Society's ChildS


Airplane

Russian A321 plane crash in Egypt: Evidence thus far points to sudden structural failure

Russian A321 Crash_1
© EPA/STR Egypt OUTDebris from crashed Russian jet lies strewn across the sand at the site of the crash, Sinai, Egypt, 31 October 2015. According to reports the Egyptian Government has dispatched more than 45 ambulances to the crash site of the Kogalymavia Metrojet Russian passenger jet, which disappeared from radar after requesting an emergency landing early 31 October, crashing in the mountainous al-Hasanah area of central Sinai. The black box has been recovered at the site.
The jet split in two near the tail, which could mean a 'tail strike' in 2001 was never truly fixed.

The suddenness of what happened to the Russian-operated jet that crashed in the Sinai is highly unusual. According to reports the pilot had reported a technical problem and a diversion to the nearest airport. But the problem was apparently so severe that his plan was overtaken by events and the airplane literally fell out of the sky from its cruise altitude of 31,000 feet.

In theory the Sinai is dangerous air space. Much of the Sinai is a closed military zone where the Egyptian army has frequent skirmishes with Islamic terrorist groups. There have been claims by a jihadist group linked to ISIS that it brought down the flight, but the airplane's altitude put it well beyond the range of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, or MANPADS, the only relevant weapon fielded by such groups, and first pictures of the wreckage offer no evidence of a missile strike.

Instead investigators will treat as much more credible the possibility of a sudden structural failure. The Airbus A321 was 18 years old, but with a modern airplane like this and regular maintenance that is not in itself a cause for concern.

Comment: 'Sudden structural failure' sounds plausible, but it's unlikely that this plane's 'weakness' alone would have caused it to crash so spectacularly. As the author points out, "would have been rigorously inspected then and during subsequent maintenance checks."

Information is still coming in, and what has been shared publicly thus far only gives rise to more questions. That the crash involved a Russian plane and that it went down in a region teaming with military and paramilitary would suggest that this was a deliberate act by some unknown party.

However, for now Sott.net is leaving it open that this crash could have been the result of a natural, albeit unusual, catastrophic event, perhaps like the airburst that sent the Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea in December last year.

Whatever happened to this Russian-owned plane, it's definitely something more than just the result of a structural weakness. Some kind of tremendous force knocked that plane out of the sky.


Airplane

Islamic State's claim to crashing Russian passenger plane dismissed

russian crash
© www.telegraph.co.ukRemnants of Russian passenger flight A321
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) terror group says it is responsible for downing a Russian passenger jet that crashed Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. The deceased include seventeen children, two-hundred adult passengers, and seven crew members, reports concluded.

The Airbus A321 plane was flying from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, when it crashed only a few hundred miles away in the central Sinai area. Everyone on the plane was Russian except for a few Ukrainian passengers, Egypt's airport authority said in a statement.

A branch of the terror organization, Wilayat Sinai (formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis), posted a statement on social media, declaring, "The fighters of the Islamic State were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders. They were all killed, thanks be to God."

ISIS fighters do possess MANPADS, shoulder-launched missiles that have a maximum effective range of around 15,000 feet, according to experts. However, the plane started to experience issues at 31,000 feet, well out of the range of the jihadis' portable launchers. Both Egyptian and Russian officials have dismissed ISIS's claims.

Comment: See also:Russian plane carrying more than 200 passengers 'completely destroyed' in Egypt crash


Bad Guys

Fourth atheist blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh; three others wounded in similar attack

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© Munir Uz Zaman/AFPThe body of Bangladeshi publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, lies in a morgue at Dhaka Medical College in Dhaka Dhaka on October 31, 2015, after he was killed in an attack in his office.
A publisher of secular books was hacked to death in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka on Saturday after three of his colleagues were wounded in a separate attack.

The victims in both attacks had been involved in the publishing of works by Bangladeshi-US blogger and writer, Avijit Roy, who was himself hacked to death on the Dhaka University campus in February.

The slaughtered body of Faisal Arefin Dipan was discovered in the office of his Jagritee publishing house. "I saw him lying upside down and in a massive pool of blood. They slaughtered his neck. He is dead," Dipan's father, Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq, a well-known Bangladesh intellectual and writer, told AFP. According to Haq, that fact that his son "published the books of Avijit Roy" was the most likely reason for his murder.

Local police chief, Jamaluddin Mir, said that at least seven people were trapped inside the publishing house when the attack on 43-year-old Dipanwas carried out. "The criminals introduced themselves as customers who were buying books, and entered the publishing house," he said.

Earlier on Saturday, publisher Ahmed Rahim Tutul and two writers - Ranadeep Basu and Tareque Rahim - were shot and stabbed by three men at the Shudhdhoswar publishing house headquarters. Right after the attack Basu posted on a short status on Facebook, reading: "They hacked us, me Tutul and Tareq."

Comment: See also:


X

Prison industrial complex: Falsified or tainted evidence leads to thousands of wrongful convictions

Annie Dookhan
© Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photos by Reuters.Annie Dookhan, convicted of falsifying evidence used in roughly 34,000 criminal cases
How many people are in jail based on faked data?
Earlier this year, I wrote about a sprawling prosecutorial scandal in Orange County, California, involving a long-standing program of secret jailhouse snitches that had tainted prosecutions in cases almost too numerous to count. This story has only continued to worsen. One of the prosecutors at the heart of the case simply packed up and left California last month, and just this week the news emerged that Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas had been told that his office might have a jailhouse informant problem all the way back to 1999, a full 16 years before the current allegations about the misuse of jailhouse snitches had surfaced.

The problem with a scandal on this order of magnitude isn't just that it reflects a fundamental flaw in the justice system. The problem is that, as a purely practical matter, there is simply no easy way to correct it. In Orange County, some convictions have been tossed, others have been stalled, and a call for a Justice Department investigation has gone unheeded. Even years after cases like this come to light, undoing or redoing wrongful convictions proves almost impossible to achieve, especially when the state believes someone else should be cleaning up the mess.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of a massive scandal that cannot seem to be reversed involves Annie Dookhan, a chemist who worked at a Massachusetts state lab drug analysis unit. Dookhan was sentenced in 2013 to at least three years in prison, after pleading guilty in 2012 to having falsified thousands of drug tests. Among her extracurricular crime lab activities, Dookhan failed to properly test drug samples before declaring them positive, mixed up samples to create positive tests, forged signatures, and lied about her own credentials. Over her nine-year career, Dookhan tested about 60,000 samples involved in roughly 34,000 criminal cases. Three years later, the state of Massachusetts still can't figure out how to repair the damage she wrought almost single-handedly.

Comment: This is an appalling travesty of injustice against thousands of people, most likely disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities, yet those who are responsible for this aren't being held accountable and those who are innocent and were falsely imprisoned aren't seeing justice. Seems like another indicator of a severely corrupt system and a product of a psychopathic for-profit prison industrial complex that cares more about profits than people or justice. Anytime accountability is lacking, corruption is surely to follow.

See also:


Fire

France: Arson suspected in massive blaze at Monsanto research facility

fire wildfire
© Unknown
Earlier this week, a Monsanto research facility in France was burned to the ground. Monsanto and investigators suspect an arsonist was responsible for the blaze.

Monsanto representative Jakob Witten told Reuters that investigators" strongly suspect it was a crime as no electrical or other sources were found." He added that "No Monsanto sites in Europe have so far been the victim of fires of criminal origin, this is unprecedented violence."

The fire had multiple points of origin, meaning it is unlikely the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction or other natural causes. Investigators also noticed a strong smell of gasoline in different areas of the site.

Comment: Monsanto: The complete history of the world's most evil corporation


Red Flag

Sex work and student debt: Prostitution in the United Kingdom

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The total number of prostitutes in the United Kingdom is not known and is difficult to assess, but authorities and NGOs estimated in 2009 that approximately 100,000 persons in the country were engaged in prostitution. According to data from the Office for National Statistics, prostitution contributed £5.3 billion to the UK economy in 2009.

According to a 2009 study by TAMPEP, of all prostitutes in the UK, 41% were foreigners - however in London this percentage was 80%. Migrant prostitutes came from: Central Europe 43%, Baltic 10%, Eastern Europe 7%, Balkans 4%, other EU countries 16%, Latin America 10%, Asia, 7%, Africa 2%, North America 1%. 35 different countries of origin were identified.

Comment: What has the world come to when students have to engage in sex work to fund 'higher education'!?

The following story was carried on SOTT.net back in 2012: Prostitution Attractive Option for Med Students with Debt
The English Collective of Prostitutes, an organization that offers support for sex workers, has received an increased number of calls from students considering sex work and has medical students within its network, Dixon said. Jobs in retail stores and bars that students might take instead are increasingly scarce and offer low pay, the ECP says.

"what is unacceptable is a student being forced into prostitution out of financial desperation,"



Green Light

Traffic stop highlights how police treat the elite vs everyone else

Purdue President Mitch Daniels
© Purdue UniversityPurdue President Mitch Daniels
In a blatant example of the double standard within the U.S. justice system, a current university president and former Governor of Indiana was recently caught on dash cam video driving over twice the speed limit and rolling through a STOP sign. Instead of issuing a ticket or shooting the suspect for exhibiting suspicious behavior, the officer apologized and didn't even bother giving him a written warning for breaking multiple laws.

Around 7:50 a.m. on October 20, a Purdue University police officer observed a silver Toyota Avalon driving 42mph in a 20mph zone and began following the car. According to the officer's dash cam video, the cop decided to pull over the speeding vehicle after it rolled through a STOP sign. Instead of immediately pulling over to the side of the road, the vehicle continued driving before turning left into a driveway.

In addition to his dubious behavior, the driver suddenly opened his door with the engine running instead of shutting off his car and waiting for the officer to calmly approach him. Although most cops would be legally justified in pulling out their service weapon and taking cover at this point, the officer can be heard giggling while saying, "Good morning, sir."

Comment: This is how every police stop should go, regardless of social status.


Sheriff

Twenty-five ways why supporting your local police is like supporting tyranny

police stop
"Law and order" conservatives: When they are right, they are so right; but when they are wrong, they are so wrong.

They are right when they decry the militarization of local police. They are right to point out that the DOD 1033 program has transferred over $5 billion worth of military equipment from the Defense Department to local police forces. They are right to oppose more federal laws and mandates relating to local police. They are right to oppose a federal police "czar" like the Congressional Black Caucus has called for. They are right to oppose nationalizing the local police. They are right to point out that the Constitution only provides for the federal government to punish the crimes of treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. They are right to decry all the federal police in the alphabet soup of federal agencies. They are right to oppose making the police like a branch of the U.S. armed forces. They are right to oppose federal funding of local law enforcement. They are right to oppose federal control over local law enforcement.

But does this mean that Americans should always support their local police? To the contrary, most of the problems with local police have nothing to do with the federal government.

Newspaper

Oops: France's Le Figaro poll finds over 70% want Syria's Assad to remain in power

Bashar al-Assad
© SANA / Reuters
A recent poll carried out by France's Le Figaro newspaper has indicated that at least 72 percent of respondents want Syrian President Bashar Assad to remain in power.

The survey, published on Thursday, asked: "Should world powers demand Bashar Assad to leave?" At least 28 percent from 21,314 respondents have voted "Yes" so far, while the majority - 72 percent - have said "No".

The poll was conducted ahead of the Vienna talks, where 19 global powers gathered to find a solution for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria. The fate of Assad remained the stumbling block during discussions.


Comment: Most of the "global powers" will, of course, ignore what the people think or want.


Comment: Oh my, the West's propaganda on Russia and Syria is not working too well.


MIB

Pedophile Jared Fogle given free reign to abuse while FBI sat on the case for over four years

jared fogle FBI
In August, we learned the shocking truth that a familiar face on television—Jared Fogle, the Subway guy—was a pedophile who used his wealth, status, and secrecy to exploit kids.

Fogle pleaded guilty to having sex with two minors and possessing homemade child pornography, although there were many more victims. He agreed to a plea deal where he will serve 5 to 12.5 years in prison and pay $1.4 million in restitution to his victims.

The story was reignited two days ago when the New York Post revealed the contents of secretly recorded audio tapes. In them, Fogle's perversions are laid bare.

"I would fly us clear across the world if we need to. To Thailand or wherever we want to go. If we're gonna try to get some young kids with us it would be a lot easier," said 38-year-old Fogle, married father of two, in the tapes. "I had a little boy. It was amazing. It just felt so good. I mean, it felt — it felt so good."

Comment: Convictions against pedophiles are notoriously lacking and, if they do happen, shamefully lenient. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that those in the criminal justice system as well as high level government bureaucrats and politicians are frequently part of pedophile rings themselves. They protect their own.