Society's ChildS


Attention

'Marry-your-rapist' bill to be introduced by lawmakers in Turkey

Maya Oppenheim
Independent
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:30 UTC
turkish parliament
© EPA
A law which would allow men accused of having sex with girls who are under 18 to avoid punishment if they marry their victims is set to be introduced to parliament in Turkey.

The controversial so-called "marry-your-rapist" bill, which lawmakers are planning to introduce to Turkish parliament at the end of January, has sparked fury among women's rights campaigners in the country.

Critics argue the legislation, which the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is urging the government to axe, not only legitimises child marriage and statutory rape but also paves the way for child abuse and sexual exploitation.

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Magnify

Plan to pay UK students £9/hr to snoop on each other's 'microaggressions' is proof universities are vanguard of totalitarianism

Sophia Narwitz
RT
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 14:31 UTC
students watching students
© Getty Images / Westend61
The normalization of Orwellian practices at higher education establishments continues apace, with the UK's University of Sheffield hiring a team of student eavesdroppers who will catch and stop others from being racist.

The prestigious northern university will train and pay roughly 20 students £9.34 ($12.20) per hour to "moderate" conversations on campus as a means of making such discussions "healthier."

The recruits are to be called "Race Equality Champions," and their ultimate aim is to challenge the ways people think about racism.

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Bizarro Earth

'We simply can't get in': Assange lawyer decries lack of access to WikiLeaks founder


RT
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 15:18 UTC
WikiLeaks
© REUTERS/Simon DawsonSupporters of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London, file photo.
A lawyer representing Julian Assange has told a London court that the WikiLeaks founder's legal team is being restricted from meeting him and it is hampering preparation for his trial on extradition to the United States.

Queen's Counsel Edward Fitzgerald told Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday that he has had great difficulty gaining access to Assange in Belmarsh prison to discuss evidence and take instructions from the Australian.

The 48-year-old is wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to expose military secrets.

"We simply can't get in as we require to see Mr Assange and take instructions ... we need time to deal with that," Fitzgerald said.

Comment: The case of Assange and Wikileaks exposes the insidious corruption that permeates the highest echelons of the UK and US:

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Light Sabers

South Front's Syrian war report: Dozens of troops and civilians killed & injured in Idlib as Syrian army battles terrorists


South Front
Tue, 21 Jan 2020 12:00 UTC
Syrian troops
© Sputnik/Iliya PitalevSyrian Forces
46 Syrian service members have been killed and 77 were wounded in recent clashes with radical militants in Greater Idlib in the period from January 16 to January 19, the Russian Reconciliation Center reported. According to the report, 57 civilians were killed and 116 others were injured as a result of attacks and shelling by militants.

On January 19, the Syrian Army repelled a large attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and its allies on the town of Abu Dafn. According to pro-government sources, the army lost several armoured vehicles. The Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL), a key ally of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, militants damaged a battle tank and an infantry fighting vehicle, and destroyed an artillery piece belonging to the army. The NFL also claimed that dozens army troops were killed and injured. Earlier, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham recaptured the areas of Tell Khatrah, Mustayf Hill and Abu Jurayf from government forces and foiled army attempts to take them back.

Comment: See also: U.S. Didn't 'Withdraw' From Syria - It Redeployed, And Now Controls 75% of The Country's Oil

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Bizarro Earth

How Ukraine's neo-Nazis are preparing to 'reintegrate' Donbass

Drago Bosnic
Fort Russ
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:00 UTC
Flame thrower
© Fort Russ News
Ever since the 2014 NATO-backed coup, Ukraine has been in a state of a perpetual downward spiral. In every way possible. Ukraine's economy has been experiencing a double-digit recession every year since 2014. According to some estimates, Ukraine lost a staggering sum of up to $80 billion due to the 2014 coup which stopped its trade with Russia, the country's main trading partner.

However, a far worse decline happened in parallel with economic hardships - an absolute moral bankruptcy, fostered by the most extremist groups, spilling over to other parts of Ukrainian society. Various armed Neo-Nazi paramilitary groups have been the main symptom of such developments. And such groups are still very much relevant and more than ready to kill the people of Donbass.

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Cross

Sex is for married heterosexual couples only - Church of England

Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:58 UTC
marriage
© MediaPhotos/Getty/iStockPhotoClergy 'should not provide services of blessing for those who register a civil partnership', say bishops.
The Church of England has stated that sex belongs only within heterosexual marriage, and that sex in gay or straight civil partnerships "falls short of God's purpose for human beings".

Bishops have issued pastoral guidance in response to the recent introduction to mixed-sex civil partnerships, which says: "For Christians, marriage - that is, the lifelong union between a man and a woman, contracted with the making of vows - remains the proper context for sexual activity."

The church "seeks to uphold that standard" in its approach to civil partnerships, and "to affirm the value of committed, sexually abstinent friendships" within such partnerships.

Comment: So the CoE isn't barring homosexuals from participating, but it is reaffirming its stance that it won't sanctify relations it feels aren't in line with its values.

See also: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Microscope 1

Flashback Lab-made coronavirus triggers debate

Jef Akst
The Scientist
Mon, 16 Nov 2015 00:01 UTC
MERS coronavirus
© flickr/niaidMERS coronavirus
Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team's efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of to one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team's results, which were published in Nature Medicine.

The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus — or other coronaviruses found in bat species — may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. "If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory," Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature.

Comment: Given the recent rise and spread of the coronavirus in China, and this recent headline from CNN, 'The Wuhan virus is the last thing China's economy needs right now', one has to wonder if one of these engineered viruses surreptitiously 'escaped' the lab. It's a horrible thought, but does anyone believe western agencies wouldn't resort to biological warfare in an attempt to economically cripple China?

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Attention

Executive at Portuguese bank co-owned by Isabel dos Santos is found dead

Juliette Garside and Hilary Osborne
The Guardian
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 18:58 UTC
EuroBic
© Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty ImagesEuroBic is a privately–owned lender whose largest shareholder is Dos Santos.
A senior manager at a Portuguese bank co-owned by Isabel dos Santos, the Angolan businesswoman at the centre of the Luanda Leaks scandal, has been found dead in Lisbon.

The death of Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha, 45, was confirmed by police hours after the banker was named alongside Dos Santos and three other individuals as a suspect in a criminal investigation in Angola into alleged embezzlement at the state oil company, Sonangol.

The national director of Portugal's judicial police, Luis Neves, said preliminary reports indicated Ribeiro da Cunha's death was suicide and that nobody else was involved. He told reporters his staff were prepared to help with the Angolan corruption investigation whenever a formal request is made.

The banker held a senior role at EuroBic, a privately-owned lender whose largest shareholder is Dos Santos. He appears to have handled a number of transactions for companies controlled by Dos Santos, according to leaked files.

Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola's former president, José Eduardo dos Santos, has faced intense pressure this week after the Guardian and other media published stories based on the Luanda Leaks, a cache of 715,000 papers from the heart of her business empire.
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Rocket

The empire's war on oppositional journalism continues to escalate

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:55 UTC
glenn greenwald assange
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has been charged by the Bolsonaro government in Brazil with the same prosecutorial angle used by the US to target WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Per The New York Times:
Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a "clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime."

For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app. The complaint charged six other individuals, including four who were detained last year in connection with the cellphone hacking.
This argument is essentially indistinguishable from the argument currently being used by the Trump administration in charging Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. The US Department of Justice alleges that Assange attempted to provide Private Manning with advice and assistance in covering her tracks while leaking documents she already had access to, therefore making Assange party to a conspiracy against the United States.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

Swipe left on Big Brother? Tinder adds user-tracking 'panic button,' because there's always a predator somewhere


RT
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 20:45 UTC
tinder
© Reuters / Monica Almeida
Dating app Tinder has added a 'panic button' feature that tracks the user through a 'date' and allows them to surreptitiously notify authorities if they're in trouble. The company insists users are fine with the loss of privacy.

The precision location tracking feature lets Tinder users store details about their dates and their planned itinerary so that authorities can be quickly and comprehensively notified at the touch of a button should anything go awry. Triggering the panic button results in a text from Noonlight, the company behind the technology. If the user doesn't respond with reassurance that all is well, the emergency services are alerted.

Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Tinder parent Match Group, insists users are fine with sacrificing their privacy for a nebulous promise of safety. "You are opting in to make sure people can help you if you are in need," she told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, denying the location data would be used for marketing "or anything else." However, she also claimed the location data will stay with Noonlight, not Match, absolving the latter from responsibility for its ultimate uses.
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