taking part in the Dhaka protest, which echoed to the sound of drums and horns. "The government should hang the proprietor and the factory owners. We want justice for these murders." The Bangladesh government is also facing foreign pressure to take credible moves to raise safety standards in the garment industry, with the collapse at the Rana Plaza factory complex only the latest in a series of deadly disasters. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Team Hizbollah's line up for today's Syriafest |
| 2005-03-08 |
| Participants in Hizbullah protest Tuesday, March 08, 2005 Calls to participate in the demonstration on Tuesday in Riad Solh Square intensified on Monday. Demonstrators will include: MP Adnan Araqji; Lebanese forces and parties, Islamic committees, Palestinian factions in northern Lebanon; the Najjada Party; the Independent Nasserite Movement (Murabitoun); Amal's politburo; the Syrian Social Nationalist Party; the Nasserite Gathering [hard to believe but there was actually a split amongst the 12 pro-Nasser people in Lebanon back in 2002]; Jamaa al-Islamiya; the Islamic Charity Projects Association; the Popular Nasserite Organization; [a third Nasser group - fossil wannabees] the national forces and parties in Sidon; Hizbullah's central education enrollment department; Amal's youths and sports bureau; the Baath Party; the Youths Association for Projects; the Federation Youths Organization; the Phalange Party students department [the Phalange is the group that killed a lot of Palestinians during Israel's Lebanon invasion]; the Zawarian Youth Organization- Tashnak; the Islamic Unionist Movement; the Workers League [still some Marxists in town]; the National Youths Federation- the Lebanese Popular Conference; the Lebanese Democratic Party; the Waad Organization; the Gathering for the Right to Return and Opposition to Settlement; the National Gathering of Lebanese University Teachers; the Self-Employed Professionals; the Islamic Gathering for Teachers; the Jabal Amel Ulemas Committee; the League for the Children of Earth [thank you green party], Human Rights and the Lebanese Association for Lebanese-Syrian Fraternity [retired Syrians living off extortion of Lebanese businesses]; former minister Joseph Hashem; the Nabatieh Merchants Association; the Tyre Merchants Association; and the South's fishermen's unions and the Baalbek-Hermel Gathering for Physicians and Pharmacists. |
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