Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Piggy Bank

Der Spiegel's outed fake-news reporter Relotius accused of embezzling donations to fictional Syrian child


RT
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 06:02 UTC
Konigskinder
© Spiegel Online
Cover image "King's Children' report by Claas Relotius shared by Der Spiegel.
Claas Relotius, an award-winning reporter who faked many of his heart-wrenching stories, is facing a criminal probe over a money collection for Syrian children. It is believed that one of the purported beneficiaries did not exist.

Germany's Der Spiegel magazine has filed a criminal complaint against Relotius after it emerged that the reporter not only falsified quotes and invented entire passages in his stories, but may also have swindled some impressionable readers out of their money.

The magazine reported that it was contacted by readers who said that Relotius used his private email account to set up a fundraising campaign for the Syrian orphans who featured in his 'King's Children' report, dating back to July 2016.

The journalist reportedly encouraged readers to make donations to him so he could give the money to those kids, who were said to be affected by poverty in Turkey.

Comment: For more on this scammer, see also:

      Read More...
Holly

'Peace and Joy in 2019' tweets Iran's foreign minister in Christmas message


RT
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 21:28 UTC
Zarif
© Getty Images/Denis Balibouse/Reuters/KJN
Iranian FM Javad Zarif's Christmas Message
Iran's foreign minister tweeted an English language Christmas message, wishing 'peace and joy' in 2019. Christians are free to practice in the Islamic republic, but promoting conversions from Islam are illegal.

Zarif, who often sends political messages via twitter, and even argues with the US President (link), used a line from the Koran to congratulate on the holiday. He had to correct the number of the verse in the follow up tweet after followers pointed to the mistake.


Comment: Peace and Joy...make it so!

      Read More...
Cross

Fake priest who fooled believers for 18 years unmasked days before Christmas in Spain


RT
Tue, 25 Dec 2018 13:46 UTC
Miguel Angel Ibarra fake Roman Catholic priest Spain

Miguel Angel Ibarra (right) pretended to be a Roman Catholic priest for 18 years
For years believers in Colombia, and then in Spain, confessed, were baptized and celebrated weddings under the direction of a fake priest. The impostor, who was never ordained, has been exposed just ahead of Christmas.

Miguel Angel Ibarra, who posed as a Roman Catholic priest, arrived in Spain in October 2017 from Colombia. He was put in charge of a church in Medina Sidonia in the south of the country with only 11,000 inhabitants. Before his Spanish trip he claimed to have worked in Colombia for many years.

During this whole year the fake priest baptized, wed and heard the confessions of unsuspecting residents. Yet, this December ahead of Christmas the parish learnt the unpleasant truth - the clergyman was an imposter. He has never been ordained and, thus, has no authority to perform any holy rites.
      Read More...
Sherlock

Russia opens criminal case into allegations of slave-labor conditions at Mordovia prison


RFE/RL
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 18:17 UTC
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova served most of her two-year sentence at the prison.
Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) has asked prosecutors to open a criminal case into allegations of slave-labor conditions among female convicts at a prison in Mordovia.

FSIN Deputy Director Valery Maksimenko said on December 24 that the director of prison IK-14, Yury Kupriyanov, had been dismissed, together with an unspecified number of other officials at the prison.

IK-14 was the prison where prominent activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova served most of a two-year prison sentence for participating in a performance by the political-art group Pussy Riot in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

She was released under an amnesty in December 2013. Since her release, she has campaigned for the rights of Russian prisoners.

Comment: Russia has been actively working to reduce its incarceration rate, revamp its prisons and investigate abuses:

      Read More...
Santa Hat

Bah humbug! Militant Palestinian group forbids Christmas celebrations in Gaza


Sputnik
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 19:28 UTC
Palestinian militants forbid Christmas Gaza

An armed faction of the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of armed Palestinian groups, published a flyer featuring a burning Christmas tree and threats in Arabic forbidding the celebrating the holiday, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The development comes amid heightening tensions between Israelis and Palestinians at the Gaza border, which have been mounting since late March, when the Palestinian Authority's Great March of Return began. The situation escalated last week after a gunman killed two Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank.

An armed faction of the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of armed Palestinian groups, published a flyer featuring a burning Christmas tree and threats in Arabic forbidding the celebrating the holiday, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Specifically, the flyer from the Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades features a verse from the Quran, warning Muslims "not to go the way of the Jews and the Christians" because "indeed God is not for the evil people".
      Read More...
Attention

Watch as Yellow Vest protesters chase away Paris cop pointing gun


RT
Mon, 24 Dec 2018 13:31 UTC
gun wielding cop paris yellow vest
© RT
A video showing police in Paris being chased away by angry Yellow Vest demonstrators has caught the attention of the French public. Authorities lambasted the protesters for their actions, while some said the story has a flip side.

This Saturday marked the sixth round of the Yellow Vests rallies. Though the last demonstrations in the capital remained relatively calm, some scuffles between police and protesters still popped up.

One video captured a standoff near the Champs-Elysees, an iconic spot, which turned into a true 'battlefield' between law enforcement and protesters. The latest footage shows several officers blocking the road to the avenue using their motorbikes.

Around a dozen 'Yellow Vests' are seen hurling stones and other objects at the officers, who respond with shots of pepper spray. At some point the confrontation gets so tense that one policeman pulls a gun as protesters approach.

Comment: While some cops have been declaring their support for the Yellow Vests, others have been behaving with particular brutality:

      Read More...
Red Flag

Several red flags warning us that we're speeding towards an economic collapse - RIGHT NOW

Daisy Luther
The Organic Prepper
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
dollar collapse
This isn't exactly an article loaded with Christmas cheer, but there's a very good reason that my family has strictly limited our holiday splurges this year. It's because all the signs right now seem to indicate the US is hurtling toward an economic collapse.

It's inevitable, of course. Our economy has been artificially propped up for decades, since abandoning the gold standard. We're $21 trillion dollars in debt, an unfathomable number. The fact that other countries still lend us money boggles the mind. If the United States was a person with such a high ratio of debt that we aren't paying off, we wouldn't even be able to buy a car with one of those 25% interest loans, that's how bad our credit would be.

Not only that, but there are some parties who seem to want to see the economy go belly up for their own greedy and nefarious purposes.

Here are the red flags that have me concerned about an imminent economic collapse.
      Read More...
Black Magic

Boise, Idaho priest lived in a world of child pornography and Satanism - sentenced to 25 years in prison

Katy Moeller & Ruth Brown
Idaho Statesman
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 09:01 UTC
Thomas Faucher
© Darin Oswald
Thomas Faucher appears before Fourth District Judge Jason Scott to be sentenced after being found guilty of multiple felonies, including possessing and trafficking child pornography among other charges Thursday at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho.


Editor's note: Some readers may find the details in this news story disturbing.

The Rev. W. Thomas Faucher, a longtime priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise who pleaded guilty to five felony crimes, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole and will be required to register as a sex offender.

Faucher, 73, was accused of amassing thousands of child porn images and videos on his home computer - and pleaded guilty in September to sharing some of those images online. He apologized in the courtroom ahead of his sentencing at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise on Thursday.

"This is the crime that has the potential for both immediate and long-lasting consequences," 4th District Court Judge Jason Scott said. "... I think there is a legitimate risk to the community."

"I am deeply sorry that I was and have been connected to that in any way," Faucher told the judge in a statement that lasted about 17 minutes. Faucher said he was deeply struck by the victim impact statements and that he knows child pornography is not a victimless crime.

Comment: The exorcism sounds like a good idea.

      Read More...
NPC

Fiction meets Reality? Witches are offended by Trump's 'witch hunt' mantra


RT
Sun, 23 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Trumps and witches L
© Reuters / Jim Yong - Global Look Press / Swen Pförtner
It may be the season to be jolly but that's not going to stop witches wanting to get a piece of the press pie to tell President Trump to stop using his beloved 'witch hunt' mantra.

The community of wiccans are utilizing the festive season to share what means the most to them - and that's criticising Trump for using the offensive term 'witch hunt'. Of course, the politically correct mainstream media has felt obliged to listen to their plight.
      Read More...
Quenelle - Golden

Natural allies? Why the post-modern faux-Left is useless to the Yellow Vest movement

Jim Kavanagh
The Polemicist
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 17:34 UTC
Yellow Vests
© Ruptly
Gilets Jaunes on the move. They have the wind of many legitimate grievances in their sails. Allons-y!

Comment: Though the author here is a committed socialist (which presents its own dangers to society) he presents a cogent, grounded critique of the neutered, worse-than-useless "Left" spawned by post-modern Marxism


Something's happening here...

Class Act

The "yellow vest" (gilets jaunes) movement has upended French politics, at least.

It has delivered a sharp and refreshing smack in the face to the smuggest of smug, entitled neoliberal brats, Emmanuel Macron, forcing him to retreat on substantive tax and minimum wage issues. It has also raised a raft of issues from wealth inequality (including demands for higher taxes on the rich) to a rejection of austerity and the dreaded Frexit.

Most importantly, it has acted outside the gatekeeping of traditional opposition parties and institutions-including those of the left, which have all been thoroughly decaffeinated and beguiled by the fantasia of Third-Way EU becoming "Social Europe." The Yellow Vest movement is millions of people out in the street, engaged in militant, confrontational protest, talking to and acting with each other unsupervised, telling the governing elite: "Va te faire foutre!".

A self-mobilization of the working class: This is the specter of Europe past, which Third-Way politicians and intelligentsia thought they had once and for all banished to the netherworld a few decades ago. The Yellow Vest movement, now spreading to other countries, is striking a new body blow to the teetering edifice of neoliberalism that has been built on the bones of the working-class lives in Europe and America over those decades.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts