Society's ChildS


Bomb

Air Force hires civilian drone pilots for combat patrols; critics question legality

MQ-9 Reaper drone
© Isaac Brekken / Getty ImagesAn MQ-9 Reaper drone during a training mission at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nev., on Nov. 17.
The Air Force has hired civilian defense contractors to fly MQ-9 Reaper drones to help track suspected militants and other targets in global hot spots, a previously undisclosed expansion in the privatization of once-exclusively military functions.

For the first time, civilian pilots and crews now operate what the Air Force calls "combat air patrols," daily round-the-clock flights above areas of military operations to provide video and collect other sensitive intelligence.

Contractors control two Reaper patrols a day, but the Air Force plans to expand that to 10 a day by 2019. Each patrol involves up to four drones.

Civilians are not allowed to pinpoint targets with lasers or fire missiles. They operate only Reapers that provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, known as ISR, said Air Force Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command.

"There are limitations on it," he said. The contractors "are not combatants."

Nonetheless, the contracts have generated controversy within the military.

Critics, including some military lawyers, contend that civilians are now part of what the Air Force calls the "kill chain," a process that starts with surveillance and ends with a missile launch. That could violate laws barring civilians from taking part in armed conflict.

Comment:


Heart - Black

Greek economy has Greek women turning to prostitution in startling numbers

Greece
© Unknown
Young Greek women are selling sex for the price of a sandwich as six years of painful austerity have pushed the European country to the financial brink, a new study showed Friday.

The study, which compiled data on more than 17,000 sex workers operating in Greece, found that Greek women now dominate the country's prostitution industry, replacing Eastern European women, and that the sex on sale in Greece is some of the cheapest on offer in Europe.

"Some women just do it for a cheese pie, or a sandwich they need to eat because they are hungry," Gregory Laxos, a sociology professor at the Panteion University in Athens, told the London Times newspaper. "Others [do it] to pay taxes, bills, for urgent expenses or a quick [drug] fix," said Laxos, who conducted the three-year study.

When the economic crisis began in Greece, the going rate for sex with a prostitute was 50 euros ($53), the London newspaper quoted Laxos as saying. Now, it's fallen to as low as two euros ($2.12) for a 30-minute session.

Laxos said the some 400 such desperate cases he found may be "nominal compared with the thousands of other sex workers operating nationwide, but they never existed as a trend until the financial crisis." He said Greek women now account for 80 percent of the prostitution trade in Greece.

He said his wide-ranging study showed that the number of desperate young women — the ones offering the cheapest sex — appeared to be on the rise. "It doesn't look like these numbers will fade," he told the Times. "Rather they are growing at a steady and consistent pace."

Comment: See also: "Being raped for a living": Chris Hedges interview with former prostitute Rachel Moran dispels the myths of sex work


Sheriff

How law enforcement uses and empowers liars and psychopaths to achieve their goals

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Does using criminals or actually becoming them, justify the path to security? American law enforcement tends to think so.


It should be common knowledge now that law enforcement has no hesitation in abandoning morality to achieve its goals. During interrogation of suspects, they can lie, offer false rewards, harass and threaten in the pursuit of a confession, deceiving the suspect into waiving his constitutional rights. This is used on children too, resulting in a high rate of false confessions.

The FBI scrapes the bottom of the barrel in carrying out its bizarre business of turning hopeless, angry teenagers into terrorists. In 2009-2010 two undercover agents, along with dozens of support operatives and a massive surveillance undertaking, spent a year to convince 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to try and detonate a bomb in downtown Portland. They befriended him, built up his confidence, did a test bombing on a tree out in the countryside, built the bomb and finally coaxed him into pressing that fateful button.

Comment: With the advent of 911, the US police state has become hopelessly, irretrievably out of control; the goal evermore becoming the subjugation and victimization of seemingly anyone that would would help to perpetuate the perception that we actually need a police state environment. It's the pathological and domestic version of the military industrial complex and intelligence/security apparatus that, just like a black whole, is working to suck in and destroy everything that's just.

SOTT has published countless stories documenting the above phenomenon in some form or another. And it looks like it will take an 'act of God' to rectify or counteract the sickness. But the situation is so critical, and the changes to our physical environment so extreme these days, we are likely to see it.


Extinguisher

Russian MP and her husband killed in car explosion

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© Ella LuzarevaOksana Bobrovskaya, her husband Nikita and their daughter.
Glamorous Novosibirsk regional legislative deputy Oksana Bobrovskaya, 30, died alongside her former military special services husband Nikita as a result of an explosion in their family Toyota RAV-4. The couple had a four year daughter who was not in the car, and is safe, but is now left parentless.

Witnesses said the mangled bodies were in the rear seat of their car after the 10.50 pm explosion on Thursday, and that both were partially undressed when they were removed from the vehicle.

It was suggested that the couple may have been enjoying a romantic tryst in their parked car close to her workplace when the explosion occurred, but police were discounting this theory. A law enforcement source said that judging by the severity of their injuries, Nikita himself may have unleashed the explosive, allegedly a grenade.

Other accounts suggested the explosives could have been planted inside or under the vehicle. There is no official confirmation of these versions. He had accused his wife of cheating, according to local reports which could not be verified.

It was also claimed that their relationship had become strained because her husband Nikita Bobrovsky was out of work, leaving her as the sole breadwinner. She worked as a lawmaker and also as a deputy general director of Diskus Plus company, one of Novosibirsk city's largest construction firms. The car was parked close to the company's office when the couple were killed.

Eye 1

Orwellian: L.A. proposes to scan all cars, send letter of shame for driving through a "prostitution area"

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A Los Angeles city councilwoman just proposed one of the most chilling uses of license plate scanners ever.

As an ostensible means of deterring prostitution, Nury Martinez of the L.A. city council wants to scan every single license plate, make a list, and mail out a shame letter to every person who drives through an arbitrary area deemed a prostitution zone.

You read that right. For merely driving through a designated area, Martinez proposes publicly shaming any and every motorist by scanning their license plate.

USA

More than 100 refugees kept in US detention centers go on hunger strike over Thanksgiving

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© Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
As US families celebrated Thanksgiving, over 100 refugees held at three immigration detention facilities engaged in a nationwide hunger strike. Hunger strikers are calling for an end to detentions and deportations, among other demands.

The hunger strikes began on Thanksgiving eve by asylum seekers, mostly South Asians, held in three detention centers in California and Alabama.

Californian authorities confirmed that 21 asylum seekers at Musick Jail in Irvine, and 14 at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange, began refusing meals around mid-day on Wednesday, according to the Orange County Register.

"Musick actually started during the daytime," Fahd Ahmed, director of the New York-based Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) told the OC Weekly. "Officers moved in and threatened the detainees."

Comment: A chill runs down one's spine to think that the US - out of the goodness of its heart of course - would even consider taking in Syrian refugees. Given its police-state mentality, collusion with the prison industry, and covert operations that ultimately seek to demonize Muslims everywhere, we could fully expect that Syrians (or any other Middle Eastern/North African refugees) would be placed in nothing less than concentration camps. A new hash tag should read: #NoConcentrationCampsUS!


Card - VISA

Black Friday 2015: Rampant and violent consumerism

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© Via Twitter@daddyweaknd
Just as we started regaining faith in humanity, after last year's Black Friday idiocy, here it comes again.

Before their Thanksgiving dinners could settle, many Americans left their family atmospheres and descended upon department stores and big box retailers across the country to partake in rampant and apparently violent consumerism.

Mindless shoppers aren't even getting the great discounts they cherish since retailers artificially inflate prices of goods in the months before the sales in order to make the subsequent discounts look good in comparison. Also, even if shoppers do manage to grab some genuine discounts, they will invariably buy another product that has a 98 percent markup value.

If we take a step back to observe this downright insanity, it is getting difficult to differentiate between Frank Darabont's Walking Dead and Black Friday shoppers. As the shopping began late Thursday night, so did the disgusting display savagery and greed.

The first video to surface shows a grown woman attacking a child. As mindless zombie customers tumble over shopping displays to grab as many rice cookers as they can, one woman becomes angry at another woman who is carrying three rice cookers. The woman then charges her child and yanks one of the three rice cookers this child's mother apparently needed from the toddler.

When the mom becomes angry, she screams, "Why are you being so oppressive?! You're scaring me!"

For a rice cooker.....


Comment: Culture has made us "Hungry Ghosts": The 40 hour work week & more


Attention

Mass protests in UK against proposed airstrikes in Syria

prtoests UK syrian airstrikes
© Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters Demonstrators listen to speakers at a rally against taking military action against Islamic State in Syria, held outside Downing Street in London, November 28, 2015.
Mass protests have taken place in London and many other cities across the country urging the government not to conduct airstrikes in Syria.

'Don't Bomb Syria' signs were plentiful, as thousands of protesters took to the streets of the British capital to make their voices heard, in a rally organized by the Stop the War coalition.

The demonstration in London started outside Prime Minister David Cameron's residence at 10 Downing Street. The rally was against a planned vote in Parliament about whether to support a motion for the UK to starting bombing Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants in Syria.

"We are very much opposed to David Cameron's plans to have a vote in Parliament to bomb Syria. The bombing has already been going on for more than a year by other forces. ISIS is as strong as it was before the bombing started and also we have the record of 14 years of bombing, and every single country we have bombed, the wars are still going on there," said Lindsey German, of Stop the War, during the demonstration.

Comment: It appears those protesting have serious doubts that the proposed airstrikes will actually target ISIS, suspecting that this military intervention may be used as a pretext to assist the US in its war against Bashar al-Assad.


Bad Guys

21 dead after Boko Haram suicide bomb attack in Nigeria

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© FILE PHOTO © Afolabi Sotunde / Reuters
At least 21 people were killed in a Boko Haram suicide bomb attack on a Shia Muslim procession in the northern Nigerian state of Kano.

The incident occurred in the village of Dakasoye, some 20 kilometers south of the state capital city of Kano.

"Our procession came under a suicide attack," Muhammad Turi, who was leading thousands of Islamic Movement of Nigeria followers, told AFP.

Turi said that the deadly attack came as no surprise for the Shia marchers as "this is the situation all over the country."

Despite the bombing, the procession, which was on its way from Kano to Zaria, located in a neighboring state, continued to match.

"This will not deter us from our religious observance. Even if all of us were bombed the last person will carry on with this duty," Turi stressed.

Comment: Nigerian government says 'Boko Haram' terror group has kidnapped over 45,000 people since 2012


Airplane

This year 57 French airport personnel fired over 'radicalization' suspicions

Paris airport security
© Pascal Rossignol / Reuters
Since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January, nearly 60 people suspected of radicalism have reportedly lost their authorization to work at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport. At least five people have been fired following the deadly mid-November attacks.

"Since the beginning of the year, there are 57 people who lost their authorization because of radicalization. There have been five since the attacks [November 13]," the prefect of Charles de Gaulle (Roissy) and Le Bourget airports, Philippe Riffaut, told a press conference.

Comment: Moving forward to more totalitarianism.