Society's ChildS


Quenelle

Turkish legal association sues police & intel agencies for complicity with ISIS slave trade


RT
Wed, 23 Dec 2015 13:31 UTC
Turkey
© Unknown
The head of a regional Turkish legal association says the organization has filed a criminal complaint against the Turkish authorities after a German documentary alleged that Islamic State are carrying out a slave trade of women on Turkish soil.

Bektas Sarkli, the head of Gaziantep Bar Association, has brought the suit against the Turkish law enforcement and intelligence agencies following allegations that Yazidi women and children were being trafficked.

"We decided to file a complaint after the allegations were made on German ARD TV. They alleged that the Yazidi people were traded by ISIS (Islamic State/IS) in a slave market here in Gaziantep. The prosecution must investigate this," Sarkli said.

"If there is evidence, then the suspects must be caught and tried. If there has been neglect of duty on the side of the security forces or intelligence, then they must be punished," he added.

Comment: Also see: Turkish-ISIS Oil Trade: Kurdistan Regional Government, Israel, and UK involvement

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Fire

Thirty injured in petrol tanker explosion near pipeline in Tabasco, Mexico


9news
Wed, 23 Dec 2015 06:03 UTC
Pemex
© Edgard Garrido / Reuters
At least 30 people have been injured after a tanker caught fire near a gas pipeline in Tabasco, Mexico, according to local media reports.

A stolen fuel tank reportedly exploded near a pipeline owned by Mexico's Pemex petrol company in Cardenas, Tabasco, the company confirmed on Twitter.

The state's health department told newspaper El Universal that 30 people had been injured.

The fire occurred near a village in a rural area, the company tweeted.

It was stopped before it affected the pipeline duct, which prevented an explosion.

Authorities and Pemex staff are working to contain the incident, and no Pemex workers were injured, the company said.
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Bad Guys

Since this cop attacked a school girl, only ones facing jail are the victim and a girl who filmed it

John Vibes
Counter Current News
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 02:49 UTC
cop throwing student
© Youtube
Earlier this year, we covered the story of a high school student who was thrown from her desk by a school police officer and brutally slammed to the ground. A video of the incident was taken by another student, and it sparked nationwide outrage after it went public. After seeing the video, it should be obvious to anyone that the officer was guilty of assault, and that the girl was actually doing nothing wrong, aside from disobeying the officer and refusing to get out of her seat.

Disobedience from a teenager surely does not warrant this type of response, especially a teenager that is sitting down and not posing a threat to anyone. However, shockingly, the officer is facing no charges, but the girl who was assaulted is, and so is the girl who filmed the brutal attack. Officer Ben Fields, the cop guilty of the assault, was fired from his position, but he has faced no legal consequences as a result of his actions, as any normal person would in the same situation.

"If any one of us would have done a youngster or even an adult like that, we would be in jail that day," pastor and activist Thomas Dixon told the Associated Press.

Both girls face misdemeanor charges of disturbing schools, which could result in a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail if they are found guilty.

Comment: SOTT Exclusive: 'A few bad apples' - the false paradigm excusing sadistic behavior by police or government officials in positions of authority

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MIB

14 year-old Canadian activist was targeted by GMO lobby

Allison Vuchnic
Global News
Mon, 21 Dec 2015 23:46 UTC
rachel parent gmo activist
Rachel Parent, Canadian GMO labeling activist
Documents reveal a Canadian teenager and her activism on the issue of GMO labelling were the subject of emails strategizing how her message could be counterered.

At the time, Rachel Parent was 14 years old and had a growing social media following. Her message to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food was attracting attention - including from those who promote GMOs in the U.S. Their internal emails reveal they were discussing how they could counter her message.

"To think at this point, I was on their radar and I had no clue," Parent said.

The strategizing was revealed in emails, along with thousands of other pages of documents released in a freedom of information request by US Right to Know (USRTK), a non-profit advocacy group funded by the Organic Consumers Association concerned with the safety of GMOs.

The documents shed light into the increasingly nasty and divisive public relations war over GMOs.


"It's mostly scientists that they attack, but Rachel is a standout. The agrichemical industry is plainly quite threatened by this teenage schoolgirl, so that's why they're after her," Gary Ruskin, the co-director of USRTK said.

Comment: There is no low a psychopathic organization won't stoop to when it comes to preserving profits.

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Bizarro Earth

The creeping villainy of American politics

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 20 Dec 2015 22:22 UTC
Muslim woman
© LM Otero / AP A Muslim woman looks out as protests take place near a mosque in Richardson, Texas, on Dec. 12.
The threefold rise in hate crimes against Muslims since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks and the acceptance of hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse signal the morbidity of our civil society. The body politic is coughing up blood. The daily amplification of this hate speech by a commercial media whose sole concern is ratings and advertising dollars rather than serving as a bulwark to protect society presages a descent into the protofascist nightmare of racism, indiscriminate violence against the marginalized, and a blind celebration of American chauvinism, militarism and bigotry.

The mounting attacks on Muslims, which will become a contagion when there is another catastrophic terrorist attack, are only the beginning. There is a long list to be targeted, including undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals, liberals, feminists, intellectuals and artists. We are entering a new dark age, an age of idiocy and blood. These hatreds, encoded in American DNA but understood as politically toxic by the liberal wing of the capitalist class, have been embraced by an enraged and disenfranchised white underclass. Our failure to curb this hate speech will haunt us. Once a civil society tolerates the intolerant, as Karl Popper wrote, "the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

The anti-Muslim virus begins slowly. Step by step the hate talk moves from insults, stereotyping and untruths to incendiary calls for vigilantes to attack women wearing the hijab, men wearing kufis, mosques, Islamic centers and schools, and Muslim-owned businesses. It makes sense to many in the white underclass—especially because they have been sold out by the liberals who preach tolerance—that the violent purging of a demonized group from U.S. society can cure the society's malaise and restore safety and American "greatness." But soon all marginalized groups will be at risk. Such a process is what happened in the Weimar Republic. It is what happened in Yugoslavia. It is what happened in Israel.
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Cardboard Box

Gentrification and homelessness in the land of technology dreams

Monica Potts
New Republic
Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
homeless palo alto
The view inside a van parked outside a Palo Alto homeless organization.
Sometime in July 2012, Suzan Russaw and her husband, James, received a letter from their landlord asking them to vacate their $800-a-month one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, California. He gave them 60 days to leave. The "no-fault" eviction is a common way to clear out low-paying tenants without a legal hassle and bring in people willing to pay thousands more in rent. James was 83 at the time and suffering from the constellation of illnesses that affect the old: He had high blood pressure and was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure and experiencing the early stages of dementia.

Their rent was actually a couple of hundred dollars more than James's monthly Social Security benefits, but he made up the rest by piecing together odd jobs. They looked for a new apartment for two months and didn't find anything close to their price range. Their landlord gave them a six-week extension, but it yielded nothing. When mid-October came, Suzan and James had no choice but to leave. With hurried help from neighbors, they packed most of their belongings into two storage units and a ramshackle 1994 Ford Explorer which they called "the van." They didn't know where they were going.

A majority of the homeless population in Palo Alto—93 percent—ends up sleeping outside or in their cars. In part, that's because Palo Alto, a technology boomtown that boasts a per capita income well over twice the average for California, has almost no shelter space: For the city's homeless population, estimated to be at least 157, there are just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink; a charity organizes a loose network of 130 spare rooms, regular people motivated to offer up their homes only by neighborly goodwill. The lack of shelter space in Palo Alto—and more broadly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which comprise the peninsula south of San Francisco and around San Jose—is unusual for an area of its size and population. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest populations sleeping outside or in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.

Comment: See also: San Francisco: Gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty

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Light Saber

A lonely lawyer in Israel

Uri Avnery
Information Clearing House
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 20:17 UTC
arab girl shot israel
© Screenshot via YouTube
By now every Israeli has seen the TV clip several times - showing a 14-year old Arab girl being shot dead near the central market of Jewish Jerusalem.


The story is well known: two sisters, 14 and 16 years old, have decided to attack Israelis. The clip, taken by a security camera, shows one of them, clad in traditional Arab garb, jumping around on the sidewalk, brandishing a pair of scissors.

The whole thing looks almost like a dance. She is jumping around aimlessly, waving the scissors, threatening no one in particular. Then a soldier aims a pistol at her and shoots her. He runs to the girl and kills her while she is lying helplessly on the ground. The other girl is grievously wounded.

The soldier was lauded for his bravery by the Minister of Defense, a former army Chief of Staff, and by his present successor. Throughout the political establishment, not a single voice was raised against the killing. Even the opposition was silent.

This week one person raised his voice. Avigdor Feldman, a lawyer, informed the Attorney General that he was going to apply to the Supreme Court, asking it to open a criminal investigation against the soldier. He wants the court to order the authorities to investigate all cases in which soldiers and civilians have shot and killed "terrorists" after they had already become unable to act.

In today's Israel, this is an act of incredible courage. Advocate Feldman is no crackpot. He is a well-known lawyer, prominent especially in the field of civil rights.

I got to know him when he was still at the start of his career. He was still a "stageur" - a lawyer who has finished his studies but is not yet a fully licensed advocate - working in a friend's office. He represented me in several minor court cases, and even then I was struck by his sharp mind.

Comment: More and more people are getting tired of subverting their humanity in the name of Israel. See also:

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Pills

Mass intoxication: The narcotics epidemic in American society

Valery Kulikov
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 19 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
big pharma, pharma drug money
In view of the national epidemic of painkiller and psychotropic drug abuse in the United States, along with the legalization of marijuana in the majority of its states, many American experts have noted the emergence of a real narcotics epidemic in the American society. Taking the road to legalizing the supposedly mild drugs, representatives of the leading political and business circles in the US graphically demonstrate to the world the fact that the nation's heath and welfare are not their greatest concern. It seems that receiving extra personal profit and promoting the new gold rush will prove sufficient, thanks to increased marijuana sales, to not only bring down their own populous in narcotic fuelled flames, but to take down other countries, on whom Washington is actively imposing its so-called American democracy and its own business. The enormous drug market is a guarantee that neither the current US authorities, nor the opposition will ever find an answer to the question: who meets the demand and the growing appetite of the Americans for drugs?

As a US study confirms, the new conditions in the country towards the active legalization of marijuana, it has pushed cigarettes out of schools and other educational institutions of the United States. Referring to the recent studies, the conservative news portal and political analysts of the USA, The Daily Caller, said that the growing popularity of cannabis among students can be explained by the fact that all the smaller number consider marijuana as a potentially harmful substance. Yet in 1991 80% of high school students considered cannabis harmful, whereas today this opinion is shared by only 39.5%.


Comment: The elimination of smoking in public spaces is quite in keeping with the efforts of the political elite to control the population. Smoking natural tobacco actually improves cognitive function and lowers social withdrawal, whereas narcotics make people more docile and thus easier to control.

Marijuana for the Masses: Legalized cannabis and why the government wants us to go to pot


Comment:

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X

Farce of human rights: Slave labor and injustice in Saudi Arabia

Jonah Cohen and Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe
New Republic
Mon, 21 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
saudi women
© Peer Grimm/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
A Sri Lankan woman sentenced to be stoned to death on charges of adultery has been granted a reprieve, but she is far from safe.

A married housemaid, she received the death penalty while the man, also a Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes, the New Republic reported earlier this month. Since that article appeared, we received word that the Canadian embassy to Saudi Arabia would try to assist the woman.

The court has now agreed to reopen her case for appeal. But the public still doesn't know her name, for whom she was working, what she testified in court, or who bore witness against her. Not her family, not even her "betrayed" husband, knows that she stands to be executed.

Why won't her name be released? Officials involved with the case claim she doesn't want her family to know how far she's fallen, that she'd feel humiliated. But it's hard to believe that the same court that would stone a woman to death would also protect her from the sting of social scandal. It's just as likely that the housemaid's name is being concealed to stifle media attention, as well as to imply her shame and guilt over a sexual crime for which her male judges might kill her.

Comment: And this is what poses for 'justice' in the nation chosen to head the UN Human Rights council. The blatant hypocrisy and corruption involved in this decision is almost incomprehensible.

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No Entry

Sickening: No indictments in jail death case of Sandra Bland


RT
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 03:21 UTC
Sandra Bland
A Texas grand jury announced Monday that there will be no indictment of county jail employees in the case of Sandra Bland, a black activist who died in custody in jail, local media reported.

The grand jury heard evidence in the Bland case for more than eight hours before announcing its decision, according to KPRC.

Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her Waller County jail cell on July 13, three days after she had been arrested during a traffic stop. Authorities claimed she hanged herself. However, her family has contested their findings.

Comment: Sadly, Sandra Bland's jailers have had all the time in the world to "lose" the evidence required to prove that something very, very evil occurred to her in custody. Yet another in the tragically long list of cases that demonstrate how vulnerable African-Americans are in the 'Land of the Free'.

See the must-read Sott Focus: The murder of Sandra Bland and America's 'color revolution'

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