Society's ChildS


Newspaper

France: Group protests against 'weapons of the police', police use tear gas to disperse them

french police brutality protest
© Fred Tanneau / AFPPeople holds a banner which translates as "Against police, social and economic brutalities, resistance" on October 23, 2015 in Pont-de-Buis-les-Quimerchduring
Dozens of protesters have clashed with officers in western France during a demonstration against police brutality and in memory of Remi Fraisse, a young environmental activist killed by police grenade a year ago.

The major protest against 'weapons of the police' was staged in the town of Pont de Buis, north-western France, in front of a local factory. The factory is producing tear gas and rubber bullets, which are used by police to disperse violent demonstrators.

According to an AFP count, at least 250 people attended the rally, with the local media estimating the crowd at 300-400 people.

"Police mutilate, police kill.""Gunpowder is not ammunition, but death and mutilation," chanted the protesters in front of security forces. Many of the participants were wearing masks.

Family

Returning home: Syrian refugees praise Russian airstrikes

Refugees and migrants
© AP Photo/ VLADIMIR SIMICEK
Syrian refugees have welcomed Russian airstrikes, and some may even be returning from abroad as the Syrian army advances alongside the Russian air operation.

Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun previously said that over 800,000 refugees have returned since Russian airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria began on September 30th. The operation has also given refugees from the conflict hope that peace would return, according to interviews AP conducted around the Aleppo province, a hub for refugees leaving Syria.

"I hope that with Russian pilots' help, our military will advance and defeat terrorists so that we could return to our homes," one refugee told AP.

Comment: This is exactly the intended outcome Russia was counting on. Europe should be thankful to Putin.


Arrow Down

Promoting pathology: Navy set to promote admiral investigated for whistle-blower retaliation

Admiral Brian L. Losey
Admiral Brian L. Losey
The US Navy is set to promote the admiral who illegally retaliated against staff members who he mistakenly suspected were whistleblowers.

Subordinates complained that Rear Admiral Brian L. Losey had wrongly fired, demoted or punished them while he searched for the person who had anonymously reported him for a minor travel-policy infraction.

Losey never identified the whistleblower. But as a result of the complaints, he was investigated five times by the Defense Department's inspector general, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.

In three of the five cases, the inspector general recommended that the Navy take action against Losey for violating whistleblower-protection laws.

Comment: This is unsurprising - after a sham investigation, it's business as usual: The history of the U.S. government's attacks, intimidation, and murder of whistleblowers


Bizarro Earth

Sick society: 15-year-old boy arrested in connection with family run prostitution ring

Dionte Hunter
Dionte Hunter,15, made his first appearance in court on Thursday in Spokane. Authorities claim Hunter learned the business from his older brother.
A 15-year-old who allegedly got a lesson in the family business from his teenage brother faced a Spokane judge Thursday.

Prosecutors charged Dionte Hunter for promoting prostitution of minors, promoting commercial sex abuse of a minor, possessing sexually explicit photos of minors and 1st degree robbery. It will be up to the judge to decide if Hunter is tried as an adult because of the seriousness of the crimes.

Authorities arrested Hunter's 17-year-old brother, Thaishaun, in January for a drive-by shooting.

Yet, court documents said phone calls Thaishaun Hunter made from the juvenile detention center helped detectives uncover a prostitution ring he ran with his brother, girlfriend and mother. Detectives listened to several phone calls Thaishaun made from juvenile detention. They said he explained to his younger 15-year-old brother how to run the prostitution business while he was locked up.

MIB

UK: Man wearing only a Spiderman mask busted for flashing teen girls in park

Vincent Lam
Vincent Lam, unmasked, has been fined and put on sex offender register
A former university student wearing only a Spiderman mask confronted two teenage girls in a Solihull park, a court heard.

Vincent Lam was later caught, fully clothed, but with the mask sticking out of a pocket, Birmingham Magistrates were told.

Lam, 27, of Sandhill Road, Solihull, admitted a charge of exposure.

He was fined £100, put on the sex offender register and ordered to pay £100 costs and a £180 criminal court surcharge.

District Judge Robert Zara told him: "There is no evidence to suggest you actively pursued these young girls and equally there is no suggestion that this was part of a pattern of behaviour.

"It appears to have been an isolated incident."

Attention

Radioactive black market: Contaminated items are stolen from Los Alamos lab on a regular basis

radioactive
Items with high levels of radiation are being stolen from the top-secret Los Alamos National Laboratory on a regular basis, a new federal court filing says, some of it 500 times above the allowable limit of contamination.

In one of the nearly 76 thefts committed by LANL personnel, a radioactive bandsaw was taken. That registered 100,000 disintegrations per minute (DPM) - well above the allowable limit of 20 DPM. Thankfully, the bandsaw was found and brought back to the laboratory, alongside a garden hose, gloves, a screwdriver set, and conduit, all of which emitted high levels of radiation.

Dollars

Bureau of Land Management knowingly sold over a thousand wild horses to rancher who sent them to slaughter

horses
© Unknown
The Bureau of Land Management, the agency tasked with protecting wild horses and cattle and their grazing lands, sold 1,794 federally-protected wild horses to a Colorado rancher who sent them to slaughter, a new report confirmed.

Between 2009 and 2012, rancher Tom Davis purchased the horses through the agency's Wild Horse and Burro Program (WH&B) and wrongfully sent them to slaughter, according to the report from the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General. According to the allegations and news reports, Mr. Davis also had farming and trucking connections with former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

"We determined that BLM did not follow current law while managing WH&B. BLM also failed to follow its own policy of limiting horse sales and ensuring that the horses sold went to good homes and were not slaughtered," investigators wrote in the report.

Camera

Naive Western celebrities reject cultural boycott of Israel

Author J.K. Rowling
© Carlo Allegri / ReutersAuthor J.K. Rowling
British cultural figures and political heavyweights including writers JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel and Conservative MP Eric Pickles are leading the charge against an arts boycott of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

The bestselling authors and fellow opponents of the embargo, including actress Zoe Wanamaker and historian Simon Schama, have signed an open letter published in the Guardian newspaper calling for dialogue to resolve the conflict and rejecting the need for a boycott of cultural institutions.

Launching what the signatories called 'Culture for Coexistence', described as a network for dialogue, they opposed an earlier letter published in February calling for a cultural embargo.

Comment: When one faction invades the land of another, slaughters tens of thousands and commits human rights abuses daily, to talk about the importance of peace and dialogue and not being "discriminatory" is nothing but paramoralistic gibberish. Maybe JK Rowling should stick to writing fiction, where this type of magical thinking actually applies.


Heart - Black

Disabled man forced to crawl off plane after being left with no wheelchair

Image
© Frank Polich / Reuters
Flying back home from an event where he had advocated for accessible transportation, a man with cerebral palsy had to crawl down the aisle to his wheelchair after United Airlines failed to provide him with assistance.

"Humiliating" is how D'Arcee Neal described his experience upon landing at Reagan National Airport in Virginia on Tuesday night. He had just been in San Francisco speaking on the very challenge he was about to face: having basic access to transportation despite his disability.

"No one should have to do what I did," Neal told NBC Washington. He waited alone on the vacated United Airlines plane for more than 30 minutes, according to WUSA, a CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. Realizing no one was coming and having to use the bathroom, Neal dragged himself halfway down the aisle to where a wheelchair would normally be waiting for him.

Except it wasn't there, either.

Comment: Heartless non-empathetic behavior from people who should be masters of customer service and customer care.


Heart - Black

Armed, masked Greek men attack refugee boats, leaving stranded people to die at sea - HRW

Syrian refugees
© Yannis Behrakis / ReutersSyrian refugees call for help and empty water from their flooding raft as they approach the Greek island of Lesbos.
Armed masked men around the Greek islands have been targeting migrant boats and turning them back, sometimes throwing their engines away, according to a damning HRW report. This follows witness claims of Greek border guards refusing asylum seekers entry.

The report bases its findings on nine witness testimonies detailing cases of masked, often armed, assailants intercepting boats off the Aegean Sea coast, which are usually headed from neighboring Turkey carrying refugees from the Syrian war.

The most recent case allegedly took place on October 7 and 9, when the attackers allegedly disabled the engines of several boats and even punctured holes in their inflatable hulls. Some of the boats were towed back into Turkish waters.


There is virtually no guarantee any of the people would survive such conditions. This has prompted an outcry from Human Rights Watch, whose Greece specialist, Eva Cosse, says these "criminal actions require an urgent response from the Greek authorities."

The allegations follow repeated cases of Greek border guards turning migrants back toward Turkey across the land border at Evros. On October 9, HRW staff saw one inflatable rubber boat drifting in neutral waters for more than an hour. The boat was loaded over capacity and looked set to perish. Thankfully, a group of volunteer Spanish lifeguards came to the rescue in their own boat.

Speaking to HRW, a 17-year-old Afghan refugee recounted how the passengers in the boat he was on had felt when they were captured by a boat containing five masked men in balaclavas carrying guns. Their rubber dinghy, filled to the brim with women and children, had set off from the Turkish shore at Assos headed for the Greek island of Lesbos.

They were intercepted 30 minutes into their journey. "At first when they approached, we thought they had come to help us," Ali told HRW. "But by the way they acted, we realized they hadn't come to help. They were so aggressive. They didn't come on board our boat, but they took our boat's engine and then sped away."