Tag Archives: victims

Mike ‘The Situation’ responds to being duped into ‘queer’ photo shoot

Jersey Shore bimbo Mike “The Situation” took to his Facebook page to respond to reports that he unknowingly participated in a Village Voice ‘queer issue’ photo shoot that included an expose on Jersey’s down-low gay guido scene. He wrote: “As for the Village Voice SitUAtioN – it’s not for me to judge somebody’s sexual preference and in my opinion the SitUaTIoN looks good as hell and that is my main concern. It just so happens that The SitUaTiON has mass appeal and happily reaches a very broad audience – This is not my first cover and definitely not my last – SitUATIon NATION” Also, he recently added this picture from an event to his Facebook page: http://www.tabloidprodigy.com/?p=15565 added by: knowandtell

Burned Little 3-Year-Old Girl a Symbol of Roma Hate… and Hope | Czech Republic

Watch more about the Roma's plight on CNN International World's Untold Stories on June 26 at 1630 GMT, and June 27 at 1100 GMT, 1830 GMT. Vitkov, Czech Republic (CNN) — Natalka Kudrikova is a bright-eyed, three-year-old girl recovering from the severe burns she suffered when far-right extremists threw a Molotov cocktail into her home. Her family and authorities say she was targeted because they are Roma, or gypsies. Natalka lost 80 percent of her skin, two fingers (a third was later amputated) and spent months lying in an induced coma following the attack last year in Vitkov, in the Czech Republic. She is still recuperating after 14 major surgeries. In May, Natalka returned to Ostrava Hospital for rehabilitation sessions so that one day she may be able to get around without support. “I'd rather not take her back to the hospital,” said her mother, Anna Sivakova, “but if she must return, my dream is that she learns how to walk without any help.” The very next day, four young men accused of attacking Natalka, filed into Ostrava District Court to hear the indictment: a racially motivated attempted murder. According to the prosecutor, the attack was planned for the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth. Court experts confirmed swastikas and other Nazi memorabilia were found in the defendants' homes. In court, Ivo Muller and Vaclav Cojocaru described their coordinated Molotov cocktail attack. Their only excuse — they said they thought they were attacking an empty storehouse of stolen goods. Under cross-examination, Muller and Cojocaru admitted attending anti-Roma demonstrations organized by right wing extremists. The other defendants, Jaromir Lukes and David Vaculik, did not take the stand. Lukes is accused of being the ringleader, a claim his defense counsel strongly denies although he concedes Lukes drove the getaway car. His lawyer also vehemently denies there was any racial motivation to the attack. An anti-fascist website published a photo of Lukes walking next to the leader of the far-right Workers' Party. Another photo showed Vaculik wearing the armband of the Workers' Party, the public face of the Czech far right. The leader of the now banned Workers' Party, Tomas Vandas, denied any involvement. “Yes, we may have used those people as organizers of our public meetings but how could we know they would commit a crime?” said Vandas. “I hope Natalka gets better soon,” he added. Miroslav Mares, from Masaryk University in Brno, is the leading academic specialist on Czech extremist groups. He thinks it's unlikely that the Workers' Party was directly involved in the arson attack, but he says they were responsible “for inflaming anti-Roma sentiment.” “Maybe some youngsters from the neo-Nazi scene said to themselves, 'If the whole population is against Romas we are justified in carrying out such attacks,'” he said. And surveys do show anti-Roma sentiment is widespread. The European Union EURoma website says Czech Romas endure extremely high unemployment rates, low educational standards, isolation, and the prejudices of the majority population. “In regions with high unemployment and poor social conditions, the rise of extremism is popular with unemployed young men but we can see more and more women on the neo-Nazi scene,” Marek said. Lucie Slegrova, 20, is a flag-waving militant of the now renamed Workers' Social Justice Party. She denies her party is inspired by Hitler's Nazi ideology. Instead, she says, they follow their own nationalist ideas. “The Czech Republic should be for people who know how to behave. If the gypsies don't want to follow the rules, they're free to leave,” she said. Only one percent of Czech voters supported the Workers' Social Justice Party in the last elections, but Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer worries that 7 percent of Czech students voted for the far-right party, according to an unofficial nationwide poll. “A lot of people are frustrated with politicians, and have troubles due to the crisis and recession. My message to them is please think it over and don't believe these very bad prophets,” Fischer said. The far-right movement has made bigger gains in neighboring Hungary where 17 percent of voters chose the Jobbik party in the last elections. Violence has been much worse as well. In the last two years, nine Roma have been killed in Hungary in unprovoked night-time attacks, according to the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC). Roma bashing also became an issue in the Slovakian election campaign. The far right Slovak National Party commissioned billboards showing a dark-skinned man with tattoos and an inflammatory message: “Vote SNS so we don't feed those who don't want to work.” In eastern Slovakia many Roma live in segregated communities like the village of Ostrovany where municipal authorities spent some $16,000 to build a wall separating the Roma from their white neighbors, because of fears of “alleged Roma crime,” said Stanislav Daniel from ERRC. “To me the wall is a symbol of segregation because public finances were used to target a stereotype, not what's real,” Daniel said. The wall separates a tidy town from a rural slum. Roma, living right next to the wall, have no sewage or garbage collection and there's just one tap with drinking water for dozens of families. Back in the Czech Republic, Natalka's father, Pavel Kudrik, has chosen to stay in the region and rebuild a comfortable home for his wife and four daughters. After police asserted that Natalka's family were victims of a racist attack, many Czechs opened their wallets and their hearts. Prime Minister Fischer's wife and son spearheaded a nationwide campaign to help them — a move that led to the Fischer family having full-time police protection after they received anonymous death threats. But the current climate is not the only reason Fischer wants to clamp down on right wing extremism. Everyone in his family died in the Holocaust except for his father and grandmother. “Sixty-five years after WWII, the societal memory is getting weak,” he said. And Roma activists complain that recognition of their sacrifices under the Nazis has never been properly acknowledged. Half-a-million Roma perished in what they call the “Devouring” — Hitler's campaign to eliminate them as a people. Last May, several hundred Czech Roma gathered at a memorial for the victims of the Lety concentration camp. Hundreds of Czech Roma children died there and are buried nearby in a mass grave. Jan Vrba is one of the camp's last survivors. He was born there. His sister perished there. “What happened in Vitkov made me cry”, said Jan. “Little Natalka reminded me of my sister who died in this camp.” added by: EthicalVegan

Clyburn, Boiled Down: We’ll Never Stop Blaming Bush

Real Clear Politics currently has a video highlighting statements by Democratic Congressman James Clyburn Jr. of South Carolina. It teases the video with a question asked by Candy Crowley of CNN. Once one sees the entire sequence, it’s clear that Clyburn really answered Crowley’s question before she even asked it. Here’s the full transcript of the vid, which begins after Indiana Republican Congressman Mike Pence had apparently made some points about how steps taken by the Obama administration to revive the economy to the point where it generates meaningful job growth aren’t working. Clyburn’s answer to when his party will stop blaming Bush is in bold: Clyburn: Uh, Congressman Spence, uh, Pence keeps talkin’ about, uh, the fact that, uh, we are, uh, failing in our approach. We all know exactly what this president inherited, and we will stop talkin’ about that inheritance, uh, when uh Congressman uh Pence and others stop talkin’ about takin’ us back uh to those failed policies. We’re trying to correct some things that we had absolutely nothin’ to do with, and the American people know that. And I would wish that all of us would get on board this in bipartisan approaches to tryin’ and get our economy stabilized, tryin’ to get our children educated, tryin’ to get workin’ men and women back to, uh, on their jobs, and look for the future, look to the future with — Crowley: Congressman? Clyburn: — a little more, uh compassion and bipartisanship. Crowley: Congressman, I think nobody disagrees with you on the goals. I think that one of the questions that’s cropping up now is, when does the statute of limitations run out on blaming the Bush administration and when is it on you all as the governing — really in the House and the Senate and the White House. When does the economy, uh, become your baby, so to speak? Clyburn: The economy is our baby. But let’s stop talkin’ about cuttin’ taxes, cuttin’ taxes, cuttin’ taxes. That simplistic approach to tryin’ to get this economy movin’ again, it’s what got us in this, uh-uh, position in the first place. We just had an across the board cut on 95% of workin’ men and women, they got an across the board tax cut. You all know that. Pence attempted to get in a word or two edgewise during Clyburn’s final two sentences and got nowhere, though Crowley got to him immediately after that. One can also hear Pence chuckling in the background as Crowley asks here “statute of limitations” question. “Congressman Pence and others” clearly have no plans to “stop talkin’ about takin’ us back to those failed policies” — policies that worked reasonably well from 2003 to 2007 , by the way, despite the sand-in-the-wheels impact of the Sarbanes Oxley law. Therefore, the short version of Clyburn’s answer to the question of when the Bush blame game will stop is, “When you guys shut up.” The one-word version is really, “Never.” As to Clyburn’s contention that “We’re trying to correct some things that we had absolutely nothin’ to do with,” it’s time to remind him and everyone else of the true origins of the housing and mortgage lending bubble. They have everything to do with government-sponsored, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and nothing to do with George Bush, who tried — perhaps not hard enough, but genuinely tried — to stop the madness emanating from those two entities. The full scope of what these Democrat crony-controlled perpetrated on the nation didn’t become fully known until late last year. It wasn’t “only” lax credit standards, which would have been bad enough. Beyond that, as I noted on December 31 (last item at link; a column with a more complete treatment of the topic is here ), there was pervasively fraudulent loan packaging: … it’s hard to overstate the relevance of this paragraph from Peter J. Wallison in the Wall Street Journal , because it should end the debate over who is primarily responsible for the housing and mortgage-lending messes: “There is more to this ugly situation. New research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, has found that from the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime or Alt-A.” The two Democrat-crony government-sponsored enterprises created an artificial market for subprime mortgages by bilking investors for 15 years . If they hadn’t done this, subprimes would never have been able to expand to their mortally dangerous levels. Further, the victims of the misrepresentations logically would appear to include the rating agencies that some state attorneys general are going after as the supposed culprits. Sorry, Mr. Clyburn, your party and its cronies had everything to do with it. The only reason much of the American public doesn’t know this is because reporters like Candy Crowley haven’t educated themselves about what Fan and Fred really did, and therefore won’t challenge your full-of-baloney assertions. Or worse, they know and let it slide. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Clyburn, Boiled Down: We’ll Never Stop Blaming Bush

Stealth Superpower: How Turkey Is Chasing China to Become the Next Big Thing

By John Feffer Turkey has ambitions beyond the Middle East and the means to get there. Related Entries June 13, 2010 Obama Wants $50 Billion For Teachers, Cops and Firemen June 13, 2010 Obama Will Demand a BP Escrow Fund for Victims

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Stealth Superpower: How Turkey Is Chasing China to Become the Next Big Thing

Pakistan and The Taliban, Sitting In A Tree

A new report issued by the London School of Economics has claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence agency is not only funding and training Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, but also that it also holds sway in the insurgency’s leadership council. The assertion that Pakistan’s “Inter-Services Intelligence” has ties to the Taliban is not new, but the scope of the relationship, the report’s author claims, could be damaging as the U.S. continues to court Pakitsan’s support. —JCL The LA Times: Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency not only funds and trains Taliban insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, but also maintains its own representation on the insurgency’s leadership council, claims a new report issued by the London School of Economics. Assertions that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, continues to nurture links with the Afghan Taliban are not new. But the scope of that relationship claimed by the report’s author, Matt Waldman, is startling and could prove damaging to the fragile alliance Washington is trying to foster with Pakistan, its military establishment, and its weak civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari. Waldman, a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, based his assertions on interviews with nine Afghan Taliban commanders as well as with Afghan and Western security officials. The report claims that it is official Pakistan governmental policy to support the Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan, and that the ISI has a strong voice on the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban’s leadership council, named after the southern Pakistani city believed to serve as the council’s haven. Read more Related Entries June 13, 2010 Obama Will Demand a BP Escrow Fund for Victims June 12, 2010 Turning the Crisis Corner

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Pakistan and The Taliban, Sitting In A Tree

Sting and Soros Hook Up For A Duet Of Pro-drug Stupidity

Editor’s Note : The following was originally posted at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood . Seeing that George Soros and Sting  are working together to “end the drug war” puts me in mind of a story an Army buddy who works in the DEA told me about busting in the door of a drug house only to find three occupants – the oldest four years old, having been left in charge while his “parents” went out to score meth.  Yeah, drug use is a victimless crime – if you ignore the victims. Apparently not content to subsidize the whining of the nonentities at Media Matters, Soros is taking a break from his adventures in currency manipulation and general scuzziness to enlist entertainment celebrities like Sting in his newest quest.  The Drug Policy Alliance  is the result, a group whose members, as its founder puts it, “come from across the drug use spectrum.”  Yes, the junkies, stoners, hopheads, dope fiends, pill-poppers, and Lindsay Lohan are unanimous:  Drug laws are bad, and it’s probably BusHitler’s fault. The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.  This assumption of competence is a common delusion among celebrities, and here it has more potential for damage than most mindless celebribabble. Now, Sting is not alone – no one in that clip says anything worthwhile.  One woman, who is bald for no apparent reason, states that “The War on Drugs is a war on people of color,” as if Americans decided they would outlaw crack because they fear that black people might enjoy themselves.  Montel Williams shows up to explain that drug laws prevent him from making choices about his own body, but the awful tie and ridiculous earring he chose to wear make a powerful argument against allowing him to make any kind of choices at all. Tony Papa also appears.  He went to jail for 12 years for being part of a drug deal – oh, I mean committing “a nonviolent drug offense” – and became an artist on the taxpayer’s dime.  While most of us will likely ask “Why only 12?,” naturally Papa is worshipped by trendy leftist celebrities .  Some Hollywood half-wit even scooped up the rights to his inspiring story.  So, to repeat, Tony Papa joined a drug conspiracy, got arrested, went to jail, leveraged that into becoming a hip artist and the subject of a movie, and yet he is somehow the real victim. Of course, there’s also the perennial “America imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world!” meme.  In fact, the only drug incarceration problem in America is that too few drug dealers are incarcerated.  Sting suffers from the same delusion that afflicts many of his celebrity pals.  He seems to think that if the kind of people who deal drugs didn’t have drugs to deal, they would naturally flock to the world of hard work and responsibility.  Oh, if only drugs weren’t illegal, the drug dealing scumbags who infest our ghettos, barrios and college sociology departments would morph into clean-shaved, untatted workerbees eagerly embracing the world of 9-5 employment.  Yeah, it was outlawing meth and crack that turned the scumbags into scumbags.  At one point, the clip promises “new solutions” to the drug problem.  Then Sting pops back up, smug and self-satisfied, to announce that drug laws violate his individual sovereignty.  Uh, typically, when you say you are going to provide new solutions you might consider, you know, providing some new solutions instead of some new cliché. I certainly enjoy Sting and his pals’ new-found appreciation of my personal autonomy and “sovereignty over my body.”  I assume they’ll be standing by me when I reject the government’s interference in my health care decisions.  Unlikely.  If you think consistency is one of their strong points, perhaps you’ve been smoking the same stuff as them. Now, Sting was always annoying but here he is reaching new heights of crappiness and pomposity in direct proportion to his declining relevance.  It’s always a pleasure to hear some Brit mega-millionaire who glides around his English manor practicing tantric sex sound off on American domestic policy.  Please Sting, save us!  Unleash the full intellectual firepower you’ve amassed writing forgettable smooth jazz/rock fusion tunes for people who buy their music at Starbucks.  Just because you’ve been waited on hand and foot for three decades by a coterie of professional sycophants telling you you’re wiser than Buddha and smarter than Einstein doesn’t mean it’s true.  There may be a case for looking at our drug laws, but these nimrods don’t make it.  The most compelling points are made by the conservatives at National Review and the libertarians at Reason .  Sure, pot smokers steal your snacks, listen to Phish and sound-off with long, disjointed monologues about the miracle of hemp, but I have a hard time getting too bent out of shape by them.  Many celebrities are among them , but Sting and Soros aren’t just talking about causal stoners.  They think we ought to go open season on meth, crack and whatever else these degenerate half-wits today are ingesting.  No thanks – I’d prefer not to live with the mess you’re rich enough to ignore. The fact is that His Stingness knows nothing – or cares nothing – about the unspeakable devastation drugs cause, particularly within the inner cities.  Instead of standing behind the one truly effective response to urban drug terror – throwing the bastards in a cell and dropping the key down the Guatemalan sinkhole – His Majesty Sting decrees that drug dealing scumbags should run free, then retreats back behind his gates and armed guards to further hone his delayed orgasm skills. Well, Sting, let’s discuss your really keen points about why poison ought to be legal.  But let’s expand the scope of our discussion to include some other celebrities who might be able to provide us with some valuable insights.  Let’s invite Michael Jackson , Heath Ledger , Brad Renfro , DJ AM , and Brittany Murphy to weigh in with their points of view.  Oh wait, they’re all dead.  So are just a few others . Like a Sean Penn who can’t help but fly into some hellhole, figuratively fellate the local anti-American strongman then jet back to Santa Monica in time for dinner at Pizzeria Mozza, Sting wanders out of his fairy-tale life for a few minutes to tell the benighted peons in the real world how they need to live their lives before retiring back inside his palace behind three layers of security.  The violence, the abuse, the wasted potential brought on by drugs mean nothing to him; what is important is his own act of scolding his lessers for failing to conform to his personal vision. That’s Sting’s high – lording over others as if he was something more than a glorified cruise ship bassist who got lucky and didn’t have to spend his career cranking out covers of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” for Corona-swilling passengers during runs between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta on the S.S. Living Hell .  And like so many in the entertainment world, he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of possession of stupid ideas – with intent to distribute.

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Sting and Soros Hook Up For A Duet Of Pro-drug Stupidity

Mitchell: If Obama Would Have Just ‘Eaten Some Shrimp,’ He Could Have Avoided Criticism

At this point, it may be safe to say that “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough is no more Republican than Arlen Specter. After all, the show’s “conservative” host takes almost every opportunity to defend the current administration and dismiss Obama’s critics. On June 9, the panelists were reviewing the Obama administration’s response to the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Scarborough asserted, “A poll yesterday shows that more people think that the government is mishandling this then Katrina , which is just, I think, ridiculous .”  Fellow MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell agreed, and noted that the president and his team have been down in the Gulf working hard. And then Mitchell asserted that Obama could have diminished criticism if a week earlier, he had “gone down there and stayed and had a meal with the people, eaten some shrimp.” [MP3 audio avaiable here ] Later, Scarborough held out hope that success is still attainable for the president because this crisis is a “marathon” and “not a sprint. He can play catch up.” While the Gulf is being ravaged with an estimated 12,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil daily and its residents’ livelihoods are being destroyed, it is reassuring to hear Scarborough offer that this is above all, a test of endurance for the president. Co-host Mika Brzezinski added her concern, wondering, “have we been covering it intensely?” Even though the oil spill has been a topic of discussion every day since it started, Scarborough practically insulted his audience by claiming that they were unaware of the president’s efforts and that, “there is a disconnect between that reality and the perception of Americans.” It just doesn’t occur to Scarborough that he may be the one who is out of touch.

toll booth car launch 2010

Acting Penang Traffic Operations chief Asst Supt Ahmad Ezzely Razali said it was believed that Azwari’s car had crashed into the safety wall of the toll booth before hitting another booth. “Early investigations showed that the car spun a few times before turning turtle and catching fire. We believe the victims could have been trapped inside when the fire broke out,” he said, adding that police hoped to obtain a CCTV recording at the toll plaza to assist in investigation. Three children of a mu

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toll booth car launch 2010

Hidden epidemic of women beating up men

Many men are reluctant to report abuse by their partners Source: AP • Women hit men psychologically • Victims reluctant to report abuse • Men fear stigma of “being a wimp” WOMEN beating up their men – physically, emotionally or financially – has become a hidden epidemic because men are too scared of being labelled wimps if they cry for help. A new study has found for male victims of “intimate partner abuse”, the cumulative effect of repeat “knees in the nuts” or being heaped with scorn is a damaging erosion of self-worth. But a typical response to men who do complain is, “C'mon, you're a bloke – get over it”. Similar to the pattern of abuse of women by men, it often starts with verbal, financial and psychological abuse, but over time escalates to physical and sometimes even sexual abuse. The issue is even more under-reported for men than women, because men fear either being seen as wimps or not being believed, the study says. Support services for abuse victims are skewed towards females, it adds. Alfred Allan, Professor at Edith Cowan University and co-author of Intimate Partner Abuse of Men, said: “Physical abuse isn't as big a problem for males as females, and when a male assaults a female, it's generally more severe, but there are male victims out there who are falling through the cracks.” The study is based on interviews with male victims and service providers working in the field of domestic abuse. “She would actually hit him with the pan . . . throw reasonably large objects at him . . . punch him to the point of bruising,” one service provider recalled of a client's interview. “I've lost count of how many times she's kneed me in the nuts,” a male victim said. The report notes the growth in abuse of men by their partner. Psychologist and author in men's mental health Elizabeth Celi describes the abuse of men by their spouse as a “silent phenomenon”. She says women perpetrators tend to combine verbal and emotional abuse of their partner with any physical violence. “Given women's verbal and emotional literacy, a viper tongue can really maim a man's sense of self-worth,” Dr Celi said. “Men also face the social stigma of being a victim. Not only is he questioning his own masculinity and identity, unfortunately he is more often than not disbelieved or disregarded.” http://www.news.com.au/national/hidden-epidemic-of-women-beating-up-men/story-e6… added by: MotherForTruth

Playgrounds From Hell

In Eastern Europe, playgrounds are designed to induce permanent trauma in their victims. It builds character. ( Via .) Watch