Anime-inspired youth movement linked to wave of violence in Russia

More than 350 young brawlers have reportedly been detained in Moscow over the past few days

A wave of violence between groups of teenagers has hit Russia over the last week. The brawls, which broke out at malls, have been linked to the mysterious ‘PMC Ryodan’ youth movement that is believed to have been inspired by Japanese anime and manga.

According to multiple reports, the movement’s name comes from a gang in the show ‘Hunter x Hunter’. The members identify themselves by wearing clothes with a spider logo. The acronym ‘PMC’ (ChVK in Russian) means ‘private military company’.

Most Ryodan members are underage and are reported to have ‘bad blood’ with football hooligans. According to news website Baza, they also oppose migrants and people from Russia’s Muslim-majority Caucasus region.

The first widely-reported fight broke out on February 19 at the Aviapark mall in northern Moscow, according to Baza. The publication said several Ryodan members were involved in an argument with another group over chairs in a food court. Other reports said the fight erupted because of how one of the members of the group was dressed.

The teenagers reportedly agreed to meet for a showdown in the Aviapark the next day, as well as inside Marcos Mall, another popular spot in the northern part of the capital. Both confrontations were broken up by the police, Baza said. The Moscow Investigative Committee has also launched a probe into the matter.

Similar incidents were later reported in the Russian capital and other major cities. Four young people attacked and pepper-sprayed a person wearing clothes with a spider logo in a Moscow subway station, according to local media reports. Three of the assailants were said to have been minors, as well as the victim.

More than 350 people, including 319 minors, were detained in Moscow on Saturday and Sunday, RIA Novosti reported, citing a police source. Some were said to have been armed with pepper spray, knives, and airsoft pistols. Most of the detainees have since been released, while the parents of 11 of them have been charged with “dereliction of parental duties.”

Officials in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, said a 17-year-old college student was arrested on suspicion of attacking a 15-year-old schoolboy in one of the malls. Social media, meanwhile, has been flooded with videos of groups of young people fighting each other and making threats against ‘spiders’.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that it was important to prevent unlawful activities. He described Ryodan as a “negative pseudo-subculture that doesn’t offer anything good to our young people.”

Ekaterina Mizulina, a member of Russia’s Civic Chamber – a body advising the government on civil society issues – said on Monday that she had asked the judiciary to formally ban Ryodan. Mizulina wrote on her Telegram channel that phenomena like Ryodan become popular because young people “are left to themselves” and spend time online instead of having access to sport clubs and other activities.

https://www.rt.com/russia/572209-pmc-ryodan-russia-fights/

German ‘Babysitter’ Convicted of Sexually Abusing Children, Including a One-Month-Old

BERLIN (AP) – A 45-year-old German man who had offered babysitting services online was convicted Tuesday on charges of sexually abusing children in a case that shocked even veteran investigators and led them to uncover numerous other abuse suspects.

The regional court in Cologne sentenced the defendant, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, to 14 years and six months in prison. It also ordered him held in secure confinement after the end of his sentence.

Prosecutors had asked the court to impose a 15-year sentence, the maximum length normally permitted under German law, arguing that the defendant’s crimes were particularly grave.

Investigators said the man had documented the abuse of babies, children and teenagers, and shared videos and images of “unimaginable brutality” with dozens of people.

Prosecutors had accused the man of more than 120 cases of sexual abuse against 13 children between 2005 and 2019. The youngest victim was one month old.

The defendant admitted the allegations during the trial and described them as “despicable,” according to German news agency dpa.

Police arrested the man in late 2021 at a house he lived in with his wife in the town of Wermelskirchen. The defendant was in a video call with work colleagues at the time of the police raid, dpa reported.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/02/28/german-babysitter-convicted-of-sexually-abusing-children-including-a-one-month-old/

White House pushes to renew controversial spying law

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows agencies to spy on anyone, anywhere

Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines wrote to Congressional leaders on Tuesday, asking them to renew a post-9/11 law allowing the US to spy on foreign targets anywhere in the world. While the law is explicitly intended to surveil foreigners, it has been used to monitor millions of Americans.

Section 702 of the 2008 amendment to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legalized the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program, allowing US intelligence agencies to monitor messages from abroad made through American networks like Google. Set to expire at the end of the year, the White House is already pushing lawmakers toward its renewal.

“The information acquired using Section 702 plays a key role in keeping the United States, its citizens, and its allies safe and secure,” Garland and Haines wrote in their letter, describing the reauthorization of the law as “a top legislative priority for this administration.”

Garland and Haines, the latter of whom served as deputy director of the CIA under Barack Obama, claimed that information gathered using Section 702 was instrumental in foiling cyberattacks on the US, halting the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction, and thwarting foreign states’ attempts to recruit spies in the US.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan described Section 702 as a “cornerstone of US national security.”

However, while Garland and Haines stressed that Section 702 cannot be “directed against Americans at home or abroad,” that is not the case. A report last year by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) found that the FBI alone made “fewer than 3,394,053” queries of US citizens between December 2020 and November 2021, based on data obtained under Section 702.

Although the law cannot be used to surveil Americans directly, it allows the US to gather intelligence on any American whom a foreign surveillance target contacts.

This intelligence is stored for five years, during which it can be searched – for example by name, phone number, or email address, by US intelligence agencies.

President Joe Biden will likely face opposition from some Republicans when it comes to renewing Section 270. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said last year that Congress “should not even reauthorize FISA.” Allies of former president Donald Trump previously condemned the FBI for abusing the FISA process to illegally wiretap the ex-president.

https://www.rt.com/news/572211-us-surveillance-act-restoration/

School suspends sex education after drag queen debacle

A man in drag allegedly told 11-year-olds that there are 73 genders

A school on the Isle of Man has paused its sex education program after parents complained about “graphic” and “indecent” lessons in which a drag queen lectured students on gender and teachers told preteens how to masturbate.

Pupils at Queen Elizabeth II High School in the town of Peel were taught by a drag queen who told them there are 73 genders, a local representative claimed this week. When one pupil responded “there’s only two,” the cross-dressing man made the child leave the classroom, she alleged.

Some 11-year-olds at the school were taught about oral and anal sex, while others were told how to masturbate and safely practice “fisting.” Another group was shown how surgeons can create an artificial penis using skin grafts from a girl’s arm, the representative claimed.

The island, which is a dependency of the British crown, introduced a new sex education curriculum in September. Based on a controversial model taught in Scotland, the curriculum is apparently unpopular with teachers, with one reportedly so uncomfortable with its content that she told students “please don’t listen to me,” as she taught it.

Parents responded with outrage, and a petition demanding to know “why was this guest speaker permitted to discuss gender issues to an inappropriate child audience by an inexperienced and untrained adult?” has been signed by more than 500 people, the Telegraph reported on Monday.

The Isle of Man’s education department said that it has “taken the decision to pause all [sex education] delivery across primary and secondary schools” until an independent review has been conducted. However, the school’s head teacher told local radio on Tuesday that “there could be a number of inaccuracies” with the reports being shared on social media.

‘Woke’ sex education programs have become more commonplace in British and American schools in recent years, often leading to outrage from parents. The Scottish program on which the Isle of Man’s curriculum was based has been slammed for “normalizing” underage sex, while Californian schools teach children that there are dozens of genders and sexualities.

https://www.rt.com/news/572203-drag-queen-school-genders/