Society's Child

850 Brits said to have joined ISIS while 100 have been killed during fighting

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 16:22 UTC

The number of Britons who have joined the ranks of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) or other similar groups has risen to 850, and an estimated 100 of them are thought to have been killed during fighting, it has been reported.

The new figures come after reports that Kadiza Sultana, one of three schoolgirls who left the UK together to join jihadis, was killed by an airstrike in Syria while trying to flee.

Sultana left her east London home during half-term break in February 2015 with friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase. They flew from Gatwick to Turkey and took a bus to the Syrian border.

The three schoolgirls, aged 15 and 16, were gifted students at Bethnal Green academy, but abandoned their A-Level courses and families to marry jihadis in Syria after being lured by IS propaganda.

Muslim women in UK most economically disadvantaged due to Islamophobia

RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 16:18 UTC

Muslim women are discriminated against in the job market, making them the most economically disadvantaged group in British society, MPs have found.

A report by the Women and Equalities Committee discovered Muslim women are three times more likely to be unemployed and looking for work than women generally, and are more than twice as likely to be economically inactive.

Muslim women were found to face discrimination because of their religion, despite this being illegal under the Equality Act.

The committee suggested Muslim women face a "triple penalty" which hampers their employment prospects - being a woman, being from an ethnic minority and being Muslim.

However religion was found to play the biggest part in their economic disadvantage. "The impact of Islamophobia on Muslim women should not be underestimated," MPs wrote.

Inside sources claim Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly censored abusive responses to President Obama

Charlie Warzel
BuzzFeed
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 15:58 UTC

In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a Q&A session, sources tell BuzzFeed News.

According to these sources, the May 2015 #AskPOTUS town hall came out of Twitter senior leadership's frustration with the fact that platforms like Reddit had become home to celebrity Q&As.

According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision.

According to sources, the decision upset some senior employees inside the company who strictly followed Twitter's long-standing commitment to unfettered free speech.

DoJ report reveals systemic racially motivated abuse against African Americans by Baltimore police

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:29 UTC

A routine traffic stop in Baltimore resulted in a woman being strip searched on the sidewalk and her anal cavity checked. After she was let go with a broken taillight citation, the case became one of the dozens of shocking accounts in the DoJ report on the city's police. The Department of Justice released the 163-page report following its 14-month investigation into the practices and procedures of the Baltimore Police Department following the police-involved death of Freddie Gray.

The report said the public strip search of the female driver "found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges... the woman received only a repair order for her headlight. The search occurred in full view of the street." When the woman filed a complaint with the department, her story was corroborated by an investigation. The officer in charge was given a "simple reprimand" and could not serve as an officer in charge until he was "properly trained."

The report contains dozens of disturbing anecdotes of police illegal practices and misconduct and makes for disturbing reading. The report also found in the five and half years of data they examined, African Americans accounted for 95 percent of the 410 people the BPD stopped at least 10 times.

Bystander effect overload: 140 cars, 82 rickshaws, 181 bikers, 45 pedestrians ignore man on the road hit by truck in India

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:20 UTC

A man was left to die on the side of the road in India after being hit by a delivery truck, despite being passed by hundreds of people - including a police vehicle. The only person who stopped, a rickshaw driver, ignored the man and stole his phone.

CCTV footage shows that the man - identified only as "Matibool" - was struck by the speeding delivery truck at 5:40 am on Wednesday as he was walking home from an overnight shift as a security guard.

The impact caused the man to fly through the air and land in a nearby gutter.

Although the driver of the truck is seen initially getting out of his vehicle, he then decides to drive away.

As Matibool lays severely injured and bleeding, he is passed by 140 cars, 82 rickshaws, 181 bikers, and 45 pedestrians. He is even passed by an emergency response van used by Delhi police.

Comment: Modern society in a nutshell.

RT targeted with 'cunning' DDoS attack

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 15:11 UTC

RT has been dealing with a particularly well-planned series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that continued into early Friday. Other than the website, RT's internet provider and data centers in the US, Europe and Russia have been targeted. The latest attack zeroed in on RT's local internet service provider, temporarily causing disruptions for RT.com visitors. We are now resolving the issue to prevent further attacks of the kind.

The attackers were trying to overwhelm the provider's capacity, according to RT's IT specialists. The recent wave of attacks on RT.com started Friday, with IT experts noting that they all seem to be originating from the same source due to the peculiar trends and signature. Moreover, the unknown hackers seem to be smarter than the average DDoSers, knowingly picking their targets and improving methods.

On Tuesday, there was a 2.5-hour attempt to take RT websites down, which came in two phases. The first one targeted RT's American and European data centers, while the second one hit Moscow's infrastructure. The attack did not result in any damage or prolonged service outage, however.

Bakken pipeline construction to begin despite environmental hazards, destruction of ancestral Native American lands

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:39 UTC

Construction on the controversial Bakken pipeline is set to begin any day now, forcing both landowners and Native American tribes in North Dakota to intensify their desperate attempt to protect their land from eminent domain laws.

Twelve people were arrested at a Sioux tribe's protest Thursday after they staged a peaceful protest to keep pipeline construction off of their lands. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are concerned that the pipeline could potentially contaminate their drinking water and damage sacred lands.

The Bakken pipeline, also known as Dakotas Access Pipeline, rivals the Keystone Pipeline XL in terms of length and has been given the greenlight to begin construction in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Illinois and received federal approval in July.

In an effort to stave off construction, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe staged peaceful protests this week. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a tribal historian at Standing Rock, told AP: "Everybody is nonviolent and peaceful," adding, "We want to hold them back until we can get to court."

Comment: Corporate arrogance: "We Are Enbridge and We Don't Go Around Anything"

'Died like a pig': Deplorable remarks about 14 year-old Chinese athlete from Olympic commentator Byron MacDonald spark outrage

RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 14:54 UTC

A Canadian sports commentator is facing a tsunami of outrage over his "nasty" and "humiliating" comments in which he said a young Chinese athlete "died like a pig" during an Olympic event. Byron MacDonald's analysis of 14-year-old Ai Yanhan's fourth place finish at the women's 4x200m freestyle relay has outraged viewers of CBC's live Olympic coverage on Wednesday.

Many called for the 66-year-old former swimmer to be fired for his "disgusting" public insult directed at the Chinese competitor. After Yanhan and her teammates missed out on a podium spot to Team Canada, MacDonald remarked that the teenager had "dropped the ball" before following up with a bizarre and needless barb.

"That little 14-year-old from China dropped the ball, baby. Too excited, went out like a stink and died like a pig," MacDonald said.

24 injured as JetBlue flight makes emergency landing in South Dakota after encountering heavy turbulence

RT
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:40 UTC

Twenty-two passengers and two crew members were injured when a JetBlue flight from Boston to Sacramento was forced to make an emergency landing in South Dakota.

Jet Blue's flight 429 is said to have encountered heavy turbulence, and had to divert to Rapid City, South Dakota, where it landed at 7:30 pm local time (3:30 am GMT), CBS Sacramento says.

The injured passengers and crew were sent to the hospital for evaluation, while the remaining passengers and personnel will continue their journey on a replacement plane.

The flight is now scheduled to reach its destination, Sacramento, at 4:04 am (12:04 GMT).

The symbolic global allegiance of terror groups like Boko Haram to Daesh

Sputnik
Fri, 12 Aug 2016 14:04 UTC

Following the emergence of Daesh, also known as ISIL, over the years, Emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi once called for jihadist groups around the world to pledge their allegiance. Dozens of militant sub-factions have done just that. But what does it mean, if anything more than symbolic gestures motivated by ever-changing dynamics on the ground?

It was no major revelation when recently Daesh reportedly announced the new leader for its West Africa branch, which is closely associated with the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram. Rather than insinuating that groups such as these are as structured and organized as they may wish for all to believe.

Abu Musab al-Barnawi, who previously featured in a Boko Haram video in January 2015 as a spokesman for the militants, is featured in the latest edition of a purported Daesh news outlet called Al-Naba.

The interview designates Al-Barnawi as the group's new leader but does not mention the fate of Abubakar Shekau, who has previously led Boko Haram in recent years, as per media investigations.

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Society's Child

850 Brits said to have joined ISIS while 100 have been killed during fighting

Muslim women in UK most economically disadvantaged due to Islamophobia

Inside sources claim Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly censored abusive responses to President Obama

DoJ report reveals systemic racially motivated abuse against African Americans by Baltimore police

Bystander effect overload: 140 cars, 82 rickshaws, 181 bikers, 45 pedestrians ignore man on the road hit by truck in India

RT targeted with 'cunning' DDoS attack

Bakken pipeline construction to begin despite environmental hazards, destruction of ancestral Native American lands

'Died like a pig': Deplorable remarks about 14 year-old Chinese athlete from Olympic commentator Byron MacDonald spark outrage

24 injured as JetBlue flight makes emergency landing in South Dakota after encountering heavy turbulence

The symbolic global allegiance of terror groups like Boko Haram to Daesh

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