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Thu, 04 Nov 2021
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Handcuffs

Indian Muslim cleric arrested after getting in fight with women's rights activist over Sharia law

india fight
© Zee Hindustan / YouTube
Indian authorities have arrested a Muslim cleric who came to blows with a local rights activist amid a heated televised debate over how Sharia law governs divorce and women's rights.

An Indian Muslim cleric, identified as Mufti Ejaz Arshad Qasmi, has been put under arrest following a complaint by broadcaster Zee Hindustan. Earlier this week, the cleric was filmed slapping Farah Faiz, a women's rights advocate, during a live show aired by the TV channel.

Things went out of control when the two clashed over the talaq - a buzzword which makes an Islamic marriage null and void if pronounced three times by a man. Faiz, who campaigns against the triple talaq, said this is not the form of divorce that exists in the Quran, triggering a violent reaction from the Mufti.

Ambulance

Fort Hunter Liggett: Helicopter blows tent over injuring 22 in combat drill

helicopter
© Carolyn Kaster/Reuters
UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter
Strong wind from a landing helicopter has caused a tent structure to collapse at Fort Hunter Liggett in California, injuring at least 22 people. No fatalities have been reported.

A US Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter's rotor wash blew a tent over around 9:30pm on Wednesday. The incident occurred during an annual reserve drill - Combat Support Training Exercise (CSTX) - according to the military.

"First responders on site report there are 22 injuries. The majority of injuries are minor and are being treated on site," the base said on its official Facebook page. Four of the victims were sent to hospitals, and two of them were evacuated by air.

The base said that it is "not currently authorized" to release data on the condition of the injured soldiers. It also has not identified the victims.

Fort Hunter Liggett is the largest United States Army Reserve command post, covering 167,000 acres (around 676 square kilometers). Last year, a civilian contractor was killed after being hit by a Humvee at the base.

Bullseye

'It is an attack on our people': South African farmer wants to move to Russia, change name to Ivan

Married couple
Half a million white South Africans have left the country in the past three decades, but most didn't choose Russia as their new home, unlike Johannes du Toit, who is intent on settling here as Ivan Vahrushev.

"The hostility, the injustice I'm living through, it is to do with the South African government. It is an attack on our people. They don't want us to feel comfortable in our own country. They want us all to leave," du Toit explains in his still somewhat rough but comprehensible Russian.

Ironically, it is du Toit's inability to leave his country for good that led RT Russian crew to contact him in Paris and take a telephone interview.

Du Toit's is not a simple story. His family is descended from French Huguenots, who settled in the Western Cape in the 17th century.

"We were religious refugees, not colonizers," he insists, saying he prides himself on his South African heritage.

But for all acknowledgements of the white-led unfairness of apartheid, he says that the black majority rule means that he can barely consider the place he grew up a home.

Comment: See also: Russia welcomes first 50 South African farming families


Sheeple

Lunatic politics: The religion of Russiagate

John Brennan
As the Snowden documents and David Sanger's great new book and other books make plain, and as U.S. officials are wont to brag, the U.S. intelligence services break into computers and computer networks abroad at an astounding rate, certainly on a greater scale than any other intelligence service in the world. Every one of these intrusions in another country violates that country's criminal laws prohibiting unauthorized computer access and damage, no less than the Russian violations of U.S. laws outlined in Mueller's indictment...

It is no response to say that the United States doesn't meddle in foreign elections, because it has in the past-at least as recently as Bill Clinton's intervention in the Russian presidential election of 1996 and possibly as recently as the Hillary Clinton State Department's alleged intervention in Russia's 2011 legislative elections. And during the Cold War the United States intervened in numerous foreign elections, more than twice as often as the Soviet Union. Intelligence history expert Loch Johnson told Scott Shane that the 2016 Russia electoral interference is "the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades, whenever American officials were worried about a foreign vote." The CIA's former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, told Shane: "If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all." Hall added that "the United States 'absolutely' has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it."

Nothing gets the phony "Resistance," corporate media and neocons more hysterical than when Trump isn't belligerent enough while meeting with foreign leaders abroad. While the pearl clutching was intense during the North Korea summit, the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday's meeting with Putin in Finland.

Comment:


Attention

Remember when the Russians hijacked our Democracy?

putin trump starburst
Those damn Russians! How much longer are we going to abide their continued malicious actions. I mean at what point are we going to say enough and stand up to these insidious gangsters. I mean to list the number of times they unleashed heinous plots to destroy America and kneecap the people is one too many to count. If I were to indict Putin and his associates for the way they have contributed to social inequalities in our country, I would need volumes to detail their malice.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to list 20 developments in the past ten years alone where Russians went out of their way to hijack our democracy and poured gasoline on the fire of inequalities that is consuming our nation. Consider the following:

Comment: See also: Who Are The Real Traitors in The USA Today?


Post-It Note

Doctors and hospitals sue patients who post threatening comments and reviews on social media

Court
Retired Air Force Colonel David Antoon agreed to pay $100 to settle what were felony charges for emailing his former Cleveland Clinic surgeon articles the doctor found threatening and posting a list on Yelp of all the surgeries the urologist had scheduled at the same time as the one that left Antoon incontinent and impotent a decade ago.

He faced up to a year in prison.

Antoon's 10-year crusade against the Cleveland Clinic and his urologist is unusual for its length and intensity, as is the extent to which Cleveland Clinic urologist Jihad Kaouk was able to convince police and prosecutors to advocate on his behalf.

Antoon's plea deal last week came as others in the medical community aggressively combat negative social media posts, casting a pall over one of the few ways prospective patients can get unvarnished opinions of doctors.

Eye 2

Psychopathic family of pedophiles jailed for 30-year campaign of abuse in what judge called 'worst ever case of its kind'

anthony potts
© West Midlands Police
(L-R) Antony Potts, his wife Elaine, and his brother Joshua
A sick family raped children during a 30-year campaign of abuse branded the "worst ever case of its kind" by a judge. Twisted Antony Potts and three members of his family carried out a string of child abuse offenses over the course of three decades.

The 49-year-old was described as a "deeply depraved man" as he was jailed for life at Birmingham Crown Court. He was convicted of 13 counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and nine counts of inciting a child to perform a sexual act and cruelty.

Antony was joined in the docket by his dad, Keith Potts, who was caged for eight years alongside his wife, Julie, both for child cruelty. Antony's wife, Elaine, and family friend Joanne Hoye were also both jailed for four years after pleading guilty to neglect.

Brother Joshua Potts admitted to multiple counts of rape and sexual assault against children, while his sibling Nathan, 26, was jailed for 16 years for two counts of rape of a child, four counts of sexual assault, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and sex with another adult.

Bad Guys

US hurries to withdraw White Helmets as Syrian Army advances in south - reports

White Helmets uniform
© Sputnik / Morad Saeed
White Helmets uniform found during the search of terrorists' headquarters in Eastern Ghouta.
The self-described volunteer rescue group has been repeatedly accused by Damascus of being the "media arm" for Syrian jihadist groups, and been charged with staging false flag chemical attacks in a bid to prompt a Western military intervention in Syria.

The US and its allies have ramped up plans to evacuate hundreds of members of the White Helmets and their families from southern Syria's Quneitra governorate as Syrian forces continue to clear the area from anti-government forces, US officials have told the AP.

Two anonymous US officials said to be familiar with the evacuation plans noted that the US and its British and Canadian allies were leading the operation to evacuate members of the NGO out of Syria to neighboring countries, and then on to Western European countries including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and possibly Canada.

The officials and a member of the group AP reached for comment said the operation was likely to happen soon due to the Syrian military's continued push to expel militants from southern Syria. "These are hard hours and minutes. This is the worst day of my life. I hope they rescue us before it is too late," the White Helmets member said.

Bullseye

Prof. Stephen Cohen: Russophobia has run amok in US, putting it on edge of nuclear war

trump protesters
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Russian demonization and Russophobia have gripped the US, where politicians would rather impeach Trump than avert a nuclear war with Russia, professor emeritus at both Princeton and New York Universities Stephen Cohen believes.

While US media and establishment still cannot settle nerves after Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Cohen, who is also contributing editor at The Nation, and Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer, bashed the Russian bogeyman approach in an interview to Vice news.

Cohen has been labelled as Russian president's apologist, with "tsunami" of attacks on him. However, the scientist says that those people are just uniformed, with Mearsheimer adding many refuse to engage in fair dialogue with both of them merely because they would "lose the debate."

"We've demonized Putin and we've putinized Russia, so we've demonized Russia. Russophobia is running amok in this country." Cohen said. "I've seen these things from the inside. I've re-thought and re-thought how we got to the edge of war with Russia, where we haven't been since Cuba in 1962. And I have concluded it is 95 percent our own doing."

Comment: US Senator Rand Paul essentially said the same thing during a recent House session, saying Trump Derangement Syndrome has officially come to the Senate and that partisans would rather risk war than talk to Russia:




Ambulance

Explosion and fire at Iranian oil facility leaves 2 dead

iran fire
© Foad Ashtari / Reuters
A huge explosion and fire have engulfed an oil storage facility in Khomein, central Iran, leaving two people dead and one injured, according to local media citing officials.

An oil purifier unit in Khomein industrial park caught fire around noon on Friday, Irna reports.

"The fire has been thoroughly contained, but the fire fighters are still on the scene to ensure the cooling operation," Deputy Governor of Markazi Province Fathollah Haqiqi said as cited by the agency.

Firefighting crews from Khomein and the nearby provinces have been mobilized to battle the blaze, according to Tasnim. The agency also reported that two people working on the site disappeared, and one was injured in the blast.