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5 female NGO workers kidnapped & gang-raped while trying to bring awareness of human trafficking in India


RT
Sat, 23 Jun 2018 17:20 UTC
protest against rape
© Amit Dave / Reuters
People hold placards at a protest against the rape of an eight-year-old girl in India on April 22, 2018.
Five women were gang-raped by at least half a dozen men in India while performing a street play to bring awareness to human trafficking. The women, who work for an NGO, were approached by the men at gunpoint.

The women were performing in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand on Tuesday when the men approached the group, which also included four male colleagues and two nuns.

"The survivors said their male colleagues were beaten and made to drink their own urine before being locked up in the car," Deputy Inspector General Amol V Homkar told the Times of India.
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Quenelle

'Free countries don't disarm their citizens': Czechs respond to EU crackdown on legal gun-owners

Jack Montgomery
Breitbart
Fri, 22 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
gun confiscation
Czech president Miloš Zeman has put his name to a petition opposing an EU diktat which would clamp down on legal gun-owners and backed a constitutional amendment which would guarantee citizens' right to keep arms for self-defence and protection of the homeland.

The directive on tightening control of firearms under the guise of counter-terrorism was approved by the European Parliament in mid-March, and would see the Czech Republic - which combines comparatively liberal gun rights with low levels of crime and extremely low levels of terrorism - forced to impose new restrictions or face sanctions from Brussels.

Center for Civic Freedoms founder Václav Klaus Jr., son of former president Václav Klaus Sr., complained that the governments of non-democratic and fascist countries disarm their citizens, not free countries.

Comment: An incredible media and politically driven effort to disarm Americans - and now in Europe by the European Parliament?! Is the PTB on both continents expecting something to happen in both places that make them fear an armed citizenry?

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Bizarro Earth

'Art' imitates life: Sex robots will soon be able to reject raunchy romps with humans (video)


RT UK
Mon, 25 Jun 2018 01:13 UTC
Dr Sergi Santos and the sex doll Samantha
© Reuters
Dr Sergi Santos and the sex doll Samantha
Created to satisfy the sexual desires of their owners, sex robots could soon be able to turn down unwanted advances, according to a trailblazing inventor designing the lovemaking machines.

Spanish engineer Sergi Santos is behind one of latest sex doll models to capitalize on the niche market. Earlier this year he told RT.com about how future iterations of his love robot, Samantha, could allow people to "have sex whenever [they] like" and then enable users to order their shopping.
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Newspaper

English football fan gets ban after giving Nazi salute in city of Stalingrad battle


RT
Mon, 25 Jun 2018 00:55 UTC
English football fan
One of the English fans that was filmed giving Nazi salutes and singing a Hitler song in a bar in the Russian city of Volgograd, the site of a major WWII battle, has been banned from attending games for five years by a UK court.

British police and the Football Association launched a joint investigation after footage emerged online showing English fans performing Nazi salutes, shouting "Sieg Heil" and singing songs glorifying the Third Reich. The video was shot on Monday at a bar in Volgograd, the city known as Stalingrad during World War Two, where more than 2 million people died.
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Binoculars

A look inside a lavish retreat where lobbyists donate for access to state attorneys general

Laura Strickler and Nancy Cordes
CBS News
Mon, 25 Jun 2018 00:42 UTC
State attorneys general, who are the top law enforcement officials in each state, have the final say on which cases to pursue or not. That power has not gone unnoticed by lobbyists. CBS News got an inside look at one lavish retreat at
Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Kiawah Island, South Carolina
Kiawah Island, South Carolina, where businesses and trade groups paid for access. Some of the companies are under investigation by state attorneys general, but still give large donations so they can get one-on-one access to AGs to state their case.

It's perfectly legal for a company under investigation by a state attorney general to give money to the political associations for attorneys general that fund AG campaigns. In return, it's legal for those associations to give access to company lobbyists.
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2 + 2 = 4

What nihilism has wrought

C. J. Townsend
The 21st Century Progressive View
Thu, 30 Oct 2014 23:33 UTC
ocean
People today have become so ignorant of their own history, purposely so, that they do not realize that the very things their great grandfathers/mothers and grandfathers/mothers fought against on the left, are now the very things the neo-left fights for. In the late 60's the Rubicon was crossed and the new left that arose readily accepted the ideological stances of its once hated enemies.

Malthusian ideas were the first incoherent ideology adopted by the new left, in its wake anti-humanism became switched out for humanism. Where once the left championed the poor, now Malthusian overpopulation concerns turned the poor themselves into liabilities. People now pollute not unfair political and economic systems which alienate the poor from their humanity.
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Monkey Wrench

Escalating the trade war: Trump threatens to impose tariffs on European cars after Brussels sets up €2.8B of levies on US

Richard Partington
The Guardian
Fri, 22 Jun 2018 17:12 UTC
Bourbon whiskey, Levi's and Harley-Davidson on list as EU measures comes into force

Long Beach shipment of Mercedes, trade war
© Bloomberg/Getty Images
Trump’s new threat comes after the EU imposed tariffs on a range of US consumer goods in response to steel and aluminium tariffs from the White House, which could increase the cost of consumer goods by £200m per year in the UK alone.
Donald Trump has threatened to widen the mounting trade dispute between US and the EU by imposing tariffs on European cars, after Brussels made good on its threat of retaliatory levies on American products including bourbon whiskey, Levi's jeans and Harley-Davidson motorbikes.

Raising the stakes in the tit-for-tat exchange of import tariffs threatening to spark a global trade war, the US president tweeted in response to the EU tariffs which came into effect late on Thursday: "If these Tariffs and Barriers are not soon broken down and removed, we will be placing a 20% Tariff on all of their cars coming into the U.S. Build them here!"


Trump's new threat comes after the EU imposed tariffs on a range of US consumer goods in response to steel and aluminium tariffs from the White House, which could increase the cost of consumer goods by £200m per year in the UK alone.

Comment: Further reading:

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No Entry

Google-Facebook: A cartel threatening independent media and free speech

Joseph Farah
WND
Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
thumbs down facebook google
Remember the days when the U.S. federal government concerned itself with media cross-ownership regulations?

Those were the rules that ensured media companies would not dominate individual geographic markets by buying up newspapers, radio stations and television properties in major cities.

The thought was that companies doing that would:

1. limit certain kinds of political speech; and

2. create advertising monopolies.

Today, newspapers, radio stations and television properties are more concerned with basic survival. Few big media companies are even interested in the benefits of dominating individual markets. As the most important and vital forms of media are now online, it's almost as though the principles that seemed so important a few years ago - competition and free and open debate - have become irrelevant to government.

Two companies have become so dominant in media nationally and internationally that geographic dominance doesn't seem so important anymore.

Comment:

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Star of David

Israel plans to launch another large-scale military operation in Gaza - shooting kite flyers

Ariyana Love
Occupy Palestine TV
Sat, 23 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Kite flying
© Unknown
The Israeli Occupation's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, announced Thursday that "Israel Might Have No Choice but to Launch a Large-scale Military Operation in Gaza."
"I don't want to launch an operation, but there is a good chance that we will have no other option but to go in so that we can create durable deterrence," he told Army Radio.
Basically, they want to silence the Great Return March protests and suppress the already dying population. Israel's Extrajudicial Executions of civilians at the separation barrier fence, has given the Occupation an opportunity to perfect their assassination abilities, test new technology (drones) and internationally banned weapons, on the innocent population.

As Gaza is showing no signs of ceasing their legitimate protests, the Occupation has determined that a full-scale military assault like the 'Extermination of People' in 2014 (Russell Tribunal on Palestine), would indeed be more pragmatic and profitable for the US, UK and Israeli Arms Industry.


Comment: "You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine."
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

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Post-It Note

ACLU: Leaked internal memo suggests wavering on First Amendment's free speech

Robby Soave
Reason
Thu, 21 Jun 2018 08:25 UTC
StatueLibertyACLU
© The Gale Blog/KJN
"Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed."

The American Civil Liberties Union will weigh its interest in protecting the First Amendment against its other commitments to social justice, racial equality, and women's rights, given the possibility that offensive speech might undermine ACLU goals.

"Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed," wrote ACLU staffers in a confidential memo obtained by former board member Wendy Kaminer.

It's hard to see this as anything other than a cowardly retreat from a full-throated defense of the First Amendment. Moving forward, when deciding whether to take a free speech case, the organization will consider
"factors such as the (present and historical) context of the proposed speech; the potential effect on marginalized communities; the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values; and the structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur."
The memo also makes clear that the ACLU has zero interest in defending First Amendment rights in conjunction with Second Amendment rights. If controversial speakers intend to carry weapons, the ACLU "will generally not represent them."

Comment: Civil Liberty: the state of being subject only to laws established for the good of the community, especially with regard to freedom of action and speech; individual rights protected by law from unjust governmental or other interference.

ACLU is a watchdog, not a policy-maker. Will the watchdog recalibrate to societal pressures and the policies of those it watches?

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