Society's Child

'Losing credibility': IOC chief wants 'reform' of CAS after favorable decision for Russian athletes

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 18:00 UTC

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach

IOC chief Thomas Bach has once again hit out at the "extremely disappointing" CAS decision to clear 28 Russian athletes of doping allegations, saying that sport's highest tribunal is losing credibility and needs urgent reform.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) knew only what had been released by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in its a press statement and this was "extremely unsatisfactory given the gravity of the cases," Bach told a media conference in PyeongChang on Sunday.

"We cannot have a situation of CAS losing its credibility with athletes... We have to do our job to make proposals so trust of the athletes can be restored," Bach said. The former Olympic fencer said that the ruling was "extremely disappointing and surprising."

"We feel that this decision shows the urgent need for reforms in the internal structure of CAS," Bach added.

Comment: Also see: Anti-Doping Authorities in Sport: Eyes Wide Shut

Poland's anti-fascist law defends national dignity in the face of Israeli and Ukrainian intimidation

Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:26 UTC

Poland passed an internationally "contentious" draft law banning the phrase "Polish death camps", the Bandera ideology, and the denial of wartime Ukrainian fascist crimes.

Israel and Ukraine reacted with fury at the decision and harshly criticized Poland for what they each claimed for their own respective reasons was "historical revisionism". Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu forcefully condemned the bill and hinted that it amounts to "denying the Holocaust", and a few people frenziedly speculated that it would outlaw any conversation about the complicity of some Polish citizens in that tragic event. Kiev, meanwhile, decried what it claimed was the painting of all Ukrainians as fascist sympathizers and protested Warsaw's use of pre-war geographic terminology in reference to the genocide of Poles by Ukrainian so-called "nationalists" in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

Newly appointed Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded to his Israeli counterpart over the weekend when he wrote on Twitter that "Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and 'Arbeit Macht Frei' is not a Polish phrase", one day before the two spoke to each other and agreed to enter into a dialogue on this issue. To be fair, historian Jan Grabowski has argued in his work that some Poles did in fact do terrible things to Jews, but claiming that these individuals committed these acts on behalf of the Polish Nation and collectively punishing the entire population with undeserved guilt is wrong and could be criminalized under the new legislation.

Child services social worker caught taking bribes to look the other way as mom and boyfriend tortured 5yo boy to death

Rachel Blevins
Free Thought Project
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:45 UTC

A social worker is facing felony charges after she was caught taking bribes to stay silent from a mother who tortured her 5-year-old son to death and then buried his body in the backyard.

In the same country where children can be taken from their homes if their parents are found possessing "illegal" plants, one woman who was being paid by the state to keep children safe, accepted bribes from a mother, and did nothing to interfere while she tortured her 5-year-old son to death.

Cleveland Police received a call from Pakistan in December, in which a man claimed his brother helped bury a young boy's dead body in the backyard of a residential neighborhood. When investigators located the yard, they began digging and recovered the body of a boy who they believe died in September, according to report from Cleveland.com.

The boy's body showed multiple signs of abuse, including broken ribs, and his mother, Larissa Rodriguez, 34, was arrested and charged with murder, felonious assault, gross abuse of a corpse and child endangerment.

While it is not clear what investigators believe happened to cause the boy's death, his mother's boyfriend, Christopher Rodriguez, was also charged with murder.

ANOTHER Amtrak disaster: Train carrying 147 people crashes into freight train in South Carolina, 2 dead [Update]

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 12:43 UTC

At least two people have died and 70 more have been taken to hospital after a train carrying 147 people collided with a freight train in South Carolina.

The Amtrak train, which was operating between New York and Miami, had 139 passengers and eight crew members on board.

The incident took place at around 2:35am local time in Cayce, South Carolina. The railroad corporation said that the lead engine and some of the passenger cars of the train had come off the tracks.

Comment: More details from CBS News:

President Trump has been briefed on the crash and is receiving regular updates, Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said Sunday morning. "Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone that has been affected by this incident," Walters said in a statement. Mr. Trump is currently at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. He later tweeted his condolences to victims.

Investigators will be looking into what was going on inside the engineering cab, if the signals on the tracks were working, how the two trains ended up on the same track and why operators didn't know the other train was there, CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave reports.

In an early morning press conference, local authorities said that 5,000 gallons of fuel had spilled in the crash, but that hazmat teams had been dispatched and the fuel was thought not to be a danger to the public.

'Tantamount to a coup': Maldives military reportedly surround government buildings

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 17:21 UTC

Security forces arrive at parliament in the Maldives

Armed soldiers have reportedly shut down the Maldives parliament just days after the country's Supreme Court overturned terrorism convictions against exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed.

Security forces surrounded government buildings, including the People's Majlis parliament building, in the capital Male on Sunday. The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has accused current President Abdulla Yameen of attempting to "cling onto" his majority leadership.

The events come after two politicians who were ordered to be reinstated to parliament were reportedly arrested by police Sunday. According to Reuters, the men were part of a 12-person contingent that defected from Yameen's ruling party last year.

French police station destroyed by molotov cocktail

Joshua Cullen
Voice of Europe
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 17:11 UTC

A fire started by a Molotov cocktail has destroyed a police station in the south east of France.

The Mayor of the city, Geneviève Girard, said it was an intentional act. "The individual broke the shutter, then a window before throwing the Molotov inside the building", she said.

Police stopped surveillance of Stockholm car-rammer less than 3 months before planned massacre

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 10:44 UTC

© Fredrik Sandberg / Reuters
Tow trucks move the beer truck that crashed into the department store Ahlens after plowing down the Drottninggatan Street in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017

Police stopped surveillance of Rakhmat Akilov less than three months before he ploughed his car into pedestrians in Stockholm killing five, according to local media. Akilov was already planning the massacre at that time.

The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) started monitoring Akilov, a construction worker from Uzbekistan, on August 31st 2016 after receiving a tip that he might present a risk. However, the surveillance was dropped five months later - January 31st 2017. The pre-trial hearing revealed that Akilov had started preparations for the vehicle-ramming attack on January 16, 2017.

"The intelligence which existed was not in my judgement sufficiently concrete to provide grounds for the use of, for example, preventative force," Runar Viksten, lead judge of Sweden's military intelligence court, wrote in a Justice Department report seen by local media. Viksten insists that Säpo did "what was possible" about the Akilov case.

Comment: Sweden wants more manpower to find 10K rejected refugees in hiding after one commits terror attack

More than a muckraker: Robert Parry believed in the possibilities of journalism

Patrick Lawrence
Salon
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 16:14 UTC

A legendary reporter who broke the Iran-contra story, Bob Parry left the mainstream media and blazed his own path

When news of Robert Parry's death reached me a week ago, I had to stop working for a long time. I would call it an interim of respectful silence except that it was closer to paralysis. The fight against all that is corrupt, misguided, maliciously intended and simply wrong in our national life instantly seemed still more forlorn than the sentient among us already understand it to be. One keeps on - there is no alternative. But the slope where the stone of Sisyphus rolls ever downward seems steeper now, and certainly it is a lot lonelier.

Given the expressions of grief and sorrow that flowed all week, I take it I do not have to explain at length who Bob Parry was. As an Associated Press reporter in the 1980s he broke some of the biggest stories of the decade, notably the scandal known as Iran-Contra. He went on to many more years of reportage, prizes and books (five). In 1995 he tossed it in on the mainstream side and founded Consortium News, of which he was also publisher and editor until his death. Oliver Stone, Bob's collaborator on the 2014 documentary Ukraine on Fire, said it as well as many others. "Robert Parry's death Saturday morning leaves a giant hole in American journalism," the celebrated filmmaker said when the New York Times called him for comment.

Does it ever. I would like to devote this modest addition to the many tributes offered since Parry's death to explain why I think this is so. It is the best I can do.

Voodoo ritual leaves 5yo girl with 3d degree face burns in Massachusetts, 2 women charged

RT
Sun, 04 Feb 2018 05:56 UTC

Two women have been charged with assault and battery of a child after a "cleansing" ritual on a five-year-old girl during which they cut her, rubbed a stinging substance into her eyes and held a flaming torch to her face.

The bizarre ritual was commissioned by the girl's mother, who believed evil spirits were "making her misbehave," the Brockton Enterprise reported.

Two sisters, Peggy LaBossiere, 51, and Rachel Hilaire, 40, agreed to help, performing the ritual on the child in their home in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The ordeal the girl went through was described by the girl's eight-year-old brother, who said the women threatened to behead him with a machete.

Mediterranean migrant route numbers rapidly increasing as Libya turns unstable again

Chris Tomlinson
Breitbart
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 14:29 UTC

mingrants boat raft Mediterranean immigrants

Since last summer the number of migrants crossing from Libya greatly declined, but new figures show that the number is rising once again as Libya becomes increasingly unstable.

According to newly released statistics, 3,580 migrants made the voyage from Libya to Italy in the first three weeks of January, with 850 being picked up by naval authorities in one weekend alone, German broadcaster NTV reports.

The number of migrants is higher than the same time period last year fueling speculation that it could rise even further.

According to an Italian journalist who spoke to the German broadcaster, the situation in Libya has changed as a rogue general named Khalifa Haftar is vying for power with UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj.

Comment: Instead of looking for quick fixes, the Italians, as well as all the rest of European nations and the US, should have thought earlier about the consequences of supporting the destruction of the government of Gaddafi and throwing an enitre nation to jihadi wolves (as they also tried to do with Syria). Europe would have much less reasons to complain about migrants and refugees if they did not get themselves dragged into every criminal imperial adventure the US comes up with.

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Society's Child

'Losing credibility': IOC chief wants 'reform' of CAS after favorable decision for Russian athletes

Poland's anti-fascist law defends national dignity in the face of Israeli and Ukrainian intimidation

Child services social worker caught taking bribes to look the other way as mom and boyfriend tortured 5yo boy to death

ANOTHER Amtrak disaster: Train carrying 147 people crashes into freight train in South Carolina, 2 dead [Update]

'Tantamount to a coup': Maldives military reportedly surround government buildings

French police station destroyed by molotov cocktail

Police stopped surveillance of Stockholm car-rammer less than 3 months before planned massacre

More than a muckraker: Robert Parry believed in the possibilities of journalism

Voodoo ritual leaves 5yo girl with 3d degree face burns in Massachusetts, 2 women charged

Mediterranean migrant route numbers rapidly increasing as Libya turns unstable again

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