Society's ChildS


Rose

Manbij celebrates liberation from ISIS: Women burn burqas, men cut beards, children play soccer


RT
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 14:19 UTC
Liberation of Manbij
© Rodi Said / Reuters A Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter helps civilians who were evacuated by the SDF from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 12, 2016.
Manbij women have been ripping off their burqas and burning them, smoking cigarettes, while men cut off their beards, all while rejoicing at their newly obtained freedom after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) drove jihadists from the Syrian city. Mass jubilation engulfed the northern Syrian city of Manbij after months of battles and grief. Both residents who had stayed in the city and those who only just returned after hearing the news have been openly expressing joy at getting their homes and freedom back.

Embraces and kisses, happy smiles, and even more happy tears have been seen on Manbij's streets, as this video and these pictures show, with whole-hearted laughter and words of gratitude heard on every corner. Children, as children do, played football and enjoyed themselves, albeit in apocalyptic-looking surroundings.

Comment: A liberated Manbij will join the autonomous federation of N. Syria. See also:

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Padlock

Private prisons save money at the expense of being more dangerous


RT
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 13:42 UTC
Texas prison
© Adrees Latif / Reuters
Migrants convicted of immigration offenses may have hoped for the American Dream, but got the American nightmare that is privatized prisons. The Department of Justice found that private prisons are more punitive and unsafe than other federal prisons.

There are 14 prisons that are privately operated but belong to the federal system. Those are exclusively used to incarcerate low-risk criminals convicted of immigration offenses. Despite the low-risk offenders, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released findings that these private prisons are more dangerous than ones operated by the federal government with comparable inmate populations.

The report found: "With the exception of fewer incidents of positive drug tests and sexual misconduct, the contract prisons had more incidents per capita than the BOP [Federal Bureau of Prisons] institutions in all of the other categories of data we examined."
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Handcuffs

Italian court deports Tunisian man in alleged plot to attack the Leaning Tower of Pisa


RT
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 13:36 UTC
leaning tower of pisa
© Clarissa Cavalheiro / Reuters
An Italian court has ordered the expulsion of a Tunisian national suspected of planning an attack on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italian media reported. He was also accused of praising militants that had carried out terrorist attacks in Western Europe.

Bilel Chiahoui was arrested on Thursday in a wooded area between the cities of Pisa and Livorno after an 8-hour-long search in which 100 police officers took part, La Stampa reported.

The police operation was prompted by a Facebook post in Arabic, which listed the names of "martyr" jihadists and ended with Chiahoui's name, date of birth (February 12, 1990), and supposed date of death (August 11, 2016), while noting that he had died in Pisa, La Stampa reported. The post was said to be from Chiahoui's Facebook account, which was registered under the false name "Rafael van der Vaart" - the same as the famous Dutch soccer player's.
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Bullseye

Still at it: Charlie Hebdo receives death threats for another offensive anti-Muslim cartoon


RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 13:26 UTC
charlie hebdo
© Regis Duvignau / Reuters
The controversial satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which has previously been the target of Islamist terrorists, has reportedly received threats warning of new attacks since publishing a cartoon of naked Muslims on its cover.

Charlie Hebdo's latest issue, which was released on Wednesday, features the image of a man and a woman on a beach with exposed genitals. The woman is depicted wearing a shoulder-length veil, while the man has a long beard. The caption reads "The reform of Islam. Muslims, loosen up" ("Musulmans de-coin-cez-vous").

After the issue was released, the magazine's staff received a written message saying "You will die," Le Parisien reported. Charlie Hebdo's co-shareholder, Eric Portheault, told the French newspaper that a complaint has been filed with Paris police, while stressing that his magazine has been receiving death threats since the beginning of summer, and "it does not stop."

Comment: Charlie Hebdo attacks bear all the markings of a false flag operation

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Bizarro Earth

Bad vibes: Russian flags torn down twice in Rio Olympic village


RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 13:21 UTC
Rio Olympic Village
© Jeremy Lee / Reuters
Russian flags were torn down in the Rio Olympic village, and disappeared again the next day after Russian athletes had put them back up, synchronized swimmer Alexandra Patskevich reported to Russian media.

Russian synchronized swimmer Patskevich opened up to Russian outlet kp.ru about the unpleasant atmosphere that has sometimes greeted Team Russia members in Rio.

"Of course the attitude towards Russian athletes here is just awful. I haven't seen such a nightmare in my entire sporting career," told Patskevich.

"They refuse to congratulate us on the podium; they don't go up to shake our hand. I've personally experienced such instances."

"We live on the 16th floor of the Olympic village, where we have our own hotel house where only the Russian delegation lives. We hung out Russian national flags there, but yesterday morning we found that they had been torn down and knotted at the corners. Can you image, they just threw them on the floor! We obviously put them back in place, but after we got back from evening training, the flags had disappeared without a trace."
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Handcuffs

Police state: How the disabled and mentally ill are criminalized by psychopathic US 'justice' system


RT
Sat, 13 Aug 2016 03:49 UTC
Brendan Dassey mugshot
© Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department / ReutersBrendan Dassey
It took a popular documentary "Making a Murderer" to have Brendan Dassey cleared of the crime after he spent 10 years in prison. His case sheds light on how the rights of mentally ill people are frequently violated in the justice system.

The Netflix documentary series chronicles the lives and trials of Dassey who was accused of helping his uncle, Steven Avery, murder Teresa Halbach in October 2005.

Dassey was 16 years old and reading at a fourth grade level. In March 2006 he spent four hours being interrogated by police without a parent or lawyer present. During his interrogation, he confessed to participating in both raping and murdering Halbach. As a result, Dassey spent the past 10 years behind bars, despite no evidence linking him to the crime other than his confession.

But a confession is a confession and innocent people don't confess to crimes they don't commit. Except when they do - and it happens a lot. This is why Dassey may be one of the luckiest men in the US on Friday; the national spotlight on his case may have given it the attention necessary to get a man with a learning disability and low IQ out of prison.

Comment: Mentally ill and disabled people have consistently been targeted, taken advantage of, and abused by the US justice system. These are the people that are the most vulnurable in society and require special care and support. Instead, they are often either wrongfully incarcerated on false pretences, or are fatally shot down by police.

The following quote below is pertinent:
"The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped." ~ Hubert. H. Humphrey

See also:

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Fire

Huge fire, explosion levels Maryland apartment complex, two dead, over 30 injured

Liam Quinn and Sarah Dean
Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 14:55 UTC
Maryland house explosion
© Reuters
Residents of a Washington apartment complex where two people died after a massive explosion say they 'smelled gas' in the days leading up to the deadly blast.

Along with the two people who were killed, several remain missing and at least 34 were injured in the incident shortly before midnight on Wednesday.

In the wake of the explosion in Silver Spring,Maryland, shocked locals have hit out at authorities for ignoring their calls about alleged 'gas leaks' near the building.

'I've been smelling gas for weeks. I called 911, they came and told us it smelled like incense,' Adrian Boya told NBC Washington. 'That's pretty sad. It's like they didn't take us seriously.'


Comment: Gas leaks reportedly have a rotten egg or skunk smell and is generally an unpleasant odor not easily confused with incense.

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Arrow Down

Profiting from abuse and neglect: Private prisons are more violent and dangerous than government run counterparts

Nika Knight
Common Dreams
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
for profit prisons money police
© Shutterstock
Damning Department of Justice report finds that privately owned federal prisons cause more bodily injuries and even death

Private federal prisons are more abusive, violent, and dangerous than their government-run counterparts, according to a frightening report published this week by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

The report [pdf], which examined prisons owned and operated by GEO Group, Management and Training Corporation, and the controversial and very notorious Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), discovered that inmates in those facilities "were nine times more likely to be placed on lockdown than inmates at other federal prisons and were frequently subjected to arbitrary solitary confinement," the Guardian reports.

Moreover, for-profit prisons "almost exclusively incarcerate low risk inmates convicted of immigration offenses," the Guardian notes.

"This is due to a new trend in the past decade of criminally prosecuting people for reentering the country rather than merely processing them through the civil deportation system," said Carl Takei, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) National Prison Project, to the Washington Post. "The result is that people serve sometimes-lengthy prison sentences in [Federal Bureau of Prisons] custody before ... going through civil deportation proceedings."

Comment:

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Apple Red

Ohio police rescue 7yo trying to sell his stuffed animal for food


RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 22:28 UTC
Stuffed rabbit toy
© Reuters
An Ohio boy was wandering around a busy area downtown Franklin, Ohio with his stuffed animal in hands Sunday afternoon. He was trying to sell the toy to get some food. He hadn't eaten for several days, according to police who helped him.

Officer Steve Dunham found the unnamed 7-year-old trying to sell his stuffed animal outside a drug store, after police received a phone call.
The boy wanted money to buy food.

"It broke my heart," Dunham told WLWT. "He told me he was trying to sell his stuffed animal to get money for food because he hadn't eaten in several days."
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Arrow Down

The Vatican has paid huge amounts of money to settle child molestation lawsuits

Alexa Erickson
Collective Evolution
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 21:08 UTC
Vatican City
© History Cooperative Org
The reality of child molestation by the Roman Catholic Church has surfaced time and time again, and yet, somehow, it continues to happen. If you watched the movie Spotlight, perhaps you have an idea of just how things are going down. But let's break it down to date.

While you can't put a price on the innocence of a child, you can put a price on just how much the Roman Catholic Church has paid out in lawsuits over the never-ending epidemic of child molestation wreaking havoc in its ranks.

According to Jack and Diane Ruhl of the National Catholic Reporter, who decided to research this particular topic, since 1950, the Vatican has spent a disgusting $3,994,797,060.10. That's nearly $4 billion to keep things hush hush. That number may even be a bit conservative, as we cannot know for sure the agreed upon "under the table" amount.

The figure is based on a three-month investigation of data, which includes a review of over 7,800 articles from LexisNexis Academic and NCR databases and information from BishopAccountability.org. Reports from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were also used.

If the amount of money dished out was divided evenly amongst the U.S.'s 197 dioceses, each one would get almost $20 million. An incredible amount of cash from hard working people who support the good faith and intentions of the Church — people who are parents to little boys being sexually abused — is being used to cover up unfathomable crimes executed by priests.
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