Society's Child

Craig Murray on Skirpal affair: UK and NATO tried to step up Cold War with Russia

RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 14:57 UTC

The UK and its NATO friends have attempted to "step up the Cold War" with Russia and have failed, according to Craig Murray, blogger and the UK's ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Theresa May's Government seems to have been delivered a huge blow today, as Porton Down scientists revealed it cannot confirm Russia was behind the attack on ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The broadcaster and human rights activist said it is an "extremely important" statement from Porton Down - the secretive military base where testing was carried out.

Murray said "a fortnight ago sources inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told him they were 'under pressure' to say it was made in Russia" but they knew they were unable to do so.

He said: "What we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia.

Nearly 2,000 people were stopped in 9 days under Trump's travel ban - and almost all of them were legal US residents

Michal Kranz
Business Insider
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC

The travel ban put forward by President Donald Trump at the beginning of last year via executive order led to 1,903 people being stopped by customs agents.

The majority of them were legal residents of the US.
While a federal judge quickly blocked that travel ban, Trump later issued two other travel bans, the second of which has been allowed to go forward by the Supreme Court.

Comment: State Department now 'fully implementing' Trump's expanded travel ban

Yulia Skripal call to cousin and statement to police released - "everyone's health fine, will be discharged soon"

Vladimir Rodzianko
The Duran
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 14:43 UTC

After being hospitalized in a poisoning in Salisbury, UK in early March, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, have been upgraded to a stable condition.

The poisoning has set off an unprecedented diplomatic row the last few weeks between Russia and the UK - with Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accusing Russia unequivocally of orchestrating the attack, all without providing a shred of evidence pointing to Russia's guilt. In fact, there has been increasingly more evidence coming out that Russia was NOT the culprit of this poisoning.

Boris Johnson and Theresa May are increasingly coming under public scrutiny for the handling of the Skripal case, turning the UK's leadership into a laughing stock.

The most recent development in the Skripal affair is a recorded phone call aired by Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1, purportedly between Yulia Skripal and her cousin, Victoria Skripal Thursday morning.

The hosts of the "60 Minute" show on Rossiya 1 - Evgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva - said they were unable to confirm the authenticity of the phone call.

Comment: The UK police also released a statement on behalf of Yulia:

"I woke up over a week ago now and am glad to say my strength is growing daily. I am grateful for the interest in me and for the many messages of goodwill that I have received.

"I have many people to thank for my recovery and would especially like to mention the people of Salisbury that came to my aid when my father and I were incapacitated. Further than that, I would like to thank the staff at Salisbury District Hospital for their care and professionalism.

"I am sure you appreciate that the entire episode is somewhat disorientating, and I hope that you'll respect my privacy and that of my family during the period of my convalescence."

The ideological perversion of scholarship

Rod Dreher
American Conservative
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 14:39 UTC

I heard from an academic friend yesterday who is extremely discouraged. I invited him to write about his experience for this blog, and I imagine he will. For now, I can tell you this. He is a young scholar working in a highly specialized branch of the humanities, one that requires an immense amount of learning. He proposed a paper for two separate forums within his discipline, and was turned down. He's very, very good in his field, and is used to having his papers accepted, and winning accolades. This was unusual, but it is of course quite possible that his papers weren't as good as the others.

What set him off, though, was his recognition that he probably wasn't going to get accepted anyway, whatever the quality of his work, because the gatekeepers aren't interested in the old-fashioned kind of scholarship that he does. Last year, the papers accepted in these two different forums were not about seriously scholarly topics, but about the kind of shallow takes on politically approved topics. My friend writes that this was "the final nail in the coffin" for him, the one that reveals that he has no place in the academy. He said he is glad to have learned this before becoming dependent on a university paycheck, but it grieves him to have devoted so much of his life to mastering his subject only to arrive at the end of his studies to find that his field has become as politicized as other humanities fields. He writes:

Comment: Academic authoritarians: The perversion of scholarship

Central American MS-13 gang spreading violence across US

Maximus
Halsey News
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 11:00 UTC

A pattern of violence is spreading across the US, with MS-13 gang related murders directly tied to an illegal immigrant pool of recruits.

MS-13 is a transnational gang from Central America which operates in multiple US cities and engages in list of violent crimes, including drug trafficking, murder, rape, prostitution, robbery, home invasions and kidnapping - with their highest level of concentration in the Northeast and West Coast, according to an FBI report.

Horrendous Crimes

In September 2016, the bodies of two teenage girls - Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens - were found in Brentwood, NY.

According to CBS News, the heads and faces of the girls were mutilated in an "almost unmatched" fashion by 13 gang members - 10 of whom were illegal immigrants.

In late January, Nassau County police found the remains of Julio Cesar Gonzales-Espantzay, a 19-year-old immigrant was found hacked to death by gang members with knives and machetes.

Comment: But the democrats need their votes - whatever the cost.

Facebook confirms spying on private messages to moderate them for 'violations'

Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 06:39 UTC

Facebook Messenger scans photos and links sent by users on the messaging platform, according to a recent statement by the company itself.

Facebook released the statement for a report by Bloomberg, which states that messages on Facebook's Messenger platform are analyzed for violation of Facebook's conduct policies. If they are flagged by the automated system, they are then read by moderators. If the content is deemed in violation of Facebook policy, the moderator is then permitted to taken action.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted to monitoring Messenger conversations. "In that case, our systems detect what's going on," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Vox. "We stop those messages from going through."

Unlike WhatsApp, the popular messaging platform Facebook acquired in 2014 for approximately $19.4 billion, Facebook Messenger does not automatically provide end-to-end encryption. Users must activate "secret conversations" on the Messenger platform in order to take advantage of encryption. Through end-to-end encryption, only participants in a conversation are able to read the messages that are exchanged.

Israeli Terrorism Against Palestinians Will Never End if Western Hypocrisy in Middle East Continues

Eva Bartlett
RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 03:50 UTC

© Suhaib Salem / Reuters
A Palestinian stands inside the remains of a house, that witnesses said was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war in 2014 summer, during a sandstorm in Gaza September 8, 2015

The US is fine with "rebels" like Al-Qaeda "protesting" in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed Palestinians protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are "inciting violence."

During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent-by any means necessary-under the old pretext of "self-defense."

On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.

Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.

French TV show featuring transgender man as baby's mother leads to mass confusion

RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 21:56 UTC

The French Twittersphere is abuzz over a TV show that invited on a couple of transgender men and their child, calling the one who gave birth "a mother." Some have slammed the show as intolerant.

The now hotly-discussed show called 'Hello, earthlings!' was aired on Saturday. It featured an American transgender couple, Biff Chaplow and Trystan Reese, who were both born women. The latter chose to keep his uterus to bear their child, who was also present on the show.

During the show a banner reading "Mom is on the left" appeared on the screen, referring to the 34-year-old, causing an uproar on social media and splitting it into two camps.

Comment: So, according to this post-modern thinking... a woman who 'transitions' to a man, can be both a man and a mother... and a man who transitions to a woman can also be a mother. Eh, is that about it?

Video captures Australian cops drag innocent disabled man from home, torture him in his own yard

Jack Burns
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 18:17 UTC

Police were caught on surveillance camera dragging an elderly, disabled man from his home and then beating him with a baton, taunting him, and covering his face with pepper spray.

Horrifying surveillance footage has been released that shows multiple police officers aggressively assaulting and torturing a disabled man in his front yard after they dragged him from his home during a welfare check.

John, a retiree in Melbourne, Australia, was supposed to be enjoying his golden years in peace-but after his psychologist called the Australian equivalent of 911, all hell broke loose. Victoria Police arrived to presumably perform an unwanted welfare check. When John refused to speak with the officers, they dragged him into the yard and beat him, pepper-sprayed him, and then hosed him down with his own water hose-all while mocking him.

The entire incident was caught on video recording principally because the homeowner had installed a surveillance system after his house was previously burglarized. In the graphic video, Victoria Police can be heard taunting the elderly man, cursing at him, beating him in the legs with their batons and covering his face with pepper spray.

Comment: Murikanism is spreading.

Canadian governments target illegal tobacco with new funding

Molly Hayes
The Globe and Mail
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 20:56 UTC

The federal and provincial governments are planning to put more money into the fight against contraband tobacco − a thriving black market that is rife with organized crime, costing billions of dollars a year in lost tax revenue.

In Ontario, it's believed that roughly one third of cigarettes are from an illicit source, OPP Detective Sergeant Luc Bouvier of the Contraband Tobacco Enforcement Team said.

His small unit - which falls under the OPP's broader organized crime enforcement bureau - has spent the past two years investigating the smuggling and trafficking of contraband tobacco across Ontario.

Is this not a case of, The pot calling the kettle black.

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Society's Child

Craig Murray on Skirpal affair: UK and NATO tried to step up Cold War with Russia

Nearly 2,000 people were stopped in 9 days under Trump's travel ban - and almost all of them were legal US residents

Yulia Skripal call to cousin and statement to police released - "everyone's health fine, will be discharged soon"

The ideological perversion of scholarship

Central American MS-13 gang spreading violence across US

Facebook confirms spying on private messages to moderate them for 'violations'

Israeli Terrorism Against Palestinians Will Never End if Western Hypocrisy in Middle East Continues

French TV show featuring transgender man as baby's mother leads to mass confusion

Video captures Australian cops drag innocent disabled man from home, torture him in his own yard

Canadian governments target illegal tobacco with new funding

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