Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Hundreds of children in the Netherlands report being sexually exploited during pandemic

Child with teddy bear
© t.tomsickova/DepositPhotos at
Hundreds of children in the Netherlands were sexually exploited during the coronavirus pandemic, AD reports based on figures from the center against child trafficking and human trafficking CKM for 2020. Parents were much more often involved in the sexual abuse, the center found.

Last year 250 children reported that they were being sexually abused. They did so through an online chat platform, where victims can anonymously share their story. The majority of victims were minors, the youngest was 9 years old.

Last year, one or both parents were the perpetrators in 14.5 percent of cases, up from 6.8 percent in 2019. "Now one in seven involves the parents themselves, that is very intense," CKM spokesperson Shamir Ceuleers said to AD. Strikingly, the perpetrator is almost as often the father as the mother of the victim. In a number of cases, a new partner was also involved in exploiting the child. When parents are involved, the child usually faces long-term abuse, often lasting two or more years.

Comment: The lockdowns have clearly made the already rampant (occurring across all strata of society) and damaging sexual abuse of children even worse:


Eye 1

Facebook rolls out weird 'you've been exposed to extremist content' alerts - encourages reporting wrongthink

zuckerberg facebook extremist warning
© Graeme Jennings - Pool/Getty Images / composite
Asks users to report anyone they think 'might be becoming an extremist', without defining what that even is.

Facebook users have begun to receive creepy messages warning them that they 'may have been exposed to extremist content' and asking if they need support, as well as asking them to report anyone they know who 'may be becoming an extremist'.

The warnings began popping up Thursday and have little indication of what the platform considers to be 'extremist content':

Fire

"The whole town is on fire": Wildfire amid record heat wave forces entire Canadian village to evacuate - spark from train suspected

Lytton canada wildfire
© 2 Rivers Remix SocietyLytton, located in southern British Columbia, Canada, was engulfed in flames within a matter of minutes
A wildfire amid a record heat wave in western Canada has forced authorities to order residents to evacuate a village in British Columbia that smashed the country's record for hottest temperature three days in a row this week. Mayor Jan Polderman of Lytton issued the evacuation order Wednesday, saying on Twitter that the fire was threatening structures and the safety of residents of the community, which is 95 miles northeast of Vancouver.

"All residents are advised to leave the community and go to a safe location,″ Polderman said.

Comment: More from RT:
sparks lakes wildfire canada british columbia
© AFP / BC Wildfire ServiceSparks Lake wildfire, British Columbia, seen from the air on June 29, 2021
The province's wildfire service said it had responded to the blaze in Lytton and confirmed on Thursday that there were four general clusters of multiple wildfires across British Columbia.

"Ground crews, helicopters, air tankers, members from volunteer fire departments, and heavy equipment have responded and will continue to do so over the coming days," it said in a statement.

Before the scenes in Lytton, at least three major wildfires were burning in British Columbia, with 26 blazes having started between Tuesday and Wednesday alone.
There is speculation the fire was sparked by a CN train passing through the tinder-dry area:
CN Rail is "evaluating" the status of its train traffic through the bone-dry B.C. Interior after a fast-moving fire on Wednesday destroyed much of the Village of Lytton — a blaze thought to have been sparked by a passing train.

The fire in Lytton is believed to have began at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Based on accounts from those in the village at the time, it moved quickly. Some estimates on Thursday have said as much as 90 per cent of the village was burned.

Global BC is reporting investigators believe the fire was sparked by a passing train, citing sources at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.

Castanet reached out to both major Canadian railways, each of which run through Lytton, for comment and asked whether any thought is being given to stopping trains until conditions in the Interior improve.

"Pertaining to the impact on our operation, we are evaluating this, but our focus now being the safety and support of the community," CN spokesman Mathieu Gaudreault said in a statement.

According to Gaudreault, CN finds the Lytton blaze "deeply distressing" and very concerning.

"We have reached out to local elected officials to offer our assistance," he said.

"We want to offer our support to the people of the First Nation of Lytton and we are committed in assisting this community during this tragic event."

A CP Rail spokesman said his railway was focusing on helping in any way it can in the aftermath of the Lytton fire.

"Our focus is on assisting emergency response operations in the town of Lytton," Andy Cummings told Castanet via email.



Attention

Judge orders release of Wisconsin woman in Slender Man case

Anissa Weier
© Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via APIn this Dec. 21, 2017, file photo, Anissa Weier, one of two Wisconsin girls who tried to kill a classmate to win favor with a fictional horror character named Slender Man, is led into Court for her sentencing hearing, in Waukesha, Wis. A Wisconsin judge on Thursday, July 1, 2021, ordered her release after being convicted of the stabbing in 2014. Weier asked Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren this year to release her from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, arguing she was no longer a threat to anyone.
A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ordered the release of a woman who has spent 3 1/2 years in a state mental health facility after being convicted of stabbing her classmate to please the Slender Man character.

Anissa Weier, 19, was sentenced to 25 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in December 2017. She argued in a petition for conditional release that she's no longer a threat to anyone.

She won't be allowed to go free immediately, however. Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren gave state officials 60 days to draw up a conditional release plan and sent Weier back to the mental hospital pending another hearing on Sept. 10.

Comment: See also: Teen pleads guilty to lesser charge in 'Slender Man' web meme-related stabbing attack


NPC

Spain's cynically woke move to allow over-14s to determine their gender undermines parents and leaves vulnerable kids exposed

spain transgender child
© REUTERS/Sergio PerezPete, 9, a transgender minor, takes part in a protest to mark LGBT Pride Day in Madrid, Spain, June 28, 2021.
Spain's loony left thinks it's in Europe's vanguard on gender identity, but allowing youngsters to self-determine without a medical diagnosis lets them make life-changing choices before they've even finished puberty.

The approval of a draft law in Spain to allow children as young as 14 to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis is a wildly irresponsible, politically charged and ill-considered move that fails those vulnerable youngsters who most need protection. It bestows what is a life-changing decision with the same level of gravitas as buying a bus ticket.

If Spain's Equality Minister Irene Montero, the architect of the new bill, is serious about her claim that her party is "making history with a law that takes a giant step forward for the rights of trans and LGBTI people", then she is deluded.

Comment: See also:


Folder

Judge to unseal dozens of documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs, including those that reveal her and Epstein's relationship with the Clintons

maxwell epstein clinton
A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons. Maxwell and Epstein are pictured with Clinton in 1993.
A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons.

Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell's right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed.

Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks' time will be Maxwell's efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Comment: See also:


X

Big Tech cracks down on Robert Malone, mRNA vaccine pioneer who warns about their risks

robert malone del bigtree
"To censor and silence scientists under such circumstances can lead to many unnecessary deaths," says previously censored Harvard Med professor Martin Kulldorff.

A scientist who credits himself as the inventor of mRNA vaccines, and has warned that they carry risks downplayed in the COVID-19 pandemic, said this week that LinkedIn "shut down" his personal account without explanation.

"The historic record of what I have done, stated, figured out (and when) etc. over time is a key part of establishing my credibility and track record as a professional," Robert Malone tweeted Wednesday. "And that has been erased completely and arbitrarily without warning or explanation."

Comment: See also:


Propaganda

Canada's government is seeking to silence Canadian journalists at home and abroad with a draconian censorship bill

newspaper printing
© Unsplash / bank_phrom
As a Canadian journalist, I could be subject to a censorship bill which, if passed in Senate, means the government in Canada can effectively shadow-ban and censor my voice into oblivion, along with other dissenting voices.

After seeing his tweet on the issue of Bill C-10, recently passed in the House of Commons, I spoke with Canadian journalist Dan Dicks about this. He explained that the bill is being presented as being about Canada bringing Big Tech companies under the regulation of the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), to have them display more Canadian content.

"But what people are missing," he cautioned, "is that there were clauses put into this bill, protections for certain publishers and content creators that would protect people like myself and yourself."

Those clauses, he said, were recently removed from the bill, leading many content-creating Canadians aware of the bill to worry they will be treated the same as a broadcaster or a programmer, subject to the regulations of the CRTC.

The bottom line is that, beyond the mumbo jumbo of the government, this is the latest attack on freedom of expression, and on dissent.

Comment: See also: Trudeau government's move to protect Canadians against hate speech & hate crimes is the road to hell for freedom of expression


Chart Bar

Does this explain why COVID-19 is normally so puny but occasionally goes bang?

coronavirus
I wanted to come back to the question of what causes COVID-19 occasionally to have explosive outbreaks. We've had two in England so far. Using the graph below (produced by Imperial's REACT study using symptom-onset reports from their antibody survey, so no PCR tests involved) we can see when they occurred. The first occurred from around February 25th to March 19th 2020, ending after about three and a half weeks, as abruptly as it began. The second got going around December 2nd, and ended - once again abruptly after three and a half weeks - on December 25th. As the lines below indicate, these starts and stops bear no relation to when lockdowns were imposed or lifted (the red and blue lines respectively).

england covid chart 1

Given that (as we can see) Covid was around in England throughout the winter of 2019-20 (arriving in November according to this graph) and was also simmering away in the autumn of 2020 without taking off, a key question is what triggers the beginning and end of the more explosive outbreaks?

Another way of putting the same question is: why does COVID-19 occasionally, Jekyll and Hyde-like, transform from a relatively gentle, not very infectious disease into a super-infectious disease for a few weeks, before suddenly returning once more to its largely benign form?

Bizarro Earth

Four times as many troops & veterans have died by suicide as in combat - study

US navy military suicide
© U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Alana Langdon/ReleasedMilitary suicides have outpaced the rate among the general U.S. population, but it's not clear why. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Sept. 10, 2019) Personnel Specialist Seaman Jenesis Fabian, assigned to Naval Station Mayport, ties a yellow ribbon around a tree at Mayport Memorial Park in recognition of Suicide Awareness Month. Participants tied yellow ribbons to represent the 46 active duty Sailors lost to suicide in 2019.
The suicide rate among active-duty troops and veterans has outpaced the also-rising rate in the general population in recent years, but with so many risk factors inherent to military life, it's difficult to pin down why.

There's no one reason for it, according to a study released Monday by the Costs of War Project, and the way the Defense Department and VA track suicides might mean even their growing numbers are incomplete.

"The report notes that the increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population ― an alarming shift, as suicide rates among service members have historically been lower than suicide rates among the general population," according to a news release.

Comment: Even wars that are fought for a righteous cause will take their toll on a human being, and this surge in suicides is, in part, the culmination of two decades of US-led wars that have primarily sought to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, to further US imperialism, and that are meted out with a indiscriminate brutality that undermines the sanctity of life: 120+ retired US generals sign letter questioning Biden's mental health, 2020 election result, warn of 'tyrannical govt'