Society's ChildS


Star of David

Auschwitz survivors warn against rise of global antisemitism on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Andrzej Duda, Auschwitz-Burkenau, concentration camp.
© APPolish President Andrzej Duda walking through the remains of the Auschwitz-Burkenau concentration camp.
Auschwitz survivors warned against increasing antisemitism across the globe while they gathered with world leaders at the site of the Polish death camp for the 80th anniversary of their liberation.

Monday's event at Auschwitz, where Nazi German forces murdered an estimated 1.1 million Jews, was attended by 56 survivors — including 98-year-old Marian Turski, who called on those gathered to remember the slews of Holocaust victims who will always outnumber those who made it out alive.

"We have always been a tiny minority," Turski said. "And now only a handful remain."

Comment: Perhaps there wouldn't be so much animosity towards the Jewish people if these survivors had done something to protest the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, the Mossad's involvement in global terror, and the rise of actual neo-Nazism in Ukraine.


Heart - Black

Sackler big-pharma family are forced to pay $7.4b of their own money to victims of the opioid crisis

sackler family perdue opioid crisis  OxyContin
© Smilow Cancer Hospital/FacebookThe Sackler dynasty - makers of powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin - has agreed to pay up to $7.4 billion of their own money to settle claims over its role in fuelling the opioid epidemic
'Cruel billionaires'

The Sackler dynasty, owners of Purdue Pharma and makers of powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, has agreed to pay up to $7.4 billion of their own money to settle claims over its role in fuelling the opioid epidemic.

The deal reflects an increase of more than $1 billion on a previous settlement that was rejected in 2024 by the Supreme Court.

As part of the settlement, the billionaire family behind Purdue Pharma has agreed to pay up to $6.5 billion and give up ownership of the company, which would pay nearly $900 million.

It's among the largest settlements reached over the past several years in a series of lawsuits by local, state, Native American tribal governments and others seeking to hold companies responsible for a deadly opioid epidemic.

The deal still needs court approval, and some of the details are yet to be ironed out.

Comment: No matter how big the settlement is, rest assured Purdue Pharma lawyers will have made sure the Sacklers will feel no personal financial pain. These people have no morals.


Eye 1

'Evil' Southport killer jailed for minimum 52 years

Axel Rudakubana
© Elizabeth Cook/ PAAxel Rudakubana would have been sentenced to a whole life prison term had he been 18 at the time of the mass killing, the judge said
Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the "sadistic" murders of three young girls in an attack described as "shocking" and "pure evil".

Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, died while eight other children and two adults - dance class leader Leanne Lucas and businessman Jonathan Hayes - were seriously wounded.

The 18-year-old refused to come into the courtroom as he was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court, having been removed from the dock earlier due to disruptive behaviour - which included demands to see a paramedic and shouts of "I feel ill".

Comment: The Guardian has reported on Rudakubana's story now that he is 18 and has received his sentence. Unsurprisingly, the teenager had been familiar to police, anti-extremism authorities, and various public agencies since he was 13 years old. You can read the full story here, with some excerpts provided below:
In October 2019, the 13-year-old made an anonymous phone call to the NSPCC's Childline, admitting to having murderous thoughts about the bully. He said he had taken a kitchen knife to school on 10 occasions and asked: "What should I do if I want to kill somebody?"
The 13-year-old, who lived with his parents and older brother in the quiet Lancashire village of Banks, was referred by the police to a local safeguarding board, which began the process of offering behavioural and emotional wellbeing support.

Two months later, just before pupils broke up for Christmas, he returned to Range high school armed with a hockey stick and attacked another pupil, breaking their wrist. He had to be restrained by staff. The headteacher said Rudakubana had "no sense of the wrongness" of his actions.
Classmates had known for months about Rudakubana's fascination with gruesome videos online. Now, it had come to the attention of professionals.

During an IT class at the Acorn, he made alarming comments about mass shootings. A teacher looked over his shoulder to see a webpage about a bloodbath at a US high school and reported it to Prevent, the government's anti-radicalisation programme.
On one occasion, after his mother had reported him missing, he was found by police on a bus with a knife, refusing to pay his fare.

Rudakubana told the officers he wanted to stab someone so police would seize his phone and delete embarrassing videos, which were on social media accounts he could no longer access.
See also: 17-year-old kills 3 children in frenzied knife attack at family centre in Southport, UK - 6 more wounded


Red Flag

Most Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency expense, report finds

money
Whether it's a busted refrigerator, car trouble or medical issues, unexpected costs are a part of life. But even such routine curveballs often spell serious financial trouble for many Americans.

That's according to a new Bankrate report that surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults about their ability to handle a surprise bill. Despite the country's current low unemployment rate, the annual study found that 59% of Americans in 2025 don't have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense.

"We are essentially a paycheck-to-paycheck nation," Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said in a statement. "Fewer Americans have the equivalent of a financial safety net to cover inevitable unexpected expenses, despite low unemployment and steady growth. This is one of the consequences of elevated prices stemming from inflation, the impacts of which are still being felt."

Bullseye

Trump Department of Education dismisses 'meritless' book ban complaints

banned book schools
© Ted Shaffrey/AP, FILEIn this Oct. 7, 2023, file photo, a Banned Books Week display is shown at the Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library in the Bronx, New York.
The Department of Education also announced the elimination of a 'book ban coordinator' who was charged with investigating local school districts and parents

The Department of Education has dismissed 11 complaints related to "book bans" and eliminated a Biden-era position tasked with investigating school districts and parents, the agency announced Friday.

The department said it was ending Biden's "Book Ban Hoax" regarding complaints that alleged that the removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit or obscene materials from school libraries created a hostile environment for students.

It also eliminated the "book ban coordinator," which investigated school districts and parents "working to protect students from obscene content."

Comment: Twitter/X has seen waves of posts where parent who attempted to read aloud books found in their childrens' school libraries, were actually thrown out of meeting because the boards were too embarrassed to listen. Most woke lefties don't even seem to understand what they are advocating for.








Question

Rhode Island Judge Joseph Molina Flynn, specializing in immigration law, resigns after FBI raids office

Central Falls municipal judge Joseph Molina Flynn illegal immigrant
© WPRI/YouTubeCentral Falls municipal judge Joseph Molina Flynn abruptly resigned Thursday shortly after FBI agents raided his law offices in downtown Providence, RI.
The "first formerly undocumented judge in Rhode Island" abruptly resigned hours after the FBI raided his downtown Providence immigration law office on Thursday.

Central Falls Municipal Court Judge Joseph Molina Flynn was being investigated before President Trump's return to the Oval Office and the raid is unrelated to his recent string of immigration-related executive orders, according to WPRI 12.

The reason for the raid has yet to be revealed by the agency.

Multiple black SUVs and Providence police cruisers were seen lined up outside the building where his office is located on Thursday.

Che Guevara

The addicted, petty, and hysterical Left

hysterical leftists protests sample image
Donald Trump won the 2024 election in part because the left's hysterical style of attacking Trump no longer worked.

After a decade of this unhinged furor, it proved worthless in winning public support — and for two simple reasons.

One, after years of Russian collusion hoaxes, the laptop disinformation farce, and the warped lies about the "suckers" and "fine people on both sides" — the shrill left became predictable.

So, the bored public began tuning them out, switching channels, hitting the mute button, and pulling the plug.

Like the deleterious effects of inflation that eventually render a currency worthless, nonstop hectoring, hysterics, pontification, and distortion finally made all such criticisms of Trump mostly as valueless as 1930s German marks.

Footprints

Israel frees 200 Palestinian prisoners

Pal prisoners free
© Nasser Nasser/APCrowd greets released Palestinian prisoners following ceasefire agreement • West Bank city of Ramallah • January 25, 2025
Crowds lined the streets of Ramallah to greet the captives, who were exchanged for four Israeli soldiers.

Some 200 Palestinians have been released from Israeli jails as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal. In exchange, Palestinian militant group Hamas has freed four female Israeli soldiers.

Israel's prison service confirmed the release of the 200 captives on Saturday, noting that 121 had been serving life sentences for killing Israelis, while the remainder had been held without charge.

The prisoners exited Israel's Ofer and Ktziot prisons and were examined by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) before 128 were returned to their homes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The remainder were deported, with Egypt taking in 70, according to state media in Cairo.

Ice Cube

Ice Age cometh: Bulk carrier paralyzed on Lake Erie — ice coverage exceeds 50-year trend

Manitoulan stuck ice lake eirie
© Peter J. Cimino/XThe bulk carrier Manitoulan stuck in the ice on Lake Eirie just outside of Buffalo Harbor, January 24, 2025
Climate misinformation and disinformation, relentlessly pushed by far-left corporate media outlets, had their readership believing they were on the brink of perishing on a fiery planet — blaming everything from Taylor Swift's private jet travels to cow farts in late 2024.

Then came 'Old Man Winter,' unleashing a polar vortex across the eastern half of the US, bringing record-low temperatures in some regions. Multiple winter storms traversed the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including an incredibly rare snowstorm that battered New Orleans (bordering Gulf of America waters) that nearly surpassed a snowstorm last seen 130 years ago.

Comment: Makes one wonder if the Russians know something, with all their investment in state-of-the-art nuclear-powered ice breakers.


Gavel

Court rules FBI's warrantless searches violated Fourth Amendment

FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation
© domoyega | iStock / Getty Images Plus
It's official: The FBI's warrantless searches of communications seized to protect US national security have at last been ruled unconstitutional and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In a major December ruling made public this week, US District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall settled one of the biggest debates about feared government overreach that has prompted calls to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for more than a decade.

Critics' primary concern was whether the FBI needed a warrant to search and query Americans' communications that are often incidentally, inadvertently, or mistakenly seized during investigations of suspected foreign terrorists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group that has long said a warrant is needed to conduct such invasive searches, celebrated the ruling as "better late than never." The EFF noted that the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US persons' 702 data in 2021, describing it as a "routine practice" and calling out Section 702 as a "finders keepers" rule that for years has seemingly given feds' unfettered access to many Americans' private and sensitive communication data.

DeArcy Hall agreed with an appeals court that ruled that "the government cannot circumvent application of the warrant requirement simply because queried information is already collected and held by the government," as the US unsuccessfully tried to argue.

"To hold otherwise would effectively allow law enforcement to amass a repository of communications under Section 702, including those of US persons that can later be searched on demand without limitation," DeArcy Hall wrote. "While communications of US persons may nonetheless be intercepted, incidentally or inadvertently, it would be paradoxical to permit warrantless searches of the same information that Section 702 is specifically designed to avoid collecting," she said. And likely equally important, "public interest alone does not justify warrantless querying," she said.

But she declined to issue harsh sanctions and denied a request to suppress evidence in the case — which involved a permanent US resident, Agron Hasbajrami, who was arrested in 2011 partly based on FBI queries of 702 data, for providing material support to a terrorist organization. According to DeArcy Hall, the government conducted these searches in "good faith" and "objectively" believed "those queries did not require a warrant."