Society's ChildS


Snowflake

She's snow-k; Woman stranded in car, buried in snow for 3 days, rescued


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:59 UTC
Buried by snow
© Maryland National Guard
An unidentified woman has been rescued after being trapped in her car amid the heavy snow that hit Accokeek, Maryland over the weekend. The woman was trapped on Friday and waited until Monday for a rescue crew to dig her out.

The woman was conscious and uninjured when she was found, officials told WJLA. The reason her car was trapped or why she was in the car is yet unknown.

Comment: See more: 28 inches of snow, floods, emergency in New York: Deadly snowstorm 'Jonas' hits US East Coast

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Magnify

Leaked report of inquiry into Jimmy Savile blasts BBC, revealing company's "sheer scale of awareness" of his pedophile activity

Nicola Slawson
The Guardian
Thu, 21 Jan 2016 21:13 UTC
Janet Smitt and Jimmy Savile
© Rex/Ross ParryDame Janet Smith is reviewing the BBC's practices at the time of the Jimmy Savile scandal
A leaked draft report into the BBC's practices during the years that Jimmy Savileworked there has revealed the full extent of the former DJ's predatory sexual activity.

The report, extracts of which were published by the investigative news website Exaro, is said to include "devastating detail" of the corporation's "sheer scale of awareness" of the late star's activities.

Dame Janet Smith's draft report is said to point to a "deferential culture", "untouchable stars" and "above the law" managers at the corporation. However, the BBC cannot be criticised for failing to uncover Savile's "sexual deviancy", it says.

The retired judge's report outlines multiple rapes and indecent assaults on children by Savile, which she claims were all "in some way associated with the BBC".

Comment: For more on this story, see:

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Che Guevara

While white Australians celebrate national holiday, aboriginals mark Invasion Day


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:38 UTC
aboriginal australian flag
The new Australian flag in the Eurasian century? The Australian Aboriginal flag
January 26 is known to many Down Under as 'Australia Day' - an occasion when proud Aussies can be seen draped in flags and raising a brewski to their much-loved country.
australia day
© ryantipping / Instagram'Australians': White, liberal, and proud
However, the date doesn't hold the same celebratory associations for all Australians.

Members of the aboriginal population are increasingly pushing for the annual holiday to be changed to 'Invasion Day', as a reminder to the majority of the population that this land was stolen from their ancestors.


Comment: 'Australian national consciousness' is a very recent development, born out of primarily British settlers in Australia and New Zealand returning to 'help the motherland' by fighting as 'Anzacs' during the 'Great War' in Europe.

They primarily participated as cannon fodder in the Gallipoli campaign, which recent historical research by Scottish authors Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor has revealed the British imperial elite never even intended to win - it was just a ruse to keep Russia fighting against Germany while cementing the Young Turks' power in Istanbul.

And thus, white Australia's national mythos was born in war - and a phony, contrived Western war at that. And ever since then, its phony 'national identity' has been held together by participation in the Anglo-American empire's fake 'cold war' and now the 'war on terror', which were smokescreens for maintaining their masters' total global domination.

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Heart - Black

Man who was gunned down by Chicago police made three calls to 911 pleading for help


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:23 UTC
Quintonio LeGrier funeral
© Joshua Lott / ReutersJanet Cooksey (L), is embraced as she attends the funeral for her son Quintonio LeGrier in Chicago, Illinois, January 9, 2016
Quintonio LeGrier made three calls to 911 emergency dispatchers in Illinois, pleading for officers to be sent to his father's home, according to newly released recordings. One dispatcher hung up on him. Chicago police shot LeGrier six times.

Audio recordings of the 911 calls, including a fourth by LeGrier's father, were released Monday by the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which investigates police shootings in the city. Previously, Chicago authorities said only two 911 calls were made.

Early on the morning of December 26, LeGrier, 19, called 911 asking for police officers to come to the home on Chicago's West Side. He did not give his name or many details as to why he wanted a police presence, only saying he was being threatened and that an emergency was taking place. He and a neighbor, Bettie Jones, were fatally shot by Chicago Police Officer Robert Rialmo minutes later. His father was shot in the chest but survived.

The shooting came amid rising tensions between city officials, police and Chicago residents, especially within communities of color. Shortly before LeGrier's killing, a Chicago police officer was charged with the murder of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times in 2014. Video of the shooting was released to the public over a year later, sparking widespread outrage and calls for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Comment: As this sad case has again proven, unless absolutely necessary people in the US should absolutely avoid calling the police.

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Eye 1

Big Brother is watching: NYPD use of license plate readers gives them "chilling" access to vast array of surveillance data


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:16 UTC
NYPD
© Mike Segar / Reuters
The New York Police Department has gained "chilling" access to a vast array of surveillance via the use of license plate readers (LPR), the American Civil Liberties Union warns.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) obtained the final version of the nearly $500,000 contract between the NYPD and Vigilant Solutions for access to the billions of records the company has collected nationwide through the use of its LPRs.

Under the department's previous license plate database system, known as the Domain Awareness System, the NYPD would hold onto data scanned by its nearly 500 LPRs, combined with information from cameras and other surveillance devices around the city, for at least five years, regardless of whether a specific license plate triggered any suspicion.

Any privacy issues raised by the Domain Awareness System, however, pale in comparison to those wrought by the switch to Vigilante, the NYCLU said, because the new system "contains over 2.2 billion location data points, and it is growing by almost a million data points per day."

"Surveillance is about power. Vigilant gives the NYPD power to monitor our whereabouts and, by extension, our affiliations, interests, activities and beliefs," the civil rights group said in its blog.
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Bomb

Explosion reported near a shopping mall in central Stockholm


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:12 UTC
Stockholm explosion
© Bjorn Larsson Rosvall / TT News Agency / Reuters
A blast was reported near a shopping mall in central Stockholm on Tuesday evening. No injuries have been reported.

Police rushed to the Mood shopping center in central Stockholm around 17:30 GMT following reports of a blast there.

"We have a damaged facade and a ruptured car window but we are not aware of any injuries to people. Obviously something has exploded but it doesn't appear to be major damage," said police spokeswoman Carina Skagerlind.
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Snakes in Suits

Mayor of South African district proposes scholarships to female students on the condition they can prove their virginity


RT
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 19:58 UTC
African child
© Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters
A South African education scheme under fire for offering girls university scholarships on condition they remain virgins has been defended by the local mayor.

Dudu Mazibuko, the mayor of the Uthukela district in south-east South Africa, previously said the girls will be given regular virginity testing as an incentive for students to "keep themselves pure and inactive from sexual activity and focus on their studies".

Mazibuko said the scholarships, which are available to 16 students, will be renewed "as long as the child can produce a certificate that she is still a virgin".

"To us, it's just to say thank you for keeping yourself and you can still keep yourself for the next three years until you get your degree or certificate," she told a local radio station.

Comment: Clearly the mayor doesn't realize that it's the 21st century. This is just another sign of institutionalized patriarchy. The fact that women who have been raped are excluded is especially egregious. This is an idea that seems all about punishing women who have not maintained someone else's standards of living. Mayor Mazibuko needs to take a time machine back to the Stone Age, where her thinking resides.

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Snakes in Suits

Plunder and domination: Gates Foundation opening African agriculture to land and seed-grabbing global agribusiness

Colin Todhunter
Ecologist
Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
africa agribusiness
The Gates Foundation - widely assumed to be 'doing good', is imposing a neoliberal model of development and corporate domination that's opening up Africa's agriculture to land and seed-grabbing global agribusiness, writes Colin Todhunter. In the process it is foreclosing on the real solutions - enhancing food security, food sovereignty and the move to agroecological farming.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development. With assets of $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It actually distributes more aid for global health than any government. As a result, it has a major influence on issues of global health and agriculture.

The charges are laid in a new report by Global Justice Now: 'Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?' The report argues that what BMGF is doing could end up exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate power globally.

Global Justice Now's analysis of the BMGF's programmes shows that the foundation's senior staff are overwhelmingly drawn from corporate America. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted - those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and economic justice rather than charity?

According to the report, the foundation's strategy is intended to deepen the role of multinational companies in global health and agriculture especially, even though these corporations are responsible for much of the poverty and injustice that already plagues the global south.

Comment:

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Pistol

Breaking: San Diego's Naval Medical Center on lockdown; reports of active shooter

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
Tue, 26 Jan 2016 18:55 UTC
Naval medical center
According to multiple news reports, the Naval Medical Center in San Diego is currently on lockdown after reports of an active shooter in the facility.

According to a Facebook post from the medical center's account:
**!ATTENTION!** An active shooter has just been been reported in building #26 at Naval Medical Center San Diego. All occupants are advised to run, hide or fight. All non-emergency response personnel are asked to stay away from the compound, located at 34800 Bob Wilson Drive, San Diego, CA 92134
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Handcuffs

Plea bargains and the death of due process: 96% of all inmates have never had a trial

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 25 Jan 2016 18:38 UTC
prison state usa
In the Land of the Free, one-quarter of the entire planet's prison population, some 2.2 million people, currently languish behind bars; yet, an astonishing number of them — around 2 million —have never been to trial. Indeed, these figures categorically debunk the notion the criminal justice system in the United States maintains any semblance of its formation's original intent: to ensure the guilty suffer punishment befitting their crimes, while the innocent avoid false conviction.

As the fundamental basis for the justice system in the United States, the Sixth Amendment states:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Comment: And who profits from these huge numbers of incarcerated individuals, otherwise known as modern-day slaves?

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