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Protests shut down streets in DC to demand justice for Terrence Sterling

DC Sterling Protest
© @AlexR_DC/Twitter

Terrence Sterling was an unarmed black motorist shot by a police officer who did not turn on his bodycam until after the shooting. The lack of footage has left many frustrated and protesters have taken to Washington DC's streets to demand accountability from the police.

Over 200 protesters have shut down several streets in Washington. They began their protests at 3rd and M Street where Sterling was killed on September 11. Plans to protest on Monday were announced by DC Black Lives Matter on their Twitter page.

The demonstrators are demanding that Officer Brian Trainer, 27, be arrested and held accountable for the death of Terrence Sterling. So far, no arrests have been reported and the protests have remained peaceful and concentrated in downtown DC.

Jet5

Trump insults military vets with PTSD, calling them 'not strong'

trump speaking
© Mike Segar / Reuters
The Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, told an audience of military veterans that those members who developed mental health issues did so because they were not "strong" and "can't handle it." The comments prompted a massive backlash on Twitter.

"When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat, they see things that maybe a lot of folks in this room have seen many times over. And you're strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can't handle it," the five-time Vietnam draft deferrer Donald Trump told an audience of military veterans at an event in northern Virginia on Monday. "And they see horror stories, they see events that you couldn't see in a movie - nobody would believe it."

Those remarks started a volley of tweets.

People

Colombian referendum result defies predictions: FARC peace deal rejected

Colombia No + FARC.
© Flickr
No + FARC.
After nearly four years of negotiations between leaders of the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the results of the "people's referendum" have been announced. In a shocking result, the citizens of Colombia have spoken out, with 50.24 percent voted against the peace accord.[i]

The announcement of the vote has created a sense of confusion; how Colombia could have rejected a deal that would have put an end to the 52-year conflict? The numbers show the 'no' campaign winning by the slimmest of margins, with only a small percentage separating the two sides.[ii]

Four years of negotiations appeared to have culminated on August 24 with the announcement of the peace deal. At a public ceremony in Cuba, Humberto de la Calle, head of the Colombian delegation, and Ivan Marquez, chief FARC negotiator, signed the historic agreement. On September 26, the accord was once again signed, this time in Cartagena by President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC commander Timochenko as crowds looked onward and the streets of Colombia broke into celebrations. Throughout the entire process both President Santos and ex-president Uribe led fierce campaigns for and against the agreement respectively. Santos begged Colombians to be rational and see the bigger picture, whereas Uribe, playing to the hearts of the people, urged voters to not simply forgive and forget. Opinion polls taken during the weeks building up to the referendum continuously predicted a "yes" landslide, with a comfortable 66% called just before the election.[iii] President Santos, who has staked his political career on this peace process, believed that his campaign would soon claim victory and peace could finally fall over Colombia.

People

Gaza is Ferguson: A letter to black America from Palestine

gaza to blacks
Dear African-American brothers and sisters,

I am not black. But like you, I am not white.

I do not have the history of slavery you carry like a weight on your back from the day you are born. My ancestors weren't shipped in chains from Africa to the Americas through the Atlantic to work under slave owners. But in 1948, Zionist militias did drive them out of their homes to refugee camps in an infamous event called the Nakba, obliterating many of our villages and towns.

My parents didn't have to protest in the streets to end segregation and institutional discrimination by their own government to win the right to enjoy their most basic civil rights, a remarkable series of events that I teach to my own students here in Gaza. However, they have been labelled "stateless" by the international community, driving them to protest through boycotts, demonstrations and even hunger strikes, introducing the word intifada (shake-off) into our political dictionary.

Police officers from my own government neither pull me over for "driving-while-black," nor stop and frisk me. They do not shoot at me, kill me while unarmed and get away with it. However, I was born under the boot of an oppressor that has controlled almost every minute of my life: the Israeli occupation forces.

Che Guevara

Raging megalomaniacs and natural born killers: Who will save us from America?

moral outrage
The first US presidential debate did not reveal anything new when it came to either candidate. Instead it merely confirmed that Donald Trump is a slobbering megalomaniac who should be kept away from political office in the same way a three-year-old child is kept away from a box of matches. A poster boy for unfettered capitalism, he is a man so divorced from reality — and, with it, his own humanity —that every word that leaves his mouth comes over as a cry for help.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is a natural born killer, a passionate disciple of US exceptionalism who believes there is no country that can't be improved with a shower of cruise and tomahawk missiles. She and her husband come as a package of liberal opportunism who have made their way through speaking left and acting right. The fruits of this opportunism are mass incarceration, the entrenchment of Wall Street as the golden temple of the US economy, and perpetual war and regime change overseas. When Farrakhan described Hillary as a "wicked woman" he couldn't have been more right. Christopher Hitchens said it even better when he observed, "She and her husband haven't met a foreign political donor they don't like and haven't taken from."

Eye 1

Has missing RAF serviceman, last seen over a week ago, been abducted?

missing RAF serviceman
© Suffolk Police
Police have expanded the search for a missing RAF serviceman who was last seen over a week ago, amid fears the 23 year old may have been abducted.

Corrie McKeague, a serviceman based at RAF Honignton in Suffolk, was last seen early Saturday morning in the town of Bury St. Edmunds, 12km south of the base. CCTV footage released by Suffolk Police shows McKeague leave the Grapes pub around 3am last Saturday morning.

On Monday morning, Suffolk police released images of the pink Ralph Lauren shirt and brown suede Timberland boots McKeague is believed to have been wearing at the time of his disappearance.

Stop

At least 20 killed, scores injured in suicide bombing at Kurdish wedding in Hasaka, Syria

Hasaka suicide bombing in Syria
© Kurdistan24 / YouTube
At least 22 people were killed and scores more injured in a suicide bombing on the outskirts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka, local media reported.

The blast reportedly occurred during a Kurdish wedding when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the crowd.

The figures on casualties differ in various reports. State television citing a police source said the casualties also included 55 injured. A Kurdistan24 reporter provided a different number of casualties, with 14 killed and 25 others wounded.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.


Comment: Why do these suicide bombers always like to hit weddings? Maximum fear.


Cross

Catholic school says orphaned refugees to use separate bathroom after parents cite 'health risk' concerns

African refugee children
© Alberto Pizzoli/AFP
A Catholic school in Sardinia has decided to ask African refugee children to use separate bathrooms after parents claimed the refugees posed a "health risk" to their kids, with some even transferring their children to other schools, a local newspaper reports.

According to Italy's La Stampa, the story involves two refugees from Egypt and Ethiopia, aged nine and 11, living in Cagliari, Sardinia and enrolled at a private Catholic school there. They were within an inch of death as they made the perilous boat journey from Libya, before they were rescued by the Italian military earlier in 2016, along with 380 other people on that boat.

Their parents are believed to have drowned, and the two were entrusted to two Italian lawyers by the Juvenile Court in Cagliari.

Parents of other children at the primary school believed that the two Africans would infect their children and staged a protest. Several parents even insisted on moving their children to a different school.

Trouble first started when the two kids noticed that other children wouldn't socialize with them. It later emerged that this was the result of the parents' concern that they may have brought unknown African diseases with them to Italy.

Comment: Racism and dark-skin phobias, though psychic in nature, are a far greater health risk for humanity.

See also: Islamic Holocaust: Western wars have killed AT LEAST 4 million Muslims since 1990


Attention

French humanitarian workers shed light on terrible situation in besieged Eastern Aleppo

Aleppo volunteer rescuers
© AFP 2016/ THAER MOHAMME
Aleppo is the long-suffering city of Syria which the representative of France to the United Nations compared to Sarajevo and Guernica on September 25. Sputnik met with the people involved in the humanitarian help in Aleppo.

According to reports, more than 200,000 people live in the eastern part of Aleppo which is still in the hands of the rebels. 1.2 million people reside in the western part and the media doesn't have much information about those civilians living in the government zone.

Pierre le Corf, founder of the NGO called "We are superheroes," has been helping the population of the west of Aleppo for more than six months.

Comment: And who is fault for this terrible situation? UN report: U.S. and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians, crippling efforts to deliver aid


Family

Life without a government just fine for most Spaniards

pedro sanchez spain
© Susana Vera/Reuters
A supporter holding a poster of Pedro Sánchez, who stepped down as the leader of the Socialist Party, outside a party meeting in Madrid on Saturday. Credit
For the past 288 days, Spain has plodded along without an elected national government. For some Spaniards, this is a wonderful thing.

"No government, no thieves," said Félix Pastor, a language teacher who, like many voters, is fed up with the corruption and scandals that tarnished the two previous governing parties.

Mr. Pastor, a wiry, animated 59-year-old, said Spain could last without a government "until hell freezes over" because politicians were in no position to do more harm.

After two grueling national elections in six months, and with a third vote possible in December, no party has won enough seats or forged the coalition needed to form a government. For the first time in Spain's four decades as a modern democracy, this country of 47 million people has a caretaker government.

That has produced an unprecedented public spectacle: Politicians scheme and plot but reject the difficult compromises needed to form a government. Voters watch ruefully with a mix of fascination and contempt.