Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Nanny state: Texas schools are arresting & imprisoning teens for the 'crime' of vaping

Robby Soave |
Raason.com
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 17:27 UTC
Thomas Williams-Platt arrested vaping Texas
© Angela Piazza for The Texas TribuneThomas Williams-Platt, 18, in the backyard of his aunt’s home in Georgetown on Nov. 22, 2019. Last December the then 17-year-old was arrested for bringing a vape pen to his high school.
Imagine a building where drug-sniffing dogs roam the corridors, air-quality sensors alert officials if anyone is inhaling a controlled substance, using the bathroom is a privilege rather than a right, clothing is searched in case anyone is hiding contraband up their sleeves, and those who are caught breaking the rules could face life-derailing punishments.

You might be imagining a prison. In fact, I have just described a public school in Texas, where the authorities are so obsessed with stopping teenagers from vaping that they are perfectly willing to treat them like inmates.

That's the only conclusion one can reach from this eye-opening Texas Tribune article, which details the state's draconian efforts to crack down on the vaping scourge. This year, Texas raised the vaping age from 18 to 21, and schools are pulling out all the stops — including installing "vape-detecting" sensors in the hallways — to prevent underage usage. The Tribune reports:

Comment: Is the so called 'war on vaping' to blame for the surge in sentences to these 'alternative schools' or have authorities created another excuse to pad the wallets of those who are able to profit from a school to prison pipeline? While vaping may present health consequences, arresting teenagers will definitely harm their future prospects and throwing them into 'alternative schools' with a population of disturbed youth is unlikely to improve things.

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Handcuffs

German security services to recruit HUNDREDS of new officers to combat right-wing radicals - interior minister


RT
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 23:15 UTC
German police
© Reuters / Thilo Schmuelgen 56
Germany's police and its domestic security service, the BfV, are to be beefed up with 600 new staff members tasked specifically with tackling right-wing extremism, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has announced.

Unveiling his plan in Berlin on Tuesday, the minister warned that more than 12,000 potentially violent right-wing radicals are on the loose in Germany, adding that half of all politically motivated acts of violence in Germany are committed by such people.

Seehofer also decried the "ugly blood trail" left behind by right-wing extremists over the last couple of decades, specifically mentioning a series of murders committed by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2001 and 2006. The minister also referred to the assassination of Walter Luebcke - a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, who actively supported her immigration policies - in June 2019 as well as a shooting attack in Halle in October, which left two people dead.

Comment: Sounds like Germany is entering phase two of its fear and chaos agenda. The first was to destabilize the country with unrestricted immigration policy, and the second is to increase fear about reactionary types, and thus increase authoritative power over the population.

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Cross

Pope lifts secrecy obligation for those who report having been abused


Catholic News Service
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 22:28 UTC
pope francis
Pope Francis has abolished the obligation of secrecy for those who report having been sexually abused by a priest and for those who testify in a church trial or process having to do with clerical sexual abuse.

"The person who files the report, the person who alleges to have been harmed and the witnesses shall not be bound by any obligation of silence with regard to matters involving the case," the pope ordered in a new "Instruction On the Confidentiality of Legal Proceedings," published Dec. 17.

In an accompanying note, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, said the change regarding the "pontifical secret" has nothing to do with the seal of the sacrament of confession.

"The absolute obligation to observe the sacramental seal," he said, "is an obligation imposed on the priest by reason of the position he holds in administering the sacrament of confession and not even the penitent can free him of it."

The instruction was published by the Vatican along with changes to the already-updated "Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela" ("Safeguarding the Sanctity of the Sacraments"), the 2001 document issued by St. John Paul II outlining procedures for the investigation and trial of any member of the clergy accused of sexually abusing a child or vulnerable adult or accused of acquiring, possessing or distributing child pornography.

In the first of the amendments, Pope Francis changed the definition of child pornography. Previously the subject was a person under the age of 14. The new description of the crime says, "The acquisition, possession or distribution by a cleric of pornographic images of minors under the age of 18, for purposes of sexual gratification, by whatever means or using whatever technology."
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Dig

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla and Dell sued over child-mined cobalt from Africa


CBS News
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 22:09 UTC
cobalt mine children congo
Some of the biggest technology firms in the United States have been accused in a lawsuit of complicity in the death and maiming of hundreds, if not thousands of African children who mine cobalt, a mineral vital to the production of the lithium-ion batteries in everything from smartphones to electric cars. The defendants named in the suit are Apple, Google parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla.

The lawsuit was filed Sunday in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. by the non-profit organization International Rights Advocates, on behalf of 13 anonymous plaintiffs from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The complaint accuses the tech giants of "knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children in Democratic Republic of Congo ('DRC') to mine cobalt."

The suit demands a trial by jury for the plaintiffs, who include maimed child miners and the families of others killed in the cobalt mines.

Human rights Lawyer Terry Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates told CBS News that his organization "traced the supply chain back from the mine where the children were either killed or maimed and have traced it back up to these companies."

The lawsuit calls for the companies to take responsibility for child miners in their supply chains, and change the way they source the metal.

Comment: The bigger issue is why these families and children have the need to work such jobs in the first place. It's because they need the money. As long as Congo's economy is mismanaged and exploited by its corrupt government and foreign governments and corporations willing to keep it that way as long as they share in the profits, children will continue to be used for jobs of this sort.

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Control Panel

Best of the Web: Fake, computer-generated Instagram influencers are modeling designer clothes, wearing Spanx, and attending red carpet premieres

Lindsay Dodgson
Insider
Wed, 04 Sep 2019 14:07 UTC
Miquela
© Baauer / YouTubeMiquela in her video for "Hate Me."
"Congrats @travisscott on the premiere of #lookmomicanfly," Instagram influencer and artist Miquela wrote on one of her latest posts, apparently after attending the red carpet premiere for the rapper's new Netflix series. "I laughed, I cried, I almost fell out of your jet."

Miquela, who goes by @lilmiquela, has racked up 1.6 million followers on Instagram since she materialized out of thin air in 2016. As soon as she appeared, her posts were met with intrigue and questions about her robot-like appearance.

The truth is that despite Miquela being dubbed one of the 25 most influential people on the internet by Time magazine in 2018, she isn't really an influencer, a musician, or a model. She can't be, because she's a digital image.


The influencer market is huge and lucrative. According to a study by InfluencerDB, $5 billion was spent on Instagram influencer marketing in 2018, and the trend only continues to rise. The report estimated that 39% of all of Instagram's accounts are run by influencers. Considering there may be a billion active users on the platform, that's a lot of influencers to compete with.

So it makes sense that with the rise in both quality and accessibility of 3D imaging and computer-generated imagery (CGI) technology, digital figures would come for a piece of the action.

Comment: So it's not just deepfakes and fake news one needs to keep an eye out for - it's also fake people. Although, in essence the marketing angle isn't particularly new. If a cartoon character can be an 'influencer' then a CGI character could do the same. Perhaps it's the 'realism' blurring the line between a computer generated 'person' and a real human being that makes this all so creepy. See also:

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Quenelle - Golden

Someone hacked Spanish state TV to broadcast RT interview with rebel Catalan leader

Sam Jones
The Guardian
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 19:46 UTC
RT Spanish Correa Puidgemont
Spain's public broadcaster has inadvertently carried an interview with the exiled Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont after hackers hijacked its online news channel and substituted its content for that of Russia's state-backed RT network.


Comment: Notice how it's "Spain's public broadcaster," but "Russia's state-backed RT network."

Western propaganda at its subtlest!


The hack, which happened last Thursday, meant Spanish TV's +24 channel showed RT's interview between Puigdemont and the former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa.

In the interview - one of RT's series Conversation with Correa - Puigdemont again insisted "there's no solution to the Catalan problem that doesn't involve independence".

Comment: With that as introduction, here's the RT (English) write-up of highlights from the interview:

If Kosovo, Albania & Macedonia are considered for EU membership, why not independent Scotland & Catalonia? - Puigdemont

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Arrow Down

Polls indicate Impeachment approval is officially underwater

John Nolte
Breitbart
Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
trumpredline
The 'up side'
For the first time since the media launched the Ukraine Hoax, support for impeachment is underwater in the average of all the polls.

Although support for impeachment never went over 50 percent, a plurality in favor of impeaching did stubbornly hold the lead in polling averages — at least, until Monday, the start of the week when the Democrat-controlled U.S. House is expected to pass two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.

One week ago, according to the RealClearPolitics poll of polls, 48 percent of those polled supported the impeachment and removal of Trump, while 45 percent were opposed. As of today, though, those numbers have flipped around: 46.7 percent support impeachment, while a plurality of 47.3 percent are opposed.

To the surprise of no one who watched the impeachment hearings, it was precisely those hearings that killed support for impeachment. Once the hearings launched, support began to face the pull of gravity that comes with having no evidence to back up your wild accusations.
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Blue Planet

Pepe Escobar: Pamir Highway, the road on the roof of the world

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 19:27 UTC
Camel caravan afghanistan
© Pepe Escobar / Asia TimesStraight from the Ancient Silk Road: a camel caravan on the Afghan Wakhan Corridor.
These are the ancient Silk Roads the Taliban will never be able to reach

This is arguably the ultimate road trip on earth. Marco Polo did it. All the legendary Silk Road explorers did it. Traveling the Pamir Highway back to back, as a harsh winter approaches, able to appreciate it in full, in silence and solitude, offers not only a historical plunge into the intricacies of the ancient Silk Road but a glimpse of what the future may bring in the form of the New Silk Roads.

This is a trip steeped in magic ancient history. Tajiks trace their roots back to tribes of Sogdians, Bactrians and Parthians. Indo-Iranians lived in Bactria ("a country of a thousand towns") and Sogdiana from the 6-7th centuries BC to the 8th century AD. Tajiks make up 80% of the republic's population, very proud of their Persian cultural heritage, and kin to Tajik-speaking peoples in northern Afghanistan and the region around Tashkurgan in Xinjiang.
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Clipboard

Fact-checking UK pundit Maajid Nawaz on Jeremy Corbyn

Irfan Chowdhury
Mondoweiss
Mon, 16 Dec 2019 18:29 UTC
Maajid Nawaz
© Shayan Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn/WikimediaMaajid Nawaz speaking at Maastricht University, 29 October 2018.
Maajid Nawaz is a British political commentator and self-described "Muslim reformer" who runs Quilliam, a prominent anti-extremist think thank in the UK. He used to be a member of the extremist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, until he was imprisoned in Egypt and subsequently became an anti-radicalization activist. He has very little standing in the Muslim community in Britain. A reason for this is, in part, because his think tank made a financial deal with the anti-Muslim extremist Tommy Robinson; "I use you, you use me," Robinson said of the arrangement.

In 2010 he compiled a secret list of nonviolent Muslims - including well-known Muslim human rights activists - and accused them of sharing the ideology of terrorists, and submitted the report to the Conservative government. He has worked closely with torture apologists Sam Harris and Douglas Murray, and has been a vocal advocate of the Prevent strategy, a government counter-extremism strategy which has been condemned by the National Union of Teachers for encouraging surveillance of Muslim schoolchildren. Despite this, he is treated as a serious and credible voice in the UK; he is a weekly columnist for the Daily Beast, has his own radio show on LBC and has written for a wide range of mainstream British news outlets.

Comment: More on Mr. Nawaz' dubious background. It makes for eye-opening reading:

Maajid Nawaz: Case study of an (ex) status-driven extremist?

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Handcuffs

SWAT deploys gas & arrests shooting suspect in Columbus, Ohio


10tv.com
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:17 UTC
swat
© Twitter / @ColumbusPolice
A man was found dead inside a home in northeast Columbus after an overnight standoff with Columbus police and SWAT.

According to Columbus police, the situation began as a domestic dispute inside a home in the 3500 block of Headford Court. Officers were dispatched there shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday.

After speaking to the victim who had left the residence, officers went back to the location to make contact with the suspect, who refused to come out and barricaded himself inside.

Police called in SWAT based on threats officers say the man was making.
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