Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalTop Russian Officers: 'You're F*cked, Putin--Motherf*cker!'
Two high-ranking Russian military officers have been caught shit-talking Kremlin leadership in unimaginably colorful language. The two colonels blast the defense minister and lash out at that “motherfucker” Vladimir Putin for his poor strategy in Ukraine, according to a leaked recording of a phone conversation.
While Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies have routinely reported on plunging morale among rank-and-file Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, many of whom have been heard complaining of dysfunction in intercepted communications, the latest audio appears to be the first to expose frustrations among high-ranking officers.
Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service published the curse-laden recording late Monday, reporting that it was provided by Ukrainian intelligence. One of the men heard in the purported intercepted call—identified as Colonel Maksim Vlasov—is no stranger to the eight-year war in Ukraine’s Donbas. He has been wanted by Ukrainian authorities since 2018 for the 2015 shelling of Mariupol—an attack in which he previously implicated himself by carelessly blabbing about it by phone in an earlier intercepted phone call covered by Bellingcat.
The latest recording, dated April 14, is said to show Vlasov and another colonel, Vitaly Kovtun, a doctor at the Naro-Fominsk military hospital said to hold many military honors, raging against the many failures of Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-russian-military-brass-caught-venting-youre-fucked-putinmotherfucker?ref=home
__________________________________________
Why will the bloated bastard not just DIE already?
The anti-abortion movement is about to win. Even it isn't ready for what comes next.
At first glance, the April 2022 arrest of Lizelle Herrera seemed like exactly what anti-abortion advocates have always wanted. After a hospital in rural Starr County, Texas, reported her to authorities, the 26-year-old was arrested and charged with murder, her bail set at $500,000. Though few details are known about her case, Herrera’s crime, according to the indictment, was causing “the death of an individual” by “a self-induced abortion.” In just a few succinct lines, a Texas grand jury had clearly and publicly affirmed that abortion was murder, a rallying cry for opponents of the procedure for more than 40 years.
The indictment was seen by many as a direct result of the passage of SB 8, a recent Texas law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The law represents an extraordinary step for the anti-abortion movement, empowering ordinary citizens to enforce the ban by suing anyone they believed had performed or aided in an abortion.
Abortion opponents have since notched another, even broader victory: A recent leaked draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito appeared to show that the Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing Americans’ right to an abortion.
Anti-abortion activists have for decades made very clear their desire to stamp out the procedure nationwide, and they are winning: If the Court does indeed overturn Roe, abortion will likely become illegal in at least 23 states. Meanwhile, SB 8 is inspiring a wave of similar, highly restrictive anti-abortion legislation in other states, and anti-abortion groups and conservative lawmakers are said to be simultaneously positioning themselves to put forward a federal abortion ban.
Herrera’s indictment, however, was received by anti-abortion groups not as a triumph but as an unwelcome shock. As national uproar grew around the case, Texas Right to Life, the group that helped write SB 8, spoke out against Herrera’s arrest. Just days after she was jailed, Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez dismissed the indictment, saying in an April 10 statement that “it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.” Ramirez even went so far as to apologize to Herrera’s lawyer, saying, “I assure you I never meant to hurt this young lady,” the Washington Post reported.
Historically, anti-abortion advocates have called for restrictions and punishments targeted at abortion providers, not patients. “When we’re looking at law-breaking, we need to go to the person who is causing the danger,” Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel for the anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life, told Vox. In the past, that has meant doctors.
Yet the rise of medication abortion means that people can perform their own abortions in the privacy of their homes, becoming, effectively, both provider and patient. This method, also known as self-managed abortion, is expected to become more common as laws like SB 8 and the likely fall of Roe make in-clinic procedures ever harder to obtain.
Herrera’s story, then, represents a jarring look at what could be the post-Roe future: a new phase for the anti-abortion movement, with a growing schism between mainstream groups whose next goal will be curbing access to pills, and hardliners, including one of the activists behind SB 8, who want to see private citizens jailed for terminating their own pregnancies.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23023675/anti-abortion-movement-roe-sb8-medication-abortion
Coal ash workers dying as lawsuit over illnesses drags on
In 2013, the first of more than 200 workers who labored to clean up the nation’s worst coal ash spill filed a suit against the contractor, blaming Jacobs Engineering for illnesses they believe were caused by exposure to heavy metals and radioactive particles in the ash. Nearly a decade later, not a single case has made it through the court system.
As the cases drag on, dozens who believed their work for the contractor made them sick have died.
They include people like Ansol Clark, who arrived at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant just hours after the Dec. 22, 2008, spill, and got to work. He labored long hours in the coal ash sludge with few or no days off for months at a time until he became too sick to work in 2013. He died last year from a rare blood cancer that he believed was caused by exposure to the ash.
“Ansol never lived to see any justice,” his wife of almost 50 years, Janie Clark, said. “He never did — on earth.”
Over the years, Jacobs has made repeated attempts to have the suits thrown out. The Tennessee Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Wednesday in Jacob’s latest challenge to the workers’ lawsuits. The company wants a judge to dismiss most of the plaintiffs for failing to follow a procedure outlined in the Tennessee Silica Claims Priorities Act.
The law requires anyone pursuing claims for exposure to silica or mixed dust to file a doctor’s report concluding that the exposure is a “substantial contributing factor” to the patient’s illness. For plaintiffs bringing wrongful death claims on behalf of a loved one, they must also show the worker was exposed to the dust for at least five years. Workers with lung cancer are subject to the five-year provision too and additionally must show that their cancer was diagnosed at least 10 years after their first exposure to the dust.
In court filings, Jacobs said the vast majority of plaintiffs either didn’t file the doctor reports, filed inadequate reports, or didn’t meet the time restrictions. For example, one worker died from lung cancer in 2015, less than seven years after the spill, so should not be allowed to sue, according to Jacobs.
Attorneys for the workers argue the silica law was never meant to apply to cases like theirs. The act specifically refers to silica, which is just one component of coal ash. The components they believe caused the worker injuries include arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury and radium, but not silica. The law also refers to claims for very specific injuries — silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis — that are not at issue in this case.
https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/05/30/coal-ash-workers-dying-lawsuit-over-illnesses-drags/
Isaac Hayes's Family Furious Trump Used Song For His Jig At Controversial NRA Speech
The family of the late legendary musician Isaac Hayes has posted an angry tweet lashing former President Donald Trump’s use of one of Hayes’s songs at his controversial speech Friday at the National Rifle Association convention.
“The estate and family of Isaac Hayes DID NOT approve and would NEVER approve the use of ‘Hold On I’m Coming’ ... by Donald Trump at this weekend’s NRA convention,” said the tweet.
The tweet added: “Our condolences go out to the victims and families of Uvalde and mass shooting victims everywhere.”
In a bold display of disrespect, Trump bashed gun control and hailed all firearms in his Friday speech, including the kind of military-style assault weapons that killed 19 children and two teachers in a mass shooting in Uvalde last week.
Trump then mangled the pronunciation of victims’ names, which he read interspersed with cheesy funeral toll sounds.
Trump wrapped up his speech smiling, with his clenched fists and wooden dance steps to the 1996 song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” written by Hayes and David Porter, and performed by rhythm-and-blues duo Sam and Dave.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/isaac-hayes-family-furious-trump-nra-song_n_6293f474e4b0cda85dc06325
______________________________
Sue his ass!
Suicide takes more military lives than combat, especially among women
When she was growing up, Memorial Day meant a trip to the Honor Wall in the center of Deana Martorella Orellana’s hometown, where the names of Charleroi, Pa., men who died in the world’s battlefields are etched in black granite.
Her family is making that trip without her this year.
She died with inspirational notes stuffed in her pockets. That March morning in 2016, she had gone to Veterans Affairs and asked for counseling.
She couldn’t talk to her family about how her deployment to Afghanistan changed her — and yes, it changed her, they all said — serving on a female engagement team there.
“She talked to one of her sisters about it and said she could take everything except for the children,” said Laurie Martorella, Deana’s mom. “Something about the children really hit her.”
And keeping that inside haunted her.
“Nobody talks about mental health,” Laurie said. “If you do, you’re weak, you’re on medication, it might affect my future earnings, there might be a stigma.”
Deana shot herself at age 28 with a .45-caliber handgun, joining the growing number of military women who end their own lives.
Memorial Day is about these warriors, too.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/30/military-suicide-women-sexual-assault-ptsd/
Woman sues three Louisiana universities over failures to report sexual assault allegations
A woman is suing three Louisiana universities and one police department over failures to report information about a handful of sexual assault allegations against one student, saying their negligence led to her being raped.
Louisiana State University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana Tech University and the Lafayette Police Department “chose to disregard their most basic duties … refused to share information concerning reports of student sexual assault, (and) continued to employ disjointed approaches to sexual assault complaints,” the lawsuit filed by woman using the name Jane Doe states.
The suit comes after a USA TODAY investigation in May 2021 revealed the practices of the universities and the Lafayette Police Department had enabled one student, Victor Daniel Silva, to jump between schools after being repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.
Silva entered LSU in 2014 and changed schools three times, each transfer coming just months after a new sexual misconduct allegation, before he graduated from UL in 2020.
Six women reported him for sexual misconduct while he attended the various schools, which should have been shared among the universities he attended under a 2015 law, but officials repeatedly failed to communicate the allegations made against him.
“All of (this) emboldened Victor Daniel Silva, a serial sexual predator who raped Ms. Doe in September 2018, when they were both students at Louisiana Tech University,” attorneys with Washington, D.C.-based Fierberg National Law Group wrote in the woman’s demand for a federal jury trial.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2022/05/26/woman-sues-lsu-others-over-failure-share-sexual-misconduct-reports/9946841002/
Woman sues three Louisiana universities over failures to report sexual assault allegations
A woman is suing three Louisiana universities and one police department over failures to report information about a handful of sexual assault allegations against one student, saying their negligence led to her being raped.
Louisiana State University, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louisiana Tech University and the Lafayette Police Department “chose to disregard their most basic duties … refused to share information concerning reports of student sexual assault, (and) continued to employ disjointed approaches to sexual assault complaints,” the lawsuit filed by woman using the name Jane Doe states.
The suit comes after a USA TODAY investigation in May 2021 revealed the practices of the universities and the Lafayette Police Department had enabled one student, Victor Daniel Silva, to jump between schools after being repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct.
Silva entered LSU in 2014 and changed schools three times, each transfer coming just months after a new sexual misconduct allegation, before he graduated from UL in 2020.
Six women reported him for sexual misconduct while he attended the various schools, which should have been shared among the universities he attended under a 2015 law, but officials repeatedly failed to communicate the allegations made against him.
“All of (this) emboldened Victor Daniel Silva, a serial sexual predator who raped Ms. Doe in September 2018, when they were both students at Louisiana Tech University,” attorneys with Washington, D.C.-based Fierberg National Law Group wrote in the woman’s demand for a federal jury trial.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2022/05/26/woman-sues-lsu-others-over-failure-share-sexual-misconduct-reports/9946841002/
A Diner Confronted Ted Cruz About The Uvalde Shooting At A Sushi Restaurant
An activist confronted Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz at a Houston sushi restaurant Friday night to grill him about his inaction on gun reform and his attendance at the NRA convention, just days after a shooter went on a horrific rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers.
In video clips of the encounter shared on social media, a man, who is being escorted out of the restaurant by Cruz's detail, is heard yelling at the senator, "But why does this keep happening? And why did you come here to the convention to take blood money? Why? When 19 children died. Nineteen children died. That’s on your hands. That is on your hands. Ted Cruz, that’s on your hands!”
That man was Benjamin Hernandez, a board member for liberal advocacy group Indivisible Houston, who happened to be dining with his wife at Uptown Sushi on Friday night when Cruz walked in through the door.
“I feel like it was fate,” Hernandez told BuzzFeed News in an interview Saturday.
The 39-year-old Houston native, who runs a digital agency, had spent the entire day livestreaming the anti–gun violence protest outside the NRA convention, where Cruz was among the high-profile speakers, alongside former president Donald Trump, who didn't pull out of the event despite the Uvalde shooting tragedy.
Hernandez said he and his wife love the Suito Roll at Uptown Sushi, so they decided to dine there that night.
"I look over, and guess who comes walking through that door,” he said.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emersonmalone/ted-cruz-confronted-restaurant-uvalde-nra
Rafaelito Cruz does not deserve to feel safe anywhere, since the rest of us can't
Without brave women, men in ministry would not have had a day of reckoning
On Thursday leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention released a 205-page list with the names of pastors and others affiliated with the SBC and different Baptist denominations who have been accused of sexual abuse for decades. The release follows an explosive investigative report into alleged sexual misconduct by Southern Baptist Convention clergy members.
This moment of reckoning would not have been possible without women speaking truth to power, belying the theological understanding that they are meant to be submissive to men in positions of authority in the church and home.
By publicly calling out pastors who they say have sexually abused them, women are challenging men in ministry seeking to cull sympathy and retain authority. In a now widely circulated video from a service at the New Life Christian Church and World Outreach in Warsaw, Indiana, last Sunday, we saw an example of this on full display.
Shortly after Pastor John Lowe II pleaded for his congregation to seek “the saving knowledge of Christ,” he said he had “a confession.” He wanted to “follow a biblical process of confession, repentance and forgiveness,” which would lead up to him finally admitting that he had committed adultery. He stressed that it was 20 years ago and was with one person, and as a way to hammer home that he was doing the upstanding thing, he said he would not “use the Bible to defend, protect and deflect my past sin.” He continued, “I have no defense. I committed the adultery. To say it plainly, I didn’t make a mistake. … I need to say that, and you deserve to hear it.”
He asked the congregation for forgiveness and announced that he was stepping aside from ministry responsibilities and submitting to recommendations from the church board. As Lowe placed the microphone down and stepped offstage, he received a standing ovation.
But he had left out key details. And as the applause continued, a woman and her husband stepped up to the pulpit to fill in what these details were. The clapping died down as the woman began: “I lived in a prison of lies and shame. Lying to protect the Lowe family … having suicidal thoughts, not realizing what had been truly done to me … I would still be in a prison if my brother … had not approached me just two weeks ago with what he had seen as a teenager that bothered him all these years. His pastor, in bed, with his younger sister, a T-shirt and underwear on. People knew but were too afraid to come forward, and they have now. The lies and the manipulation have to stop.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/southern-baptist-leaders-sex-abuse-reckoning-brave-women-rcna30950
Sick and tired of men making themselves out to be "victims" in these cases. STAND DOWN when you are called out!
Cowardice is the point of white supremacy, too
Perspective by Damon Young
My familiarity with Buffalo’s demographics isn’t quite what it was when I was in school there 20 years ago. But I remember enough that when I first saw breaking news alerts of a mass shooting in the city and read that it happened on Jefferson Avenue, I knew it was us who’d been shot before even knowing it was us. Some streets in some neighborhoods in some cities are just where you will always find regular Black people, and Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo is one of them. “Regular” here is not a pejorative. Nor is it an implication that there’s such a thing as irregular Black people. Just a way to describe working-class people doing nothing but living their lives on a sunny Saturday. Sleeping in. Tending lawns. Walking pets. Washing cars. Watching nephews. Grilling meat. Sipping tea. Getting nails did. And maybe going to the grocery store too.
It’s this banality — the purposeful obliviousness of the assumed safety of minding your damn business — that Payton Gendron allegedly hoped and prepared for. The 10 people killed weren’t just randomly chosen sitting ducks. They were targeted specifically because they were defenseless. Specifically because they included church ladies and retired grandparents with no real chance to fight or even run. That he was equipped with an assault rifle and outfitted with protective armor isn’t just more proof of an unfair fight. It’s proof that making the fight as unfair as possible was the whole point. Is the whole point.
We already know Payton Gendron too. We didn’t know his name until the news reported on it, but we know him. He’s Dylann Roof walking into a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and murdering nine people after watching them pray. And Dylann Roof is Robert Gregory Bowers allegedly killing 11 people during Shabbat morning services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. And Robert Gregory Bowers is Patrick Crusius saying he drove 10 hours to a Walmart in El Paso to kill as many Mexicans as he could.
These men, with their alleged sneak attacks on the unarmed and the unsuspecting, are no different than the mobs of dozens, hundreds, thousands gathered to lynch just one person. Like the hundreds in 1918 who hung Mary Turner upside down from a tree, doused her in gasoline and motor oil, set her on fire, and split her abdomen open with a knife. She was eight-months pregnant, and her unborn child fell to the ground and was murdered too. Or the domestic terrorists in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s attacking Black neighborhoods, Black schools and Black churches — with fire, bricks, bullets and bombs — at night and while hiding behind white sheets and citizens’ groups. Or the entire communities — masses of faces, full-throated and frothing — out to intimidate a 6-year-old going to class.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/26/damon-young-buffalo-shooting-cowardice-is-point-white-supremacy-too/?itid=hp_magazine
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 9,999