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America's failing infrastructure: Three fatal AMTRAK crashes in 49 days

Crash scene via Lexington Sheriff
© Lexington Sheriff
Crash scene
Horrible news from South Carolina this morning. If America is going to have a passenger rail system, we have to do much better than this. Via The State:
A crash involving an Amtrak passenger train and a freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, left at least two people dead and more than 50 injured.

Pine Ridge train incident update: @CountyLex confirms two fatalities, more than 50 injured transported to the hospital. Shelter for passengers open at Pine Ridge Middle School. Media update @SCEMD at 6:30 a.m. #alert

- SCEMD (@SCEMD) February 4, 2018

Comment: See: Also check out SOTT radio's : Behind the Headlines: Babylon, Ancient Rome and the American Empire


Eye 1

Selling off a nation: Britain's first 'no win no fee' "private police force"

Britain's first 'private police force' has 100 per cent conviction rate
© Georgie Gillard/Daily Mail
A PRIVATE police force probing hundreds of crimes including murder and rape has a 100 per cent conviction rate.

The firm - Britain's first - has successfully prosecuted more than 400 criminals and is led by former Scotland Yard senior officers.

TM Eye is now believed to bring more private convictions than any other organisation except for the RSPCA, Daily Mail reports.

The company has a service called "My Local Bobby", which costs wealthy homeowners around £200 a month and involves a guard patrolling their streets.

Comment: For the most part, this was never necessary before, so why now? If the police were receiving adequate funding and were run by an honest, sane, government, there'd be no need for private policing. However, as with the NHS, the UK pathocrats are looking to privatise every social service in order to reap the benefits for themselves and their industry friends. Though their catastrophic track record when privatising public services paints a bleak picture for Britain:


Pistol

Florida Sheriff: Robbers should 'keep in mind' number of gun owning residents

gun pistol
A Florida Sheriff has warned would-be robbers in Vero Beach that there is a decent chance that they will be breaking into somebody's home who happens to have a gun, after one burglar suspect was shot in the head and thigh by a law-abiding citizen. Indian River County Florida Sheriff Deryl Loar said that he hoped the incident would serve as a warning to future criminals.

Indian River County Florida Sheriff Deryl Loar announced Friday afternoon that a 25-year old man who shot an intruder in his home will not be charged, reports ABC 25 West Palm Beach Florida. Sheriff Loar noted the high number of Indian River County residents who legally own firearms in his county and warned potential criminals to remember that statistic the next time they want to rob a house. "Just shy of ten percent are lawfully possessing firearms," Sheriff Loar told the media. "That's something (robbers should) keep in mind."

As for the incident itself, authorities say that 25-year old Taylor Reese heard a man breaking down his door on Thursday night. Reese then grabbed his gun and was suddenly face to face with two men robbing his home. One of those men fired several shots at Reese, but missed. Reese then returned fire and hit one of the suspects twice, once in the head and once in the thigh.

After investigating, police determined that Reese was well within his rights of self-defense to shoot at the suspects. One of the suspects is actually a juvenile who ran from the scene Thursday night, but turned himself in on Friday. The man who was shot is still recovering in the hospital, but injuries do not appear fatal.

Newspaper

Syrian Archive: Salvaging online videos as proof of war crimes in Syria

cluster bombs Syria

Image archived on Syrian Archive, showing cluster bombs in Maarat Al Numan in northern Syria after a bombing in August 2017
Every day, social media platforms delete hundreds of videos showing atrocities in the war in Syria because they are deemed too violent. Yet a Syrian computer programmer living in Germany realised the incredible value of these videos as proof of war crimes, so since 2014, he has been working to save, verify and catalog these videos on his website.

On a typical day, Hadi al Khatib sits at a computer in Berlin, Germany - where he has been living since seeking refuge there in 2015 - and gathers dozens of videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. He then works with a team made up of six journalists and human rights activists to verify the content. If the team is able to trace and verify the footage, then they post it on the website al Khatib built, called Syrian Archive.

Together, the team has verified about 4,300 videos, which include more than a 1,000 instances of illegal weapon use. The task they've set themselves is daunting, though in total they've gathered more than 1.2 million videos.

Star of David

Israeli settlers vandalize Nabi Saleh with graffiti threatening 'death to Ahed Tamim'

Death to Ahed Tamimi
On Thursday night, when residents of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank were sound asleep in their homes, Israeli settlers crept through the village's streets, vandalizing walls with graffiti threatening jailed teen activist Ahed Tamimi and her family.

Some of the graffiti reads: "Death to Ahed Tamimi," "There's no place in this world for Ahed Tamimi," and another demanding that the Tamimi family be "kicked out of the country."

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father, told Mondoweiss that none of the village's residents had seen the settlers enter the village, but that the incident occurred at some point after 1 a.m. "The settlers wrote that Ahed should be killed in order to scare the residents in Nabi Saleh," he said.

Comment: Further reading: Ahed Tamimi's village, Nabi Saleh, declared "closed military zone" by Israeli occupation


Heart - Black

Daughter's journal exposes sister's secret incestuous relationship with her father

Katie Pladl and her son
© Collect Unknown
Katie Pladl and her son
A wife learned her long lost daughter was pregnant with her dad's child by reading about the alleged incestuous affair in one of her other children's journals, it has been claimed.

Steven Pladl, 42, left his wife to start a relationship with 20-year-old Katie Pladl, who has now reportedly borne his child.

Steven told his other children that they should start referring to their eldest sibling as their "step-mom", according to court documents.

The couple are now facing criminal charges after police uncovered the horrendous scandal.

Comment: The International Business Times reports that the two are now being held in a detention center and awaiting extradition to Virginia. They have been issued a $1 million bond.


Fire

Students hate on quotes from Trump's SOTU, until they are told they are actually Obama's

Trump Obama
© Win McNamee/Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Press/Getty
Some students reacted negatively to quotes they believed were from President Donald Trump's recent State of the Union Address, until realizing they were actually quoting Barack Obama.

Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips spoke to students outside John Jay College in New York City, who unanimously criticized the supposed Trump quotes, describing them as "warmongering," "aggressive," and "immature."

The quotes, taken from some of Obama's State of the Union addresses, included threats to destroy the Islamic State, statements of America's military strength, and attacking China's economic policy.

Comment: The first guy in the video might have been ignorant about the speech, but he was quite on the mark with his comment about ISIS. However, it is interesting to see how quickly they changed their tune once they found out it was Obama's speech. See also: Trump's SOTU hasn't happened yet, but these students already hate it


Snowflake

Snowflakes are today's fascists!

Hitler Youth book burning
© UIG via Getty Images
If we close our minds to ideas that upset us, the long-term consequence is that our minds will atrophy. We will no longer be able to think for ourselves, writes Stephen Pollard (photograph of Hitler Youth members burning books, dated 1938).
Last weekend I, along with many around the world, commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. As editor of the country's leading Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, it is a memorial of particular significance.

Through editing the newspaper, I am confronted daily with the legacy of that unique evil, including the suppression of debate, the distortion of truth and even the burning of books at the heart of that terrible chapter in our history.

I know, too, that the Third Reich's totalitarian impulse - that only one type of question and one type of answer are legitimate, and all else must be extinguished - is far from unique because repressive regimes the world over continue to ban freedom of enquiry and freedom of expression.

We must be on our guard.

Comment: While it's easy to mock the snowflakes due to their ludicrous and hilarious hyper-sensitivity, it's hiding a more ominous agenda. What happens when we conceded liberties in the face of absurd protest? The above author lays it out, yet how many are listening?

See also:


Handcuffs

Cop robs disabled man of his opioid prescriptions while on duty - gets caught on film

Christopher Michael Barnett
A police officer who has been a member of his department for more than 15 years was arrested and charged with distributing and possessing prescription opiate medications, which he stole from a disabled man while he was on duty.

Christopher Michael Barnett, a sergeant with the Hagerstown Police Department, was arrested after he was caught stealing from a disabled man who was physically unable to leave his bed. WJLA News reported that Barnett entered the man's apartment using "a phony pretense," and he then began to go through the man's bottles of prescription painkillers.

When a caregiver arrived later and noticed that several of the man's pills were missing, he called the police department, and Barnett was the one who was put on the phone. The report claims that Barnett was quick to hang up the phone, and decided to return to the apartment in person.

Comment: See also:


Jet3

Pilot of Russian Su-25 posthumously conferred Hero of Russia award

rebel fighter
© AFP 2018/ OMAR HAJ KADOUR
Maj. Filippov will be posthumously conferred the Hero of Russia award, the Russian Defense Ministry stated.

The pilot of the Su-25 bomber that had been shot down in Syria blew himself up after he was surrounded by terrorists, the Russian Defense Ministry said.