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Star of David

'Longest trial in history' involves a Palestinian worker charged with funding Hamas, now in 129th hearing


RT
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 23:57 UTC
al-Halabi
© AFP/Dudu Grunshpan
Former World Vision employee Muhammed al-Halabi at district court in Beersheva, Israel.
A former charity manager in the Gaza Strip accused of funding Hamas has attended court for the 129th time in what has become the longest trial of its kind in Israel's history, dragging on as witnesses are blocked from testifying.

The 41-year-old aid worker, Muhammed al-Halabi, was arrested in June 2016 while working for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian group, charged with funneling kickbacks to Hamas and its armed wing. For nearly four years, however, Halabi has been denied his proper day in court, instead forced to endure an endless series of stop-go proceedings in which key witnesses are barred from testifying.

His most recent hearing on Wednesday was no different, quickly hitting a dead end soon after it began. Halabi's brother, Hamed, told Middle East Eye:
"Today's hearing was cancelled shortly after it started because the witnesses were not present. The prosecution then threatened that any witnesses who come from Gaza to give their testimony will be detained.

"They do not want anyone to prove them wrong. All the eyewitnesses and even the officials at World Vision gave proof that he was innocent. But this is not what the prosecution is looking for."
The Israeli government has denied travel permits to crucial witnesses in the former charity worker's case, preventing them from leaving Gaza to give testimony in Israeli courts. Halabi's lawyer, Maher Hanna, says that guarantees he cannot receive a fair trial.
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Star of David

Israel extorts its imported serfs: Palestine workers forced to pay to work in Israel


Middle East Monitor
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 16:48 UTC
Israel checkpoint west bank workers
© Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu Agency
Thousands of Palestinians queue up to cross into Israel and begin their work day as the sun begins to rise, at Eyal Border crossing, in the city of Qalqilya, West Bank on 1 May 2019
Some 20,000 Palestinian workers paid $140 million to brokers and employers in order to get permits allowing them to work in Israel, Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed yesterday.

The workers make up 33 per cent of all Palestinian labourers in Israel, the paper added.

According to the report, workers paid upwards of $400 a month to get a permit, but field activists in the Israeli rights groups Kav La'Oved and Machsom Watch said they "heard of higher amounts being charged for each permit."

Comment: Herded like cattle: The plight of Palestinian workers

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Light Sabers

Hundreds of thousands demand Texas leaders step in to prevent gender 'transition' of 7-yr-old boy - AG to look into case (UPDATE)

Calvin Freiburger
Life Site
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 17:19 UTC
James Younger
© savejames.com
James Younger
As the country watches in horror a Texas father's legal battle to prevent his ex-wife from "transitioning" their seven-year-old son into a faux girl, a growing chorus of Americans is demanding state and federal leaders intervene to save James Younger.

On Monday, a Dallas jury ruled 11-1 against father Jeffrey Younger in his fight against his ex-wife, Dr. Anna Georgulas, who wants to subject young James to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as well as legally force his father to treat him as a girl. Mr. Younger contends that all of this is being pursued against his son's will.


Comment: Previously:


The case has sparked intense national outrage even as the mainstream press largely ignores it, with experts warning that not only is affirming a child's gender confusion psychologically unhealthy in the long run, but exposure to sex-change hormones carries serious physical risks including infertility, impairment of adult sex function, and reduced life expectancy.

As of the time of this writing, a Change.org petition calling on Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and state lawmakers to intervene has received more than 211,000 signatures. LifeSiteNews has also launched its own petition calling to support James and his father, which will be delivered to the governor and Jeffrey Younger. LifeSite's petition has collected more than 26,000 signatures so far.

Comment: UPDATE Oct 24

The judge presiding over the case of the father, Jeffrey Younger, ruled today that the parents will have joint conservatorship over James, which includes making joint medical decisions for the child. Unfortunately, the judge also put a gag order on both parents so that they cannot speak to the press about the case which means that the Save James website will have to be shut down.

However, Blogger Matt Walsh started the hashtag #protectjamesyounger on Twitter that has been used in tweets over 41,000 times and a petition created by LifeSiteNews in support of Jeffrey Younger's efforts to protect his son from being 'transitioned to a girl' has been signed by over 58,000 people.

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Bullseye

B***h, please! Banning 'sexist' language won't make sexism disappear, any more than banning racial slurs killed racism

Helen Buyniski
RT
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 16:31 UTC
protest
© Reuters / Michael Dadler
A Massachusetts congressman wants to end sexism by punishing sexist language - specifically the word "b***h" - with fines and even jail. But policing speech doesn't kill the underlying sentiment - that requires real social change.

Massachusetts Democrat Daniel Hunt's bill to ban the "b-word," fining offenders $150 on the first offense and $200 or six months in prison if they can't stop saying it, sounds like the kind of joke conservatives might make to poke fun at the uber-liberal Bay State. But the bill - titled 'An act regarding the use of offensive words' - is real. Worse, any witness to the use of the word can complain.
A person who uses the word 'bitch' directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person.
Hunt's bill, which he insists was submitted at the request of a constituent, is far from the only example of the Democratic Party clutching its pearls over speech while giving the sentiment beneath that speech a pass. A vocal segment of the Left has become notorious as America's "speech police," calling out offenses real and imagined on social media and inciting outrage mobs to force apologies out of celebrities and businesses, sometimes sincere but often perfunctory and defensive.
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Arrow Up

Wealthy Norwegian shipowner funds intelligent design research to counter Darwin in schools


RT
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 16:16 UTC
Einar Johan Rasmussen
© LTJ
Einar Johan Rasmussen
One of Norway's richest people, shipowner Einar Johan Rasmussen, has pumped $1.6 million into a foundation that aims to challenge Darwin's theory of evolution and to promote intelligent design in its place.

The BioCosmos Foundation calls for "more open debate on biology and the cosmos" and targets "everyone interested in science and the big questions," especially "youth and young adults" - incorporating schoolchildren.

As with all proponents of Intelligent Design theories, the foundation extols the virtues of a pseudo-scientific theory that nature is so finely tuned and well-crafted that it could not have evolved via natural selection and must instead have been engineered.


Comment: RT should get with the program. There's nothing pseudo-scientific about fine-tuning, or the argument that it suggests engineering. There are other theories for fine-tuning, of course, but that doesn't make ID pseudo-scientific.


Rasmussen, 81, who hails from Kristiansand in the country's south - Norway's answer to the Bible Belt in the US - told national broadcaster NRK that his "wish is to make much of this modern research known to the public. It breaks with Darwin in significant ways."


Comment: Good for him. It's about time ID got some money to counter the Darwin lobby.


The millionaire agrees with the BioCosmos Foundation, whose members include a Danish professor, a doctor, a civil engineer and a theologist, that evolution "can no longer be clarified as a result of coincidental mutations and natural choice."
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Arrow Down

Goodbye middle class: 50% of American workers make less than $33,00 a year

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 16:24 UTC
rubble
The truth is that most American families are deeply struggling, but you hardly ever hear this from the mainstream media. Yes, about 10 percent of all American workers are making $100,000 or more a year, but most of those high paying jobs are concentrated in the major cities along the east and west coasts. For much of the rest of the country, these are very challenging times as the cost of living soars but their paychecks do not.

According to the Social Security Administration, the median income in the United States last year was just $32,838.05. In other words, 50 percent of American workers made more than $32,838.05 and 50 percent of American workers made less than $32,838.05 in 2018. Let's be generous and round that number up to $33,000, and when you break it down on a monthly basis it comes to just $2,750 a month.

Of course nobody can support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four on $2,750 a month before taxes, and so in most families more than one person is working these days. In fact, in many families today more than one person is working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet, and it still is often not quite enough.
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Dominoes

It's not just Ronan Farrow: NBC News killed my rape-allegation story too

Sil Lai Abrams
The Daily Beast
Mon, 21 Oct 2019 16:09 UTC
Sil Lai Abrams
© The Daily Beast/Photos Getty
Sil Lai Abrams
Sil Lai Abrams writes about how her story detailing rape allegations against Russell Simmons and A.J. Calloway was killed by NBC News — mirroring Ronan Farrow's Weinstein exposé

In the days leading up to the publication of Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's blockbuster account of his dealings with NBC News, I have been struck by the company's insistence that Farrow didn't have the Harvey Weinstein story in the bag. I don't believe a word of what it says because in 2018, the network killed my #MeToo story that was being reported by MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid. Incredibly, a year after NBC botched Farrow's reporting on Harvey Weinstein, it had the audacity to do it again.

In November 2017, I told Joy about my experience of being raped by Russell Simmons in 1994. I also shared that in 2006, former Extra co-host A.J. Calloway sexually assaulted me in his car and was subsequently arrested for his crime. When Joy and I first spoke, Russell had already been accused of rape by Keri Claussen Khalighi. In fact, she appeared as a guest on the now-defunct NBC show Megyn Kelly Today. However, I would be the first woman to allege being sexually assaulted by Calloway. When NBC chose to quash my story, it not only abdicated its obligation to report news; it provided cover for a man who would later be accused of serial rape and sexual assault when my story was eventually published by The Hollywood Reporter the following summer.
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Heart - Black

39 bodies, including one teenager, found in a lorry container in Essex - UPDATES

Richard Spillett & Mark Duell
MailOnline
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 11:03 UTC
essex truck lorry bodies

Police have found 39 dead bodies in the back of a lorry container on an Essex industrial estate
Police have launched one of the UK's biggest ever murder probes after the bodies of 39 people, including one teenager, were found in the back of a lorry in Essex. An ambulance crew made the horrific discovery after they were called to the Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays in the early hours of this morning. None of those inside the lorry were able to be saved and police later arrived and cordoned off the scene, which is near the Dartford Crossing.

The lorry is originally from Bulgaria and had entered the UK at the Welsh port of Holyhead, Wales, where ferries arrive from Ireland. It has been suggested that those on board may have been trying to get into Britain through the 'weak point' of Ireland. The lorry's driver, a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Police have not said where the people who died are from or where they were thought to be travelling to.

Comment:

Update 24 Oct, 15:00 CET

The dead bodies were reportedly Chinese migrants. RT reports:
The 39 migrants who were discovered dead in a refrigerated truck container at Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex, in the early hours of Wednesday morning were Chinese nationals, police have confirmed.

"...eight of the deceased are women and 31 are men and all are believed to be Chinese nationals," the police confirmed.

They have launched an inquiry and are continuing to question the driver of the lorry, Mo Robinson, 25, who was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The police had initially stated that the vehicle had entered the UK via Holyhead in north Wales, but have since confirmed that the trailer had arrived separately into Purfleet, Essex, on the River Thames, from Zeebrugge in Belgium.

Authorities have revealed that the tractor unit - the front part of the truck that hauls the container - came from Northern Ireland and had picked up the trailer at Purfleet. The lorry and trailer left the port at Purfleet shortly after 01:05.
And from the BBC:
Three properties in Northern Ireland have been raided and the National Crime Agency is working to establish if "organised crime groups" were involved. [...]

Councillor Paul Berry said the village of Laurelvale in County Armagh, where the Robinson family live, was in "complete shock".

He said he had been in contact with Mr Robinson's father, who had learned of his son's arrest on Wednesday through social media.

"The local community is hoping that he [Mo Robinson] has been caught up innocently in this matter but that's in the hands of Essex Police, and we will leave it in their professional hands to try to catch the perpetrators of this," he said.

The lorry has been moved to a secure site at Tilbury Docks and police have begun the process of moving the bodies to a mortuary at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford. They will be taken by private ambulance under police escort so that post-mortem examinations can take place, with the force expecting all the bodies to have been moved by the weekend.

Essex Police said it was the largest murder investigation in the force's history and the victims were all "believed to be Chinese nationals."

It said formal identification of the 39 people, one of whom is a young adult woman, "could be a lengthy process".

China's ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming tweeted that the embassy had read the reports of the deaths "with heavy hearts" and was in close contact with British police.

[...] A spokesman for the Bulgarian foreign affairs ministry said the truck was registered in the country under the name of a company owned by an Irish citizen.
UPDATE 27 Oct

Turns out the victims are not Chinese; they're Vietnamese.

And that's not the only strange 'misplacement' of nationalities going on. All the 'Irish' suspects involved are Northern Irish - more specifically, given their backgrounds, they would very much see themselves as British.

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Handcuffs

Nine Washington men arrested in online child sex sting

Katabella Roberts
The Epoch Times
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 15:45 UTC
child predators
© Washington County Sheriff's Office
Nine men have been arrested in Washington following an undercover predator sting by Oregon authorities.

In a statement, the Washington County Sheriff's Office said investigators had launched the operation on Oct. 17.

Officers posed as 15-year-old boys and girls on a number of social media platforms and dating sites, and were contacted by the predators who arranged to meet for sex.

The predators were arrested by undercover deputies at a location where they believed they would be meeting the child in person.

The statement said that nine different men were caught in the sting.

They were identified as Joseph Kenneth Raney, 30, of Portland; Brandon Daily Perkins, 36, of McMinnville; Brent Wayne Pruitt, 41, of Portland; Maverick William Pfel, 39, of Beaverton; Christopher Michael Mckane, 40, of Beaverton; Jonathan Arthur Hauck, 48, of Newberg; Tou Moua, 37, of Happy Valley; Wayne Michael Redman, 29, of Portland; and Gaspar Gaona-Aguilar, 48, of Beaverton.
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Car Black

Lawsuit filed after Florida man dies in burning Tesla after its futuristic doors fail to open


The Oregonian
Wed, 23 Oct 2019 15:38 UTC
Tesla Model S 85 KWH
Omar Awan was driving his dream car when he lost control. The sleek, blue Model S Tesla careened across a road in South Florida and slammed into a palm tree.

But it wasn't the crash that killed him, his family's lawyers said - it was the car's futuristic design features.

The last moments of Awan's life were gruesome and excruciating. After the crash, the Tesla's lithium ion battery caught fire. Smoke - and then flames - filled the car, suffocating Awan and burning him from his feet up. Outside, a crowd gathered, but couldn't help.

That's because the car's retractable door handles, which are supposed to "auto-present" when they detect a key fob nearby, malfunctioned and first responders weren't able to open the doors and save Awan, alleges a wrongful-death lawsuit.

"The fire engulfed the car and burned Dr. Awan beyond recognition - all because the Model S has inaccessible door handles, no other way to open the doors, and an unreasonably dangerous fire risk," the complaint reads.

Comment: See also:

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