Society's ChildS


Eye 1

'American ISIS fighter' surrenders after finding it 'very hard to live in Mosul'

American ISIS fighter
An ISIS fighter believed to be US-born says he wanted to return home after finding it "very hard" to live in Mosul, the terror group's stronghold. He told Kurdistan24 TV he was led to the area by someone who vowed to take him "near Turkey's border."

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, a 26-year-old US citizen from Virginia as described by the channel, surrendered himself to Kurdish Peshmerga forces near the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq on Monday, after living in Mosul for "about a month." The city is under the control of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

In early 2016, Khewis traveled to Turkey via London and Amsterdam, where he met an Iraqi girl from Mosul. The two decided to travel to the IS stronghold together.

"First, we took a bus from Istanbul to Gaziantep...from there, a driver picked us up and took us to the border and then [we went] from Syria to Iraq," he told Kurdistan 24 news channel. They arrived in Mosul on January 16.

But before he even arrived in Mosul, Khewis realized he had made a "bad decision."

Comment: What did this man think he was going to find when he made it to Mosul and joined Daesh?


House

Over 200 families face eviction in Dublin after Goldman Sachs vulture fund deal

Homeless Man
Scores of families in the Tyrellstown area of Dublin, Ireland are at risk of losing their homes after a Goldman Sachs venture fund purchased an €89 million loan on their housing development.

Some 60 families have already been served eviction notices, according to The Sunday Business Post.

The move comes after Sachs purchased the loan that Irish company Twinlite had secured on the Cruise Park development. Sachs and Twinlite subsequently reached a deal to sell 208 of the development's houses.

Under Irish tenancy and eviction laws, landlords have to provide notice of between four and five months to their long-term tenants before evicting them from a property.

Many of the tenants at risk of eviction in Tyrellstown are social housing recipients, who will likely need to source alternative accommodation through their local authority. However, it is unclear where these people will go if forced from their current home, given the current demand for social housing.

According to figures published last month, there are almost 140,000 people currently on waiting lists for social housing properties around the country.

Bizarro Earth

Two brave women share hidden camera footage of life and death in the Daesh capital of Raqqa

Using hidden cameras, two brave Syrian women have apparently managed to provide a sneak peek into the heart of the terrorist movement known as Daesh.

Dilapidated buildings, armed religious police hunting for unaccompanied, 'improperly' dressed women, brutal public executions - this is, apparently, how the once-thriving Syrian city of Raqqa looks today, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, which managed to obtain the video.

The women had to be especially careful during their trips around the city, as females are prohibited from going about their business alone or dressing inappropriately.


Comment: These women are incredibly brave to stay in Raqqa to help their friend, and more so to have taken this footage and shared it with the world. A truly terrifying glimpse of the heart of Daesh and the evils supported by the West and its allies in the Middle East.


Sheriff

Cop arrested after punching & choking 7 year old girl for 'lying' to him

Ryan Ferguson
Ryan Ferguson, left, was arrested after medical examiners confirmed an unidentified girl's story of being brutally attacked by the officer.
Deputy Ryan Ferguson, 29, with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office was arrested Thursday after a 7-year-old girl came forward with disturbing allegations of brutality.

According to the arrest affidavit, the girl, who remains unnamed, told investigators that Ferguson shoved liquid soap into her mouth and accused her of lying. He then picked her up, threw her on the couch and began beating her rear end.

While choking and gagging from the soap, Ferguson then picked the little girl up and slammed her down on the tile floor where he attacked her further. Ferguson was throwing both open hand slaps and closed-fist punches into the face of this innocent child as he began choking her to death. According to the affidavit, the girl could barely breathe as he held his hand on her throat while punching her in the face.

The next day, the girl reported Ferguson to police and detectives confirmed her injuries. A doctor with Pasco's Child Protection Team (CPT) also found that the girl had bruises under her eyes, which were consistent with being choked for an extended period. She had bruises on her forehead, according to the doctor, which were consistent with being punched with a closed fist.

Comment: Regardless of their relationship, no child deserves to be treated like that. Unfortunately, it's likely that his position as an officer will be 'taken into consideration' throughout this process and that he'll receive special treatment because of it.


Airplane

Tragic: Passenger plane crashes at Rostov-on-Don airport in Russia

A passenger FlyDubai Boeing-737-800 en route from Dubai to Russia's Rostov-on-Don crashed at the city's airport after missing the runway amid poor visibility. There were 7 crew members and 55 passengers on board the crashed Boeing 737-800 plane, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said in a statement.
boeing 737 800
© Flickr/ Woodys Aeroimages
"According to preliminary information, there were 62 people on board (55 passengers and 7 crew members), the information is being verified," the statement on the ministry website says.


Most people on board the crashed passenger jet Boeing-737-800 were residents of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, there also were foreigners among them, the Russian Emergencies Ministry's Southern Regional Center's chief Igor Oder said Saturday.

"There were mainly residents of Rostov-on-Don on board. According to preliminary data, there also were three foreigners there," Oder said during a video conference in the Emergencies Ministry.

Better Earth

Revitalizing Food: Oglala Lakota chef serves pre-colonization menu

Lakota chef
A Lakota chef is helping bring a Native American food culture into the modern world.

Before there was fry bread, there were sage, white pine, chokecherries and wild buffalo.

Before Europeans unloaded wheat and sugar cane and introduced beef to Turtle Island, Natives hunted and fished. They planted potatoes, squash and corn, and they flavored their food with purslane, rose hips and dandelion.

That traditional diet, or what Chef Sean Sherman calls the "pre-colonization diet," is the bedrock for a new restaurant set to open this fall in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota, plans to use only indigenous foods in the restaurant, which he has appropriately named The Sioux Chef.

Monkey Wrench

Not-so-transparent: Obama administration sets record for failing to disclose documents for FOIA requests

obama
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Secretive President Barack Obama
President Barack Obama's promise to have the "most transparent administration in history" doesn't hold water, as the government has set a new record for failed public records searches under the nation's transparency laws.

In 2015, the government failed to disclose any documents for nearly 130,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to an Associated Press analysis that involved all requests made to 100 federal agencies.

Notably, the FBI failed to find any related documents to 39 percent of FOIA requests it received, while Customs and Border Protection came up empty handed 34 percent of the time. The Environmental Protection Agency's regional office covering New York and New Jersey failed to stump up for a staggering 58 percent of requests.

In 77 percent of all cases, the Obama administration either censored documents it turned over, or simply withheld their release. That amounted to 596,095 cases, also a new record. In 250,000 of these cases, the administration said it couldn't find records, that the request was unreasonable or improper, or that the person making the request would not pay for copies.

Comment: Do as we say, not as we do? The U.S. bellows about freedom, democracy and peoples' rights to other countries but yet it is growing more secretive and paranoid with each passing year. Perhaps the U.S. should think twice about lecturing other countries and focus on their own growing lack of transparency in government?

Documents reveal Obama administration tried to kill transparency despite claims of openness


Robot

Rise of the machines? Robot 'jokes' that she will kill humans

sophia the robot
© cnbc
You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.

Just kidding, we are already there. We've been there for a while now.

The CNBC headline asked, "Could you fall in love with this robot?" and the outlet also called her "hot," but the real question should be, "Can you see how all of those nightmarish sci-fi movies are about to come true in our lifetimes?"... although I guess the latter would have been an awfully long headline.

Meet Sophia, a lifelike robot (partially based on Audrey Hepburn (supposedly) with "realistic" facial expressions and cameras for eyes that "jokes" about destroying humans (at least, I think it was supposed to come off as a joke).

Comment: Unlike Sophia's creators, not everyone is so enthusiastic about the rise of the robots.


Info

Would professional liability insurance requirement for police weed out the bad cops?

cops with sticks
In almost every city across the US, tax dollars are used to cover the damages and settlements from lawsuits filed against their police departments due to officer misconduct. Taxpayers, in essence, pay out massive amounts in damages for officers not doing their job properly. Additionally, the cost is compounded because taxpayers are forced to continue paying the salaries of these criminal cops.

City officials don't have the guts to hold officers accountable for their actions. So, a new approach is necessary to hold rogue officers responsible for their conduct.

Just like doctors have to carry malpractice insurance, police officers should be required to carry professional liability insurance as a condition of employment. For years, the Free Thought Project has been advocating this approach to force police accountability and, according to a new report out of Reuters, it's happening.

Sheriff

Denver police have been accessing confidential databases for less-than-official reasons like dating and stalking

police car computer
© motorola
Denver Police have been abusing the confidential database in their department for personal reasons — as in trying to get dates and to "enable stalking."

According to the report by the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor, which assessed law enforcement performance for 2015, officers often faced only minor oral or written reprimands for their transgressions. But this discipline could be seen as disproportionate to the potential harm caused by breaching the database for unofficial, unsanctioned purposes.

Both Denver Police and Sheriff's Department were evaluated by the monitor, and both were found to have abused the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and Colorado Crime Information Center (CCIC).

Comment: Another example of how the boys in blue consider themselves above the law and use their positions to prey on others.