Up to 3,200 pedophiles worked in French Catholic Church since 1950, independent commission says

(CNN) Between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile clergymen have worked in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s, the president of an independent commission on sexual abuse told CNN Sunday.

"We had to cross historical, sociological, medical and psychiatric perspectives. We had to call upon skills in the area of child protection, social work, questions of abuse and also bring to bear skills in the area of theology and law," said Jean-Marc Sauvé, ahead of the release of the commission's final report on Tuesday.

Read in Le Monde earlier today:

• Jean-Marc Sauvé called the 2900-3200 range "a minimal estimate"
  
• About 115,00 priests, in total, were exercising during the 70 years between 1950 to date

Politico.eu |  5 takeaways from Italy's local elections

National government intact
[...]
Democrat success
[...]
Right suffer, but not that much
[...]
From 5Stars to zero stars
[...]
Meloni on the rise

Politico.com |  5 takeaways from Italy's local elections
ditto

Mytilineos lands major RES project in Italy

The RSD Business Unit is strategically positioned in the Italian market with a 1.7-gigawatt solar energy storage and green hydrogen pipeline. The projects are at different stages of development and located in 15 regions.

Latest Corona-related news in brief:

NATIONAL EMPLOYERS ORGANIZATION NHO wants state officials to clarify whether employers can legally demand that any sick employees test themselves for the Corona virus. As many return to the workplace after 18 months in home offices, it's unclear who's responsible for testing and covering the costs of sick pay.

EU finance ministers strike three countries off tax haven ["]blacklist["], ignoring Parliament's calls

EU finance ministers met on Tuesday (5 October) and approved the removal of Anguilla, Dominica, and Seychelles from the list.

archived a RAFT of documents 2017, Lagarde list 2012

The Netherlands too has a shortage of 10,000 truck drivers: NOS

Many truckers who work for Dutch firms come from eastern Europe, but are often denied salaries in line with their Dutch colleagues, according to trade union federation FNV. Some companies use complicated cross-border constructions to get round the Dutch pay scales. In July, for example, a Dutch transport company was ordered to give 10 Hungarian lorry drivers back pay which could run into hundreds of thousands of euros for failing to pay them a salary in line with Dutch requirements.
[...]
n the UK, where the shortage is much more serious, just 27 people have applied so far for one of 300 visas set aside for lorry drivers to deliver fuel to petrol stations, the Times reported on Tuesday.

Romania's Covid 'fourth wave' surpasses first outbreak, 4 Oct
"With a total record of over 11,000 daily Covid cases, Romania significantly outpaces both the European and world average. ... Plummeting vaccine interest in Romania comes from a long-standing mistrust in authorities, vaccine-scepticism, plus officials' poor approach in dealing with the virus.... "We need to overcome the political gridlock. We need authorities to be able to fight the coronavirus, as well as rising gas and electricity prices", Iulius Marian Firczak MP told EUobserver"
Romanian political parties prepare for a no-confidence vote
"To overthrow the government, 234 votes are needed. The three parties that want to oust the prime minister have more than 280, but their common interests stop there."
Romanian government falls after losing no-confidence vote, poll of polls

The opposition center-left Social Democratic Party (PSD) and far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) were joined in supporting the no-confidence motion by ex-coalition members from the Union to Save Romania (USR, formerly known as USR-PLUS). The government collapse could lead to early elections in Romania, which are triggered when a prime minister and their cabinet are rejected twice in a row by MPs. That could take months, leaving the country in limbo. The PSD has demanded an election as soon as possible.

French senators arrive in Taiwan amid tensions with China

The group, led by senator Alain Richard, will meet with President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwanese economic and health officials and the Mainland Affairs Council. Richard, a former French defense minister, previously visited Taiwan in 2015 and 2018, according to Taiwan's semi-official Central News Agency, and heads the Taiwan Friendship group in the French Senate.
[...]
The visit is part of normal and regular parliamentary exchanges between France and Taiwan, which were not politicized in the past, said Mathieu Duchatel, director of the Asia Program at the Institut Montaigne in Paris.
[...]
China [sic; s/b CCP] and Taiwan [sic; s/b KMT] split amid civil war in 1949. Today they have extensive trade and investment ties but no official relations, and China has increasingly mobilized military, diplomatic and economic pressure to undermine Tsai's independence-leaning administration.

Biden says he and China's Xi agree to abide by Taiwan agreement
channeling surrender of the CSA to Teh Union at Apptomatox, VA, which concluded the US war of Northern Aggression, sort of

Opposition wins surprise majority
"Together, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition won 27.7% of the vote, while Pirates and Mayors, another opposition group, got 15.5%."
CNN Newsource | Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's populist party loses grip
"With 98.84% of votes counted, the center-right alliance Spolu (Together) leads the count with 27.58% of the ballots, followed by Babiš's ANO party with 27.32%, and the centrist PirStan coalition with 14.45%."

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announces resignation

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Saturday announced that he would step down amid allegations of financial impropriety against his office.

Kurz said he would move to parliament as leader of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). Foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg will replace him as chancellor, he said.

"My country is more important to me than myself," Kurz said in a televised statement.

"What we need now are stable conditions,'' he told reporters in Vienna. "So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability."

Kurz said he wanted to "make space to prevent chaos".

Finland lobbied EU to declare nuclear power sustainable after unpublished cabinet decision supported by Greens
"If nuclear power gets the so-called 'green label', financing for nuclear projects will be easier to come by and the terms of any loans will be softer than for other energy projects. ... Finland's decision was reached at a meeting of ministers on 9 July, but not announced publicly."
US President nominates new Finland ambassador
"The Associated Press reports that [Douglas T.] Hickey is a prominent Democratic fundraiser and telecom executive."
Coronavirus latest: 1,618 new cases over the weekend; Child poverty grows; PM denies restrictions lifted too early, illustrated
"The government's telecommuting recommendations are scheduled to end in the middle of October, but employee opinions are divided on whether returning to the workplace is a good idea."

They haven't even finished voting, but the result is clear.

Now it's reached a "peer reviewed" publication, the European Journal of Epidemiology. (For anyone like me who is not in "the biz", there is hardly anything about this on wikipedia, just boilerplate/PR.)

"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States"
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people."

Full article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7

Court slaps $1.2M daily fine on Poland in rule-of-law fight

the [ECJ] said in a news release that the daily fine was necessary "to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law." The court said it would issue a full ruling at a later date.

archived practice, practice, practice

[EC] investigates ["US-based"] Nvidia's purchase of ["UK-based"] chip designer Arm

"Our investigation aims to ensure that companies active in Europe continue having effective access to the technology that is necessary to produce state-of-the-art semiconductor products at competitive prices," said EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who's in charge of competition and digital issues for the bloc. [...] The commission has until March 15 to decide whether to clear the deal. The EU concerns echo those cited by the U.K's competition watchdog, which opened its own investigation earlier this year.

European Commission to launch Chips Act in bid for strategic autonomy

I've been wondering whether to keep this section, now that Brexit is (safely?) behind us. I think I'll keep it up for a little while, if only for the entertainment value: all Brexit related news these days seem to come straight out of The Onion/Der Postillon/Le Gorafi.

Government asks German residents to drive lorries even if they never have before - Independent

A letter was sent by the Department for Transport, signed by transport minister Baroness Vere, asking Germans who live in Britain to "consider returning" to the HGV driving sector.

The letter states: "Your valuable skills and experience have never been more needed than they are now.

"There are fantastic HGV driving opportunities in the logistics industry and conditions of employment have been improving across the sector. As well as attractive pay rates, we are seeing more options for flexible working, fixed hours, fixed days, full time and part time."

German driving licences issued before 1999 include an entitlement to drive a small to medium-sized truck of up to 7.5 tonnes. It is understood that almost all Germans residing in the UK who hold such a licence have been sent the letter, almost none of whom have ever driven an HGV before.

pic.twitter.com/yNn1aBqKeV

— Professor Amanda Vickery (@Amanda_Vickery) October 2, 2021

Northern Ireland faces clown shortage 🤡https://t.co/HpK6R80nCz

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 29, 2021

This can be read at so many levels. Should we start a caption contest?

I think this, from the New Yorker, might be closer to reporting than satire. pic.twitter.com/TuC2JHipMR

— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) October 1, 2021

Scotland, Wales won't follow Westminster govt on gene editing deregulation
wages of a devolved, united kingdom paid to the EU

reference
Department for EnvironmentFood & Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
"Genetic technologies regulation: government response explainer," updated 29 September 2021

Gene editing and the genetic technologies we are considering do not result in the introduction of DNA from different species but produce targeted changes to the existing DNA that could be made more slowly using traditional breeding methods or occur naturally. After considering the scientific evidence, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) have advised that an organism produced by gene editing does not pose an increased safety risk compared to current traditional breeding techniques, which would take far longer to introduce the same beneficial changes.

The following is on the front page of La Repubblica (but behind the paywall). I can't find anything in the British press - what's going on there?

Regno Unito, ingorghi di ambulanze davanti agli ospedali: anche oggi 45 mila nuovi casi di Covid

Daily Mail

Britain is now facing a pie crisis amid a 'perfect storm' of foil tins running low due to rising global aluminium prices, ongoing labour shortages and inflation.

The British Pie Association is urging pie makers to re-use the foil tins rather than throw them away to tackle the shortages.

The National

Asked on Sky if you can catch Covid from your friends, Javid said: "People should consider wearing masks in crowded places when they are with strangers, when they are with people that they are not normally spending time with."

SNP MP Stephen Flynn asked vaccines minister Maggie Throup whether that advice had been backed up by science. She confirmed Public Health England had not made a comparative assessment about transmission rates between people who know each other and those who don't.

What a surprise!

Guardian

Supermarkets are using cardboard cutouts of fruit, vegetables and other groceries to fill gaps on shelves because supply problems combined with a shift towards smaller product ranges mean many stores are now too big.

Tesco has begun using pictures of asparagus, carrots, oranges and grapes in its fresh produce aisles, prompting ridicule on social media.

Thanks to Brexit, there are no restrictions on the shape of cardboard bananas.

Potatoes of Color edition
"He said Democrats have moved so far to the left that 'it looks anti-American.'"

Welcome to America pic.twitter.com/J5L7Oc8nBK

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) October 13, 2021

JTA

Teachers in a Texas school district were told last week that a new state law requiring them to present multiple perspectives about "widely debated and currently controversial" issues meant they needed to make "opposing" views on the Holocaust available to students.

What does the law have to say about opposing views on Israel, let alone opposing views on Texas itself?

Noam Chomsky is in favour of isolating vaccine skeptics from society:
"How can we get food to them? Well, that's actually their problem."

He's right. If anything he's too lenient.

Short clip: https:/twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1452490014533816323
Whole interview: https:/t.co/WIjVOs1h7I?amp=1

Lightfoot is right, clicking a thing on a web site is not that much to ask.
https:/www.mercurynews.com/2021/10/19/35-of-chicago-police-officers-refuse-to-report-vaccination-st atus

The usual nonsense about "natural immunity" comes up every time. I can't even!

And, I agree, they should lose their pension. This is no laughing matter. Do they think this is a good time to renegotiate pay? Chicago is safer than it's been in decades!
https:/policetribune.com/chicago-pd-may-withhold-pensions-from-cops-who-retire-while-not-complying- with-vaccine-mandate

The good news, hopefully, is that this should be the remaining Trumpists on the force. Once city down ... how many to go? Texas probably won't fall in line - may have to wait for them to secede.

Like the EC, CHINA tightens political control of [domestic] internet giants

The party says anti-monopoly antitrust enforcement will be a priority through 2025. It says competition will help create jobs and raise living standards.
[...]
Products from China wouldn't function in the United States or Europe, and vice versa. Innovation and efficiency would suffer.

< wipes tears >

Alibaba said it will invest $28 billion to develop operating system software, processor chips and network technology. The company has pledged $1 billion to nurture 100,000 developers and tech startups over the next three years. Last year, Tencent promised to invest $70 billion in digital infrastructure. Meituan, an e-commerce, delivery and service platform, raised $10 billion to develop self-driving vehicles and robots.

[INCONTINENCE ALERT]

A law that takes effect Nov. 1 establishes security standards, prohibits companies from disclosing information without customer permission and tells them to limit how much they collect. Unlike data protection laws in Western countries, the Chinese rules say nothing about limiting government or ruling party access to personal information.
[...]
Beijing is also using the crackdown to narrow China's politically sensitive wealth gap by pushing tech giants to share their wealth with employees and consumers.

Google seeks to overturn $5.1 bln EU fine
archived Eric Li in The Coming War Against China (Pilger, 2016)

Taliban-style security welcomed by some, feared by others

Before the Taliban takeover in August, people had to pay bribes simply to settle a utility bill. Rampant fraud in the military was one reason it collapsed so quickly in the face of the advancing Taliban. Despite the overt graft, the U.S. and Europe poured billions of dollars into the government with little oversight.

Taliban raid suspected IS hideout after bombing in capital

Global gas wars: the fun has just begun!
"On the other side of Belarus lies the Ukraine, where things are even more fun. Back in spring of 2019 the Ukraine declined Russia's gracious offer to sell it gas $240-260 per thousand cubes (a quarter of the current spot price) and instead opted to buy it on the spot market."
US trade group calls for restrictions on LNG exports, 17 Sep 2021

Horrific torture videos show widespread rape and brutalisation of inmates inside Putin's jails: 'Torture conveyer belt' sees rapists deployed to 'break' male prisoners, 2021

The sick scheme was exposed in a leak of 40Gb of video footage which was smuggled out of the archives of Russia's FSIN prison service by an anonymous Belarussian man who claims he was tasked with archiving the videos while in jail.

Now freed, the man handed a smuggled copy of the material to campaigners at Gulagu.net who have published parts of it online - while calling for reforms. MailOnline has reviewed a section of the material, but has decided not to publish most of it because of the highly distressing nature of the footage.

21st Century Eugenics: Reproductive Injustice at the Border (2020)
100 years later ...
Rikers Island isn't in the wrong place -- it just has the wrong management!

Singapore shows the world what 'endemic' COVID might look like

Experts say that Singapore's climbing cases, more than half of which are in vaccinated individuals, may signal that COVID-19 is becoming an endemic disease in the city-state, meaning COVID-19 circulates in a population like its four coronaviruses cousins but doesn't upend lives due to widespread immunity. As long as deaths remain low, Singapore can set an example for how other countries, especially those that have maintained zero tolerance for COVID-19, can emerge from the pandemic.
[...]
Singapore's data shows that 52% of infections in the last month have been among the vaccinated while 48% have been unvaccinated.

Singapore has used COVID-19 vaccines from U.S. makers Pfizer and Moderna for its national campaign, while some private clinics have also distributed doses from China's Sinovac for individuals that prefer the Chinese jab.

< wipes tears >

WHO starts shipping COVID-19 medical supplies to N. Korea

a possible sign that the North is easing one of the world's strictest pandemic border closures to receive outside help. WHO said in a weekly monitoring report that it has started the shipment of essential COVID-19 medical supplies through the Chinese port of Dalian for "strategic stockpiling and further dispatch" to North Korea.

wut sanctions

The latest WHO report came weeks after Kim during a ruling party meeting ordered officials to wage a tougher anti-virus campaign in "our style" after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via COVAX.

UNICEF, which procures and delivers vaccines on behalf of the COVAX distribution program, said last month that North Korea proposed its allotment of about 3 million Sinovac shots be sent to severely affected countries instead. < wipes tears > Some ["]analysts["] say the North is angling to receive more effective jabs amid questions about the Sinovac vaccine's effectiveness.

Australia's borders to stay closed until mid-2022, 21 May 2021

in light of the recent ICC decision not to resume investigation of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM war crimes, UN ends Yemen war crimes probe in defeat for Western states [?!]

Members narrowly voted to reject a resolution led by the Netherlands to give the independent investigators another two years to monitor atrocities in Yemen's conflict. It marked the first time in the council's 15-year history that a resolution was defeated.

US, France, Britain may be complicit in Yemen war crimes, UN report says
The United States, Britain and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to a Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic, the United Nations said on Tuesday (3 September).

Rights activists said this week that Saudi Arabia lobbied heavily against the Western Dutch resolution. The kingdom is not a voting member of the UN Human Rights Council and its delegation did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Statement by Group of Experts on Yemen on HRC rejection of resolution to renew their mandate

During the debate, Bahraini ambassador Yusuf Abdulkarim Bucheeri said that the international group of investigators had "contributed to spreading misinformation about the situation on the ground" in Yemen.

GEE on Yemen Roll Call, 7 Oct 2021

In the vote called by Saudi ally Bahrain, 21 countries voted against the Dutch resolution including China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Venezuela and Uzbekistan. Eighteen including Britain, France and Germany voted [for] it.

How did US vote? It didn't.
US envoy on Yemen returns as UN drops ["]abuse["] probe

The US envoy on Yemen on Friday started a fresh peace bid that includes a stop in Saudi Arabia, which succeeded in scuttling a UN-backed probe into abuses in the conflict.

Tim "Iraqi Freedom" Lenderking, tasked by President Joe Biden with working to end a war that has brought a humanitarian catastrophe, arrived in Jordan and will also visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates[,] and Oman, the State Department said.
[...]
The United States said it had "strongly supported the renewal of the mandate because we believe there must be accountability for human rights violations and abuses in Yemen.

"This failure to renew the GEE's mandate blocks critical, independent reporting on human rights abuses in Yemen," a State Department spokesperson said.

Doubt this will go anywhere

China, Russia urge U.S. to clarify its military biological activities

In a joint statement released Thursday by the two nations' foreign ministers, China and Russia expressed grave worry about U.S. military biological activities.

According to the statement, U.S. military biological activities pose a severe threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and China and are detrimental to the security of relevant regions.

The two sides urged the U.S. to behave in an open, transparent, and responsible manner by informing properly on its military biological activities conducted overseas and on its national territory, according to the statement.

But amusing, none the less

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

I am the fucking Kwisatz Bacharach. https://t.co/V5n81Rs0JM pic.twitter.com/W4aRDx4yH5

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) October 19, 2021

France still being this mad about the submarines is one of my favorite subplots.

Bloomberg

China Urges Hui to Tap Wealth; Firms to Repay; Evergrande Update

China has urged companies to make payments on their offshore bonds, and asked China Evergrande Group's billionaire founder Hui Ka Yan to tap his personal wealth to help solve the company's deepening debt crisis.

I like Bloomberg's "asked"....

[Xinjiang] mummies didn't migrate during the Bronze Age, genetic analysis finds

Until now, researchers had proposed three migration routes: either they were ["]western Eurasians["] moving south from Siberia, or they were ["]Central Asian["] farmers moving east, or else they had to be a mobile pastoral community moving west along the mountains.

Genetic analysis published in the journal Nature on Thursday reveals the Tarim people were a genetically isolated population of ancient ["]North Eurasians["] with roots dating back to the Holocene.

archived scientific orientalism

The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of ["]Inner Asia["], and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious¹. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000-2800 BC from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100-1700 BC from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early-Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. ...

archived Herodotus rising

Farms Evacuated In Þingeyjarsveit Due To Landslides

Because of the heavy rainfall in the area, there's a lot of water on the mountain slopes causing landslides. The residents of the five farms that got trapped have been helped out of the area by helicopter.

RVK Newscast #135: Earthquakes Are Back! Plus A Few Words On La Palma, A/V (EN)

Nobel in chemistry honors "greener" way to build molecules, mostly pharma and pesticide applications, marketing

The chemistry prize focused on the business of making molecules. That requires linking individual atoms together in specific arrangements -- a difficult and slow task. Until the beginning of the millennium the year 2000, chemists had only two methods -- or catalysts -- to speed up the process, using either complicated enzymes or metal catalysts.

periodic table of organic | inorganic elements meets quantum physics

"One way to look at their work is like molecular carpentry," said John Lorsch, director of the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences. "They've found ways to not only speed up the chemical ["]joining["]," he said, "but to make sure it only goes in either the right-handed or left-handed direction."

peter, paul "biologic" blockchain

List said he did not initially know that MacMillan was working on the same subject and figured his hunch might just be a "stupid idea" -- until it worked.

Where's muh patent waiver?
Where's muh alternative fuel?
asymmetric organocatalysis has entered the room.

Breaking News: The WHO approved the first ever malaria vaccine, which could save tens of thousands of children in sub-Saharan Africa. The quest for this vaccine has been underway for a hundred years, a WHO official said, and is a "historic event." https://t.co/i1hcYBhbvb pic.twitter.com/wTNg6xWmzU

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 6, 2021

We should have expected long COVID.

SARS survivors are "still, after 10 years, experiencing problems. Issues such as fatigue, muscle and joint pain, shortness of breath and some newly developing problems such as neuropathy, numbness in the feet and hands"https://t.co/Qr0kDpLMXD

— Dr Zoë Hyde (@DrZoeHyde) October 21, 2021

Rep. Carolyn Maloney "sounds alarm" observing federal and states' regulation of abortion and "constitutional rights" thereof.

US House Oversight and Reform Committee, 30 Sep 2021, featuring dubious reading comprehension, a RAFT of bills purporting to perfect "constitutional rights", tears, sippy cups, and Gloria Steinem, "feminist icon" of the middling sort--possibly low-income menstruating colored people--as is the custom when FIFTH WAVE politicians have exhausted a philosophy of "qualified" equity and meritocracy which has bound the nation in their exceptional ignorance in "cases of rape or incest". running time 05:01:39.

reference
Jane ROE, et al., Appellants, v. Henry WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

Held:

1. While 28 U.S.C. § 1253 authorizes no direct appeal to this Court from the grant or denial of declaratory relief alone, review is not foreclosed when the case is properly before the Court on appeal from specific denial of injunctive relief and the arguments as to both injunctive and declaratory relief are necessarily identical. P. 123.

2. Roe has standing to sue; the Does and Hallford do not. Pp. 123-129.
   

[...]
3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Pp. 147-164.
[...]

4. The State may define the term "physician" to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined. P. 165.

5. It is unnecessary to decide the injunctive relief issue, since the Texass authorities will doubtless fully recognize the Court's ruling

And so they have but for the 4mm embryo "heart beat" limitation

314 F. Supp. 1217, affirmed in part and reversed in part.

[the contrite Klans man] BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, STEWART, MARSHALL, and POWELL, JJ., joined. BURGER, C.J., post, p. 410 U. S. 207, DOUGLAS, J., post, p. 209, and STEWART, J., post, p. 167, filed concurring opinions. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, J., joined, post, p. 221. REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 171.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992
"undue burden" test of states' regulations
Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 2016
"balancing of benefits and burdens" of states' legitimate interests
Whole Woman's Health et al. v Paxton, et al., 18 Aug 2021
wherein 5th Cir. enumerates US district ct errors in findings of fact and case law pertaining to one medical procedure (rather than "viability" per se), then recites "constitutional" restriction and permissions (109 pp)
Whole Woman's Health, et al. v Judge Austin Reeve Jackson, et al. 5th Cir. per curiam, 10 Sep 2021
wherein "light of S.B. 8's enforcement mechanism, Plaintiffs have adopted a novel strategy for their pre-enforcement [!] challenge. Principally, they seek to enjoin the entire Texas judiciary to prevent any [!] court from entertaining S.B. 8 lawsuits."

archived Who is a "health provider"?

Turkey may already be in the process of destroying a Greek relic, making "the entire world angry"! This evening RT presenter Rick Sanchez asked RT producer Joe Ricci, who also happens to possess a PhD in history, to explain "with some sense of authority", WHY in the WORLD would Turkey do something like this? And help us understand how important these Greek landmarks are.

"the foundational tale of western literature"

Assos is "right near the city Troy" [I-IX], site of the Trojan war in the Illiad ["elite" pulp fiction]. "Historically, 500 to a thousand years before the birth of Christ, this area was ALL populated by Greeks. So the center of Greece was really the Aegean Sea." They called Ionia or Anatolia which in Greek just means 'the east' or the 'land of the rising sun' [more often translated to *-Eng., "Asia"] It remained Greek-speaking until the 1920s, "when there were finally some deportations of Greek people from Turkey ... so there was a kind of sorting which took place between Greece and Turkey."

Dr. Ricci explains. Turkish provincial government wants some hotels built. "They're not actually trying to destroy the site. They're actually trying to build up the area" to accommodate moar tooorists. One thing that is safe to say is, "the Turks might not like that Greek sites lay all over their territory... but these sites have brought millions and millions, billions, of tooorist revenue to the Turks."

reference
Troy Excavation Project Final Reports I.1: The West Sanctuary I. Iron Age-Classical. Studia Troica Monograph 12. Carolyn Aslan, Kathleen Lynch, and Mark Lawall. R. Habelt, Bonn, 2018.

Journalists who took on Putin and Duterte win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

Maria Ressa and Dimitry Muratov were credited by the Nobel Committee as "representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal ["courageous fight for freedom of expression"] in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions".

The award comes at a time when restrictions on the press and threats to the safety of journalists are on the rise globally. Often using the COVID-19 pandemic as a license, many governments have increased restrictions on the press and controls on information in recent years.

Kashoggi be, like

.....

Assange be, like,

halp ... halp ...

Snowden be, like

Who me?

Anna-Karin Bylund be, like

Thanks for nothing

Biden be, like

C'mon, man. The thing.

I am not sure they can be termed "experts" if they were shocked by this extremely inevitable development. pic.twitter.com/b85wB6mGCq

— Ben Ad Astra 🚀 (@BenAdAstra) October 14, 2021

The BBC channeling antisemitism when presenting a French period drama (they didn't manage to blame it on Corbyn this time).

Dreyfus was a Jewish officer in the French army who was baselessly accused of treason by a deeply antisemitic establishment.

After initially being convicted and humiliated, he was later exonerated of all charges.

Yet the @BBC refers to him as a "notorious Jewish spy". pic.twitter.com/woFbgdnztM

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 10, 2021

After the backlash, the Beeb changed the tagline from "the notorious jewish spy" to  "arrested for spying".

Some idiots dubbed the 2016 Brexit referendum 'our Independence Day'. As John Oliver remarked: "Britain is already independent. Actually, Britain is what many countries have become independent from."

For instance:

Independence Day (Cyprus)

In Cyprus, Independence Day falls on 1 October. It is celebrated by festivals at schools and a large military parade in the capital. Cyprus became independent from the British in 1960 after Cyprus won full sovereignty from Britain.

Todd Akin, sunk by `legitimate rape' remark, dies

16 October 2021: Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is murdered in a car bomb attack in Malta.

On This Day in 1961, French Police Murdered Dozens of Pro-independence Algerians

October 17, 1961: A massacre of Algerians in the heart of Paris

In deep secrecy, the FLN started organising a march against the curfew and police repression of Algerians more broadly. The group called on Algerian men, women and children to take to the streets of Paris on the evening of October 17.
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Some Algerians were beaten to death, bludgeoned by clubs, batons or other such contraptions. Some were shot dead. Some were thrown into the Seine; some already dead, some still alive, their feet and hands bound. They were the people "drowned by bullets" according to Paris police HQ's official expression. For several days, those bodies washed up in the Seine and Paris's canals.

The Paris chief of police, Maurice Papon, who organized the repression, was later appointed to the cabinet under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (1978 to 1981). During the 1980s, Papon's role  in the deportation of 1,600 Jews of Bordeaux to Drancy from 1942-44, under the Vichy government, came to light. Papon was finally tried for crimes against humanity and was convicted in 1998; he died in 2007.

Colin Powell joins Ray Odierno in the circle of miscreants.
wut: "Saddam was captured by U.S. forces while hiding out in northern Iraq in December 2003 and later executed by the Iraqi government."

A bomb (actually a grenade) is sent to US Ambassador to France Myron Herrick, in the guise of a package from "a well-known perfumery house," but it only injures his English valet, who luxuriates in the very English-valet name Blanchard....

From another forum:

Today marked the 65th anniversary of the uprising in Hungary, which began on October 23, '56 with a student rally in Budapest as a sign of solidarity with Poland.
The Hungarians tried to free themselves from Russian occupation. The uprising was bloodily suppressed by the Soviets. pic.twitter.com/Mkqo6PS8oN

— The PIASA Archives (@PIASA_NY) October 23, 2021