Category Archives: Fail!

Netanyahu backs calls for convicted Israeli soldier to be pardoned | World news | The Guardian – He cannot see it as a criminal case outside of politics.

The rare case of an active serviceman being charged had been seen as a test of Israeli military justice.It also exposed deep divisions in Israeli society, not only between left and right, but between the Israeli military’s most senior officers – who pushed for the prosecution – and nationalist political figures, who have campaigned for Azaria’s acquittal.AdvertisementOn Tuesday, however, the Israeli military’s chief of staff pushed back at the most recent campaign slogan of Azaria’s supporters, which claims the soldier was “the child of us all”.Speaking at a conference in Herziliya, Gen Gadi Eisenkot warned that the attempt to portray Azaria as immature and confused “undermines the most fundamental values that we look for in our soldiers”.Among the pages of commentary in the Israeli media and on social media during the trial, perhaps most bizarre was the decision by Makor Rishon’s Profile magazine to declare Azaria one of its men of the year for “sparking the stormiest argument in Israeli society”, complete with a cover picture of the accused soldier posing with a gun.The video of the killing was filmed by a Palestinian volunteer for the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which accused the security forces of “routine whitewashing” in a statement after the verdict.“The fact that one soldier was convicted today does not exonerate the Israeli military law-enforcement system from its routine whitewashing of cases in which security forces kill or injure Palestinians with no accountability,” B’Tselem said.“The exception of a much-publicised trial, marked by a rare instance of video documentation, is not enough to change this norm.”

Source: Netanyahu backs calls for convicted Israeli soldier to be pardoned | World news | The Guardian

Republican senators introduce bill to move US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem | World news | The Guardian – Armageddon 2.0 bill or Armageddon deja vu? Has a whole lot to do with campaign fund raising than with any care for Israel, Palestine, US or you and me.

Although the US Congress passed a law ordering the move to Jerusalem in 1995, every president since then has exercised a six-month waiver to prevent it taking place, usually citing “national security concerns”. Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and peace negotiator, warned last month that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would result in the “destruction of the peace process as a whole”.

Source: Republican senators introduce bill to move US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem | World news | The Guardian

Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND-  “Being a billionaire and inciting greed and status seeking behavior of all who come close can ruin any serious effort to understand and control malaria.”

The two technologies could be “transformational,” said Dan Strickman, a senior program officer at the foundation. The next challenge, however, will be to identify the approaches that work best in combination with existing medical treatments so as to shrink the footprint of the disease over the next ten to fifteen years, Karl Malamud-Roam, manager of Rutgers University’s public health pesticides program, told the Seattle Times.

Source: Gates Foundation Project to Eliminate Malaria Focuses on Insecticides | News | PND

Finding out how human behavior facilitates the expansion of growth of malaria carrying mosquitoes would cost less but would show that industrial farming and deforestation are the chief facilitators of malaria’s continual comebacks.

Online Idiots Continue To Harass Denise Huskins, Vallejo Woman Accused Of Faking Kidnapping That Was Not Fake: SFist

Ignorant trolls who neither keep up with the news nor have enough to occupy them in life continue to send harassing messages to Denise Huskins, the woman at the center of the so-called Gone Girl kidnapping case in Vallejo that happened nearly two years ago, and calling her a liar. Huskins revealed in a Facebook post New Year’s Day one such message from a man named Jeffrey McFadden, a complete stranger who, all this time later, is calling her an “ignorant slut,” telling her she’s “not as pretty as u think” and threatening violence against her, because he assumes her story remains a falsehood.”I don’t post this for pity,” she writes. “I post this to increase awareness,” and she goes on to describe how this message sent her into a physical PTSD response, and “I am thoroughly exhausted, every inch of my body is tired from the fit of terror it was battling.” “All I did was survive, and I was criminalized for it.”The case from March 2015 was bizarre enough to make national headlines, and Vallejo’s own police department was quick to dismiss it as a hoax. Huskins was kidnapped, her boyfriend Aaron Quinn sedated and tied up in their home, and she was then returned to her parents in southern California when the kidnapper had a change of heart, after demanding a strangely small ransom and writing a manifesto to the San Francisco Chronicle. But in fact there was one very mentally ill man, Matthew Muller, who has pleaded guilty in the case, and we’ve known since July of 2015 that the kidnapping was very much real, and that this same man was suspected of committing similar, sexually charged, home-invasion crimes against other Bay Area women.As ABC 7 reports, Muller was scheduled to be sentenced this month, but his sentencing has been postponed to March, exactly two years after the kidnapping. Huskins and Quinn are expected to deliver victims’ impact statements in court.

Source: Online Idiots Continue To Harass Denise Huskins, Vallejo Woman Accused Of Faking Kidnapping That Was Not Fake: SFist

NYPD Investigating Video Of Police Beating Man While Handcuffing Him: Gothamist

Jasmin wrote on Facebook that the man had been in his car following an encounter with the police. She said the officers were “getting ready to pull off” when they changed course, exiting the van and approaching the man.”Granted the man did stick his head out the window and say a few choice words,” she wrote. “But please tell me why the cops got out the van, snatched him out of his car and proceeded to do this to him.””This is exactly why i [sic] hate the police,” she added. “His hands were already tied and he kept hitting the man in the face until bloody. RIDICULOUS!!”

Source: NYPD Investigating Video Of Police Beating Man While Handcuffing Him: Gothamist

Coal Fire, Not Just Iceberg, Doomed the Titanic, a Journalist Claims – The New York Times – Profit, pride, and status seeking drive “news”

David Hill, a former honorary secretary of the British Titanic Society, who has been studying the cause of the sinking since the 1950s, argued that, while the damage caused by the fire to the steel walls protecting the hull may have hastened the disaster, the blaze was not the decisive factor.“When the Titanic hit the iceberg close to midnight on April 14, 1912, it created a 300-foot-long line of damage on the starboard section of the hull, including punctures and gashes, that opened up too many compartments to the sea, so that the weight of the water dragged the bow down so low that the ship eventually sank,” he said. “A fire may have accelerated this. But in my view, the Titanic would have sunk anyways.”He added: “It amazes me how this ship still captures the global imagination. It was not the worst-ever catastrophe at sea. But it is the one everyone remembers.”

White male @JCPENNEY employee assaults a black teenage girl with a headlock | 3CHICSPOLITICO

White male @JCPENNEY employee assaults a black teenage girl with a headlockPosted on January 3, 2017 by SouthernGirl2JC PENNEY, Y’ALL! It’s so damn disturbing.According to reports, the girl was with her family when they were told to leave by the suspect after telling them “they didn’t belong there.”On their way out, the girl knocked over a display as retaliation and the man jumped at her and wrestled her into a headlock.

Source: White male @JCPENNEY employee assaults a black teenage girl with a headlock | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016 “Wonder, how many more have not been identified? And who frequents them?”

A court in the Chilean capital, Santiago, has lengthened by one year sentences already imposed on three Germans found guilty of forming a criminal organization at “Colonia Dignidad,” a German colony located in the Andean foothills.The three men – Kurt Schnellenkamp, Gerhard Mücke and Karl van den Berg – were among the leaders of the commune, now called “Villa Baviera,” where systematic child abuse took place between 1961 and 1997. They have now been sentenced to five years and one day in prison.The 15,000-hectare (37,066-acre) settlement, sealed off from the rest of the world, was also used as a secret detention and torture center for political prisoners during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973-1990. Several opponents of the Pinochet regime were murdered there. Paul Schäfer was arrested in Argentina in 2005The court also handed down similar sentences to former Chilean intelligence agents Fernando Gomez and Pedro Espinoza. Four other defendants were released.”Colonia Dignidad” was founded in 1961 by cult leader Paul Schäfer, an ex-Nazi corporal, who fled Germany for Chile with 250 followers after authorities in his home country began to investigate him for sexual abuse of children.Schäfer was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2006 for his role at the “Colonia Dignidad,” and died in prison in 2010, aged 88.

Source: Chilean court imposes heavier sentences on German cult leaders | News | DW.COM | 31.12.2016

Chile: torturers and murderers are compared with the apostles of Jesus – Red Harvest

Last week Manuel Guerrero Antequera, son of one of the slain, said the former agents “committed the worst crimes, not helped justice, they lowered penalties. They have special jail. Serving sentences and leave us alone. ” On Thursday, hearing parole granted to “Pegasus”, charged that Chile breached international human rights law and again criticized the famous mass. “Some say that such gestures are disinterested, gratuitous, deep and genuine repentance. False, they are pure instrumental rationality. With this action, all terrorist conspiracy that operated from the State in the case Degollados is free. ” The year that the five officers committed this crime, ’85, Manuel was 14. The school from which kidnapped his father, who worked there, it was also his high school: he witnessed the arrest of Manuel father to three meters away and ran after the helicopter monitored the entire operating until the school door. Just the Supreme Court issued the “comply”, the murderer of his father will released.TAGS: CHILE , AGAINST HUMANITY , PAROLES , APOLOGYANTONIA ORELLANA GUARELLOJOURNALIST.-

Source: Chile: torturers and murderers are compared with the apostles of Jesus – Red Harvest

Wish You Would Listen: A Very Short Playlist Because You Missed the Whole Point of Feminism – The Ladies Finger – why are people so afraid?

Obviously, this never happened. The part where Princess Nokia showed up, I mean. But I wish it did, because the other stuff – being asked to leave spaces, or prove my gender, happens all the time.In bathrooms, at airport security checks, at the movie theatre, on our local buses. Everywhere. Friends and family (often self-titled feminists), tell me to “Dress more like a girl. Or at least grow your hair out.” They point to my jeans, my short hair and my beat-up sneakers, and say, “What more do you expect?” This is a playlist for all the people who have offered me snatches of discordant wisdom and jarring insights, and to anyone who relies on gender binaries to question the validity of an individual’s rights and way of life.

Source: Wish You Would Listen: A Very Short Playlist Because You Missed the Whole Point of Feminism – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger