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Sheriff

Durham is first US city to ban police from going to Israel for 'military-style' training

militarized police US Israel
Durham City Council, North Carolina, has voted to abolish international exchanges with Israel, under which officers receive "military-style training." The council wants to prevent the "militarization" of law enforcement.

Late on Monday, after a heated debate in the city council, the members voted 6 to 0 in what one of the activist groups, Jewish Voice for Peace, described as "the first city to prohibit police exchanges with Israel." The group was one of those which pushed forward the move together with the Durham2Palestine coalition - a movement opposing police militarization in the US and calling to stop supporting human rights abuses in Israel. The activists launched a petition in fall of last year demanding that the city authorities "immediately halt" any such partnerships with Israeli forces.

"The council opposes international exchanges with any country in which Durham officers receive military-style training since such exchanges do not support the kind of policing we want here in the City of Durham," the council said in a statement.

Comment: Well done, Durham City Council. Police officers sent to Israel may absorb very corrupted professinal 'ethics', if they can be called that:



Fire

World Cup honey trap! British press adds gorgeous women to many 'threats' English team faces in Russia

Miss Russia 2018 beauty pageant
© Ramil Sitdikov / Sputnik
Miss Russia 2018 beauty pageant. Moscow, April 14, 2018.
The scariest thing English footballers will face this year is a hooligan hacker model bot, armed with laxatives and a chained balalaika-playing bear at her knee. At least that's what you'd think after reading the British press.

British tabloids have been busy preparing her majesty's subjects for a trip to scary, dangerous Russia for the World Cup this summer. After all, Russia pretty much stole the championship from England, so it is certain to do anything to hurt the English even more. The latest weapon of choice in Putin's sinister arsenal is gorgeous women, lining up for the visiting team.

That's what Express.co.uk learned from Professor Anthony Glees, director of the University of Buckingham's Centre for Security and Intelligence. They shared the revelation with the public in a piece titled "Russia World Cup: Kremlin SEX THREAT to England players."

Comment: Clearly, there's no level to which the 'evil Russians' won't stoop to attack England's poor defenseless football team. Throwing beautiful Russian women at them will, no doubt, prove to be their greatest weakness. It's truly diabolical!

See also:


Red Flag

Riots in Toulouse, France: Police attacked as woman arrested for refusing to remove Islamic face veil

Toulouse riot aftermath
© Eric Cabanis / AFP
Burnt cars in Toulouse, France after a night of clashes between the youth and police on April 17, 2018.
A deprived district of Toulouse, France has been rocked by two nights of furious riots, triggered by the arrest of a woman who refused to remove her Islamic full-face veil for police. Some 18 people were arrested.

Hundreds of police units were deployed after young residents threw stones, torched cars and set fire to garbage cans, police told the AFP. The clashes began on Sunday afternoon in the Toulouse district of Bellefontaine after a woman wearing a full-face veil - which is illegal in France - was stopped by the police for an identity check.

Comment: Tensions are quite high in France where the large Islamic population are none-too-happy about the country's part in the recent FUKUS strike on Syria. Similarly, tensions between the citizenry and government over Macron's right-wing reforms seem to be climbing. France is, more or less, a time-bomb.

See also:


Bad Guys

Russia's UN envoy says Syria's Raqqa devastated, 'de-facto occupied and run by a gang of incompetents'

Raqqa City, Syria
© Erik de Castro / Reuters
Raqqa City, Syria
The US and its allies are doing practically nothing to help rebuild Raqqa, which is de-facto occupied, Russia's UN Ambassador told the UNSC, after a UN representative reported on the mass-scale devastation of the Syrian city.

On average, an estimated 50 people a week are being killed in Raqqa, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator told members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), noting that virtually nothing is being done for some 100,000 repatriates who have returned to the destroyed city.

"Conditions are not conducive for return, due to a high level of unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive device (IED) contamination, and widespread and severe infrastructural damage and the lack of basic services," Mark Lowcock said, reporting on the UN team's findings after its April 1 visit to the Syrian city. "Up to 95 percent of households who have returned to Raqqa are food-insecure. Health services are lacking or severely limited."


Comment: See also:


Newspaper

Former US First Lady Barbara Bush has passed away at the age of 92

Barbara Pierce Bush
© Jason Reed / Reuters
Barbara Pierce Bush, wife of one US president and the mother of another, has passed away at the age of 92, according to a statement from her family.

Barbara and her future husband George Herbert Walker Bush met in 1941 and married in 1945. They were married for 72 years, the longest marriage of any first couple in US history. She was Second Lady of the US from 1981 to 1989, and then First Lady between 1989 and 1993. During her time in the White House, she famously established the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

Comment:


Vader

The one-third of Syria illegally occupied by US and proxy forces contain most of its oil, water and gas

US troops syria
© Associated Press/Susannah George
American troops look out toward the border with Turkey from a small outpost near the town of Manbij, Syria, Feb. 7, 2018.
While gaining control of key resources for partitioning Syria and destabilizing the government in Damascus, the U.S.' main goal in occupying the oil and water rich northeastern Syria is aimed not at Syria but at Iran.

After the U.S. launched "limited" airstrikes on Friday against Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the U.S. will maintain its illegal presence in Syria until U.S. goals in the area are fulfilled, opening the door for the U.S. occupation to continue indefinitely.

While the U.S. military presence in Syria has been ongoing since 2015 - justified as a means of countering Daesh (ISIS) - U.S. troops have since turned into an occupying force with their failure to pull out following Daesh's defeat in northeastern Syria. Currently, the U.S. occupies nearly a third of Syrian territory - around 30 percent - including much of the area east of the Euphrates River, encompassing large swaths of the Deir Ezzor, Al-Hasakah and Raqqa regions.

2 + 2 = 4

How NYU reined in their student mobs

At NYU, administrators threatened the protesters' financial aid, and the woke warriors went back to their rooms.
NYU protest
© Bria Webb/Reuters
New York University students participate in a protest against then President-elect Donald Trump in Manhattan on November 16, 2016.
Spare a thought for those knights of social justice, the student protesters. Motivated by the yearning for a better world, they sacrifice their time and energy in service to their ideals. They display courage, stamina, determination, and creativity in coming up with rhymes in their chants.

Except if you tell them they're jeopardizing their financial aid or their housing. Then they fold immediately.

Light Saber

'This is not France': Frenchman renounces citizenship in order to protest attack on Syria

French Gendarme
© AFP 2018 / Pascal Guyot
A Frenchman living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is renouncing his French citizenship to protest the strikes conducted on Syria last week by three Western countries, including France.

The missile attack on Syria, launched by the US and allies the UK and France on April 14, has triggered protest that took many different forms, from crowds of Iraqis burning US flags on Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Baghdad to former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters condemning the attack and "fake" White Helmets at a concert in Barcelona.

Comment:


Laptop

IRS payment website crashes on tax day

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
A general view of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington
It's that time of year that all Americans love: tax day. Fortunately, for some of those who have procrastinated all year and waited until the last moment to file their returns, the IRS payment website is down.

The Internal Revenue Service still expects Americans to cough up the cash. Just how, exactly, eager taxpayers are supposed to do that, however, is unclear. According to various pages on the IRS website, including those allowing people to make a direct payment and set up a payment plan, the "service is currently unavailable".

The IRS stresses that they "apologize for any inconvenience."

Bullseye

Pedophile-hunter mom travels to Mexico to catch her son's abuser after police let him walk free

Lydia Lerma
© Timothy Hurst/The Coloradoan
Lydia Lerma, the mother of the first victim who came forward in a child sexual assault case against Andrew Vanderwal, poses for a portrait in her child's bedroom on Tuesday, April 10, 2018, at her home in Fort Collins, Colo.
Anyone who has ever dealt with law enforcement when they've been a victim of a crime knows that the wheels of justice move very slowly. For some, the waiting is too much to bear and when police - who are often more concerned with prosecuting people for possessing a plant - refuse to go after criminals, they take matters into their own hands.

When Lydia Lerma discovered that her son had been molested by a man who was living with her ex-husband, the crime devastated her. However, the insultingly low bail placed on her son's abuser was equally devastating as it allowed him to walk free for very little money. When police allowed Andrew Vanderwal to walk free after posting $750 bail, the family was doubly impacted. Worse still, Vanderwal fled to Mexico, escaping justice and infuriating Lerma, who then made it her mission to become a pedophile hunter.

Vanderwal had fully confessed to molesting Lerma's son. Yet even with a full confession, a judge set the bail so low he was able to get out of jail and go on the run. Vanderwal quickly found refuge south of the U.S. border, eventually settling in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, which is where Lerma found him, almost a year and a half after police let a confessed pedophile walk free.