All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

A Saudi Prince’s Fairy Tale

The crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, issues another incredible explanation for the death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Opinion | Let’s Agree Not to Kill One Another – The New York Times

Threatening to kill or rape someone shouldn’t be banal. It should shock everyone who comes across such a threat. And that should go without saying, except that increasingly it doesn’t, not in a world where the president has said that he longed for the days when disruptive protesters were carried away from the scene “on a stretcher.” It’s perversely heartening to see that the apparent murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi seems to have temporarily interrupted business as usual. Such shock and outrage is crucial, because in a world where dissenters are dismembered, there’s no hope for change. The prospect that you’ll be killed for what you say makes discussion essentially impossible. A society in which critics fear death is a society with fewer critics, and hence with fewer chances for change.

Trump says US will withdraw from nuclear arms treaty with Russia

Only doing what he has to to keep his boss happy and records of his money laundering under wraps

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Experts warn of ‘most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s’ as Trump confirms US will leave INF agreement

Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.

Related: Trump says he’d prefer to choose woman as US ambassador to UN

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Miss Marple would demolish in minutes the Saudi story of a fistfight gone wrong | Simon Tisdall | World news | The Guardian

Why did Bin Salman and his officials wait almost two weeks before admitting Khashoggi was dead, if his killing was not deliberate? Why all those staunch denials of involvement and the repeated, on-the-record assertions that Khashoggi had left the consulate unscathed, if they knew all along that he had died? Why has Khashoggi’s body disappeared? If his death was an unintended accident, why was an ambulance not called and the police informed? The Saudi statements offer no clue as to where Khashoggi’s remains may be now. Turkish assertions that he was dismembered, smuggled out of the building in suitcases and buried in a forest near Istanbul will now be more widely accepted.

Source: Miss Marple would demolish in minutes the Saudi story of a fistfight gone wrong | Simon Tisdall | World news | The Guardian

People’s Vote march: thousands set to demand second referendum – live

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More than 100,000 people are expected to gather in London for what organisers hope will be the most important anti-Brexit protest since the referendum

1.11pm BST

Four packed coaches set off at 9am from Birmingham, which voted marginally in favour of Brexit in 2016, to carry people to the march in London.

At 12.30pm they arrived on Park Lane and the passengers, kitted out with EU flags, t-shirts, banners, badges and whistles, immediately swarmed towards the crowd as it inched eastwards towards Westminster.

1.07pm BST

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, will address the crowd later today.

As Mayor, I look out for Londoners. And we need a public vote on Brexit. #peoplesvote #peoplesvotemarch pic.twitter.com/SVYCdpjg9s

London Mayor Sadiq Khan says “politicians can’t be trusted to make the right decision” and calls for the British public to have the final say on the Brexit deal

Read more on the #PeoplesVote march taking place in London today here: https://t.co/yY6k1lkB39 pic.twitter.com/bRLINdhNAV

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