Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

FBI harasses Muslims in 8 states ahead of election day


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 14:31 UTC
American Muslims
© Stephanie Keith / Reuters
American Muslims in eight states have been contacted by the FBI in recent days to answer a series of questions regarding any connections to Al-Qaeda leaders or knowledge of any terror plots, a civil rights group said

Officials with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights organization for Muslims in the US, said that over the weekend, FBI agents visited the homes of Muslim-Americans in California, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington to ask if the individuals knew certain Al-Qaeda leaders killed in a recent US airstrike and if they knew anyone planning to harm Americans domestically or abroad, among other questions, according to CAIR reports and the Washington Post.

"The FBI actions . . . to conduct a sweep of American Muslim leaders the weekend before the election is completely outrageous and . . . borderline unconstitutional," Hassan Shibly, executive director of CAIR-Florida, told the Post. "That's the equivalent of the FBI visiting churchgoing Christians because someone overseas was threatening to blow up an abortion clinic. It's that preposterous and outrageous."
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Bulb

What an idea! Denver police to give city jobs to homeless people

Alanna Ketler
Collective Evolution
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 14:37 UTC
men clapping
Over the next year, the city of Denver, Colorado will try something new. While some people will consider this outrageous, others will wonder why we've never tried this before: the city will make paying jobs available to the hundreds of homeless people without jobs.

The Denver Day Works Program started November 1st and is expected to run until next October. The program will offer day-by-day jobs to the people who are currently living on the streets. The work will be for the city and will include park maintenance, planting trees, and clearing snow.

Spokesperson for Denver Human Services, Julie Smith said: "We want it to be low to no barriers. No background checks. Do you want to work? We're going to put you to work today."

"The goal is to engage about 300 people," said Jenna Espinoza, spokesperson for the Mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock. The city is hoping that about half of those people will participate regularly and that eventually some of those people will move on to more permanent long-term jobs with the city of Denver, or elsewhere.
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Eye 1

Quebec police caught tapping the phones of reporters

Chris "Kikila" Perrin
Underground Reporter
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 14:31 UTC
surveillance
In what can only be described as a case that defies the idea of freedom of the press, CTV News reported this week that the Sureté du Quebec (SQ; the Quebec Provincial Police) has been tapping the phones of reporters. That they were doing so in an effort to uncover which officers have been leaking information, however, indicates that this surveillance greatly undermines the bounds of civil liberties.

Problematically, this is not the first time police in the province of Quebec have been caught spying on the press — it is only the first time that the provincial police have been implicated.

Earlier in 2016, a new report found that the SPVM (or Montreal Police) were spying on and surveilling a reporter for La Presse. This, they reasoned, was in an effort to uncover which one of their fellow officers was passing information to the press. Moreover, the practice seems long-standing with Montreal police as a similar program, with similar motives, was ongoing as early as 2014. Since then, the undermining of the free press has become broader in scope.
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Clipboard

State officials prepare for election day chaos

William Wan and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 13:42 UTC
voters
© MATT BARNARD/Tulsa WorldEarly voters line up outside the Hardesty Regional Library in Tulsa, Okla., on Thursday, November 3, 2016.
State leaders, voting experts and advocates say they are preparing for an unusual level of confusion and chaos Tuesday as voters cast their ballots in a historically bitter presidential race.

Early voters in some states have faced hours-long lines the past several days. Democrats have filed a flurry of last-minute lawsuits alleging voter intimidation by Donald Trump supporters. And there have been some heated polling site confrontations between Trump voters and Hillary Clinton backers.

Election monitors are especially worried this year about the specter of voter intimidation after calls by the Republican candidate for his supporters to stake out polling places and watch for fraud.

Election officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona have become so concerned in recent days about potential intimidation that they issued advisories spelling out what types of threatening behavior are banned and the exact dimensions of buffer zones surrounding polling places.
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MIB

Teachers assume role of Big Brother, spy on thousands of schoolchildren without their knowledge


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 13:48 UTC
UK schoolchildren
© Luke MacGregor / Reuters
At least 1,000 schools have installed software that allows teachers to monitor their students' internet activity, but most schools have failed to inform youngsters that they are being watched. According to a report by civil liberties watchdog Big Brother Watch, several secondary schools in England and Wales have installed the Classroom Management Software in more than 821,000 devices owned by the institutions and by pupils themselves.

The tool can allow teachers to monitor the screens on every single desktop in the classroom, as well as access the students' internet browsing history and alert staff of "signs of extremism and radicalization." Campaigners were shocked to find that of the few institutions (149) able to provide Acceptable Use policies on their management of the software, over 80 percent did not give detailed information on the monitoring process.
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Handcuffs

German politician appeals sentence for Nazi tattoos, receives harsher punishment instead


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 13:41 UTC
Marcel Zech tattoos
© alexander.marguier / Facebook
A German politician who landed in hot water after being caught with tattoos of a Nazi slogan and the notorious Auschwitz death camp has appealed his sentence - but instead of receiving a lesser punishment, he received a more severe one.

Far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) politician Marcel Zech, 28, received an eight-month jail sentence at a district court in Neuruppin on Monday, after being found guilty of public incitement caused by his tattoos of a Nazi slogan and Auschwitz.

The ruling, passed down during Zech's appeal, is harsher than the six-month suspended sentence originally given to the politician in December 2015.

Following the ruling, Judge Jörn Kalbow told DPA news agency that a lesser sentence could have been interpreted as "the state backing down in the fact of right-wing radicalism."
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Arrow Up

Jury awards Michigan police brutality victim $36.6 million


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 10:00 UTC
Cops
© PoliceCenter / YouTube
The victim of a brutal police beating has been awarded $36.6 million in mostly punitive damages after a jury found five Genesee County Sheriff's officers used excessive force.

William Jennings, 42, was arrested in Michigan for driving drunk in September 2010. When he was going through intake at Genesee County Jail, things quickly went from standard procedure to a takedown by police. Thrown to the floor, Jennings was then beaten by the officers.

Comment: See also: Video shows callous officer stand and watch as 16-yo girl gasped for air and died right in front of him

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X

Popular with the crowds: FBI building and Trump hotel vandalized by demonstrators

Darcy Spencer and Gina Cook
NBC Washington
Sat, 05 Nov 2016 21:55 UTC
FBI Vandalized
Two men participating in the Million Mask March in Washington, D.C., have been arrested for vandalizing federal property and the Trump International Hotel, police say.

D.C. police officers found several buildings and sidewalks in the area had been vandalized with spray paint, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, and the Trump hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, about 11:15 a.m. Saturday.

A neon green "X" covered the FBI emblem, and the word "corrupt" and images of masks were spray-painted on sidewalks and a column at the FBI building. At the hotel, someone spray-painted the steps and the message, "We Suck," near the entrance. The front doors of the hotel also have scratch marks, according to the police.



A Metropolitan Police Department cruiser was also damaged by demonstrators, police said.

Eric Roberts, 27, of Florida, was arrested and charged with defacing government property and resisting arrest. Police said they confiscated several cans of spray paint and stencils from Roberts.

Police also arrested Danny Hamilton, 35, of Louisiana, and charged him with destruction of D.C. government property and resisting arrest.

It wasn't immediately clear if they had attorneys to represent them.

Thousands were protesting capitalism in the Million Mask March in cities throughout the world, according to activist network Anonymous. Marchers are wearing maskes "to protest corruption, censorship, inequality and war," Anonymous said on Twitter.
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Solar Flares

Coincidence? Massive solar event expected for - election day?

Melissa Dykes
SHTFplan
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 00:00 UTC
coronal mass ejection
Just Weeks After Obama's Executive Order on Catastrophic Space Weather Events, a Coronal Mass Ejection Is Set to Hit on Election Day


Comment: See: New Executive Order points to devastating space event, unprecedented government response - and public's lack of preparedness


This has already been the craziest election in the history of the country, with the most overt corruption and fraud the American people have likely ever seen.

Now, on top of everything else that's scheduled to go down tomorrow, it is being projected that a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) is set to hit Earth tomorrow, and not just hit earth but a direct hit is in our forecast.


Comment: spaceweather.com states:
'CANYON OF FIRE' OPENS, SPITS A CME TOWARD EARTH: Yesterday, Nov. 5th, a filament of magnetism in the sun's northern hemisphere became unstable and erupted.

[...]

The glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the sun's surface. From end to end, the structure stretches more than 200,000 km--a real Grand Canyon.

Fragments of the exploding filament formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun faster than a million mph: movie. NOAA analysts have modeled the trajectory of the CME and concluded that it will probably strike Earth's magnetic field on Nov. 8th. The impact could spark G1-class geomagnetic storms and auroras at high latitudes.
A G1-class geomagnetic storm is considered minor (but how accurate any of this is a good guess)

Power systems: Weak power grid fluctuations can occur.

Spacecraft operations: Minor impact on satellite operations possible.


According to Space Weather Live, "A coronal mass ejection (or CME) is a giant cloud of solar plasma drenched with magnetic field lines that are blown away from the Sun during strong, long-duration solar flares and filament eruptions."

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Chess

Chris Hedges: Defying the politics of fear

Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com
Sun, 06 Nov 2016 00:37 UTC
vote
Chris Hedges gave this talk Saturday evening at a rally in Philadelphia for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka.

No social or revolutionary movement succeeds without a core of people who will not betray their vision and their principles. They are the building blocks of social change. They are our only hope for a viable socialism. They are willing to spend their lives as political outcasts. They are willing to endure repression. They will not sell out the oppressed and the poor. They know that you stand with all of the oppressed—people of color in our prisons and marginal communities, the poor, unemployed workers, our LGBT community, undocumented workers, the mentally ill and the Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans whom we terrorize and murder—or you stand with none of the oppressed. They know when you fight for the oppressed you get treated like the oppressed. They know this is the cost of the moral life, a life that is not abandoned even if means you are destined to spend generations wandering in the wilderness, even if you are destined to fail.

I was in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1989 during the revolutions, or in the case of Romania an interparty putsch. These revolutions were spontaneous outbursts by an enraged population that had had enough of communist repression, mismanagement and corruption. No one, from the dissidents themselves to the ruling communist parties, anticipated these revolts. They erupted, as all revolutions do, from tinder that had been waiting years for a spark.
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