Society's ChildS


Sheriff

Lawmakers and cops exposed in massive $800m private prison bribery conspiracy


Free Thought Project
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 15:18 UTC
prisons US
Mississippi sued10 people and 15 corporations this week to recoup more than $800 million in state money lost in a seven-year prison bribery scandal.

Defendants in the 11 lawsuits included former Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps, and former Republican state House Member Cecil McCrory, the key figures in the conspiracy. They and four other people pleaded guilty to their involvement in the conspiracy.

Attorney General Jim Hood says in the lawsuits that multiple corporations, including prominent private prison contractors, paid millions of dollars in bogus "consulting fees" to people who used the money to pay bribes and kickbacks to Epps.
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Newspaper

The western media clearly doesn't care about Russian women

Paul Kaiser
Russia Insider
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 15:07 UTC
Russian women
Stop using women as tool to score cheap political jabs
We don't want to spend too much time on this, because frankly we're reaching "typing to a brick wall"-levels of absurdity.

Russia recently reduced the punishment for first-offense spousal or child abuse from a criminal to a civil one. What this means is that in cases of non-life threatening abuse, the penalty has been changed to a fine. When it was a criminal offense, the abuser could be sent to prison.

What Russian legislators realized is that people don't like sending family members to prison and that police, who in many parts of Russia are not particularly attentive, had no incentive to investigate whether Vlad hit his son or not, if it was reported at all, which returns us to our first point. The fine creates an incentive for police to respond to reports as well as encourages more reports. A win-win.
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People 2

Are gender feminists and transgender activists ignoring science?

Debra W. Soh
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 10 Feb 2017 14:55 UTC
gender neutral bathroom
© Los Angeles TimesStudents pass by a gender neutral bathroom at Santee High School in May of 2016.
In the world of radical identity politics, two groups with very different philosophies have been ignoring science in the name of advancing equality: gender feminists and transgender activists.

Gender feminists — who are distinct from traditional equity feminists — refuse to acknowledge the role of evolution in shaping the human brain, and instead promote the idea that sex differences are caused by a socialization process that begins at birth. Gender, according to them, is a construct; we are born as blank slates and it is parents and society at large that produce the differences we see between women and men in adulthood.

The idea that our brains are identical sounds lovely, but the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Many studies, for instance, have documented the masculinizing effects of prenatal testosterone on the developing brain. And a recent study in the journal Nature's Scientific Reports showed that testosterone exposure alters the programming of neural stem cells responsible for brain growth and sex differences.

Gender feminists often point to a single study, published in 2015, which claimed it isn't possible to tell apart male and female brains. But when a group of researchers reanalyzed the underlying data, they found that brains could be correctly identified as female or male with 69% to 77% accuracy. In another study, published in 2016, researchers used a larger sample in conjunction with higher-resolution neuroimaging and were able to successfully classify a brain by its sex 93% of the time.
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USA

Ignorance: US Tennis Association plays 'Nazi anthem' during German encounter


RT
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 14:56 UTC
Andrea Petkovic.
© Kim Kyung Hoon / ReutersAndrea Petkovic.
The US Tennis Association was left red faced after playing part of the German national anthem used during the Nazi period at the Fed Cup tournament in Hawaii. Germany's Andrea Petkovic described it as "the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

The offensive first stanza has been banned in Germany since the end of the Second World War, but it was precisely those bars that were played during the opening ceremony of the quarter final match on Saturday between the Alison Riske of the US and Germany's Andrea Petkovic.

Riske subsequently beat Petkovic, who described hearing the verse as the "epitome of ignorance."

"I've never felt more disrespected in my whole life, let alone in Fed Cup, and I've played Fed Cup for 13 years now and it is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," she said, stressing "It's 2017 - something like this simply should not happen in the United States."
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Question

Mysterious: Self proclaimed KKK 'imperial wizard' found dead near Missouri river after employer reports him as missing

Nicole Hensley
New York Daily News
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 14:22 UTC
Frank Ancona
© Facebook Frank Ancona, 51, poses with a General Lee car depicted in the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard."
A Ku Klux Klan leader was reportedly found dead under suspicious circumstances near a rural river in Missouri after being reported missing by his employer.

A body discovered on Saturday was identified as Frank Ancona, the self-proclaimed "imperial wizard" of a KKK chapter near St. Louis. The 51-year-old was last seen at his Leadwood home on Wednesday morning, his wife told authorities.
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Network

'Russian hackers' hysteria in US may be extremely profitable - Zakharova


TASS
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 13:41 UTC
The statement came in response to US media reports of Google's warnings about "state-sponsored" hackers trying to steal mail passwords from journalists

Maria Zakharova
© Dmitry Serebryakov/TASS Spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign ministry Maria Zakharova
The hysteria surrounding the so-called "Russian hackers" in the United States may bring millions in profit to those who exploit it, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign ministry Maria Zakharova said commenting on recent media reports about alleged cyberattacks on journalists in the United States.
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Crusader

As construction begins, veterans return to Standing Rock to form human shield to protect DAPL protesters against police

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 12 Feb 2017 08:24 UTC
Military veterans, most of whom are native American, confront police guarding a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on November 30, 2016 outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota
© Getty ImagesMilitary veterans, most of whom are native American, confront police guarding a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on November 30, 2016 outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota
"We are prepared to put our bodies between Native elders and a privatized military force," Elizabeth Williams, a U.S. Air Force veteran, told the Guardian on her decision to come to Standing Rock as a human shield.

Williams and perhaps hundreds of other military veterans are descending on several remaining camps at Cannon Ball, North Dakota, near the banks of the Missouri River's Lake Oahe reservoir in a last stand against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

"This is a humanitarian issue," asserted U.S. Navy veteran Matthew Crane. "We're not going to stand by and let anybody get hurt."

But things could get ugly. They have multiple times in the past.

Indeed, hostilities have increased on every front — the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Council voted to ask water protectors not from the area to go home. A multi-state police force led by the Morton County Sheriff's Department randomly employs violence against water protectors it also wishes would leave.

Comment: See also:

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Nuke

Extremely high radiation breaks down Fukushima clean-up robot at damaged nuclear reactor


RT
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
fukushima reaction cleanup
© Toru Hanai / Reuters
A clean-up mission using a remotely operated robot at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has had to be aborted, as officials feared they could completely lose control of the probe affected by unexpectedly high levels of radiation.

The robot equipped with a high-pressure water pump and a camera designed to withstand up to 1,000 Sieverts of cumulative exposure had been pulled off the inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex earlier this week, The Japan Times reported Friday, citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The device reportedly broke down just two hour into the probe.

The failure led experts to rethink estimated levels of radiation inside the damaged reactor.

Comment: Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist: Fukishima Daiichi Nuclear Facility is a "Ticking Time Bomb"

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Clipboard

Citizens file petition after former cop gets only 3 months for molesting an 8 y.o. girl

Jack Burns
The Free Thought Project
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 22:10 UTC
Gerald Cookus
Former Wilkes-Barre police officer, Gerald Cookus, left, leaves the Luzerne County Courthouse with his attorney.
As The Free Thought Project has consistently reported, police officers, even if they're caught on video committing a crime, are rarely punished to the same standards the public which they're sworn to protect are held to. And now, it seems, even retired police officers are given the same preferential treatment.

Gerald Cookus, a twenty-year veteran of the Wilkes-Barre Police Department in Pennsylvania, was sentenced to just 3 months in prison for admittedly molesting an 8-year-old girl at his home on Mayock Street in Wilkes-Barre.

Cookus, who was working as a greeter at the school known as the Solomon Plains Education Center, was seen by the victim's mom hugging the victim in a way that aroused her suspicions. Upon further investigation, it was discovered Cookus had molested the girl because, in his words, he felt like she liked it.

According to WNEP News, "Court papers show he admitted to police he touched the girl inappropriately because he believed she thought it felt good. School leaders do not think the assaults happened on school grounds. He was fired from his position at Solomon Plains Elementary in November."

News reports indicate the former career police officer was overcome with emotion, "Inside the courtroom, his lawyer told the judge he's living with the loss of his family's respect." And, "Before he was sentenced, Cookus told the judge through tears, 'this is the worst thing in my life and I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry.'" But all of the emotion, the tears, the words of remorse, mean nothing when you examine the research that exists on pedophiles.
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Pirates

Khaled Sharrouf: Australia's anti-terrorism law strips first ISIS fighter of citizenship


RT
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 10:10 UTC
Khaled Sharrouf
© The Sydney Morning HeraldISIS terrorist Khaled Sharrouf
Islamic State terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, whose little son shocked the world by holding up the severed head of a soldier in a picture, has become the first Australian to be stripped of citizenship under the country's anti-terrorism laws, a report says.

A spokeswoman for Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told AAP that a person had been stripped of their Australian citizenship, while declining to name the individual, but the Australian newspaper has identified him as 35-year-old dual-national Sharrouf.

Under a 2015 law, Australia may strip dual nationals of their citizenship if they have carried out terrorist acts or been members of a banned organization.

Sharrouf, the son of Lebanese immigrants, went to fight for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria in 2013, a year after being released from prison for taking part in a terrorist plot.

In 2014, horrifying photographs emerged on Twitter showing Sharrouf and his 7-year-old son holding up the chopped off heads of Syrian soldiers, with the caption "That's my boy!" In 2015, unconfirmed reports emerged claiming that Sharrouf had been killed in a drone strike in Mosul in northern Iraq, but he is still the subject of an active arrest warrant.

Last year, Sharrouf's widow, Tara Nettleton, a mother-of-five who was living in Raqqa with four of her children and one grandchild, died in Syria, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
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