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British teen who accused 12 Israelis of gang rape charged with causing 'public mischief'

Inderdeep Bains
Daily Mail
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 18:44 UTC
rape victim
© EPA
The woman (pictured leaving court on Monday) – who is facing jail on Tuesday after being convicted of making up the assault – insists she was held down and raped by 12 Israeli youths at a budget hotel in Ayia Napa in July.
A doctor who reported the alleged Cyprus gang rape to police said he 'believed' the British teenager after he saw her 'crying and screaming'.

The woman - who is facing jail on Tuesday after being convicted of making up the assault - insists she was held down and raped by 12 Israeli youths at a budget hotel in Ayia Napa in July.

But ten days later she was hauled back in for questioning without a lawyer, and says police forced her to sign a fake retraction and charged her with causing 'public mischief'.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab yesterday intervened after the 19-year-old pleaded for help because she was 'running out of time'. Sources say Mr Raab called the Cypriot foreign minister to outline the UK's 'serious concerns' over the fairness of the young woman's shambolic five-month court case, during which the judge branded her a 'liar' and said she made up the rape in revenge for being filmed without her consent.

Comment: Twelve Israelis accused of raping young British woman in Cyprus

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Attention

One dead, three injured in mass stabbing attack in Austin, Texas


WBRZ
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 18:36 UTC
crime scene
© The Statesman
Medics respond to the scene of a stabbing within 500 block of Congress.
Authorities say multiple people were stabbed in South Austin, Friday morning, and a suspect is in custody.

The incident occurred along the 500 block of South Congress near the Riverside community.

Authorities say four people were stabbed just before 8:15 a.m. Medics later confirmed that a man in his 20's died at the scene while a second male victim in his 50's was taken to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Two additional patients were being treated at the scene shortly after 9 a.m. By 9:07 one of these individuals was successfully revived via CPR and the other declined medical treatment.

Comment: This incident happened just one day after a gunman opened fire in an Austin nightclub: Austin police on the hunt for suspect who opened fire in nightclub injuring two

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Pistol

Austin police on the hunt for suspect who opened fire in nightclub injuring two

Bettie Cross
CBS Austin
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 18:25 UTC
police line
Austin Police are searching for a man who opened fire in a crowded nightclub during a New Year's Eve celebration.

Two teenagers were shot during the fight at the Terminal 6 Club at 302 E. 6th Street in Downtown Austin.

"Austin Police responded to a shots fired call. They actually heard the shots being fired," said Detective Veneza Bremner with APD.

The New Year's Eve celebration turned violent just after midnight.

"There was some sort of disturbance between several people and then shots rang out and everybody scattered from there," said Bremner.

Terminal 6 allows guests 18 and up into the dance club and the two shooting victims are both 19-years-old.
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Heart - Black

Hundreds of thousands gather in Baghdad to mourn war heroes Soleimani and al-Muhandis


RT
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 18:02 UTC

Comment: ...and in Najaf. And in Karbala. And in many other cities across the Muslim world.

Trump just united the Shia Muslim world in a way Iranian leadership couldn't have dreamed of.

So much for 'Iraqis cheering the death of Soleimani' (Pompeo), and 'Iraqis wishing Iranian influence be gone' (also Pompeo).

The US will be sending home body bags if they don't get their troops out of Iraq ASAP.


soleimani rally
© Sabah Arar / AFP
Massive crowds have gathered in Baghdad for a funeral procession for Iran's elite Quds Force leader, Qassem Soleimani, Iraqi militia chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and others people killed in a US drone strike on Friday.

Mourners and supporters of Major General Soleimani and al-Muhandis, who was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), are holding photos of both men along with Iraqi flags and flags of the Shia group Hezbollah. Many are dressed in black and are heard chanting "death to America."

Iraq's prime minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, is also attending the ceremony. He stepped down in November amid mass anti-government protests, but has retained his post in a caretaker capacity.



Comment: Does it look like these Iraqis are "dancing in the streets" for freedom, "thankful that General Soleimani is no more"? That's what Pompeo would have the world think.



Either he's a liar, or such an idiot that he believes his own propaganda:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exaggerated the reaction of Iraqi citizens to the death of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing eyewitnesses who said that celebrations occurred on a much smaller level than Pompeo implied.

The newspaper reported that while the video itself was authentic, there were a number of inconsistencies with what Pompeo portrayed, and what actually happened on the ground. The New York Times cited eyewitnesses who claimed that the group of men carrying the flag was very small and that the celebration was over in less than two minutes. The newspaper also stated that citizens were running, not dancing as Pompeo stated, in the video.

​The fact that the video had been viewed almost five million times, along with Pompeo's caption, sets a dangerous precedent for factual news reporting, the newspaper stated. The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for a comment on the allegations, submitted on Friday evening, the newspaper reported.
Here was the scene in Tehran today:


And in Kashmir:
The assassination sparked protests in other countries as well, especially in those with sizable Shia Muslim populations. A handful of rallies were held in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Kashmir region, where people flocked to the streets to voice their anger over the murder.

Hundreds of protesters also marched in the northern Indian town of Budgam, carrying portraits of Soleimani and chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.


"We will take revenge of their act so that they will bow down. And it is going to be a lesson for our future generations," said an Islamic cleric who led the protests, while another scholar insisted that the US and Israel "will be destroyed very soon."

A similar rally was held in the town of Kargil, where locals turned up in large numbers to mourn the death of the prominent Iranian commander. Footage from the scene shows residents carrying portraits of Soleimani and placards reading "Down with the USA." Large banners portraying Iranian leaders could also be seen hanging from several buildings in the town.

In case there's any doubt just how allied Iraq and Iran are, here's the Iraqi PM side-by-side with the new commander of the Iraqi PMU:


The US can send another million troops to Iraq if it wants, but it has already lost the battle for hearts and minds.

See also:

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Target

The main victims of progressive 'cancel culture' are progressives themselves

Jonathan Kay
National Post
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 22:06 UTC
sisterhood protest toronto
© Postmedia News
Supporters of the trans community protest outside the Palmerston Public Library in Toronto following a talk by controversial speaker Meghan Murphy on Oct. 29, 2019.
In the many op-ed denunciations of cancel culture that get churned out (of which I suppose this is one), a common theme is that we've all become too quick to take "offence." But having spent the last few years interviewing cancel-culture victims, from Steven Galloway to Meghan Murphy to James Damore, I can attest that the real driver of mob-run silencing campaigns isn't "offence." It's a desire to demonstrate power. When a heretic's agonies (and eventual confessions) play out on a public medium such as Twitter, the spectacle serves to warn other thought criminals. It's all about offering a show of force "pour encourager les autres" (as Voltaire once put it).

This explains why cancel-culture mobs often channel the tribalistic language and imagery of territorial warfare, with activists seeking to prevent the forces of "hate" penetrating the secular-sacred confines of a campus, library, literary festival, public event or online discussion group. What they truly fear isn't the substantive content of the heretic's message (of which many mob members will be ignorant), but the symbolic effect of a heretic speaking freely in a space seen as traditionally controlled by dogmatists. Mob censorship only works when the mob is feared. Let a single heretic go unpunished, and the mob loses its power.

Comment: See also:

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Bullseye

Terry Gilliam: 'I'm tired of white men being blamed for everything wrong with the world'

Alexandra Pollard
Independent
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 08:48 UTC
Terry Gilliam
© Rex
Terry Gilliam says Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims ‘are adults who made choices’ and he doesn’t like the terms ‘black or white’.
By his own admission, Terry Gilliam is offensive. But it's not his fault, it's yours. "People work so hard to be offended now," he says with a grin. "I don't know why I'm doing it. It's not fun anymore." He seems to be enjoying himself today, though. The more incendiary his opinion - that the #MeToo movement is a witch hunt; that white men are the real victims; that actually, it's women who hold all the power - the bigger that smile.

We're in his publicist's London offices to discuss Gilliam's new film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. But the 79-year-old writer, director and former Monty Python member has other ideas. "I'm so booored of talking about the film," he groans, rolling up the sleeves of a maroon overshirt, which has a cut not dissimilar to a posh dressing gown. With grey hair, cut short except for a long rat's tail around the back, and a weathered face, he looks his age - just about - but he has sharp, keen eyes, and the air, energy and trainers of a man many years younger.

Comment: Gilliam has been railing against the wokeness of our culture for some time now, and it's no wonder given the jaundiced eye retrospectively being cast upon the classic comedy troupe he was a part of. How many classic aspects of our culture will we sacrifice at the altar of political correctness?

See also:

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Gold Coins

Deuces wild: Gold on path to reach $2000 per ounce in 2020


RT
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 07:23 UTC
gold
© Pixabay / Linda Hamilton
Gold prices can spike further this year, beating the highs they reached in 2019, with market analyst Fawad Razaqzada expecting the precious metal to hit $2,000 an ounce.

Bullion prices continued to reach higher during the last trading day of 2019, with gold for February delivery up around 0.5 percent, trading above $1,525. The yellow metal touched its highest level since September, when it stood at around $1,540 an ounce.

"I think gold has everything going for it in 2020," Razaqzada told Kitco News, adding that even if bullion misses the forecast price, it is still set to rise in the new year.

Comment: This is happening alongside yet more US quantitative easing, worldwide recession, countries fleeing the dollar and investors seeking hard assets to store their wealth:

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Bad Guys

Israel is systematically poisoning one million Palestinian children

Robert Inlakesh
PressTV
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 20:12 UTC
Wounded child in Palestine
© AFP
Palestinian medical workers tend to wounded children, members of a family where six were killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza Strip on November 14, 2019.
We have now entered 2020, the year in which experts at the United Nations (UN) once predicted Gaza would become unlivable. But the sad reality is not only that those same experts said that Gaza was already unlivable in 2017, but that now the population of 2 million residing in Gaza are under the real threat of genocide.

Sara Roy of Harvard University's Centre for Middle Eastern studies, who is considered the leading scholar on Gaza's economy, has written that "innocent human beings, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned in Gaza by the water drink and likely by the soil in which they plant." So let us break down that statement, based upon the data available to us.

The population of the Gaza Strip is over 2 million strong, more than 50% of which are children (18 and under). Ninety-seven percent of Gaza's water is undrinkable with only the upper 10% of Gaza's population having access to clean water according to the UN. If we take these statistics and we look at them critically that would mean that according to conservative estimates only 40% of Gaza's children are consuming water that is fit for human consumption. This means that parents in the Gaza Strip are forced to make the decision to allow their children to drink contaminated water in order for them to survive.
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Arrow Up

Dirty little secret behind EVs

Vandana Hettiaratchi
Daily FT
Fri, 03 Jan 2020 19:12 UTC
Behind the 'clean' wheel of the electric cars, there is a dark secret. The main element used to produce the batteries that power electric cars is cobalt - a toxic and hazardous element. Cobalt mining, which is a dangerous task, takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which is home to 70% of the world's cobalt supply. The mining of cobalt is unregulated and involves child labour, exploitation, human rights abuses and environmental risks to those who work on the mines.

Children working in Cobalt Mines, DR Congo
© Daily FT
An article by Forbes in June 2019 titled 'Electric Models to dominate car sales by 2040, wiping out 13 m barrels a day of oil demand' made headlines as the demand for electric cars continues to rise exponentially, in most parts of the world. Globally, the sales of EVs grew from two million units in 2016 to 5 million in December 2018.

The need for Electric Vehicles (EVs) has come about as one of the solutions of tackling the environment crisis or the 'climate emergency', which the world is facing. Rising levels of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and dependence on technology has urged state governments to focus on investing in green technology, from which the idea of EVs, mainly cars, was born.

In the developed world, investment into green technology and 'being sustainable' is perceived as a "societal, moral and ethical" obligation and responsibility that both, the public and private sector, need to adhere to. Thus, the idea behind electric cars is that it is a cleaner and 'greener' alternative than using gasoline or petrol run cars. However, is the production and manufacturing of electric cars just as 'green'? Just as 'sustainable'?

Behind the 'clean' wheel of the electric cars, there is a dark secret. The main element used to produce the batteries that power electric cars is cobalt - a toxic and hazardous element. Cobalt mining, which is a dangerous task, takes place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which is home to 70% of the world's cobalt supply.

The mining of cobalt is unregulated and involves child labour, exploitation, human rights abuses and environmental risks to those who work on the mines. Moreover, the manufacturing of electric cars emits more CO2 than the manufacturing of standard gasoline cars. Consequently, this undermines the 'green potential' of electric cars.
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Heart - Black

Saddest people on Earth: After 18 years of war, Afghans are least optimistic about the future

Alan Macleod
MintPress News
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Since the 2001 occupation of Afghanistan began, fighting has not stopped, destroying the country and leading to the U.S. spending an estimated $2 trillion on the war.
Afghan man repairing roof
© Altaf Qadri, AP
A man repairs the roof of a house on the hills surrounding Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 25, 2019.
American polling firm Gallup has found that Afghans are the saddest people on earth, finding that nearly nine in ten respondents are "suffering," in their own words, with zero percent claiming that they are currently "thriving." When asked to rate their life out of a score of ten, Afghans gave an average answer of 2.7, a record low for any country studied. Worse still, when asked to predict the quality of their life in five years, the average answer was even lower: 2.3.

As the study mentioned, "the unprecedented finding highlights Afghans' near-universal lack of optimism." In more than a decade of data collection around the world on the topic, this is the first time that any population predicted that their future lives would be worse than their current ones. This, to Gallup, was "all the more notable" due to Afghanistan's very young population; two-thirds of those interviewed were aged 35 or under. Less than half of the country said they experienced enjoyment or were treated with respect in the previous day, while 52 percent admitted to worrying for much of the day, up 10 percentage points from 2016.

Comment: See also:

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