Category Archives: Fail!

UK student leaders reject “partisan” anti-Semitism report | The Electronic Intifada

In an open letter, the student leaders condemn an influential parliamentary committee’s “selective and partisan” report on anti-Semitism in the UK, which was published on Sunday.The NUS itself has also criticized the report’s politicized approach to anti-Semitism.The student leaders say that the Home Affairs Select Committee’s report is an attempt “to delegitimize NUS and discredit Malia Bouattia as its president.”The parliamentary committee is dominated by the governing Conservative Party.Despite admitting there is no evidence that Labour under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn is any more prone to anti-Semitism than any other party, the report overwhelmingly focuses on the Labour Party.Corbyn on Sunday hit back that the select committee was guilty of “politicizing anti-Semitism” and neglecting to combat it in the Conservative Party.VilificationThe report has also come in for flak over its call to outlaw criticism of Zionism, Israel’s official ideology.First published Sunday night, the open letter has now garnered the signatures of almost 400 student leaders.The select committee’s report claims that Bouattia’s characterization of the University of Birmingham as an outpost of Zionism “smacks of outright racism.”In a 2011 blog post, Bouattia wrote that the leadership of the university’s Jewish society was “dominated by Zionist activists.”The open letter demands a “revised report that is impartial” and the retraction of what it says are false statements about NUS policy on campus anti-Semitism, “along with an apology to those who have been vilified by the inaccuracies and partisan biases it contains.”The report includes a large section on anti-Semitism in UK universities, which mostly focuses on Bouattia.It criticizes her record as a campaigner for Palestinian rights, saying her “choice of language” suggests “a worrying disregard for her duty to represent all sections of the student population and promote balanced and respectful debate.”Bouattia, an advocate of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, has faced attack from right-wing media and Israel lobby groups since she was elected NUS president in April.Singled outIn their open letter, the student leaders say they are “alarmed” at how Bouattia “is being singled out for her views on Israel by the [Home Affairs Select Committee] in its report, and depicted as the source of anti-Semitism in higher education.”On Sunday, an NUS spokesperson said the report “fails to address the reality for students” and that it was “partial and inaccurate in relation to NUS work in tackling anti-Semitism.”Bouattia welcomed parts of the report, saying that its “data on increasing anti-Semitism and targeting of the Jewish community is deeply concerning.”She affirmed that “there is no place for anti-Semitism in the student movement.”The student leaders’ letter said that the report’s focus on the Labour Party and the NUS “casts doubt upon its authors’ intentions.”They reject the parliamentary committee’s recommendation suggesting that “legitimate criticism of Zionism … be considered as hate-crimes by the government, effectively equating them with anti-Semitism.”“Zionism is a political ideology that continues to express itself through the actions of the state of Israel. It is one that is held or rejected by both Jewish people and non-Jewish people,” the student leaders state. “As with all political ideologies, it should be open to discussion, scrutiny and debate.”

Source: UK student leaders reject “partisan” anti-Semitism report | The Electronic Intifada

Donald Trump’s Defiance Is Seen as ‘Colossal Mistake’ That Threatens U.S. Image – The New York Times – For his ego, he is willing to sell out the US!

“What many if not most foreigners admire about us, about the United States, is the durability of our democracy and the fact that we alternate power,” Mr. Burns said. “It’s how we are fundamentally different from Russia and China, and it gives us an enormous advantage.”Mr. Burns, who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president, called Mr. Trump’s remarks a flagrant violation of American democratic traditions. “I don’t think we’ve had a serious national leader say that since the Confederate leaders of 1860 who refused to accept the election of Lincoln,” he said.William M. Daley, a former White House chief of staff who was the chairman of Al Gore’s campaign during the 2000 standoff in Florida, said Mr. Trump seemed indifferent to the possibility that his words might weaken trust in the American government, at home and overseas.Mr. Daley said the Gore team had been cautious not to say anything during the Florida recount that might cripple the next president’s legitimacy, to the point that other Democrats criticized them for being overly cautious. Mr. Trump, he said, was taking the opposite approach.“He really has no appreciation for our history, which most of the world looks at with great admiration, as opposed to some banana republic,” Mr. Daley said. On election night, Mr. Daley said, “he could be tweeting at 3 in the morning and trying to undercut the new administration coming in.”

Source: Donald Trump’s Defiance Is Seen as ‘Colossal Mistake’ That Threatens U.S. Image – The New York Times

Argentinian Women Take to the Streets in the Thousands to Protest the Murder of a 16-year-old Girl – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Women wore black and left workplaces for an hour at midday on Wednesday, “in mourning for all of the dead women, all of the women killed simply for being women, ” as one Ni Una Menos activist described it. They had previously organized on social media under hashtags like #NiUnaMenos (“Not one less” indicating that every day one more woman’s life is lost to violence) and #MiercolesNegro (BlackWednesday).The Argentinian women marching in black are also reminiscent of the victorious Polish women’s protests earlier this month that overturned the government’s ridiculous proposal to ban abortion.The nation-wide protest follows a series of women’s protests, since the march on 3rd June 2015 for the death of fourteen-year-old Chiara Paez and recently, in Rosario, demanding abortion rights. Argentinian President Mauricio Macri has proposed a national plan to combat violence against women in July this year — including measures like a hotline for abuse victims, monitoring of abusers, and shelters for women. Activists have said that this may be a beginning but have astutely placed the focus of the problem as that of machismo (an aggravated masculinity), ingrained into the cultural fabric of Latin America. A woman is murdered every 31 hours in Argentina as many reports note. According to the Secretariat of Human Rights, nineteen women and girls have been murdered in the first eighteen days of October. As in India, Argentinian activists are asking, is violent crime against women on the rise or is it being reported and protested more?

Source: Argentinian Women Take to the Streets in the Thousands to Protest the Murder of a 16-year-old Girl – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

CDC report: STDs reached all-time high in 2015 | CIDRAP – As with TB, you do not take STDs for granted because men forget too easy and have too high a delusion rating.

“Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are curable, but the new numbers make it clear that many Americans are not getting the preventive services they need,” Donnica Smalls, MA, a health communications specialist with the CDC, told CIDRAP News. “We know that this is the second year in a row that all three reportable STDs have increased substantially.”Researchers called the trends “alarming,” especially because young people ages 15 to 24 were the most likely to report new gonorrhea (50% of all infections) and chlamydia (65%) infections in 2015.”We have reached a decisive moment for the nation,” said Jonathan Mermin, MD, MPH, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, in a CDC press release. “STD rates are rising, and many of the country’s systems for preventing STDs have eroded. We must mobilize, rebuild and expand services—or the human and economic burden will continue to grow.”

Source: CDC report: STDs reached all-time high in 2015 | CIDRAP

CDC highlights high-risk Zika areas in South Florida | CIDRAP – not going away – wait till next spring for a major outbreak in the Gulf States

Almost 900 US pregnant women infectedIt its weekly Zika case update today the CDC said infections have been reported in 21 more pregnant women in the continental United States, putting the total at 899. The US territories reported 121 more illnesses in pregnant women, boosting its total to 1,927, most of them from Puerto Rico.The number of Zika-affected pregnancies in the states remained at 25 live births and 5 pregnancy losses, and the CDC has not yet posted the latest totals from the territories.For Zika-infected travelers, 71 more cases were reported from US states, bringing the total to 3,878. The CDC subtracted 1 sexual transmission case from its total, putting that number at 32, and added 1 more Zika-related Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) case, making 14 so far.US territories reported 1,443 more local infections, boosting the total to 27,314 illnesses so far, about 99% in hard-hit Puerto Rico. The number of GBS complications held steady at 40.

Source: CDC highlights high-risk Zika areas in South Florida | CIDRAP

Zika virus found in Florida blood bank, mosquitoes | CIDRAP

Despite increased surveillance, spraying, and testing, Florida is still experiencing signs of widening Zika virus transmission, based on positive blood bank samples and detection of another positive mosquito pool.Also, Public Health England found Asian Tiger mosquito eggs in southeast England, a first for that country.Pool, blood bank detectionsAccording to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, an eighth pool of mosquitoes has tested positive for Zika virus in Miami Beach, one of two active transmission zones in Miami-Dade County. The positive sample was from a trap located at 1236 Drexel Ave in Miami Beach.Despite testing 5,400 mosquito samples across the state, all eight positive traps have come from Miami Beach. According to an online statement, the department said “Miami-Dade County’s Mosquito Control team will continue to conduct inspections to reduce mosquito breeding and perform spray treatments as necessary in a minimum of 200-yard radius around the trap location.”In addition to the positive mosquito pool, a Seattle Times story yesterday confirmed that Zika virus had been found in a few units of donated blood in Florida. The Food and Drug Administration confirmed this discovery but did not say how many units had been detected.In July, blood donations stopped in Broward and Miami-Dade counties until Zika testing began. Earlier this year, it was estimated that 1% of all blood donations in Puerto Rico were positive for Zika virus, and many have suggested that a similar trend will be seen in Florida.In August, FDA officials urged at-risk states (Florida, Texas) to begin testing blood bank donations for Zika virus.

Source: Zika virus found in Florida blood bank, mosquitoes | CIDRAP

Inside Donald Trump’s echo chamber of conspiracies, grievances and vitriol – The Washington Post

In the presidential campaign’s home stretch, Donald Trump is fully inhabiting his own echo chamber. The Republican nominee has turned inward, increasingly isolated from the country’s mainstream and leaders of his own party, and determined to rouse his most fervent supporters with dire warnings that their populist movement could fall prey to dark and collusive forces.This is a campaign right out of Breitbart, the incendiary conservative website run until recently by Stephen K. Bannon, now the Trump campaign’s chief executive — and it is an act of retaliation.A turbulent few weeks punctuated by allegations of sexual harassment have left Trump trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in nearly every swing state. Trump’s gamble is that igniting his army of working-class whites could do more to put him in contention than any sort of broad, tempered appeal to undecided voters.The execution has been volatile. Since announcing last week that “the shackles have been taken off me,” Trump, bolstered by allies on talk radio and social media, has been creating an alternate reality — one full of innuendo about Clinton, tirades about the unfair news media and prophecies of Trump’s imminent triumph.Donald Trump’s long list of conspiracy theories Play Video2:52Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes there’s a global conspiracy to stop him from becoming president – but it’s not the first time he’s pushed unfounded theories. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)The candidate once omnipresent across the “mainstream media” these days largely limits his interviews to the safe harbor of the opinion shows on Fox News, and most of them are with Sean Hannity, a Trump supporter and informal counselor.[Trump says groping allegations are part of a global conspiracy to help Clinton]Many Republicans see the Trump campaign’s latest incarnation as a mirror into the psyche of their party’s restive base: pulsating with grievance and vitriol, unmoored from conservative orthodoxy, and deeply suspicious of the fast-changing culture and the consequences of globalization.

Source: Inside Donald Trump’s echo chamber of conspiracies, grievances and vitriol – The Washington Post

Fox News Host Turns Against Network & GOP LIVE On Air: ‘I’m Done!’ (VIDEO)

 

Indicating Ben Carson as one of the worst offenders, Perino said that she was furious with them defending Donald Trump’s long history of sexually assaulting and harassing women. Recently, a number of women have complained that the Republican nominee has displayed sexually aggressive behavior toward them, while tapes of Donald Trump bragging about molesting female acquaintances have been released, making unseemly remarks about underage girls, and admitting that he was a sexual predator have come to light in recent weeks. The Republican nominee settled a sexual harassment suit filed by Jill Harth back in 1997, but other women have come forward recently, including one that claimed that Donald Trump raped her when she was 13 years old.After two of the other panel members joked that her mic was going to be cut off because of these statements, Perino said:‘Yeah, because women should be seen and not heard, apparently.‘After 20 years of defending these guys, done.’

Source: Fox News Host Turns Against Network & GOP LIVE On Air: ‘I’m Done!’ (VIDEO)

Newsweek proves that WikiLeaks is leaking phony “Hillary Clinton emails” to try to hurt her

Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald was in the process of figuring out that the key email in question didn’t really come from Blumenthal. How did Eichenwald figure it out? He realized that the email attributed to Blumenthal was actually something that he himself had written. In other words WikiLeaks took a journalist’s words that were critical of Hillary Clinton and falsified them to make it appear that those words had come from within the Clinton camp itself. This represents absolutely proof that WikiLeaks is in fact leaking phony “Hillary Clinton emails” in an attempt to make her look bad. Or as Eichenwald puts it, “WikiLeaks is compromised.”

Source: Newsweek proves that WikiLeaks is leaking phony “Hillary Clinton emails” to try to hurt her

Trump Finds Self-Professed Child Pimp To Refute Airplane Groping Claim: Gothamist

Trump campaign has found a man who has refuted Jessica Leeds’s account of Trump groping her on an airplane: Anthony Gilberthorpe. Gilberthorpe is perhaps best known for claiming to have pimped underage boys to members of the British government in the 1980s. There are 23 days until Election Day. According to Gilberthorpe, who told the Post he was in first class with Trump and Leeds during the flight, Trump didn’t touch Leeds. Gilberthorpe claims Leeds confided to him that she wanted to marry Donald Trump, which she allegedly told him when Trump got up to go to the bathroom after she had spent the flight being shrilly flirtatious. What? That’s a thing, I guess. As far as any kind of corroborating evidence that he saw all of this, Gilberthorpe offered up his “excellent memory,” which allowed him to recall the events he claims to have witnessed but not the year they took place—he said the flight happened either in 1980 or in 1981. Gilberthorpe’s claims also could contradict a Trump claim that he hadn’t met his accusers.

Source: Trump Finds Self-Professed Child Pimp To Refute Airplane Groping Claim: Gothamist