[HOTAIR] Or, maybe, Dunham just did not want to lie about someone with whom she had a consensual night of sex, a person who she regarded as a friend and with whom she shared similar political views, and thought that it would make a better story to turn him both a violent criminal and a Romney voter. That would, after all, be the simplest explanation. While it is morally repugnant, for someone who makes a living as a creative writer, it is a course of action that is not especially not difficult to envision.
Of course, the joke is now, “Sure, Dunham’s Republican rapist turned out to be nothing of the sort, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the Larger Truths about rape and Republicans exposed by her confession.” That larger truth is, as ever, the faith-based claim that American culture is also “rape culture,” and that sexual violence and repression are both embraced and advanced by conservatives. As with the collapse of the fabulist tale that has robbed Rolling Stone of much of its waning credibility, the implosion of this narrative, too, has dealt those who are married to ideological preconceptions about their own victimhood quite the blow.
The genuine victims of sexual violence should be horrified by their supposed allies who would profit from their abuse by falsely claiming to have shared in it.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2015 00:00 ||
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That last sentence is certainly true. Like racism,false charges of rape just makes that much harder for real victims to get any help.. Or even be heard.
Not that the slut Dunham or any of her supporters give a rat's ass about them. What's a few ruined lives if they can throw a false narrative against their opponents.
#6
Maybe I should but I just can't bring myself to pay much attention to the likes of Lena Dunham. Is she kind of a white, female Al Sharpton or what? Not a race hustler but a v@g|na hustler? The only pictures I've ever seen of her make her look dumpy and unattractive, not the sort of person who would attract a rapist or anybody else.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/01/2015 13:50 Comments ||
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#7
A pasty white worm from the Apple
Who'd chastely avoided the chapel
Was hasty to marry
Her second fake Barry
And rode him like Sancho on Dapple.
[MEDIAITE] The New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... issued its second editorial against the NYPD in two days, this time excoriating the department for its alleged work slowdown.
The New York Post reported yesterday that police activity had plummeted since the union called for a work "slowdown" in response to Gotham Mayor Bill de Blasio's remarks following the Eric Garner decision and the ambush-style murder of two NYPD officers. (The protracted contract dispute has a good deal to do with it as well.)
The department's "list of grievances adds up to very little, unless you look at it through the magnifying lens of resentment fomented by union bosses and right-wing commentators," the ed board wrote Wednesday. (On Tuesday they chided the department for its "snarling sense of victimhood".)
The Times reminded the NYPD Wednesday morning that de Blasio was elected by a landslide to enact the sort of reforms, such as ending Stop and Frisk and quota-based policing, that he had since implemented, and that he had pumped millions of dollars into the department while overseeing a 4.4% drop in crime.
"Do your jobs," the paper advised. "The police are sworn public servants, and refusing to work violates their oath to serve and protect. Mr. Bratton should hold his commanders and supervisors responsible, and turn this insubordination around."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2015 00:00 ||
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Just what do you want them to do?
Whatever Our LEO's do, you make it sound evil.
You had better back off unless you want to live in a third world shithole like the rest of the "jornos" behind bars for not towing the party line.
You, through history, have proven yourselves to be a disgraceful organization.
Morally bereft, seeking public admiration, begging the question, selective or non reporting, and screwing around with the corrupt static line politics.
You may have been un-willing accomplices to many, many souls taken from this place. WWII is your record.
You call this war on the cops off to, you tyrant fluffers.
#5
What's interesting is, according to the numbers, the NYPD is still on the job on actual crime.
What they've cut back on are traffic enforcement, tickets, parking violations, and low end stuff like arresting people for selling cigarettes (wonder why?)
As in, fee generators for the city.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/01/2015 10:13 Comments ||
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#6
Sure. Times delivery truck double parked and obstructing traffic? Tag and tow. No blinker on that turn? Tagged. Pinchy's limo double parked in front of headquarters? Tag and tow. Permits all up to date? Those inspection stickers on the trucks expired? Smoking within 100 feet of the entrance to headquarters? Here's your summons.
Just doin our jobs...
#7
I was thinking of the same things, tu3031. You want law enforcement, Mr. Sulzburger, we got your law enforcement right here...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/01/2015 11:17 Comments ||
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It amounts to a public act of extortion by the police.
That’s strong language for a board that always attacks those opposed to unions as anti-worker. Then again, there was that time when the Newspaper Guild encouraged NYT staffers to strike over contract negotiations. So you never know.
[LAHT] A Chinese businessman was sentenced to 13 years in prison for eating three tigers, one of the most endangered species on earth, reported the official news agency Xinhua.
The ruling was made Monday by the Qinzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Guangxi.
The condemned, a real estate magnate, known only as Xu, bought the three tigers that were killed in the months of March, April and May in 2013, at a price of around $70,900 each.
The first tiger was killed by electric shocks on March 13 last year after which he prepared a banquet in a hotel where he also invited his friends.
China has hardly a few dozen tigers in the country and the investigators believe that the ones killed on Xu’s orders had been imported illegally from another country.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that different parts of the tiger, from their blood, to their eyes or even their penis, have extraordinary healing powers.
In spite of the Chinese environmental authorities banning trade of tigers and other endangered species, a crime that can be punishable with death, there still are cases of illegal trading of meat or other animal parts.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2015 00:00 ||
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Video: Old Chinese joke about eating ten stone lions.
#2
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that different parts of the tiger, from their blood, to their eyes or even their penis, have extraordinary healing powers.
#3
In spite of the Chinese environmental authorities banning trade of tigers and other endangered species, a crime that can be punishable with death…
And yet the Chi-coms still have the two child rule. Of course, in the enlightened US you can be sent to federal prison for disturbing a Bald eagle nest but you can get abortion on demand through your government subsidized health care. Go figure.
[AnNahar] More than 100 colonists migrants on Tuesday managed to scale the six-metre fence surrounding the Spanish exclave of Melilla to enter the territory while around 40 remained perched on the barrier, officials said.
Some 200 people tried to storm into the territory that lies in northern Morocco -- which together with the nearby exclave of Ceuta have Europe's only land borders with Africa -- in the early morning hours, Melilla police said in a statement.
"In total, 102 managed to enter Melilla" and 40 remained on top of the fence under the watchful eyes of Spanish border guards, it said.
The flow of migrants hoping to reach Europe via Ceuta and Melilla has swelled this year by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq as well as unrest in parts of north Africa, officials say.
The number of undocumented migrants entering Melilla had surged to more than 4,600 in early December, compared with 3,000 for the whole of 2013, Spain's interior minister said on December 10.
Rights groups and the UN refugee agency have accused Spanish forces of violence towards migrants climbing the border fences into Ceuta and Melilla over recent months.
[LAHT] President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday that the Venezuela's petroleum export price dropped to $48 a barrel and accused the U.S. for flooding the market with oil with the aim of destroying both his country and Russia.
"Did you know there's an oil war? And the war has an objective: to destroy Russia," said the president in a speech to state businessman in Caracas.
"It's a strategically planned war ... also aimed at Venezuela, to try and destroy our revolution and cause an economic collapse," he added, accusing the United States of trying to flood the market with shale oil produced by fracking, a technique designed to recover gas and oil from shale rock.
According to Maduro, U.S. President Barack Obama Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.... himself recently admitted "that everything has been done to break President Putin and destroy the Russian Federation."
He declared that despite the "global economic war" against Venezuela, the falling oil prices were "a huge opportunity" to make 2015 the year of "the great change of consciousness in the Venezuelan economic model."
Oil prices in Venezuela began falling in September going from $95 per barrel to the current $48.
The world's fifth largest crude oil exporter, Venezuela produces close to 2.5 million barrels daily, selling that not used domestically mainly to the U.S. and China.
Oil accounts for more than 90 percent of the country's foreign exchange revenues and half of the revenues of the national budget.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/01/2015 00:00 ||
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"the great change of consciousness in the Venezuelan economic model."
Período especial coming soon with basic ration at no charge.
Posted by: chris ||
01/01/2015 11:03 Comments ||
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#5
From what I understand (FWIU ?) it's the Chinese that should be complaining. After all they loaned a ton of money to VZ on the basis of oil revenue. VZ is already restructuring the loans to stave off bankruptcy.
This will get cute as it continues.......everyone stocked up on pop-corn?
This story will be updated as new information is published. I'm going to need a program to understand all the actors in this play...
Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin and a news website associated with Russian reserve FSB Colonel Igor Girkin is reporting one of Lugansk's top field commanders, Aleksandr Bednov was killed along with six other others in an arrest attempt, presumably by a group associated with Lugansk president Igor Plotnitsky. Apparently, among the dead were Bednov's wife and members of Bednov's security detail.
So far, no one has confirmed any element to this story. I have read reports from Russian language media that residents in Georgievka, a suburb south of Lugansk city, reported gunfire and explosions in an area known NOT to have Ukrainian troops.
According to a news account in the pro Ukrainian news site tsensor.net. Bednov was traveling in a two vehicle convoy which included one step van and a sedan through the village early on January 1st, when they were attacked in a prepared ambush at close range, by men using small arms and a fuel-air explosive RPG fire.
Other reports suggest Bednov's convoy was ambushed, but that Bednov survived the encounter, but was surrounded by local militia loyal to Plotnitsky.
Also presumed to be killed in the ambush were four members of his security detail, one of them an Azerbaijani identified with the call sign "Ramil", and the others identified with the call signs Razor, Gold, and Knight.
Bednov has held previous field commands, but at the time of this incident was chief of staff of the Lugansk 4th Rifle Brigade. His rise to prominence began only two months ago when he started giving interviews to pro rebel media.
Plotnitsky declared only three days ago that it was his intention for Lugansk to become part of Russia, that independence or federation with Ukraine were not on for discussion.
Watching a youtube.com video of an interview by an unidentified female Georgian female, the popular commander of the "Somaliya" battalion, identified as "Givi" said that unity of command of forces in both Donetsk and Lugansk were in discussion, which is a clear indication that neither republic would be seeking independence, but merging with the Russian federation. Not only that, "Givi" said that the merging of "at least" nine Ukrainian oblasts" into Russia was a definitive goal.
Only a week ago, this writer read an opinion which appeared in Jamestown.org, by a writer who said that Russian president Vladimir Putin had abandoned his "Novorossiya" project, but now it appears the project, if it were abandoned, was back and in operation.
"Novorossiya" is the name of a region east of the Dnepr River.
[AnNahar] Every year, hundreds of North Koreans risk their lives escaping the reclusive nation, but the profile of those braving the dangerous border crossing has changed markedly from the famine-driven refugees of the past.
Where escape was once a desperate bid for survival by people on the brink of starvation, it is now often the calculated path taken by relatively affluent North Koreans who also know far more about an outside world that was a total mystery to earlier escapees.
The shift has come quickly -- a reflection of changes that followed the great famine that killed hundreds of thousands of North Koreans in the late 1990s, known as the "Arduous March".
"The typical profile of a North Korean refugee today is very different from, say, 10 years ago," said Kim Seung-Eun, a prominent South Korean missionary involved in the underground network that brings escapees to the South.
One 40-year-old refugee, who gave her name only as Choi, told Agence La Belle France Presse she fled with her mother in 2010 with the help of a sister who had already made it to Seoul.
She explained: "I wasn't exactly starving but saw no hope for improvement in my life in the North. We went through a lot during the Arduous March and the experience opened my eyes.
"I wanted to have a better life and some hope for my future. We lived in relative comfort in the North thanks to the money my sister sent (via brokers in China) but the more you hear about South Korea through your family there, the more you'd want to get out and live just like them."
- 'Well-off and well-informed' -
Precise statistics on the number of escapees are hard to come by, though South Korea records the annual tally that make it there.
"Now many are members of what you could call the North's middle-class -- relatively well off and relatively well informed," Kim told AFP.
This was not the case in the 2000s, when the number of annual arrivals peaked at 3,000 -- most of them motivated by hunger and grinding poverty.
North Korea is still an extremely poor country by any standards and malnutrition remains widespread, but a thriving black economy -- tolerated as a necessary evil by the regime -- has brought significant changes.
Unauthorised private markets have lessened dependence on a dysfunctional state ration system and provided a crucial income source for those on near-worthless state salaries.
The subsequent rise in living standards has coincided with a breach in the sanitised information cordon that effectively isolated North Korea from the outside world for decades.
Mobile phones, MP3 players and smuggled USB sticks with South Korean television dramas have provided more than just a glimpse of realities beyond the border.
- 'A better life' -
"The sort of people we see defecting now actually have relatively stable lives in the North," said one Seoul official working directly with refugees.
"One of the most common reasons they cite for leaving is for the sake of their children. They want them to have a better education and a better start in life," the official said.
A significant number come from border towns.
Internal travel in North Korea remains very restricted, so those who already live near the border have a real advantage. They also tend to have contacts with people who move or trade across the border.
And more than 70 percent are women -- partly a reflection of tighter monitoring of North Korean men at their official work units.
Since North Korea's current leader Kim Jong-Un took power following the death of his father Kim Dear Leader Jong-Il ... hereditary dictator of North Korea. His definition of reunification isn't the same as the definition in Seoul... in late 2011, border security has been stepped up -- another factor behind the rise in the number of better-off refugees.
"Getting out of North Korea now costs a lot more, in bribes or payments to brokers," the Seoul official said.
The increased security and a crackdown by China on its side of the border saw the number of new arrivals almost halve to around 1,500 in 2012 and 2013.
Video footage taken with cameras supplied by Kim Seung-Eun's missionary group show the river border with China lined with surveillance cameras.
Other footage showed a house on a remote hill with a satellite dish, which Kim claimed belonged to a security unit tasked with tapping mobile phone conversations in the border area.
No matter how much money a refugee may have, escaping North Korea remains an extremely dangerous challenge.
Even if they manage to cross the border without being caught -- or shot -- capture later on will likely result in repatriation and severe punishment.
Experience helps, and one more thing the current batches of refugees have in common is that many have relatives who have already got out.
"There's a large community of North Korean refugees already here and they are a big bridge back into the North," said Seoul-based Park Sokeel, director of research at Liberty in North Korea, an international NGO that works with North Korean refugees.
Choi agreed, adding: "I was lucky to have a family member who had already settled in the South. It looks like many North Koreans who come to the South these days (have the same).
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, more than 27,000 North Koreans have escaped to the South.
Of those who remain, around half send money back to the North through brokers in China, according to a recent South Korean government survey.
They also use their contacts to help arrange the escape of family members still in the North.
According to Park, many recent arrivals are from the North's "economic midlevel" -- somewhere between the top 20 percent and bottom 20 percent.
"A lot of people we speak with these days say they weren't necessarily starving or suffering severe food shortages," Park told AFP.
"It's not about survival. It's about living better."
#1
As said or inferred times before, Pudgy's = Kim regime's job or focii is to prevent any takeover of indigen NOKOR by China - both NOKOR + SOKOR have a stake in ensuring that a Chinese takeover never happens.
Lest we fergit, MANY CHINESE POLITICOS = NOKOR is already merely an "UN-ANNEXED/SEMI-AUTONOMOUS CHINESE PROVINCE OR TERRITORY".
Undoubtedly, in KJU's mind every NOKOR Citizen that illegally departs leaves a space in NOKOR's Communist-Socialist system that may poten be filled by a Chinese Citizen.
[SydneyMorningHerald] At least 35 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a stampede at New Year's Eve celebrations in Shanghai, according to Chinese state media.
[AnNahar] Turkey's top judicial body on Tuesday said it had dismissed four prosecutors who oversaw a massive corruption investigation which damaged the Islamic-rooted government and touched the inner circle of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him...
The Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) said Zekeriya Oz, Celal Kara, Muammer Akkas and Mehmet Yuzgec would be removed from their positions, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
A final decision on the fate of the prosecutors was due after the conclusion of an investigation, it added. They might be dismissed from the profession entirely.
The four prosecutors, who were reassigned in the wake of the corruption scandal, are accused of abusing their authority by leading the December 2013 graft probe that rocked the government of Erdogan, then prime minister, and touched his inner circle.
The scandal, which dragged down four ministers, threw up one of the most serious challenges to Erdogan's 11-year rule as prime minister.
Erdogan, who came out fighting from the crisis and switched to presidency in August, labelled the graft probe an attempted "judicial coup" staged by U.S.-based Moslemholy man Fethullah Gulen, a former ally-turned foe.
Thousands of supporters of Gulen had influential jobs in high places in the police and judiciary. But Gulen vehemently denied Erdogan's suggestions he instigated the probe.
Prosecutors dropped the corruption case due to a "lack of evidence", triggering protests from the opposition that it had been buried due to political pressure.
The Turkish strongman showed no mercy in the fight against Gulen supporters and struck back by seeking to tighten his grip over the judiciary, sacking thousands of police and prosecutors.
The authorities earlier this month launched raids against pro-Gulen media in a move sharply criticized by the EU as marking a new erosion of press freedom in Turkey.
A Turkish court has also issued an arrest warrant for Gulen himself although the United States has until now shown little interest in his extradition.
[Business Insider] A confidential bulletin sent by the FBI to companies across the US warning of further cyber attacks by the Sony hackers may have been based on fake posts and messages created by a prankster.
Earlier today we reported that the FBI sent a bulletin on Dec. 24 that warned companies of further threats made by the Guardians of Peace hacker gang. That's the group that targeted Sony Pictures, but the FBI warned that it was threatening a media organization as well.
Some security experts have cast doubt on the FBI's claim that North Korea was behind the hack of Sony Pictures. If the FBI has been fooled by an online prankster, that could make its claim that North Korea ordered the hack more difficult to believe. DoD has a Cyber Warfare Command. What do they say ?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[LAHT] President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday that the Venezuela's petroleum export price dropped to $48 a barrel and accused the U.S. for flooding the market with oil with the aim of destroying both his country and Russia.
North Korea
Kim 
