Society's ChildS

Take 2

Funding from U.S. trains Christians for private war on Iraq jihadists


Middle East Online
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00 UTC
VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Gathafi, is training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists in Iraq.

VanDyke
© www.20min.chAmerican Matthew VanDyke
After fighting with rebels in Libya and Syria, Matthew VanDyke has rolled up in northern Iraq, but the celebrity American revolutionary-cum-filmmaker has traded his fatigues for a three-piece suit.

VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Moamer Gathafi, has just finished leading his new military contracting firm through its first assignment -- training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists.

Funded by Christian groups from abroad, mainly from the United States, the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU) aims to bring a local Christian militia to bear against the Islamic State group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.

VanDyke is one of the best-known -- and least camera-shy -- figures in an expanding and complex constellation of foreign fighters, organisations and donors getting involved in a private war against the jihadists.

"This is an extension of my work as a revolutionary," he says as he takes a sip from his cappuccino in a cafe in the Kurdish capital of Arbil. "What gives somebody else the right to sit home and do nothing?"

Comment: Update from February 25, 2015 - Matthew VanDyke no longer involved with NPU. A NPU spokesman stated that VanDyke continued to misrepresent himself and use the NPU as a means to promote his business, SOLI. VanDyke received a letter from the American Mesopotamia Organization's attorney ordering him to take down all references to the NPU on his websites and online postings, visual images and related text. (To date he has not complied.) Apparently there is now legal action against VanDyke. SOLI is headquartered in New York, NY.

As if the ME isn't complicated enough, there are new semi-independent, semi-naive, wide-eyed factions coming into play to "fight ISIS" starting literally from scratch. Do they even know who and what they are fighting against? A strategy?

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V

#Gitmo2Chicago: Thousands expected to attend Chicago protest against Homan Square torture site


Sputnik
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:29 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/ Jeff Roberson
Hundreds of people are expected to gather at Chicago's Homan Square on Saturday to protest about an alleged police interrogation facility where detainees are denied basic rights.

The Chicago police department reportedly operates a secret interrogation compound, similar to the CIA's black sites, at the Homan Square warehouse. Practices at the site allegedly include beatings, prolonged shackling and denying detainees legal counsel.

"I have spoken with several people who have been detained and several attorneys who have represented the detained, so people are coming forward, but the more people who do, the harder it will be for CPD to claim this isn't happening at Homan Square," one of the organizers, Billy Joe Mills, wrote on the protest's Facebook event page.

Some 1,500 people are listed as attending, while another 300 have responded that they may be going.

The goals of the demonstration are a public inspection of the alleged interrogation site, a roundtable discussion on the matter, making information available to the public, and for all Chicago detainees to be given access to their attorneys, according to the Facebook page.

Organizers, which include Chicago Anonymous, urge anyone who has been detained at the Homan Square to come forward, as well as police officers who have knowledge of the situation.
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Pocket Knife

US Ambassador to South Korea injured in razor attack


Sputnik
Thu, 05 Mar 2015 01:10 UTC
Mark Lippert
© TWITTER/usembassyseoulMark Lippert
US envoy to Seoul Mark Lippert was taken to hospital after the attack that followed a lecture Thursday morning, reported the Yonhap news agency.


Comment: A rather drastic measure to voice one's concern over the military drills. The 'elites' will need to be more careful around the public as people become more disgruntled with their governments.

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Red Flag

Whitewash: Federal government will not charge Darren Wilson in murder of Michael Brown

Jon Swaine and Oliver Laughland
The Guardian
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 22:22 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesDarren Wilson
Darren Wilson, the white police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, led to months of unrest and revived a debate on race and law enforcement in the US, will not face federal criminal charges.

The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that after a six-month inquiry it has concluded no civil rights charges should be brought against Wilson for killing Michael Brown. A grand jury in St Louis decided last November not to indict Wilson on state charges.

"There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson's stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety," the Department of Justice report concluded, according to law enforcement officials.

The decision concludes the second half of a politically-charged investigation into Wilson's shooting of Brown on 9 August following an altercation in a residential side-street.

An attorney for Wilson said the Justice Department's decision amounted to an "exoneration" of the former Ferguson officer. "Obviously the reaction is one of relief," Neil Bruntrager told CBS. "It's been a long road for him. Now he needs to get on with his life."

It was widely expected by protesters who allege that Brown's killing was a criminal act.
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Arrow Down

Ebola leaves southeast Guinea scarred, jobless, and without hope

Misha Hussein
Reuters
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 22:24 UTC
Ebola
© REUTERS/MishaEtienne Ouamouno, father of Ebola patient zero, poses for a picture in Meliandou February 4, 2015.
A charred kapok tree and around a dozen graves scattered amongst the mud brick houses of Meliandou are painful reminders of the toll Ebola has taken on this village in southeast Guinea.

Scientists traced the source of the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola to two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, who they believe contracted the disease while playing near the tree, home to hundreds of bats that may have been hosting the deadly virus.

The boy's father, Etienne Ouamouno, said Emile fell ill in December 2013, and infected his sister and mother who was eight months pregnant at the time. Over a year later, having lost all his immediate family, Etienne Ouamouno has difficulty in finding words to describe his grief.

Comment: It's horrible - this is what happens when a natural catastrophe meets incompetent government.

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Magnify

Best of the Web: Just how Islamic is 'Islamic State'?


Middle East Online
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 00:00 UTC
ISIS and Qu'ran
© www.commdiginews.comIslamic State and the Qu'ran - mission or excuse?
IS not only misreads texts, most clerics say, it also ignores Quranic verses requiring mercy, preservation of life and protection of innocents.
Three British schoolgirls believed to have gone to Syria to become "jihadi" brides. Three young men charged in New York with plotting to join the Islamic State group and carry out attacks on American soil. A masked, knife-wielding militant from London who is the face of terror in videos showing Western hostages beheaded.
They are among tens of thousands of Muslims eager to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group (Daesh). An estimated 20,000 have streamed into the territory in Iraq and Syria where the group has proclaimed what it calls a "caliphate" ruled by its often brutal version of Islamic law.

But how rooted in Islam is the ideology embraced by this group that has inspired so many to fight and die?

President Barack Obama has insisted the militants behind a brutal campaign of beheadings, kidnappings and enslavement are "not Islamic" and only use a veneer of Islam for their own ends. Obama's critics argue the extremists are intrinsically linked to Islam. Others insist their ideology has little connection to religion.

Comment: Is religion an excuse or validation for violence? If so, Islam is not unique. Almost all religions have been utilized to fulfill horrendous acts against fellow humans, as a crutch for wannabe ideologies, a cover for genocide and the perpetration of atrocities for societal or political gain. All over the world, whether it is Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., there are groups of people, in the name of religion and by "documented permission," killing, maiming, torturing the "others."

Read here for an overview of the pathological intricacies present in religion:
Monotheistic religions - Playground for psychopaths

"As per the PewResearch Religion & Public Life Project, the world's two largest faiths, Christianity and Islam, make up almost half of the world's population and were the most widely targeted in 2012, facing official and social hostility in 110 and 109 countries respectively. Jews were targeted in 71 countries. Over a six-year period: Christians - 151 countries, Muslims - 135 countries, Jews - 95 countries. (Does this tell us something about the ongoing grand distraction of mankind and its unwavering subservience to irrational religious ideals? ...)"

"...when a religion that allows radical interpretation is given undue credence, psychopaths and authoritarian followers, who would not otherwise have a political or social context to behave badly, are conveniently and subversively provided one."

Is Islamic State one thing or another? Does it matter?

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Bizarro Earth

Economic losses from global disasters hit low-income countries the hardest

Megan Rowling
Reuters
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 15:04 UTC
disaster chart natons
Deaths, economic losses and other negative impacts from disasters have caused losses equivalent to 42 million years annually since 1980, a measure that is comparable to the burden of tuberculosis worldwide, the United Nations said.

More than 90 percent of the total "years" lost in disasters between 1980 and 2012 were in low and middle-income countries, representing a serious setback to their development, the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) said.

"If these figures show that disaster loss is as much a critical global challenge to economic development and social progress as is disease, they also show that it is a challenge unequally shared," the UNISDR said in a report on Wednesday.

Comment: Low income nations are least likely to have the resources to build infrastructure to withstand the increasingly devastating affects of earth changes. While wealthier nations invest in developing countries, often the focus is on resource-grabbing rather than building to sustain a nation and its inhabitants. And in some cases, even so-called wealthy nations like the US are unrealistically ignoring a crumbling infrastructure in order to fund war and plunder in other nations. The way things are looking on the BBM, it will become increasingly obvious that such policies have been disastrous in themselves.

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Sheriff

Raging New Mexico police attack defenseless, handcuffed man in jail cell

Lexi Morgan
Intellihub
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 11:59 UTC
Image
© KRQE
On Dec. 23 Russ Flynn, already jailed at the Las Cruces Police Department over a parking dispute with his neighbor, piped up by "talking back" to police from behind his cell gate which unfortunately garnered an unwarranted response from two LCPD officers who soon-after bum-rushed Flynn's cell, quickly opening the gate to gain entry. Their intentions were clear.

Once inside Flynn's cell the two cops, in true roid-rage like fashion, proceeded to viciously attack Flynn, roughing him up, just before smashing his head against concrete walls, kneeing him and slamming him to the ground which ultimately fractured the man's skull.

You see at the time Flynn was of no threat to the officers as he was already locked in his cell securely. He was merely "talking back". Police are trained to take a decent amount of verbal abuse from their detainees, it's part of their job. And surely a few comments and a small display of frustration don't warrant the savage ass-beating of a defenseless handcuffed man by any means.

Yet even more grotesque and disgraceful is the fact that a report filed by the officer's says that Flynn hit his own "back and head against the wall" and that the heavy blows from the officer's knees were "to distract him from grabbing the officer's belt". However, video evidence tells a different story one that's not so favorable to the police.

Flynn spent "days" in the intensive care unit at a local hospital to recover from the severe battering two LCPD officers gave him and now intends to sue the "City of Las Cruces" over the matter, demanding "$12,500,000 as a full settlement".

"There needs to be repercussions", Flynn's attorney said.

Comment: What thugs! Not a day goes by where you don't hear about another defenseless person being abused by the police. May he get his millions and more.

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Arrow Down

Rewarding performance? BP CEO receives huge salary increase, despite drop in profits and enforcing wage freeze on workforce


RT
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 22:21 UTC
bp logo
BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley was given a 25 percent rise in total pay and bonuses in 2014 despite a drop in profits at the oil major, according to the annual report.

Dudley's remuneration rose from $10.17 million in 2013 to $12.74 million last year, according to BP's annual report released Tuesday. He also received $9.8 million in share awards. In January the company cuts its capital spending program and imposed a salary freeze, weeks after axing hundreds of jobs in Scotland and thousands more globally as a result of falling oil prices and profits. BP has frozen the pay of its 84,000 workforce around the world after a nearly 50 percent fall in crude prices since last summer.

Comment: Multinational corporations continue to reward those who are adept at global plundering and environmental devastation while forcing their employees to strike for decent wages and better working conditions. This is one reason why inequality has risen exponentially, thus presaging the day of reckoning that always follows such periods of hubris and unconcern for the welfare of humanity by the global elites. In their blindness they can't see they are destroying the very foundation of their prosperity. To quote Lobeczewski's Political Ponerology:
Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest. They do not understand that a catastrophe would ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.


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Arrow Up

We still live in a world where many believe...

Marco Torres
Prevent Disease.com
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 19:47 UTC
Image
The status quo is reality. People don't question the existing state of affairs, especially if it's been repeated enough times as the norm in the name of social, scientific and economic progress. But how do we define progress in our species?

Through advancements in energy, economics, agriculture, technology?

All of the above? What about advancements in Humanity?

Humanity has taken a back-door to what we define as progress. The problem is we still live in a world where people believe:
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