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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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Former Russian governor sentenced to 13 years in major anti-corruption trial

Alexander Khoroshavin
© Kirill Yasko / Sputnik
Alexander Khoroshavin, former governor of the Sakhalin region, charged with receiving bribes, during a hearing at the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk City Court
A court in the Russian Far East region of Sakhalin has sentenced former Governor Aleksandr Khoroshavin to 13 years in prison for running a ring that brought in over half a billion rubles in bribes for him.

Apart from the sentence, to be served in a maximum-security prison, the court ordered the ex-governor to pay a fine of 500 million rubles ($8.6 million) and banned him from assuming any official posts for five years after the sentence is served.

The announcement of the sentence took the judge several days. Other suspects in the case - the former adviser to the governor, the ex-deputy chairman of the regional government, and the former Sakhalin minister of agriculture and trade - were also convicted of corruption crimes and received lengthy prison sentences and multi-million-ruble fines.

Comment: Further reading: Putting Putin's "soft authoritarianism" in perspective: Containing and balancing Russia's multifarious forces


Nuke

France to boost military spending by 40 percent as part of defense spending hike

France soldiers army
© Sam Panthaky
France wants to boost its military spending by over 40 percent by 2025, giving its nuclear arsenal a multibillion-dollar shot in the arm. France is currently the world's third-biggest nuclear power.

According to a bill unveiled on Wednesday, the current French defense budget of €34.2 billion ($42 billion) will rise to €50 billion ($61 billion) in 2025, or 2 percent of the nation's GDP. This is the benchmark level that NATO members are obliged to spend on defense but, historically, few have done so in the past two decades.

Under the proposals, spending would be rise by €1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) a year between 2019 and 2022, increasing to €3 billion ($4.1 billion) annually in subsequent years. Delivering on this promise would make Paris compliant with its NATO obligations.

Newspaper

Train goes to far off station for lone Russian schoolgirl

The village has only 50 residents, with just one schoolgirl among them
snowy train tracks
© Yuri Smityuk/TASS
A long-distance train in the Murmansk Region, in northwest Russia, has started stopping at a far-off station to pick up one, lone schoolgirl so that she could return home from school, a spokesman for the local railway company told TASS on Friday.

"We considered and approved the request of the Kandalaksha district administration for an additional stop at the Poyakonda station along the number 21 train route from Murmansk to St. Petersburg," the spokesman said.

Video

'Instrument of Influence': Why Morgan Freeman agreed to star in Bosnia war documentary

Morgan Freeman
© AP Photo/ Jordan Strauss/Invision
Commenting on coverage of the Srebrenica massacre during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War in a series starring Hollywood star Morgan Freeman, Serbian moviemaker Aleksandar Mandic said in an interview with Sputnik that all this indicates a common American trait which can be called "pretentious incompetence."

The National Geographic Channel's "Story of Us" documentary features Morgan Freeman meeting well-known Bosnian TV journalist Senad Hadzifejzovic and his son to discuss the 1990s conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the Balkan Insight.

Comment:


Bizarro Earth

Dismembered corpses from America become 'reliable supply of body parts' to the world

Shipping container - China Shipping
© CC BY 2.0 / Matthew Paul Argall
Shipping container - China Shipping
The body parts of dead Americans, sometimes contaminated with deadly contagions, are reportedly being ferried across the globe by land, sea and air to be used in research and medical training.

On July 20, 2017, a transport vessel registered in Hong Kong left Charleston, South Carolina carrying an assortment of cargo, including a refrigerated container loaded with about 6,000 pounds of human remains valued at $67,204.

Light Sabers

UK university blocks 'politically incorrect' research into sex change reversal

transgender flag
A UK university that blocked research into the negative effects and possible regrets after sex change surgery told RT the proposal was refused because of its methodology rather than the sensitivity of the transgender topic.

James Caspian, a psychotherapist working with transgender people, wanted to write a thesis on "detransition" of transgender people back to their original sex as part of his master's degree at Bath Spa University. While the school originally accepted his proposal on the controversial topic in 2015, the university's ethics committee, apparently fearing a backlash from the LGBT community, rejected his research deeming it to be "potentially politically incorrect."

Comment: I'm a pediatrician. How transgender ideology has infiltrated my field and produced large-scale child abuse


USA

My American Disease

American decay
It is hard going, being impoverished and poor in the American Nightmare... I read that the American Working Class for the most part is so foolish, that they idolize the rich; and resent it when people much poorer than themselves get welfare payments, so they are dead set against them. So the working classes are against social insurance and they idolize the rich. Forget about Marxism now. You cannot liberate people that are this stupid. No hope here. The reason lots of them went for Trump is because the working classes hate the upper middle class managerial snobs that they work for, serve in restaurants, and get abuse from. This includes "Limousine Liberal" Democrats. The working classes hate these people, which is why they rejected Hillary Clinton in droves. The white working class, this nebulous, dying phantom is a case in point. This is true of them more than anyone else.

I am a member of the White Underclass. Too poor to be considered as part of the white working class. Technically, I am a Jew, but only 25%, so mostly white. I understand the unique disease of the white underclass, really quite well. The white underclass is a class of nihilists. Deep down, we all love death and destruction, especially when it visits itself upon the affluent who live lives we will never have. We all love it when they suffer violence, when they are murdered in terrible ways, when their fancy houses burn down, or are destroyed in floods. We live to see the rich and affluent suffer. We stay glued to our TVs or cheap tablets or PCs and we suck it all up like heroin, the heroin that many of us die from, the ones that are lucky. We are ghouls for all of this. It is true. But are we aware of it? No, we are not. We could never own up to being this evil consciously, we would condemn ourselves. We experience all of this in a private state of hypnosis, where we feel like we're something other than ourselves. Enjoy it as a kind of vicarious power, and then disown it and forget it. It is not us, oh no...

Comment: The author's nihilistic perspective is understandable given the cesspool America has become. A quick scan of the headlines in the media is enough to send anyone into a crisis, seemingly devoid of all hope. But while it might be excusable to wallow in a state of defeat, perhaps there is still hope. See:


Book 2

University of Michigan to host 'pederastic' lecture on sex between boys and adult men

university of michigan
© The Associated Press
An event hosted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Research on Women & Gender on Friday afternoon will focus on analyze the history of "pederastic" relationships. "Pederastic" refers to romantic relationships between adult males and boys.

The event, which is called "Pederastic Kinship: Deidealizing Queer Studies," will feature Emory University professor Kadji Amin. The lecture will focus relationships between adult males and younger boys. The event description describes modern pederasty as "sexually, ethically, and politically dubious" but goes on to analyze the role it played for French author and activist Jean Genet.

Comment: It appears Kadji (who has a background in Woman's Studies) intends to advocate for the practice and further the normalization of pedophilia. See also: Modern Music: Promoting pedophilia to adults and sexual debauchery to children


Attention

'I wouldn't mind seeing Trump dead' says Northeastern Professor Barry Bluestone

Prof. Barry Bluestone
Barry Bluestone, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, was caught on tape during a public lecture saying that he "wouldn't mind seeing" President Donald Trump "dead."

Bluestone is a professor of political economy at the elite private school. His comments came during a Jan. 31 public event called, "The Rule of Law in a Time of Polarization." During the two-hour event, Bluestone was recorded as saying, "Sometimes I want to just see [Trump] impeached. Other times, quite honestly - I hope there are no FBI agents here - I wouldn't mind seeing him dead."

Immediately noticing Bluestone's slip, liberal journalist Robert Kuttner, who was also a speaker at the event, quickly added, "Of natural causes." Bluestone then affirmed, "Of natural causes. Thank you, thank you."

Comment: It's amazing how liberals always tell you how anti-violent they are, right before calling for violence against Trump. Hope the good professor likes being on government watch lists. See also:


Star of David

Israeli troops in jeeps hunt down Palestinian teen like in a safari and shoot him in the head

Laith Abu Naim shrine
The killing field of young Laith Abu Naim is an empty lot in the remote village of Al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah. Someone once planned to build a house here, but got no further than iron rods and a retaining wall. The boy ran for his life between the rods, pursued by two armored Israel Defense Forces jeeps. The chase ended when the door of one of the vehicles opened and a soldier aimed his rifle straight at Laith's forehead from a range of 20 meters. He fired one bullet, killing the teen - the same way an animal is hunted down and bagged on a safari.

A 16-year-old boy who dreamed of becoming a soccer goalie threw stones at a jeep and suffered the punishment of execution at the hands of a soldier, perhaps to teach him a lesson, perhaps as revenge. The rubber-coated steel bullet struck the exact spot it was aimed at - the boy's forehead, above his left eye - and had the anticipated result: Laith fell to the ground and died shortly afterward. The outstanding IDF sniper could have aimed at his legs, used tear gas, or tried to stop him in other ways. But he chose, in what seems to be an almost standard pattern in recent weeks in this area, to fire a round directly at the head.

Comment: See also: