Society's Child

France's gilets jaunes prepare for ninth weekend, government declare they will show their "authority"

Angelique Chrisafis
Guardian
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 09:54 UTC

© Benoît Tessier/Reuters
Seven out of 10 French people do not think Emmanuel Macron's public debate, intended to steer protesters' anger away from the streets, will work.

More than 80,000 police officers are mobilising across France for the ninth weekend of gilets jaunes anti-government protests as Emmanuel Macron prepares to launch a three-month public debate process that he had hoped would channel protesters' anger away from the streets.

Demonstrators were expected in Paris on Saturday where the government fears a repeat of last weekend's violent skirmishes with police. More than 5,000 police will be stationed in the capital and all local officers have been called back from leave.

There could also be large protests in the small town of Bourges in central France after gilets jaunes groups online suggested its central location made it easy to reach and that it had less of a police presence.

Comment: This article was written on Friday, the protests are due to commence, today, Saturday, and so one wonders what impact the alleged "gas leak" related explosion in Paris earlier on today will have on the planned protests: Suspected 'gas leak' triggers explosion in central Paris, reports of injuries

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Google's parent company facing lawsuit for alleged mishandling of 'explosive' sexual misconduct case

Shirin Ghaffary
Recode
Sat, 12 Jan 2019 11:17 UTC

A Google shareholder sued the board of the search giant's parent company, Alphabet, accusing the company's co-founders of mishandling sexual misconduct claims against several high-powered former executives.

The suit filed by shareholder James Martin alleges that company leadership "had active and direct participation in a multi‐year scheme to cover up sexual harassment and discrimination" at Alphabet. The focus of the lawsuit revolves around the company's handling of sexual misconduct allegations against former executive Andy Rubin, among others. Rubin reportedly received a $90 million exit package even as a credible accusation of sexual misconduct was revealed through an internal investigation.

Revelations about Google's handling of Rubin's departure resulted in a massive company backlash, culminating in 20,000 Google employees walking out of work in November 2018.

Comment: Also see:

Nepal special police investigate 'Buddha boy' guru over devotee disappearances

Arab News
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 12:19 UTC

© AFP
‘Buddha Boy’ Ram Bahadur Bomjan, seen here in 2008, became famous after followers said he could meditate motionless for months without water, food or sleep.

A Nepali spiritual leader believed by his followers to be a reincarnation of Buddha is under investigation over the disappearance of several devotees, police in Katmandu said Monday.

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, dubbed "Buddha Boy," became famous in 2005 after followers said he could meditate motionless for months without water, food or sleep in Nepal's jungles.

The 28-year-old guru has a devout following but has been accused of physically and sexually assaulting some of his flock.

Special police investigators have begun inquiries after the families of four of Bomjan's devotees allegedly vanished from his ashrams.

Comment: See also:

Court rules Israeli ultra-Orthodox party must end ban on women within 21 days

Times of Israel
Sat, 12 Jan 2019 09:54 UTC

The High Court of Justice instructed ultra-Orthodox party Agudath Israel on Thursday to change its party regulations within 21 days to allow women to run for office, in line with an agreement reached in September on the matter.

Currently a clause in the regulations stipulates that only men may run on the platform.

Agudath Israel along with the Degel HaTorah party forms United Torah Judaism in the Knesset, and sits in the governing coalition. The two parties announced a split this week, though they called it a "procedural" move and said they may reunite before the upcoming April elections.

Comment: Sputnik adds:

The move was followed by Israeli women's groups expressing doubt that amending the clause alone would immediately remove the obstacles females face in joining the country's ultra-orthodox party.

The court ruled that the party's charter should be amended within 21 days in order to remove all women-related restrictions, saying that "there will not be any rules preventing acceptance of a woman as a party member" and that "from a legal standpoint the appeal process has been fulfilled".

Under the ruling, if the party regulations aren't amended and a woman is blocked from joining the party, she may file a petition to the High Court.

Haaretz cited an unnamed Agudat Yisrael member as saying that the party will "respect the High Court's instructions to change the party's constitution because it's a matter of semantics that has no practical meaning".

"Even the group of women who speak about a lack of women's representation in the party know that this won't change in the decades to come, and still they know that Agudat Yisrael is a party that will see to the needs of all Haredi Jews," he said.

Women's groups based in Israel claimed, for their part, that amending the clause alone would not completely remove the obstacles females face in joining the party.

In other words,Agudath Israel will amend its charter, but not follow it. Still, the tide may be turning in a broader social sense.

French producers say 'non' to California ban on foie gras, blame vegetarian lobbyists

Reuters
Tue, 08 Jan 2019 23:58 UTC

French foie gras makers have accused the U.S. Supreme Court of bowing to false claims by vegetarian lobbyists with its refusal to hear an appeal against a California ban on the delicacy produced from force-fed ducks and geese.

The U.S. court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by producers that also included a Canadian non-profit organization that represents duck and goose farmers, clearing the ban on a product that French lawmakers recognized in 2006 as part the European country's "cultural and gastronomic heritage".

France is by far the world's largest foie gras producer with a market share of about 70 percent.

Comment: Those plant-based people won't be happy until we're all eating fake meat.

The 'Woke' crowd and the Nuremburg trials of comedy

A.J. Rice
Washington Examiner
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:42 UTC

The "Wokes" are coming for the jokes.

Wherever you look, the "anything goes" crowd have become the "That's not funny!" scolds. No wonder Jerry Seinfeld won't play college campuses anymore. The clean comic of the 90's, the man behind the most successful situational comedy in television history, says he can't make a joke on a campus today because today's Left can't take a joke at all.

You don't have to be a conservative to wonder at what the Wokes have wrought. Louis C.K., a usually liberal leaning comedian who has already come under #MeToo fire for his personal conduct, faced backlash again for a recent set in which he called out millennial progressive Americans for their hyper-vigilant joke policing. According to the Hollywood Reporter, C.K. called out the humorlessness of today's snowflake youth, then went after one of their sacred cows: gender.

"They're like royalty," he says. "They tell you what to call them. 'You should address me as they/them, because I identify as gender-neutral.' Oh, OK. You should address me as 'there' because I identify as a location. And the location is your mother's c--t It doesn't have to be that nasty, but it can be."

Not even Joseph Biden's family could stand to vote for Killary as president in 2016

Joseph Curl
Daily Wire
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 19:26 UTC

Frank Biden, younger brother of former Vice President Joe Biden, ripped Hillary Clinton in a recent interview, saying the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate blew Pennsylvania and that many in his family didn't even vote for her, opting to pull the lever for President Trump.

Biden said his brother would have won his home state of Pennsylvania and would never have insulted more conservative voters as "deplorables."

"We never would have lost Pennsylvania, and all my relatives - the Finnegan family [his mom's family] - who voted for Donald Trump because they felt slighted by Hillary and her campaign," Biden, 65, told Florida's Palm Beach Post. His brother, who is mulling his own run in 2020, is a native of Scranton.

Comment: It's safe to say a great deal of Americans felt the same way.

Biden also said his brother would not have ignored Michigan, which, like Pennsylvania, voted for Trump in 2016.

Damning report finds immigration loophole led to thousands of approved child bride requests

Colleen Long
Associated Press
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:08 UTC

Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.

The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.

But the data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the United States, and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report.

Just an empty gesture: Five IDF troops arrested for beating Palestinian detainees

Sputnik
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:05 UTC

Military police detained an Israel Defense Force platoon commander and four troops serving in his unit for reportedly beating two captured Palestinians, according to Israeli media.

The soldiers are members of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a unit designed for Orthodox Jews to be able to serve in the defense force and stay true to their religious convictions. The Jerusalem Post notes the battalion receives a range of recruits, from ultra-Orthodox Israelis to immigrants and would-be settlers.

The military court hearing did not uncover when the alleged beating took place, though the military said the Palestinians were detained in the Ramallah area, a Palestinian city in the West Bank just north of Jerusalem. It's not clear what charges the five are being tried for.

The court lengthened the detention of the officer until Sunday. The four soldiers will stay locked up until next Tuesday.

Notorious anti-Kremlin shock 'artist' arrested for torching French bank will walk free due to 'suspended sentence'

RT
Fri, 11 Jan 2019 10:53 UTC

A shock artist from Russia, praised in the West as a vivid Kremlin critic, has been sentenced to three years in prison for arson in France, but will walk free. The controversial 'activist' also received a hefty fine for his stunt.

Pyotr Pavlensky garnered international attention and support for being a vocal government critic. His shock stunts, including nailing his scrotum to the Red Square pavement and several acts of creative vandalism, made him famous in the West.

Pavlensky's notoriety received a boost when he was fined 481,500 rubles (€6,500) by a Russian court for setting fire to the entrance of the Russian security service FSB. No prison sentence was issued though.

Apparently, that was the last straw for the notorious stuntman as he fled the 'oppressive' Russian regime and settled down in France. But French life became too idyllic (or miserable?) for Pavlensky, as he and his partner Oksana Shalygina repeated his arson stunt at the door of the Bank of France in October 2017.

French judges weren't impressed by his creative genius. On Thursday, Pavlensky and Shalygina stood trial in Paris and faced up to ten years in prison for "dangerous destruction of property."

Comment: No doubt the court's leniency is due to the 'service' provided by Pavlensky in giving some credence to the narrative of Russia as an 'intolerant and oppressive regime'. And noting the French government's hypocrisy, such generosity will not likely be shown to the hapless Gilet Jaunes who have been arrested during (or ahead of) recent protests.

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Society's Child

France's gilets jaunes prepare for ninth weekend, government declare they will show their "authority"

Google's parent company facing lawsuit for alleged mishandling of 'explosive' sexual misconduct case

Nepal special police investigate 'Buddha boy' guru over devotee disappearances

Court rules Israeli ultra-Orthodox party must end ban on women within 21 days

French producers say 'non' to California ban on foie gras, blame vegetarian lobbyists

The 'Woke' crowd and the Nuremburg trials of comedy

Not even Joseph Biden's family could stand to vote for Killary as president in 2016

Damning report finds immigration loophole led to thousands of approved child bride requests

Just an empty gesture: Five IDF troops arrested for beating Palestinian detainees

Notorious anti-Kremlin shock 'artist' arrested for torching French bank will walk free due to 'suspended sentence'

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