Society's ChildS


Eye 1

I tried cutting Google out of my life, but couldn't use the internet without it

Kashmir Hill
Gizmodo
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 18:16 UTC
google
Reporter Kashmir Hill spent six weeks blocking Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple from getting her money, data, and attention, using a custom-built VPN. Here's what happened.

Week 3: Google

Long ago, Google made the mistake of adopting the motto, "Don't be evil," in a jab at competitors who exploited their users. Alphabet, Google's parent company, has since demoted the phrase in its corporate code of conduct presumably because of how hard it is to live up to it.

Google is no stranger to scandals, but 2018 was a banner year. It covered up the potential data exposure of a half million people who probably forgot they were still using Google+. It got caught trying to build a censored search engine for China. Its own employees resigned to protest Google helping the Pentagon build artificial intelligence. Thousands more employees walked out over the company paying exorbitant exit packages to executives accused of sexual misconduct. And privacy critics decried Google's insatiable appetite for data, from capturing location information in unexpected ways — a practice Google changed when exposed — to capturing credit card transactions — a practice Google has not changed and actually seems proud of.
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Handcuffs

Malta mogul arrested on yacht in journalist murder case

Matthew Xuereb with Ella Ide
Yahoo
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 17:39 UTC
Caruana Galizia's sons Matthew and Paul
© AFP Photo/Tolga AKMENCaruana Galizia's sons Matthew and Paul at a vigil in London hoping for justice for their journalist mother
Malta on Wednesday arrested a tycoon in connection with the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the day after an alleged middleman was offered a pardon to identify the mastermind behind the killing.

Maltese national Yorgen Fenech was detained on his yacht at dawn as he tried to leave Malta, a police source told AFP, in the latest development in the long-running case that has raised questions about the rule of law in Malta.

Before her 2017 murder, which sparked outrage and protests in the Mediterranean island, Caruana Galizia reported on corruption -- including alleging that a company owned by Fenech was connected to high-level politicians.

Her son Andrew said on Twitter that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat "has blood on his hands" for protecting those involved.

Parliament was adjourned Wednesday following a walkout by opposition lawmakers after Muscat refused to sack officials allegedly implicated in the case.
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Cross

Pakistani journalist quits her job after colleagues 'rubbish' her Christian faith & pressure her to convert to Islam


RT
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:29 UTC
cross
© REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood
A Pakistani journalist has resigned after reportedly being harassed by colleagues over her Christian faith and her refusal to convert to Islam.

The only Christian registered with the Lahore Press Club, Gonila Gill has been working as a journalist for nearly twenty years. Covering health, education and minority rights, her job at Dunya News became a nightmare after she married a Muslim co-worker in 2014. Their marriage led to Gill being criticized at her workplace for not adopting her husband's religion. The discrimination only grew worse after she gave birth to her first son - who was baptized and named Abraham. Ironically, she recounted, her co-workers had told her that she would never get pregnant until she converted to Islam.
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Heart - Black

Study finds less than 10% of EU aid reaches world's poorest countries

Karen McVeigh
The Guardian
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:23 UTC
men bricks pave road
© Scott Peterson/Getty ImagesMen pave a road with bricks as part of an EU-funded job scheme in Agadez, Niger.
Less than 10% of EU aid money reaches the countries where it is most needed, according to a study that found levels of assistance had dropped for the second year running.

The EU and its member states remain the biggest development donor group in the world - investing €71.9bn ($61bn) in 2018, more than half of global aid - but its contribution was 5.8% lower than in 2017, the European NGO network, Concord, found in its AidWatch report.

Progress on meeting the UN target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid, laid down in 1970, has gone into reverse, said the group. Their research showed that aid decreased to 0.47% of the EU's combined GNI last year, compared with 0.49% in 2017 and 0.51% in 2016.
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Light Sabers

Lawyers launch $500M class-action lawsuit against Roundup makers


Yahoo
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 16:28 UTC
roundup
Diamond & Diamond, a national personal injury law firm in Canada, is spearheading a $500 million class-action lawsuit against various Roundup makers, including pharmaceutical company Bayer, the owner of Roundup maker Monsanto.

Roundup is a weedkiller that contains glyphosate, a herbicide chemical often used by homeowners to treat their lawns.

There have been many lawsuits filed across North America alleging that glyphosate can cause health problems including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a rare type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system.

In the United States alone, there have been about 18,000 lawsuits filed against the makers of Roundup.

Diamond & Diamond is calling this Canada's largest class-action lawsuit against Roundup makers. There are currently more than 60 individuals named as plaintiffs, but the firm said they believe thousands may have been affected.
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Target

Telling the truth about trans is not 'hate speech': YouTube bans interview with Posie Parker for saying trans women are men


Spiked
Tue, 19 Nov 2019 00:01 UTC
Posie Parker
An interview with feminist Posie Parker has been taken down by YouTube because it constitutes 'hate speech', which could incite 'hatred and/or violence against protected groups'.

In an interview on the Triggernometry podcast, Parker restated her apparently controversial view that men who transition to female are still men.

The video was online for 24 hours and was watched by around 35,000 people until YouTube took it down. The tech giant also gave the Triggernometry channel a warning. After three further warnings, a channel can be permanently deleted.

Comment: The video has since been re-instated by YouTube, but you'd probably be better off watching it on BitChute here.

See also:

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Megaphone

'Mealy-mouthed bunch of bulls**t': Roger Waters decries hypocrisy of Swedish prosecutors, says no evidence Assange EVER injured anybody


RT
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 08:06 UTC
Julian Assange Roger Waters
© Reuters / Henry Nicholls / Carlo Allegri
Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has condemned Swedish prosecutors who yesterday dropped a rape investigation into WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, saying the whole thing was "a complete bogus set-up" from the beginning.

Waters told RT that the statement from Swedish prosecutors claiming that the evidence against Assange had "weakened" since 2010 was a "mealy-mouthed bunch of bullsh*t" and that there was "no evidence to support the idea that [Assange] injured anybody."

It's partly because of this whole "set-up" that Assange is still suffering in London's Belmarsh Prison with no real process of law being followed, Waters said. "Assange is being slowly murdered by the state because he told uncomfortable truths about US war crimes," he added.

Comment: See also:

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Fire

'Right to be offended' does not exist, UK judge says as court hears police record 'hate incidents' even if there is no evidence

Izzy Lyons
The Telegraph
Wed, 20 Nov 2019 23:56 UTC
Harry Miller
© Dominic Lipinski /PAFormer police officer Harry Miller outside the High Court in London.
The "right to be offended" does not exist, a judge has said, as the High Court hears that British police forces are recording hate incidents even if there is no evidence that they took place.

Mr Justice Knowles made the remark on the first day of a landmark legal challenge against guidelines issued to police forces across the country on how to record "non-crime hate incidents".

The College of Policing, the professional body which delivers training for all officers in England and Wales, issued their Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG) in 2014, which states that a comment reported as hateful by a victim must be recorded "irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element".

Comment: Nice to see that the judge still has a head on his shoulders.

See also:

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Books

Douglas Murray cuts through the doubt-sowing incoherence of social-justice babble

Barbara Kay
National Post
Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:26 UTC
Douglas Murray
British intellectual Douglas Murray, the author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity
London-based public intellectual Douglas Murray is in Montreal this week to promote his new book. I was afforded the luxury of a rambling conversation over coffee with him about The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity.

A "clubbable conservative," as one reviewer accurately describes him, Murray hit his intellectual stride early, publishing his first book at 18, which attracted the attention and mentorship of polemical giants Christopher Hitchens and Roger Scruton. Quite different in personality from Jordan Peterson (less intensity, more suavity), he's equally erudite and similarly crowd-pleasing (they've done joint appearances in the U.K., attracting massive audiences).

Murray shot to international celebrity with his powerful, if depressing 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe, which opens with the words, "Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide." Joining frontline reports from unpleasant way stations in the 2015 migrant crisis to insightful analysis of the West's present malaise, Murray painted a gloomy picture of continental passivity in the face of momentous cultural change.

In The Madness of Crowds, also inspired by the West's loss of a "grand narrative," Murray applies his formidable exegetical skills to the proliferation of identity politics "tripwires" that corrode civic life and wreak havoc with individual lives.

Murray writes: "The interpretation of the world through the lens of 'social justice,' 'identity group politics' and 'intersectionalism' is probably the most audacious and comprehensive effort since the Cold War at creating a new ideology." Christianity has been spurned, but the religious impulse is inherent and abhors a vacuum. The "religion" of social justice, Murray observes, poured itself into the handy campus vessel of Marxism with remarkable speed.

Comment: See also,

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Health

Canada: Ex-NDP leader Tom Mulcair featured at pro-homeopathy conference in Montreal


CBC
Tue, 19 Nov 2019 16:09 UTC
Tom Mulcair
© Adrian Wyld/Canadian PressFormer NDP leader Tom Mulcair in the House of Commons October 25, 2016.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair's work for a pro-homeopathy advocacy group is raising eyebrows among critics who denounce the field as pseudoscience.

Mulcair told a conference in Montreal today that he's been using homeopathic remedies for about 30 years and feels the Quebec government should do more to recognize and regulate the field.

His presence was discouraging to Jonathan Jarry of the McGill Office for Science and Society, who says there's no scientific evidence to show homeopathic remedies work for any health condition.

Comment: The fact that an ex-politician would actually stick his neck out to proclaim he supports homeopathy is quite significant given the amount of trash thrown at the healing modality in the public sphere. It's akin to declaring yourself an 'informed vaccination' advocate. For a look at how divisive the topic is, head over to the original article and take a look at the comments - all 152 of them (at the time of posting) - and see some of the divisive name calling from the skeptics. But the arguments always boil down to "homeopathy cannot possibly work because it betrays the laws of my materialistic worldview, therefore it doesn't work". Rock solid logic.

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