A woman at the centre of a paedophile ring setting children up as “sexual playthings” over more than a decade has been found guilty

A woman at the centre of a paedophile ring which set children up as “sexual playthings” over more than a decade has been found guilty of offences including rape, conspiracy to rape and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity

reports The Guardian. As Glenn Reynolds often says, Teach Women Not to Rape.

Ten people – six women and four men – had been on trial accused of the abuse of five children. Marie Black, from Norwich, was alleged to have been at the centre of the abuse.

Black, 34, denied 26 charges during a three-month trial at Norwich crown court, but on Monday the jury convicted her on all but three counts after 19 hours of deliberations. She sobbed uncontrollably in the dock as the verdicts were delivered and was heard saying: “I’ve been stitched up.”

 … Opening the trial, prosecutor Angela Rafferty QC had said Black, previously known as Marie Adams, played an instrumental role in using the children as “sexual playthings”. The abuse, which is said to have happened in and around Norwich and London, included forcing the children to have sex with one another.

On some occasions, the adults threw parties and played card games to decide who would abuse which child, Rafferty said. In interviews the victims described how they were abused in front of one another and other adults. Some of the abuse involved children’s toys, including Barbie dolls.

They said the abuse became so routine that the victims came to accept it as normal. One of the male victims said: “There would be parties and they would do some games where the boys were in one room with the men and the girls were in another with the women. The adults would have a card game and the winner would get to choose a boy to start touching their private parts and then hurt them afterwards.”


 … All of the defendants denied abusing the children, saying it simply did not happen. During the trial it emerged that police had launched an investigation into the conduct of Norfolk county council social workers involved in the case.

Report on a Recent Occurrence of Russian Racism Is Watered Down by Focus on Western Company Involved

The Guardian's Alec Luhn reports that

a video from a Red Bull event in Moscow showed a Barack Obama impersonator chasing a banana. … In the video, at least four shirtless men who appeared to be in blackface makeup, and one dressed as the US president, chased another dressed as a banana off the Flugtag ramp.

But, of course, racism only counts when it takes place in the United States or a Western country, or when anything related to the West is involved.

Thus, much must made of the fact that Red Bull is involved in the controversy that emerged in

a highlights video from last week’s Red Bull Flugtag competition, in which participants send whimsical “flying” machines crashing off a ramp into water.

It is only as an aside, almost, that we learn that

Photoshopped memes showing Obama with bananas and calling the US president a monkey have appeared frequently on the Russian internet, including on a site of images often used by paid pro-Kremlin trolls. 

The Republic of Cronyism

A French magazine takes on the French state's network of cronyism and patronage.

Nominations de complaisance, recasages discrets, en trois ans, le pouvoir socialiste a fait main basse sur l’État et satisfait l’appétit de ses courtisans. Aux dépens de la République irréprochable.

When Blacks Are Harrassed by White Police Officers, Who Do They Call Upon to Broadcast the Video?

Not many people seem to have noticed what may one one of the most interesting parts of the 58 Year Old Woman Slapped by Cop, Other Cop Tries to Snatch Camera from Son video: the dude does not say he will send the tape to ABC, to NBC, or to CBS (2:02). While he does—briefly—mention CNN, for some reason he thinks (or… he knows?) that America's conservative TV network is the station to turn to, for the TV station of the supposed racist Tea Partiers seems to be the most likely one to air the video of white police brutality towards a black family. In the mind of this black man, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News is the TV station that will stand up for the little man.