Society's ChildS


Boat

Russia sends 3 large ships to Syria as Idlib offensive approaches

A ship of the Russian Navy
For the first time in two years, the Russian Navy has sent three large ships to Syria's Port of Tartous along the Mediterranean Sea.

According to Yoruk Isik of the Bosphorus Observer, three Russian ships recently sailed through the Bosphorus Strait towards Syria's territorial waters.

The three ships were identified Isik as the BSF Krivak Class frigate Pytlivy, the BSF Tapir class LST Orsk, and the BSF Tapir class LST Nikolay Filchenkov.

Target

German army targets children with fancy ads amid chronic personnel shortage

german army
© Global Look Press/ Axel Heimken
In a bid to boost its long-understaffed military, Germany has been targeting young people with "glossy" ads featuring the lives of soldiers. It comes as child military recruitment in the country is at a record high.

Germany's army has "big gaps" in its personnel, Parliamentary Armed Forces Commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels warned last February in a damning report on the condition of the military. He called for reforms to be implemented with "greater urgency."

As part of efforts to boost its personnel from the current 179,000 to 198,000 by 2024, Germany's army - or Bundeswehr - has been using YouTube ads to attract under-18s. This is despite already being called out by the United Nations back in 2014 over its "specific targeting of children" in advertising.

The ads feature on the army's YouTube channel, which boasts more than 300,000 viewers, and have garnered a total of 64 million views. They promise to give behind-the-scene footage of what it's like to be a young soldier in the army.

Comment: See also: Germany considers bringing back conscription to boost falling army numbers


Cult

Abuse issues threaten to overshadow Pope's visit to Ireland

Preparations are made at Phoenix Park in Dublin ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland
© PAPreparations are made at Phoenix Park in Dublin ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland.
Decades of child sex abuse scandals have eroded Irish trust in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis's planned weekend visit to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families comes at a tumultuous time for the Catholic Church around the globe.

Last week's grand jury report out of Pennsylvania, uncovering years of child sexual abuse at the hands of hundreds of priests across the state, is the latest entry in a laundry list of scandals that have rocked church leaders and parishioners in recent years. In Ireland, historically among the most Catholic countries in the world, churchgoers are experiencing their own nationwide reckoning with sexual abuse of children by priests and a subsequent, systematic cover-up that allowed such abuse to happen.


Comment: According to the recent grand jury report of six dioceses in Pennsylvania, over a period of 70 years, 300 priests abused over 1,000 children in Pennsylvania and church officials repeatedly covered it up. See also:

The grand jury report about Catholic priest abuse in Pennsylvania shows the church is a criminal syndicate: 'It is time to face the horrible truth: The Catholic church is a pedophile ring'.


The embattled pope's visit comes less than a week after he issued a 2,000-word apology for the church's role in the international sex abuse crisis. Though critics say his missive lacked concrete solutions for dealing with this crisis, it'll be his first opportunity to make public amends with Catholics both in Ireland and around the world. But sex abuse is not the only issue that will be on Irish Catholics' minds as the pope makes his arrival.

The past few years have seen this once-devout country shaken by a series of scandals within the Catholic Church, including the revelations of forced labor and systemic physical abuse at many of the country's Catholic orphanages and care homes. Meanwhile, the country has, in recent years, become increasingly secular and liberal, countering traditional, conservative Catholic social policy.

A country in which divorce, homosexuality, and abortion were all illegal has now transformed into the first country in Europe to legalize same-sex marriage by referendum. It is a country that overturned its historic abortion ban just a few months ago, something that would have been all but unthinkable one generation ago. If one thing is clear, it's that the Ireland of 2018 is not the Ireland of nearly four decades ago, when Pope John Paul II became the first sitting pope to visit the country.

Cross

Priest disappears after allegations he molested 3 teen boys, stole $80,000 from church

Rev. Edmundo Paredes
Three adult men came forward in February to accuse Rev. Edmundo Paredes of abusing them when they were in their mid-teens more than decade ago, parishioners of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff learned at mass on Sunday.
A priest who allegedly molested teenage boys and stole tens of thousands from his Texas church has gone missing, officials said.

Three adult men came forward in February to accuse Rev. Edmundo Paredes of abusing them when they were in their mid-teens more than decade ago, parishioners of St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff learned at Mass on Sunday.

The revelation was delivered by Bishop Edward Burns, who said Paredes, who served as pastor of the church for 27 years, was already under investigation for allegedly stealing between $60,000 and $80,000 from the treasury when the men came forward, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Paredes, who was known as "Father Ed," has allegedly fled and his whereabouts are unknown, but church officials believe he may have traveled to his native country of the Philippines, Burns said.

Snakes in Suits

The Democratic Party's suicide march

David Hogg
© YouTubeDavid Hogg
David Hogg picks up where Bill Ayers left off.

Leftist radical David Hogg generated some controversy when he complained to the press that "Older Democrats just won't move the f-k off the plate and let [the young people] take control [of the DNC]." With that outburst, Hogg completed the cultural revolution begun in the 1960s - and best summed up by the domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, who ordered young Baby Boomers (at the time) to "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents."

After decades of dumbing down America's youth, in order to turn that youth into nothing more than empty receptacles in which to dump their destructive ideology, the Left is about to reap what they sow. This isn't the first time a youthful rebellion has ripped apart the Democratic Party. Bill Ayers' generation of the radical New Left did just that in the 1960s. What was so interesting was that the New Left of the 1960s arose during a period of relative political dominance for the Democratic Party. It was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who effectively created the paradigm - the regime - of postwar American politics.

Attention

The 'diversity' of illegal immigration: A first-hand account

I live on farm beside a rural avenue in central California, the fifth generation to reside in the same house. And after years of thefts, home break-ins, and dangerous encounters, I have concluded that it is no longer safe to live where I was born. I stay for a while longer because I am sixty-five years old and either too old to move or too worried about selling the final family parcel of what was homesteaded in the 1870s.

Rural Fresno County used to be one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the United States. I grew up with first-, second-, and third-generation farmers-agrarians of Armenian, German, Greek, Mexican, Japanese, Portuguese, Punjabi, and Scandinavian descent.

Race and ethnicity were richly diverse; yet assimilation was the collective shared goal-made easier because immigration was almost entirely a legal and measured enterprise. No one much carried for the superficial appearance of his neighbors. My own Swedish-American family has intermarried with those of Mexican heritage. My neighbor's grandchildren are part white, Japanese, and Mexican. The creed growing up was that tribal affiliation was incidental, not essential, to character.
illegal immigrants aliens arizone

USA

'No hope of victory': Not one more American life should be expended for Afghanistan

Afghanistan checkpoint
© US Army/Sgt Ken Scar/FlickrUS, Afghan forces conduct checkpoint operations near Combat Outpost Yosef Khel, Paktika Province, 2012.
There is no hope of victory in the war against the Taliban today

There is no prospect for any kind of American victory in the war against the Afghan Taliban that would correspond to what U.S. officials have been promising throughout the 17-year struggle. As if any rational observer needed further evidence of this fundamental reality, the Taliban a week ago attacked the strategic city of Ghazni, located barely 100 miles from the Afghan capital of Kabul, and laid waste to major parts of it. The insurgents killed dozens of Afghan soldiers and police officials, seized strategic points in the city, and cut the central artery between Kabul and important southern regions.

In reporting on this turn of events, reporter Mujib Mashal of The New York Times wrote, "The Ghazni assault has demonstrated a stunning display of Taliban tenacity that belies the official Afghan and U.S. narrative of progress in the war...." The Wall Street Journal dispatch, by three reporters filing from Kabul, put it similarly, saying the the drawn-out confrontation, "requiring at least 1,500 government forces backed with U.S. firepower to put down a far smaller and more lightly armed number of insurgents," has "cast doubt over the progress of the U.S. military in building security forces in Afghanistan."

Handcuffs

Monster: California cop convicted of raping children, never sent to prison, strikes again

Jacob Mark Duenas
Highlighting the sheer lunacy of blue privilege and the broken justice system, a former California Highway patrol officer was found guilty of raping children twice and never went to jail. Now, this predator may finally be sent to prison but only after his third conviction for horrifying crimes against children.

Jacob Mark Duenas, a former Monterey County-based California Highway Patrol officer, was found guilty earlier this month of brutally and repeatedly raping an 8-year-old boy. The abuse happened when Duenas was training to be a law enforcement officer.

Prior to this conviction, Duenas pleaded no contest to multiple charges of molesting two girls, ages 13 and 14, while he worked as a CHP officer. Flexing his blue privilege, after he was found guilty of sexually abusing the girls, Duenas served no time in jail.

Because this pedophile was never locked up, a few years later, he struck again. This time, his victim was a 10-year-old boy. Again, he was arrested, and again, he did not go to jail.

Biohazard

Thousands of glyphosate cancer-risk lawsuits filed against Bayer's Monsanto

monsanto weed killer glyphosate
© Benoit Tessier / Reuters
The number of lawsuits against Monsanto has surged from 5,200 to 8,000 and may cost its new owner Bayer billions of dollars in damages in the coming years.

The surge in lawsuits followed the $289-million California court verdict when Monsanto was ordered to pay damages to a man who alleged the company's glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer. Bayer's shares lost more than 10 percent since then.

When asked whether Bayer would consider settling cases out of court, the company's Chief Executive Werner Baumann said: "We will vigorously defend this case and all upcoming cases."

Comment: Bayer may be down but not out. Evil never rests:

With Roundup on the rocks, Monsanto hatches plan for replacement with drift-prone crop destroying dicamba


Light Saber

Argento accuser Jimmy Bennett speaks out over sex assault claims

Asia Argento
© Jean-Paul Pelissier / ReutersAsia Argento
Jimmy Bennett, the actor who accused actress Asia Argento of sexually assaulting him when he was aged 17, has said that he decided to speak out after she came forward as a victim of producer Harvey Weinstein.

Bennett told The Hollywood Reporter that he did not speak out about the encounter with the actress because he had wanted to "handle it in private." When the first reports of the alleged assault emerged, the actor maintained his silence, saying that he was "ashamed and afraid to be part of the public narrative."

The statement comes just days after a New York Times report in which it was alleged that Argento paid off Bennett after he accused her of sexually assaulting him in 2013. Bennett was aged 17 at the time of the alleged encounter, while Argento was 37. The legal age of consent in California is 18.

Comment: The hypocrisy of the #MeToo movement becomes clearer every day. Argento even throws the deceased Bourdain under the bus.