Society's ChildS


Snakes in Suits

Kevin Trudeau found guilty of criminal contempt over diet book ads

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Author and infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau.
In the world of dieting, many promises are made and broken. But author Kevin Trudeau's is an extreme case: He had been warned by no less than the Federal Communications Commission not to make false claims about his diet book in advertisements.

Nevertheless, he appeared in a recent set of infomercials for his book "The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You To Know About" saying that it revealed a miracle substance that would allow people following his diet plan to eat all they wanted and still lose weight. The infomercials aired 32,000 times.

A federal jury in Chicago found Trudeau guilty of criminal contempt Tuesday and he was taken into custody, Reuters reports. He faces potential federal prison time.

Trudeau has been in hot water with federal officials in the past for infomercials marketing remedies for AIDS, hair loss, memory loss and obesity. He paid $2 million in a 2004 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to stop advertising products with infomercials.

Publications about products, however, were still OK -- as long as he followed the rules.

Attention

Desperation grows among Philippine survivors of Typhoon Haiyan

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© Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesTyphoon survivors wait to board a C130 aircraft during an evacuation from the Tacloban, Philippines
Filipinos in devastated Tacloban try to rush military planes to evacuate, and relief crews struggle to get aid through the debris.

Drenched by rain and increasingly desperate, typhoon-stricken Filipinos rushed fences and pleaded with guards Tuesday at the battered airport serving as a tenuous lifeline to an international aid effort confronted at every turn by transport and logistics bottlenecks.

The United Nations launched an appeal for $301 million to help victims. The chief of its humanitarian operations, Valerie Amos, arrived in Manila, the capital, to coordinate the relief effort and quickly acknowledged the difficulties it faced.

"We have not been able to get into the remote areas," Amos said. Even in Tacloban, she said, the main city in the typhoon's path and the site of the airport, "because of the debris and the difficulties with logistics and so on, we have not been able to get in the level of supply that we would want to."

In its appeal for funds, the U.N. estimated that more than 11 million people had been affected by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to hit land, with 660,000 left homeless. The official death toll was nearly 1,800, and that figure is expected to rise substantially. More than 2,500 were injured.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III downplayed widespread estimates that 10,000 or more people might have died, telling CNN that the figure was more likely 2,000 to 2,500 people.

Ambulance

Train in Alabama oil spill was carrying 2.7 million gallons of crude

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© Bill Castle / Associated PressA tanker train that derailed and caught fire in western Alabama outside Aliceville was carrying 2.7 million gallons of crude oil.
A train that derailed and exploded in rural Alabama was hauling 2.7 million gallons of crude oil, according to officials.

The 90-car train was crossing a timber trestle above a wetland near Aliceville late Thursday night when approximately 25 rail cars and two locomotives derailed, spilling crude oil into the surrounding wetlands and igniting a fire that was still burning Saturday.

Each of the 90 cars was carrying 30,000 gallons of oil, said Bill Jasper, president of the rail company Genesee & Wyoming at a press briefing Friday night. It's unclear, though, how much oil was spilled because some of the cars have yet to be removed from the marsh.

"Most of the cars did not spill all of the product that was inside it," Don Hartley, a regional coordinator for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, told the Los Angeles Times.

Emergency responders have to wait until the fire has burned out, Hartley said.

Hartley said that the marsh where the oil spilled is stagnant, so the oil hasn't spread to other water systems. Scott Hughes, spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, told The Times that responders had set up booms to absorb some of the oil.

Heart - Black

Psychopath alert: 'If you can't prevent rape, you enjoy it,' says India's top police official

Ranjit Sinha addresses a press conference
© Mustafa Quraishi/AP Ranjit Sinha addresses a press conference at the CBI headquarters in New Delhi, India.
Ranjit Sinha, chief of India's Central Bureau of Investigation, apologises for remark that causes outrage across country

One of India's most senior policemen has been forced to apologise after comparing rape to unlicensed betting which, because it cannot be prevented, should be enjoyed.

Ranjit Sinha, who leads the Central Bureau of Investigation in India, made the remarks during a discussion at a conference on Tuesday night.

India is struggling with a wave of violence against women which has prompted widespread debate about social attitudes and has damaged its image overseas.

In December last year, a 23-year-old student died of internal injuries suffered during a gang rape by six men after she boarded a private bus in south Delhi. Four men were sentenced to death for the attack in September at a special fast-track court in the capital. A juvenile has also been convicted. The alleged ringleader of the assault hanged himself in prison.

Further incidents of multiple rapes or sexual assaults are now regularly reported by Indian media.

"Do we have the enforcement?" Sinha said after being asked if sports betting, which is banned in India but widespread, should be legalised. "It is very easy to say that if you can't enforce it, it's like saying if you can't prevent rape, you [should] enjoy it."

His remarks outraged campaigners and politicians.

Handcuffs

Man jailed for 7 years in heater abuse case

heater
© Thinkstock
A man who burnt his 5-year-old son's face with a fan heater because the youngster accidentally scorched the carpet has been jailed for almost seven years.

Before the 46-year-old was taken into custody to begin his lengthy stint behind bars, he made an emotional plea to family members in Christchurch District Court.

"I'm very sorry for what I've done to my son," he said.

"One day I hope to stand in front of you and apologise properly."

He told another one of his children present in court to "stay away from the gang. Don't do the gang thing."

The man cannot be named after a judge granted final name suppression after a request from the youngster's family who want his identity protected.

The unemployed man earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to disfigure the boy during the attack on July 20 this year.

It happened at the family home in the Shirley area of Christchurch when police say the boy accidentally knocked over a fan heater, which made a burn mark on the carpet.

The man then lost his temper and "took hold of the heater and forcibly pushed the hot metal protective grill at the front of the heater on to the boy's face, causing deep burns to his facial skin," according to the police summary of facts.

Handcuffs

23 petty crimes that have landed people in prison for life without parole - New ACLU report documents the disturbing growth of endless sentences

As of last year, according to a report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 3,200 people were serving life in prison without parole for non-violent crimes. A close examination of these cases by the ACLU reveals just how petty some of these offenses are. People got life for, among other things...
  • Possessing a crack pipe
  • Possessing a bottle cap containing a trace amount of heroin (too minute to be weighed)
  • Having traces of cocaine in clothes pockets that were invisible to the naked eye but detected in lab tests
  • Having a single crack rock at home
  • Possessing 32 grams of marijuana (worth about $380 in California) with intent to distribute
  • Passing out several grams of LSD at a Grateful Dead show
  • Acting as a go-between in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana to an undercover cop
  • Selling a single crack rock
  • Verbally negotiating another man's sale of two small pieces of fake crack to an undercover cop

Propaganda

"Sources" say Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords

Snowden
© The GuardianNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, is seen in this still image taken from video during an interview by The Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 6, 2013. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on July 5, 2013 in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs.
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.

A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.

Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.

Pistol

Breaking: Yet another one - 3 shot outside Pittsburgh high school

Pittsburgh, PA (AP) - School officials say three students were shot outside a Pittsburgh high school, and police are searching for a gunman.

Pittsburgh school district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh says the students were shot outside Brashear High School on Wednesday afternoon as they walked to a vehicle they'd all taken to school earlier in the day.

House

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Surviving the End of the World (as we know it)

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Impending economic collapse; global food shortages and famine; a planet frozen by sudden glacial rebound; widespread illness from comet-borne viruses; societal breakdown from bloody revolution; psychos in power launching nuclear Armageddon... it's not 'the end' of the world, but it's certainly a time of great change.

When we see the same things happening over and over again in history, it becomes clear that the point is not to worry but to be aware. There may be mass death, but those who are prepared, like the Wise Virgins, survive and create the future.

It'll be frightening, possibly fun, and most certainly interesting. Fortune will play a large part in determining the outcomes from one person to the next, but the ones who are prepared are the ones who draw Fortune to their side. So, the question is: how do we prepare?

This week on SOTT Talk Radio, we're going to discuss some good ideas and how to put them in action. We'll also be taking a critical look at some of the wilder ideas that have given so-called 'preppers' and 'survivalists' a bad rep.

Running Time: 02:01:00

Download: MP3


Attention

Flashback SOTT Focus: Sim City and John F. Kennedy


Comment: This is the fourth 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.




True Statesman
Son of Perdition


When I re-read the words of John F. Kennedy, when I consider the legislation he sought to enact, when I consider the sheer depth and humanity of him, and compare him with what is lurking and lurching in the White House today, I am literally overwhelmed. How far down into the Slough of Despond we have been sucked since that November day 43 years ago.