[EnGadget]The tech industry has a clear history of sexism and misogyny, but a recent Newsweek report highlights another problem. The publication got its hands on a slew of emails sent to brothels and pimps between 2014 and 2016 that document the industry's patronage of brothels and purchasing of services from trafficked sex workers. Among the emails, which were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office, were 67 sent from Microsoft employee email accounts, 63 from Amazon accounts and dozens more from companies like Boeing, T-Mobile, Oracle and local Seattle tech firms.
Some of the emails were collected during a 2015 sting operation that targeted sex worker review boards and resulted in the arrest of 18 individuals, including high-level Amazon and Microsoft directors. Two opted for a trial, which is currently set to begin in March.
Seattle's sex industry has grown right alongside its tech industry and the city's authorities have said that some men spend up to $50,000 per year on sex workers. Brothels are even known to advertise how close they are to tech offices. Alex Trouteaud, director of policy and research at the anti-trafficking organization Demand Abolition, told Newsweek that the tech industry is a "culture that has readily embraced trafficking."
In a statement sent to Newsweek, Microsoft said, "Microsoft has a long history of cooperating with law enforcement and other agencies on combating sex trafficking and related topics, and we have employees who volunteer their time and money specifically to combat this issue as well. The personal conduct of a tiny fraction of our 125,000 employees does not in any way represent our culture. No organization is immune to the unfortunate situation when employees act unethically or illegally. When that happens, we look into the conduct and take appropriate action. Microsoft makes it clear to our employees they have a responsibility to act with integrity and conduct themselves in a legal and ethical manner at all times. If they don't, they risk losing their jobs."
Amazon told Newsweek it's investigating the matter and said, "Amazon's Owner's Manual clearly states that, 'It is against Amazon's policy for any employee or Contingent Worker to engage in any sex buying activities of any kind in Amazon's workplace or in any work-related setting outside of the workplace, such as during business trips, business meetings or business-related social events.' When Amazon suspects that an employee has used company funds or resources to engage in criminal conduct, the company will immediately investigate and take appropriate action up to and including termination. The company may also refer the matter to law enforcement."
#2
And US Corporations were once conservative. Now we know that the directors are definitely not conservatives which explains their leftist/lawless tendencies these days.
Another today's corp executive "embracing cheap labor" policy.
#3
Yea, well, the key to success in IT is proper care & feeding of computer nerds - meaning, in particular, arranging for them things they can't do for themselves.
p.s. How is that sexist - do the authors claim that a woman doesn't have a right to chose to work in providing sexual services? Do they claim ownership on female vaginas!!!
#6
As with the hollyweird crowd, the IT world, as embodied bt MS, Gurgle, Crapple, Fartbook, Sh*tree and PayPally, are all scolds telling us all how to live every day. They'll call this an aberration, not indicative of the organizations as a whole. I'll go with the Law of Ultimate Syzygy: You put a teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. You put a teaspoon of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get sewage...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/26/2017 6:58 Comments ||
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#7
trafficked sex workers
A title employed for anyone engaged in commercial sex whether consensual or not. It's like all illegals are 'migrants' conflated with legal immigrants or the conflating of natural and man made climate change into labeling skeptics deniers. IIRC in counties outside of Reno and Vegas in Nevada, it is still legal to operate brothels, but to they'll still be referred to as 'trafficked sex workers'.
Upper management in large corporations as a group, all hardworking, thoughtful, college-educated individuals, are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Those who think otherwise keep quiet about it, in my experience.
[PRESSTV] A suspected rebel militia group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... has killed at least nine military forces during two separate attacks in the country’s volatile east.
The Congolese army said the fatalities took place in the eastern province of South Kivu over the past four days, accusing Mai Mai Mazembe snuffies from the Nande ethnic group of being responsible for both attacks.
"The army recorded a loss of nine soldiers in two ambushes in the Baraka operational zone" in South Kivu, an unnamed military official told AFP.
A lieutenant was killed on Sunday in the village of Lweba, seven kilometers from the Baraka district, the official said, adding that the other deaths came in an attack two days earlier.
"Our hospital received the bodies of eight soldiers killed by bullets on Friday," said a hospital source in Lulimba, a village 60 kilometers south of Baraka.
Dozens of gangs have been active in the eastern DR Congo ever since a war there in 1998, and the Congolese army, joined by United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... troops, is on the offensive against rebel groups.
Seeking safety, tens of thousands of people have escaped to neighboring Zambia, where they are facing "hugely underfunded" aid operations, according to UN figures.
Congo has also been facing numerous problems over the past few decades such as grinding poverty and crumbling infrastructure.
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[AA.TR] The Ugandan military on Monday said that more than 100 rebels have been killed in Arclight airstrikes on their 8 camps in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... Ronald Kakurungo, Uganda Peoples Defence Force's front man, told Anadolu Agency on phone that they have launched a joint operation with the Congolese army to deal with Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels.
The operation started a few days after the rebels killed 14 UN peacekeepers, including 5 Congolese soldiers, and injured over 50 peacekeepers.
"We launched a joint operation on December 22. The Ugandan army operates from within Uganda while DRC army fights the rebels from inside Congo, Kakurungo said.
He said that the Ugandan forces has been carrying out airstrikes and using artillery from the border district of Bundibugyo.
"Through intelligence and coordination with the DRC army we can confirm that 8 bases of ADF rebels have been destroyed and over 100 rebels killed. The army in DRC is pursuing the rebels who survived the airstrikes," said Kakurungo.
Lieutenant Thomas Muhindo, Congolese security officer in eastern DRC, also said the airstrikes and long artillery by Ugandan army had destroyed the ADF bases.
He said the joint operation was agreed on intelligence reports that the rebels were planning to attack Uganda.
The ADF, a Ugandan rebel group based in the country’s east, is made up of several groups opposed to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. They have been active in the east since 1995 and have been blamed for the killings of hundreds of civilians around Beni.
The ADF rebels have left their political demands behind as they are mostly involved in trafficking minerals in the country’s gold-rich east.
On Aug. 4, Museveni and his Congolese counterpart agreed to establish military cooperation and exchange information in the fight against the ADF.
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[FP] Not far from the northeastern Zayed Port in Abu Dhabi, in a typical modern Gulf villa framed on one side by an elegant swimming pool, Westerners are teaching Emiratis the tools of modern spycraft.
The day starts with the basics: a 10 a.m. seminar on Sunday morning is titled "What is intelligence?" On Thursday, the recruits learn how to operate in four- to six-man surveillance teams. Over the course of the first week, they embark on scavenger hunts intended to hone their problem-solving skills. The following weeks get more advanced ‐ students are schooled on creating cover identities to use when attending galas with diplomats, they are taught how to groom intelligence assets, and they watch skits about recruiting Libyan sources.
The Emirati recruits also train at another site about 30 minutes outside downtown Abu Dhabi called "The Academy" ‐ complete with gun ranges, barracks, and driving courses ‐ reminiscent of the CIA’s "Farm" at Camp Peary, a training facility located in southeastern Virginia.
The details of the training are contained in an official course schedule reviewed by Foreign Policy and were described by former U.S. intelligence officials who have been involved in the effort. The facilities and courses are part of the United Arab Emirates’ nascent efforts to create a professional intelligence cadre modeled after the West’s.
Former CIA and government officials were drawn to the Gulf nation by the promise of interesting work and, perhaps even more importantly, lucrative careers.
"The money was fantastic," one former employee told FP. "It was $1,000 a day ‐ you could live in a villa or in a five-star hotel in Abu Dhabi."
The key figure behind this growing intelligence training operation, according to multiple sources, is Larry Sanchez, a former intelligence officer who helped kickstart a controversial partnership between the CIA and the New York Police Department that tried to pre-empt the radicalization of potential terrorists by tracking people ‐ many of them Muslims ‐ in mosques, bookstores, and other places around New York. Sanchez, a veteran of the CIA clandestine services, has been working for the crown prince of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for the past six years to build large pieces of its intelligence services from the ground up, six sources with knowledge of the matter tell FP.
#4
The facilities and courses are part of the United Arab Emirates’ nascent efforts to create a professional intelligence cadre modeled after the West’s.
How utterly bizarre... People in that area have been spying on each other for millennia and any advice on HUMINT from the CIA? *snicker*
#5
Any intelligence officers who "retire" and go to work for foreign intelligence should have their pensions cut, at the least. We have to assume they've leaked anything they know to their new masters.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
12/26/2017 18:31 Comments ||
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[AtlasObscura] DECEMBER 25 IS COMMEMORATED AS a day of peace for many cultures across the globe, but in the Peruvian province of Chumbivilcas, the day doubles as Takanakuy, a festive fistfight between neighbors. High in the Andes Mountains, friends, rivals, and relatives square off to settle year-long disputes in an annual airing of grievances.
The Quechua term "Takanakuy" means "to hit each other," and while the tradition’s exact origins are up for debate, the modern observance is the perfect opportunity to blow off steam over legal matters, stolen lovers, or pure bravado.
In Santo Tomás, the capital of Chumbivilcas, men and women, young and old may participate, while rules and contestants vary in other towns. Beyond the fisticuffs, locals sing, dance, pray, and imbibe beer as well as a fermented corn beverage called chicha (the thicker the better).
In their report, "Peleas rituales: la waylía takanakuy en Santo Tomás," anthropologists Máximo Cama and Alejandra Ttito Tica document their observations at Takanakuy events throughout the Andean highlands.
To establish why the community fights, Cama and Tica recount the explanation of a spectator: "For grudges, for problems that come up during the year, they fight. If there is a young man who is already physically grown, and he wants to show off his strength, he may fight with others. That is a ritual fight; when it ends, they drink alcohol and chicha, and they are friends. It’s also like sport."
The isolated community has also come to rely on Takanakuy to settle legal matters in lieu of a judge and jury. The Peruvian government maintains a minimal police presence in Santo Tomás, and the mountain-bound village is hours away from any form of conventional court. Article continues.
[PRESSTV] Representatives of the Ukrainian government and pro-Russia forces have agreed on a major prisoner exchange following a long-standing conflict in Ukraine’s volatile east.
Representatives from the two sides made the announcement in a joint televised statement on Monday, saying they would exchange prisoners on December 27.
Kiev representative Viktor Medvedchuk said Ukraine was ready to release 306 prisoners and was hoping for pro-Russian forces to release 74 soldiers on Wednesday.
Iryna Herashchenko, first deputy speaker of parliament in Ukraine, confirmed the report and wrote on her Facebook page that "seventy-four Ukrainians will be released on December 27. We will exchange them for 306 people."
Donetsk News Agency also quoted regional pro-Russia leader Alexander Zakharchenko as saying, "We have agreed upon all the conditions, and on December 27, the exchange will be carried out under the 306-for-74 formula."
The parties agreed last week to carry out the exchange of the detained persons before the New Year and Christmas holidays. The deal was mediated by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow.
The government in Kiev had earlier claimed that pro-Russia forces were holding at least 162 Ukrainian servicemen and civilians in captivity, while the other side had estimated that the government was holding 309 of their supporters.
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[AA.TR] The Russian election commission on Monday rejected opposition leader Alexey Navalny's application to run in the upcoming presidential elections in March 2018 in the country.
In a statement, Central Election Commission said Navalny cannot be a candidate for the presidential elections because of corruption charges and sentences against him.
Navalny, 41, an opposition activist and the founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund, had officially applied to the Central Election Commission to challenge President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... , despite objections from Russian authorities due to lawsuits against him.
Navalny previously received multiple sentences over a number of charges, including fraud and calls to attend "unauthorized" rallies.
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#1
DWS has moved on to the Russian election commission?
#2
Navalny, 41, an opposition activist and the founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund ... previously received multiple sentences over a number of charges, including fraud
Residents in Iraq's Shia holy city of Karbala have denounced a ban on female mannequins being displayed with anything other than Islamic clothing.
Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed and an important figure in Shia Islam, is buried in Karbala.
Posters warning against indecent behaviour have been plastered around the city as part of the application of a 2012 provincial council decision to uphold Karbala's "holy character", council member Nasser Hussein al-Khozali said.
The signs warn residents against "shockingly displaying women's clothes", as well as "selling indecent films" and airing "music or indecent words in public places".
The posters, signed by an "implementation committee for the decision on Karbala's holy character", warn that sanctions will be taken against offenders.
Not everyone is the city supports the decision, however.
"Listening to music is part of personal freedoms," said taxi driver Majah Hassan, as a song belted out of his car radio.
"Nobody can forbid it as I'm not harming anyone by doing it."
Inside a shopping centre, women's clothes salesman Ahmad Hussein railed against a decision that he said infringed freedoms and hurt business.
"The provincial council would do better fixing the roads and improving public services," he said.
The head of a civil society association said the council decision was no different from the harsh rules imposed by the Islamic State group in areas they controlled until their defeat in Iraq earlier this month.
"This kind of decision, which is allegedly based on religion, is in fact no different from IS ideology," Ehab al-Wazarni said.
Hadi al-Mussawi, also an activist, said the move "aimed to garner votes in the elections" for parliament in May.
After seizing control of second city Mosul in 2014, IS prohibited shopkeepers and street vendors from displaying women's clothing on mannequins.
Several Shia armed groups also imposed the rule in southern Iraq at the height of the sectarian violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
[DailyCaller] It’s Christmastime, America, and you know what that means: It’s the season when public schools across the fruited plain have pointedly avoided Christmas but have teemed with lessons about Kwanzaa and a handful of other holidays which aren’t Christmas.
As a public service, then, The Daily Caller is once again here to tell you the true ‐ and truly bizarre ‐ history of the violent, deranged and radical black nationalist who concocted the completely artificial holiday of Kwanzaa in 1966.
The creator of Kwanzaa is Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga, a 76-year-old professor of Africana studies at California State University, Long Beach. His real name is Ronald Everett. He was born in rural Maryland, the fourteenth child of a sharecropping Baptist minister.
Karenga was convicted in 1971 for brutally torturing two naked women. The women were members of Karenga’s ultra-radical, paramilitary, black nationalist cult called the US Organization, which went by the acronym US, according to a May 1971 Los Angeles Times story.
"Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes," the LA Times article reports.
Jones "testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths."
The victims also said they were "were hit on the heads with toasters."
...
A psychiatrist who examined Karenga in 1971 concluded he was insane. A sentencing hearing transcript shows that the unidentified psychiatrist believed that the founder of Kwanzaa was "both paranoid and schizophrenic."
Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from the psychiatrist’s report in court in September 1971, according to a FrontPage Magazine report.
"Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell," the psychiatrist’s report said, in part. "During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed."
"This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment," the report said.
Karenga concocted Kwanzaa in 1966 as a secular, "nonreligious" pan-African holiday. At the time, he was a twentysomething graduate student living in Los Angeles.
#12
In spring 1968, at invitation of some Karenga devotees at the SoCal University where I served as Assistant Chaplain on an intern year from seminary in NYC, I made arrangements to meet Karenga at his office in Watts and drove there, alone, for the purpose.
The scene I met was similar to that at the office of "Big" Ed Mustapha in Eastwood's The Enforcer. Two heavies met me at the door and then, one on each side, hovered right over me as I sat across the desk from Karenga, who was polite but not friendly.
I invited Karenga's participation in a general USA sitrep information program, initiated by Robert Theobald, a Fabian Brit, at NYC whom I had agreed to help with that program.
Karenga agreed to help from the West Coast but he never responded after I visited him in Watts. Theobald's program fizzled before August 1968 -- i.e., I was a failure -- and I went back to seminary for the final year, nearly getting expelled for using original thought while not a doctoral candidate.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, Microsoft said, "Microsoft has a long history of cooperating with law enforcement and other agencies on combating sex trafficking and related topics, and we have employees who volunteer their time and money specifically to combat this issue as well. The personal conduct of a tiny fraction of our 125,000 employees does not in any way represent our culture. No organization is immune to the unfortunate situation when employees act unethically or illegally. When that happens, we look into the conduct and take appropriate action. Microsoft makes it clear to our employees they have a responsibility to act with integrity and conduct themselves in a legal and ethical manner at all times. If they don't, they risk losing their jobs."
Host nation lads who struggle with the academics could always default to careers in aviation. What harm could there be ? 
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
