Society's ChildS


Binoculars

International manhunt launched for Brit who shot fellow national in Amsterdam


RT
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 16:10 UTC
British national manhunt
© National Crime Agency (NCA)
An international manhunt for a suspected British hitman believed to have shot a fellow Briton in the head outside a café in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has kicked off.

The alleged hitman is suspected of shooting a 55-year-old man, from Sale, Greater Manchester, before fleeing on a bike taxi in the Dutch capital on May 19. The victim remains in hospital in a stable condition. Dutch Police believe he was targeted due to a gang feud.

The witness was seen heading towards the crime scene in Amsterdam's Stromarkt before pulling out a gun and firing. He then took the bike taxi towards Dam, the city's main square.
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Family

Years of suffering end as 7 thousand Syrians evacuated from besieged strongholds


RT
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 15:18 UTC
A loyalist fighter and a child
© Khalil Ashawi / ReutersA loyalist fighter and a child are evacuated from the villages of Foua and Kefraya onJuly 19, 2018.
Around 7,000 Syrians besieged by militants in Idlib have been evacuated in a prison swap with the government, ending a years-long nightmare as the final battle for the jihadist stronghold looms, RT's Murad Gazdiev reports.

After months of stalling, the remaining residents of Foua and Kefraya, two predominantly Shiite towns in Syria's Idlib governorate, have been evacuated in exchange for militant fighters and their families.
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Jet4

Lockheed Martin production & stocks explode as Trump demands NATO members increase defense spending

Jay Syrmopoulos
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 14:35 UTC
trump defense industry lockheed Martin
© The Free Thought Project
Donald Trump is essentially acting as a sales representative for weapons companies by threatening to leave NATO if members don't buy US weapons.

U.S. President Donald Trump met with leaders of NATO member states last week in a "very intense" summit in which he reportedly secured commitments from European leaders of NATO member states to increase their weapons expenditures on the military alliance.

Trump reportedly told NATO leaders during the summit that if they failed to meet defense spending targets of a 2 percent GDP by January, 2019, the United States would consider leaving the alliance - which prompted an emergency NATO session.
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Family

Russia welcomes first 50 South African farming families


RT
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 14:05 UTC
South african farmers Russia
© RTSchlebusch family in Russia's Stavropol Region
The first families of Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa, could soon be moving to Russia to escape rising violence against farmers. Some 15,000 Boers want to leave South Africa and become farmers in Russia.

The Schlebusch family from South Africa's Bloemfontein is going to be among first 50 Boer families to settle in Russia's southwest. Like many other Boers, they are seeking political asylum in Russia. They say they are facing violent attacks and death threats at home stemming from government plans to expropriate their land.

Earlier this month, farmer Adi Schlebusch visited Russia's farmbelt Stavropol Region. Schlebusch, whose grandfather was murdered at his farm, told RT that the land in South Africa "was never taken by whites from blacks with violence or in an unjust manner." He explained that when Boers moved to South Africa in the 19th century, they tried to act in a way that was fair, to negotiate officially and to avoid conflict.

Comment: South Africa's short-sighted policy will come back to bite them down the road. Their agricultural 'brain drain' will bring hardship to that country in the future.

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X

Horrific attack on Muslim man shocks Canadians, labelled as hate crime


PressTV
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:24 UTC
Muhammed Abu Marzouk
Muhammed Abu Marzouk, 39, remains in intensive care at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada.
Muslims in Canada are shocked and outraged by a horrific assault on an Arab near Toronto, which has left him in intensive care in hospital amid an uptick in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Muhammed Abu Marzouk, 39, was beaten up badly by two brothers on Sunday in Mississauga, a city near Toronto.

Police initially said the incident was sparked by road rage; however, further investigations revealed it was a "hate-motivated incident."

Abu Marzouk, who was with his wife and two daughters, was just heading home after a summer evening picnic.

He was backing out of a parking spot near a community center when he nearly hit a passing car.

Abu Marzouk got out of his car to assess the situation when he was confronted by two brothers, Adem and Janis Corhamzic, aged 27 and 19, from Brampton.

Although there was no accident, the brothers apparently started an argument with Abu Marzouk and then began shouting at him.

"Don't you see us? ... F---ing Arab people! ... Terrorists."

Comment: See also: Immigration, Crime and Propaganda

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MIB

'This is straight out of The Americans': Twitter on fire over Russian spy story similarities


RT
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:23 UTC
Maria Butina
© Facebook
Maria Butina
A 29-year-old woman accused of acting as a Russian agent in the United States and using sex as part of her 'covert plan' has been jailed without bail pending her trial - and it's all too much for Twitter to handle.

Maria Butina was arrested on Sunday on charges of acting as a foreign agent without registering with the US government. A judge granted the prosecutors' request that she be remanded in custody due to concerns that she poses a significant flight risk and has been in contact with Russian intelligence officials.

Twitter users were quick to draw parallels with the popular TV drama 'The Americans' which depicts the lives of two deep-cover KGB agents living what appear to be normal American lives in a Virginia suburb, but who are actually involved in all sorts of nefarious undercover activity in service of the Soviet Union.

One Twitter user noted that the story sounded like something "straight out of" the TV show, while others joked that perhaps the show was actually a "documentary" and that Butina's story was kind of like watching "bonus episodes" of the drama play out in real time.

Comment: See also: Joe Quinn on Sputnik: 'Deep State Wants Trump to Acknowledge Russian Collusion, Thus Undermine His Own Presidency'

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Handcuffs

Global survey reveals modern slavery is shockingly high in developed world


Press TV
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 11:51 UTC
labourers Britain UK
This undated file photo purportedly shows daily laborers in Britain.
Britain is home to about 136,000 modern slaves, a global survey found on Thursday - a figure 10 times higher than government estimates that points to emerging forms of slavery, police and campaigners said.

About one in 500 people in Britain were trapped in modern-day slavery in Britain on any given day in 2016, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index (GSI) by rights group Walk Free Foundation, which says the crime affects 40 million globally.

The government estimated in 2013 that only about 13,000 people in Britain were modern-day slaves - trapped in forced labor, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude - while the police have said there are likely to be tens of thousands.
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Arrow Down

Vancouver college maps thousands of attacks by crows

Ashifa Kassam
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:23 UTC
Crow
© Masahiro Makino/Getty ImagesThe college launched CrowTrax to document attacks by the bird in Vancouver, Victoria and beyond.
It was a crow fiercely protecting its nest - and repeated complaints of it dive-bombing and swooping - that prompted the idea.

"Just about every day someone would come in and say: 'I got smacked in the back of the head,' or 'Mary got smacked in the back of the head,'" said Jim O'Leary, a teacher at Langara College in Vancouver, Canada.

"I was thinking to myself: I know crows are smart but we're pretty smart too. Isn't there something that I can do about this?"

The result was CrowTrax, an online tool that since 2016 has documented about 2,500 crow attacks in the Metro Vancouver region, nearby Victoria and around the world.

O'Leary, who teaches a course on geographic information systems (GIS), initially envisioned the site as a way to show his students how such systems could be used to map and store spatial data.

Comment: See also:

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Camera

Time magazine's 'creepy' Putin-Trump cover: This is what media subversion looks like

Simon Rite
Time
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 09:18 UTC
Trump-Putin hybrid
© TIME
Staring out from the front cover of this week's 'Time' magazine is a striking, unsettling picture of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump morphed into one. The hidden, yet unsubtle messaging behind the image is equally unsettling.

Time describes the image as "meaning to represent this particular moment in US foreign policy, following the pair's recent meeting in Helsinki, Finland." However, what it really represents is the way that a major US media outlet wants its readers to see these two men. As strange and creepy figures who are in some way linked.

Comment: Well, Time magazine has always been a ridiculous propaganda machine, so it's little wonder they would jump on the hysterical narrative bandwagon and stoke the fires of outrage. They're selling magazines more than anything else, and likely have little interest in actual journalism, so this was probably a good move on their part if judged by that metric.

See also:

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Marijuana

Living the high life: Toronto residents smoke nearly 1.42 million joints a year


RT
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 09:19 UTC
Toronto CN Tower
© Chris Helgren / ReutersCN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Canadians are preparing for the day when they can smoke cannabis without breaking the law, but some of them have not been shying away from it as it is: Torontonians already light the equivalent of 141.7 million joints a year.

While the recreational use of cannabis will become legal all over Canada only on October 17, it's not stopping residents of Toronto, Canada's most populous city, from smoking it like there's no tomorrow.

A survey published by Environics Analytics on Thursday pointed out that, supposing all the weed consumed by the respondents came in joints, Torontonians smoke the equivalent of a mind-boggling 141.7 million per year. If the figure is too colossal to embrace, the researches give a more tangible equivalent - stacked up, they'd be as tall as 2,050 CN Towers, assuming an average roll is 8mm thick

Comment: Since they were ousted in 2010 as the city with the tallest freestanding structure, it seems Torontonians are trying to be the highest by a different means.

See also:

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