Society's ChildS

Ice Cube

Russia takes the lead in Arctic exploration

Russia's Arctic Trefoil
© Vadim Savitsky / SputnikRussia's Arctic Trefoil base located on the island of Alexandra Land โ€“ the westernmost major island of the Franz Josef Archipelago.
Russia has widely expanded its control over its Arctic territories, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said. He added that the unique infrastructure Russia built in the Polar regions is unmatched by any country in the world.

"Throughout the history of Arctic exploration and reclamation, no other country has built so many [infrastructure] objects equipped with such technologies and possessing such levels of capacity in the fields of power saving, as well as military capabilities," Shoigu said, addressing a plenary session of the Public Council of the Russian Defense Ministry on Monday.

Chess

Checkmate: Israel chess federation demands compensation for Saudi visa ban

Chess game
© Vegard Wivestad / Global Look Press
Israel's chess governing body is seeking compensation from the organizers of an international chess competition in Saudi Arabia after its players were denied visas to participate in the tournament.

The King Salman World Chess Championships Blitz & Rapid which runs from December 26 to 30 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, would have united the best chess players from all over the world, had it not been a visa snub which precluded Israeli participants from entering.

The two Middle East countries do not have any diplomatic and economic ties, as Saudi Arabia along with many other Arab countries doesn't recognize Israel as a state.

Spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in the US Fatimah Baeshen explained Saudi's stance on the issue by saying that "the Kingdom has allowed the participation of all citizens. The exception is whereby the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has historically not had diplomatic ties with a specific country-thus has maintained its policy."

Question

Minister rules out link between HAARP and Iran earthquakes

Mohammad Hossein Zolfaqari
© Shahab GhayuomiMohammad Hossein Zolfaqari.
Tehran - Deputy Interior Minister for Security and Law Enforcement Mohammad Hossein Zolfaqari has ruled out a link between repeated earthquakes in Iran and the HAARP project, saying the claim lacks scientific basis.

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) was initiated as an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was designed and built by BAE Advanced Technologies (BAEAT). Its original purpose was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance.

As a university-owned facility, HAARP is a high-power, high-frequency transmitter used for study of the ionosphere.

Over time, HAARP has been blamed for generating such catastrophes, as well as thunderstorms, in Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Turkey, Greece and the Philippines, and even major power outages, the downing of TWA Flight 800, Gulf War syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Christmas Tree

Gambian migrant tries to steal cross from Milan Christmas tree, gets detained

christmas tree milan
© cristzam / Instagram
A Gambian man has been apprehended by Italian police in downtown Milan while climbing up a Christmas tree in a bid to remove a cross at its apex. Following a psychiatric examination, the man was admitted to a secure hospital.

A 21-year-old man from the Gambia was arrested by Italian police as he attempted to climb up the illuminated Christmas tree erected in Milan's Piazza Duca d'Aosta on Friday, ANSA reported. Confronted by police about his odd behavior, the man had nothing to say other than "the tree is not good" while pointing to the cross, Il Giornale reports.

Police then took him into custody and in due course brought him to the immigration office to be deported. This was where officers found out that the 21-year-old had already been granted permanent resident status under the refugee protection scheme in the province of Brindisi. Since the man had permanent residence in Brindisi, the officers intended to send him back to the province. However, the man began behaving erratically and was sent to a medical ward in a Milanese hospital as a precaution.

The incident came just a few days after the square was turned into a Tunisian marketplace by the Tunisian Tourist Board which rented the downtown square for a weekend. For this occasion, a giant Arabic gate was set up facing the Christmas tree.

Comment: There are two sides to the hospitality equation. It sounds as if this man may be mentally disturbed, but either way, it's bad form to enter a foreign country and have the audacity to disrupt their cultural traditions. If you don't like the Christmas tree, don't look at it. Talk about an overblown sense of entitlement.


Briefcase

Rolling Stone settles final defamation lawsuit with UVA fraternity

Defamation suit stemmed from retracted 2014 article accusing frat brothers of gang rape

Phi Kappa Psi fraternity
© Jay Paul/Getty Images
Over three years after Rolling Stone published an article accusing numerous fraternity brothers of vicious gang rape, the magazine has settled the final lawsuit stemming from that controversial report.

The lawsuit, brought against Rolling Stone by three members of the University of Virginia's Alpha chapter of Phi Kappa Psi, was "initially dismissed by a federal judge before being revived in September by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals," according to Hollywood Reporter. The parties subsequently "stipulated to dismissal."

Comment: Rolling Stone loses $7mn+ in defamation suit to a university dean of students over false gang rape report


Handcuffs

14yo girl who sent explicit photo to boyfriend could face 10 years in jail

selfie
© Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
A 14-year-old Minnesota girl who sent her boyfriend an explicit photo she took of herself may face up to 10 years in jail and be registered as a sex offender. The ACLU calls this a perversion of the state's child porn laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) is calling on Rice County juvenile court to throw out felony child pornography charges against a 14-year-old girl known only as"Jane Doe," according to KSTP-TV.

Doe admits to sending a sexually explicit selfie to a boy she met at school. She used the social media app Snapchat, but the boy shared the photo more widely, according to court documents cited by KSTP. The boy is also being charged.

Red Flag

Sign contract before sex? Political correctness led by the Left is going to take the passion out of love

harassment
© Frank May / Global Look Press
In the West, at least, everyone has become massively aware of the extent of coercion and exploitation in sexual relations.

However, we should bear in mind also the (no less significant) fact that millions of people on a daily basis flirt and play the game of seduction, with the clear aim of finding a partner for making love. The result of the modern Western culture is that both sexes are expected to play an active role in this game.

When women dress provocatively to attract the male gaze or when they "objectify" themselves to seduce them, they don't do it offering themselves as passive objects: instead they are the active agents of their own "objectification," manipulating men, playing ambiguous games, including reserving the full right to step out of the game at any moment even if, to the male gaze, this appears in contradiction with previous "signals."

This freedom women enjoy bothers all kinds of fundamentalists, from Muslims who recently prohibited women touching and playing with bananas and other fruit which resembles the penis to our own ordinary male chauvinist who explodes in violence against a woman who first "provokes" him and then rejects his advances.

Female sexual liberation is not just a puritan withdrawal from being "objectivized" (as a sexual object for men) but the right to actively play with self-objectivization, offering herself and withdrawing at will. But will it be still possible to proclaim these simple facts, or will the politically-correct pressure compel us to accompany all these games with some formal-legal proclamation (of consensuality, etc.)?

Pills

Alleged British 'drug smuggler' escapes death penalty in Egypt for banned narcotic

Drug smuggler
© Mohammed Salem / Reuters
A young British woman has escaped the death penalty, yet been sentenced to three years in jail for bringing 290 pills of Tramadol into Egypt. The painkiller is legal in the UK but a banned narcotic in the north African country.

33-year old Laura Plummer from Hull, England, was handed the three-year sentence for drug smuggling on Tuesday. Plummer and her family have always maintained that the pills - available on prescription in Great Britain - were for her partner Omar Abdel Aziz, who suffers from chronic back pain. The young shop assistant might consider herself lucky - earlier she'd been told that she might be facing 25 years in jail or even the death penalty.

Plummer's mother Roberta Sinclair flew in to Egypt to support her daughter in court.

"I'm still in shock after today's verdict. It's difficult and I can't believe it after waiting for two months," she told the BBC.

Card - VISA

Russia Sanctions the West: Visa & Mastercard prohibited from Russian financial technology

Russia
© Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters
The world's two most used payment systems - Visa and MasterCard - have been prohibited from Fintech, the Russian center for new financial technology, Vedomosti daily reports.

According to the daily, Russian authorities do not want to give foreign companies like Visa and MasterCard access to the latest financial technology in Russia. A spokesman from Fintech told Vedomosti the move is linked to security issues.

Penis Pump

Amazon, Microsoft staff busted buying prostitutes trapped in trafficking industry

jeff bezos
'It wasn't me!'
Scooped-up electronic communications between pimps and tech-sector employees at reputable Seattle-based companies such as Microsoft and Amazon is another hit for the tech industry, already reeling from sexism charges.

A cache of tech-sector emails sent to brothels and pimps, obtained by Newsweek via a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office, reveal that "67 emails were sent from Microsoft employee email accounts, 63 from Amazon accounts and dozens more from companies like Boeing, T-Mobile, Oracle and local Seattle tech firms."

Authorities have been collecting email messages from sex-traffickers' computers over the last few years. In 2015, a sting operation against prostitution rings ensnared high-level Amazon and Microsoft directors.

Those caught up in the sting operation to buy trafficked Asian women were discovered because pimps frequently request that clients prove they are not police by forwarding employee identification.

Comment: See also: Dragnet: US sex trafficking bust ensnares over 1,000-including law enforcement and clergy