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Not a coward?! WaPo columnist forced to explain he didn't really mean ISIS leader died a hero, just wanted to prove Trump wrong


RT
Tue, 29 Oct 2019 07:30 UTC
baghdadi max boot
© Reuters TV; AFP / Getty Images North America / Anna Webber
Washington Post columnist Max Boot was forced to backtrack after offering a strange defense of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, arguing he did not die a "coward," triggering a wave of mockery and outrage online.

One of President Trump's loudest critics right of center, Boot has made a brand out of attacking the commander in chief at every opportunity. However, this week's column presented Boot with a unique challenge: how to spin the news of the jihadi mastermind's death into a jab at the president?

He found a way. Taking issue with President Trump's description of Baghdadi as a "coward," Boot shot back that the so-called Caliph's death by explosive suicide - killing three of his own children in the process - itself proved his bravery. Apparently confident in that take, Boot even pulled the line from his column to post as a standalone tweet, but it soon provoked a torrent of ridicule from commenters online.

Comment: See: Media downplays importance of Baghdadi after Trump announces his death - WaPo calls terrorist mastermind "austere scholar"- UPDATE: WaPo alters headline upon social media backlash

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No Entry

New York City secretly sending their homeless to over 350 cities - including Honolulu, Houston

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:40 UTC
Homeless in New York City
New York City officials have been quietly dumping homeless people to more than 370 cities across 32 states, including Honolulu and Houston.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio's "Special One-Time Assistance Program," (SOTA) local homeless families are given a full year's worth of rent - which has cost NYC taxpayers $89 million on rent alone since August 2017 - before exporting some 5,074 homeless families (12,482 individuals) to cities as far as the South Pacific, according to the New York Post, citing data from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS).
The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800.

Add to the tab the cost of furnishings, which the city also did not disclose. One SOTA recipient said she received $1,000 for them.

DHS defends the stratospheric costs, saying it actually saves the city on shelter funding — which amounts to about $41,000 annually per family, as compared to the average yearly rent of $17,563 to house families elsewhere. -New York Post
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Control Panel

Political persecution: Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal arrested months after reporting on Venezuelan opposition violence

Ben Norton
The Grayzone
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has been arrested on false charges after reporting on Venezuelan opposition violence outside the DC embassy. He describes the manufactured case as part of a wider campaign of political persecution. By Ben Norton

Max Blumenthal, the editor of the news site The Grayzone, was arrested on the morning of October 25 on a fabricated charge related to the siege of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC that took place between April and May.

A team of DC police officers appeared at Blumenthal's door at just after 9 AM, demanding entry and threatening to break his door down. A number of officers had taken positions on the side of his home as though they were prepared for a SWAT-style raid.

Blumenthal was hauled into a police van and ultimately taken to DC central jail, where he was held for two days in various cells and cages. He was shackled by his hands and ankles for over five hours in one such cage along with other inmates. His request for a phone call was denied by DC police and corrections officers, effectively denying him access to the outside world.

Blumenthal was informed that he was accused of simple assault by a Venezuelan opposition member. He declared the charge completely baseless.
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Megaphone

Hong Kong enters recession as protests continue into 5th month


Reuters
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:29 UTC
hong kong protests
Hong Kong has fallen into recession, hit by five months of anti-government protests that erupted in flames at the weekend, and is unlikely to achieve any growth this year, the city's Financial Secretary said.

Black-clad and masked demonstrators set fire to shops and hurled petrol bombs at police on Sunday following a now-familiar pattern, with police responding with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.

TV footage showed protesters, who streamed into the Kowloon hotel and shopping artery of Nathan Road on Sunday, setting fire to street barricades and squirting petrol from plastic bottles on to fires at subway entrances amid running battles with police.

At one station, activists rolled a flaming metal barrel down a long staircase toward police below.

Comment: While citizens have valid grievances against the government, the behavior of some protesters and the money trail demonstrate that these protests are part of a destabilization campaign by Western force against China:

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Extinguisher

British govt report on Grenfell tower fire pins tragedy on... the firemen

Robert Booth
The Guardian
Tue, 29 Oct 2019 10:54 UTC
grenfell firefighters

British govt: "It's their fault"
The London fire brigade's readiness for the Grenfell Tower fire was "gravely inadequate" and fewer people would have died if it had been better prepared, a long-awaited public inquiry report into the disaster that killed 72 people has concluded.

The report into the biggest single loss of life in London since the second world war also ruled that the building had been refurbished in breach of safety regulations and that contrary to the evidence so far of the cladding panel manufacturer, Arconic, "the principal reason why the flames spread so rapidly up the building" was its aluminium composite panels and the "melting and dripping of burning polyethylene".

The retired high court judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, who led the inquiry, found that despite senior officers knowing about the risk of cladding fires from high rise blazes abroad, the "preparation and planning for a fire such as Grenfell" by the London fire brigade (LFB) fell far short of what should have been expected.

Comment: Whew, the British govt sure knows how to rig an inquiry so that it comes out smelling like roses.

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Pyramid

GDPR after one year: Astronomical costs to meet EU's epically-failing 'data protection' compliance - Small & medium businesses shutting in droves

Alec Stapp
Truth on the Market
Fri, 24 May 2019 10:24 UTC

Comment: The following analysis was done in May this year. Since then, the costs have continued skyrocketing...


gdpr

"Lock it all down. We need to remind these euro-peons who's boss."
GDPR is officially one year old. How have the first 12 months gone? As you can see from the mix of data and anecdotes below, it appears that compliance costs have been astronomical; individual "data rights" have led to unintended consequences; "privacy protection" seems to have undermined market competition; and there have been large unseen — but not unmeasurable! — costs in forgone startup investment. So, all-in-all, about what we expected.

GDPR cases and fines

Here is the latest data on cases and fines released by the European Data Protection Board:
  • €55,955,871 in fines
    • €50 million of which was a single fine on Google
  • 281,088 total cases
    • 144,376 complaints
    • 89,271 data breach notifications
    • 47,441 other
  • 37.0% ongoing
  • 62.9% closed
  • 0.1% appealed

Comment: Google and other big corps are happy to pay the fines. But ALL small and medium businesses across the EU are currently undergoing 'compliance procedures' - audits, effectively, carried out by nominally independent agencies like accounting firms. These companies cannot afford the fines, so they're having to pay for their files being scrutinized for compliance on customers' data protection. The smallest firms are paying around 1,000 euros each...


Unintended consequences of new data privacy rights

GDPR can be thought of as a privacy "bill of rights." Many of these new rights have come with unintended consequences. If your account gets hacked, the hacker can use the right of access to get all of your data. The right to be forgotten is in conflict with the public's right to know a bad actor's history (and many of them are using the right to memory hole their misdeeds). The right to data portability creates another attack vector for hackers to exploit. And the right to opt-out of data collection creates a free-rider problem where users who opt-in subsidize the privacy of those who opt-out.

Comment: Hundreds if not thousands more will be added to that list by the time this bloodbath is through. Great governance there, EU. No wonder you're so popular in Europe...

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Handcuffs

Putin orders introduction of criminal punishment for online drugs propaganda


RT
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 14:54 UTC
syringes
© Sputnik / Vladimir Trefilov
Using the internet to promote drugs and persuade people to take prohibited substances will become a criminal offense in Russia under new amendments to legislation ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

The amendments also cover mood-altering synthetic cannabinoids such as Spice. Russia's consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, had earlier said these substances caused over 110 deaths in the country between 2016 and 2018.

Putin has endorsed the proposed law, which would ban the publication of information on ways of cooking and distributing psychoactive substances on the internet. He has also instructed the Interior Ministry to increase the number of police officers involved in tackling the illegal drug trade, both on the internet and offline.

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

'Consent should be continuous: Liberal professor implies not asking during sex is rape


RT
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:23 UTC
Protest
© Global Look / Christian Spicker
For Georgetown Law professor Preston Mitchum, a long history of stamping all men as sexist is not egregious or woke enough. According to his implication, "most men" (especially heterosexuals) are also unknowingly rapists.

On his personal website, Mitchum describes himself as an "unapologetically Black and queer civil rights advocate, activist, writer, and professor." Although he graduated from Kent State University with a BA in Political Science, he seems to have recently taken up an interest in the psychology of sex and intimate relationships.

In one of his all-time worst takes, Mitchum recently tweeted that any man who doesn't regularly check for the continuation of consent during sexual intercourse is "selfish, likely violated consent, and bad at sex."

As an adjunct professor of law, it's disappointing that Mitchum didn't elaborate on the exact legal conditions that men must meet in order to protect themselves from becoming accidental rapists. For instance, at what interval should men be checking for their partner's sustained consent? It's a detail that seems as important as his assertion is ridiculous.
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Padlock

Journalist Kirill Vyshinsky, imprisoned for treason without trial, recounts his time in Ukrainian prison

Eva Bartlett
MintPress News
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
Kirill Vyshinsky
© Zenit-ka.ru
Kirill Vyshinsky covering Ukraine's Maidan protests in 2014
In November 2018, I became aware of the case of Kirill Vyshinsky, a Ukrainian-Russian journalist and editor imprisoned in Ukraine without trial since May 2018, accused of high treason.

Soon after, I interviewed Vyshinsky via email. He described his arrest and the accusations against him as politically-motivated, "an attempt by the Ukrainian authorities to bolster the declining popularity of [then] President [Petro] Poroshenko in this election year."


Vyshinsky noted that his arrest was advancing the incessant anti-Russian hysteria now prevalent among Ukrainian authorities, as he holds dual Ukrainian and Russian citizenship. He noted that the charges against him, which pertain to a number of articles he published in 2014 (none of them authored by Vyshinsky), became of interest to Ukrainian authorities and intelligence services four years after they were published. To Vyshinsky, this supports the notion that neither the articles nor their editor were a security threat to Ukraine, instead, he says, they were a political card to be played.

Comment: See also:

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Cult

Democrat congresswoman Katie Hill resigns after being caught on wife-sharing website, smoking bong with female staffer during threesomes

Sean Moran
Breitbart
Sun, 27 Oct 2019 17:49 UTC

Comment: Where to start with this one? She was co-chair of the 'LGBT Caucus Committee', yet has a Nazi-era Iron Cross tattooed right next to her privates...


katie hill predator democrat
© Zach Gibson/Getty Image
Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA)
Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) will resign from Congress after reports suggested that she had inappropriate relationships with staffers in her congressional office and campaign, according to a report on Sunday.

Politico reported Sunday that Rep. Hill, an openly bisexual member of Congress, will resign from Congress by the end of the week, according to two Democrat sources.

The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into Hill's reportedly improper sexual relationship with a male congressional staffer, a claim she has denied.

The House adopted new ethics rules this year banning romantic relationships between lawmakers and their staffers, in response to the #metoo movement.

Comment: From RT, noting the media rush to defend Hill:
Democratic congresswoman Katie Hill has resigned, after explicit evidence emerged that she'd had affairs with multiple staffers, but the spin machine is working overtime to portray her as an innocent victim of "revenge porn."

Hill announced her resignation on Sunday, just four days after the House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into whether she had a sexual relationship with her legislative director, Graham Kelly. The openly bisexual congresswoman has admitted to a relationship with a female campaign staffer - that affair began before she was elected, and is technically legal. And to hear the media tell it, Hill has done nothing wrong.



[...]

Hill holds a special place in history as the first woman to be investigated by the Ethics Committee for an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. The new rule was passed in the wake of #MeToo, and it's unlikely members of the House had women in mind when they imagined what unethical behavior would look like. But with the rule now in place, it would be regressive and positively anti-feminist to hold women to a lower standard of behavior than men.

Republicans have delighted in pointing out that Hill was a prominent voice opposing the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. But Democrats have tried to turn that around, reminding the GOP that several women have accused President Donald Trump of sexual harassment and that at least Hill's trysts were consensual.
Tom Fitton and others comment on the contrast with regard to Rep.Ihlan Omar's messy personal life:





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