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College #MeToo: Since when is kissing and not dating a sex crime?

Micah Curtis
RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 03:26 UTC
me too
© Reuters / Christian Hartmann
Williams College, a school in Massachusetts, has suspended a male student after some kissing and touching with a female student, accusing him of 'sexual misconduct.' His crime? He says it was refusing to date her afterwards.

The college boy kissed and touched a female student (both of whom are anonymous in the reports), and the boy ended up being suspended because the girl says their encounters (more than one) were without her "affirmative consent."

But now the boy is suing the college, telling his side of the story. He says the girl really filed the Title IX complaint because he hurt her "conservative religious values" by not pursuing a romantic relationship with her after they got all smoochy. She says he "emotionally manipulat[ed]" her and took "advantage of [her] lack of knowledge of American cultural norms." She allegedly even told him that she had "lots of people ready to hurt him" for it.
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Arrow Up

Russia's inflation headed towards lowest level in post-Soviet history


RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 12:05 UTC
russia
© Sputnik / Maxim Blinov
Annual inflation in Russia has eased to 2.2 percent in February, according to the median estimate of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Statistics show that price growth briefly fell to that level in 2018.

The Central Bank of Russia has cut its key rate in February by 25 basis points, from 6.25 percent to six percent. It left inflation outlook for 2020 unchanged, at 3.5-4 percent.

The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade expects inflation this year at three percent. Experts say that the possibility of inflation easing to a record low increases the likelihood of a seventh consecutive interest rate cut later this month. They also point to the global spread of coronavirus, which has sparked a sell-off in Russian assets.

Comment: Meanwhile economies in the West are looking increasingly precarious:

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Pistol

Death squad massacres 32 at political rally in Kabul: Random chaos, or is there method to the madness in Afghanistan?


The Guardian
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:53 UTC
kabul attack march 2020
© Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
An ambulance transports the wounded to hospital after the attack in Kabul.
Gunmen opened fire on Friday at a ceremony in Afghanistan's capital attended by prominent political leaders, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens more before the two attackers were killed by police, officials said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on its website.


Comment: 'ISIS' has no 'website'. This claim of responsibility was probably 'found' by SITE Intelligence, the Israeli media coordinator for terrorists.


Militants from Isis have declared war on Afghanistan's Shias, and many of those at the ceremony were from the minority sect. The ceremony commemorated the 1995 slaying of Abdul Ali Mazari, the leader of Afghanistan's ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shia Muslims.

The Taliban said they were not involved in the attack, which came less than a week after the US and the group signed an ambitious peace deal that lays out a path for the withdrawal of American forces from the country.


Comment: Throughout this 18-year-long 'war', there has been a third force shooting and bombing both the Taliban and their supporters, and NATO troops and their supporters.


Comment: This is how empires ensure their continued military occupation of foreign countries. The British dealt with a 3-year-long Irish insurgency in the 1970s by setting up death squads that attacked both Protestant and Catholic civilians. As a result they 'had to stay to protect them'.

The Americans in Iraq in the 2000s 'had to stay' when they transformed Iraqi resistance to their invasion into a 'civil war' between Sunni and Shia Iraqis by running death squads who would randomly attack both sub-groups. Same thing in Afghanistan with 'ISIS', a name they've just recently appended to the death squads they've actually been running there for about 15 years:
CIA death squads responsible for spike in Afghan civilian casualties
Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, 2 November 2019
UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) has also pointed to so-called "kill-or-capture" or "night raids" carried out by a network of shadowy militias that have been organized, financed and directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency as a growing and disturbing cause of civilian casualties.

Operating outside of the chain of command of either the Afghan or US military, these militias include the so-called Khost Protection Force, which was formed by former Northern Alliance militias after the US 2001 invasion, working in close collaboration with the CIA. Others are known simply as NDS 01, NDS 02, NDS 03 and NDS 04, ostensibly under the command of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, but in reality answering to no one besides the CIA's operatives in Afghanistan. All of them have carried out a reign of terror in rural areas where the US and its puppet regime are contesting the Taliban for control.
The way it's meant to work in Afghanistan is that they'll send out one of their squads to massacre a bunch of civilians, ideally making it look like a Taliban or Taliban-supported attack. This will then dampen and even break popular support for the Taliban, upon which its fighters have of course relied all these years in order to be able to withstand the most powerful and technologically advanced empire in all history.

But by this point, most people there have figured out the game. That's why there is likely sincerity on the US govt's part to now begin scaling down the 'war'/occupation. They sort of realize that no matter how many iterations of their 'win hearts and minds' psy-ops they undertake, it all just serves to make the target population see them as repulsive psychopaths with whom they want nothing to do with whatsoever.

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Bomb

US embassy in Tunisia target of mystery 'suicide' bomb attack - One police officer killed


Al Jazeera
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 20:10 UTC

Comment: Remember, 'suicide' bomb attacks may not be such at all. Very often intel agencies coerce or blackmail people into 'being at this spot at this time', then remote detonate bombs and quickly tell the press 'Mohammed X was a suicider'...


One policeman killed and others wounded in capital Tunis, interior ministry says, as bombers blow themselves up.
bomb embassy tunisia
© REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi
People gather at the scene of Friday's suicide attack near the US embassy in Tunis.
Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up outside the United States embassy in the Tunisian capital, killing a policeman and injuring six other people, authorities said, in the most serious attack in months.

An explosion at around midday on Friday rocked the Berges du Lac district, where the highly fortified embassy is located, causing panic among pedestrians and motorists.

"Two individuals targeted a security patrol... in the street leading to the American embassy," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Photos posted on local news websites showed damaged vehicles on the road outside the embassy.


Comment: 'ISIS', of course, doesn't exist. At least, it doesn't exist in the way it's portrayed in the media (as a self-contained outfit with a single organizing principle or mission). The Russians' pulling back of the curtain in Syria exposed 'ISIS' there to be proxy forces - paid mercenaries - answering to command-and-control directions from their paymasters in Western intel agencies and regional govts.

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Eye 2

Erdogan vows to keep migrants flowing as THOUSANDS being bussed to storm the Greek border


RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:34 UTC
turkey migrants greece border
© AFP / Bulent Kilic
Migrants chant slogans as they demonstrate in the Turkey-Greece border buffer zone, near Pazarkule crossing gate in Edirne, Turkey, on March 6, 2020.
Turkey's border will remain open for migrants seeking to reach the EU, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says. Thousands of illegal migrants have amassed at the border with Greece, facing off with police and trying to break through.

Ankara will not try to stop the refugees flowing to Europe, Erdogan told reporters Friday, as he was flying home from Moscow, where he had agreed a ceasefire document on Syria's Idlib with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Are the borders open or closed? We don't have time to discuss it anymore. It is done.
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Health

Chaos in Bethlehem: 7 confirmed cases of coronavirus

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Hospital
© APA/Abedalrahman Hassan
Belt Jala governmental hospital, West Bank, Bethlehem
Palestinians, for lack of a better word, are freaking out. And much like the rest of the world, they're worried about the current outbreak of coronavirus disease. While the global hysteria surrounding the coronavirus gained traction in Palestine in recent weeks as Palestinians looked to a growing number of confirmed cases in Israel, it reached new heights on Thursday, as multiple suspected cases were reported in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem.

COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the new coronavirus. It is a respiratory illness spread primarily person-to-person, and is related to the SARS and MERS viruses that have had outbreaks in recent years.

Locals woke up to the initial news reports that four people, alleged to be foreigners, were being held at the Beit Jala governmental hospital on suspicions that they had been infected with the virus. People were initially wary to believe the reports, as fake news surrounding the virus reaching Palestine has been circling around social media for weeks.
Tourists&masks
© APA/Abedalrahman Hassan
Foreign tourists wearing masks as a preventive measure against the coronavirus during a visit to the Church of the Nativity, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on March 05, 2020.
But by Thursday afternoon, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that there were seven confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Bethlehem, and had declared a state of emergency in Bethlehem and Jericho, another popular destination for tourists visiting Palestine.

Comment: See also:

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Better Earth

Zarif adviser & former envoy to Syria dies of coronavirus, first death in UK, 'Bollywood Oscars' cancelled


RT
Thu, 05 Mar 2020 17:50 UTC
Hossein Sheikholeslam
© Wikipedia / Tasnim News Agency; Reuters / UK Health Protection Agency Handout
Hossein Sheikholeslam, adviser to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, has died of coronavirus, becoming the third government figure to perish in the epidemic which has infected thousands in Iran.

Sheikholeslam, whose previous political posts have included ambassador to Syria and assistant to the parliament speaker for international affairs, first rose to prominence in the country while still a student for his role in the US-Iran hostage crisis.


He died on Thursday in Tehran's Masih Daneshvari Hospital.

Comment: Israel has banned its servicemen from traveling abroad due to the virus (one good thing to have come out of all of this!), and shut down the city of Bethlehem. The UK saw its first death as its total number of cases doubled to 116 yesterday, and today it's at 163. Two British Airways baggage handlers tested positive and have been sent home to self-isolate. Russia has cancelled SPIEF 2020 over concerns. And the International Indian Film Academy indefinitely postponed this year's "Oscars of Bollywood".

See also:

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Info

Farmers have mortgaged their lives to feed America

Robin O'Brien
robynobrien.com
Fri, 15 Nov 2019 16:29 UTC
farmers
"America's farmers have been bracing for a reckoning-and now it's here," begins an article in the Wall Street Journal. The stats are so appalling I found myself reading them out loud and taking notes.

Unfortunately. these headlines continue. If you want to fact check any of it, just head out to Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio or any other farm community to learn for yourself. What were once bustling communities now look more like ghost towns. Towns that once had three high schools are now down to one.

Is it any wonder that the U.S. farm economy is struggling, given the statistics shared below:
"U.S. farm households had a median farm income in 2018 of negative $1,548.

Negative $1,548.

U.S. farm debt — covering operations, land, equipment, livestock and more — last year climbed to more than $409 billion, according to the USDA .

Nationwide, the volume of loans to fund current operating expenses grew 22% in the fourth quarter from year-ago levels, hitting a quarterly record of $58.7 billion.

Last year, bankruptcies in farm counties made up 48% of the U.S. total of chapter 12 bankruptcies."
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Camcorder

'Maybe the guy needs help': Black woman stops to capture video of NYPD officers swarming unarmed black man with his hands up

Ashleigh Atwell
Atlanta Black Star
Thu, 05 Mar 2020 08:31 UTC
NYPD cops
Footage of several New York Police Department officers swarming an unarmed Black man is making rounds on social media.

A woman, who identified herself as Velvet, filmed the encounter between a young Black man and the NYPD around 7:50 p.m. on Wednesday, March 4 in Brooklyn, New York. She posted three clips on her Twitter page. In the video, the young man is being held up against a wall by an officer in plain clothes.

"What crime did I commit?" the man asked while the officer called for backup.

The man asked what he did wrong several times, but the officer never answered or identified himself. Velvet advised the young man to ask if he was being detained. He insisted he did nothing wrong.
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Bizarro Earth

2 rockets hit Baghdad's Green Zone setting off sirens at US embassy


RT
Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:36 UTC
iraq green zone
© Reuters / Khalid al-Mousily
Two rockets have reportedly landed in the Green Zone in Baghdad, setting off sirens at the US embassy. Witnesses report seeing smoke and hearing explosions.

One of the rockets reportedly fell near the Turkish embassy.

The attack comes less than a week after two unguided 'Katyusha' rockets landed inside the Green Zone on Monday, an incident which resulted in no casualties.

The heavily fortified compound has been repeatedly hit with rocket attacks over the past few months, though the blasts rarely strike personnel within. The Iraqi government's official position is to condemn the attacks, even as the US presence on Iraqi soil has recently regressed into an occupation following a parliamentary vote to order foreign troops out of Iraq.

Comment: See also:

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