The militant Islamic group Boko Haram has increased its kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria. Incredibly, they have not only proudly claimed responsibility, they seem boastful and even gleeful about what they have done and promise to keep doing it and to use the girls as slaves and to sell them as brides.
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Today is election day in South Africa, 20 years after the election in which Nelson Mandela became president and apartheid was effectively ended. It seems like the African National Congress will be re-elected to office despite the record of corruption of the party and its leader president Jacob Zuma, which is partly blamed for the voting apathy of the so-called ‘born frees’, young people who were born after end of apartheid and who can vote for the first time.
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Trevor Timm points out how in recent remarks, Hillary Clinton trots out the same old lies and arguments about Snowden that have been thoroughly debunked. Here are the debunked statements she made that Timm rebuts point by point.
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The situation in Ukraine goes from bad to worse with increasing numbers of deaths, with the latest consisting of the authorities in Kiev killing pro-Russian separatists. Today comes reports that there have been dozens of further deaths in addition to the dozens killed over the weekend, though the details are still sketchy.
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Those who advocate shredding people’s constitutional protections and using barbaric methods like torture in order to ‘protect us’ and ‘keep us safe’ have the easy side of the argument because they are appealing to emotions like fear. Those of us who argue that living with some risk is the necessary consequence of living in a free society are appealing to the rational part of the brain and that is a harder sell.
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Yesterday there was a debate in Toronto on the proposition “Be it resolved state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms”. It was live streamed last night and I apologize for not giving advance notice. For some reason I did not know earlier but heard about it only on my way home and managed to catch only the second half of it live.
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The two authors of the study that looked at a large amount of data that enabled them to test various hypotheses about who runs America and came to the conclusion that the middle class and lower have no influence on policy had an extended interviewed on The Daily Show two days ago. They are careful to say that they themselves did not use the word oligarchy, which to them implies control by a very tiny group, say they top 0.1%. They think control here is by about the top 10%.
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The US Department of Education has released a list of 55 universities that they are investigating to see if they are responding properly to reports of sexual violence and harassment complaints, as required under legislation known as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
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I have been following this terrible story out of Nigeria where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram that is so ruthless and reactionary that they make even the Taliban look progressive, has kidnapped an estimated 234 girls from a boarding school three weeks ago and taken them into the jungles and their fate remains unknown. Farouk Chothia gives some background on the group.
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The assault on the poor has been extended even to the disabled and now even they are being portrayed as part of the ‘moocher’ class. Last year, there were a spate of news reports about the rise in the disability rolls following the recession. Of course, this set off a storm of speculation the ruling class, ever vigilant when it comes to rooting out any poor or working class families getting what they see undeserved relief, as to whether people were abusing the system to claim disabilities so that they could get some benefits while not working.
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