Syria’s Assad threatens force against US-backed Kurds

On By peanutgallerynhIn Middle East,, Military,Leave a comment

“It’s our land, it’s our right and it’s our duty to liberate it, and the Americans should leave. Somehow they’re going to leave,” he said.

Both the SDF and Russian-backed Syrian government troops are engaged in separate operations against IS jihadists in eastern Syria, creating a highly volatile situation where de-confliction mechanisms have already been tested several times.

Assad also said that a confrontation between Russia and US forces over Syria was narrowly avoided.

….”Fortunately, it has been avoided, not by the wisdom of the American leadership….”

….A US-led wave of Western missile strikes on Syrian government targets across the country last month raised fears of a Russian response and full-blown internationalisation of the seven-year-old conflict.

More strikes by US ally Israel have further raised fears that the devastating war, which has left more than 350,000 people dead, could yet escalate.

Syria’s Assad threatens force against US-backed Kurds | Daily Mail Online

Sigh….

hmmm

Photographing the Abandoned Homes Above the Arctic Circle (PHOTOS)

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Bye explained that rural areas in Scandinavia are facing depopulation due to the decline of farming. Many young people flock to the cities, leaving behind the rural way of life. Bye says many of the former farms have become vacation homes or are just abandoned. She said the homes give her a nostalgic, melancholic feeling, which is conveyed in her photos above.

“The feeling you get when surrounded by mountains so steep and tall and an ocean so crystal clear and turquoise blue, it makes you feel incredibly small and in awe,” she said. “It’s also very appealing to photograph abandonment in those surroundings— the weathered look of the houses are in direct correspondence with the mighty nature surrounding them.”

Photographing the Abandoned Homes Above the Arctic Circle (PHOTOS) | The Weather Channel

very cool

Scientists Have Found Cave Art That May Be From Neanderthals

On By peanutgallerynhIn Europe,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

The painted caves were discovered in Spain. The walls were the canvasses, and the paintings are bold and clearly not some kind of smeary accident. The paint used was red ochre, from soil mixed with water.

One geometric design looks like part of a ladder, forming rectangles. There are stencils where someone pressed a hand up against the wall and then apparently blew liquid ochre over it. Someone painted swirls of bright red dots and patches onto flowing curtains of stalactites that hang from the cave ceilings.

…New tests on the rock and calcium carbonate that formed over parts of the ochre show that they were painted 65,000 years ago. That’s about 20,000 years before the first modern humans got there.

“The only species that were around at that time were Neanderthals,” explains Alistair Pike, an archaeologist from the University of Southampton in England who was part of the team that did the work. “So, therefore, the paintings must’ve been made by them.”

Scientists Have Found Cave Art That May Be From Neanderthals : Shots – Health News : NPR

cool

ACLU Report: Detained Immigrant Children Subjected To Widespread Abuse By Officials

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,, Race,Leave a comment

The allegations include reports of physical, verbal, sexual and psychological abuse of migrant children and the denial of clean drinking water and adequate food.

Among the allegations, U.S. officials are said to have:

– Denied a pregnant minor medical attention when she reported pain, which preceded a stillbirth.
– Subjected a 16-year-old girl to a search in which they “forcefully spread her legs and touched her private parts so hard that she screamed.”
– Left a 4-lb. premature baby and her minor mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell filled with sick people, against medical advice.
– Threw out a child’s birth certificate and threatened him with sexual abuse by an adult male detainee.
– Ran over a 17-year-old with a patrol vehicle and then punched him repeatedly.

“These agencies have taken no meaningful action to hold federal officials accountable for abusing children or to ensure that such abuse never occurs again,” she said.

The ACLU report, co-written by the University of Chicago Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, says the U.S. government “has failed to provide adequate safeguards and humane detention conditions for children in CBP custody.”

“These failures,” it says, “have allowed a culture of impunity to flourish within CBP, subjecting immigrant children to conditions that are too often neglectful at best and sadistic at worst.”

ACLU Report: Detained Immigrant Children Subjected To Widespread Abuse By Officials : The Two-Way : NPR

Well, what do you expect in a society where individuals tasked with law enforcement are valued and protected more than the actual citizenry they charged with protecting? When the only people you value are given guns and exempt from consequences for their crimes people get treated like they are lower than dogshit.

In Passing ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Bill, House Lawmakers Ignore Civil Rights Leaders

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,Leave a comment

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, co-authored a letter asking members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote no on HR 5698, the “Protect and Serve Act of 2018.” But lawmakers, including Democrats, overwhelmingly voted to pass the legislation the next day.

The bill would establish offenses that target law enforcement officers as a federal crime, imposing penalties that are leading many of its opponents to label it the country’s first national “Blue Lives Matter” bill. Named for the push to “counter” Black Lives Matter, at least 32 of these bills were proposed in state legislatures last year, all intending to increase the penalties against those who harm officers.

…At least 987 people—disproportionately people of color—were shot and killed by police in 2017 and 963 in 2016, according to analysis from the Washington Post.

“Creating a new, yet superfluous, crime for offenses committed against law enforcement is a particularly disconnected and non-responsive policy choice,” the letter continued.

….Civil rights groups believe that the U.S. Senate version of the bill, which was introduced on May 7 by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and co-sponsored by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), is significantly worse because it establishes crimes against law enforcement as hate crimes.

“Not only does [the Senate’s bill] create a new crime by targeting law enforcement, it does it using the hate crimes framework,” Kanya A. Bennett, ACLU legislative counsel, told Rewire.News. “We know that law enforcement is already the most protected class of people given the federal laws that protect them [and] given the state laws that protect them.”

In Passing ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Bill, House Lawmakers Ignore Civil Rights Leaders – Rewire.News

When those enforcing the law are valued by the government as more valuable than the citizenry itself? you have fascism. Fascism. Buckle up people. It’s not going to get pretty from here.

Ambien to Roseanne: ‘Racism is not a known side effect’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

The manufacturer of Ambien issued a statement on Wednesday dismissing actress Roseanne Barr’s suggestion that the sleep aid was to blame for her racist and anti-Semitic tweets that led to the cancellation of her rebooted sitcom.

“People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world,” Sanofi U.S. said in a statement posted to Twitter. “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”

Ambien to Roseanne: ‘Racism is not a known side effect’

heh