Society's ChildS


Star of David

Israel's High Court has ruled that the IDF can't keep the bodies of slain Palestinians


RT
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 17:03 UTC
Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant during his funeral in Gaza City
© Mohammed Salem / ReutersA mourner reacts as he carries the body of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant during his funeral in Gaza City December 12, 2017
Israel's High Court has ruled that the Israeli military can't keep the bodies of slain Palestinians for prisoner and body swaps. Instead of banning the widely-condemned practice, however, the court gave the Israeli government time to enshrine it in law.

In ruling that bodies cannot serve as bargaining chips, the court acted on a petition filed by families of deceased Palestinians whose remains have been retrieved by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), most recently in October, when IDF destroyed an underground tunnel leading from Gaza to the Israeli city of Negev. Five bodies of Islamic Jihad members were discovered by the Israeli forces at the time and have been held since then.

"The State of Israel, as a nation of laws, cannot hold on to corpses for the purposes of negotiations at a time when there is no specific and explicit law that allows it do so," the court stated in its decision, as cited by the Times of Israel.
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Crusader

FSB raids ISIS cell that planned attacks on Kazan Cathedral & other St. Petersburg landmarks


RT
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 16:30 UTC
Kazan cathedral, Saint Petersburg
© Getty Images
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained suspected members of a terrorist cell linked to Islamic State. A series of weekend bombings was planned in St. Petersburg, with the iconic Kazan Cathedral among the targets.

The attacks were planned to involve "a suicide bomber blowing [himself] up inside a religious facility and the murder of civilians with improvised explosive devises in places of mass gatherings," the FSB statement said.

The cell members were detained overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, the FSB reported. During the raid, law enforcement agents seized "a large amount of explosive materials, elements of IEDs, automatic arms, ammunition and extremist literature." A bomb-making workshop was dismantled as part of the bust.
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Handcuffs

93yo woman arrested, evicted for not paying rent

Adrianna Iwasinski
clickorlando.com
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 06:07 UTC
93 year old woman
Eustis police arrested a 93-year-old woman accused of trespassing after the independent living facility in which she lived reported that she has refused to pay rent for the past three months.

Juanita Fitzgerald, 93, has a birthday coming up Friday. She was held in the Lake County Jail on a $500 bond and has been there since Tuesday. Fitzgerald was released Thursday on her own recognizance, a Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesman said.

Fitzgerald did not have to pay bond but must appear for a Dec. 27 court appearance, officials said.

Karen Twinem, with National Church Residences, which owns the Franklin House where Fitzgerald has lived since April 2011, said Fitzgerald told the staff she held back the rent because she thought she was going to die soon.

Comment: Juanita Fitzgerald is celebrating her 94th birthday and most probably suffering from some degree of age related dementia. It's appalling she would have hand cuffs slapped on her and spend 5 days in the slammer. This is one example of how America takes cakes care of their elderly. Shameful.

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Red Flag

'Wheel estate': Increase in American nomads living in vehicles, working temp jobs - Settled life 'unaffordable'

Jessica Bruder
The Guardian
Sat, 02 Dec 2017 16:00 UTC
homeless
© Bill Hackwell
Millions of Americans are wrestling with the impossibility of a traditional middle-class existence. In homes across the country, kitchen tables are strewn with unpaid bills. Lights burn late into the night. The same calculations get performed again and again, through exhaustion and sometimes tears.

Wages minus grocery receipts. Minus medical bills. Minus credit card debt. Minus utility fees. Minus student loan and car payments. Minus the biggest expense of all: rent. Rising rents are leading Americans to live in cars and other vehicles

In the widening gap between credits and debits hangs a question: which bits of this life are you willing to give up, so you can keep on living?

During three years of research for my book, Nomadland: Surviving America in The Twenty-First Century, I spent time with hundreds of people who had arrived at the same answer. They gave up traditional housing and moved into "wheel estate": RVs, travel trailers, vans, pickup campers, even a salvaged Prius and other sedans. For many, sacrificing some material comforts had allowed them to survive, while reclaiming a small measure of freedom and autonomy. But that didn't mean life on the road was easy.
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Magic Wand

Delusional Cologne mayor thinks she can stop migrant sex attacks with 'respect' wristbands


Voice of Europe
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 15:16 UTC
respect wristbands
As many may know, New Year's Eve 2015 was a disaster for the German city of Cologne. Hundreds of women were sexually assaulted, robbed or raped by large groups of migrant men.

But officials of the city and the police think they have now found a solution. The mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, launched a new campaign, focused on respect yesterday. Wristbands with the text will be distributed throughout the city to prevent new sexual assaults and rapes.

It didn't take long for people to attack the initiative. A social media user asked the city's mayor:

Comment: Leave it to the mayor that blamed the victims for the attacks to think up something so utterly absurd.

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Green Light

Wealthy CEOs Tim Cook and Charles Koch lecture Americans to show 'courage' by welcoming illegal immigrants

Neil Munro
Breitbart
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 12:40 UTC
White House demonstration anti-Trump
© Neil Munro
Americans should have the courage to ignore their written laws, to amnesty DACA illegals and accept an open-borders world, says an op-ed by two wealthy CEOs who stand to gain more wealth in a labor market flooded by low-wage migrants.

The op-ed by Tim Cook (CEO of Apple, wealth $800 million and growing) and Charles Koch (Koch Industries, $49 billion and growing) was posted in the Washington Post newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon, $98 billion and growing). Under the headline "Congress must act on the 'dreamers,'" it declared:
We must do better. The United States is at its best when all people are free to pursue their dreams. Our country has enjoyed unparalleled success by welcoming people from around the world who seek to make a better life for themselves and their families, no matter what their backgrounds ... each successive generation - including, today, our own - must show the courage to embrace that diversity and to do what is right.

Comment: As we commented here:

The very-conservatives want all illegal immigrants gone now. The very-liberals want all illegal immigrants to stay, and more to come. Both are unrealistic, so a compromise of some sort is probably the only way to go, and focusing on the very-criminal element in the illegal immigrant population sounds like a safe bet - if they can actually get results and not just deport a bunch of jay-walkers.

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Quenelle

Ultra-liberal feminists don't speak for all women

Lauren DeBellis Appell
Fox News
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 13:21 UTC
Sarah Sanders Trump anti-islamist tweets
© AP / Alex Bandon
The days of ultra-liberal feminists in the media and Hollywood brainwashing women into believing they speak for the majority of us are coming to an abrupt and final end.

Conservative women have increasingly risen to more prominent positions with larger platforms and louder microphones, making it harder for their voices to be drowned out by the shrieks of the extreme liberal women.

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski erupted in hysterics on "Morning Joe" Tuesday, demanding all women who work in the White House - including the President Trump's daughter, Ivanka - turn their backs on the president over a tweet he sent in response to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., calling on him to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct. The president fired back saying that Gillibrand would do anything for campaign contributions.
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USA

Psycho cop smashes handcuffed woman's face into pavement (VIDEO)

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 15 Dec 2017 13:21 UTC
police brutality woman coldwater michigan
Last July, Tiffany McNeil would walk into the Branch County Jail in handcuffs only to leave in a stretcher moments later after being brutally assaulted by a police officer and knocked unconscious.

What happened while McNeil, 31, was being processed into jail that fateful day is now the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging that police used excessive force and then lied about what happened. The incident-in which a half dozen cops stood by and watched their brother in blue smash a handcuffed woman's face into the pavement-was also captured on video.

"It was absolutely egregious, disgusting, thug-like conduct," McNeil's attorney, Solomon Radner, said. "You don't expect that from police officers, and it shouldn't be tolerated."
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Stock Down

2017 was a bad year for Facebook, 2018 not looking much better

Leonid Bershidsky
Bloomberg
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 08:00 UTC
Mark zuckerberg
© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Facebook is projected to boost sales by 46 percent and double net income, but make no mistake: It had a terrible year. Despite its financial performance, the social media giant is facing a reckoning in 2018 as regulators close in on several fronts.

The main issue cuts to the core of the company itself: Rather than "building global community," as founder Mark Zuckerberg sees Facebook's mission, it is "ripping apart the social fabric." Those are the words of Chamath Palihapitiya, the company's former vice president of user growth. He doesn't allow his kids to use Facebook because he doesn't want them to become slaves to "short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops."

Palihapitya's criticism echoes that of Facebook's first president, Sean Parker: "It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."

Facebook has reacted nervously to Palihapitya's accusations, saying he hadn't worked at the company for a long time (he left in 2011) and wasn't aware of Facebook's recent initiatives. But I can't see any practical manifestations of these efforts as a user who has drastically cut back on social networking this year for the very reasons cited by Parker and Palihapitya.

To outsiders and regulators, Facebook looks like a dangerous provider of instant gratification in a space suddenly vital to the health of society. It's also making abuse and aggression too easy -- something the U.K. Committee on Standards in Public Life pointed out in a report published on Wednesday. Sounding one of the loudest alarm bells on social media yet, the panel urged the prime minister to back legislation to "shift the balance of liability for illegal content to the social media companies."

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Almost 5 million Americans default on their student loans

Zoe Papadakis
Newsmax
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 15:20 UTC
student loans balloon
© Clement Greenberg/Dreamstime
Student loan defaults hit nearly five million in the third quarter, a doubling from four years ago, The Wall Street Journal reported, or about 13 percent of outstanding loans.

While the overall U.S. economy has enjoyed steady growth and notched its quickest pace in three years, according to Reuters, there has been a sharp decline in payments made towards federal student loans among those leaving schools in the past three years.

Data released by the Education Department shows that the number of students who have not made payment in the last year has grown by nearly 274,000 in the third quarter alone, the Journal said.

The statistics mark a reversal of half a decade's worth of decline in new defaults, with 580,671 reported defaults among the five million people from 6,173 schools who began repaying their student loans in Oct. 2013, The Washington Post said.

The Journal said that by the end of the quarter defaulted student loans totaled $84 billion - which is around 13 percent of the reported $631 billion required to be paid back.

Comment: See also:

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