Society's ChildS


Biohazard

Inclusion on Forbes' rich list 'now seen as toxic' by wealthy Russians

Marc Bennetts
The Guardian
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 18:13 UTC
Roman Abramovich
© Alastair Grant/APRoman Abramovich was estimated to have lost $60m from his $9bn fortune in the 24 hours after the ‘Putin list’ was published.
Wealthy Russians now view inclusion on the Forbes list of the world's richest people as toxic, rather than a cause for bragging rights, the magazine has said, after the US treasury department used it to compile its own "name and shame" list of Kremlin-linked oligarchs.

RBK, a Russian newspaper, reported on Wednesday that the business people included on the "Putin list" had lost a combined total of $1.06bn (£750m) in the 24 hours after its publication.

The biggest losses were reportedly incurred by Vagit Alekperov, the owner of Lukoil, Russia's biggest privately owned oil company, who lost $226m. Alekperov's total wealth is estimated by Forbes at more than $14bn. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, lost $60m from his total fortune of about $9bn, RBK reported, using figures compiled by Forbes.

"The Forbes list has been transformed from a list of vanity into a list of toxicity," wrote Nikolai Mazurin, the editor-in-chief of Forbes' Russian edition. He complained that some wealthy Russians who had previously been happy to speak to the magazine were now giving it the cold shoulder.
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Handcuffs

Moscow court convicts ex-governor with ties to Aleksey Navalny of large-scale bribery


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 17:27 UTC
Nikita Belykh
© Maksim Blinov / SputnikFormer governor Nikita Belykh is being escorted to the court room
A court in Moscow has convicted Nikita Belykh, a former governor of Russia's Kirov Region, of large-scale bribery over a 2016 incident, in which he was detained while accepting €400,000 in cash from businessmen.

The ruling on Belykh's conviction was announced in Presnensky District Court on Thursday afternoon. The sentence is expected to be pronounced later in the day, with prosecutors demanding 10 years in prison and a 100 million ruble fine ($1.75 million) for the ex-official.

The case against Belykh began in June 2016, after the then-governor was detained in the process of receiving a €400,000 (over $440,000) cash bribe in a Moscow restaurant. Investigators suspected the bribe was intended as payment for including two local companies - a ski factory and a forest-management firm - in a federal investment program as priority projects. During the investigation, more instances of bribery were uncovered, bringing the total amount of received funds to €600,000 ($745,000).
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Red Flag

UK watchdog warns British values being 'undermined' by Islamic extremists


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 17:21 UTC
schoolchildren
© Klaus Vedfelt / Getty
British values are being "actively undermined" by Islamic extremists using schools as a means of "indoctrinating impressionable minds," the chief of UK watchdog Ofsted warns.

Amanda Spielman, head of Ofsted, is calling on teachers not to shy away from reproaching religious fundamentalists who are trying to brainwash pupils and cut them off from society.

"Ofsted inspectors are increasingly brought into contact with those who want to actively pervert the purpose of education," she is expected to tell a Church of England school conference on Thursday.

"Under the pretext of religious belief, they use education institutions, legal and illegal, to narrow young people's horizons, to isolate and segregate, and in the worst cases to indoctrinate impressionable minds with extremist ideology."

Comment: One wonders just what British "values" are being undermined. Perhaps the values that led to colonialism, slavery, genocide, class warfare and xenophobia? Plenty of elite Brits would hate for those values to go away.

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Eye 1

Bisexual 'neo-Nazi' accused of plotting machete attack on LGBT Pride event


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:47 UTC
Ethan Stables
© Friends & Supporters of the Furness LGBT Community / FacebookEthan Stables
A bisexual far-right terrorism suspect accused of plotting a deadly machete attack on a LGBT Pride event became interested in Nazis after visiting his girlfriend in Germany, a court heard.

Ethan Stables, 20, is alleged to have planned to kill people at a gay pride demonstration in Barrow, Cumbria, last June. He denies preparing an act of terrorism and threats to kill, and says he is not homophobic but was just trying to impress his friends.
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Arrow Down

Number of people in US and Canada who check Facebook every day dropped for first time ever

Matt Rosoff
CNBC
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:32 UTC
facebook censorship
The number of people in the U.S. and Canada who check Facebook every day dropped between the third and fourth quarter of 2017, the first such quarterly drop in company history.

Facebook usage in North America has been largely flat for the last several years, leaving international growth to pick up the slack. But the drop suggests that Facebook usage has reached a saturation point in its first and most lucrative market, and could foretell similar usage drops around the world.

The drop could also be a result of a steady drumbeat of negative press about Facebook, including concern over foreign governments using Facebook posts to divide the U.S. electorate during the 2016 election season, and growing concern over violent and other inappropriate content on the site.

Comment: Americans are probably coming to realize how much Facebook is part of the mainstream media machine and tries to control how they think through its cryptic feed algorithm, plus their obvious censoring of content that is not part of mainstream thought. Time to move on to more free social media sites like VK.

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Russian Flag

'Insufficient' evidence: IOC overturns 28 Russian athletes' ban from Olympics in groundbreaking ruling


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 15:44 UTC
russian athlete celebrating
© Phil Noble / Reuters
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has cleared 28 Russian athletes and dropped their life-bans over alleged doping. Their results have been reinstated and the athletes are eligible to compete in the 2018 Winter Games.

"Both CAS panels unanimously found that the evidence put forward by the IOC in relation to this matter did not have the same weight in each individual case," the statement from the Lausanne-based international body said.

According to the ruling, in 28 cases filed by the Russian athletes the evidence was "insufficient" to establish that "an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) was committed by the athletes."

"With respect to these 28 athletes, the appeals are upheld, the sanctions annulled and their individual results achieved in Sochi 2014 are reinstated," it said.

Comment: The IOC's reaction to having their ruling overturned was "regrets" the successful appeal by the athletes. Of course they do, since they were just following orders in the Western cultural war against Russia. Meanwhile, the athletes who won their appeals are "overwhelmed".

Keep in mind that among the Russian athletes banned who have since been cleared is Russian gold medalist Alexander Legkov who was one of the most controversial banned athletes, as no scratches were found on his doping kits and no salt was discovered in his probes. Kriukov was not mentioned in the McLaren report and has never tested positive for banned drugs. Imagine the stress of being banned for doing nothing wrong. Elite athletes pour their heart and soul into training and competing, and then to be tarnished as a cheater unfairly must be incredibly distressing. The relief is certainly palpable.

This ruling has righted another wrong; the Sochi medal count has now been altered in light of the CAS ruling and Russia is back at first overall. The West tried to diminish Russia's athletic achievements, and like most of what they do against Russia, it failed.

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Eye 1

Facebook desperately trying to entice inactive users back

Sarah Frier
Bloomberg
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 14:48 UTC
Facebook losing users
© Khylin Woodrow
The social network is getting aggressive with people who don't log in often, working to keep up its engagement numbers.

It's been about a year since Rishi Gorantala deleted the Facebook app from his phone, and the company has only gotten more aggressive in its emails to win him back. The social network started out by alerting him every few days about friends that had posted photos or made comments-each time inviting him to click a link and view the activity on Facebook. He rarely did.

Then, about once a week in September, he started to get prompts from a Facebook security customer-service address. "It looks like you're having trouble logging into Facebook," the emails would say. "Just click the button below and we'll log you in. If you weren't trying to log in, let us know." He wasn't trying. But he doesn't think anybody else was, either.

"The content of mail they send is essentially trying to trick you," said Gorantala, 35, who lives in Chile. "Like someone tried to access my account so I should go and log in."

Comment:

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Christmas Tree

San Francisco to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions which will "right so many wrongs"


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:36 UTC
San Francisco to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions
The San Francisco district attorney's office has begun a process to expunge weed-related convictions from thousands of criminal records.

At a media conference Wednesday, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon estimated that his office will immediately dismiss 3,038 marijuana-related misdemeanors and begin reviewing another 4,940 marijuana-related felonies to be reclassified as misdemeanors.

"Today I'm announcing that the San Francisco District Attorney's Office proactively will be dismissing misdemeanor cases, sealing the records of those who were convicted for marijuana offenses," Gascon said.

Comment: The 'war on drugs' has been abused since its inception and has essentially been a massive money maker for nefarious groups and as an excuse to demonize particular sections of society:

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X

Maryland: Two women beat kids, locked them up and made them eat dog feces, say investigators

Rose Velazquez
Delmarva Now
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 09:23 UTC
Home of women charged with multiple counts of child abuse
© Todd DudekHome of women charged with multiple counts of child abuse.
Three children in Mardela Springs were beaten and reportedly locked up and fed bread and water, oatmeal and sometimes dog feces, authorities said Wednesday.

Two women were arrested Wednesday and charged with multiple counts of child abuse involving the children in their custody.

Amanda R. Wright, 29, and Besline Joseph, 25, of Norris Twilley Road in Mardela Springs, were charged in the case.

Investigators determined the three victims, ages 8, 9 and 10, lived with Wright and her live-in girlfriend, Joseph.

Comment: Any case of child abuse is disturbing to the extreme, but it seems odd that a number of these extreme cases have been popping up in the news lately. See:

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Attention

Indian cleric 'forbids' Muslim women from checking out luscious 'footballer thighs'


RT
Thu, 01 Feb 2018 14:43 UTC
Turkey's and Switzerland's soccer players
© Pascal Lauener / ReutersTurkey's and Switzerland's soccer players run with the ball on a rain soaked the pitch during their Group A Euro 2008 soccer match at St Jakob Park in Basel, June 11, 2008.
A senior cleric at one of the world's largest Sunni Muslim seminaries has issued a religious decree saying that Muslim women should not watch men playing football - even on television.

Mufti Athar Kasmi, from India's Darul Uloom Islamic School, said that women who watch men "playing with bare knees" violate Islamic doctrine.

"Why do women need to watch these football matches? What [will they] gain by looking at footballer's thighs? Their attention will be on that only and they will even miss the scores," Kasmi said, as cited by the Times of India.
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