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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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Pocket Knife

Police commander blames lack of genital mutilation convictions on 'nuances'

female genital mutilation
© Getty Images
The police commander tasked with tackling female genital mutilation has excused the lack of convictions for the crime by saying it has "many nuances".

Ivan Balchatchet, the National Police Chiefs' Council's lead on 'honour' violence, female genital mutilation, and forced marriage, was responding to a letter from Jonathan Nicholas, a writer who served as a frontline police officer for 30 years, asking why there has yet to be a single conviction for FGM despite tens of thousands of recorded cases since it was criminalised in 1985.

"Thank you for your letters received dated 10th October 2017 and 12th January 2018 [sic]," wrote Balhatchet.

Comment: Seems like a pretty uncomplicated crime, actually. If someone insists on this horrific and barbaric crime, they're arrested and charged. Not seeing a whole lot of nuance. See also:


Jet5

Weapons of mass migration: 77% of Belgians 'no longer feel at home'

Majority Belgians no longer feel at home
© LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/AFP/Getty Images
The massive rise in the proportion of Muslim migrants in the country has resulted in two-thirds of Belgians feeling their nation is being "increasingly invaded", according to a new study.

This sentiment was especially marked among respondents to the detailed survey aged 65 and over, 84 per cent of whom likened the influx of migrants and refugees to an invasion.

Overall, two-thirds of the 4,734 people polled believe there are "too many immigrants in Belgium", while 77 per cent agreed with the statement, "Today we no longer feel at home as we did before [mass migration]".

Bizarro Earth

SWAT team kill 72yo Grandma during cannabis raid on her son

72yo Grandma Shot Dead as SWAT Raided Her Home To Arrest Her Son For Marijuana
Michael Anthony Livingston, 50, was suspected of selling a plant that is legal in some form in well over half the country. Becuase the other half of the country still violently and callously kidnaps, cages, and kills people for this plant, however, Livingston is in jail and his mother is now dead.

Geraldine Townsend, 72, was shot and killed this week as a Bartlesville SWAT team executed a search warrant to bust Livingston for the alleged sale of marijuana.

When the heavily armed and likely militarized men kicked in the door to their home, Townsend, likely not knowing who her home invaders were, picked up a pellet gun and fired off two pellets. A Bartlesville officer then shot and killed her.

Green Light

N.Korea WILL send team as promised to prep for Olympics in South

Demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas
© Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
South Korean soldiers work on a barricade on the Grand Unification Bridge which leads to the truce village Panmunjom, south of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, South Korea, January 19, 2018.
Pyongyang has promised to send a delegation to South Korea on Sunday to prepare for a trip by an art troupe during the Winter Olympics. North Korea had raised eyebrows when it abruptly cancelled the entire visit late on Friday.

Pyongyang said it would send its seven-member team to check the venues for its proposed art performances in Seoul and Gangnueng, on the east coast of South Korea, some 260 kilometers east of the capital, Seoul's Unification Ministry said in a statement on Saturday, as cited by Yonhap news agency.

According to the ministry, Pyongyang's team would use a western land route and stay for two days.

The South Korean government has agreed to the visit on Sunday, Reuters reported the ministry saying.

Snowflake Cold

Texas shatters record for winter electricity use - grid manages without rolling blackouts

Snow covers Corpus Christi in Texas on December 8 2017. First time in 13 years. via
© Instagram
Snow covers Corpus Christi in Texas on December 8 2017. First time in 13 years
Bitter cold across Texas brought a new winter record for peak electricity use, ERCOT, the state's independent electric grid operator announced Wednesday morning.

At one point, Texans were using 65,731 megawatts, blowing past the previous record by nearly 5 percent. Multiple records were set overnight as temperatures plunged statewide, but the new peak arrived between 7 and 8 a.m.

The peak use was significantly higher than the Electric Reliability Council of Texas' projection of 61,068 megawatts for a peak this winter. It fell short of the "extreme" peak projection by just 1,044 megawatts.

Overnight, the Dallas area recorded a low of 13 degrees, well below the average low of 34. While frigid, that was still far from the record low of 2 degrees in 1930.

Cross

Judgment Day: Texas judge tells jury God told him defendant was innocent

jack robison
A state district judge in Comal County said God told him to intervene in jury deliberations to sway jurors to return a not guilty verdict in the trial of a Buda woman accused of trafficking a teen girl for sex.

Judge Jack Robison apologized to jurors for the interruption, but defended his actions by telling them "when God tells me I gotta do something, I gotta do it," according to the Herald-Zeitung in New Braunfels.

The jury went against the judge's wishes, finding Gloria Romero-Perez guilty of continuous trafficking of a person and later sentenced her to 25 years in prison. They found her not guilty of a separate charge of sale or purchase of a child.

Robison, who also presides in Hays and Caldwell counties, did not respond to a message left with his court coordinator, Steve Thomas, who said the case is still pending. Robison is scheduled to return to the bench in Comal County on Jan. 31.

The Herald-Zeitung reported that Robison recused himself before the trial's sentencing phase and was replaced by Judge Gary Steele. The defendant's attorney asked for a mistrial, but was denied.

Map

Propaganda: Why African Americans are moving to Africa

Muhammida el-Muhajir
© Muhammida el-Muhajir
Muhammida el-Muhajir says as an African American in the US, she felt she could 'never win'
They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return.


Comment: How many is many?


A new wave of African Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States.


Comment: Hardly.


From Senegal and Ghana to The Gambia, communities are emerging in defiance of conventional wisdom that Africa is a continent everyone is trying to leave.


Comment: Not everyone, just hundreds of millions.


It is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 African Americans live in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. They are teachers in small towns in the west or entrepreneurs in the capital and say they that even though living in Ghana is not always easy, they feel free and safe.


Comment: And about 51,000 Americans live and work in Tokyo. So what?


Take Muhammida el-Muhajir, a digital marketer from New York City, who left her job to move to Accra.

She says she moved, because despite her education and experience, she was always made to feel like a second-class citizen. Moving was an opportunity to fulfil her potential and avoid being targeted by racial violence.

She told Al Jazeera her story:

Comment: For those so inclined, it's probably a good move for them to move to a community or country that is ethnically conspecific for them.


Target

#MeToo: Sex vs. Political Correctness?

man implied poor sexual performance
The Left has some reason to worry that the newfound solicitude for sexual propriety spread by #MeToo might overflow the traditional bounds of political-correctness-as-weapon.

No different from demands regarding race and identity politics generally, the strictures of political correctness concerning sex do not define rights and wrongs. Rather, they claim authority to suppress such evils as the powerful may impute to their enemies. They also serve the ruling class's war against Western Civilization. But current demands for "sensitivity" for women's sense of sexual self-worth, rather than merely enhancing the power of better-connected people over less-connected ones, might actually lead America to consider what proper or improper sexual behavior is.

Neither P.C.'s partisan nature nor its corrosion of our civilization are in doubt. Elsewhere, I showed that Communists originated the term to distinguish between the "correctness" of what serves the Party's interest from that which is factually correct - and that the Party's paramount long-term interest lies in overcoming the reality that human beings perceive through the senses and reason with the Party's "correct" version thereof.

Comment: See also:


Heart - Black

Vegas cops say shooter Paddock possessed child porn, new 'person of interest' discovered in case

stephen paddock vegas shooting
© OFF / Agence France-Presse
Stephen Paddock, the gunman who killed 58 people and injured over 500 during an open air concert on October 01, 2017 in Las Vegas.
A new person of interest has been identified in the case of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, but authorities insist he acted alone in the massacre.

On Friday, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) released an 81-page preliminary investigative report on Paddock that reveals a new person of interest in the case. However, investigations are ongoing and many details are yet to be confirmed. The person of interest is not Paddock's girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who authorities had previously been looking into.

The file also contains "disturbing" internet searches for SWAT tactics and photos of Paddock's deceased body surrounded by the arsenal of weapons he allegedly used during the shooting. The FBI also found "several hundred images of child porn" after scanning Paddock's computer. It further revealed google searches for other potential public venue targets, ballistics and questions such as, "How tall is Mandalay Bay."


Comment: Wait a minute. How did they find that information? Las Vegas shooter's laptop found at scene is missing its hard drive


Comment: Four months on and the stench of an FBI cover-up is as strong as ever.


Eye 2

'Border protection unit' to prevent another refugee crisis - Austrian Interior Minister

Refugees
© Michael Dalder / Reuters
Migrants stand in queue before passing Austrian-German border in Wegscheid in Austria, near Passau.
Austria's new interior minister is planning to introduce a "border protection unit," stating that scenarios like the 2015 refugee crisis "cannot be allowed to happen" again.

Herbert Kickl of the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) told Tiroler Tageszeitung newspaper that he wants to introduce a police standby force, which will be able to react and secure border crossings within a few hours. The force is also to carry out identity checks.

Kickl added that the monitoring existing right now is effective, though everything should be done to prevent a repetition of the 2015 refugee crisis.

Comment: See also: Austrian government calls for "restrictive asylum policy" amid growth in crime committed by "foreigners"