Tag: NETHERLANDS

UK POLICE FORCE RIDICULED FOR CONFISCATING A SPOON

UK Police Force Ridiculed For Confiscating a Spoon

Fighting violent crime one kitchen utensil at a time

A police force in the UK has been ridiculed for bragging about fighting knife crime by confiscating a spoon.

Regents Park Police said that a local charity shop had handed over a collection of potentially dangerous weapons to prevent criminals buying them.

“Yesterday we conducted weapons sweeps, dealt with a person injured from a van reversing on them, reported a burglary and collected all these from @scope charity shop who diligently didn’t want them to get into the wrong hands & disposed of correctly & safely,” said the police force in a tweet.

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Eagle-eyed observers soon noted that amongst the trawl of deadly weapons, most of which were cooking knives and letter openers, was a spoon.

That’s right. With violent crime soaring and street gangs becoming more vicious, police in London are confiscating spoons.

“They CHOSE to include the spoon,” commented journalist Tim Pool. “They could have just left it out. They really do think spoons are dangerous.”

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“Cereal killer,” joked another respondent.

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“If you can’t trust the new Londoners you imported to handle spoons without stabbing someone, perhaps you have a problem which requires more than spoon confiscation to solve?” asks Chris Menahan.

The same police force was also ridiculed last year for confiscating pliers, scissors and a screwdriver.

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The war on spoons doesn’t really seem to be helping reduce knife crime in the UK, which recently hit its highest level since records began.

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DEMS TO STAGE MARATHON READING OF MUELLER REPORT

Dems to Stage Marathon Reading of Mueller Report

Latest stunt in Russian collusion witch hunt soon

By 

Democrats plan to deliver a marathon public reading of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, staged Thursday in a House committee room.

“This report illustrates a presidency founded in opportunism, devoid of respect for public service and the rule of law,” Representative Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, vice chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee and a leader of the reading effort, said in a statement. “This administration and its enablers do not want the American people hear the contents of this report.”

More than 20 Democrats plan to take part, reading in shifts in the House Rules Committee meeting room in the Capitol, according to a notice about the planned event. The reading will start at noon Thursday on the first page, where Mueller’s report declares: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

It will continue through the report’s two volumes, excluding the appendices and still-secret portions.

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Survey: Over Half of Swedes Reject Taking More Refugees

Swedish

By Chris Tomlinson

A new survey at attitudes towards migration across Europe has found more than half of Swedes say they do not want to see the country take in more refugees, making it one of the most migration-sceptic nations.

Around 8,000 people in Germany, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, France and Sweden were asked a series of questions in the survey, including “Do you agree with the statement: ‘My country should not receive more refugees from conflict areas.’?” to which 51 per cent of the Swedish respondents said they agreed, Spanish newspaper El Paisreports.

While both Poland and Italy were tied with 53 per cent saying they agreed with the statement, the Swedish number exceeded that of Hungary, a nation noted for its strong anti-mass migration stance and policies, at 49 per cent.

More than one-third, 35 percent of the respondents across all of the countries surveyed, said that immigration was the most important issue facing the European Union today but only 14 percent said that the European Union had managed to handle the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016 in a competent manner.

By contrast, 41 percent of Germans say they would welcome more refugees despite being the largest recipient of migrants during the height of the migrant crisis, and the challenges of rising crime, increased spending and lack of both cultural and economic integration.

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For Sweden, migration has been a core issue in elections since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, with the issue dominating the 2018 national elections, according to similar surveys taken last year.

Several reports in Sweden have highlighted the issues surrounding mass migration, including an unpublished report earlier this year that proved that the costs for an increase in migration promised by the Swedish government earlier this year would be far higherthan the initial stated estimates.

Another report, from Swedish broadcaster SVT, revealed the extent of migrant rape rates, claiming over a period of five years, migrants made up 58 percent of those convicted for rapes. The number jumped to 85 percent when accounting to violent rapes in which the victim did not know the perpetrator beforehand.

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Record number of attacks on gays in France: report

Record number of attacks on gays in France: report

By AFP

Paris (AFP) – Assaults in France on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people hit a new record in 2018, “a dark year” for the LGBT community, French group SOS Homophobie reported Tuesday.

The non-profit association registered 231 physical attacks, up from the previous annual record of 188 anti-LGBT assaults back in 2013 linked to same-sex marriage legislation.

“2018 was a dark year for LGBT people,” said SOS Homophobie co-presidents Véronique Godet and Joël Deumier in the yearly report.

The number of assaults jumped 66 percent over 2017, with a spike towards the end of the year when a case a day was being reported to the group.

SOS Homophobie’s helpline, website and legal services collected 1,905 statements from witnesses of abuse of the gay community, 15 percent more than the previous year.

The breakdown of cases, which could involve multiple categories, showed 62 percent involved rejection, 51 percent insults, 38 percent discrimination and 20 percent harassment. Threats and defamation made up 17 percent each with physical assault on 13 percent.

Some 66 percent of witnesses were men, who were “more inclined to talk about it and turn to SOS Homophobie to denounce what they suffered”.

The association said the 42 percent leap in reporting of violence against lesbians appeared linked to the greater willingness of victims to speak out and the influence of the #MeToo movement.

With 23 percent of reported cases, Internet was the leading place for the expression of LGBT phobia in France.

Facebook and Twitter act like an “echo chamber” of daily cases with the social networks recording more than half of all reported cases, the group said.

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Richard Burr Walks it Back on Trump, Jr. Subpoena Agrees to Strict Limits on Scope, Length of Interview

CAP

By Matthew Boyle

Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has relented regarding the subpoena he issued of Donald Trump, Jr., which was originally open-ended in terms of scope and topics, as well as without limits on the length of time for the interview.

Now, after a sustained pressure campaign from allies of the president and the first family, Burr has agreed to limit the scope and topics of the interview, as well as the length of time the president’s eldest son will be expected to appear.

Trump, Jr., will now, sources familiar with the deal that Burr and Trump, Jr.,cut early this week appear in early June sometime before the committee for between two and four hours–but no longer, terms that Burr originally opposed limiting. The scope of topics is also going to be limited. The deal that Burr has agreed to comes after last week the matter blew up in serious public fashion in Burr’s face–where an embarrassing amount of Republicans undercut Burr, including several members of his own Senate Intelligence Committee, several other committee chairs, and his own home state colleague.

While Trump, Jr. had been signaling that he might blow off the subpoena entirely, his intent sources close to him say has always been to be helpful. He had offered to answer more questions in writing, and even to testify in person again with a time and scope limitation–something Burr and Senate Intelligence Committee officials previously opposed. Now, after allies of Trump, Jr., and Republicans party-wide rejected Burr’s original subpoena, with a fierce public backlash, Burr has cut a deal to limit the time and scope of the subpoena–which allies of Trump, Jr., say was always his intention.

“This Don Jr. ‘compromise’ is classic Art of the Deal,” Cliff Sims, a former White House official who is close with Trump, Jr., told Breitbart News. “Take a hardline position, mount a PR campaign, throw out a ‘compromise’ you know the other side won’t accept, end up getting what you actually wanted all along while the other side thinks they’re getting a win.”

The New York Times summarized it similarly, laying out how what Trump, Jr., and his team did was very similar to his father’s political playbook.

“The move by the younger Mr. Trump’s associates was straight out of his father’s playbook — set the terms of the debate at the most extreme end of the discussion by saying he would not appear, then cut a deal and look gracious,” the Times wrote in its report on the matter.

Trump, Jr., is also, sources familiar with his thinking say, very pleased with the many Republicans party-wide who stood up for him during this process, and intends to help them in future political battles to come.

So, for now, the temperature on this fight comes down–but simmering tensions between Burr and the Trump universe are unlikely to fade forever, and this may foreshadow a bigger fight to come in the future sometime between the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump-world.

What’s more, it further clears Trump, Jr.–who did nothing wrong with regard to Russia, despite countless media and Democrat attacks on his character. “This compromise further proves that Don Jr. continues to be open and honest throughout this process,” another former White House official told Breitbart News. “He has nothing to hide and has graciously permitted the previous agreement to be reneged on in order to reiterate there was no collusion at all, just like the Mueller report found.”

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‘Arthur’ character comes out, FINALLY giving LGBT cartoon rat population representation on kid’s TV

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A publicly-funded educational show for children 4-8 about an anthropomorphic aardvark took a turn for the even weirder, when it decided to teach kids the importance of accepting adult male-male inter-species love relationships.

Come on, if there was one thing kids’ TV programming was desperately crying out for, it was a gay cartoon rat getting married, teaching us all a timely lesson about “diversity.”

So, that’s exactly what the season premiere of the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) “Arthur” cartoon delivered. The episode featured a surprise wedding between the titular aardvark’s humanoid rat teacher and his male partner who appears to also be an aardvark…as CNN put it, “leaving us all in happy tears.”

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While many people seemed unsurprised that Mr. Ratburn, a ‘man’ whose principal interests include eating cake and bird-watching, turned out to be a homosexual, there were, nonetheless, heavy celebrations across social media post-nuptials.

Indeed, social justice warriors everywhere were hardly able to contain their glee over the inter-species, same-sex pairing up. If nothing else, the episode confirmed that even kids just barely out of toddlerhood can no longer avoid being pummelled with lessons about identity politics.

Arthur has been on the air for a whopping 22 SEASONS, making it the longest running children’s cartoon on television. So, perhaps we can chalk its success up to being so very in tune with the zeitgeist — and its willingness to take on responsibilities that might otherwise be left to parents. Like lessons about gay marriage, for example.

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Should decisions of when and how to teach children about adult relationships really be made by television producers trying to impart their personal values onto everyone else’s kids? Regardless of whether the relationship is heterosexual or same-sex, marriage is hardly a topic many people would expect to be cropping up in a cartoon for four-year-olds.

What’s next? Are busy parents going to have to start vetting the shows their toddlers are watching and pick ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ ones depending on their own political persuasions? Can a parent not sit their child in front of a television show without wondering what wisdom and life lessons the friendly animated characters are going to be imparting next?

Of course, there’s no grave danger in a child learning about marriage and the basics of sexuality (some people are gay, some are straight, etc.), but are these topics really age-appropriate for the under-fives?

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Cartoons kill’: Kids’ movies show more death than adult ones, study finds

It’s not the first time that PBS has dealt with same-sex relationships in a supposedly child-friendly manner, either. The publicly-funded network ran an episode in 2005 which ambitiously featured two lesbian couples. Although, it appears on that occasion, “Arthur” was a bit ahead of its time and it was forced to pull the episode following parental complaints.

In a statement to People magazine, the network commented on the importance of accurately representing “the diversity of communities across the nation,” as well as the “wide array of adults in the lives of children who look to PBS KIDS every day.”

Social media reaction varied from extreme excitement that wedding bells were finally ringing for Mr. Ratburn to concern that PBS had taken their efforts to promote diversity and educate young kids a tad too far. Some were even downright angry that the channel had decided to “burden” children with thoughts of sexuality and adult relationships, homosexual or otherwise.

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Facebook bans Italian populist pages ahead of EU elections

By   

The social media giant Facebook has banned 23 noteworthy Italian populist pages with 2.5 million followers just two weeks ahead of the highly anticipated European elections.

The vast majority of the 23 pages that were banned supported Italy’s currently governing coalition made up right and left wing populist parties La Lega (The League) and the 5-Star Movement (MS5), Italy’s La Stampa reports.

Facebooks cited ‘hate speech’ and ‘divisive content’ regarding vaccines, immigrants, and Jewish people as justification for the drastic move.

Apparently, the tech giant’s decision to ban these pages was informed by a report which was created by a leftist NGO by the name of Avaaz, which claims to focus on environmental campaigns and what they regard as ‘human rights’.

A spokesperson from Facebook commented, saying, “We thank Avaaz for sharing its research so we could investigate…We are committed to protecting the integrity of the EU elections and around the world. We have removed a series of false and duplicate accounts that violated our policies on the subject of authenticity, as well as several pages for violation of the policy on changing the name.”

“We have also taken action against some pages that have repeatedly spread misinformation. We will take further measures if we find other violations,” the spokesperson added.

In Avaaz’s report, which was presented to Facebook earlier this month, the NGO claimed that it had discovered 14 Italian networks operating on social media platform which included 104 pages, 6 groups, with a reach of more than 18.2 million individual users.

Of these networks, actions taken by Facebook this week targeted 23 of its pages – totaling nearly 2.45 million individual users and 2.44 million interactions over the past three months.

On top of this, Facebook has also apparently ‘weakened’ pages that it has arbitrarily deemed to be spreading content containing ‘fake news’ – presumably limiting their visibility to Facebook users.

Facebook asserts that its primary motivation for banning these pages was that the page creators had initially chosen page themes which didn’t cite any involvement with political parties or movements, but which had later switched the themes.

Included among the banned pages are ‘Lega Salvini Premier Santa Teresa of Riva’, ‘We want the 5-Star Movement in government’, which had 129,000 followers and nearly 700,000 interactions in just three months, ‘Lega Salvini Sulmona’ — which had 307,000 followers – ‘We Are 5 Stars’, as well as ‘Beppe Grillo for President’.

Facebook’s most recent efforts in Italy to influence this May’s European elections are only the tip of the iceberg, according to Italian media.

Earlier this month, Facebook opened up a ‘war room’ in Dublin, Ireland with 40 teams of full-time engineers, researchers, threat specialists, scientists, and experts for each country who devote their efforts to the European electoral campaign, according to the Italian La Repubblica.

Apparently, there are 500 individuals working on the elections, with the help of 21 so-called ‘fact checkers’, working in 14 different languages.

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REMINDER: EVERY BOGUS 2016 FISA REQUEST to Spy on Trump was Signed by Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch

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By Joe Hoft

Last night on the Laura Ingraham Angle on FOX News, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo, noted that Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed off on most all the FISA warrants during Obama’s last couple years in office (emphasis added) –

As somebody who’s worked on FISA applications, I can tell you how high it could go because under the FISA law itself the Attorney General has to approve the FISA application.  So if the Steele dossier, which we now know was completely made up, was used as a basis for the FISA application, then you have somebody that was high up in the FBI that had to approve that.  Somebody high up in the Justice Department had to approve that.  Ultimately the Attorney General [Loretta Lynch] has to approve that.

And then a second thing we haven’t touched on yet is that appears that the FBI attempted to send undercover informants and agents to infiltrate the Trump campaign.  There’s a whole other set of laws that are called the Attorney General guidelines which are supposed to only allow that in very, very rare circumstances.  So I assume the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General and maybe FBI Director Comey all had to sit in on that decision and approve it…

Here’s a reminder of what we reported on February 3rd, 2018, more than a year ago –>>

On March 7th, 2017, the Gateway Pundit reported – Only 1 in 10,000 FISA Requests Was Denied in 6 Years — Obama’s First Request to Wiretap Trump Denied in 2016.

We now know that the FISA requests to spy on Carter Page were based on the discredited and bogus fake Trump dossier created by Fusion GPS and that the dossier’s origin was not reported to the court.

We also know that all of these requests were signed off on by the Obama Administration’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch and that the first request to spy on Trump was denied by the FISA Court.

In March 2017 we reported that President Trump tweeted that former President Obama had petitioned a court [at least] twice in order to wire tap current President Trump when he was running for office.

In his first tweet President Trump tweeted:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

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The President next tweeted:

Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

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We also reported that according to ABC News:

More than a thousand applications for electronic surveillance, all signed by the attorney general, are submitted each year, and the vast majority are approved. From 2009 to 2015, for example, more than 10,700 applications for electronic surveillance were submitted, and only one was denied in its entirety, according to annual reports sent to Congress. Another one was denied in part, and 17 were withdrawn by the government.

A very disturbing fact about the wire tapping request of President Trump is that the FISA Court turned down President Obama’s Administration’s first request to wire tap President Trump that was evidently signed off on by Attorney General Lynch. With only two known applications denied out of 10,700 from 2009 through 2015, the fact that the Obama Administration’s application was denied by the FISA Court is very disturbing. The odds of this happening were 0.02%.

Now we know that Carter Page was spied on by the Obama Administration and the information provided to the Court to spy on him was bogus.

We now have additional evidence that the Obama Administration, its AG, FBI and DOJ were all corrupt and doing all they could, including obtaining warrants to spy on President Trump based on bogus information, to take him down before the 2016 election.

The amazing thing is … Trump still won!

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