Society's ChildS


Pistol

Chicago gun violence skyrockets with nearly 100 victims shot in less than a week

Chicago shooting
© Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago TribuneA member of the Chicago Police Department works the scene of a shooting in the 4200 block of West Grenshaw Street on Aug. 11, 2016, in Chicago.
Nearly 100 people have been shot in Chicago in less than a week, pushing the number of shooting victims so far this year to more than 2,500 — about 800 more than this time last year, according to data kept by the Tribune.

Between last Friday afternoon and early Thursday, at least 99 people were shot in the city, 24 of them fatally. At least nine people were killed on Monday alone, the deadliest day in Chicago in 13 years, according to Tribune data. Among the wounded that day was a 10-year-old boy shot in the back as he played on his front porch in Lawndale. The number of shooting victims in Chicago stood at 2,514 Thursday morning. At this time last year, 1,725 people had been shot. The city has not seen this level of gun violence since the 1990s, a trend the Police Department has blamed on lax gun laws and feuding gang factions.

Over eight hours from Wednesday evening through early Thursday, three people were killed and at least 10 others were wounded in the city.

Arrow Down

Olympics coverage all over the world: Tasteless, sexist, uncivilized

bikini burka
© Antonio Lacerda / European Pressphoto Agency)BBC Africa focused extensively on the uniform choices of the Egyptian and German women’s volleyball squads, labeling their match “Bikini vs Burka.”
A week into the Rio Games, NBC and some other U.S. news outlets have taken a drubbing for a sexist approach to female athletes. But around the world, other media organizations are showing they aren't about to let the Americans win gold, silver and bronze in the foot-in-mouth competition.

The U.S., to be sure, was out of the gate first. There was NBC broadcaster Dan Hicks, who after Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu won gold and set a world record in the 400-meter individual medley, immediately started talking about her husband and coach, calling him "the guy responsible." Next came the Chicago Tribune, which referred to two-time trapshooting medalist Corey Cogdell as "wife of a Bears' lineman" in a headline, rather than using her name.

But then South Korea got in the game. The English-language Korea Times ran a story speculating on the love life of 6-foot-3 Kim Yeon-goung, headlined: "Boyfriend a tall order for 192cm South Korean volleyball star."

Comment: It's not just against women; it's an all-around lack of class and focus on the trivial. Men, women, they're all just pieces of meat, apparently.
It's hard to imagine in earlier and more puritanical times a feature like "36 of the Greatest Summer Olympic Bulges" appearing in a mainstream American magazine, even one as prurient as Cosmopolitan. Yet fashions shift in all things. And a Cosmo slide show that captures and rates the genital endowments of various male athletes almost immediately went viral across social media. Unprintable here, the subheadline even suggests awarding gold medals for exceptional, uh, performance. ...

Women and gay men are assumed to be the audience for these displays. The truth is, everybody's looking. You can judge that by how quickly the image of the shirtless, oil-slicked Pita Taufatofua — the Tongan taekwondo champion with the body of a bendable action figure — as the flag bearer for his country's Olympics delegation not only stole the show at Friday evening's Parade of Nations but also soon enough thereafter stoked the internet.

Much of the commentary after Mr. Taufatofua's later appearance on "Today" wearing traditional Tongan garb focused on the giddiness of the show's female hosts — Hoda Kotb, Natalie Morales and Jenna Bush Hager — as they lasciviously stroked the shiny torso of an athlete who looked ready to be deep-fried.

Yet there was Matt Lauer, stepping forward gingerly to run a finger over the athlete's biceps. (Al Roker, who had eagerly supplied the sunscreen with which his female co-hosts rubbed Mr. Taufatofua, stood flummoxed on the sidelines.)



X

Liberty, equality, fraternity? Cannes bans burqinis from beaches because they 'show allegiance to terrorists'

Burqinis bann
© Tim Wimborne / Reuters
Cannes Mayor David Lisnard has ruled that burqinis, a special Muslim swimsuit that covers the entire body, should be banned on the city's beaches.

"Access to beaches and for swimming is banned to anyone who does not have [bathing apparel] which respects good customs and secularism," his ruling read, as quoted by AFP. "Beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are currently the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order (crowds, scuffles etc) which it is necessary to prevent," it added.

The decree was initially signed on July 28, and is set to remain in force until August 31, French media reported. People who are seen wearing burqinis on the beach will first be verbally told to change their swimwear or leave. If they refuse to comply, they will be fined €38.

Comment: This particular type of Muslim dress is indeed not traditional and comes from Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. If France deems Saudi Arabia a 'terrorist organization' perhaps they should re-evaluate their close ties with the country rather than taking frustrations out on individual people.


Red Flag

850 Brits said to have joined ISIS while 100 have been killed during fighting

isis flag
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
The number of Britons who have joined the ranks of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) or other similar groups has risen to 850, and an estimated 100 of them are thought to have been killed during fighting, it has been reported.

The new figures come after reports that Kadiza Sultana, one of three schoolgirls who left the UK together to join jihadis, was killed by an airstrike in Syria while trying to flee.

Sultana left her east London home during half-term break in February 2015 with friends Shamima Begum and Amira Abase. They flew from Gatwick to Turkey and took a bus to the Syrian border.

The three schoolgirls, aged 15 and 16, were gifted students at Bethnal Green academy, but abandoned their A-Level courses and families to marry jihadis in Syria after being lured by IS propaganda.

Red Flag

Muslim women in UK most economically disadvantaged due to Islamophobia

muslim woman
© Paul Hackett / Reuters
Muslim women are discriminated against in the job market, making them the most economically disadvantaged group in British society, MPs have found.

A report by the Women and Equalities Committee discovered Muslim women are three times more likely to be unemployed and looking for work than women generally, and are more than twice as likely to be economically inactive.

Muslim women were found to face discrimination because of their religion, despite this being illegal under the Equality Act.

The committee suggested Muslim women face a "triple penalty" which hampers their employment prospects - being a woman, being from an ethnic minority and being Muslim.

However religion was found to play the biggest part in their economic disadvantage. "The impact of Islamophobia on Muslim women should not be underestimated," MPs wrote.

Magnify

Inside sources claim Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly censored abusive responses to President Obama

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo
© Getty Images
In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a Q&A session, sources tell BuzzFeed News.

According to these sources, the May 2015 #AskPOTUS town hall came out of Twitter senior leadership's frustration with the fact that platforms like Reddit had become home to celebrity Q&As.

According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision.

According to sources, the decision upset some senior employees inside the company who strictly followed Twitter's long-standing commitment to unfettered free speech.

Stormtrooper

DoJ report reveals systemic racially motivated abuse against African Americans by Baltimore police

police target african americans
© Sait Serkan Gurbuz / Reuters
A routine traffic stop in Baltimore resulted in a woman being strip searched on the sidewalk and her anal cavity checked. After she was let go with a broken taillight citation, the case became one of the dozens of shocking accounts in the DoJ report on the city's police. The Department of Justice released the 163-page report following its 14-month investigation into the practices and procedures of the Baltimore Police Department following the police-involved death of Freddie Gray.

The report said the public strip search of the female driver "found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges... the woman received only a repair order for her headlight. The search occurred in full view of the street." When the woman filed a complaint with the department, her story was corroborated by an investigation. The officer in charge was given a "simple reprimand" and could not serve as an officer in charge until he was "properly trained."

The report contains dozens of disturbing anecdotes of police illegal practices and misconduct and makes for disturbing reading. The report also found in the five and half years of data they examined, African Americans accounted for 95 percent of the 410 people the BPD stopped at least 10 times.

Attention

Bystander effect overload: 140 cars, 82 rickshaws, 181 bikers, 45 pedestrians ignore man on the road hit by truck in India

delhi
© NARESH VEERASWARAPU / YouTube
A man was left to die on the side of the road in India after being hit by a delivery truck, despite being passed by hundreds of people - including a police vehicle. The only person who stopped, a rickshaw driver, ignored the man and stole his phone.

CCTV footage shows that the man - identified only as "Matibool" - was struck by the speeding delivery truck at 5:40 am on Wednesday as he was walking home from an overnight shift as a security guard.

The impact caused the man to fly through the air and land in a nearby gutter.

Although the driver of the truck is seen initially getting out of his vehicle, he then decides to drive away.

As Matibool lays severely injured and bleeding, he is passed by 140 cars, 82 rickshaws, 181 bikers, and 45 pedestrians. He is even passed by an emergency response van used by Delhi police.


Comment: Modern society in a nutshell.


Ark

RT targeted with 'cunning' DDoS attack

DDoS attack
© Kacper Pempel / Reuters
RT has been dealing with a particularly well-planned series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that continued into early Friday. Other than the website, RT's internet provider and data centers in the US, Europe and Russia have been targeted. The latest attack zeroed in on RT's local internet service provider, temporarily causing disruptions for RT.com visitors. We are now resolving the issue to prevent further attacks of the kind.

The attackers were trying to overwhelm the provider's capacity, according to RT's IT specialists. The recent wave of attacks on RT.com started Friday, with IT experts noting that they all seem to be originating from the same source due to the peculiar trends and signature. Moreover, the unknown hackers seem to be smarter than the average DDoSers, knowingly picking their targets and improving methods.

On Tuesday, there was a 2.5-hour attempt to take RT websites down, which came in two phases. The first one targeted RT's American and European data centers, while the second one hit Moscow's infrastructure. The attack did not result in any damage or prolonged service outage, however.

Arrow Down

Bakken pipeline construction to begin despite environmental hazards, destruction of ancestral Native American lands

Bakken protests
© AP / the Bismarck Tribune
Construction on the controversial Bakken pipeline is set to begin any day now, forcing both landowners and Native American tribes in North Dakota to intensify their desperate attempt to protect their land from eminent domain laws.

Twelve people were arrested at a Sioux tribe's protest Thursday after they staged a peaceful protest to keep pipeline construction off of their lands. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation are concerned that the pipeline could potentially contaminate their drinking water and damage sacred lands.

The Bakken pipeline, also known as Dakotas Access Pipeline, rivals the Keystone Pipeline XL in terms of length and has been given the greenlight to begin construction in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Illinois and received federal approval in July.

In an effort to stave off construction, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe staged peaceful protests this week. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a tribal historian at Standing Rock, told AP: "Everybody is nonviolent and peaceful," adding, "We want to hold them back until we can get to court."

Comment: Corporate arrogance: "We Are Enbridge and We Don't Go Around Anything"