Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 29 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Heart - Black

Boat carrying 20 refugees capsizes off Greek coast - at least 9 dead

Image
© AAP
Refugees and migrants disembark from a dinghy after their arrival from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos.
Greece is reporting that a boat carrying some 20 migrants capsized this morning off the Greek island of Kos, leaving nine migrants dead. Two of the victims were children aged seven and 14. Seven people were rescued.

"The Hellenic Coast Guard has recovered nine bodies, but four others may be missing and search operations are continuing,'' said Kelly Namia, an IOM Athens spokesperson.

Tuesday's tragedy brings to at least 562 the number of migrant and refugee fatalities in the Eastern Mediterranean this year. It brings to 3,515 the total of all migrant and refugee fatalities across all sea-borne routes to Europe in 2015.

Attention

Why U.S. governors are wrong to oppose taking in Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees
© tribune.com.pk
Americans willing to house Syrian refugees.
Some half of US governors have announced their opposition to their states taking in Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. Although they can bother refugees, they can't actually dictate to people who are here legally where they can live. But anyway, here are the reasons for which these announcements are a form of political hysteria and not grounded in any rational policy considerations:

1. The attackers in Paris were European nationals. The Syrian passport found near one of them was a fake. So are the governors opposed to Belgian immigration into the United States?

2. The attackers were not refugees. They were born in Europe. Refugees are poor and lacking in knowledge or resources about their new environment. The attackers knew exactly where everything was that they wanted to assault and were hooked in with arms smugglers and other hard-to-discover criminal networks.


3. There is no rational reason to bar Syrian refugees but accept refugees from other conflict areas. The US already admits 70,000 refugees every year, but only took in about 400 Syrians last year. Most refugees are fleeing conflict situations or oppressive governments, and if you wanted to be paranoid about them you could fear them all on the same grounds that the GOP fears Syrians. The US has accepted a former child soldier from the Congo (might have skills). In 2014 the US accepted 758 refugees from Afghanistan; how are they different from Syrian refugees? And here's the kicker: the US accepted 19,651 refugees from Iraq last year! It is completely irrational to single out Syrians if you are going to take in Iraqis.

Stock Down

Manufacturing, trade and retail statistics show that the U.S. is already in recession

recession_cartoon
© Sack
If the U.S. economy really is in "great shape", then why do all of the numbers keep telling us that we are in a recession? The manufacturing numbers say that we are in a recession, the trade numbers say that we are in a recession, and as you will see below the retail numbers say that we are in a recession. But just like in 2008, the Federal Reserve and our top politicians will continue to deny that a major economic downturn is happening for as long as they possibly can. In this article, I want to look at more signs that a dramatic shift is happening in our economy right now.

First of all, let's consider what is happening to hedge funds. For many years, hedge funds had been doing extremely well, but now they are closing up shop at a pace that we haven't seen since the last financial crisis. The following is an excerpt from a Business Insider article entitled "Hedge funds keep on imploding" that was posted on Wednesday...

Comment: There are, however, two sectors of the economy that are doing quite well - the military industrial complex and the banks, which are benefiting quite handsomely from the recent attacks in Paris.

Who benefits? Defense industry stocks soar after the Paris terror attacks


Sheriff

Toronto: Being innocent and disabled is no protection from a police beating

Toronto Police
In a case of mistaken identity, Toronto Police were caught on video viciously beating a nonviolent, innocent man with a developmental disability. On Wednesday, the victim filed a $5 million lawsuit against the police after a video of the assault was released.

Around 8 a.m. on November 1, Santokh Bola, 21, arrived in the parking lot near his grandfather's store when two Toronto cops approached him at gunpoint. Responding to a call about a suspect with a knife, two officers tackled Bola to the ground as a bystander began recording the incident on his cellphone. Two other cops rushed onto the scene immediately delivering kicks and punches to Bola's unprotected head.

As an officer repeatedly kicked him, Bola shouted, "Hello! I didn't do anything, sir."

Instead of conversing with the innocent man, a cop kneed Bola in the head before punching him multiple times in the face. As Bola continued to defend his innocence, one of the officers ordered him to shut up. Although Bola was restrained on the ground, the cops rained down a torrent of fists and knees instead of simply handcuffing him.

Comment: Cops are equal opportunity sadists, as the following articles show:


Star of David

3 killed, including American tourist, in terrorist shooting in the West Bank

Image
© Fire Department
Scene where terrorist vehicle smashed into Israeli vehicle in Gush Etzion.
Three people were killed late Thursday afternoon when a Palestinian terrorist shot at cars stuck in a traffic jam near the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank.

Initial reports suggest that the terrorist fired at the cars and then sped in the direction of the Alon Shvut settlement and slammed into a car.

The terrorist exited the vehicle and attempted to fire off further shots. Security forces shot at the terrorist and then arrested him.

Network

Anonymous: Silicon Valley startup CloudFlare is assisting Islamic State online

cloudflare ISIS
Hacktivist group Anonymous has accused a San Francisco Web services company of protecting pro-ISIL websites from cyberattacks.

ISIL exploits the internet and social media sites to spread its propaganda and promote its activities — it also uses web services to guard the group from cyber attacks. As more attempts are made to disrupt ISIL-related sites, members of the terrorist organization are circumnavigating attacks by using web services readily available on the market.

According to some members of Anonymous, web technology available from CloudFlare, a company providing a content delivery network and distributed domain name server services, is being used by terrorists operating on the darknet and in cyberspace to prevent members of the hacktivist group from suspending ISIL related propaganda.

Following the recent terror attacks in Paris, Anonymous, who pledged to continue their cyber warfare campaign against ISIL online, have accused CloudFare of preventing them from doing so.

2 + 2 = 4

Paris attacks designed to make you hate refugees

Image
True to form, the reaction to the Paris terrorist attacks has fallen hardest on Muslims and refugees rather than the handful of psychopathic nihilists who perpetrated them. Without even waiting for anyone to claim responsibility, François Hollande closed the borders, laying blame at the feet of refugees in pitiful capitulation to the far right.

As in every such incident the powerful take advantage of the crisis produced by the violent atrocity not to address the causes so that it might not happen again, but to scaremonger and scapegoat; France has 6 million Muslims; if one tenth of one percent of these were jihadists, that percentage would amount to a hard core of 6,000. If France has that many jihadists, they are exceptionally lazy. If not, terrorism is not a specifically Muslim problem.

Display

New York City is a target - states newly released "ISIS" video

Image
© Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Islamic State has released a new video threatening attacks on New York - the footage shows images of Times Square, crowds of tourists and a suicide bomber making an explosive vest and apparently preparing for an assault on the 'Big Apple'. Trends France terror attacks

The five-and-a-half-minute video starts from horrific scenes from the recent Paris attacks and various recordings of French President Francois Hollande speaking about military operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) jihadists.

French- and Arabic-speaking fighters are heard praising the attacks which killed at least 129 people in the French capital on Friday.

Comment: Sure, "don't panic everyone!," but in the meantime the police state apparatus now has further "justification" for bloating itself and, ultimately, treating everyone like criminals.


Magnify

Scandal: Baltic States receive EU funds by passing their non-citizens off as 'refugees'

Baltic refugees
© www.uss.cl
Refugees keep on coming and Baltic states profit.
The Baltic States are about to face a large-scale scandal after media revealed they scammed the EU's refugee re-settlement system by labeling their Russian-speaking populations as "refugees," RIA Novosti's Vladimir Barsegian said. The EU allocates extra money to countries that accept refugees. Although Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania let very few Middle Eastern and African refugees into their countries, they managed to get millions of euros from the EU budget for refugee resettlement programs.

How did that happen? Well, German experts also asked the same question and began an investigation to find out what had really happened. Turns out the Baltic States passed off their Russian-speaking populations, who still have a non-citizen status, as "refugees," Barsegian said.

Between 2007 and 2013, Latvia, which has around 260,000 non-citizens, received €33 million from the EU budget; Estonia got a bit less since it "only" has 88,000 non-citizens. These lies probably would have never surfaced and the Baltic States would have kept getting the easy money, if it were not for the current refugee crisis in Europe. As EU leaders began allocating refugee quotas across the union, they noticed that the Baltic States had one of the highest "refugee" numbers in the entire EU.

The truth was revealed and some EU leaders began to speak about the issue, accusing the Baltic States of stealing EU funds. Furthermore, following the real refugee crisis EU leaders opened their eyes to the ugly side of their own members — the Baltic States discriminated against their own residents simply based on their ethnicity. What a true reflection of European values!

Comment: "Opportunity is the mother of invention," or so they say. Just don't reveal the details.


Camcorder

Condition the kids early: Expensive private school installs 700 CCTV cameras

security cctv camera
© Francois Lenoir / Reuters
A private boarding school in North Yorkshire that accommodates children aged 3-19 has allegedly installed 700 CCTV cameras to catch pupils "kissing and queue-jumping," an inspector's report has found.

Following two unannounced inspections by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI), Queen Ethelburga's School has come under scrutiny after pupils claimed it fitted cameras in classrooms to "catch students" committing minor disciplinary breaches.

The inspectorate's report on the visit states that several students believe the school is determined to catch them "kissing and queue-jumping" on camera. The private school, which charges fees of up to £34,000 per year, denies the allegations.

"At the time of the inspections, around 700 CCTV cameras were located around the school, including in the EYFS [Early Years Foundation Stage]," the ISI report reads.