Tag: CZECH REPUBLIC

South Africa created 100 ‘blacks only’ doctor positions… but failed to fill them

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A South African province attempted to create 100 new positions in a doctor training program that would be reserved for black candidates only. The quota, which was not met due to recruiting problems, has been criticized as racist.

The KwaZulu-Natal health department decided that it would expand its doctor training program in 2019, from 314 to 414. An internal memo leaked to local media revealed, however, that only black doctors would be eligible for the 100 additional slots.

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South African parliament brings country one step closer to seizing land from white farmersSouth African parliament brings country one step closer to seizing land from white farmers

The department remained unapologetic about the policy, tellingTimesLIVE: “South Africa, including KwaZulu-Natal, remains an unequal society with limited opportunities for self-development for those who were historically oppressed.”

Spokesperson Ncumisa Mafunda added that the measure was designed to “address these imbalances of the past.”

Difficulties with recruiting, however, hindered the department’s ability to meet its new quota.

“After difficulties were experienced in recruiting black African candidates for these posts, a deviation was sought from the accounting officer and, out of a total of 77 registrar posts, 21 posts will be offered to non-Black Africans,” Mafunda said.

A spokesperson for Democratic Alliance – the leading opposition party to the ruling African National Congress – argued that any policy was “an aberration of our constitutional values and is racist.”

“Any form or attempt to redress the injustices of the past must ensure that we remain committed to what our constitution says… There must be no exclusion, especially based on the colour of our skin.”

The failed quota was not well received on Twitter, with many calling it openly racist and counter-intuitive.

“Let me understand – one should practice racism in order to eradicate racism? Sounds logical,” one sarcastic Twitter user wrote.

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Racial tensions in South Africa have been growing as a result of proposed legislation that would seize land, without compensation, from white farmers. The proposal has been billed as necessary to help correct years of racial inequality in the country as a result of apartheid.

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Twitter erupts after NYT reveals FBI probe into Trump-Russia links that lead… nowhere

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Russiagate disciples are squealing with joy after the New York Times wrote about the FBI apparently probing if Trump was secretly working for the Russians. In fact, the article states there is no evidence to support the theory.

In what appears to be a last-ditch Russiagate Hail Mary, the New York Times breathlessly reported on Friday – of course, citing people ‘familiar with the investigation’ – that the FBI began looking into whether the president was a covert Kremlin agent, after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. According to the Times, “agents and senior FBI officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign,” but were reluctant to launch a formal probe into the matter. This all changed, the Times tells us, after Comey got the boot.

The investigation was quickly handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller, who continues to lead a probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and collusion with Trump’s presidential campaign.

According to the Times, counterintelligence investigators “had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security.” Agents were also tasked with determining whether Trump “knowingly work[ed] for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.”

The decision to secretly investigate the president for possibly threatening national security triggered a “vigorous debate” within the Justice Department. The FBI, however, apparently felt vindicated after Trump remarked that Comey’s firing had helped relieve Russia-related political pressure.

Among Russiagate’s devout faithful, the report was treated as an earth-shattering revelation that reinforced their core dogma – i.e., that Donald Trump is a Kremlin agent installed in the White House by Vladimir Putin to destroy democracy.

Unfortunately, even the Times begrudgingly admitted – albeit buried in the ninth paragraph – that “no evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.”

Indeed, Twitter was swamped with indignant comments accusing the paper of cooking up a massive nothingburger. One observant netizen pointed out that in October 2016, the New York Times even ran a headline that stated unequivocally: “Investigating Donald Trump, the FBI sees no clear links to Russia.”

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Trump himself took to Twitter to mock the report.

“Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!” he wrote.

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The White House said in a statement that the notion that Trump was in bed with Russia makes little sense, given the administration’s hardline policies directed at Moscow.
“Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia.”

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The report also raises questions about whether Comey was being entirely truthful when he testified to Congress in December that Trump wasn’t among the “four Americans” targeted by the FBI counterintelligence probe into Russian meddling.

As one political pundit observed, the Times’ story raises more questions about the FBI than it does about Trump and his still unproven ties to Russia.

“Is NYT story about Trump, or about FBI malfeasance?” Fox News contributor Byron York asked in a tweet.

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Police employ tear gas & water cannons as Yellow Vest protests enter 9th week (VIDEO)

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Yellow Vest demonstrators returned to the streets of Paris and other French cities on Saturday, and some were met by police with tear gas and water cannons as the authorities pledged zero tolerance to violence.

More than 32,000 people took part in the protests in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Strasbourg, and other cities, according to Interior Ministry data.

Around 8,000 demonstrators, both locals and those coming from other parts of the country, were rallying in the French capital. Some 5,000 riot police with special equipment and armored vehicles oversaw the protests.

Clashes eventually erupted at the iconic Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomphe, with police using tear gas and water cannons to calm the angry crowds. Hundreds of people were arrested during the standoff, with most of them put in custody, the law enforcers said.

© Reuters / Christian Hartmann

“We’ve come to Paris to make ourselves heard, and we wanted to see for ourselves at least once what’s going on here,” a man, who travelled to Paris from western France to attend the protest, told AFP.

 

Around 1,000 demonstrators also made their way to the hippodrome and caused a delay of races in the horseracing town of Chantilly, north of Paris.

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In Nimes, police deployed tear gas against protesters after a tense standoff in the downtown.

17 people were also arrested during clashes in Bourges in central France, where the local authorities said that 5,000 were rallying.

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The French government earlier vowed zero tolerance for violence at the protests, with 80,000 security personnel deployed across France on the weekend.

The Yellow Vest movement, which took its name from the high-visibility jackets worn by the demonstrators, kicked off in November over a government-proposed hike in fuel taxes. As the weekend protests saw more people participating and started turning violent, the government dropped the planned increase.

But the demonstrations continued as the movement morphed into wider discontent with President Emmanuel Macron’s pro-business agenda, a decline in living standards, and growing inequality.

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Yellow vests Acte 9: Gloves on both sides are definitely off

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French interior minister Castaner and the yellow vest movement are on the warpath.

The French yellow vest (‘gilet jaunes’) movement is entering its ninth edition Saturday 12 januari. And instead of cooling down things seem to be heating up and spreading.

While the gilets jaunes are calling for a massive bankrun, in an effort to damage or even collapse the French- and eventually the EU banking system, the government dispatches 80 thousand police and army personnel to try and contain the protests.

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French Interior Minister Castaner today even heightened the tension by saying that protesters will be held accountable for acts committed by fellow gilets jaunes during Saturday’s protests.

Earlier this week there where some tensions between the Italian and French government. Italy’s support for the yellow vest movement was not appreciated by the French.

 

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Google sued over cover-up & payoffs in executive sexual misconduct

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Board members of Alphabet, the parent company of tech giant Google, are being sued by shareholders over multi-million payouts to top executives investigated for sexual harassment at the Silicon Valley behemoth.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in California, claims that the board failed in its duty to shareholders by approving big severance payouts to executives who left the company, while keeping details of their alleged sexual misconduct under wraps.

Among the defendants named in the lawsuit by shareholder James Martin are Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as former CEO Eric Schmidt, who were all on the board’s audit and compensation committees that approved the payouts.

ALSO ON RT.COMYou too: Google staff stage worldwide walkout over sex harassment, mistreatment of women

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Last October, Google revealed to its employees that it had dismissed 48 people for sexual harassment over the past two years, without payouts. Martin’s lawsuit, however, focuses on millions paid to two executives – Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal – who were both accused of sexual misconduct.

Rubin left Alphabet in 2014 with a four-year $90 million payout. He was the creator of the Android mobile operating system and ran the company’s mobile division. The reasons for his departure were a mystery until a New York Times report in October accused him of sexual misconduct with a female staff member, which the paper said was covered up by Google.

ALSO ON RT.COMGoogle CEO sends out sex harassment damage control memoAnother executive, Amit Singhal, left Alphabet in 2016 in a similar fashion, also amid sexual harassment claims, the lawsuit says.

The Times report caused widespread anger among Alphabet staff, with thousands of employees staging walkouts at Google offices around the world. Commenting on Martin’s lawsuit, some of the staff involved in organizing the October walkout released a statement Thursday,  slamming the Google board for not having the employees’ “best interests at heart.”

“Google’s culture of racism, discrimination, and sexual harassment is not the result of a few individual bad actors — it’s built into how the system works, and won’t be fixed without structural change,” they wrote.

Any damages Martin is seeking will be directed back to Google, as his objective is to reform Alphabet’s corporate governance, his attorney Louise Renne told Bloomberg.

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Poll: Democrats Against Pulling Troops Out Of Syria, Afghanistan

By Chris Menahan

A new poll from Morning Consult/Politico found the majority of Democrats are against President Trump’s move to pull out of Syria and also oppose Trump pulling half our troops out of Afghanistan.

On the flip side, Republicans overwhelmingly favor both pulling out of Syria and drawing down troops from Afghanistan.

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On the religious front, non-evangelical Catholics were the most supportive of pulling out of Syria (64%/24%) while Jews were the most opposed (34%/52%).

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Though “conservative” Erick Erickson suggested last month that our soldiers were ready to stage a coup to overthrow president Trump in order to keep the war in Syria going, the poll found military households were also overwhelmingly in favor of ending the war (55%/35%).

Most Democrats were against the war in Syria in 2017 before the latest media blitz ordered them to support it:

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As I reported earlier this week, over the past two years neocons have begun shifting over to the Democratic Party.

MSBNC’s Ari Melber recently hailed “woke Bill Kristol”:

MSNBC also recently celebrated that the “military-industrial complex is now run by women”— as well as the CIA.

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The Democratic Party has become the party of war.

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MUSLIM REP. CARSON ENVISAGES FUTURE WITH MUSLIMS SERVING AT EVERY LEVEL: ‘SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE RASHIDA … PRESIDENT FATIMA …’

Muslim Rep. Carson Envisages Future With Muslims Serving at Every Level: ‘Speaker of the House Rashida … President Fatima ...’

Asked by a reporter what he thought about Tlaib “and what she said,” Carson said he had replied, “I love her, I’ve known her for decades. She’s a fighter and I stand with her.”

CNS News – JANUARY 11, 2019

(CNSNews.com) – Welcoming his two fellow Muslim newcomers to Congress, Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) on Thursday evening envisioned a future with 30-35 Muslim members serving by 2030, and with Muslims holding posts ranging from committee chairs to the presidency of the United States.

Speaking at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reception in honor of himself and Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ihlan Omar (D-Minn.), Carson also spoke in defense of his “sister Rashida,” who has been under fire for using a vulgar expletive to describe President Trump.

Asked by a reporter what he thought about Tlaib “and what she said,” Carson said he had replied, “I love her, I’ve known her for decades. She’s a fighter and I stand with her.”

“And we should stand with her,” he added, drawing applause from the CAIR gathering at a hotel in Arlington, Va.

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Carson likened Tlaib and Omar to superheroes who arrived at a time when he was feeling “all alone” after his then sole Muslim colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison, had stepped down to run for attorney general of Minnesota. (Ellison took up the post on Monday; Omar won the election in November to succeed him as representative for Minnesota’s 5th District.)

“All of a sudden I looked in the sky and saw Wonderwoman come out of nowhere,” Carson said. “And then I looked on the other side and I saw Storm from the X-Men come out of nowhere.”

“We’ve got firepower in Congress. We’ve got sister Rashida [Tlaib] in the House, and she’s tough.”

“She’s the kind of sister you take to a debate with scholars with you, because she’ll rock the house,” Carson continued. “She’s also the kind of sister you take with you if you’re about to get jumped, because she’ll fight too. That sister’s tough.”

Carson said it was important to have three Muslims in Congress, but that he would not rest until there were five more Muslims in Congress in 2020, and ten more by 2022 or 2024.

“In 2030 we may have about 30, 35 Muslims in Congress,” he said.

“Then we’re talking about Madame Chair Rashida. We’re talking about Madame Chair Ilhan,” Carson continued.

“Hell, we could be saying Speaker of the House Ilhan, Speaker of the House Rashida, Senator Rashida, Governor Ilhan, President Fatima, Vice President Aziza.  Inshallah [Allah willing].”

Carson described Tlaib and Omar as “powerful” and “smart.”

“They’re ready. They represent the next generation of Democratic leadership. They’re unapologetic about who they are, and they won’t bow down and they’ll never, never sell you out.”

Concluding his speech, Carson said every American Muslim has “a directive to represent Islam, in all of our imperfections, but to represent Islam and let the world know that Muslims are here to stay, and Muslims are a part of America. And we will have a Muslim caucus that is sizeable, that is formidable, and that is there for you.”

 

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