A sharp-eyed protester in Portland claimed she spotted a white supremacist hate symbol taunting her from a window of the BLM-besieged federal court. Further investigation, though, showed it was actually a basketball fan’s poster.  Read Full Article at RT.com

Petr Yan only needed seven fights to capture the UFC bantamweight title, but during that time he has seen which contenders most deserve a title shot, and after his win at UFC 251, he named the man he feels should be next in line. Read Full Article at RT.com

Sex workers held a protest urging authorities to end the lockdown for brothels in the northern German city of Hamburg. Brothels have remained closed for more than three months due to Covid-19 restrictions. Read Full Article at RT.com

The now-nightly standoff between BLM protesters and officers guarding the courthouse in downtown Portland remains intense. On Saturday, activists attempted to block the area, and accused their opponents of using a 'sound weapon.' Read Full Article at RT.com

Outspoken fighters Ben Askren and Colby Covington didn't pull their punches in their assessment of the Kamaru Usman vs. Jorge Masvidal title fight at UFC 251 as the pair criticized the fight on social media. Read Full Article at RT.com

Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has revealed that he will not be sporting a social justice message on the back of his jersey when the Lakers' NBA season resumes on July 30. Read Full Article at RT.com

A driver tried to burn down a Catholic church in Florida after ramming his vehicle into the building's lobby as worshipers were gathering for Mass. The suspect was arrested after a high-speed chase. Read Full Article at RT.com

British bantamweight «Dangerous» Davey Grant lived up to his fighting nickname as he delivered a one-punch knockout to make history in spectacular fashion at UFC 251 in Abu Dhabi. Read Full Article at RT.com

We've seen countless submission finishes in the UFC, but there haven't been too many situations where a fighter helps wake up his opponent. But that's what happened when Makwan Amirkhani finished Danny Henry at UFC 251. Read Full Article at RT.com

US President Donald made his first public appearance wearing a mask (dressed up with a presidential seal), during a visit to a military hospital where he met wounded soldiers and health care workers. Read Full Article at RT.com

Russia has a new UFC world champion after Petr Yan scored a huge finish of former featherweight champion Jose Aldo to claim the vacant bantamweight title at UFC 251 in Abu Dhabi. Read Full Article at RT.com

In Sylvia A. Harvey’s new book, The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family, the author explores how mass incarceration creates immense obstacles for not only those inside, but for the families who live and love beyond prison and jail walls. While recent criminal justice campaigns such as the Connecting Families movement have drawn attention to how private prison phone services create financial burdens for people who want to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved ones, Harvey’s book explores some of the less mentioned ways the carceral system can strain and sever familial ties.

Militants on pickup trucks attacked a logistics supply convoy headed to a US military base in Iraq, forcing it to stop, got the local contractors out of the vehicles, and torched the trucks, according to local media reports. Read Full Article at RT.com

It seems 2020 was the year that the political right fell into a weird love affair with Sweden. This “high-tax, welfare-loving country” with a universal healthcare system took a unique, “hands-off” approach against the novel coronavirus, much to the delight of Libertarians and anti-vaxxers eager to sow distrust of governmental actions on Facebook. Even traditional “conservatives” such as Newt Gingrich and Tucker Carlson reflexively jumped at any chance to capitalize on the public’s discomfort with social distancing and inconvenient business lockdowns imposed in this country. The Swedish model, as it became known, eschewed business closures and relied entirely on the personal responsibility of Swedish citizens to demonstrate appropriate risk-avoidant behavior during the pandemic. Essentially, in Sweden, large public gatherings were banned—but bars, restaurants, shops and many schools remained open, with no specific guidelines regarding social distancing, beyond voluntary “common sense” measures. So the protocol in Sweden was, in practice, not particularly different from those being put into place by Republican governors in states which relied on their citizens’ “good judgment,” rather than mandatory face mask orders and of the shutdown of certain businesses.

Donald Trump rewards loyalty, sometimes, when he feels like it, and convicted felon Roger Stone is the most recent beneficiary of the Racist in Chief’s inconsistent and conditional generosity. Disgust at Trump’s commutation of Stone’s federal sentence (before the latter served a day of his 40 months) has been widespread since the move was announced late Friday, even if surprise is a bit harder to find. Trump, of course, can’t resist Twitter, finding time to ramp up his cries of witch hunts and hoaxes in between threatening schools and retweeting 2019 Misinformer of the Year John Solomon. In an uncharacteristic break from his signature (and necessary) silence on the matter, Robert Mueller took to his own computer Saturday to defend his work and his team, and remind us just how dirty Roger Stone is. In a pointed op-ed for The Washington Post—titled “Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so”—Mueller tackles the Oval Office Occupant’s obsessive misinformation campaign against him and the massive investigation that made him a household name. Mueller’s concise summary of that investigation as it pertains to Stone and his crimes combines with an unflinching rebuke of both the commutation and Trump’s continued insistence that it was all a hoax—and comes in at exactly 725 words.  Sure, that’s not as short as a tweet, but Saturday’s Mueller op-ed is a whole lot more accessible than the 2019 Mueller Report. 

The UN Security Council has finally reached a compromise, agreeing to keep one checkpoint in militant-controlled Idlib open for aid deliveries from Turkey. After vetoing two initial drafts, Russia and China abstained from voting. Read Full Article at RT.com

The UN Security Council has finally reached a compromise, agreeing to keep one checkpoint in militant-controlled Idlib open for aid deliveries from Turkey. After vetoing two initial drafts, Russia and China abstained from voting. Read Full Article at RT.com

A sudden death in the family left with me no information, or answers

Shearod McFarland, 52, is incarcerated in Parnall Correctional Facility. He's interviewed here by Mateo Hoke

by Lux Alptraum Warning: Some photos featured NSFW. In the mid-2000s, porn was going through a seismic shift. Technological innovations like cheaper cameras and widespread high-speed internet had begun to upend the industry. Suddenly, being a pornographer was cheaper and easier than ever. Before, you needed a distribution deal (or a whole lot of money) if you wanted to get your film in front of a substantial audience; now all you had to do was grab a camera, post a video on the internet, and wait for the cash to come rolling in. Filmmakers who’d previously felt shut out of the adult industry suddenly had a way in, and a flood of female, queer, POC, and other marginalized voices began to reenvision what porn could look like. One of those voices happened to be Shine Louise Houston. Houston didn’t originally intend to be a pornographer. As a film student at the San Francisco Art Institute, she assumed her career would take her along a more traditional path. But after graduation, she began working at local sex toy boutique Good Vibrations. As she helped customers navigate the store’s selection of porn movies, she realized that her talents as a filmmaker could help more consumers find erotic films they could connect with—particularly consumers who, like Houston, craved erotica from the point of view of someone who wasn’t white, straight, and male.

Dozens of US troops at two bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa have been confirmed infected with the coronavirus. Local authorities demand transparency from the Pentagon, and an adequate response to the massive outbreak. Read Full Article at RT.com

Liberté, égalité, canelé!

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet continues to be there, for some reason, despite recent blunders and buffoonery from the paper (like the Tom Cotton op-ed pressing for military violence against protesters—the one the Times editors solicited, but allegedly never bothered to read before publishing). As such, the Times will remain incapable of any introspection into just how badly their journalistic model has failed in an era when government officials are brazenly lying to the public on a daily, briefing-by-briefing basis, or what true journalism might look like when the old model—inviting important people to make declarations to the public while demurring on whether any of it is, say, openly fraudulent—becomes a tool for defrauding the public, rather than a tool for preventing it. The man and the company seem incapable of learning. In a podcast interview last week singled out by PressWatchers' Dan Froomkin, Baquet gave a noble defense of enforced journalistic ignorance.

It’s very simple: By commuting Roger Stone’s sentence, The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has sent a clear signal that anyone who does something illegal on his behalf, or who has knowledge of something illegal he has done and lies about it under oath, and/or to investigators, will never be punished. This an act that fatally weakens the constitutionally mandated checks and balances through which our democracy prevents a president from achieving dictatorial power. Investigations cannot proceed toward any sort of justice if no one is required to tell the truth. That much should be apparent to any reasonable, objective observer, no matter their party. This president has now created a shield around himself so that he can—so long as he simply maintains the loyalty of his minions—do literally anything he wants and remain free of accountability or punishment. That cannot be allowed to stand. Our system offers but one remedy.

Massive crowds of people have packed one of the largest squares in Tel-Aviv on Saturday to decry how Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, handled the coronavirus pandemic and its harsh economic fallout. Read Full Article at RT.com