Society's ChildS


MIB

170 people taken hostage in Mali hotel

Mali hotel
© AP
Gunmen took 170 people hostage at a hotel in the capital city of Mali, according to a Radisson Hotels representative. After reports of an active shooter operation at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, Mali, a company spokesman has confirmed that two people have taken 140 guests and 30 employees hostage.
Twenty guests, including three United Nations personnel workers, have been released, Olivier Salgado, a spokesman for the U.N. mission to Mali, told "Good Morning America" today.
Salgado said a military operation was ongoing. Five crew members from Turkish Airlines have also been released, a company spokesman said.
"What I know is three people stormed the hotel with AK47s around 7 a.m. this morning," Salgado said. "Of course, immediately, the security forces from Mali were deployed around the hotel."

Bomb

13 year old teen arrested for making 'ISIS' bomb threat on social media

Image
A screen capture of the bomb threat
A 13-year-old teen was arrested in Tennessee for allegedly making a bomb threat on social media under the username "ISISAttacks" that targeted four schools, leading to a sweep by a bomb unit, a K-9 unit, a Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the FBI.

The unnamed male teen from Mason, who admitted to making the bogus threat on social media to detectives and agents, was arrested on Thursday. The teen's parents cooperated with officials to confirm that there were no weapons or explosives in the home, according to the Jackson Sun. The teen is an 8th grader at Bright Middle School and is currently attending classes at Tipton County Alternative Learning Center, according to the Tipton County Sheriff's Office.

Heart - Black

Saskatchewan women pressured to have tubal ligations

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© Greg Pender, StarPhoenixBrenda Pelletier (left) and Tracy Bannab
The Saskatoon Health Region is apologizing and changing its policies after two aboriginal women felt pressured by medical staff and social workers to have tubal ligation surgeries.

"They made it pretty clear they didn't want me discharged until my tubes were tied," said Brenda Pelletier, who had the procedure at Royal University Hospital in 2010.

"They bug you and bug you and bug you."

Pelletier, now 39, had just given birth to her seventh child when the hospital social worker came to her room and asked her to sign a consent form to have the procedure. She refused.

Her mother was raising her six older children in another community. Pelletier, who was and is a recovering addict in the methadone program and committed to a healthy life, was determined to raise her daughter herself.

Arrow Down

British study: Millennials will be poorer than their parents

millennials poor wealth inequality
© Nigel Roddis/Reuters
Based on the rate in which wealth grew between 2006-08 and 2010-12, today's young people will be poorer than their parents' generation, new research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggests.

According to the report, which was published Thursday, Britain also suffers from huge levels of wealth inequality, with 9 percent of households having no assets at all while 5 percent are worth more than £1.2 million.

Those on the lowest incomes, the poorest 1 percent, have negative net wealth of £16,000, meaning their debts are higher than any assets they own.

Meanwhile the richest Brits, constituting the top 1 percent, have assets worth over £2.4 million. The report found that seven out of 10 households own their home outright or had secured them with a mortgage, while three out of 10 live in rented property.

Comment: The social contract has been broken by greedy psychopaths, for whom there is never enough.


Heart - Black

Boat carrying 20 refugees capsizes off Greek coast - at least 9 dead

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© AAPRefugees and migrants disembark from a dinghy after their arrival from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos.
Greece is reporting that a boat carrying some 20 migrants capsized this morning off the Greek island of Kos, leaving nine migrants dead. Two of the victims were children aged seven and 14. Seven people were rescued.

"The Hellenic Coast Guard has recovered nine bodies, but four others may be missing and search operations are continuing,'' said Kelly Namia, an IOM Athens spokesperson.

Tuesday's tragedy brings to at least 562 the number of migrant and refugee fatalities in the Eastern Mediterranean this year. It brings to 3,515 the total of all migrant and refugee fatalities across all sea-borne routes to Europe in 2015.

Attention

Why U.S. governors are wrong to oppose taking in Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees
© tribune.com.pkAmericans willing to house Syrian refugees.
Some half of US governors have announced their opposition to their states taking in Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. Although they can bother refugees, they can't actually dictate to people who are here legally where they can live. But anyway, here are the reasons for which these announcements are a form of political hysteria and not grounded in any rational policy considerations:

1. The attackers in Paris were European nationals. The Syrian passport found near one of them was a fake. So are the governors opposed to Belgian immigration into the United States?

2. The attackers were not refugees. They were born in Europe. Refugees are poor and lacking in knowledge or resources about their new environment. The attackers knew exactly where everything was that they wanted to assault and were hooked in with arms smugglers and other hard-to-discover criminal networks.


3. There is no rational reason to bar Syrian refugees but accept refugees from other conflict areas. The US already admits 70,000 refugees every year, but only took in about 400 Syrians last year. Most refugees are fleeing conflict situations or oppressive governments, and if you wanted to be paranoid about them you could fear them all on the same grounds that the GOP fears Syrians. The US has accepted a former child soldier from the Congo (might have skills). In 2014 the US accepted 758 refugees from Afghanistan; how are they different from Syrian refugees? And here's the kicker: the US accepted 19,651 refugees from Iraq last year! It is completely irrational to single out Syrians if you are going to take in Iraqis.

Stock Down

Manufacturing, trade and retail statistics show that the U.S. is already in recession

recession_cartoon
© Sack
If the U.S. economy really is in "great shape", then why do all of the numbers keep telling us that we are in a recession? The manufacturing numbers say that we are in a recession, the trade numbers say that we are in a recession, and as you will see below the retail numbers say that we are in a recession. But just like in 2008, the Federal Reserve and our top politicians will continue to deny that a major economic downturn is happening for as long as they possibly can. In this article, I want to look at more signs that a dramatic shift is happening in our economy right now.

First of all, let's consider what is happening to hedge funds. For many years, hedge funds had been doing extremely well, but now they are closing up shop at a pace that we haven't seen since the last financial crisis. The following is an excerpt from a Business Insider article entitled "Hedge funds keep on imploding" that was posted on Wednesday...

Comment: There are, however, two sectors of the economy that are doing quite well - the military industrial complex and the banks, which are benefiting quite handsomely from the recent attacks in Paris.

Who benefits? Defense industry stocks soar after the Paris terror attacks


Sheriff

Toronto: Being innocent and disabled is no protection from a police beating

Toronto Police
In a case of mistaken identity, Toronto Police were caught on video viciously beating a nonviolent, innocent man with a developmental disability. On Wednesday, the victim filed a $5 million lawsuit against the police after a video of the assault was released.

Around 8 a.m. on November 1, Santokh Bola, 21, arrived in the parking lot near his grandfather's store when two Toronto cops approached him at gunpoint. Responding to a call about a suspect with a knife, two officers tackled Bola to the ground as a bystander began recording the incident on his cellphone. Two other cops rushed onto the scene immediately delivering kicks and punches to Bola's unprotected head.

As an officer repeatedly kicked him, Bola shouted, "Hello! I didn't do anything, sir."

Instead of conversing with the innocent man, a cop kneed Bola in the head before punching him multiple times in the face. As Bola continued to defend his innocence, one of the officers ordered him to shut up. Although Bola was restrained on the ground, the cops rained down a torrent of fists and knees instead of simply handcuffing him.

Comment: Cops are equal opportunity sadists, as the following articles show:


Star of David

3 killed, including American tourist, in terrorist shooting in the West Bank

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© Fire DepartmentScene where terrorist vehicle smashed into Israeli vehicle in Gush Etzion.
Three people were killed late Thursday afternoon when a Palestinian terrorist shot at cars stuck in a traffic jam near the Gush Etzion junction in the West Bank.

Initial reports suggest that the terrorist fired at the cars and then sped in the direction of the Alon Shvut settlement and slammed into a car.

The terrorist exited the vehicle and attempted to fire off further shots. Security forces shot at the terrorist and then arrested him.

Network

Anonymous: Silicon Valley startup CloudFlare is assisting Islamic State online

cloudflare ISIS
Hacktivist group Anonymous has accused a San Francisco Web services company of protecting pro-ISIL websites from cyberattacks.

ISIL exploits the internet and social media sites to spread its propaganda and promote its activities — it also uses web services to guard the group from cyber attacks. As more attempts are made to disrupt ISIL-related sites, members of the terrorist organization are circumnavigating attacks by using web services readily available on the market.

According to some members of Anonymous, web technology available from CloudFlare, a company providing a content delivery network and distributed domain name server services, is being used by terrorists operating on the darknet and in cyberspace to prevent members of the hacktivist group from suspending ISIL related propaganda.

Following the recent terror attacks in Paris, Anonymous, who pledged to continue their cyber warfare campaign against ISIL online, have accused CloudFare of preventing them from doing so.