Category Archives: Viva!

Boris Johnson: the clown is crowned as the country burns in hell | Hannah Jane Parkinson

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It’s 33C in London, 0.2% of the nation has spoken and a DUDE has lied his way about bananas and condoms to high office

Well, here we are then. Someone who could easily be rejected as a Guess Who character for looking too ridiculous is now to lead the country. A man whose DNA profile is the exact same as a Bernard Manning joke. A man who mentioned the 20 hustings he had taken part in, approximately 30 seconds after Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis talked of the 16 hustings held.

Related: Boris Johnson elected new Tory leader

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Kirsten Gillibrand Responds to Al Franken New Yorker Piece – She is still right, he is still wrong.

Gillibrand was also critical of Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Al Franken that was published on Monday morning, pointing out that it focused almost solely on Leeann Tweeden, the first woman to come forward with allegations against Franken. “There was really no critical or investigative journalism or reporting on the other seven, and that certainly causes me pause,” Gillibrand said. “He had eight credible allegations against him—two since he was senator, and the eighth one happened to be a congressional staffer.”Will Gillibrand ever have to stop answering questions about Franken? Probably not!“Women are asked to hold accountable their colleagues. The men are not,” Gillibrand said. “Who is being held accountable for Al Franken’s decision to resign? Women senators, including me. It’s outrageous. It’s absurd.”

Source: Kirsten Gillibrand Responds to Al Franken New Yorker Piece

Drug-resistant malaria parasites ‘spreading aggressively’ across south-east Asia

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Up to 80% of the most common carriers of the disease are immune to the most common treatments, researchers find

Drug-resistant forms of malaria-causing parasites are spreading across south-east Asia leading to “alarmingly high” treatment failure rates of frontline medication, researchers have warned.

In twin studies published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, they revealed that in parts of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia up to 80% of the most common malaria parasites were now resistant to the two most common antimalarial drugs.

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The big names in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Black Book’

The “black book” of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier and now-accused child sex trafficker, is a smorgasbord of high-profile, powerful people, including Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and convicted sex assailant and comedian Bill Cosby, Epstein’s former neighbor.

Then there’s supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, Clinton’s daughter Chelsea Clinton, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and John Kerry, late Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, media titan Rupert Murdoch, and movie director Woody Allen, New York magazine notes in a new article detailing the contents of Epstein’s private phone book and private plane’s flight logs.

The article contains summaries of Epstein’s relationships with various well-heeled people whose names appear in those documents including President Donald Trump, who once called Epstein a “terrific guy” in an interview with New York, and Bill Clinton, who traveled multiple times on Epstein’s plane.

Trump’s first wife, Ivana, is in the book, as is his third wife, Melania, and his daughter, Ivanka, currently senior advisor to the president.

Epstein’s address book originally was published in 2015 by the defunct news site Gawker, after its content was revealed in a court case.

Epstein Contacts- A to Z

“Along with the logs of Epstein’s private plane, released in 2015, the book paints a picture of a man deeply enmeshed in the highest social circles,” New York says in its article.

New York notes that a woman whose name appears on flight manifests of Epstein’s jet — “including Bill Clinton’s trip across Africa, and who wound up working at the Clinton Foundation” — is one of five women whom Epstein recommended as an assistant for Charlie Rose, the then host of a PBS talk show.

Rose ended up hiring three of Epstein’s recommendations, the magazine reported.

One of those women, who later was among more than two dozen who accused Rose of sexual misconduct, was quoted by New York as saying, “I was being offered up for abuse” by Epstein.

Rose in 2017 lost his PBS gig, along with posts at “CBS This Morning” and “60 Minutes,” on the heels of the misconduct allegations.

Epstein, a registered sex offender, was arrested in early July on federal charges that he trafficked dozens of underage girls, who traveled to his huge New York City townhouse and Palm Beach, Florida, mansion, where he alleged sexually abused them during purported “massage” sessions from 2002 through 2005.

The 66-year-old, who pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges in 2008 in Florida, has pleaded not guilty in the current case, for which he remains held without bond in a federal jail in Manhattan.

Trump and Clinton have distanced themselves from Epstein since his latest arrest.

Trump has said “I was not a fan” of Epstein.

Clinton’s spokesman has said he has not spoken with Epstein in “well over a decade,” and that “President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”

Rose’s spokesman told New York that Rose only learned about Epstein’s abuse years after the recommendations of assistants, when Epstein pleaded guilty in the Florida case.

‘Our whole lives are here. Where can we go?’

Spending the night with Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, hoping to stop the bulldozers coming to demolish their homes.

By A. Daniel Roth

Armed Israeli soldiers storm into a Palestinian home in Sur Baher, East Jerusalem ahead of the building's demolition, early the morning of July 22, 2019. (A. Daniel Roth)

Armed Israeli soldiers storm into a Palestinian home in Sur Baher, East Jerusalem ahead of the building’s demolition, early the morning of July 22, 2019. (A. Daniel Roth)

I am awakened by the “thud thud thud” of someone pounding and then the sound stops. It feels like I am waking up after only five minutes of sleep. Each of my eyes feels like it weighs 10 pounds. I can’t remember where I am, but the sound is unmistakably a fist hitting a door. I hear rustling somewhere near me and realize I’m in a dark room, on a mattress on the floor surrounded by other people.

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I am in a room with 20 or 30 other activists. We have been sleeping for a few short hours in an office in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sur Baher, which straddles the Green Line between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. We are here because the local community is facing a number of home demolitions.

I jump to my feet. The knocks were from a Palestinian resident sent to wake us up when the army arrives. The activists sleeping over in Sur Baher had come from Palestine, Israel and around the world. Many of us are Jews from diaspora communities and members of All That’s Left: Anti-Occupation Collective.

We are all there because in prior years, activists, organizers, and community members have worked to build partnerships across national and ideological divides. We are there because when the Israeli High Court ruled in June that a number of homes could be destroyed in the Wadi Hummus area of Sur Baher, those relationships sprung to life. Invited and led by the residents of Sur Baher, folks began to organize.

One of several buildings slated for demolition in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher, July 22, 2019. (Emily Glick)

One of several buildings slated for demolition in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher, July 22, 2019. (Emily Glick)

It’s 3 a.m. and my heart sinks. All I can think about is what I am about to walk into. I follow others down the stairs, out the door, and into the cold summer morning, wondering how I would cope if my home was permanently under threat of demolition.

Israeli demolitions in East Jerusalem are fairly common, but these homes happen to be located in Area A of the occupied West Bank, under full Palestinian civil and security control according to the Oslo Accords. Israeli authorities say the demolitions are being carried out for “security reasons,” claiming the buildings were built too close to the separation barrier. It’s a well-worn excuse.

The beeping of trucks and the revving of engines moving heavy machinery are distinct in the distance. We move swiftly down toward those sounds that fill the darkness at the foot of an unfinished, multi-story building. This is just one among several buildings slated to be demolished. We weave past Israeli army jeeps and Civil Administration pick-up trucks and arrive at a line of police officers, some masked — all of them armed — telling us to stop and move back a few meters here or several steps there. It’s all seemingly arbitrary, but there is little we can do.

Some of us head off to another home after getting word that a family, at risk of losing their home today, wants others there to be there with them. Their hope? To stop or slow the impending demolition of their home.

A small group of us enter quietly with nods and greetings in Arabic. We sit in the living room while the couple who live there sit in their bedroom. I imagine they are feeling shattered.

A Palestinian family looks outside the window as soldiers and militarized police arrive to East Jerusalem's Sur Baher area to carry out slated demolitions, July 22, 2019. (Emily Glick)

A Palestinian family looks outside the window as soldiers and militarized police arrive to East Jerusalem’s Sur Baher area to carry out slated demolitions, July 22, 2019. (Emily Glick)

Thud. Thud. Thud.

This time the children and teenagers of the house have come to wait together. The next hour is filled with the sounds of activists planning, kids learning English words, coffee, and prayers. According to rumors, nine busloads of soldiers and militarized police are being brought to the area to secure the massive number of demolitions set to take place.

Still, there is more time for activist plans, children’s games, and contemplation of how these young uniformed people can allow themselves to take peoples’ homes away from them.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It’s now around 5 a.m. and the light is creeping in. The banging on the door feels different this time. The patriarch of the house opens the door and uniformed, armed police officers flood the apartment. They take stock of the family, activists, and cameras staring at them and proceed to detail their plans to clear the house of all inhabitants.

The patriarch of the house sits down and when told to leave answers in Hebrew: “You can demolish the building over our heads. Our whole lives are here. Where can we go?”

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The sleepless night pads my emotions. I am in the main room of the apartment surrounded by armed Israeli officers and a moment later I am being pushed and pulled out to the street. There, families, neighbors, and activists – some with bloodied faces – gather behind the line of armed personnel to watch as the demolitions go on.

Some move back quietly. Others continue to yell and cry. I’m exhausted and thinking about what to do next, about the losses endured by those families and that community. I’m thinking about the fact that our movement is not winning yet, but we are most definitely growing.

Daniel Roth is an educator and journalist based in Jerusalem. His writing and photography is at allthesedays.org. Follow him on Twitter: @adanielroth.

The post ‘Our whole lives are here. Where can we go?’ appeared first on +972 Magazine.

America’s red scare is back. And it’s racially tinged | Kate Aronoff

Deja vu all over again – FBI tried to discredit Martin Luther King as commie! When you’re right old white supremacy folks claim red! Even while their leader has sold out to old commie spy master Putin!

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Condemnation of Democratic congresswomen is xenophobic, dangerous and flat-out false

The Republican party has come out swinging against socialism – a strategy sure to be a mainstay of its 2020 campaigns. “Our opposition to our socialist colleagues,” the Wyoming senator Liz Cheney claimed, referring to the congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, “has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race. It has to do with the content of their policies. They are wrong when they attempt to impose the fraud of socialism on the American people. They are wrong when they pursue policies that would steal power from the American people and give that power to the government.”

It’s a bold line coming from the daughter of a man, the former vice-president Dick Cheney, who did more to centralize power in the executive branch than perhaps any other public official in living memory. It’s also a bald-faced lie. Cheney’s diatribe against socialism – like Trump’s racist railing against the same group of progressive freshman congresswomen to “go back” to where they “originally came from” – has a long legacy in American history: it’s called red baiting.

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US ‘not ready’ to stop 2020 meddling, says House intelligence chair – live

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2.59pm BST

The Trump administration named Trump National Doral, the president’s Miami golf club, as a “finalist” location for next year’s G7 meeting. Trump’s properties have featured prominently during his presidency, despite concerns about conflicts of interest.

The meeting is a gathering of leaders of the world’s most powerful economies. Axios reported the administration is nearing a decision after conducting several site surveys for the upcoming meeting.

2.47pm BST

Here is more from House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s interview with Recode:

The tech companies aren’t ready,” Schiff said. “They don’t have, I think, their policies fully thought out yet. The government isn’t ready. We don’t have the technologies yet to be able to detect more sophisticated fakes.”

And the public, by and large, when you bring up ‘deepfake,’ they don’t know what you’re referring to,” he added. “And so we don’t have much time. It’s eight months until the primaries begin to try to prepare the public, prepare ourselves, determine what other steps need to be taken to protect ourselves from this kind of disinformation.”

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