Society's ChildS


Attention

Tourists in Spain 'frightened' after surreal gang shooting

gangland murder Costa Del Sol
Spanish police are working on the case - though there is no presence at the scene of the crime
It's less than 36 hours after a gangland double murder in a busy bar on the Costa Del Sol, and there is no sign of the Spanish police - apart from an occasional patrol car gliding by.

No cordon, no tape, no forensics in white suits, no officer guarding the front door of Monaghans Bar in Fuengirola.

According to a local cameraman, it was the same on Sunday afternoon - the day after Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr were gunned down.

In the homeland of the two men who had been shot dead, the case would be classed as a top level "category A" homicide with the bar sealed off and turned upside down for days afterwards.

X

Sarkozy stripped of France's highest state award due to corruption conviction

Nicolas Sarkozy
© Getty Images / Luke Dray / FreelancerNicolas Sarkozy
The former president has lost his Legion of Honor due to a corruption conviction

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been excluded from the prestigious National Order of the Legion of Honor, according to a state decree published on Sunday. The revocation follows a 2022 conviction for corruption and influence peddling.

In 2021, Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of attempting to bribe a judge in exchange for confidential information about a separate investigation related to his 2007 presidential campaign.

Explosion

Israeli airstrike claims 60 lives in Tehran apartment block

Tehran bombing
© Majid Saeedi/Getty ImagesView from a living room of a residential building destroyed in an Israeli attack in Tehran.
A 14-story building in the Iranian capital was hit by a missile on Friday morning, according to IRIB News.

At least 60 people, including 20 children as young as 9 months old, have been killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment block in the Iranian capital Tehran, according to local broadcaster IRIB News.

The IDF hit multiple targets across Iran on Friday, including uranium enrichment sites, while also killing several senior military commanders and scientists in targeted assassinations. West Jerusalem described the attack as a preemptive measure aimed at stopping Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

Iran, which has repeatedly denied pursuing a military nuclear program, responded by launching multiple volleys of ballistic missiles at targets in Israel, killing at least three people and injuring over 150, according to the Jerusalem Post.

IRIB News reported on Saturday that a 14-story residential building in Tehran had been hit by an Israeli missile on Friday morning.

The strike took the lives of at least 60 residents of the apartment bloc, which partially collapsed as a result of the strike, have been killed, including 20 children as young as nine months old, the broadcaster said. A total of 38 bodies had been recovered from the rubble so far and search operations are continuing, according to the broadcaster.

Comment: This kind of indiscriminate 'war' is precisely why any country might want the deterrent of a nuclear bomb.


Gavel

USAID official, 3 execs plead guilty in bribery scheme with over $550 million in contracts

WatsonBrittBarnes
L to R: Roderick Watson • Darryl Britt • Walter Barnes
A United States Agency of International Development (USAID) official as well as three corporate executives have pleaded guilty in a decades-long bribery scheme connected to over $550 million in contracts.

According to a press release from the Department of Justice, four men pleaded guilty to the charges of being part of the bribery scheme. The USAID official in the case was Roderick Watson, 57, of Maryland, who was a contracting officer and pleaded guilty to bribery of a public official.

Walter Barnes, 46, of Maryland; Darryl Britt, 64, of Florida; and Paul Young, 62, of Maryland all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official while Barnes also pleaded guilty to securities fraud.

Barnes and Britt were the owners of PM Consulting Group LLC (doing business as Vistant) as well as Apprio, Inc. respectively while Young was a subcontractor for both Vistant and Apprio. Both firms were certified businesses with the Small Business Administration 8(a) contracting program.

Comment: This case, likely one of many, reveals how loosely USAID was managed and how easy it was to manipulate contracts for personal gain via bribery and fraud.


Revolver

Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and State Rep. Melissa Hortman shot at their homes

minnesota state senator shot
© KMSPThe crime scene in Brooklyn Park, where state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot, June 14, 2025
Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and State Representative Melissa Hortman, along with their spouses, have been shot by a man dressed as a police officer who showed up at their homes in Brooklyn Park and Champlin, according to law enforcement sources. The suspect is still at large.

The first shooting happened just after 2 a.m. on Saturday at the Champlin home of State Senator John Hoffman, a Democrat who has served in the Minnesota Senate since 2013. Hoffman suffered at least two gunshot wounds while his wife Yvette was shot three times.

A second shooting happened a few miles south, near the Edinburgh Golf Course in Brooklyn Park, at the home of State Representative Melissa Hortman, who has served in the House since 2005. She's also the Democratic leader in the Minnesota House. Both Hortman and her husband Mark were shot.

Comment: Sadly Ms. Hortman has died of her injuries:


Motive?





Attention

Impervious to Suffering

Surveillance
© Off-Guardian
Can I be so bold as to say I may have figured something out? It is probably something all of you already know, as I can be a bit slow on the uptake. I keep hearing from the sheep-types that they really don't care if we lose all of our freedoms. They don't care about losing privacy because they don't have anything to hide, they don't care about losing free speech because people should be punished for saying bad and/or dangerous things (and they have nothing to say that would be considered bad and/or dangerous).

They have no fear of the government getting too much control because there will never be a reason the government would want or need to control them. They don't fear communism or fascism primarily because they don't know what those two ideologies clearly mean, and besides, that would never happen in a free society — which they are ready to give up anyway.

Of course, to all of us shrew-types, we practically lose our cookies thinking about living in a society where basic freedoms have been stripped away, or where the government, or any other authority, has power over our movements, our money, and our fundamental existence. When we hear someone say, "I don't care how much control the authorities have, I have nothing to hide, and I do nothing wrong, therefore it is not something to worry about for me," we blow a gasket.

Don't they know?

Don't they know that when the control over the masses surely does take effect it won't matter a tinker's damn if they "have nothing to hide" or "don't do anything bad." Oppression comes in many flavours, and its primary purpose is not to punish wrongdoing, but rather to keep people, in a very general way, compliant and under control.

Control sets the tone of the behaviour of a society. A good example of this came about during the Canadian Trucker's Convoy. People who donated to that cause ran the risk of having their bank accounts frozen. (I was one that this happened to.) Was donating to a "cause" such as the Trucker's Convoy a "bad thing" — was it against the law, was it criminal? In a free society, protesting (peacefully) and standing up against any sort of injustice an individual finds abhorrent is one of our fundamental rights as citizens of a free country.

Eye 2

Flashback Israel is turning into 'refuge for pedophiles,' warns child abuse prevention activist

Yifat Shasha-Biton Manny Waks
© Aimee AmigaMK Yifat Shasha-Biton (Kulanu) and Manny Waks at a Knesset pre-hearing on child sex abuse in Jewish communities, Jerusalem, March 21, 2016.


At a Knesset pre-hearing, groups working to prevent the abuse suggested there may be a 'significantly higher proportion' of cases in the ultra-Orthodox community.


Israel has become a safe haven for Jewish pedophiles from around the world, a leading advocate for child sexual abuse victims warned Monday at a Knesset committee pre-hearing on pedophilia in the ultra-Orthodox community.

"Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening," said Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v'Oz, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community.

The Law of Return grants automatic citizenship in Israel to those who meet its definition of a Jew.

Comment: Another negative effect of the disastrous idea of creating a state for one religious group only. Why? Because any Jew gets a free pass into Israel, regardless of the sort of person they are or the crimes they have committed. Newsflash: Being Jewish doesn't automatically turn you into a good and decent citizen.


Star of David

Best of the Web: 'Bottom of darkness': Children raped in ritual ceremonies expose the horrors of Satanic child abuse in Israel

Multiple women recount organized abuse including ritual ceremonies conducted by people they knew, even close family members - after months of interviews with victims, their families, treatment professionals and experts in Israel and abroad, a disturbing picture emerges with descriptions difficult to read.
Isaac
© Luc/Getty ImagesAn Illustration of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac from the 19th century.
"I suffered painful sodomy, truly felt like I was splitting in two. It's a terrible experience, but there's something about these things, perhaps in their strangeness, that's like... maybe the hardest component is that if you tell people about these things, they'll think you're crazy. I remember many types of severe sexual abuse, but there's something about these ritualistic abuses that makes them the bottom of darkness."

In direct words and with a clear voice, Emunah (pseudonym, like all victims' names in this article) describes the severe abuse she allegedly experienced in her childhood. Organized sexual abuse that included "ceremonies" with supposed religious significance. Horrifying ceremonies in which religious people, some from her own family, sacrificed her as an offering for spiritual transcendence or redemption.

Emunah is not alone. More than ten women between the ages of 20-45 with whom we spoke describe a severe phenomenon raising serious concern that in Israel, like many countries worldwide, organized sexual abuse of children is occurring right under everyone's nose.

Comment: See also:

Rabbi exposes rampant child sex abuse in the Ultra-orthodox Jewish community
US: Child sex abuse scandal rocks Orthodox Jewish community after 85 arrested Orthodox Jewish Community Struggles With Abuse Allegations


Family

'Sumoud' aid convoy heads to Egypt seeking to break the siege on Gaza

Sumoud Convoy Gaza aid famine
© Press TV TG ChannelSumoud Convoy to Gaza
An overland aid convoy of buses and cars crossed into Libya on Tuesday as it makes its way to Egypt, aiming to break Israel's crippling humanitarian siege on the Gaza Strip.

Consisting of 12 buses and 100 private cars, the Sumoud (resilience in Arabic) convoy of more than 1,000 participants, led by Tunisian civil society as well as participants from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and Libya, set off from the Tunisian capital on Monday.

"We crossed through several Libyan cities and are now close to Al-Zawiya, 51 km west of Tripoli," Mohammed Ameen Binnour, a medical coordinator of the convoy, told the Anadolu news agency.

Comment:


Egypt, doubtless under Israeli and U.S. pressure, has stymied the relief effort's progress:





Sheriff

Texas Gov. Abbott deploys National Guard to San Antonio ahead of ICE Protest

greg abbot national guard texas ice protests
© Raquel Natalicchio for the Houston ChronicleGov. Abbott with Texas National Guard troops at the border town of Eagle Pass amid a Biden-era surge of illegal immigrants
Setting himself in stark contrast to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered a contingent of National Guard soldiers to San Antonio ahead of protests against the apprehensions of illegal aliens planned for Wednesday night and Saturday.

"Peaceful protests are part of the fabric of our nation, but Texas will not tolerate the lawlessness we have seen in Los Angeles," Abbott's press secretary said in a Tuesday night statement. "Anyone engaging in acts of violence or damaging property will be swiftly held accountable to the full extent of the law."

News of the deployment of National Guard soldiers comes after lawless conduct by demonstrators in Austin on Monday night. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers aided local police in managing a response that kept the theft and destruction to a minimum. "During Monday evening's response, DPS personnel deployed tear gas and pepper ball projectiles to ensure officer safety and maintain order," said DPS in a statement. Five arrests were made, with charges including felony criminal mischief and resisting arrest. Here's video of the tear-gas deployment: