Rock concert, rallies overwhelm Germany's anti-Islam group

Germany's anti-Islam PEGIDA movement was overwhelmed by opponents of the far-right group at a rock concert for tolerance in Dresden on Monday and enormously popular counter-demonstrations in cities across the country.

More than 22,000 cheered German rock stars at an anti-PEGIDA rally in Dresden, where the movement that argues the country is being overrun by Muslims and refugees began in October. In Frankfurt 70 PEGIDA backers were outnumbered by 15,000.
"It's great that you're all here with us to send a signal tonight," said Herbert Groenemeyer, one of Germany's best-selling rock artists at the hastily organized free concert under the motto "Open and colorful -- Dresden is for everyone."
"It's horrible and sad what's been happening in some people's minds lately -- creating an atmosphere of hysteria where one religious group is being targeted as the scapegoat. It's absurd, mean, unjust, undemocratic and completely unacceptable."
PEGIDA, already reeling after its leader Lutz Bachmann quit for posing for a picture looking like Hitler and calling refugees "scumbags", normally holds its rallies on Mondays but switched to Sunday to make way for the parade of rock stars.
"There are 4 million Muslims in Germany and they are just as much a part of our 'economic miracle' as all the other religions in Germany," said Groenemeyer to the crowd, which braved heavy rain and chilly January temperatures for three hours.
In Munich, more than 2,300 anti-PEGIDA demonstrators outnumbered the 800 who took part in the PEGIDA rally there while, in Berlin, 500 supporters of the local BAERGIDA group were met by more than 1,000 counter-demonstrators.
Earlier on Monday, on the eve of Tuesday's 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germans had an everlasting responsibility to fight all forms of anti-Semitism and racism.

In what appeared to be an indirect reference to PEGIDA, Merkel told a memorial for the victims of Auschwitz: "We've got to fight anti-Semitism and all racism from the outset."
"We've got to constantly be on guard to protect our freedom, democracy and rule of law," she said. "We've got to expose those who promote prejudices and conjure up bogeymen, the old ones as well as the new."
Merkel said it was a disgrace that some Jews or those expressing support for Israel had been threatened or attacked in Germany, which was responsible for the Holocaust, and that protecting the growing Jewish community was a national duty.
 

China has just banned the burqa in its biggest Muslim city

Chinese authorities have banned women in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang—an autonomous western region where Muslims account for almost half of the population—from wearing burqas in public, according to a brief article on a government-run website, Tianshan News. Local legislators for Urumqi proposed the ban in December, and now the regional legislature has approved it.

It’s not clear when the ban on 蒙面罩袍, literally “face-masking robes” will go into effect. State media said only that it will be implemented after being modified to meet comments proposed in a meeting over the weekend.

What is clear, though, is that moves like these are likely to further alienate an already disenchanted minority group—the Uighurs, who feel their culture and economy is being overrun by Han Chinese. Ever since a group of Uighur Muslims went on a killing spree in a train station in Kunming last March, Chinese officials have ratcheted up restrictions on a group they see as potential extremists. Xinjiang officials later banned students and civil servants from fasting for Ramadan, and authorities in the Xinjiang city of Karamy barred anyone wearing burqas, niqabs, hijabs or simply “large beards” from taking public buses.

Despite—or as a result of—these measures, attacks and clashes involving Uighurs have only increased. Today, police in Shule county, near Kashgar, shot dead six attackers who were allegedly trying to detonate a series of explosives. Militants attacked police, residents, and officials in Shache county in August, leaving almost 100 dead.

The state-run news agency Xinhua justified the burqa ban by pointing out that burqas are also banned in France (perhaps not the best example to use, given the recent extremist attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo). The Xinhua report in English said, “Burqas are not traditional dress for Uighur women… The regulation is seen as an effort to curb growing extremism that forced Uighur women to abandon their colorful traditional dress and wear black burqas.”

But as long as Chinese officials tell residents they will be safer if religious expressions are kept to a minimum, these measures are likely to continue. Zhang Haitao, an activist based in Urumqi, told Radio Free Asia, “You can’t deprive the freedom of a small portion of people to maintain the stability of the society. But here, for a long time, the authorities have been kidnapping public opinion in the name of stability.”

Credit to Lily Kuo

Facebook Invades the Workplace and This Time It’s Legit

Facebook, the productivity killer and perennial thorn in the side of corporate managers and executives everywhere, recently revealed its latest plan to take over a little more of the world.
 With its eye on Yammer and an emerging trend towards work-driven private social networks, the company has announced Facebook at Work, billed as an alternative (and presumably better) way for employees of a company to communicate internally.
 Some apparently think that anything is better than being constantly hammered with a deluge of email. I can think of something worse — being hit with the same amount of messages but in an alternate reality Facebook where the only people who exist are the people I work with.
 But there is a positive side to Facebook’s announcement. It means more people are figuring out that email clients were never intended to be used as instant messaging software.
“Did you get the email I sent you?”
 “Probably, but I haven’t checked my email in a couple of hours.”
 “You don’t keep your inbox open?”
Nope. Because If I did, I wouldn’t get anything else done. To increase my productivity, I’ve made an effort to limit checking corporate email to three times a day. Even as an editor working with writers on what is often time-sensitive content, I’ve found that three times is usually sufficient. Collaboration doesn’t always need to be instantaneous. And when it does, there are better, more specialized tools out there than Facebook.
Some companies have an outright ban on Facebook in the workplace, partly because they see people in the outside world as a distraction to the folks inside who are trying to get work done. But Facebook believes it can convince company executives to let employees use its “at work” version like a company intranet. They’re even changing the color of the user interface so supervisors can tell with one glance if you’re on “work Facebook” or “real Facebook.”
The whole idea, of course, is based on the false assumption that people inside your company won’t be as much a of a drag on productivity as those in your newsfeed who are outside the company.
Good luck with that. Have you ever been pulled reluctantly into a real-time chat on Facebook when you were really intending to just check your feed and move on to something else? Imagine having this experience on a regular basis with your colleagues.
Another big question is Facebook’s ability to keep data safe. If Facebook at Work is meant to be a collaborative space, there’s inevitably going to be some confidential information on the network. Facebook says information will be kept “secure, confidential and completely separate” from personal Facebook profiles.
Recent high-profile security breaches like the one at Sony, however, might give some companies a reason to be skeptical. But even if the social media giant can deliver on its guarantee, who’s going to protect our information from Facebook?
I can’t even look at a pair of Nikes online without the same shoes following me to virtually every other site I visit online, including making multiple appearances in my Facebook feed. And Facebook already creeps me out with its ability to target ads. What would it be able to do if it knew my daily work details too?
Facebook, for its part, assures that such a scenario wouldn’t happen. BBC reports, “At this stage the work version will not feature adverts, nor will it gather data about its users that could be sold on to third parties.”
But what about the next stage? Could a company that has built massive wealth by collecting user data and selling targeted advertising really give up its data addiction so easily?
Don’t count on it.
I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with a company collecting data as part of its business model, as long as it’s up front about it. Own what you do. But why is it that, with Facebook, every new announcement always makes you wonder if another shoe is about to drop?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, like any shrewd businessman, is not only trying to reach more potential customers, he’s trying to create more potential customers. This week, he’s in Colombia launching an initiative for Internet.org, a nonprofit partnership aimed at bringing affordable Internet access to everyone.
According to Reuters, the partnership’s free Internet application brings tools like Wikipedia, job listings, weather websites and health information to low income users. And Facebook — did I mention Facebook? Because apparently no one in the world can do without Facebook.
Soon there won’t be too many places where you can escape it. Including, if Zuckerberg has his way, your office.




Credit to Shane Raynor