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#MeToo movement hypocrites remain silent in the face of the Telford sex abuse scandal

Joanna Williams
Spiked!
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:31 UTC
teen in window
It's been six months since the #MeToo movement first took off. For half a year now we've had a regular drip-feed of stories drawing attention to the apparent suffering of women at the hands of men. So when this weekend's Sunday Mirror revealed the shocking abuse experienced by hundreds of women and girls in Telford we might have expected the outrage to find a new focus. The news that girls, some as young as 11, were drugged, beaten and raped by gangs of mainly Muslim, Asian-heritage men could have provided further fuel to campaigners. We might have expected shows of solidarity, reminders of the importance of believing the victim, and offers of financial support.

But no. The abuse in Telford is estimated to have involved over 1,000 girls stretching over 40 years. Young girls in the town were groomed, fed drugs and raped. They were passed between abusers like commodities. Some got pregnant, had abortions and were raped again on multiple occasions. Three women were murdered and two others died in tragedies linked to the abuse. Yet these shocking events have received relatively little coverage. Girls in Telford do not, it seems, deserve frontpage coverage in the Guardian or The Times.

The very same newspapers that covered, at length and over many days, news that Kate Maltby's knee may or may not have been touched by Damian Green or that Michael Fallon attempted to kiss Jane Merrick, were unable to muster up the same level of outrage for young women in Telford.

Comment: The #MeToo movement is not about giving voice to the powerless. It's a power grab.

For more on the Telford abuse see:

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Gold Bar

Prudent move: Hungary latest country to repatriate country's gold reserves from UK


RT
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:34 UTC
Hungarian Central Bank

National Bank of Hungary (MNB)
The National Bank of Hungary (MNB) has announced it is bringing home the country's 100,000 ounces (3 tons) of gold reserves from London.

The decision to repatriate gold reserves, in total worth some 33 billion Hungarian forint (US$130 million), was also explained as being for safety reasons, in case of a potential geopolitical crisis.

It is also in line with international trends as storage of gold reserves out of the country is now considered risky by many central banks, including Austrian, German and Dutch regulators. They have recently decided to repatriate their gold reserves.
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Flashlight

Mandatory bias training: All the rage yet seriously counterproductive

Lee Jussim Ph.D.
Psychology Today
Sat, 02 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
unconscious bias amygdala
© CLIPAREA/Shutterstock
Neurologists claim your biases are located in an exact part of the brain called the amygdala.
"Implicit bias" seems to be everywhere. What is it? "Bias," to your average layperson, seems to mean something like prejudice or discrimination. "Implicit" is usually taken to mean unconscious or outside of awareness. So "implicit bias" is, supposedly, something like prejudices of which people are not even aware.

However, the research on so-called implicit bias has its serious critics. Almost everything about implicit bias is controversial in scientific circles. It is not clear what most implicit methods actually measure; their ability to predict discrimination is modest at best, their reliability is low; early claims about their power and immutability have proven unjustified. And yet colleges and corporations have been rushing to institute "implicit bias trainings" in (misguided and unlikely to be effective) attempts to reduce discrimination.

Over the last few months, I have had several interesting exchanges with Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, one of the most prominent psychological scientists working in the area of implicit methods, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, and biases. She, along with Dr. Tony Greenwald, created the concept of implicit bias, which has caught on like wildfire, and was even mentioned in a Hillary Clinton election speech.

Comment: Questioning the consensus: Maybe we can't really measure "implicit bias"

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Treasure Chest

Russia's comprador elites: Investing everywhere but at home

Anatoly Karlin
The Unz Review
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:15 UTC
The latest issue of the Knight Frank World Wealth Report will not make happy reading for those of us who thought they were seeing tentative signs that Putin's Russia was making good progress on "nationalizing" its elites(e.g. multiple wealth amnesties, local Courchevel, local Hogwarts, etc).
global wealth distribution chart
© The Unz Review/Wealth-X
First, Russia's wealth structure remains extremely lop-sided. While there are ~100 Russian billionaires (about as many as in Germany, and twice the number in the UK), there are only about 2,620 Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (>$50 million), versus 8,070 in Germany and 4,580 in the UK.

UHNWI are a much better proxy for capitalistic dynamism than billionaire plutocrats, especially in a country like Russia, where most of them are made their wealth through their political connections.
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People

Gender-neutral madness: All girls school builds unisex toilets just in case some students want to transition


RT
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:15 UTC
gender neutral toilet
© Lucy Nicholson / Global Look Press
A top private school in London is contemplating building unisex toilets - despite the school being exclusively for girls.

The £16,000 ($22,340)-a-year Blackheath High School is planning to build gender-neutral toilets after students raised the issue. Headmistress Carol Chandler-Thompson said: "Obviously you can read alarmist headlines about these things, but these are valid questions to be asking."

Pupils must be female when they enroll at the school, but Chandler-Thompson said: "We may have young people who are transitioning here, and we would support that."

The gender-neutral toilets would be included in major reconstruction work the school is undergoing, with one-third of the buildings being bulldozed and rebuilt. "We are in the middle of a giant building project. If we are introducing a single toilet, why would you put a gender on it? We are not about asking that question," she told the Evening Standard.
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Folder

New report finds US hospitals can't handle catastrophic attacks or disasters

Bridget Johnson
Homeland Security Today
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 15:01 UTC
Northridge earthquake aftermath
© FEMA
The aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles on Jan 16, 1994.
A new report found that U.S. hospitals would struggle to respond adequately to large-scale catastrophic events such as disasters and attacks, raising concerns about the nation's capacity to handle bioterrorism or other mass-casualty events.

The two-year study from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Health Security states that although the healthcare system is better prepared post-9/11, it's still not par in terms of handling a catastrophic disaster - and "other segments of society that support or interact with the healthcare system and that are needed for creating disaster-resilient communities are not sufficiently prepared for disasters."

Researchers put disaster prep into four categories: relatively small-scale mass injury/illness events like a tornado, shooting spree or small outbreaks; large-scale natural disasters such as significant hurricanes or earthquakes; complex mass casualty events such as the Las Vegas and Orlando mass shootings, the Boston Marathon bombing, the 2003 Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island, limited radiological and chemical events, and limited spread of deadly pathogens such as bioterrorism agents or Ebola; and catastrophic health events such as a major earthquake in a concentrated population center, a nuclear blast, or a large-scale pandemic or bioterror attack.
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Bomb

Deadly package bombings put Austin on edge; police receive 150 calls about suspicious boxes

Madison Park, Ralph Ellis and Jason Hanna
CBS Denver
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:54 UTC
austin police
A series of deadly package bombs delivered to homes in Austin has shaken residents and cast suspicion on one of life's common occurrences - getting a package delivered to your doorstep.

Three package bombs have exploded at homes in the Texas capital over 10 days - including two Monday - killing two people and injuring two others. Investigators say they believe the incidents are related, and residents have responded anxiously in the past day.

Austin police have received 150 calls about suspicious packages, Chief Brian Manley said Tuesday on Twitter, though police haven't indicated any subsequent check revealing anything alarming.

Daniel Arriaga told CNN affiliate KXAN he called authorities after he found a package he wasn't expecting for his daughter.

Comment: FBI, police investigate deadly explosion in Austin, Texas - 2nd linked occurrence this month

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Arrow Down

Another United Airlines PR nightmare: Dog dies after flight attendant forces owner to store it in overhead bin for duration of flight

Janine Puhak
Fox News
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 17:00 UTC
dog dies united airlines flight

Kokito, pictured in an undated handout photo, died on a United Airlines flight on March 12, 2018, after being placed in an overhead bin.
Tragedy struck on a United Airlines flight 1284 from Houston to New York City, when a dog in a TSA-compliant pet carrier died after a flight attendant allegedly forced its owner to store the animal and its carrier in an overhead bin for the duration of the four-hour Monday flight.

United has since claimed full responsibility for the "tragic accident" that killed Kokito, a black French bulldog, owned by Catalina Robledo of New York, who was traveling with her two children, ABC 13 reports. Robledo says that the airline has since contacted asking to settle the situation with money, which she says the situation is not about.

Passenger Maggie Gremminger told the New York Times that Robledo was insistent that the dog carrier should stay by her side, with no avail.

Comment: One might question the corporate culture at United Airlines when the company is routinely in the news for abusive practices:

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Arrow Down

Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone, conservative activists, detained in UK for political beliefs (UPDATES)

Cassandra Fairbanks
Gateway Pundit
Mon, 12 Mar 2018 00:01 UTC
Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone
Austrian activist Martin Sellner of Génération Identitaire (GI) and his girlfriend, American author and YouTuber Brittany Pettibone, have been detained by airport police in England for nearly three days.

Nobody from the US State Department or embassy contacted Pettibone's family.

Sellner was on his way to give a speech that authorities say would cause "tension among local communities and possibly incite hatred."


Comment: Conservative pundits seem to be increasingly under attack in the current landscape, both on social media, in the press, speaking engagements and now also in being blocked from entering "free countries" who supposedly uphold some level of freedom of speech. See also: UPDATE: Apparently Sellner and Pettibone have been released.


Update 2: Independent journalist Laura Southern was also subjected to the same treatment. She was detained in Calais by UK border authorities.
Canadian YouTuber and right-wing activist Lauren Southern has been detained in the United Kingdom and has had her phone and passport taken from her.

The detention comes on the same day that they released American YouTuber and activist Brittany Pettibone and Austrian activist Martin Sellner after refusing them entry into the nation and detaining them for nearly three days.

Southern was travelling to the UK by bus when she was singled out by border police and taken in for questioning. The Gateway Pundit attempted to call her cellphone, but it was immediately sent to voicemail.

Sellner and Pettibone had been detained and denied entry for him planning to give a speech and her plans to interview right-wing journalist and UK citizen Tommy Robinson.

Southern had planned to meet with the duo in the UK prior to their detention. Following the questioning, Southern messaged Pettibone and told her that they were taking her phone and placing her in detention.


"Does this mean conservatives are no longer welcome in the U.K.?" Pettibone tweeted with a screenshot of the conversation.


More..... Lauren was denied entry because she spoke out against radical Islam - which is not a race.

So are we now to assume that the UK has a kind of reverse Muslim ban?

Anyone critical of the belief system of Islam (which is not a race) is now barred from entering the country?


Tommy Robinson traveled to Calais to interview Southern about her experience.



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Star of David

Swedish rights groups up in arms over Google's 'anti-Semitic' search results


RT
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 11:53 UTC
Google
© Christoph Hardt / Global Look Press
Google has been blasted for producing links to anti-Semitic blogs and a notorious neo-Nazi website as top search results relating to the Holocaust or Jews in Sweden. The tech giant has been branded "repulsive" over the debacle.

Searches for the website of the infamous Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a Nazi group which repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and gave lectures about Nazi Germany, appeared as news, Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter found.

When Googling for the Holocaust, users were directed to an anti-Semitic blog post containing detailed information on a number of Swedish Jews, including their names, occupation and even pictures. Dozens are described in a humiliating and derogatory manner.
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