Society's ChildS


Pistol

Soldier worship blinds Britain to the grim reality of war

Soldiers
© Getty Images'We should not feel compelled to point out that brave men and women are fighting in Afghanistan to secure our safety every time the military is mentioned.'
A Royal Marine's murder of a wounded Afghan in his custody lays bare the truth of military campaigns

With the official Remembrance Day ceremony closing in, and soldier worship about to hit its tedious annual peak, the public have been given an unexpected glimpse of war's unsanitised face. A Royal Marine has been convicted of murdering a wounded Afghan in his custody. Two marines were acquitted.

While the public has for 12 years been told otherwise, the Afghan occupation is not simply a case of good guys and bad guys. Nevertheless, tired references to "bad apples" will now flow. The Ministry of Defence will repeatedly and frantically highlight the supposed "good work" the troops have been doing in the smoking ruins of Afghanistan. A stock statement will be released by the MoD about military values and high standards of behaviour. Allegations of law-breaking, they will tell us, are investigated thoroughly and can result in disciplinary action up to and including court martial, discharge and prison. And all of this will obscure rather than address the issue.

Mr. Potato

Ex-Irish PM Bertie Ahern assaulted by man with a crutch in Dublin pub

Bertie Ahern
© Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty ImagesBertie Ahern has declined to talk about the attack, which comes three years after he was verbally abused by a number of customers in another Dublin pub.
Ireland's former prime minister Bertie Ahern was assaulted in a Dublin pub on Friday night.

Ahern was attacked with a crutch by a man in his forties inside the Sean O'Casey bar just off O'Connell Street, the Irish capital's main thoroughfare.

His attacker, who was said to be extremely drunk, was later arrested by the Garda Síochána and detained overnight in a city centre police station.

The former taoiseach has declined to talk about the attack, which comes three years after he was verbally abused by a number of customers in another Dublin pub.

USA

High level company executives visiting pornographic websites causes majority of IT problems

Image
A new survey by ThreatTrack Security shows that IT professionals spend a great deal of time fixing problems caused by company executives visiting pornographic websites on company devices.

The survey published earlier this month looks at cybersecurity challenges within U.S. enterprises.

Around 40 percent of the survey respondents said that one of the most difficult aspects of defending their company's network was the fact that they don't have enough highly-skilled security personnel on staff.

They also said their time is often spent dealing with easily avoidable malware infections originating at the highest levels of their organization.

Malware analysts say that a device used by a member of their senior leadership team had become infected with malware due to executives visiting a pornographic website 40 percent of the time.

Better Earth

San Francisco transforms into Gotham City for leukemia boy's Batman wish

A young leukemia patient realized his dream to become Batman for a day as an army of volunteers transformed part of San Francisco into 'Gotham City' Friday.

5-year-old Miles Scott from Siskiyou County traversed the city Friday, maneuvering through huge throngs of admirers as a superhero fighting crime with the help of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Volunteers, businesses, the San Francisco Giants and even the city's mayor and police department all pitched in to make the adventure as realistic as possible.


Miles, whose leukemia is currently in remission, has become an internet sensation as the project which has taken on a life of its own through social media.

Just after 10 a.m. Friday, Miles emerged from a Union Square garage in the Batmobile, accompanied by a second Batmobile, in front of a throng of onlookers, well-wishers and reporters held back by police barriers.

Stock Up

Norway: Man buys apartment with forgotten $27 bitcoin investment

Currency
© ReutersBitcoin: A worthwhile investment for some
A Norwegian man who purchased $27 worth of bitcoins and then promptly forgot about it for four years, was able to buy an apartment in central Oslo thanks to the massive appreciation of the virtual currency.

In 2009, Kristoffer Koch was doing research on encryption and on a whim decided to invest 150 Norwegian kroner ($27) in the recently created bitcoins, a means of payment over the internet.

Koch, now 29 and working as an engineer, only remembered the investment in April this year when he read an article about the soaring value of bitcoins.

Bad Guys

Flashback SOTT Focus: John F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Organized Crime and the Global Village


Comment: This is the sixth in a series of 12 articles written in 2006 commemorating (at the time) the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of JFK. This year, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of what can, in hindsight and in Truth, be called the Day America Died.

Anyone who has taken the time to study the facts about that fateful day in Dallas, TX, will already know that JFK was deliberately murdered by a cabal of psychopathic warmongers who were opposed to his plans for a more peaceful world. That same cabal is still in power today, and it has extended its reach across the globe.

We will be featuring one article per day between now and the anniversary.

You can find the rest of the JFK series on the right hand bar of Sott.net. You can also purchase a Kindle of the whole series on Amazon.

If you do nothing else, just take the time to watch the Sott.net/QFG produced version of 'Evidence of Revision', a three disc set that presents archive footage that will leave you in no doubt who killed JFK and why.




Cross-dressing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover presided over the greatest development of organized crime America has ever seen


Did you know that if we could reduce the world's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this...

Attention

Homeless cannibal eats the heart and tongue of elderly French villager after hearing voices in his head

  • Homeless 26-year-old murdered elderly man in southern France
  • Batched open 90-year-old's head with an iron rod and ripped out his tongue
  • He ate the tongue and the man's heart before setting the body on fire
A man brutally murdered a 90-year-old and ate his heart and tongue, blaming voices in his head, French officials said today.

The homeless 26-year-old broke into his elderly victim's home in Nouilhan, southern France, bashed the man's head open with an iron rod before ripping out the body parts he consumed.

The man ate the tongue and heart before burning the body and then setting fire to the 90-year-old's house.
Image
Cannibalism: In a horrific Hannibal Lecter killing, the 26-year-old ripped out the tongue and heart of a 90-year-old man and ate the body parts
The flames alerted the victim's son, who lives nearby, who discovered his father's body, investigators said.

USA

Number of U.S. expatriations reaches record high In 2013

Image
© Jeffrey Coolidge | Photodisc | Getty Images
Year's Tally for Expatriations Sets Record; Increase Comes Amid Tax Crackdown on Offshore Assets

This year will set a record for expatriations by U.S. taxpayers, with at least a 33% increase from the previous high in 2011.

The Treasury Department published the names of 560 people who either were U.S. citizens renouncing their citizenship or long-term residents who turned in their green cards during the third quarter.

That brings the total so far this year to 2,369, according to Andrew Mitchel, a tax lawyer in Centerbrook, Conn., who tracks the data. For all of 2011, the number of published expatriates was 1,781, he said.

Treasury doesn't report when people renounced, and there could be a gap between that action and a name's appearance on the list. The department also doesn't distinguish between those giving up passports and those turning in green cards.

Taxpayers who expatriate aren't required to give a reason, but experts said the overall increase was likely because of tougher enforcement of U.S. tax laws.

Eye 1

Man kills girlfriend with vacuum cleaner for refusing sex

Image
Refugio Sanchez Jr.
TACOMA, Wash. -- Pierce County prosecutors say a 32-year-old Lakewood man used a vacuum cleaner to beat his girlfriend to death after she refused to have sex with him.

Refugio Sanchez Jr. was charged Thursday with second degree murder in the Tuesday beating and strangulation death of Angela Cannizzio.

Sanchez, who's an active duty member of the US Army, drank a six pack of beer and a shot of rum after getting home from work Tuesday night, according to prosecutors.

Detectives believe Sanchez and Cannizzio got into an argument about Cannizzio's estranged husband, who lives in Connecticut. After the argument, Sanchez wanted to have "make-up sex," and when Cannizzio rebuffed him he picked up a vacuum cleaner and began beating her with it, according to charging documents.

Comment:
Sanchez was anxious to take a shower, saying, "I can't wait to get this out from under my fingernails," according to prosecutors.
Witness, dear readers, the mind of the psychopath. Contemplate, how fundamentally different this reaction is to that of a normal human reaction.


Arrow Down

Obamacare enrollment is super low

Image
© AFP/Getty Images/KAREN BLEIER/StaffThe Health and Human Services Department released enrollment figures for Obamacare Wednesday that fell far below the administration's initial targets.
Roughly 100,000 people enrolled in health insurance through Obamacare last month - far short of the administration's goal.

The Health and Human Services Department said 106,185 people have successfully applied for and chosen private insurance through the health care law's new marketplaces. That total is only about 20 percent of the administration's initial enrollment target for October, the first month in which consumers were able to sign up for coverage.

Officials have long acknowledged they would fall short of that target because of the problems surrounding HealthCare.gov, the problem-plagued website that handles enrollment for 36 states.