Society's ChildS


Headphones

Ferguson shooting audio recording confirmed to be real by software developer

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© Reuters / Adrees LatifA local resident stands with his arm up over a makeshift memorial at the site where unarmed teen Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri August 27, 2014.
A new audio recording that allegedly captures a series of gunshots at the time of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, has been confirmed to be real by the developers behind the software used to capture it.

The 12-second audio clip first came to light on CNN earlier this week, and features a man chatting with a friend of his using a video-recording messenger system called Glide. As the unnamed individual records his message, a string of gunfire can be heard in the background. Numerous gunshots can be heard before the action is broken up with a pause. Shortly afterwards, though, another barrage of shots occurs.

At least 10 gunshots total can be heard during the recording, which Glide certified as being captured at 12:02 pm on Saturday, August 9th. This is the same time that 18-year-old Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

"A Glide user living nearby (whose identity is being protected) was simply using the Glide app on their smartphone exactly as it was designed - to instantly communicate with a friend through our real-time video texting service," the app stated on its blog. "Simultaneously, they also captured audio in the background of the gunshots allegedly fired at Michael Brown."

"Because Glide is the only messaging application using streaming video technology, each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second."

Eye 1

Ferguson protests prompt calls for cops to wear on-body cameras

On-body cameras mean police use less force, and a range of new apps are giving citizens new ways to hold errant police officers to account
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© WTVR
Who watches the watchmen? Since the riots started in Ferguson, Missouri, many have decried the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown and brutal crowd-control tactics at the protests following his death (see "Crowd-control policing in the US is stuck in riot mode"). The uproar has turned into a call for better surveillance of the police. How might that be done?

The US Department of Justice has the power to investigate and overhaul problematic police departments. Ferguson has not yet been investigated, but it's a likely candidate.

"Police misconduct is not usually just caused by one rotten apple. It is caused by a rotten barrel," says Stephen Rushin at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. "A lot of people would argue that you're seeing that in Ferguson."

For the US public, an investigation would not be enough. A petition to the White House has called for a "Mike Brown Law", requiring all police to wear an on-body camera while on duty. It garnered more than 100,000 signatures, which obliges the White House to respond to the request.

On-body cameras automatically record an officer's interactions from a first-person perspective. Quite a few US cities are using them, including Salt Lake City in Utah, and Oakland in California. Last year, Barak Ariel at the University of Cambridge conducted the first major study of on-body cameras, with police in Rialto, California. He found that officers were 60 per cent less likely to use force when wearing them. Citizen complaints, too, fell sharply. Ariel's group is now monitoring the cameras' impact in two dozen police departments around the world.

Comment: Cameras will not change the violent nature of police.
  • Police State USA: Dozens arrested, reporters detained, assembly rights restricted



Map

Donetsk armed forces kicking SS and taking names: Kiev nazis lose control of Novoazovsk, rebels advance in southeast

Novoazovsk
© AFP Photo / Alexander KhudoteplyMembers of Ukrainian volunteer battalion Dnipro stand in a truck covered in steel plates near the small southern Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk, Donetsk region, on August 27, 2014.
Kiev's troops had to leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk to save their lives, said the country's Security and Defense Council. The authorities admitted that self-defense forces are advancing and leading a counteroffensive in the southeast.

Along with Novoazovsk, Kiev troops have lost control over the villages of Amvrosiivka and Starobeshevo in the Donetsk Region of Eastern Ukraine.

According to Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, on Wednesday Kiev's troops were shelled by Grad rocket launchers and then attacked by two military columns of self-defense troops.

The columns included tanks and armored infantry vehicles.

"Later in the afternoon two Russian columns entered Novoazovsk," the council said in a statement.


Comment: Ha! Kiev is like the school bully who finally gets pounded by the scrawny kid he's been beating on for months. "He and his big Russian friends teamed up on my, I swear!" Sorry guys, but it turns out the DPR and LPR are just a whole lot better than you. No Russians required.



Quenelle

Protesters in Kiev demand ouster of Ukrainian president, defense minister

kiev protest
© AFP Photo / Sergei SupinskyA man holds a placard " General Staff save Ukraine but not your asses!" during the rally in front of the Ukrainian Defence Ministery in Kiev on August 28, 2014.
Hundreds of people have gathered in front of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev, demanding resignation of President Petro Poroshenko and the defense minister over the poor handling of the military operation in the southeast.

The demonstrators, many of whom were mothers and wives of the soldiers involved in the fighting in the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, have blocked traffic at one of the capital's arterial roads, the Vozdukhoflotsky Boulevard.

They called on the army to urgently send reinforcements, including tanks and other heavy military vehicles, to the city of Ilovaysk in the Donetsk Region.

This strategic town was retaken by the self-defense forces after several days of fighting on Wednesday, which led to the encirclement of a large group of Kiev's troops.

The protesters also insisted on the resignation of defense minister Valery Geletey and all other top commanders of Kiev's so-called "anti-terrorist operation" in southeast Ukraine.

Comment: The mothers and wives of the Ukrainians are correct. Their sons and lovers are being sent to the southeast as cannon fodder, and the Donetsk and Lugansk armed forces are making mincemeat out of them. But the solution isn't to send more troops, more weapons; it's to get the hell out of Novorossiya and stop the slow genocide of the people living there.


Heart - Black

Rotherham U.K. child abuse investigation reveals disturbing facts: Threats, corruption and utter contempt

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© PAProfessor Alexis Jay led the investigation into child abuse in Rotherham, U.K.
The child victim had been repeatedly raped before she found the courage to report her story to the police. She had tried to escape, but the perpetrators had broken her brother's legs and smashed the windows of her parent's home as a warning.
When she finally visited the police station, she received a text from her main abuser who made it perfectly clear what would happen to her 11-year-old sister if she spoke out. "Your choice," he wrote repeatedly - and the girl refused to give a statement.

The case - from 2001 and detailed in today's independent report - was the last straw for the Home Office researcher who had persuaded the young victim to go to the police. She wrote to the chief constable of South Yorkshire police and at a subsequent meeting with a senior officer and council staff was firmly told never to do such a thing again. When she handed in her research data to the Home Office, the council suspended her erroneously, and then sidelined her so that her part of a report on prostitution was never completed.

The story highlights the atmosphere of cover-up and collusion at Rotherham Council. Nobody in the upper echelons of the child-care system could say they were not aware of the raft of warnings. But a collective failure of leadership meant continued, well-founded warnings about the widespread sexual abuse of children were suppressed, ignored or played down because of short-term political considerations.


Comment: There is more at play here.Take into account that we can find sexual predators among councillors, police officers, social workers up till the highest level of society and you will get the picture.


Comment: For further information:

Rotherham UK: Den of paedophilia covered up by a corrupt system
On-going nightmare in Rotherham UK: About 1,400 children were 'sexually exploited over 16 year period'


Monkey Wrench

Russia to aid Japan in filtering radioactive water

fukushima workers
© Agence France Presse/Toru HanaiA worker wearing a protective suit and a mask looks up welding storage tanks for radioactive water, under construction in the J1 area at the Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant
RosRAO, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, is among the three companies selected to build a system to filter radioactive tritium out of the contaminated water collected at the stricken power plant - a task that has so far defied engineers.

Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO, which has resorted to erecting thousands of water tanks to contain the toxic run-off from the plant, is already trialing a system that filters 62 radioactive materials. But the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) does not filter tritium, a mildly radioactive byproduct of nuclear generation, which nonetheless means that water cannot be safely discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

RosRAO, which was built on the foundations of Soviet-era waste disposal research institutions, won the TEPCO tender for a filtration system - alongside US firm Kurion Inc, and GE Hitachi Canada, a joint project between the Japanese and US corporations - beating 26 other companies.

Comment: So much for Russia being backwards!


Bullseye

Is the tide turning? Self-proclaimed republics' forces practically encircle Mariupol

Mariupol map
© UnknownMariupol is a city of 492.000 inhabitants in normal times.
The self-proclaimed republics' forces have practically encircled the city of Mariupol in Ukraine's embattled southeastern Donetsk region, the Novorossiya News Agency said on Friday.

"During the fighting overnight, the Novorossiya forces took control of the villages of Starchenkovo, Respublika, Zeleny Yar, Boyevoye, Malinovka, Demyanovka, Starodubkovka, Chervonoye Pole and Osipenko," the news agency said.

"At present, the operational situation is the following: Donbass' defenders blocked a section of the Mangush-Osipenko road. The clashes are continuing in Urzuf," it said, adding "Chances are high that today [Ukrainian] punitive troops will be finally entrapped in Mariupol."

Earlier reports said Ukrainian units deployed near Novoazovsk had retreated to Mariupol. "Militias took control of checkpoints and strong points on the outskirts of the city, as well as a bridge across Gruzsky Elanchik River."

Mariupol residents said the regional administration and most of the military had left the city; food stores had run out of stocks, with cereals and sugar no longer available; and drivers were experiencing serious fuel shortages. "People are waiting for the Donetsk People's Republic troops to come," eyewitnesses said.

Militias have begun what they call a humanitarian-combat operation to push the Ukrainian army away from major cities and to stop its artillery strikes on densely populated residential areas.

Video

Racial profiling: Black American TV producer on way to Emmy party mistaken for bank robber, handcuffed, held for six hours

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© UnknownNo matter how highly educated you are, what kind of job you have, if you fit the description; tall, bold-headed, black male they will get you
An African-American film producer in Beverly Hills for an Emmy pre-party was handcuffed and detained for around six hours on Friday night as police believed he fit the description of a suspect in a nearby bank robbery.

Charles Belk said he left a restaurant alone to refill a parking meter when he was suddenly surrounded by six police cars "handcuffed very tightly, fully searched for weapons, and placed back on the curb," he wrote on his Facebook page with an accompanying photo of him sitting on the curb as two police officers stand close by.

"Within an hour, I was transported to the Beverly Hills Police Headquarters, photographed, finger printed and put under a $100,000 bail and accused of armed bank robbery and accessory to robbery of a Citibank."

Comment: By humiliating him and treating him like a criminal? By just randomly picking up a man? Mr. Belk should make a film about the way law enforcement treats the black community, beginning with Michael Brown.


USA

Hysteria 101: Teacher banned from school for writing fiction books about school shooting

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© UnknownBe very afraid of books. They may contain questionable content according to law enforcement
An eighth-grade language arts teacher from Maryland has been placed on administrative leave after school officials learned he allegedly authored two books containing questionable content under a pseudonym.

According to a press release published on Monday by the Dorchester County, Maryland superintendent of schools, Mace's Lane middle school teacher Patrick McLaw has been placed on a leave of absence pending an ongoing investigation.

Last week, Dorchester superintendent Henry Wagner wrote, the Wicomico County State's Attorney Office alerted educators that authorities are investigating the teacher, who since last year has taught language arts at the suburban Maryland school.

Comment: With all the violence that is going on in schools in the U.S. a teacher that only uses language is treated like a criminal. What is wrong with this picture?


MIB

The bogus FBI 'investigation' of whether Russia is tied to JPMorgan hacking

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© Unknown
Russian hackers attacked the U.S. financial system in mid-August, infiltrating and stealing data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and at least one other bank, an incident the FBI is investigating as a possible retaliation for government-sponsored sanctions, according to two people familiar with the probe.


Comment: Investigating? Judging by their comments it seems they've come to a definite conclusion. And it's very unlikely that Russia would 'retaliate' due to sanctions imposed by the West, since these so-called sanctions have shown themselves to be ineffective and have done nothing but to ultimately force Russia to align itself with BRICS countries and other countries that aren't directly controlled by the West.

Russian sanctions? You Must be Joking! Russia Holds All the Cards!


The attack, which occurred in mid-August, resulted in the loss of gigabytes of sensitive data, and authorities are investigating whether recent infiltrations of major European banks using a similar vulnerability are also linked to the attack, one of the people said.

In one case, the hackers used a zero-day vulnerability in one of the banks' websites, then plowed through layers of elaborate security to steal the data, a feat several security experts said appeared far beyond the capability of ordinary criminal hackers. The incidents occurred at a low point in relations between Russia and the West, as Russian troops continue to mass on the Ukrainian border and the West tightens sanctions aimed at crippling Russian companies, including some of the country's most important banks.


Comment: They've claimed that Russia was using humanitarian aid convoys to smuggle weapons into Ukraine, they've claimed that Russia was amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, they've claimed Putin shot down the MH17 flight, they've claimed that there were Russian tanks in Ukraine. Most recently, they're claiming that tanks, artillery and infantry have crossed from Russia into Ukraine. All of these examples are bogus, would it be any surprise that these hacking allegations are also fake?