Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Israel arrests US journalist over Iranian attack report- UPATE: Laffredo released but not allowed to leave the country

sat image
© Satellite image/Planet Labs PBC/APA damaged hangar at Israel's Nevatim Air Base • October 2, 2024
American journalist Jeremy Loffredo has been arrested by Israel in the West Bank and reportedly charged with "aiding the enemy during wartime" for his reporting on the recent Iranian bombardment, according to his employers at The Grayzone.

Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on October 1, striking a number of military bases and facilities in response to the killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Israeli censors banned any reports of the damage the strikes may have inflicted.

Brazil-based journalist Glenn Greenwald said, highlighting Loffredo's case on Thursday:
"I realize many Americans have a deep, overarching, unyielding love for the foreign country of Israel, but Jeremy Loffredo is an American and a journalist (a very good one), being imprisoned with no trial by Israel for his reporting. Maybe he deserves some consideration, too?"
Some of Loffredo's works [are] for US-based outlet, The Grayzone. According to its editor, Max Blumenthal, the journalist's phone was confiscated after he was arrested by the Israeli military. Blumenthal's colleague Wyatt Reed said Loffredo had been "beaten, blindfolded, and taken to an Israeli military base."

Comment: UPDATE: 2024/10/11:

Public shaming works eventually, even on Israel.






Heart - Black

Canadian woman charged with killing 3 people in 3 days, labeled a serial killer

Sabrina Kauldhar
© Hamilton Police ServiceSabrina Kauldhar is accused of killing a woman and two men in three days.
A Canadian woman accused of killing three people in a span of a few days in separate slayings has been arrested, authorities said this week before labeling her a serial killer.

Sabrina Kauldhar, 30, was arrested at a hotel in Burlington, Ontario, after the slayings of a woman and two men in and around the Toronto area, the Niagara Regional Police Service said Friday.

"I think by definition she is a serial killer," Niagara Regional Police Chief Bill Fordy told reporters at the news conference. "Two or more offenses, so by definition, I think that's a fair comment."

Kauldhar's alleged killing spree began on Oct. 1 when authorities in Toronto responded and found a woman in her 60s dead inside a home. The next day, first responders were called to a disturbance at John Allan Park in Niagara Falls.

Comment: The vast majority of serial killers, and wanton murders in general - are committed by men. The case of Kauldhar, besides being absolutely heinous, is highly unusual.


Big Bomb

US arms dealers witness 'record profits' from Israel's year-long genocide in Gaza, war on Lebanon

military plane
© Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images
The US and Israel's ongoing military escalation across West Asia has helped the aerospace and defense industry outperform expectations

US arms manufacturers have outperformed major stock indexes this year in a rally fueled by Israel's year-long genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the expansion of its war against Lebanon.

Stock funds with holdings in the US aerospace and defense industry - including companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris - saw their profits soar past expectations this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index.

"That handout of taxpayer funds to Israel coupled with Israel's, and global, demand increasing for weapons in a period of instability, has been jet fuel for stock prices," reports Responsible Statecraft.

Eye 2

CIA embroiled in sex-crimes scandal - CNN

cia usa
Almost a third of CIA employees have experienced inappropriate sexual conduct in the workplace at least once during their career, according to the first-ever internal survey by the US spy agency, shared exclusively with CNN.

According to the outlet, the agency is undergoing "its own #MeToo moment," referring to a public campaign against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry that erupted in 2017 leading to the conviction and incarceration of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

"We are not where we need to be, and I don't need a survey to tell me that," CIA Chief Operating Officer Maura Burns, not related to Director William Burns, told CNN.

Only a quarter of the agency's employees participated in the voluntary survey. Of those that did, 28% said they'd experienced "at least one instance of a sexually hostile work environment" during their time at the CIA, while 9% encountered at least one such instance in just the past year.

CNN has noted that this is "just slightly higher than the national average" and lower than the US military's figures. The outlet pointed to two major cases suggesting a "deep-rooted cultural problem" at the Langley, Virginia-based agency.

One officer, stationed in Europe until recently, is alleged to have knowingly infected at least five women with a sexually transmitted disease. He is still employed at the agency, working at headquarters pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

Comment: This is the tame tip of the dirty iceberg.


Handcuffs

Just Stop Oil fanatics are jailed for two years after tipping soup over Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers masterpiece

Phoebe Plummer, Anna Holland, Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh
© EPAIn October 2022, Phoebe Plummer, 23, (left) and fellow activist Anna Holland, 22, (right) flung two tins of Heinz soup at Sunflowers at London 's National Gallery.
Two Just Stop Oil activists have been jailed for pouring soup over Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, after they came close to 'destroying' the masterpiece.

Phoebe Plummer 23, and Anna Holland, 22, caused as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the artwork's gold-coloured frame when they targeted it at London's National Gallery.

Plummer received a two-year jail term, while Holland was handed 20 months.

The protesters, wearing Just Stop Oil T-shirts, threw two tins of Heinz tomato soup over the 1888 work in October 2022, before kneeling down in front of the painting and gluing their hands to the wall beneath it.

Staff at the gallery inspected the painting, worth up to £72.5m, and frame for damage while the women were still attached to the wall, and were worried the soup may have dripped through the protective glass.

Star of David

Ben Shapiro joins Trump on October 7 visit to world-famous rabbi's grave

Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro
© Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDonald Trump and Ben Shapiro with the family of hostage Edan Alexander
Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro joined former President Donald Trump in New York Monday to mark the first anniversary of Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel with a trip to the tomb of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Chabad.

Trump and Shapiro visited the Ohel Chabad-Lubavitch in Queens, the final resting place of one of the most influential Jews of the 20th century. Schneerson, affectionately known as the "Rebbe," led the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which promotes Judaism around the world.

"October 7 was the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust," Shapiro said. "It was an honor to join President Trump in NY today to pay our respects and remember the lives lost in the horrific terrorist attack one year ago today."

"I had the additional honor of being accompanied by Yael, Adi, and Roy Alexander whose son and brother, Edan, an American citizen, is still held captive by Hamas," Shapiro added. "Today and every day we pray for the swift return of all the hostages and a victory over those who sponsored and perpetrated October 7."

Comment: Laying a prayer in a grave isn't going to do anything when the reason the hostages are hostages is standing all around him. Also:




Dollars

Feds say TD Bank was a safe haven for criminals — and will be fined $3 billion for it

toronto dominion bank logo
© Jon Hicks/Getty Images
The 10th-largest bank in the U.S. agreed to pay $3 billion in fines for its anti-money laundering deficiencies

Toronto-Dominion Bank was hit with a total of $3.09 billion in fines from U.S. regulators and agreed to a limit on its growth after pleading guilty to failing to curb financial crimes in its systems.

Over the course of six years, Canada's second-largest bank failed to monitor $18.3 trillion in customer activity in the United States. In its plea agreement, TD Bank (TD) admitted that this allowed three money laundering networks to transfer over $670 million through the bank's accounts.

"By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press briefing. "Today, TD Bank became the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to Bank Secrecy Act Program failures and the first bank in history to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering." The Wall Street Journal first reported the agreement on Wednesday.

Bullseye

Pennsylvania court rules in favor of parental right to opt out of gender-identity lessons

pennsylvania capitol building
© Ray Tan/via Getty ImagesThe Pennsylvania State Capitol Building, in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
A Pennsylvania court has ruled in favor of parents who accused a Pennsylvania public school district of violating their civil rights by teaching first-grade children concepts such as gender dysphoria and gender transition.

Carmilla Tatel, Stacy Dunn, and Gretchen Melton are mothers of three first-grade students in Mt. Lebanon School District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, who brought a case against the district, its school board, and one of its first-grade teachers, Megan Williams. The parents claimed that Williams, herself a mother of a transgender child, read aloud to six- and seven-year-old students books that discussed gender transitioning, played a video in class called Jacob's New Dress, and "explained to her students that sometimes 'parents are wrong' and parents and doctors 'make mistakes' when they bring a child home from the hospital."

The school district violated the parents' constitutional rights by refusing to give families the right to opt their children out of such lessons, Joy Flowers Conti, a senior district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled last week.

NPC

Professor suspended after calling for male Trump supporters to be "lined up and shot"

Professor suspended
A professor at the University of Kansas was suspended Wednesday after footage emerged of him telling a class that men who choose not to vote for Kamala Harris should be "lined up and shot."


Athletics lecturer Phillip Lowcock can be seen in the clip telling students: "(If you think) guys are smarter than girls, you've got some serious problems," adding "That's what frustrates me. There are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don't think females are smart enough to be president. We could line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don't understand the way the world works.

"Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don't want the deans hearing that I said that," Lowcock continued.

Dollars

Corrupt Ukrainian official's son found lying in bed with huge sum of money, $6 million in total seized from medical fraud operation

huge sums of money
Corrupt officials in Ukraine are making huge profits off of their own people

A huge corruption case was uncovered in Khmelnytskyi, western Ukraine, with authorities detaining the head of the Hmelnytskyi County Medical Center over allegations he accepted huge sums of money to offer medical exemptions to Ukrainian men to avoid being conscripted.

The official, Tetyana Krupá, was responsible for medical examinations in the area, according to Trancarpathian news outlet Kárpáti Igaz Szó, which produces news in the Hungarian language. The paper reveals that the suspect is also the Khmelnytskyi county representative of President Volodymyr Zelensky's party, the Servant of the People.

During a search of the official's home, the man was found with various currencies worth a total of $6 million, which is an extraordinary sum for Ukraine. Officers found $5.24 million, €300,000, and 5 million hryvnias, which is Ukraine's currency. In addition, jewelry and other valuables were seized.

Comment: One wonders just how much Zelensky has stashed away.