Society's ChildS


Megaphone

Best of the Web: Jon Stewart lashes out at near-empty congress hearing on healthcare for 9/11 first responders: "You should be ashamed of yourselves" - UPDATE

Emily Tillett, Grace Segers
CBS
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 20:50 UTC
jon stewart congress
Former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart's demeanor on Capitol Hill Tuesday was vastly different from the one his fans were accustomed to seeing on Comedy Central. He was there to call for the reauthorization of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, which was established nine years ago to provide health care benefits to first responders and others in the community with illnesses related to the 2001 terror attacks. Now, it's running short of money.

In his emotional testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Stewart at times broke down in tears, shouting at the lawmakers and calling them "shameful."

"I can't help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is ... a filled room of 9/11 first responders and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. Sick and dying, they brought themselves down here to speak to no one ... shameful," said Stewart at the outset of his remarks. A little over half of the 14-member subcommittee members were present, mostly Democrats.


Comment: Is anyone surprised that politicians are essentially ignoring 9/11 first responders? Unless they can use it as virtue-signaling, there's no expedient reason for them to actually come to the aid of the people who were there, willing to risk their lives, to help while their country was under attack. The fecklessness of the political class is stunning.

See also: UPDATE June 12: Apparently Jon Stewart shook committee members out of their complacency. ZeroHedge reports that the House Judiciary Committee has unanimously passed a bill to permanently reauthorize the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler dismissed calls to require a full committee vote after many lawmakers were once again absent, allowing the voting to proceed.

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Cult

The 'Gay Mafia' is blocking needed church reforms, says Vatican whistleblower

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D
Breitbart
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 12:26 UTC
Pope Francis
© Alberto Pizzoli/AFG/Getty
The former Vatican ambassador to the United States told the Washington Post a gay mafia among Church leadership is blocking attempts to seriously address clerical sexual abuse.

In an extensive interview, snippets of which were published Monday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said that the sexual abuse crisis would be "far less severe" if the "problem of homosexuality in the priesthood were honestly acknowledged and properly addressed."

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is mind-boggling that the word 'homosexuality' has not appeared once, in any of the recent official documents of the Holy See" dealing with clerical sexual abuse, Viganò told the Post.

Instead, a "gay mafia" among the bishops, seeking to protect themselves, was "sabotaging all efforts at reform," he said.

Late last August, Archbishop Viganò released a shocking 11-page report declaring that in 2013 he had personally informed Pope Francis of the serial homosexual abuse of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, but that the pope had ignored the information, elevating McCarrick to a position of influence in the Vatican.
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Airplane

Families complain of Air Force failures in child sex abuse cases

Justin Pritchard & Foster Klug
AP
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 12:08 UTC
air force base
© Airman 1st Class Greg Erwin/U.S. Air Force via APIn this Nov. 16, 2017 photo made available by the U.S. Air Force, a fighter plane takes-off from Kadena Air Base, Japan.
To the mothers, the 13-year-old boy appeared largely unsupervised as he roamed among the clusters of townhomes on the U.S. Air Force base in Japan.

It would have been unremarkable - the neighborhood was full of kids - except that young girls were starting to report the boy had led them from play and molested them.

"We were like, 'How is this OK?'" the mother of one 5-year-old girl told The Associated Press, which granted her anonymity to protect her daughter's privacy. She locked her kids inside.

The first girl to report had to wait six days for officials on the largest Air Force installation in the Pacific to provide counseling. The mothers did not sense much urgency from Air Force criminal investigators either. They told the families they'd waited 13 days to meet the boy's father.

By then, mothers had identified five girls, ages 2 to 7, who said the boy had taken them to some trees or a playground or his house. Another five kids would allege abuse soon after.

"We come here, and it takes the worst cases that you can imagine to find out that you don't have the services to support your children," the 5-year-old's mother said. "There's a feeling of complete distrust."
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Fire

Riot in Memphis: US Marshalls shoot dead wanted suspect, sparking riot - Police officers injured

Yolanda Jones
Daily Memphian
Thu, 13 Jun 2019 11:24 UTC
memphis shooting riot
© Jim Weber/Daily MemphianShelby County Sheriff's Department deputies brace against the crowd as protesters take to the streets of Frayser in anger against the shooting of a youth identified by family members as Brandon Webber by U.S. Marshals earlier Wednesday evening
A chaotic scene erupted in the Frayser area Wednesday evening following an officer-involved shooting, with heavily armed police facing off against an angry, rock-throwing crowd.


Comment: Notice how, right up front, the protesters are presented as a baying, dangerous mob. That may well turn out to be an accurate description, but people don't generally 'go ballistic' for no good reason...


Rain and tear gas had largely dispersed the crowd by 11 p.m. as officers on horseback patrolled, but not until after agitated onlookers and police clashed in a volatile situation that left several officers injured by flying debris, according to Memphis Police Deputy Director Mike Ryall. None were injured seriously.


Comment: CNN reports 24 injured officers, though just 6 required hospitalization.


Officials from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation took over the scene since a law enforcement officer was involved in a shooting. Before dawn Thursday, Keli McAlister, TBI's public information officer for this region, issued a statement saying the situation began about 7 p.m. in the 2700 block of Durham Street.
memphis riot
© Mark Weber/Daily MemphianProtesters take to the streets of Frayser in anger against the shooting of a youth identified by family members as Brandon Webber by U.S. Marshals earlier in the evening. Dozens of protesters clashed with police, throwing stones and tree limbs until police forces broke up the angry crowd with tear gas.
According the TBI, officers with the U.S. Marshals-Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force were searching for a suspect "wanted on multiple warrants." They spotted the man getting into a vehicle outside of a residence.

"While attempting to stop the individual," the TBI release stated, "he reportedly rammed his vehicle into the officers' vehicles multiple times before exiting with a weapon. The officers fired striking and killing the individual. No officers were injured."

Comment: 'Officer-involved shooting'?? Who came up with this newspeak??

Anyway, they shot a man dead in Memphis, and the locals really didn't like that. It hasn't escalated into a repeat of the Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore riots, but it sure escalated quickly and intensely...

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Map

Huawei looks to launch self-driving car in 2021 in move away from smartphones

Shivali Best
The Mirror
Thu, 13 Jun 2019 10:06 UTC
huawei
© Global Look Press / Geisler-Fotopres / Christoph Hardt
Huawei has hit the headlines several times over the last few months - and not for the best reasons.

The tech giant's smartphone business took a huge knock, after Google revealed that it was blocking Huawei from using several apps, as well as its operating system, on its phones.

Following the news, it seems that Huawei is looking at its other options beyond smartphones, and could even launch its own self-driving car.
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Bizarro Earth

Moral decay: New York state lawmakers seek to legalize prostitution


Fox 5
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 19:45 UTC
NY seeks to legalize prostitution
© Fox 5
New York state would legalize the buying and selling of sex under a proposal introduced in the state Legislature Monday that would lift criminal penalties for sex work.

The bill isn't expected to get a vote before the Democrat-led Senate and Assembly plan to adjourn for the year next week.

But supporters still hailed the announcement of the bill as a critical step toward repealing criminal penalties for sex workers and their customers.

Speaking at a press conference in Manhattan Monday, former and current sex workers talked about being forced into the industry as minors.

They said many sex workers rely on their jobs to make ends meet. "We only want to live, be free and be safe," said TS Candii, a former sex worker and current leader in the effort to decriminalize the industry. She said started selling sex at age 13 as a matter of survival.
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Eye 1

FBI's face recognition technology is dangerously inaccurate and a growing threat to liberty

Jennifer Lynch
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Thu, 06 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
facial recognition
This week the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued an update to its 2016 report on the FBI's use of face recognition. The takeaway, which they also shared during a Congressional House Oversight Committee hearing: the FBI now has access to 641 million photos-including driver's license and ID photos - but it still refuses to assess the accuracy of its systems.

According to the latest GAO Report, FBI's Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation (FACE) Services unit not only has access to FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) face recognition database of nearly 30 million civil and criminal mug shot photos, it also has access to the State Department's Visa and Passport databases, the Defense Department's biometric database, and the driver's license databases of at least 21 states. Totaling 641 million images - an increase of 230 million images since GAO's 2016 report - this is an unprecedented number of photographs, most of which are of Americans and foreigners who have committed no crimes.
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Nuke

Flashback What is the cost of lies? Fallout from 9/11 attacks on par with Fukushima and Chernobyl

Leah McGrath Goodman
Newsweek
Sun, 18 Sep 2016 22:04 UTC
dust cloud 9/11
The U.S. government has spent the past six years pouring millions of dollars into researching deadly diseases linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. But it has never officially warned people who lived and worked in Lower Manhattan during 9/11 that the attacks turned the area into a breeding ground for cancer.

At a conference at the New York Academy of Medicine on Wednesday, researchers shared fresh evidence of elevated rates of cancer, heart and respiratory disease and post-traumatic stress disorder linked to Ground Zero. One doctor even stated that the dangerous health consequences of the attacks are on par with those of the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima, Japan in 2011.

Previewing a yet-to-be-released paper he wrote with several colleagues overseas, Dr. Roberto Lucchini of the World Trade Center Health Program at Mount Sinai in New York told attendees that while the September 11 attacks resulted in heightened cancer rates for those living and working near Ground Zero, Fukushima, so far, has not.

Comment: It could have been worse. Most of that dust cloud blew out to sea on and after 9/11.

And yet, so much about that event is still unacknowledged.

As a certain recent docu-drama on Chernobyl said: "What is the cost of lies?"

See also: Jon Stewart lashes out at near-empty congress hearing on healthcare for 9/11 first responders: "You should be ashamed of yourselves"

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Bulb

Jordan Peterson announces creation of free speech platform 'Thinkspot'

Alexander Hall
NewsBusters
Wed, 12 Jun 2019 19:42 UTC
Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson
An upcoming free speech platform promises to provide users the best features of other social media, but without the censorship.

The subscription based "anti-censorship" platform "Thinkspot" is being created by popular psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. It's being marketed as a free speech alternative to payment processors like Patreon in that it will "monetize creators" and as provide a social media alternative to platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Peterson discussed Thinkspot with podcaster Joe Rogan on June 9, emphasizing a radically pro-free speech Terms of Service. He described that freedom as the "central" aspect saying, "once you're on our platform we won't take you down unless we're ordered to by a US court of law."
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Pirates

Five years after IS conquest, Mosul has become 'a cemetery for the living'


RT
Tue, 11 Jun 2019 18:03 UTC
car wreak Mosul
© Stringer/ReutersChildren stand next to a burnt vehicle during clashes between Iraqi forces and ISIS in Mosul, Iraq on June 10, 2014.
Mosul had fallen to Islamic State five years ago. The US-led coalition liberated the Iraqi city in 2017, but left it largely in ruins. With the ISIS caliphate gone, are the local residents recovering, and how?

IS takes Mosul

After taking control of Fallujah and Ramadi in early June 2014, IS (also known as ISIS) fighters turned their sights on Mosul, where the Iraqi Army reportedly had just 10,000 soldiers. Crucially, the troops were short of weapons and ammunition, and their tanks had been moved to the Anbar province.


On June 4, IS rode into the city in pick-up trucks and overpowered their Iraqi opponents in mere days, seizing control of government buildings and the airport as some 500,000 civilians fled. Kurdistan had offered to send Peshmerga fighters to help, but Iraq declined, and Mosul fell.

Comment:



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