Society's ChildS


Cell Phone

FBI ignoring judiciary committee request: Will not collect Page, Strzok work messages sent on insecure 'non-FBI' accounts

Alex Pappas and Brooke Singman
Fox News
Mon, 07 May 2018 18:29 UTC
Peter Strzok Lisa Page
Lisa Page and Peter Strzok
Strzok's text refers to inter-agency meeting.

An FBI official says the bureau is not working to collect messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, despite the request to do so from a top Republican senator as well as evidence suggesting they communicated about "work-related" matters on non-FBI accounts.

In a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Charles Thorley, the acting assistant director of the FBI's office of congressional affairs, said FBI employees are "required to adhere to record keeping policies in place where communications constitute records under the Federal Records Act."

But Thorley said "the FBI is not otherwise obligated to collect and/or retain all communications between its employees."

Comment: If the official material is bad, just imagine what was being sent on Strzok's and Page's personal accounts.

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Fire

UN: Climate change the "single biggest threat to life" on earth - actual pollution not even mentioned

Thomas D. Williams, PhD
Breitbart
Fri, 04 May 2018 18:32 UTC
climate change protest
© ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty
The United Nations Climate Change Secretariat released its first ever annual report this week, in which it held up its "Gender Action Plan" as a key to increasing the participation of women in responding to global warming.

"Climate Change is the single biggest threat to life, security and prosperity on Earth," said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa at the roll-out of the report.

"This annual report shows how UN Climate Change is doing everything it can to support, encourage and build on the global response to climate change," Espinosa said, adding that "UN Climate Change's mandate is to lead and support the global community in this international response, with the Paris Agreement and the Convention being the long-term vehicles for united global climate action."

In his foreword to the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, expressed a similar conviction that global warming poses a singular threat to the world in the third millennium.

"Climate change is the defining challenge of our time," Guterres warned, "yet it is still accelerating faster than our efforts to address it. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are higher than they have been for 800,000 years, and they are increasing. So, too, are the catastrophic effects of our warming planet - extreme storms, droughts, fires, floods, melting ice and rising sea levels."


Comment: It's debatable whether all those effects are due to human causes. And if the earth survived CO2 levels this high 800,000 years ago, perhaps the earth has an inbuilt feedback mechanism to take care of it, as in, an ice-age rebound?

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Stock Up

Ipsos poll finds young British Muslims becoming more liberal - but more religious too

Zack Hassan
UK Independent
Mon, 07 May 2018 17:58 UTC
muslims prayer mat
© Reuters
With the narratives on the topic of Islam turning stale, you'd be forgiven for thinking that nothing was changing. We have all seen critics of Islam and immigration point to conservative social attitudes among Muslims as proof of some deeper problem with Islam, and call on them to integrate.

Muslim apologists, in return, warn about the dangers of Islamophobia, cheer about celebrities like Mohammad Salah and Nadiya Hussein, and reiterate the well-known fact that Muslims consistently identify more strongly with Britain than other Brits do. Other Muslims, like Maajid Nawaz, instead acknowledge there is a problem and propose a "reformation" to address it, to lukewarm reception from everybody else.

So far, so boring. It would be easy to think that there's a straight choice: either be more British by being less Muslim, or be more Muslim while being less British.

So when Ipsos MORI released a review last month of all the major polling data on Muslim social attitudes to date, it's surprising that no one picked up on the significance of its findings. Delve into the detail and what you find is something completely new.

What it showed is that Muslims are becoming more liberal. But what was surprising was that they're not becoming less religious; if anything, the data suggests the opposite. The report noted rising religious observance over the 2005-2009 period, saying "this rise was particularly evident in the younger (16-29) age group (from 68 per cent to 80 per cent)" compared to 73-79 per cent for all Muslims.

Comment: If true, this survey shows some positive trends among second-generation Muslim immigrants. That's not to say conservative critics don't have some valid points, though. The surveys still show that a significant minority support the establishment of an Islamic state - anywhere from 2-7%. That's anywhere from 55,000 to 200,000 UK Muslims. Then again it's probably safe to say that 6% of any population is crazy.

Also, what role the wave of migrants will have is up for debate, in the UK and in Europe as a whole. It doesn't seem likely that their beliefs would match up with second-generation Brits who have lived their entire lives in the country.

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Newspaper

Boy believed to be brain dead revived after parents sign consent for organ donation


RT
Mon, 07 May 2018 18:03 UTC
hospital patient
© Sam Edwards / Getty Images
A miracle occurred as a 13-year-old boy in the US, believed to be brain dead following a traffic accident, was revived after his parents signed consent for organ donation.

The parents were told it would be nearly impossible for their son to recover from his injuries, and that he would most likely be a "vegetable" for the rest of his life. However, as soon as the doctors decided to withdraw life support, he defied all the grim predictions and regained consciousness.

Comment: Also see:
Danish teen wakes from the "dead" just as doctors prepare to harvest her organs

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Treasure Chest

Ten countries hold 74% of the world's total private wealth

Jeff Desjardins
Visual Capitalist
Fri, 04 May 2018 17:50 UTC
10 wealthiest countries

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

According to market research company New World Wealth, the world has accumulated $215 trillion in private wealth, a 12% increase over the last year.

Incredibly, the vast majority of this wealth - about 73.5% - is held by just 10 countries:
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TV

China reportedly censors cartoon star, Peppa Pig as an 'antisocial subculture icon'


RT
Mon, 07 May 2018 17:44 UTC
Peppa Pig
© Huang Zongzhi / Global Look Press
Images of Peppa Pig, the cartoon star of a TV show aimed at children, are reportedly being censored on a popular Chinese video-sharing website, over fears the animated porker is being increasingly used as a 'subversive icon.'

Videos featuring the pink pig have mysteriously disappeared from Chinese website Douyin, according to the Global Times, with suggestions that the cartoon has been blacklisted after becoming a icon for a subversive subculture.

First appearing on British television screens and officially coming to China three years ago, Peppa Pig has reportedly been co-opted by a movement known as Shehuiren - which roughly translates as 'society person', but in online Chinese slang means a person who chooses to be an outcast rejecting any mainstream values cultivated by the ruling party.
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Newspaper

New York's 'Island of the dead' disintegration causes skeletal remains to emerge


Sputnik
Mon, 07 May 2018 17:30 UTC
Mass graves on Hart Island
© AP Photo / Seth WenigMass graves on Hart Island
The biggest mass burial site in the United States appears to be in peril as it continues to disintegrate, disgorging countless skeletal remains in the process.

Hart Island, which is located in New York's Bronx borough and is the site of the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world, recently became the focus of media attention when it became apparent that its ongoing destruction has been causing the dead to literally emerge from their graves.
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Eye 1

Best of the Web: On Silencing RT Forever

Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Mon, 07 May 2018 17:09 UTC
russia today censor
Loyalists of the western empire have been growing increasingly honest about their desire to use censorship and propaganda in order to win an "information war" against Russia.

The other day we saw a Guardian article arguing for the necessity of a coordinated campaign by western governments to "combat Russian disinformation" due to Russia's disinterest in "cooperating to reach a common understanding of the truth", i.e. agree with unproven western accusations and capitulate to the longstanding western agendas those accusations are meant to advance.

Before that, we saw a Defense One article authored by an Atlantic Council official arguing in favor of the creation of a "NATO for Infowar" to propagandize westerners against Russian interests for their own good. The author of this article went so far as to suggest that the Kremlin-backed television channel RT ought to be forbidden to air in western nations.
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Pistol

Armed and ready to fight back: 70yo Philadelphia woman safe after shooting burglar invading her home


CBS Philly
Sat, 05 May 2018 17:21 UTC
maxine thompson shoots burglar
She may be 70-years-old, but Saturday morning Maxine Thompson of the West Poplar section of Philadelphia proved she is one great grandma you don't want to mess with.

Around 4:30 a.m. she heard someone, who turned out to be a 43-year-old man, breaking in her back window.

"Next thing I know I could tell he was inside my house and he was running up the steps," says Maxine Thompson.

She realized this was a home invasion and she was prepared to fight back.

Thompson explains that she took the gun she inherited from her mother off of the nightstand, "I snatched my gun and I started shooting at him and he ran down the steps and I ran down the step behind him and started shooting some more and he jumped out that window back the way he came in."

Comment: Wonder what all those libtards raging about gun-control would say if this was their grandmother?

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Arrow Up

Latest poll shows Russians see return of superpower status as Putin's main achievement in previous term


RT
Mon, 07 May 2018 19:16 UTC
Vladimir Putin
© Moskva News AgencyVladimir Putin attends a concert near the Red Square in Moscow
Russians have named internal stability and the return of superpower status to their country as main achievements of Vladimir Putin's past presidential term, but urged improvement in policies targeting economic inequality.

In the latest poll conducted by an independent Russian public opinion research organization, Levada Center, ordinary Russians were asked what they saw as the main positive result of Putin's work as Russian president during his third term, in 2012-2018. 47 percent of respondents named the "return of superpower status to Russia" as the main achievement of the country's leader.

38 percent said it was the stabilization of the situation in the North Caucasus region, 27 percent named "prevention of the collapse of the Russian Federation," 24 percent mentioned the increase in wages and pensions and 22 percent said it was the continuation of economic reforms in the country.

Comment: See also:

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