Tag Archives: WorldNews

Fascist fight clubs: how white nationalists use MMA as a recruiting tool

Bust them up!

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Far-right groups across Europe and North America are using mixed martial arts to swell their numbers, spread their ideology and fight their enemies

“You will not replace us.”

This was one of the slogans chanted during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on the night of 11 August 2017. Approximately 100 young white men – most of whom brandished tiki torches to intimidate watchers and light up their path – marched through the streets in scenes reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan rallies that once blighted the southern Unites States. By 10pm that evening, the group of white supremacists — now chanting “Jews will not replace us” along with the Nazi phrase “blood and soil” – had reached the University of Virginia campus, where counter-protesters awaited them with banners and slogans of their own. By the end of the weekend one of the counter-protestors would be killed, struck by a car.

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ICC will continue ‘undeterred’ after US threats

When you think you are above the law and you’ve broken it – you deny it! Foul!

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International criminal court issues statement after US national security adviser John Bolton threatened sanctions

The international criminal court has said that it will “continue to do its work undeterred”, a day after US national security adviser, John Bolton, threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigated US activities in Afghanistan.

The Hague-based court said in a statement it was an independent and impartial institution with the backing of 123 countries.

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Geena Davis joins women in film to give Toronto a reality check

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Thelma and Louise star was among the actors and directors who shared tactics at the Toronto film festival for overcoming gender inequality

On the third day of the Toronto film festival (Tiff), business appears to be booming. The queues for the press and industry screenings speak to that. But a few feet from the main venues, a section of John Street has been converted into what looks more like a music festival than a trade convention. There’s artificial grass covering the tarmac, and a stage where singer Shakura S’Aida is leading the crowd in a chant of “use your voice, use your voice”.

The event is a rally in support of women in film, part of Tiff’s Share Her Journey initiative, which was set up in 2017. The object of Share Her Journey, Tiff executive director Michele Maheux explained in her introduction, was not just to “celebrate and lift up women everywhere” but to find “solutions to the gender parity problems that are rampant in the film industry.” Well, she shrugs. “What a difference a year makes.”

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‘Jail juvenile offenders until middle age’, Trump health secretary argued in 1991 memo

Paul Joseph Goebbels would love this guy!

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Alex Azar rejected notion that juvenile who committed a crime was ‘salvageable human’

Donald Trump’s health secretary, who defended the administration’s child separation policy as “charity”, once argued in a private paper that repeat juvenile offenders cannot be rehabilitated and ought to be jailed until they reach middle age, according to a memo obtained by the Guardian.

A 1991 legal memo written by Alex Azar, a former drug industry executive who is now secretary of health and human services (HHS), rejected the notion that a juvenile who committed a crime was a “salvageable human” who could be treated rather than punished.

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Trump attack on ICC is the unacceptable face of US exceptionalism

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Under the guise of a battle for sovereignty, America aims to end international justice

The title of John Bolton’s speech in Washington – “Protecting American constitutionalism and sovereignty from international threats” – sounded innocuous enough, if a little pompous.

But its text represents the Trump administration’s most devastating and unrestrained attack to date on the global rules-based order and its legal flagship, the international criminal court.

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Russian trolls’ tweets cited in more than 100 UK news articles

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Posts from accounts identified in June add to those previously spotted in British media

UK news organisations have cited tweets from Russian trolls more than 100 times, a Guardian investigation has found, in stories about topics including Donald Trump, Donald Glover and Lena Dunham.

In June the US Congress released details of 1,000 accounts that Twitter believes were run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-backed misinformation operation based in St Petersburg, adding to more than 2,000 accounts the company had already identified.

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Serena Williams’s treatment shows how hard it is to be a black woman at work | Carys Afoko

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The fact that the tennis player manages to overcome the discrimination she faces every day is an inspiration

When I have a bad day at work, I think of Serena Williams. I tell myself that if she can do her job then I can do mine. To be clear, I am not a professional athlete – I struggle to walk up more than one flight of stairs without losing my breath. And, no, I’m not the mother of a small and adorable child, I just about keep my houseplants alive most weeks. The thing Williams and I have in common is that we are black women who work for a living. And being a black woman at work comes with a specific set of challenges.

Related: Serena Williams was right about women’s treatment but wrong on Saturday | Kevin Mitchell

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