Society's ChildS


Camcorder

Video intifada: IDF atrocity videos expose Israeli bigotry - Palestinians need more cameras

Jamila Jabbar
Jamila Jabbar holding a knife seconds before she is shot near the Israeli settlement of Ariel in occupied territories
If I were in charge of the Palestinian hasbara budget I would spend it all on video cameras. The recent outbreak of the video intifada has done more to show the relationship between the occupier and the occupied than anything before.

Each of these videos tells the same story, with no ambiguity, that no hasbara can contend with, that no obfuscation can camouflage. These videos are the best answer to Benjamin Netanyahu and Jeffrey Goldberg. They show evil and cruelty by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers towards Palestinians.

While the world is clearly deaf it might turn out to be more difficult for the world to be blind, to this video of Mustafa Adel Al-Khatib, 17, being shot in the back and killed in the Old City last year.


Handcuffs

Police State: Recording police officers gets citizen journalists put in jail

Handcuffed
© Mike Segar / Reuters
Police practices are under fire as more and more recordings of excessive force and racist behavior surface. Some police departments have responded by trying to work with communities to regain trust lost, while others try to silence whistleblowers.

The availability of smartphones and cameras has empowered citizens to become guerrilla journalists who feel protected by the First Amendment. However, many have been shocked to discover revealing police misconduct may result in being targeted and harassed by law enforcement.

Comment: See also:


Pistol

Bangladesh kills suspected dual-Canadian citizen mastermind of cafe attack

Bangladesh hostage attacks
© Indian express fileThe Islamic State's Amaq News Agency said the attack on the restaurant was carried out by "Islamic State commandos,'' according to the SITE Intelligence Group which monitors jihadist activity.
Bangladesh police have shot dead three suspected militants, including the alleged mastermind of an attack on a cafe in which 20 civilians, mostly foreign nationals, died.

Police officer Sanowar Hossain confirmed to local media on August 27 that Tamim Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen believed to be behind the attack, was dead.

A gunfight erupted early August 27 when police raided a militant hideout in Narayanganj, 20 kilometers east of the capital, Dhaka.

Chowdhury, who returned from Canada in 2013, has been leading the banned Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, which police say carried out the cafe attack in which 18 foreigners were shot and hacked to death in the country's worst terror attack.

Police said nine Italians, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, an Indian, and a U.S. citizen were killed during the attack.

Bangladesh has seen a spat of killings over the past 18 months targeting liberals or members of minority groups -- killings the government blames on two home-grown groups, JMB and Ansar Al-Islam, which pledge allegiance to Al-Qaeda.

Comment: Flashback:


Whistle

Police whistleblower finally vindicated after raid on home ruled unconstitutional

Whistleblower cop
© exposedat.in
Police officer Wayne Anderson took a risk when he shared evidence of corruption in the Terrebonne Sheriff's Office. He was finally vindicated, however, when the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a raid on his home was unconstitutional.

A unanimous decision handed down from the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals found that a raid on Anderson's home was unconstitutional, as the rationale for it contained a fatal flaw.

Two computers and five cellphones were confiscated from his home under the premise that he was breaking the law with defamation. He was not, the court found.

Comment: In this case justice prevailed.


Alarm Clock

Swiss court will review Russian Paralympic Committee's appeal on the illegal and immoral blanket ban on Russian athletes

Mikhail Terentiev
© Vladimir Trefilov / ReutersMikhail Terentiev, chairman of the National Society for the Disabled
The Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) is set to learn on Monday whether its appeal against the decision by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to ban all Russian athletes from the Rio 2016 Paralympics has been successful.

Member of the IPC and RPC Mikhail Terentiev has told R-Sport that Russia's appeal against the decision will be reviewed at the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland on August 29.

On August 7, IPC chief Philip Craven announced that the committee had unanimously decided to prevent all Russian athletes from taking part in this summer's Paralympics and was withdrawing Russia's membership of the IPC due to the ongoing doping scandal.

Comment: Further reading:


SOTT Logo Media

Sputnik interviews Syria's displaced residents, who thank Russia for their military and humanitarian support

syria
© Sputnik/ Michael Alaeddin
The attempts by some Western media to accuse Russia of bombing the homes of civilians in Syria have failed every time because of the lack of actual evidence and the absurdity of the fabricated reports.

Sputnik went to a center in the refugee camp in the city of Latakia, which is engaged in the dissemination of domestic IDPs to different camps. In the center, residents of Idlib, Aleppo and Raqqa all await to be settled. One of the refugees named Abu Ahmed, who fled from the city of Erich in Idlib, told Sputnik that his house was destroyed by the terrorists two years ago. These were the same terrorists who killed Russian pilots who were carrying humanitarian aid on board the Mi-8 helicopter.

"We do not accept the criminal actions of the armed groups that committed crimes against the pilots who were on a humanitarian mission," Ahmed told Sputnik.

"These pilots delivered food to the residents in besieged areas and the terrorists shot down the helicopter and humiliated the bodies of these pilots. Let me ask you a question: which century to do you live in," Abu Ahmed said.


Hearts

Italian quake aftermath: 'Migrants who have nothing help Europeans in need'

Italy earthquake
© REUTERS/ Emiliano Grillotti
Refugees in Italy's southern region of Calabria are donating money to help survivors of the devastating earthquake that hit the country earlier this week. Sputnik discussed the refugees' involvement in rescue operations with Giovanni Maiolo - local coordinator of Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy.

"In our project we decided to help [the victims of the earthquake] in a symbolic way. The day of the earthquake they saw on television houses destroyed, towns destroyed and a lot of them thought about their own countries, their houses destroyed by bombs and their family members killed. So they decided to do something, to collect money and send it to the people in need," Giovanni Maiolo said.

People 2

Married elderly couple forced to live apart weep in heartbreaking photo

Couple
Anita and Wolf Gottschalk have been inseparable throughout their 62 years of marriage — but now, the elderly couple has been apart for eight months, forced to say a heartbreaking goodbye over and over again.

Their granddaughter, Ashley Bartyik, says a backlog in the Canadian health care system has made it impossible to move Wolf, 83, out of his transitional nursing home and into the care facility where Anita, 81, is living.

In the meantime, Bartyik drives Anita the 30 minutes from her Surrey, British Columbia, care complex to Wolf's every other day so she can see her ailing husband. The visits always end in tears for the couple, Bartyik said.

She posted a photo on Tuesday of Anita and Wolf weeping as they said goodbye — and explained that the situation had become even more desperate.

Pistol

NYPD cops fire 16 shots chasing after 15 y.o. boy with a BB gun

Keston Charles running
Keston Charles on the run from police.
Video footage has once again proven police frequently either assess a potential threat situation incorrectly or simply craft fictitious narratives to justify a wholly unnecessary use of force. Keston Charles miraculously survived being fired upon 16 times during a foot pursuit by the NYPD, who claimed the Brooklyn teen had drawn a weapon — but surveillance footage obtained exclusively by the New York Daily News proves the cops' story was all but an outright lie.

On December 9, 2013, 15-year-old Charles had been armed only with a BB gun — which has drawn comparisons to the Cleveland police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 — as he fled Officer Jonathan Rivera on foot.

Police had previously claimed Charles repeatedly took aim at Rivera with the BB gun, which the officer believed to be a real firearm — so Rivera, they said, had been justified in firing upon the teen 16 times.

Bomb

Birmingham, UK: Bomb disposal team dispatched in response to arrest of 5 men on anti-terrorism charges

West Midlands police
© Darren Staples / Reuters
An Army Bomb Disposal Team were dispatched to the English Midlands city of Birmingham after police arrested five men on anti-terrorism charges.

The West Midlands Police called in the bomb squad as a "precautionary measure" on Friday following an "intelligence-led"operation which led to the the arrest of the men in the Stoke area of Staffordshire and in Birmingham.

The men, all aged between 18 and 32 years old, are being held in the West Midlands on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, according to a statement from West Midlands Police.