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The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has rejected an application against Turkish authorities failure to conduct a proper investigation regarding the disappearance of Yusuf Bilge Tun, who went missing over a year ago and is feared to have been abducted by Turkish intelligence.

According to Turkish Journalist Sevin zarslan, the ECtHR said an investigation is being conducted by the Turkish authorities to figure out the whereabouts of the missing man.

Tundisappearedin Ankara on August 6, 2019 in broad daylight, leaving no trace behind. His father Mustafa Tun earliersaidneither the police nor the prosecutor had cooperated with the family in finding their son.

Tuns car was found in a remote area 45 days after he vanished from Ankaras GMAT shopping mall. His family immediately called the police; yet the police showed no real interest in his disappearance. The police only conducted a crime scene investigation six months after we found the car and contacted them, said Mustafa Tun. We had already removed the car from where we found it, so the investigation was really a formality.

Although the family was afraid he had been abducted, the police dismissed their fears, saying: He might have fled and left his car behind. Take a look at the CCTV footage. He will return.

Tun worked in Turkeys Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry, the government agency responsible for defense procurement, and he was summarily fired with an executive decree after a July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

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ECtHR rejects application against Turkey's failure to find Yusuf Bilge Tun - Turkey Purge

CROWN POINT Lake Criminal Court jurors viewed photos Tuesday taken at a Gary crime scene in 2019 after a 14-year-old girl was found dead in an alley, with her hands bound behind her back and a cord around her neck.

Takaylah Tribitt, 14, was found shot to death Sept. 16, 2019, in an alley near East 20th Avenue and Pennsylvania Street in Gary.

Lake County Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Kiel Sopko testified during the second day of Simmons' trial he took the photos and collected evidence in the case while working as an evidence technician with his department's Crime Scene Investigation Unit.

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Tribitt was found facedown and partially covered by thick vegetation on the east side of the alley, Sopko said.

Foilage along the alley was overgrown, and miscellaneous trash was strewn around. Investigators also found tire tread marks in mud near Tribitt's body and two gloves.

Sopko and his partner collected a gold-colored Master Card and a spent 9mm shell casing found near Tribitt's body and a black shower-cap-like hat from under her shoes, he said.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Michael A. Campbell, Sopko said a glove could retrain possible DNA evidence but he and other investigators did not believe either of the gloves seen in crime scene photos had any evidentiary value.

"Those gloves appeared to have been weathered and had been there for some time," Sopko said.

By contrast, the spent shell casing found near Tribitt's body was free from dirt and rust and did not appear to have been stepped on or depressed into the ground in any way, he said.

Sopko said he attempted to lift fingerprints from the spent casing, but found nothing.

According to charging documents, Tribitt died from a single gunshot wound to her head. She also had been sexually assaulted, but prosecutors did not charge Simmons with any sex crimes as part of the case.

Tribitt's body was found by a NIPSCO worker, who drove through the alley before calling 911. The Master Card Sopko collected bore the name of Simmons' relative, records state.

Simmons was found to be a contributor to DNA on one of the cords found with Tribitt's body, according to court documents.

Sopko told the jury he didn't initially collect the cords found around Tribitt's wrists and neck.

Staff at the Lake County Coroner's Office collected those items during an autopsy and later turned them over to Sopko to be documented as evidence in the case. They subsequently were sent to an Indiana State Police lab for DNA testing, he said.

Lake County Deputy Prosecutors Douglas Shaw and Arturo Balcazar were expected to continue presenting evidence and testimony Wednesday.

Some of the testimony might include that Simmons knew Tribitt and gave her rides and food and paid for her to get her hair and nails done. Jurors also may see videos of two statements Simmons gave to police while in custody in Chicago in 2020 on unrelated matters.

Tribitt was living in a Chicago shelter and had been reported missing by a shelter representative about two weeks before she was found dead, according to Chicago police.

Age: 20

Residence:Gary, IN

Booking Number(s):2201830

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:CONFINEMENT

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 37

Residence:Gary, IN

Booking Number(s):2201842

Arrest Date:March 11, 2022

Offense Description:HOMICIDE - MURDER

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 42

Residence:Cedar Lake, IN

Booking Number(s):2201839

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:OWI

Highest Offense Class:Misdemeanor

Age: 29

Residence:Merrillville, IN

Booking Number(s):2201828

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:POSSESSION - COCAINE OR NARCOTIC DRUG

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 52

Residence:Crown Point, IN

Booking Number(s):2201817

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:OWI

Highest Offense Class:Misdemeanor

Age: 47

Residence:East Chicago, IN

Booking Number(s):2201827

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:DEALING - COCAINE OR NARCOTIC DRUG

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 49

Residence:Gary, IN

Booking Number(s):2201832

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:OPERATING A VEHICLE AFTER DRIVING PRIVILEGES ARE SUSPENDED

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 29

Residence:Lafayette, IN

Booking Number(s):2201834

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:DEALING - METHAMPHETAMINE

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 42

Residence:East Chicago, IN

Booking Number(s):2201818

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:BATTERY

Highest Offense Class:Misdemeanor

Age: 54

Residence:Chicago, IL

Booking Number(s):2201801

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:ROBBERY

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 34

Residence:Chicago, IL

Booking Number(s):2201789

Arrest Date:March 9, 2022

Offense Description:DOMESTIC BATTERY

Highest Offense Class:Misdemeanor

Age: 32

Residence:Richton Park, IL

Booking Number(s):2201808

Arrest Date:March 10, 2022

Offense Description:OWI

Highest Offense Class:Misdemeanor

Age: 20

Residence:Chicago, IL

Booking Number(s):2201787

Arrest Date:March 9, 2022

Offense Description:ROBBERY

Highest Offense Class:Felony

Age: 44

Residence:Cedar Lake, IN

Booking Number(s):2201794

Here is the original post:
Jury views photos of teen girl found bound, shot to death in alley - The Times of Northwest Indiana

The past few years have seen the rise of political extremism at home and abroad. Violence is the hallmark of extremism, violence by mobs or by armies. We have become very familiar with violence. At home the trend erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, with the climactic assault on the U.S. Capitol and the anti-climactic violent riots after the George Floyd murder. But were lucky. Our democracy has mostly weathered the storm and the threat of civil war, which was considered a serious possibility by many, has receded.

We can only hope that the 2022 elections, unlike those of 2020, do not set off another firestorm of subversion and denial, no matter who comes out on top. And that the 2024 presidential election is held in a peaceful and fair way. Democratic Europe hopes for the same. But on the margins of Europe, the pressure has slowly mounted and gained strength. Finally, the forces of chaos became too powerful for civilization to resist and the Russian invasion of Ukraine exploded.

Those twin scourges of the 20th century, communism and fascism, which we had assumed were safely dead and buried, have been resuscitated. Once again, they have the power to motivate people and they have returned to haunt the twenty-first-century.

We can best see the union of communism and fascism in Russia. Communism found its secure home in Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. The birth of the communist Soviet Union in 1917-1920, which included many nationalities such as the Ukrainians, was bloody and violent.

Thousands died so that Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other communist satraps could have their communist regime.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, whose rulers were almost all Russians. This was the battle of the century, the life and death struggle of communism and fascism. Communism, with ample help from capitalism, won the war. But not until the fascist Germans had killed 27 million Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, and others, by reliable count. Almost all the killing occurred in what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands, in his book about the war between Adolph Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine is in the Bloodlands. The present war is the latest chapter in the bloody saga of that unhappy territory.

Strange, given this history, that we now find a convergence of communism and fascism in Russia. Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer and incarnation in one personality of tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and communist tyrants such as Lenin and Stalin, has led Russia out of her communist past, not into liberal democracy as many had hoped, but into a new version of fascism. However, his communist KGB mentality remains. Russia is again the repressive and highly efficient police state it was under communism. The Lubyanka prison in Moscow is again filled with enemies of the people. On top of that, Russia is also now a fascist dictatorship.

Fascism is reactionary, built on notions of religion, national identity and racial superiority. In spite of his KGB training, Putin attends church, and the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow has endorsed his war. The war is premised on the doctrine that a nation has to recover its lost brethren, as Hitler wanted to do with the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, and as Putin claims he wants to do with the Ukrainians.

Putin says the Ukrainians are really Russians, if only they would just admit it.

If they wont admit it, then he will beat them until they do. Gone from Putins rhetoric are communist bromides like the class struggle. Putin has thrown out the communist idea that nationalism is a distraction to divert the exploited masses from the class struggle. Putin has embraced fascist nationalism, aided and abetted by the oligarchs, the new nobility, much like Hitler was enabled by the Krupps and other wealthy industrialists in Germany.

All of this is a done deal, and like the snake that swallowed its own tail, the extremes of left and right, communism and fascism have joined, and are now one and the same beast.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Go here to see the original:
COLUMN: The Convergence of Communism and Fascism | Joe Barrera - Colorado Springs Gazette

The past few years have seen the rise of political extremism at home and abroad. Violence is the hallmark of extremism, violence by mobs or by armies. We have become very familiar with violence. At home the trend erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, with the climactic assault on the U.S. Capitol and the anti-climactic violent riots after the George Floyd murder. But were lucky. Our democracy has mostly weathered the storm and the threat of civil war, which was considered a serious possibility by many, has receded.

We can only hope that the 2022 elections, unlike those of 2020, do not set off another firestorm of subversion and denial, no matter who comes out on top. And that the 2024 presidential election is held in a peaceful and fair way. Democratic Europe hopes for the same. But on the margins of Europe, the pressure has slowly mounted and gained strength. Finally, the forces of chaos became too powerful for civilization to resist and the Russian invasion of Ukraine exploded.

Those twin scourges of the 20th century, communism and fascism, which we had assumed were safely dead and buried, have been resuscitated. Once again, they have the power to motivate people and they have returned to haunt the twenty-first-century.

We can best see the union of communism and fascism in Russia. Communism found its secure home in Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. The birth of the communist Soviet Union in 1917-1920, which included many nationalities such as the Ukrainians, was bloody and violent.

Thousands died so that Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and other communist satraps could have their communist regime.

In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, whose rulers were almost all Russians. This was the battle of the century, the life and death struggle of communism and fascism. Communism, with ample help from capitalism, won the war. But not until the fascist Germans had killed 27 million Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews, and others, by reliable count. Almost all the killing occurred in what historian Timothy Snyder calls the Bloodlands, in his book about the war between Adolph Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine is in the Bloodlands. The present war is the latest chapter in the bloody saga of that unhappy territory.

Strange, given this history, that we now find a convergence of communism and fascism in Russia. Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer and incarnation in one personality of tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and communist tyrants such as Lenin and Stalin, has led Russia out of her communist past, not into liberal democracy as many had hoped, but into a new version of fascism. However, his communist KGB mentality remains. Russia is again the repressive and highly efficient police state it was under communism. The Lubyanka prison in Moscow is again filled with enemies of the people. On top of that, Russia is also now a fascist dictatorship.

Fascism is reactionary, built on notions of religion, national identity and racial superiority. In spite of his KGB training, Putin attends church, and the Orthodox patriarch of Moscow has endorsed his war. The war is premised on the doctrine that a nation has to recover its lost brethren, as Hitler wanted to do with the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, and as Putin claims he wants to do with the Ukrainians.

Putin says the Ukrainians are really Russians, if only they would just admit it.

If they wont admit it, then he will beat them until they do. Gone from Putins rhetoric are communist bromides like the class struggle. Putin has thrown out the communist idea that nationalism is a distraction to divert the exploited masses from the class struggle. Putin has embraced fascist nationalism, aided and abetted by the oligarchs, the new nobility, much like Hitler was enabled by the Krupps and other wealthy industrialists in Germany.

All of this is a done deal, and like the snake that swallowed its own tail, the extremes of left and right, communism and fascism have joined, and are now one and the same beast.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Joe Barrera, Ph.D, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches U.S. Military History and Mexico/U.S. Border Studies. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

Go here to see the original:
COLUMN: The Convergence of Communism and Fascism - Colorado Springs Gazette

There is so much misunderstanding of the relationship between religion and communist views. More often than not, people only associate communism with atheism due to misquoting Marx in his comment of religion being the opium of the masses. Due to misquoting and misinformation, the general thought has been that no one of religious faith or practice could possibly be a communist and vice versa. This is simply not true.

As members of the CPUSA, our guidance and understanding of how to make lasting change for the better is Marxism. Its a systematic approach to understanding society how it works, how it develops, and how it can become more just. Theres nothing in Marxism as a way of understanding society and social change that is incompatible with whatever religious faith you may hold. The views, voices, and efforts of progressive people of faith are in harmony with the goals of our Party, especially in regard to seeking peace and justice for all. The doors of the Communist Party USA are, and always have been, wide open to people of faith. This openness is made even clearer in our vision of the CPUSA that includes all people regardless of religion (or none), race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ability.

Join the Religion Commission!

We have people at all levels of the Party who are active in their communities of faith and its because of this that a commission was created several years ago for religious members of the Party to work together. The Religion Commission of the Party functions as the opportunity for members to come together to discuss their faith journey and how it brought them to the Party. We also discuss the work we want to do within our communities of faith on behalf of the Party and vice versa.

The Commission meets monthly to discuss upcoming projects we want to work on, articles members are writing on behalf of the Commission, and meetings for book discussions that involve religion and Marxism. We are an active part of the Party that seeks to remove the stigma and misinformation about religious communists. We hope to bring the perspective and concerns of the faith-based community to the Party while also promoting the Party in our own faith communities!

So, if you are curious in seeing your faith in action with the mission and values of CPUSA, then the Religion Commission welcomes you! We hope you take the opportunity in contacting us, and we hope to see you at our next meeting!

For more information, contact the Recording-Secretary of the Religion Commission at religion@cpusa.org

Image: Oliver Hammond (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Originally posted here:
Person of faith? The Communist Party welcomes you! - Communist Party USA