By Mousa Tawfiq:When Egypt opened the Rafah crossing in February for three days, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza applied to leave. Among them were 29-year-old Rani Humeid. “I’m leaving Gaza to find the future that I dream of,” said Humeid as he was waiting in a makeshift departure hall at the crossing. Humeid earned a master’s degree in media and public relations in Malaysia in 2012, and he continued studying when he returned. “I received a research grant from the Media Development Center of Birzeit University in Gaza,” said Humeid. But the young scholar also needed to earn money. He worked, he said, as a part-time lecturer at both Al-Aqsa and Palestine universities in Gaza and took on a job as a program coordinator at the Palestinian Association for Education and Environmental Protection. “I’ve done a lot during the last three years in Gaza but I’m sure I would have accomplished more if I had been abroad,” he said. “Life here is difficult. I lost a lot of opportunities because of the closed crossings.”
By William Collins aka mra-uk: It didn’t start well. Bleary eyed from sleep I switched on Radio 4. I tell myself I just want to know what the enemy is saying. In truth it’s some sort of compulsion, a masochism…..
No, no,….that’s surely not Alison Saunders…. Thankfully, I reached the off switch before the urge to impale myself on the nearest railings became overwhelming.
I heard the word “internet”. I didn’t catch much else. That was enough. It would be her latest wheeze to criminalise men for writing stuff. I didn’t want to know. [Sure enough, it was…see here for our beloved DPP’s latest swathe of new criminal offences. It’ll be strictly gender neutral, of course. How could you doubt it. Oh, but the HuffPo piece considers it worth mentioning that, “Legislation rolled out in December created the offence of “controlling or coercive behaviour” in intimate or family relationships. It means domestic abusers who control their victims through social media accounts or spy on them online could face up to five years in prison.” Monomania, at all, Ms Saunders? I suppose there’s nothing to be gained by pointing out that men are, if anything, subject to rather more internet trolling than women? No, I thought not.
By Gilad Atzmon: The British socialite madam Ghislaine Maxwell (the daughter of) stands accused of recruiting Jeffrey Epstein’s “teen sex slaves.” Ms. Maxwell was ordered by a Manhattan judge to hand over any correspondence she has had with the Jewish billionaire pedophile. The alleged madam will also have to produce any documents from between 1999 and 2016 that mention the sex-trafficking ring she and Epstein allegedly operated. Victim Virginia Roberts has sued Maxwell in Manhattan federal court for defamation. Roberts, who is now 32, has also claimed Maxwell pimped her out to Epstein’s wealthy pals, including Prince Andrew. Roberts escaped from the sex ring in 2002 after fleeing to Australia when Epstein and Maxwell allegedly sent her to Thailand to study massage.
Community of the Wrongly Accused: A 16-year-old boy had consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl. She told her parents, who objected to the boy, and they had him taken into state custody and charged with statutory rape. He's out on bail, awaiting another court date. She was never taken into custody, because under the applicable law, she did not commit a crime. It happened in Ireland where the age of consent for both males and females is 17, and boys under that age can be prosecuted for statutory rape, girls can't. The applicable statute provides: "A female child under the age of 17 years shall not be guilty of an offence under this Act by reason only of her engaging in an act of sexual intercourse." The judge said this about the young male"criminal": "Someone has to guide him and be firm, someone has to give him love. His parents have let him down."
Notice that no one has to "guide" the girl, or be "firm" with her -and her parents did not let her down. Only the boy requires such assistance, and he didexactly what she did.He is guilty by reason of penis.
By Charles Hugh Smith:Many young people are stuck in the purgatory of minimum wage and/or part-time jobs: that raises the question: how do you get out of minimum-wage purgatory?
The conventional answer is, “get another college degree.”Perhaps this once had some value, but this now yields rapidly diminishing returns due to supply and demand: everyone else seeking an escape from low-wage/part-time purgatory is pursuing the same strategy, so there is an oversupply of over-credentialed job seekers. As I point out in my book on jobs and careers in the new economy, Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy, issuing 500,000 MBAs does not automatically create jobs for all those graduates: credentials don’t create jobs. What creates jobs are opportunities to earn high profits via developing profitable skills. Not allbusinesses are highly profitable; low-margin businesses don’t make enough profit to pay high wages.
Max and Stacy ask what’s the matter with Kansas? And Virginia? North Carolina? Florida? Alabama? Michigan and Massachusetts? Are voters flocking to Donald Trump because they’re racist? Or, is it the economy and so-called ‘free trade’ deals, stupid?
Men Are Good!:I can think of a number of ways to use money to help dads. Insure 50% custodyand pay off old onerous and questionable child support. (i.e. child support that accumulated while in jail etc)Fund research into fatherhood. Fund PSA's on the importance of fatherhood. Neutralizethe bigots who have ruled this incredible family hostile takeover. Fund the education of therapists and the general public aboutParental Alienation. Fund men's studies that are not feminist drivento start to bring back a sense of honor and pride in being a man and a father. Basically trying to undothe hatred that has been foisted on all males over the last 50 years. That's just a start! lol Oh, and starting sheds for men, only men. Yeah.Bring the devastation of relational violence to the forefront. Women have been protected by our ignorance feigned or otherwise. It's time we started calling out the relational hatred that has been swept under the rug while people scream about physical violence as if it exists in a vacuum.
Among them were 29-year-old Rani Humeid.
