Clinton Campaign Agrees to Back Jill Stein’s Election Recount Effort: Lawyer 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Saturday it intends to back the statewide election recount effort in the battleground state of Wisconsin spearheaded by third-party candidate Jill Stein. The Clinton team had been quiet about Stein’s crusade, but campaign lawyer Marc Elias said that because a recount was set into motion Friday — and could begin as soon as next week — they want to see a ‘fair’ process for all involved. Stein also has plans to file a recount effort in Michigan, where NBC News has yet to officially call a winner, and Pennsylvania.

Clinton Campaign Agrees to Back Jill Stein’s Election Recount Effort: Lawyer – NBC News

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Shooter refers to murder as just ‘another piece of trash off the street’ 

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Local Interest,Leave a comment

One of the witnesses to the shooting was 13-year-old James Cooper, who told the Gazette-Mail on Tuesday morning that he saw Pulliam kill his friend. 

…Another friend, Teonno White, 14, …said he’s had run-ins with Pulliam in the past, when Pulliam would “pick on” his younger brother.

“One time I went over there to talk to him about it, I said, ‘You’ve got to quit picking on my little brother, that doesn’t look right,’” White said.

“He said, ‘Get the [expletive] off my property.’ He said I need to go on with my nappy Latino self. He’s just a real bad guy.”

White said he’s called the police about Pulliam before, and was told to avoid the man.

[For those counting, that’s policing FAIL number one in this story]

….Caleb Burgess was working at the Dollar General when officers responded Monday night.

….He said police initially forced Burgess and another employee to the ground, guns pointed, until they confirmed the store was empty.

[policing FAIL number two – stay tuned for more I’m sure!]

Charleston Gazette-Mail

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Arab-Kurd tensions simmer in shadow of Mosul campaign

On By peanutgallerynhIn Middle East,Leave a comment

Tensions between KRG and Baghdad could fuel a proxy war between regional powers, analysts warn.

…The Kurdistan Regional Government has changed course, declaring its commitment to Baghdad to retreat from territory that Kurdish forces have taken from ISIL.

On November 16, Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, said in a press conference that his soldiers would not retreat from the land “liberated with their blood” from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant group, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

“There will be no negotiations about the territories liberated by Peshmerga before the Mosul offensive,” Barzani declared. “This is a new chapter. ISIS is on the path to defeat. Peshmerga shed their blood to free Kurdistan’s land and end the suffering of our people.”

But the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, later retracted Barazani remarks, saying that his comments, originally made in Kurdish, were taken out of context and “mistranslated”.

Nevertheless, Barzani’s comments revived long-standing fears among many Iraqis that the country’s Kurds are using the Mosul battle to seize land to incorporate into a future independent state.

Arab-Kurd tensions simmer in shadow of Mosul campaign – News from Al Jazeera

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Shiite and Kurdish forces to coordinate west of Mosul, reports

On By peanutgallerynhIn Middle East,Leave a comment

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Shiite and Kurdish forces have reportedly reached an agreement on mutual movements in future operations against ISIS in the Tal Afar and Shingal area though Sunni civilians fear sectarian violence from the Hashd al-Shaabi.  

The move comes as Hadi Amiri, leader of the paramilitary, declared the Mosul-Tal Afar road cut as his forces took control of a portion of the route on Wednesday and linked up with Kurdish Peshmerga forces based in the Yezidi town of Shingal. 

Amiri came to Shingal “in order to coordinate with us,” Reuters quoted Mahma Xelil, the mayor of Shingal, as saying. 

Thousands of civilians, mostly Sunnis, have fled the ISIS-held Sunni Turkmen town of Tal Afar west of Mosul as Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary forces continue to close in on the town .

Civilians are fleeing Tal Afar in large numbers as they “fear Hashd al-Shaabi will take revenge on them” for alleged links to ISIS, a former Iraqi MP, Nabil Harbo, told Rudaw.

Shiite and Kurdish forces to coordinate west of Mosul, reports

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Hurricane Otto Death Toll Rises to Double Digits 

On By peanutgallerynhIn The Americas,Leave a comment

Hurricane Otto has killed several people and forced thousands to flee. Here’s the latest.

The death toll from Hurricane Otto has risen to 12 after Costa Rican authorities announced nine deaths after the storm cut through Central America. 
 
Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis told the Associated Press that nine people were killed in the town of Guayabo de Bagaces, a town south of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. 
 
Earlier in the week, civil defense officials in Panama announced that two people died in landslides and a child was killed when a tree collapsed on top of a car outside a school in Panama City days ago, before Otto strengthened to a hurricane. Panama’s civil defense director Jose Donderis said the landslide occurred just west of Panama City and trapped nine people. Seven people were rescued.

Hurricane Otto Death Toll Rises to Double Digits | The Weather Channel

sigh….

Why should women have to pay the price for ‘safety’ on a daily basis? 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,Leave a comment

The poll listed 10 different strategies women use to try to avoid harassment, from avoiding parks or public transport to taking a chaperone or even failing to attend work, school or college all together. A quarter of the women polled had changed their travel route and 28% had prepared to use an everyday object, such as keys or an umbrella, as a weapon.

What is worse is that society encourages women to do these things. It regularly reinforces the message that it is women’s responsibility to keep themselves safe, not men’s responsibility not to harass or assault them. We see it in newspaper articles that emphasise a rape victim’s clothing or behaviour, implying the attack might never have happened if only she had taken more precautions. We see it in celebrity “warnings” to young women to avoid rape by not drinking, not wearing the wrong thing, not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because, the assumption goes, rape is a shadowy, inevitable force out there waiting for silly women who walk into its path, not the deliberate act of an individual criminal. We see it in police campaigns that tell women to avoid “becoming a victim of rape” by doing things that are legal, instead of telling men not to become rapists by breaking the law.

Why should women have to pay the price for ‘safety’ on a daily basis? | Life and style | The Guardian

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Pakistan Names New Military Leader 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Middle East,Leave a comment

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan on Saturday chose Lt. Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, a military commander with a solid soldierly reputation and a firm belief in civilian supremacy, to lead the country’s powerful army.

General Bajwa replaces Gen. Raheel Sharif, an immensely popular commander in Pakistan for his successes against Taliban militants.

Pakistan Names New Military Leader – The New York Times

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Starvation threat numbers soar in South Sudan 

On By peanutgallerynhIn Africa,Leave a comment

Up to one million people to join almost five million already facing starvation as civil war spreads to rural areas.

…The aid group CARE told Al Jazeera that if the armed conflict continues, as many as one million civilians could go hungry in the region of Equatoria, adding 20 percent more people to the almost five million already facing starvation.

Starvation threat numbers soar in South Sudan – News from Al Jazeera

Sigh…

Fidel Castro: iconic revolutionary and longtime American nemesis – CSMonitor.com

On By peanutgallerynhIn Caribbean,Leave a comment

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro died Friday. 

…He was a revolutionary and a liberator: delivering his island nation from the colonial powers and mafia dons that ruled over it from the 16th century halfway into the 20th, and inspiring other independence movements in  Latin America and  Africa.

He was a dictator and a despot: delivering basic needs but denying basic rights, ultimately turning his nation of 10 million people into what some considered a collective gulag where the individual with a differing political vision was shown the door – to prison or to exile, or even to the firing squad. 

Fidel Castro: iconic revolutionary and longtime American nemesis – CSMonitor.com

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