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Scathing report from Illinois AG finds more than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse not yet publicly identified by Catholic Church

Elvia Malagon
Chicago Tribune
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 17:45 UTC
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
© Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged.

The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.

The determination is part of a preliminary report made public Wednesday by Madigan's office, which has been investigating Catholic clergy sexual abuse of minors following revelations during the summer of widespread abuse and cover-ups by Catholic officials in Pennsylvania. The report was critical of the six Catholic dioceses that govern parishes across Illinois for their lack of transparency and flawed investigations.

Although the report says that "Clergy sexual abuse of minors in Illinois is significantly more extensive than the Illinois Dioceses previously reported," it does not estimate how many of the allegations against the 690 clergy should have been deemed credible. Some of the allegations go back decades.
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Brick Wall

Vet raises $5M in 3 days on GoFundMe for border wall

Ben Feuerherd
New York Post
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 17:58 UTC
Trump wall
A supporter of President Trump's border wall proposal has started a GoFundMe to help pay for the project - and the fund skyrocketed to more than $2 million Wednesday night after being live for just three days.

Brian Kolfage, a Trump voter and disabled Iraq War veteran with no connection to the administration, wrote that he set up the page because "President Trump's main campaign promise was to BUILD THE WALL. And as he's followed through on just about every promise so far, this wall project needs to be completed still."

Trump campaigned on building a "great wall" on the southern border during the 2016 presidential election.

Comment: At the time of this posting the campaign has raised over $5 million in three days. It's apparent many Americans are looking for stronger border security and elected Trump largely for this reason.

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Handcuffs

Psycho mom jailed after caning domestic worker in Singapore


Asia Times
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 15:40 UTC
man in jail
© iStock
40-year-old woman was jailed for 10 weeks for assault by a Singapore court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to two charges of causing hurt to her 30-year-old Indonesian domestic worker in 2016.

The court heard that the accused named Mow Li San punched and caned the victim worker, who was hired by the accused's husband in 2016. The assaults took place on October 7 and October 11 of the same year, Yahoo News Singapore reported.

The first incident occurred on October 7, 2016 when the worker failed to follow instructions to bring the couple's twin children along on an outing.
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Arrow Down

"Yellow Vests" and the downward mobility of the world's middle class

Charles Hugh Smith
charleshughsmith.blogspot
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:43 UTC
yellow vests flag paris
© Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse
Yellow vest protesters on the Chanps-Elysees in Paris, December 15, 2018.
Capital garners the gains, and labor's share continues eroding. That's the story of the 21st century.

The middle class, virtually by definition, is not prepared for downward mobility. A systemic, semi-permanent decline in the standard of living isn't part of the implicit social contract that's been internalized by the middle class virtually everywhere:living standards are only supposed to rise. Any decline is temporary.

Downward mobility is the key context in the gilets jaunes "yellow vest" movement in France. Taxes and prices rise inexorably while wages/pensions stagnate. The only possible outcome of this structural asymmetry is a decline in the standard of living.

This structural decline in the standard of living of the middle class is complex.One of the definitive identifying characteristics of the middle class is that is supposed to be largely immune to the insecurity and precariousness that characterize much of the working class.

Comment:

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NPC

Orange man bad, Empire good: Reactions To Trump's Syria withdrawal plan say more than the plan itself

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:41 UTC
NYT New York Times Syria cartoon
© New York Times
President Trump has ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, which is reportedly expected to take 60-100 days or 30 days depending on who you ask. According to Kurdish forces in eastern Syria the withdrawal of American as well as French troops is already underway, though France is saying it's staying. The number of troops to be withdrawn which keeps getting repeated in the news is 2,000, but there've been reports that the actual number of US ground troops in Syria is closer to 4,000. The US-led airstrike campaign against Islamic State will reportedly continue.

Trump says the withdrawal is because ISIS has been defeated in Syria, but others are pointing to the conspicuous timing of his recent chat with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdoğan, who has announced a coming military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria east of the Euphrates in the near future, as the more likely reason. An anonymous senior US official has told Reuters that the two leaders didn't discuss a US withdrawal from Syria, but the timing of the conversation as well as a recent $3.5 billion arms deal with Turkey indicates the the US withdrawal and Erdoğan's planned military assault could very well be related. The Kurds put all their eggs in the basket of US support out of a desire to create their own nation, and a US withdrawal means they'll be forced to either court an alliance with Damascus, as some analysts believe will happen, or risk being trapped between hostile Turkish forces and hostile Syrian coalition forces as the Assad government races to reclaim Syrian territory.
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Quenelle

Angry New Yorkers demand answers from Amazon execs: "You're worth $1 trillion. Why do you need our $3 billion?"

Julia Conley
Common Dreams
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 16:12 UTC
new york protest amazon
© @GoMadeIn/Twitter
Demonstrators from local worker advocacy groups assembled outside New York's City Hall as the City Council held a hearing on Amazon's plan to extablish a new headquarters in Queens.
The online retail giant has said its new headquarters in New York will create 25,000 jobs for residents - a claim one protester derided as "smoke and mirrors"

After being kept in the dark about New York's $3 billion deal with Amazon, allowing the trillion-dollar corporation to build its new headquarters-complete with helicopter landing pad for CEO Jeff Bezos - in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, concerned New York City Council members and scores of angry New Yorkers on Wednesday angrily confronted company representatives over the plan.

At the first City Council meeting on Amazon's so-called "HQ2," about 150 protesters joined the mostly-Democratic lawmakers in slamming the closed-door process through which the city and state finalized the deal and the effect the corporation's arrival will likely have on affordable housing and community development in Queens and the entire city, as New York pours much-needed funds into the new one million square foot campus.

Comment: Regular citizens are right to be furious. They have Seattle's example before them and know what's coming. New York's ruling elite has sold them out. And most chilling:

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Handcuffs

US top universities don't support presumption of innocence

Katie Anderson
Campus Reform
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 15:16 UTC
guilty
A new study found that students' due process rights are in jeopardy at more than two-thirds of America's top colleges and universities.

Over 70 percent of the top 53 institutions in the United States, as rated by U.S. News and World Report, do not guarantee that students have the presumption of innocence when it comes to disciplinary hearings, according to a report published by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

According to the report, over 70 percent of the top 53 institutions in the United States...do not guarantee that students have the presumption of innocence.

The study, which gathered data throughout 2018, graded each of these top universities in the U.S based on the policies instituted by the school. FIRE awarded each college a grade on a scale from zero to 20 points, where an "A" ranges from 17 to 20 points and an "F" is zero to four points.

Comment: Who needs out-dated ideas like 'presumption of innocence'? The inquisition and gulags worked out so well.

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Pistol

DOJ and ATF about to find themselves in court over new bump stock ban

Chris Eger
Guns.com
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 15:06 UTC
bumpstock
Legal challenges have already been filed to a planned federal requirement to give bump stock owners 90 days to destroy or surrender their devices.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, and Madison Society Foundation on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court against Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives seeking a motion to block a pending ban on bump stocks announced earlier that day. The member groups, filing on behalf of Pennsylvania bump stock owner Damien Guedes, argue Whitaker and the ATF are overstepping their legal authority.

"The ATF has misled the public about bump-stock devices," said Pennsylvania firearms attorney Joshua Prince, who along with Adam Kraut, is representing Guedes. "Worse, they are actively attempting to make felons out of people who relied on their legal opinions to lawfully acquire and possess devices the government unilaterally, unconstitutionally, and improperly decided to reclassify as 'machineguns'."
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NPC

Editor-in-chief of Mother Jones caught skewing poll data to trash Bernie


RT
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 11:01 UTC
Bernie Sanders
© Reuters / Mark Kauzlarich
Bernie Sanders is unfit to be president because black women don't care for him, the editor-in-chief of a prominent American magazine has argued citing a poll that... doesn't really support her claim.

Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, revealed to the internet on Tuesday that black women do not think that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders would be an appetizing presidential candidate in 2020, preferring instead Democratic heartthrobs such as Senator Kamala Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden.

"Survey asked black women to say who's among their top three candidates: Harris: 71.1% Beto: 38.3% Biden: 25% Booker: 24.2% Warren: 22.3% Abrams: 15.2% Bernie: 12.1% Bernie's never going to be the nominee unless he turns these numbers around," Jeffery tweeted, along with a link to her source.
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Propaganda

French media 'in cahoots' with govt: RT interviews censored Yellow Vest protester


RT
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 11:01 UTC
Jean-Baptiste Redde censor Yellow Vests
© AFP / Geoffroy Van der Hasselt
Jean-Baptiste Redde speaks to RT (R) ; Redde with his sign during a protest
A French news channel's eyebrow-raising edit has reinforced the belief that the media "are in cahoots" with the country's political elite, a Yellow Vest protester, whose anti-Macron placard was airbrushed from a photo, told RT.

Jean-Baptiste Redde said he was shocked when he learned that TV channel France 3 had sanitized an AFP photograph showing him holding a sign that read "Macron out." The channel, which dropped the "out" part of Redde's message, blamed the curious Photoshop-job on a "human error."

That explanation was far from being enough for the activist. "The censorship by France 3 casts a shadow on the media in general," he told RT France. "The protesters start to think that the media are in cahoots with politicians and the financial elite. Such sort of censorship doesn't help the situation."
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