Where The Mighty Have Fallen
Where The Mighty Have Fallen
When news of Donald Trump’s indictment broke last Thursday, the former president went on social media to vent his anger at the decision.
“The USA is now a third world nation, a nation in serious decline,” he wrote in all caps, suggesting that the indictment was a politically-motivated “attack” on the country and its “once free and fair elections”.
While the question of whether or not the charges brought forward against Trump are justified is up for the courts to decide; Statista’s Felix Richter notes that the United States is by no means the first country to prosecute a former president, even if Trump’s indictment is a first in the nation’s long history.
As Richter shows in the following chart, former leaders from all over the world, including wealthy democracies such as France and South Korea, have been charged or jailed after their time in office.
You will find more infographics at Statista
According to research conducted by Axios, leaders who left office since 2000 have been jailed or prosecuted in at least 78 countries, the vast majority of these cases being related to corruption and/or illegal campaign financing.
Investigations into former leaders have been in the news around the world lately.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial has fueled some of the outrage over his judicial overhaul plan, while Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the presidency in January after his corruption conviction was thrown out
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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s home was surrounded this month in a botched attempt to arrest him, while former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak remains in jail after a judge this week threw out a challenge to his corruption conviction in the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scheme.
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Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s current vice president and former president, was convicted of fraud but remains in office and out of prison because her position carries immunity and because she’s launched what’s expected to be a lengthy appeal.
Brazil’s Lula and Italy’s Berlusconi have both managed to prove a trial, or even conviction, was not career-ending.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/04/2023 – 20:25
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/where-mighty-have-fallen
Charles Barkley calls the Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese controversy ‘unfortunate’
The LSU Tigers captured the first national championship in the history of the women’s basketball program in front of a record-breaking amount of viewers.
Sunday’s title game drew an average of 9.9 million viewers and peaked at approximately 12.6 million viewers, ESPN said Monday. Those numbers shattered the previous record of 5.7 million viewers for an NCAA women’s tournament game.
But much of the talk has not been about the Tigers’ dominating win over the Iowa Hawkeyes. The focus instead has been on the interaction between two of college basketball’s brightest stars.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
LSU forward Angel Reese sparked reactions from every corner of the sports world when she made gestures toward Iowa guard Caitlin Clark in the final minutes of the championship game.
Reese approached Clark before moving her open hand in front of her face. The motion, which symbolizes “you can’t see me,” was popularized by WWE star John Cena.
CAITLIN CLARK SHOOTS DOWN IDEA OF VISITING WHITE HOUSE WITH NATIONAL CHAMPIONS: ‘THAT’S FOR LSU’
Reese, a first-team all-American, later pointed to her finger in reference to where her championship ring would go.
Cena recently approved of Caitlin Clark’s use of the “you can’t see me” taunt when she used it during a game against Louisville in the Elite Eight.
Some fans and sports pundits spoke out against Reese’s gestures while others came to her defense. Basketball Hall of Famer and NBA analyst Charles Barkley, who was a part of the coverage of the NCAA’s men’s tournament, shared his thoughts about the controversy.
“Well, I thought it took away from the game,” Barkley said Monday. “In fairness, Caitlin did that in a game before. I just thought it brought too much attention away from a great performance because she’s amazing.
“And you got all these fools on the internet and on television, who, well, first they gonna make it about race, which is part of it. They deserve to celebrate. I thought it was unfortunate because people are talking more about that than they are about a great performance.”
When Clark was asked about Reese’s actions, the Hawkeyes guard said she did not see the gesture in the moment. On Tuesday, during an appearance on ESPN, Clark said she did not take issue with Reese.
Clark, who won the Wooden Award as National Player of the Year Tuesday, also hinted at a double standard between men and women as it relates to trash talking.
“I think men have always had trash talk. That’s what it’s been, and I think more and more people, as they turn on the game, they’re appreciating it for what it is,” Clark said Tuesday.
“I’m just lucky enough that I get to play this game and have emotion and wear it on my sleeves, and so does everybody else. So that should never be torn down, that should never be criticized, because I believe that’s what makes this game so fun. That’s what draws people to this game. That’s what draws it to the pro level, to college level, to the high school level. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”
During a postgame media session, Reese defended her actions.
“I don’t fit in the box that y’all want me to be in,” Reese said. “I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don’t say nothing. So this was for the girls that look like me.”
Reese said the negative reactions she received over the course of the season helped fuel her outstanding season. She finished the season averaging 23.0 points and 15.4 rebounds and was named the most outstanding player of the women’s NCAA Tournament.
“Twitter can say what they want to say,” Reese noted. “I love reading those comments. I have all the screenshots of what everybody has said about me all season. What are you going to say now?”
UConn legend Ray Allen explains why Huskies have built a ‘basketball kingdom’
The University of Connecticut won their fifth national championship in 24 years on Monday night with their 76-59 victory over San Diego State University.
Not only did they win it all, but they dominated along the way — the Huskies became the first team to win each of their tournament games by at least 13 points.
Entering this season, UConn wasn’t on a lot of people’s radar, but they made the tournament look extremely easy.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
Well, one Huskies legend has a fairly good reason why the school has become a “basketball kingdom.”
Speaking to reporters after the championship game, Ray Allen said the lowkey surrounding environment of the school has led to its on-court success.
“I want to be focused on this right here because I’m trying to get somewhere with this. That is the environment that promotes higher learning and better basketball,” he said. “I can walk down the street and get in the gym and shoot without any distractions along the way. That’s what I implore every child to think about when they’re picking their school: make sure you pick somewhere that doesn’t provide excess that keeps you distracted.”
Storrs, Conn. isn’t exactly a big city, short of the typical college nightlife. Its closest “major” city is Hartford, which certainly is no New York, which is about two-and-a-half hours away.
The title run for the Huskies just missed Allen’s tenure there — Allen joined the NBA in 1996, three years before the Huskies’ first title.
That logic hasn’t exactly taken to the gridiron — the football team hasn’t finished above .500 since 2010.
But who’s going to complain about that right now?
President of largest teacher union declares racial, social justice a ‘pillar’ of educators’ efforts
The president of the largest teacher union in the country said on a panel last week that racial and social justice are a “pillar” of the union’s efforts.
“Here we are. In the aftermath of Jan 6. Here we are. Looking at rights being taken away from union members, educators, workers, students. The right to learn; the freedom to teach. Right here in our country–in Florida and Texas” Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association said at the “Summit for Democracy” event on March 28th.
The summit was co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The summit was intended to “elevate the role of labor movements as drivers of democracy and essential components of democratic societies.”
Pringle was prompted to address teachers being at the center of a heated debate about COVID response policies and curriculum in public schools.
“For us at the NEA, education justice must be about racial justice, it must be about social justice, it must be about climate justice. It must be about all of those things,” Pringle said. “For our students to be able to come to school ready to learn every day–We can never think of education as an isolated system because everything connects to our students’ ability to learn. So, we have to necessarily talk about housing justice, food inequality, and the reality that we all just went through a global pandemic together and of course it was the most marginalized communities that were already suffering from the inequities in every single social system in this country and every country.”
Pringle’s comments come amid a raging debate about what education should look like in schools. Across the country school board meetings have become battlegrounds between parents and school board officials, with parents protesting controversial curriculum like critical race theory as well as pushing to ban certain books in school libraries.
She explained further that the NEA operates through “three pillars” including “advocating for education professionals” in the conventional sense of backing workers and “elevating” the teaching profession due to the current teacher shortage in the U.S.
The third pillar, she claimed, is “racial and social justice.”
“We have to be as a union–we have to be the ones that are standing up and demanding those rights for all of our students. Our Black, Brown, API students, our indigenous students, our students with disabilities, our LGBTQ+ students–all of them deserve the right to a high-quality public education.”
Pringle added that union members are trained to run for political office, and they had “hundreds” of NEA members elected to offices ranging from school boards to Congress.
According to the NEA website, the NEA launched an activism initiative called NEA EdJustice which “engages and mobilizes educators, allies, and activists in the fight for racial, social, and economic justice in public education.”
The COVID-19 pandemic’s toll on the learning of kids across the U.S. was revealed through the most recent results of the national test scores that show sharp declines in math and reading.
Math scores saw their largest decreases ever, while reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992 for fourth and eighth graders across the country, according to the Nation’s Report Card. The average mathematics score for fourth-grade students fell five points from 2019 to 2022. The score for eight-graders dropped eight points. Reading for both grades fell three points since 2019.”
Math scores were worst among eighth graders, with 38% earning scores deemed “below basic” — a cutoff that measures, for example, whether students can find the third angle of a triangle if they’re given the other two. That’s worse than 2019, when 31% of eighth graders scored below that level.
Reacting to the national test scores, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the statistics are a sign that schools need to redouble their efforts, using billions of dollars that Congress gave schools in response to the pandemic to help students recover.
“Let me be very clear: these results are not acceptable,” Cardona said.
Biden aide Kathy Chung refutes classified docs ‘locked closet’ spin: Comer
President Biden’s former assistant contradicted White House claims that classified documents discovered at Biden’s post-vice presidency DC office this past November were in a “locked closet.”
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/biden-aide-kathy-chung-refutes-classified-docs-locked-closet-spin/
Jim Valvano’s Hall of Fame moment comes 40 years after Cinderella run
It was the Tuesday of Final Four week in basketball-mad Louisville, so naturally Bob Valvano was going to have Dick Vitale on his midday show on ESPN680 radio. Before they chatted, Vitale sent him a note: “Let’s talk off the air.” Valvano went to a commercial. And Vitale gave him the most amazing news: “Jim’s…
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/jim-valvanos-hall-of-fame-moment-comes-40-years-after-cinderella-run/
Trump’s day in court: Circus-like fanfare, protests, rhetoric, and history being made: Recap
Steel barriers lined streets near the courthouse, roads were closed, and protesters bantered back and forth in Manhattan on Tuesday.
The secret behind Anthony Volpe’s base-stealing prowess
Anthony Volpe has quickly injected some youth and energy into the Yankees. Emphasis on “quickly.”
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/the-secret-behind-anthony-volpes-base-stealing-prowess/
Sex Traffickers Using TikTok To Lure Children, Youth Therapist Warns
Sex Traffickers Using TikTok To Lure Children, Youth Therapist Warns
Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
TikTok may be providing opportunities for sex traffickers to groom children, a youth therapist has warned.
Dr. Katie Guinn has spent the last 10 years providing in-home family therapy to young people and their families in the Acadiana region of Louisiana. She is the regional director of The Center for Children and Families, a nonprofit organization that provides advocacy, counseling, and other services for families in need.
The need for mental health services among young people has skyrocketed in the last two years, according to Guinn, who said that she is encountering more and more children who have been victims of sex trafficking. In providing a definition of the term, she said that “sex trafficking involves engaging in sexual activities against the will of a person for an exchange of goods.” The transaction is not always associated with money, but can also include drugs, food, or shelter, for example.
As a result of the COVID pandemic, Guinn said a relatively new concept has emerged, which she called “cybersex trafficking.” The goal of luring children and adults into sex trafficking remains the same, but in this approach, she said, “everything is virtual.” Websites and a variety of phone apps with messaging capabilities are utilized to communicate with users, who are often minors.
Victims and participants can upload content, like photographs or videos, and a transaction occurs using cryptocurrency. According to Guinn, “This new realm of sex trafficking is incredibly difficult to track and learn more about because it constantly and instantly evolves.”
What is known, she said, is that children are particularly vulnerable. “For a child or another victim to be susceptible to sex trafficking,” Guinn said, “there first has to be a vulnerability.” A vulnerability can be defined as “something missing in a child’s life that needs to be filled.” This void or need can come in many forms, she explained. “It can be connection, survival, love, substance abuse, shelter, food, stability, and more.
“In the last three years,” Guinn said, “the biggest need we have seen in children is connection, [as] kids have been incredibly isolated as a result of the pandemic.” She identified connection as a human need that is as significant for a child as eating or breathing. “People need connection, especially children,” she said.
Groomed on TikTok
Social media has become a primary means for people to connect. According to Guinn, however, all avenues of social media can be used for contacting and potentially recruiting victims for sex trafficking, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. But TikTok—a hugely popular Chinese-owned app—is the “most aggressive,” she said, explaining that “TikTok’s algorithm is incredibly aggressive and customizable to the user.
“The app tracks how much time is spent using it, how a user engages with a video, whether it be by sharing it, commenting on it, or liking it, and determines what videos will show up next on the user’s feed,” she explained. “It’s the user’s interaction with the video that determines their customized algorithm.
“Traffickers will make videos, posts, or different kinds of content which talk about the lifestyle of sex trafficking very openly and blatantly,” Guinn said. “They glamorize it, making it very desirable for a child who is lacking so much. They’ll show such things as women at parties, enjoying drinking, eating, and flaunting expensive gifts, for example. For a kid, this all looks very enticing.”
Once a child watches a attractive video, she said, “the TikTok algorithm is going to shuffle similar videos to share more of that content to the child user, further glamorizing a very dangerous lifestyle.”
It’s part of the larger process that “naturally starts to fill a vulnerability,” Guinn said. “A child could become more incentivized to message the person responsible for the video, to make contact with this person in hopes to partake in this lifestyle they observed, and get their needs met.
“Inadvertently, they could easily become part of the realm of sex trafficking, simply with the intention of getting their needs met, but often times, [they are not] able to find a way out,” she warned.
“TikTok provides constant exposure to things kids never would have been exposed to, [and] it can reduce sensitivity, normalize behavior, and potentially make a child more susceptible to being approached by traffickers. These traffickers are trained to spot and take advantage of vulnerabilities in children, [and] Tik Tok has made this easier than ever.
“Grooming can occur for free on TikTok in children,” Guinn said. “There is no doubt that [the video hosting service] can play a harmful role in the potential recruitment and grooming of children for sex trafficking.”
More Communication Needed
Guinn admitted that a child’s use of TikTok is incredibly difficult to monitor. “It’s terrifying because it could be grooming children from their phones with no one’s knowledge.”
While a parent’s gut reaction is to pull everything, she said, removing the app from a device or taking away a child’s phone isn’t a foolproof solution. “Children will find a way to get what they want. Kids are incredibly resourceful and will find a way. Most likely through using a friend’s phone at school.
“Many times, the most susceptible are victims of sexual abuse, substance abuse, broken homes, or more,” she said. And by taking away a child’s phone, “a parent could create a space that’s not trusting or communicative—which is not helpful when all you want to do is protect your child.
“Remember, kids are often looking to meet their needs, and TikTok has provided instantaneous access to unhealthy alternatives to fill that vulnerability,” Guinn said. In her opinion, the best armor against such evil is over-communication and increased awareness. Sex trafficking is something that must be discussed despite how uncomfortable it is to do so, she said.
“Increase communication and spread awareness, not fear,” Guinn said. “Over-communicate with your kids, knowing where they are and what they’re doing, asking who their friends are, and talking about what’s on their phones.
“I’d rather over-communicate and have a safe, ticked-off teenager than be in the dark,” Guinn said.
TikTok did not return The Epoch Times’ request for comment. Last month, the app set a one-hour default time limit for users under the age of 18 amid growing concerns about the platform’s effect on children.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/04/2023 – 20:45
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sex-traffickers-using-tiktok-lure-children-youth-therapist-warns
King Charles’ wife receives Queen Camilla title on coronation invitation, Prince George given special role
Queen Camilla was officially identified with her new title for the first time on the invitation for King Charles III coronation.
Camilla was designated “queen consort” when Charles ascended the throne following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September.
Buckingham Palace released the invitations for the monarch’s May 6 coronation Tuesday along with a new portrait of Their Majesties.
Her new title will take into effect after the coronation.
Camilla will be crowned alongside her husband at London’s Westminster Abbey. The Palace hasn’t revealed the guest list, but said that “2,000 guests” will form the congregation.
In February 2022, several months before her death, the late queen marked the 70th anniversary of her rule with support for Camilla. At the time, the monarch expressed her “sincere wish” that Charles’ wife should be known as “Queen Consort” when her son succeeds her.
PRINCE HARRY MAKES COURT APPEARANCE IN CASE AGAINST BRITISH TABLOIDS
King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla “will each be attended by four Pages of Honour” who fill form “part of the procession through the Nave of Westminster Abbey.”
The King’s Pages of Honour will include His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales, Prince William’s eldest son.
Prince George is second in line to the throne behind his father, the Prince of Wales.
Lord Oliver Cholmondeley, Master Nicholas Barclay and Master Ralph Tollemache will also be included in the King’s Pages of Honour.
The Queen Consort’s Pages of Honour will be Her Majesty’s grandsons, Master Gus and Master Louis Lopes, and Master Freddy Parker Bowles, in addition to her great-nephew, Master Arthur Elliot.
KING CHARLES DENIED BY HARRY STYLES, ADELE, ELTON JOHN FOR CORONATION CONCERT: EXPERTS REVEAL WHY
The invitation for the Coronation was designed by Andrew Jamieson, a heraldic artist and manuscript illuminator. Mr Jamieson is a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild, of which The King is an Honorary Member.
The palace previously shared that the featured roles for members of the king and queen’s family are part of a ceremony that “will reflect the monarch’s role today and look toward the future while being rooted in long-standing traditions and pageantry.”
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It took years for many in Britain to forgive Charles, whose admitted infidelity and long-time links to Camilla torpedoed his marriage to Princess Diana, known as “the People’s Princess.” The glamorous young mother of Princes William and Harry died in a Paris car crash in 1997, five years after her messy, public split from Charles. She was 36.
When Camilla, 75, married Charles in 2005, it was widely assumed she would not be known as queen when Charles, 74, acceded to the throne. However, Elizabeth’s words set the record straight on her daughter-in-law, who was initially shunned by Diana’s supporters.
In January, Harry accused his stepmother of leaking private conversations to the media to burnish her own reputation. The accusation was published in his explosive memoir, “Spare.”
While it’s still unclear if they will attend, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were extended an invitation to the coronation, according to the Sunday Times.
May 6 is a particularly important date for Prince Harry and Meghan as the day coincides with their son Archie’s fourth birthday. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex removed themselves from royal responsibilities in January 2020 and moved to Canada before settling in Southern California.