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Can he say it? Canada’s Trudeau confuses internet with newest
acronym for sexual minorities, 2SLGBTQQIA+
6 Oct, 2021 04:24
FILE PHOTO: Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joins supporters of Toronto's LGBTQ community as they march in one of North America's largest Pride parades, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 23, 2019. © REUTERS/Chris Helgren
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau sparked an online storm after he used an obscure acronym, 2SLGBTQQIA+, while commemorating missing and murdered members of ethnic and sexual minorities, prompting a collective head scratching.
“People across the country are lighting candles to honour Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people who are missing or have been murdered,” Trudeau tweeted on Tuesday, urging an end to the “ongoing tragedy.”
The message, however, appeared to be lost on a sizeable portion of netizens who struggled to decipher the cumbersome and seldom-used acronym – which stands for: Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual people, with a plus-sign added for good measure to cover any potentially overlooked groups.
“I honestly have no idea what 2SLGBTQQIA+ means,” one perplexed commenter tweeted, while another requested a translation: “I am asking unironically, what is 2SLGBTQQIA+?”
Many of those unfamiliar with modern wokespeak were in disbelief that such a convoluted acronym could be a real thing. One observer suggested that Trudeau might have accidentally dropped the nuclear codes for NORAD [The North American Aerospace Defense Command]. More mundane guesses included a wayward cat walking across the Canadian PM’s keyboard at the wrong time, an inadvertent reveal of a Wi-Fi password, or “a video game cheat code.”
Others questioned Trudeau’s own understanding of the term, challenging him to actually verbalize it publicly – a feat that might prove difficult for the Canadian leader, who mangled the much-shorter LGBTQ2+ acronym just last month.
“I will never apologize for standing up for LGDP, uh, LGT, LBT…,” Trudeau stammered before an aide helped him. The clip has since gone viral.
While it remains to be seen if Trudeau will attempt to utter the challenging tongue-twister in future comments, some celebrated what appeared to be the acronym’s official debut into public space. “The 2SLGBTQQIA+ movement grows stronger by the day. Just absorbing the power of the alphabet with no obstruction,” one user quipped.
And the acronym grows longer by the day!
Barbarism behind bars: Rape & torture in Russia’s prisons laid bare
by thousands of leaked videos, human rights activists tell RT
8 Oct, 2021 07:10
By Gabriel Gavin, in Moscow
A chilling archive of footage purportedly showing the abuse of inmates in Russian prison colonies has already sparked a probe and cost several officers their jobs. The group behind the leak tells RT there’s still more to come.
A decade ago, Vladimir Osechkin was sentenced to seven years behind bars over fraud allegations brought by the daughter of an influential Moscow politician. Released quickly on parole, he left the country as soon as travel restrictions imposed upon him were relaxed and is still reportedly wanted for questioning on a number of charges. Now, though, as the founder of human rights group Gulagu.net, he has managed to upend the country’s penal system from afar.
Earlier this week, a tranche of videos that Osechkin and his colleagues say were taken by officers inside a prison hospital in Russia’s Saratov region have caused shock and outrage in the country. In one, a man believed to be an inmate at the tuberculosis facility can be seen laying strapped to a bed and screaming while staff repeatedly violate him with a stick in a horrifying minutes-long ordeal.
Other clips released by Gulagu.net claim to show prisoners being urinated on and forced to perform sexual acts in front of the camera. The outcry in the wake of their publication has even reached the Kremlin, with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, saying that, “if the authenticity of these materials is confirmed, then of course it is a pretext for a serious investigation.”
However, the director of the country’s federal prison services, Alexander Kalashnikov, has quickly moved to dismiss four officers from the region over the incident. After the clips were released on Wednesday, the top penal boss fired Pavel Gatsenko, the head of the Saratov hospital where the incidents were alleged to have taken place, as well as a number of senior officials. Kalashnikov has apparently also moved to sack the overall head of Saratov’s prison service, Colonel Alexey Fedotov, “for serious miscalculations in operational and service activities.”
Among the four officers dismissed in Saratov is Sergey Maltsev, head of the institution’s security department. Osechkin alleges that he was “the main proponent and organizer of the whole process… he co-ordinated it, led it, gave commands. He told them to make video recordings, he controlled them and took the results to security agencies.” Osechkin alleges that the clips were later used to blackmail and coerce prisoners.
However, Osechkin told RT that the galling episode is just the first of a series of revelations that his group will publish over the course of the coming weeks. According to him, similarly shocking footage has been passed over featuring prisons like “SIZO-1 and SIZO-6 in Irkutsk, SIZO-1 in Vladimir, SIZO-1 in Omsk, SIZO-1 in Krasnoyarsk” and others. “We are reviewing the archive and publishing it step by step,” he went on.
“We have identified almost everyone to whom this happened. Now, lawyers and investigators will be working with them and there are at least 10 criminal cases coming over these terrible acts. The perpetrators have been known for a long time,” the activist added.
Snezhana Muntyan, a lawyer working with Osechkin and Gulagu.net, told RT that “I am currently representing three criminal cases of rape as a victim’s representative in the proceedings.” The cases, already ongoing, have been brought against officers by one man, but “there is information about several more potential victims in similar cases so it is all just a matter of time. I think more will be made public in the near future.”
Muntyan also revealed later on Thursday that she “now has 14 people in the process of giving statements. I am waiting for the right moment to request that the Investigative Committee opens a criminal case. And these are only the people who decided to report crimes made against them – most have already been released from custody and are free of threats within the system.”
She also told RT that she was concerned some potential victims and witnesses might have been pressured into keeping silent, as not to make their time behind bars tougher. According to Muntyan, at least one inmate she spoke to “apparently feared that if he told the truth to his lawyer, and it became known to the staff, there could be negative consequences for him.”
The alleged perpetrators of cruel sexual and physical abuse in Russia’s prisons will apparently go to any lengths to prevent themselves being convicted of heinous crimes and ending up behind bars. After all, they likely have a unique insight into just how bad the ordeal can be.
French teenager arrested for trying to enter hospital with
President Emmanuel Macron’s vaccine passport – media
10 Oct, 2021 14:30
French President Emmanuel Macron adjusts his protective face mask after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, September 6, 2021 © Reuters / Gonzalo Fuentes
A French teen has reportedly been arrested and fined for attempting to enter a hospital using the health pass data of President Emmanuel Macron, which had been leaked online. He said he impersonated the president “just for fun.”
The 19-year-old presented Macron’s QR code at the door of a hospital in Marseille earlier this week, but didn’t fool security guards, who let him enter before calling the police. The teen was then arrested and taken into police custody, according to multiple reports in French media.
He was later released and given a fine for “presentation of a health document belonging to a third party.” The teen reportedly said he did not have a ‘health pass’ of his own, and decided to use the president’s data “just for fun.”
Macron’s data was leaked online last month – allegedly by a healthcare worker with access to the government’s vaccination database – along with the data of Prime Minister Jean Castex, which was scanned from a press photo. An investigation was launched following the leaks, and the QR codes of Macron and Castex were deactivated.
Introduced during the summer, France’s ‘health pass’ system requires citizens to present proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test to access bars, restaurants, shopping malls or public transport, among other locations. The system has proven controversial, and thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Paris and other major cities almost every weekend since its introduction.
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