Society's Child

'Reputational assault': Mystery Wikipedia editor Philip Cross targets journalist Rania Khalek

RT
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 17:25 UTC

Notorious Wikipedia editor Philip Cross, known for his campaign against anti-war and left-leaning journalists on the platform, appears to be at it again - this time taking part in a smear effort against journalist Rania Khalek.

Khalek, who produces content for RT's online video platform In The Now and has been critical of US foreign policy, seems to have caught the attention of Cross and another editor with the username 'Flickotown' - and the pair have repeatedly edited the information on her page.

The opening line of the page at one point described Khalek as "pro-Assad,""pro-Kremlin" and even suggested she is "anti-Semitic." Tweeting about the edits, Khalek said the smears on the page, which is the first thing people see when they Google her name, amount to "reputational assault" and suggested that she was targeted for her support of Palestinian rights and criticisms of US foreign policy.

When Khalek's page was restored to display the original description of her work, another editor appeared and changed it back.

Grenade attack on mosque in southern Philippines kills 2, comes on heels of cathedral bombing

Raul Dancel
The Straits Times
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 16:52 UTC

© Westmincom
The aftermath of a grenade attack on a mosque in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga, January 30, 2019.

Two people were killed and at least four wounded in a grenade attack on a mosque early on Wednesday (Jan 30) morning in Zamboanga city, a key gateway in the Philippines' restive south.

This occurred just three days after twin blasts rocked a Roman Catholic cathedral on Jolo island, southwest of Zamboanga, and left at least 21 dead and more than 100 injured.

Chief Inspector Shellamae Chang, Zamboanga police spokesman, identified those killed as Mr Habil Rex, 46, and Mr Haj Sattal Bato, 47. Both were said to be Muslim missionaries, known as "tablighs".

Comment: It's notable that Islamic terrorism has risen in the last few years, just as Duterte has been working to free his country from the Empire.

Critics howl over Tehran's ban on dogs in public spaces

Mohammad Zarghami
Radio Free Europe
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 16:29 UTC

A woman walks her dog past a wall of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

A leading Iranian veterinarian has questioned a new ban on the walking and transporting of dogs in the Iranian capital, Tehran, as illogical.

"How are veterinarians supposed to treat dogs if their owners are not allowed to take them out in public or drive them in their cars?" said Payam Mohebi, a senior member of Iran's Society of Veterinarians. "How are sick dogs supposed to get to us?"

The ban on the walking of dogs in parks and other public places and of transporting them in cars is the latest move by the Islamic republic against dog ownership, which has reportedly been on the rise despite being regularly denounced by hard-liners as an imitation of decadent Western culture.

The ban was announced on January 29 by Tehran's chief of police, Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi, who said the decision was made in a meeting with representatives from Tehran's prosecutor's office.

Texas officials have difficulty determining citizenship status on county voter lists

Alexa Ura
The Texas Tribune
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 16:17 UTC

© Bob Daemmrich
According to election officials, some counties are being instructed to consider certain voters on the list as citizens.

After flagging tens of thousands of registered voters for citizenship reviews, the Texas secretary of state's office is now telling counties that some of those voters don't belong on the lists it sent out.

Officials in five large counties - Harris, Travis, Fort Bend, Collin and Williamson - told The Texas Tribune they had received calls Tuesday from the secretary of state's office indicating that some of the voters whose citizenship status the state said counties should consider checking should not actually be on those lists.

The secretary of state's office incorrectly included some voters who had submitted their voting registration applications at Texas Department of Public Safety offices, according to county officials. Now, the secretary of state is instructing counties to remove them from the list of flagged voters.

"We're going to proceed very carefully," said Douglas Ray, a special assistant county attorney in Harris County, where 29,822 voters were initially flagged by the state. A "substantial number" of them are now being marked as citizens, Ray said.

EAT-Lancet's tentacles stretch to New Zealand as health officials ponder a red meat tax

Cate Broughton
Stuff
Mon, 28 Jan 2019 15:09 UTC

An international expert panel says a red meat tax would help tackle global pandemics of obesity, under-nutrition and climate change.

First it was sugary drinks - now experts are calling for red meat to be taxed.

A report by The Lancet Commission on Obesity, released on Monday, said a tax on red meat was an example of the urgent action needed to address the greatest threats "to human and planetary health" - obesity, under-nutrition and climate change.

University of Auckland population health professor and commission co-chair professor Boyd Swinburn said national and international responses to all three problems had been "unacceptably slow".

Agriculture production accounted for about 50 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand and foods high in saturated fats, sugar and salt, including red meat, were the biggest cause of ill health and premature death, he said.

Comment: The dogged adherence to the myth that meat, saturated fat and salt are unhealthy will be the death of us all. Excessive amounts of sugar and of carbohydrates, processed foods, trans fats and seed oils do more harm than meat ever could.

"We need to consider these together so we have food systems that continue to give us wealth, but don't promote ill health and death, and inequalities and drive up climate change."

Comment: See also:

School history books vilify Europe, whitewash Islam - Norwegian researcher claims

Sputnik
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 13:38 UTC

In Norwegian textbooks, Europeans are systematically portrayed as abusers, imperialists, and exploiters. By contrast, non-whites are ascribed the role of victims, signalling an anti-Western bias, a new study has claimed.

"Something to do with European supremacy", a new study by Bergen University student Kristoffer Tyssøy Høisæther, has uncovered double standards in the way history is being presented in Norwegian textbooks used today in elementary and high schools.

According to Høisæther, there is a pronounced difference in the way Western and Islamic history in the Middle Ages is portrayed. In general, there tends to be an overemphasis on the problematic aspects of Western history, as opposed to a prevalent omission of problematic aspects within Islamic history.

"The most remarkable finding in my work is how Europeans are consistently portrayed as 'abusers', as opposed to other cultures and peoples, who continually hold a sacrificial role", Høisæther wrote in an article in the news outlet Resett.

Comment: Evidently modern schooling is overseen by the same ideologues who have also infected various other areas of society. And, while their failures are immediately evident in programs like 'multi-culturalism' and mass migration, the fruits of teaching a twisted version of history may take a little while longer to become apparent. What is clear is that no free society benefits from distorting the facts of history. It's the reason why any totalitarian regime seeks to burn and rewrite the history books, because being disconnected from the past, particularly one's own, makes a person much more malleable to nefarious influences.

See also:

Also check out SOTT radio's:

"The police are out of control": St. Louis dept mired in corruption and violence, two charged with death of patron during bar altercation

Jim Salter
AP
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 12:00 UTC

Two St. Louis police officers have been charged in a shooting outside a bar, the latest embarrassment for a department still reeling from an officer's shooting death at the hands of a colleague.

Prosecutors on Monday charged officers Joseph Schmitt and William Olsten with first-degree assault and armed criminal action stemming from a violent altercation last April. Schmitt also faces a weapons charge.

The charges come just days after Officer Katlyn Alix, 24, was fatally shot while allegedly playing with a gun with a colleague, Nathaniel Hendren. He is accused of involuntary manslaughter .

And in November, four St. Louis officers were accused in a federal indictment of beating a black undercover colleague during a 2017 protest against police. That same protest has spawned more than a dozen federal lawsuits alleging that several officers roughed up innocent demonstrators, onlookers and journalists.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Para-military Police State: U.S. cops out of control?

Democrats move to strike 'so help me God' from House committee oath

Gregg Re
Fox News
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:31 UTC

A key committee in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is moving to eliminate the God reference from the oath administered to witnesses testifying before the panel, as part of a new rules package expected to be approved this week, according to a draft obtained exclusively by Fox News.

The draft shows that the House Committee on Natural Resources would ask witnesses to recite only, "Do you solemnly swear or affirm, under penalty of law, that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

The rules proposal places the words "so help you God" in red brackets, indicating they are slated to be cut. The words "under penalty of law" are in red text, indicating that Democrats propose to add that phrasing to the oath.

Twitter erupts after EU bigwig Verhofstadt's 'choose your own identity' mantra

RT
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:31 UTC

Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium's staunch pro-EU politician, tried to hail the pan-European cause on Twitter, claiming that multiple identities don't clash in the continent, provoking the ire of Europeans and Catalans in particular.

"I am from Gent, I am Flemish, I live in Belgium and I am European," he says in a video he uploaded to Twitter. "There is no contradictions at all! There is no war of identities in Europe!"

Verhofstadt, a key Brexit negotiator in the European Parliament and an over-the-top EU supporter, wrote that Europeans should feel free to choose multiple identities and "be proud of all of them."

Surveillance guinea pigs? Facebook pays teens $20 a month to install 'research app' that gives them unfettered access to mobile data

RT
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:40 UTC

Facebook has been paying users $20 a month to install an app which monitors their phone and web activity and sends it back to the social media giant, a report has revealed. The app may run afoul of Apple's privacy guidelines.

Launched in 2016, the "research app," first uncovered by TechCrunch, allows Facebook to continuously collect a user's private data, including chats from instant messaging apps, photos and videos, emails, web browsing activity, and more. Aimed at people aged 13 to 25, the app, according to Facebook, is designed to study mobile usage habits. Users were also asked to take screenshots of their Amazon order history page.

While the app is voluntarily downloaded and installed in exchange for upwards of $20 a month, critics have noted that the program closely resembles a similar Facebook-owned app, Onavo, which gave the company undisclosed access to sensitive user data. Facebook was later forced to remove Onavo from Apple's App Store, due to violations with Apple's data collection policies.

Comment: That Facebook is paying people to install an app that collects data is interesting considering how much information they get from your phone already by virtue of just having Facebook installed in the first place. However, it does suggest that there are limits to what they can collect, hence requiring someone to install a dedicated 'research' app. See also:

If you read the linked white house statement try not to puke.

sbc

Let's go, Brandon! Fucking asswipe, worthless, POS. Fraud! Argh! 😤

slbeaudry

I don't think this new requirement has undergone proper public review. There are procedures codified for this sort of thing. If some sort of...

Buffalo_Ken

First it will be 100 employees,then 50, then one. Masses are collectively powerful against the intolerant vocal minority and it is time to wipe...

Bezel Bub

I most certainly would not park my arse on a plane full of vaccinated people and have them infect me with their mutated virus. Whilst my...

Winternights3

Society's Child

'Reputational assault': Mystery Wikipedia editor Philip Cross targets journalist Rania Khalek

Grenade attack on mosque in southern Philippines kills 2, comes on heels of cathedral bombing

Critics howl over Tehran's ban on dogs in public spaces

Texas officials have difficulty determining citizenship status on county voter lists

EAT-Lancet's tentacles stretch to New Zealand as health officials ponder a red meat tax

School history books vilify Europe, whitewash Islam - Norwegian researcher claims

"The police are out of control": St. Louis dept mired in corruption and violence, two charged with death of patron during bar altercation

Democrats move to strike 'so help me God' from House committee oath

Twitter erupts after EU bigwig Verhofstadt's 'choose your own identity' mantra

Surveillance guinea pigs? Facebook pays teens $20 a month to install 'research app' that gives them unfettered access to mobile data

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