Society's ChildS


Eye 1

3,000 bodies found at Mexican drug cartel extermination site

Roger Baird
International Business Times
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:34 UTC
mass grave Mexico.
© ReutersA mass grave in Mexico.
A burial ground holding the dumped remains of 3,000 suspected drug cartel murder victims has been unearthed in northern Mexico.

The gruesome find in the country's Coahuila state contained thousands of skeletal remains, teeth, bullet casings and boots that had been "cooked with acid" and broken up with shovels.

The area was uncovered by Victims for their Rights in Action (Vida), a pressure group representing the families of the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing as a result of drug violence in the Central American nation.
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Video

TIME person of the year finalists followed a disturbing trend - most were anti-Trump

Benny Johnson
The Daily Caller
Mon, 04 Dec 2017 18:50 UTC
time person year
© Screenshot/MSNBC
Time Magazine has released its finalists for person of the year in 2017 Monday morning. It seems the easiest way to make the list is to be apart of the "Resistance."

President Trump was one of the ten finalists on the list. However, the vast majority of the finalists for person of the year have something very interesting common: they are combative opponents to POTUS. At least six of the finalists on the list have gone on the record against the president for a diverse range of issues.

Comment: The winner(s): the women of #MeToo. Which just demonstrates how pervasive social hysteria can be. That's not to say there's nothing to the issue, however. Some of the accusations are pretty serious. For example, the TIME piece on the winners describes Selma Blair's story:
Other women, like the actor Selma Blair, weathered excruciating threats. Blair says she arrived at a hotel restaurant for a meeting with the independent film director James Toback in 1999 only to be told that he would like to see her in his room. There, she says, Toback told her that she had to learn to be more vulnerable in her craft and asked her to strip down. She took her top off. She says he then propositioned her for sex, and when she refused, he blocked the door and forced her to watch him masturbate against her leg. Afterward, she recalls him telling her that if she said anything, he would stab her eyes out with a Bic pen and throw her in the Hudson River.

Blair says Toback lorded the encounter over her for decades. "I had heard from others that he was slandering me, saying these sexual things about me, and it just made me even more afraid of him," Blair says in an interview with TIME. "I genuinely thought for almost 20 years, He's going to kill me." (Toback has denied the allegations, saying he never met his accusers or doesn't remember them.)
But there are problems with the whole movement too. How many of the accusations are false or misleading? What are the consequences of lumping all of the accused together, when guilt has not been established? And is it really helpful to include serious allegations side by side others that amount to littler more than potentially inappropriate behavior or language (like "talking about sex" in front of someone)?

While #MeToo was TIME's choice, their readers picked Mohammed bin Salman, who scored 24% of the vote. (#MeToo came in second, with 6%.)

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Bizarro Earth

Judge protects Jeffrey Epstein, won't allow damning evidence in child rape trial

Rachel Blevins
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:41 UTC
A judge has warned that he will limit the "graphic, sexual questions" in a case against convicted sex offender and child predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein
When a convicted sex offender appears in court over a lawsuit filed on behalf of three of the many women he assaulted when they were young girls, it is assumed that his actions will be examined in detail, and the content will be graphic.

However, in the case of a lawsuit filed against billionaire Wall Street hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein, 64, the judge presiding over it has declared that when it comes to "graphic, sexual questions, the likelihood is that I will not allow them into evidence."

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Donald Hafele already ruled in favor of Epstein when he agreed to delay the next hearing in the 8-year-old civil lawsuit until March 2018, according to a report from the Palm Beach Post. Now, the idea that he won't allow "graphic, sexual questions" in a lawsuit over sexual misconduct is ludicrous.

Comment:

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Cult

Pope Francis calls for status quo to be preserved in Jerusalem


RT
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:32 UTC
pope francis
© Remo Casilli / Reuters
Pope Francis says he cannot remain silent about a White House plan to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The head of the Holy See called for the city's "status quo" to be respected, adding the US move could exacerbate "cruel conflicts."

Weighing in on the controversial decision, the pontiff made a "heartfelt appeal" to all nations to "respect [Jerusalem's] status quo, in conformity with the pertinent United Nations resolutions,"as cited by Vatican Radio.

The leader of the Catholic Church said he "cannot keep silent" about the brewing conflict over Jerusalem's status. Describing the city as "holy for Jews, Christians and Muslims, who venerate the holy sites of their respective religions," the Pope said Jerusalem enjoys a unique status that should be preserved.

"I pray to the Lord that its identity is preserved and strengthened for the benefit of the Holy Land, the Middle East and the whole world and that wisdom and prudence prevail to prevent new elements of tension from being added to a global context already convulsed by so many cruel conflicts."

Comment: Also See:

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Red Flag

French court orders Paris halal grocery store to shut down for not selling pork and alcohol


RT
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 18:21 UTC
halal
© Loic Venance / AFP
A French court has ordered a halal grocery store in Paris to shut down because it did not sell pork and alcohol, and failed to cater for the needs of the customers.

The Court of Nanterre ruled on Monday that the "Good Price" mini-market in Colombes failed to comply with the conditions of its lease, according to which the grocery must act as a "general food store," La Liberation reported.

The court ordered the termination of the store's lease and the eviction of the tenants. In addition, the owner must pay €4,000 to the local authority in respect of legal costs.

The court ruled that the owner of the store had failed to meet "the needs of all inhabitants of the residential area." The products that the shop stocked were "restrictive and did not fit the broad concept of general goods," it added.
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Oscar

Best of the Web: (Not satire) And the winner of TIME's 2017 'Person of the Year' award goes to... Hollywood celebrity supporters of #MeToo!


The Independent with Sott Commentary
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 19:00 UTC
NBC show time metoo
© NBC
'This is the fastest moving social change we have seen in decades,' says Time editor-in-chief

The Hollywood abuse "silence breakers" have been named as Time magazine's 2017 Person of the Year.

The decision to grant people who have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct with the accolade was announced on NBC's Today show on Wednesday morning.

The award is decided by Time's editors and goes to the person or group who has had the most influence on the year's news for better or worse.

"This is the fastest moving social change we have seen in decades," Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal told the programme.

"It began with individual acts of courage by hundreds of women - and some men, too - who came forward to tell their own stories".
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Red Flag

Users of popular virtual keyboard app for smartphones have private data exposed online


RT
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:42 UTC
smartphone
© AItype / YouTube
More than 31 million users of a popular virtual keyboard app AI.type, have had their private data exposed online, including email addresses, passwords, dates of birth and details from Google accounts, as well as actual text entered using the keyboard.

AI.type is an onscreen keyboard with 40 million users. It has a free and paid version, and, according to its privacy policy, users who have the free version have more of their data collected. The company uses this to sell advertising, ZDnet reports.

The breach occurred when the company failed to secure the server with a password, leaving it exposed to hackers. It was uncovered by Kromtech Security Center researchers. AI.type is owned by Eitan Fitsui, who acknowledged the breach but didn't comment further.

"Theoretically, it is logical that anyone who has downloaded and installed the Ai.Type virtual keyboard on their phone has had all of their phone data exposed publicly online," Bob Diachenko of Kromtech told ZDNet. "This presents a real danger for cyber criminals who could commit fraud or scams using such detailed information about the user."
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Handcuffs

Border detentions at lowest level in decades, agents making more arrests far from the border


RT
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:33 UTC
border agents
© Henry A. Barrios / Global Look Press
President Donald Trump made building a wall on the southern US border the centerpiece of his election campaign. But new data shows border detentions are at the lowest level in several decades.

"Build that wall" was a common chant at rallies in support of Trump, but border crossings are decreasing and US Border Patrol made only 310,531 arrests - a 25 percent decline from the 415,816 in 2016 and the fewest in 45 years, new data shows.

When a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders if that figure undermined the need for the wall, she responded, "I think it shows the effectiveness of the Trump presidency, and another success story as we wrap up the year."

While arrests near the US-Mexico border have declined, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Removal Operations (ERO) have drastically increased immigrant roundups far away from the crossings. The agencies carried out 143,470 arrests and 226,119 removals - a 37 percent increase since Trump's inauguration in January, compared to the same period in 2016.
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Target

Youtube to hire 10,000 moderators to remove 'extremist' content


RT
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 05:02 UTC
bloody youtube logo
© Jenny Tobien / Global Look Press
YouTube will dedicate more than 10,000 staff to tackle "bad actors" who are using the Google-owned video hosting platform to distribute extremist and disturbing content, as well as to "mislead, manipulate, harass and harm" viewers.

"In the last year, we took action to protect our community against violent or extremist content, testing new systems to combat emerging and evolving threats," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in an article in the Telegraph.

The video sharing website overhauled its policies to restrict what type of content can appear while investing heavily in machine learning technology which takes down videos and comments that violate its policies.

Comment: It's about time:

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Cloud Precipitation

Russian navy temporarily suspends search for Argentine sub due to bad weather


TASS
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 17:07 UTC
sub search
© AP Photo/Vicente Robles
Russian military sailors have suspended combing the seabed in the area of the search for the sunken Argentine submarine San Juan due to bad weather, Russia's Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday.

"The Russian military sailors taking part in the search for the missing submarine San Juan have suspended the dives of remote controlled submersibles due to the deterioration of weather conditions in the search area," the ministry said in a statement.

"At present, the sea disturbance is three-four points, which prevents the dives of the unmanned submersible vehicle Pantera Plus from aboard the Argentine Navy's sea tug Islas Malvinas," the statement says.

Over the time of their participation in the search effort off the Argentine coast, specialists of the Russian Navy's rescue detachment have made six submersions to depths of 125-970 meters to survey the detected anomalies of the seabed. The descent capsule Pantera Plus helped detect and categorize a fishing trawler and a concrete massif.

Comment: The sub went missing 3 weeks ago. So far, it hasn't been found. Are we looking at the underwater equivalent of MH370? Or is it normal to be unable to trace a downed submarine?

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