Vomiting induced: Religion aids and abets a criminal. Again.

Briton Richard Huckle is currently on trial in England, facing twenty two potential life sentences for his crimes in Cambodia and Malaysia, the rape of dozens of children.  He worked for christian bible schools and ESL schools in those countries, gaining access to children through his job.

Christopher Neil is a serial child rapist who taught in Asia and committed crimes against children in Cambodia.  He was given an unfortunately short prison sentence in 2007 and has since re-offended after his release in 2012.

Neil is an ardent christian who studied to be a priest.  Is Huckle also an ardent christian like Neil?  I don't know.  But like Neil, he used his religiosity to gain access to children.  Those whose responsibility to hire foreign workers and protect those children failed to do their jobs.  They were all too willing to employ people based on religious fervour and willingness to accept poor working conditions.


Every non-christian I have met refuses to work for christian run ESL schools because such schools engage in questionable employment practices.  Most of them ask for unpaid work, excessive hours and six day workweeks, offer substandard pay or fail to pay as promised, provide poor living conditions, refuse to apply for or provide a legal work visa, etc.  Religious schools are scraping the bottom of the barrel in who they hire, so it doesn't surprise that they end up hiring slime.

From Buzzfeed:

Paedophile Who Raped Malaysian Children Faces 22 Life Sentences 

One of the UK’s most prolific paedophiles abused and raped children and babies in poor Southeast Asian communities for years, while bragging about it online and publishing a guide on how to carry out the abuse undetected.

Huckle taught English and Bible studies to children in Cambodia and Malaysia, outwardly appearing to be a trustworthy Christian. He even featured in a promotional video made by the British Council in Malaysia highlighting its work.

From The Telegraph, UK:

Britain's 'worst paedophile' Richard Huckle who targeted poverty-stricken children faces life in prison after admitting scores of offences

He then began to visit Malaysia regularly, posing as a teacher, photographer and philanthropist in order ingratiate himself with a local Christian community before raping and abusing their children.

There is no evidence at this stage that he abused any children in the UK, but the authorities have not ruled out victims coming forward.

Huckle's favourite method was to target vulnerable children in poverty stricken communities, even boasting of his exploits to other paedophiles online

Death Sports: Pop Warner football kills 18 year old kid

Football is a dying sport, and a sport that kills.  The only question is how many people will be killed before the game dies.  How many is not just players, but also children, girlfriends and wives killed by players with dementia, and people endangered and killed by the acts of players and former players (e.g. Rob Bironas).

People who put their children into football are no better than people who shake babies.

Paralyzed youth football player who settled with Pop Warner dies at 18

Donnovan Hill, the paralyzed former youth football player who reached an unprecedented seven-figure settlement with Pop Warner football, died Wednesday after complications during surgery related to managing his health, his mother, Crystal Dixon, said (via ESPN.com).

He was 18.

In 2011, Hill was paralyzed while making a tackle in a Pop Warner game in Lakewood, Calif. His injury and subsequent lawsuit, in which he claimed his coaches promoted a head-first tackling technique, ignited the discussion over player safety in youth football in general and the vulnerability families of severely injured players face.

Predators Target: Rightwing christian fanatics are enabling and encouraging cisgender rapists

In the US, all known cases of sexual assault against women and children in public bathrooms have been perpetrated by cisgender heterosexual men.  Police departments across the US report not a single instance of transgender women assaulting anyone in bathrooms anywhere.

Breitbart's ignorant attempts to smear transgender women backfired when they showed that twnety five cases of sexual assault were by cisgender men.  In their typical incompetence, not-so-Breitbart did the exact opposite of what they intended, and showed that transgender women pose no danger to anyone.

Since straight men are the danger, why are christians and various rightwing groups repeating the lie of "man in a dress raping women"?  Why are christians encouraging sexual predators to enter women's washrooms at Target stores (and elsewhere) and endangering women?

Right-Wing Anti-LGBT Activists Are Sending Men Into Target Bathrooms to 'Test' the Store

Do you know how many reports of transgender people assaulting others in bathrooms there have been? The grand tally stands at none, a number also expressed as zero, zip, nil, nada. Yet several jurisdictions and states—North Carolina most notoriously—have passed “bathroom bills,” and a number of others have pending legislation targeting trans people and restroom access. In response to the ginned-up scaremongering at the heart of these laws, Target issued a message stating it “welcome[s] transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” Now, anti-LGBT activists have appointed themselves restroom guardians, and have been going into bathrooms in the company’s stores to "test" the store's vigilance.

Among the greatest ironies of this story is that these bigots claim they’re trying to protect women from trans people, but they’re overwhelmingly men. In other words, a bunch of dudes, in the misguided name of “safety,” are invading women’s rooms. As if having a random guy in the bathroom while you go isn’t a bajillion times worse, more invasive, and something far closer to harassment than having a trans woman in the stall next to you. It’s utterly ridiculous.

Children Abused: Beating kids until morals improves doesn't work

Wow, what a shock.  Abusing children with physical violence is as mentally and emotionally damaging as sexually abusing them.  Who would have expected that?

Pretty much everyone who has ever endured physical violence from their parents, that's who. 

Risks of harm from spanking confirmed by analysis of 5 decades of research

The more children are spanked, the more likely they are to defy their parents and to experience increased anti-social behavior, aggression, mental health problems and cognitive difficulties, according to a new meta-analysis of 50 years of research on spanking by experts at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan.

The study, published in this month's Journal of Family Psychology, looks at five decades of research involving over 160,000 children. The researchers say it is the most complete analysis to date of the outcomes associated with spanking, and more specific to the effects of spanking alone than previous papers, which included other types of physical punishment in their analyses.

"Our analysis focuses on what most Americans would recognize as spanking and not on potentially abusive behaviors," says Elizabeth Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. "We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents' intended outcomes when they discipline their children."

I have asked a question to every person who attempts to justify "spanking" (a/k/a child abuse):

If spanking kids is okay when they disobey or do something wrong (e.g. break something), does that mean your partner or employer can do the same if you do the same things?  Unlike a child, an adult who has the knowledge and education to know better.

Unsurprisingly, defenders of child abuse say "No".  In their hypocritically "thinking", it's perfectly okay to physically and mentally abuse a child who can't fight back and doesn't know their legal rights and protections available to them.  But hitting an adult who can call the police, file a lawsuit or physically fight back is suddenly somehow wrong.

The IOC Games: South Korea's fascist government rounded up and imprisoned homeless people and pro-democracy activists

An investigative journalist has reported that during the 1980s the South Korean government rounded up and imprisoned homeless and poor people (falsely labelled "vagrants" to dehumanize them) in the years leading up to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.  During their captivity, these people (men, women and children) were subjected to abuses like beatings, slave labour, starvation, torture, rape and murder.

South Korea was still a US-backed (and armed) fascist government in 1981 when the 1988 Olympic bid was awarded.  That was only a year after the May 27th massacre of as many as 2000 pro-democracy protesters by the military (the government claims only 200-300, the families say differently).  In 1985, the torture and murder of a university student became the rallying point, leaving to the South Korean fascist regime giving up power in 1987.

That means many of the abuses of the homeless and poor continued after South Korea had allegedly become a free country.

South Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants'

In 1975, dictator President Park Chung-hee, father of current President Park Geun-hye, issued a directive to police and local officials to "purify" city streets of vagrants. Police officers, assisted by shop owners, rounded up panhandlers, small-time street merchants selling gum and trinkets, the disabled, lost or unattended children, and dissidents, including a college student who'd been holding anti-government leaflets.
They ended up as prisoners at 36 nationwide facilities. By 1986, the number of inmates had jumped over five years from 8,600 to more than 16,000, according to government documents obtained by AP.

Nearly 4,000 were at Brothers. But about 90 percent of them didn't even meet the government's definition of "vagrant" and therefore shouldn't have been confined there, former prosecutor Kim Yong Won told the AP, based on Brothers' records and interviews compiled before government officials ended his investigation.

Equally appalling, the current South Korean govenment is showing obscene hypocrisy and duplicity.  They have demanded for decades that Japan pay reparations to Korea's "comfort women", women who were forcibly held in brothels and raped by Japanese soldiers during World War II, more than seventy years ago.  And yet now that same South Korean government refuses to investigate and hold accountable those who participated in the imprisonment and abuses of their own citizens less than forty years ago.


One of those responsible was Park Chung-hee, South Korean dictator from 1962-1979, and the father of current South Korean president Park Geun-hye.

Liars and Bigots Colour: Whites More Likely Than Blacks to Use Drugs

In the least surprising news of the day, the same US government that made it policy to prevent black people from home ownership and wealth accumulation also intentionally targeted those least likely to use drugs with the most incarceration by race.

Stereotype Shattered as New Study Finds White Youth Are More Likely Than Blacks to Abuse Hard Drugs

By now we can all agree that the real target of Reagan’s enduring war on drugs was never drugs, it was African Americans. But if rising incarceration rates among black youth or the utter failure to curtail drug use is not enough proof, perhaps a new study from Northwestern University on racial differences among drug users will do the trick.

[...]

Researchers interviewed the participants in the study up to nine times through the course of their 20s. In that time, findings revealed that the odds of non-Hispanic white youths using cocaine were 30 times higher than African Americans. Hispanic participants trailed slightly behind, showing 20 times the odds of cocaine use compared to their African-American brethren.

They Gave Up: Call them "Desperation Bombers", not "Suicide Bombers"

Many people object to the term "Suicide Bomber" for those who engage in violence that cause their own deaths.  (If they aren't suicide attacks, what were the Japanese kamikaze attacks in World War II?)  Some have tried to use the term "Homicide Bomber", but that is a more apt term for those who kill and commit mass murder from a distance, like bomber pilots or drone operators.

A better term for those who kill themselves would be Desperation Bombers. They are people who no longer have concern for their own lives and living, who are willing to die for their cause because they have nothing else. The willingness of those who kill themselves for terrorist groups is no different than the willingness of soldiers to follow orders and die in combat. The only difference is their motivation.

People who have chronic and incurable conditions (e.g. terminal cancer, MS, ALS, etc.) sometimes choose to commit suicide because their quality of life is declining and will never improve. They have lost optimism and hope, choosing to end their own suffering. It is not a sign of mental illness.

The same is true of the kidnapped torture victims at Guantanamo Bay who attempt or commit suicide. It’s not a political statement or mental illness (though it is a sign of mental and physical abuse). And it’s definitely not an attempt to kill Americans since the victims have no resources nor the ability to cause harm. Their suicides are acts of desperation to end their suffering, the only means they have left.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of young Palestinians choosing to become bombers, and the reason is a lack of a future. Israel and its military intentionally bomb schools, demolish homes, cut off Palestine economically, kill people indiscriminately with no accountability, cut off access to water, food, medicine and other necessities. Desperation and lack of hope makes it easy for Hamas to recruit. It’s not because Palestinians are inherently violent. Jobs and futures are a scarce commodity in Palestine.

Who Are the New Hamas Recruits in Gaza?

Many of 15,000 applicants have no interest in police work or in politics – they just are looking for jobs.

When the Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip announced recently plans to hire about 1,000 new policemen, 15,000 applied.

Only a few of those reporting for fitness tests one recent afternoon expressed an interest in police work or said they belonged to the Islamic militant group. Most just wanted a job.

Plagued by poverty for decades, Gaza’s private sector has been all but wiped out by nearly four years of closed borders and last year’s devastating Israeli offensive. In the meantime, Hamas has solidified its grip, making it Gaza’s second largest employer.

The same applies to young muslims in the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, etc.) and Europe (e.g. France, Belgium, England). Poverty, racism, high rates of unemployment and a lack of opportunities among young populations makes it easy for extremists to find recruits. When there is no future and nothing to live for, it’s easy to convince someone to die for a cause.

What Motivates the Suicide Bombers?

Study of a comprehensive database gives a surprising answer

[…]

In September 2007 when American forces raided an Iraqi insurgent camp in the desert town of Singar near the Syrian border they discovered biographies of more than seven hundred foreign fighters. The Americans were surprised to find that 137 were Libyans and 52 of them were from a small Libyan town of Darnah. The reason why so many of Darnah’s young men had gone to Iraq for suicide missions was not the global jihadi ideology, but an explosive mix of desperation, pride, anger, sense of powerlessness….

Neither increased policing, military presense, spying nor tracking people will stop extremist terrorism in Europe. Those will only exacerbate the situation. The answer is including minority communities in society and giving them work and educational opportunities, giving them a future. When people see themselves welcomed and included in society, they will have no reason to listen to, support or join extremists.

When they have a reason to live, they won’t be willing to die as desperation bombers.

Religion Kills: Man murders his own son for being gay, likely also his wife

Once again religious bigotry rears its ugly head.

Christian father 'shot his son dead for being gay' and 'stabbed to death his wife' at their LA home

An LA father shot and killed his son in an act of premeditated murder because of the youth's sexual orientation, prosecutors alleged Friday.

Shehada Khalil Issa, 69, was arrested Tuesday after police arrived at his North Hills home to find the bodies of his son Amir, 29, and his wife, who has not been named, dead.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office claimed that Issa had threatened to kill his son in the past because of his sexual orientation.

It makes a change for a media outlet to openly mention the murderer's religion as a motivation for the crime (or crimes, since he likely also murdered his wife).  Too often they pretend religions they like are unrelated to the crime (e.g. Dylann Roof) unless they are engaging in fear mongering.

Money Corrupts: Mossack and the Cossack

The illegal and unethical financial practices of white collar criminals worldwide have been exposed by one brave individual who has chosen anonymity for the person's own safety.  The person has learnt the lessons of Edward Snowden.  In the eyes of the corrupt, telling the truth is the criminal act.  In the eyes of those who want everyone to abide by the same rule of law, the person is a hero.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/live/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-global-reaction-to-huge-leak-of-offshore-tax-files-live

Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

Eleven million documents were leaked from one of the world's most secretive companies, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

They show how Mossack Fonseca has helped clients launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax.

[...]

Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), said the documents covered day-to-day business at Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years.

"I think the leak will prove to be probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents," he added.

[...] 

One wealthy client, US millionaire and life coach Marianna Olszewski, was offered fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities. This is in direct breach of international regulations designed to stop money-laundering and tax evasion..

The question now becomes, will politicians save their own necks and stop protecting the corrupt by seizing assets and forcing people to pay taxes?  Or will they prove they are the puppets of such corruption, prove that they need to be overthrown by popular revolt?

Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption

Millions of documents show heads of state, criminals and celebrities using secret hideaways in tax havens

• Files reveal the offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials from around the world
• Current and former world leaders in the data include prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia
• More than 214,000 offshore entities appear in the leak, connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories
• Major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens

Trust Mistrusted: Once again, "Corrupt Cop" is a redundancy

Newark city's "settlement" with the US's Department of Justice settles nothing.  It does not reimburse victims of police corruption, not does it hold corrupt cops accountable for their actions.

Unlike most cases of police corruption, there is direct evidence of their misconduct that could be used to convict them.  Every time corrupt cops filed false reports, they put their names on them.  The US's DOJ is not charging those corrupt cops, and by not doing so they are condoning further corruption.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/nyregion/in-settlement-newark-agrees-to-a-series-of-police-department-reforms.html

In Settlement, Newark Agrees to a Series of Police Department Reforms

Federal officials announced on Wednesday that a sweeping settlement had been reached to reform the Newark Police Department after a three-year investigation uncovered a pattern of unconstitutional practices, including improper searches and stops and excessive use of force.

She Perseveres: A Mother's Strength In The Face Of Tragedy

Claire Wang, describing her daughter, her "Little Light Bulb":

"Fortunately, I had held you tightly and told you I loved you every day."

On Monday, March 28 2016, Claire Wang was watching her four year old daughter playing on her bicycle when the little girl fell over.  A man stopped by the little girl, and Wang mistakenly thought he was going to help her up.

Instead, the man grabbed the little girl and cut off her head with a knife in full view of her mother, who was powerless to do anything to stop the attack.  The attacker was quickly captured, but too late to save the little girl.

The crime has shocked Taiwan.  Mx. Wang was horrified, but her response to the tragedy has been amazing and strong, and one to admire and emulate.  The issue of ending "capital punishment" in Taiwan is being debated, but instead of seeking revenge against the killer, Mx. Wang has spoken out.  She has not and will not forgive him, but she has the will to speak against capital punishment and for greater help for the mentally ill.  (The murderer was a psychiatric patient who was inadequately treated and released from hospital.)  Some have accused the Taiwanese media of sensationalism, but it is Mx. Wang who voluntarily chose to talk to the media.

Sadly, one day after the murder of Mx. Wang's daughter, a policeman was stabbed in an unprovoked and unrelated attack in a metro rail station in Taipei.  It is unknown if the policeman's attacker was mentally ill.

These are now the second and third such attacks in recent years following the unprovoked murders on the Taipei subway in 2014 when Cheng Chieh murdered four people and injured several others.  Cheng had a history (from childhood to adulthood) of threatening violence against other people.

As horrific at these attacks with knives are, this shows yet again the need for gun control.  How many more people would have been killed if guns were as uncontrolled as freely available as in the US?  The "good guy with a gun" is a myth believed only by the ignorant.

My condolences and best wishes to Claire Wang and her husband.