Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Moscow court jails Griner for nine years in drug trial


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2022 17:23 UTC
brittney griner conviction russia drug smuggling
© AP /NZ HeraldBrittney Griner stands in a Moscow courtroom listening to the verdict.
US women's basketball player Brittney Griner has been handed a nine-year prison sentence after being found guilty in her drugs trial at a court just outside Moscow.

The sentence is only slightly more lenient than the one demanded by prosecutors earlier on Thursday, after they had requested a nine-and-a-half-year term for Griner.

In addition, the presiding judge ordered Griner to pay a fine of 1 million Russian rubles ($16,200) as part of the case, after she was found guilty of attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into the country.

Griner's legal team immediately said they would appeal the sentence, according to reports from Khimki City Court.

Comment: Russian Foreign Ministry says US is disrespecting law in Brittney Griner case

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Yoda

UK law chief Suella Braverman says ditch the woke 'witch trials'

Martin Beckford
Daily Mail
Thu, 04 Aug 2022 17:12 UTC
Suella Braverman
© AFP 2022 / Justin TallisUK Attorney General Suella Braverman
The Attorney General today launches a fightback against woke 'witch trials'.

Suella Braverman brands the diversity industry a 'new religion' in which zealots seek to punish unbelievers while others are too scared to speak out.

In an article for the Daily Mail, she reveals she has scrapped equality training in her department after learning that staff had spent almost 2,000 hours on the courses last year.

They were being given lectures on 'micro-incivilities' and 'how to be a straight ally'.

Mrs Braverman, who stood for the Tory leadership last month, says it is 'downright dangerous' for Whitehall lawyers to be taught they cannot challenge anyone who says they have been offended by a particular phrase.
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Fire

Germany: Fire, explosions at Berlin police munitions facility


DW
Thu, 04 Aug 2022 16:34 UTC
Berlin fire
Berlin's fire department said that more than 100 personnel were on the scene early on Thursday
Firefighters have responded to a blaze in the upscale Grunewald forest in the west of the German capital. A munitions storage facility was affected and emergency services reported explosions at the scene.

A fire broke out in Berlin's Grunewald forest early on Thursday following an explosion at a munitions storage site, with the German capital still facing searing summer temperatures.

The threat of further explosions and flying debris meant firefighters were hampered from systematically extinguishing the fire. Personnel were forced to keep a distance of a kilometer (more than half a mile) from the flames.

Berlin fire department spokesman James Klein explained to DW the challenge that was facing firefighters.

"What we have here is an ordnance site. So ordnance is stored and also fireworks and other objects that can also explode, detonate."

"There are different items stored there, so there can be smaller and larger explosions. We are optimistic, because the heavy ordnance also located there, is stored accordingly, cooled and in steel containers, so that we can protect them."
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Attention

FOIA request reveals school district hid library database that has pornographic material


Libs of TikTok
Fri, 29 Jul 2022 00:00 UTC
groomer
Richland School District Two in South Carolina has been exposed for removing guest access to the school district's online library catalog because of the "current political climate" and "scrutiny." The move made it impossible for parents to access the catalog and view what books were being made available to their children. Parents who were already outraged over the material in the library submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last month which revealed an email from Richland School District officials demanding the library be locked.

The now-disclosed email (shown below) was sent by Richland's Library Media Specialist, Amy Whitfield. The email states that RSD's Chief Academic Officer, Nancy Gregory, had requested the district "remove guest access to our library catalogs" to hinder anyone "who may have malicious intent in searching our library collections." Whitfield directed RSD staff to "do this as soon as possible."

Comment: See also:

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Rocket

Amnesty International: Ukraine violates laws of war by placing weapons at schools


TASS
Thu, 04 Aug 2022 04:31 UTC
War in Ukraine is Imminent soldiers tank flag
Ukraine violates the laws of war and puts the lives of civilians at risk by deploying combat vehicles and weapons at schools and hospitals, according to an Amnesty International report released on Thursday.

"We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas," said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General.

According to the report, human rights activities reported cases when Ukrainian troops launched strikes from residential areas and deployed weapons at civil infrastructure facilities in 19 Ukrainian settlements, including in Donbass, the Kharkov and Nikolayev regions. "In the cases it documented, Amnesty is not aware that the Ukrainian military asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby buildings - a failure to take feasible precautions to protect civilians," Amnesty International said.
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Attention

Reporter tells White House security coordinator 'You gave a whole country to extremists'

Steve Watson
Summit News
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:00 UTC
John Kirby
"What did you think was going to happen?"

White House Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby was confronted Tuesday by Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy over the revelation that Al Qaeda has reestablished itself in Afghanistan following the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from the country, handing it back to Taliban extremists.

Doocy first raised the issue of the administration claiming they knew Al Qaeda has a presence in Afghanistan despite Joe Biden's claim last year that the terrorist organisation was "gone" from the country.

Comment: See also:

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Stock Down

How Canada stupidly bet its border economy on ArriveCAN — a glitchy $25M app

Tristin Hopper
National Post
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 14:43 UTC
arriveCan border crossing
© John Richardson
Right now, nobody gets into Canada without first uploading a cornucopia of needlessly complex personal details to ArriveCAN, a federally mandated smartphone app (that has had an annoying penchant to routinely sentence innocent people to house arrest). There are estimates that ArriveCAN has singlehandedly kneecapped foreign tourism by as much as 50 per cent, it has somehow managed to destroy a 100-year-old golf club, and the federal government has never really adequately explained why we need it.

By the mid-summer of 2022, a lot of tourism businesses near the Canadian border started to notice something: Where is everybody?

Pandemic restrictions are lifted, but there aren't nearly as many Americans blowing money at Niagara Falls casinos. In May 2020, just before COVID started, almost a million people crossed the border near Buffalo, N.Y. In May 2022, it was about half a million.

If you ask basically any politician whose constituency is near the U.S./Canadian border, they know exactly what to blame for all this: The ArriveCAN app.
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Book 2

New book chronicles how America's opioid industry operated like a drug cartel

Terry Gross
NPR
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:37 UTC
bag o' opiods
© Patrick T. Falon/AFP via Getty ImagesA bag of assorted pills and prescription drugs is dropped off for disposal during the Drug Enforcement Administration's National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on April 24, 2021 in Los Angeles.
It's estimated that more than 107,000 people in the United States died due to opioid overdoses in 2021. Washington Post journalist Scott Higham notes it's "the equivalent of a 737 Boeing crashing and burning and killing everybody on board every single day."

In the new book, American Cartel, Higham and co-author Sari Horwitz make the case that the pharmaceutical industry operated like a drug cartel, with manufacturers at the top; wholesalers in the middle; and pharmacies at the level of "street dealers." What's more, Higham says, the companies collaborated with each other — and with lawyers and lobbyists — to create legislation that protected their industry, even as they competed for market share.

"Most people think it's the political parties that run the show or it's the White House that runs the show, but it really is the companies that run the show," Higham says. "People were dying by the thousands while these companies were lobbying members of Congress ... to pass legislation and to lobby members of the Department of Justice and try to slow down the DEA enforcement efforts."

Comment: See also:

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Airplane

911 call reveals doomed North Carolina pilot jumped before emergency landing

Joshua Rhett Miller
New York Post
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 08:45 UTC
charles hew crooks
© Twitter/Simon PalmoreWake County Emergency Management officials told WRAL the initial 911 call was received at 2:30 p.m. Friday. The aircraft, a CASA 212-200, made an emergency landing about 18 minutes later, WRAL reported.
A 911 call released Tuesday revealed that the co-pilot who mysteriously vanished midair in North Carolina had "jumped" out of the aircraft.

Two Federal Aviation Administration employees could be heard saying that Charles Hew Crooks' co-pilot reported that he leaped out of the damaged plane before it made an emergency landing at Raleigh Durham International Airport on Friday, WRAL reported.

"This is from Raleigh Airport," an FAA air traffic controller said on the recording. "We have a pilot who was inbound to the field. His co-pilot jumped out of the aircraft. He made impact to the ground and here are the coordinates."
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NPC

The 'Great Awokening' of British media

Matt Goodwin
mattgoodwin.substack.com
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
woke
A few years ago, a new study caught my eye. After crunching data on 27 million articles in 47 media outlets in America, a young academic named David Rozado uncovered some truly astonishing trends. He found the number of words to describe prejudice, discrimination, and social justice or 'woke' ideology had exploded.

References to words such as 'sexist' had rocketed 130%. 'Racist' by 249%. 'Patriarchy' by 340%. 'White supremacy' by more than 2000%. And 'transphobia' by more than 2300%. Suddenly, seemingly without warning, American journalists were talking a LOT about different forms of discrimination, as well as highly contested woke ideas such as 'unconscious bias', 'white privilege, and 'whiteness'.

It became known as "The Great Awokening" — part of a rapid and dramatic change in the beliefs of mainly white, university-educated liberals on race, sex, and gender. Many of the people who work in media, politics, the universities, the institutions, and who regularly consume content produced by the likes of the New York Times or the Washington Post, have simply become far more liberal than everybody else.
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