Society's ChildS

Yellow Vest

France's economy contracts as massive protests continue, Italy has worst growth since 2013

Gare de Lyon
© Reuters / Gonzalo FuentesFrench SNCF railway workers on strike near the Gare de Lyon train station, Paris, January 29, 2020
The French economy, one of the largest in the EU, has failed to meet expectations and contracted for the first time under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron in the final quarter of 2019.

France's real GDP fell 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, a dramatic drop after an expansion by 0.3 percent in July-September, according to a report published by the French national statistics bureau, INSEE, on Friday. While the agency said that GDP slid just "slightly," the results are well below the earlier projected 0.2 percent growth.

This brings the full-year economic growth to 1.2 percent in 2019, down from 1.7 percent a year earlier.

Comment: Meanwhile Macron, always eager for a photo opportunity, and likely oblivious to what he's actually promoting, is snapped holding up a t-shirt that represents the ever present police brutality at France's protests - the character is missing an eye because France's repressive security forces have now become infamous for maiming numerous protesters:
Macron paid a visit to the International Comic Book Festival in Angouleme, southwestern France on Thursday - but his appearance likely had the opposite of its intended effect on France's increasingly discontented electorate.


A photograph taken during the festival shows the French leader holding up a t-shirt showing a cartoon cat with a bleeding, patched-up eye. Under the feline reads: LBD 2020, an allusion to the infamous "defense ball launcher" (LBD) used by French riot police, as well as the name of the comic book festival (BD 2020).

Apparently oblivious to the double entendre, Macron is seen cracking a grin as he poses with the shirt - and the very amused cartoonist credited with making it.

The photo-op gaffe sparked outrage from Macron's critics. Left Party leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said the incident showed that the French president "trivializes police violence."

French police have been accused of using excessive force to quell anti-austerity and Yellow Vest protests across the country. More than 20 protesters have lost eyes in demonstrations against Macron's deeply unpopular reforms.

The photograph also enraged law enforcement. Yves Lefebvre, a senior police union official, described the incident as "scandalous," local media reported.

Responding to the outrage, Macron suggested that the photograph shows how in France's "free society," the president can hold up a t-shirt with which he does not agree.
See also:


Chess

'We won't be uprooted': Mayor says Trump's plan to make Abu Dis new Palestinian capital 'not fair or honest'

Abu Dis
© REUTERS/Ammar AwadPalestinian town of Abu Dis
Mayor of Abu Dis, the small town envisioned as the new Palestinian capital in Donald Trump's Middle East 'peace plan,' told RT that Jerusalem will always be the true capital of Palestine and slammed US president for ignorance.

Trump's 'Vision' for peace, unveiled at the White House on Tuesday, outlines a two-state solution with Jerusalem proper remaining the "undivided capital" of Israel, while a new Palestinian capital could be established east of the city, centering on Abu Dis.

"Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine and Abu Dis is only considered as a suburb of Jerusalem," Ahmed Abu Hilal told RT. "We will not be uprooted from the historic city and we will always be a part of Jerusalem."

Arrow Up

Texas mother loses appeal to gain power to transition her young son into a girl

The courts have rebuked this deranged woman yet again.

James and Jeffery Younger
James Younger with his father Jefferey.
A Dallas, Texas judge denied the appeal of Dr. Anne Georgulas to reinstate an October ruling that would have given her the power to transition her 7-year-old son's gender into a girl against his father's wishes.

The case of James Younger gained national attention after James' father Jeffery Younger waged a campaign over social media to save his son. The judge ruled that both parents will have a say in medical decisions for their son, which may prevent the gender transition planned by his mother.

Georgulas had challenged the ruling that was made by Judge Kim Cooks last year to give both parents joint decision-making abilities regarding their son. Judge Mary Brown rebuked her request, and Cooks' ruling is now an official order. Georgulas' lawyer said she would attempt another motion to make a new trial to give her client control over James.

Comment: Previously:


Sheriff

Dr. Jordan Peterson says the government should get out of sex education altogether

peterson
Late last year, Dr. Jordan Peterson sat down with the Scottish Catholic Observer for a wide-ranging discussion on the culture wars raging across the West. When the interviewer brought up the censorship increasingly inflicted on pro-life groups in Europe, Peterson was unequivocal: "That's just beyond belief to me, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice. If you think the pro-life voice should be silenced there is something seriously wrong with you. I don't care what you say about the abortion debate, there is something to be said on both sides at minimum so to stile that debate is part of this totalitarian leftism that I think is reprehensible and dangerous."

What I found most interesting were Peterson's comments about the debates on sex education currently taking place across Canada and other jurisdictions throughout the West. One of the reasons these debates generate so much heat is due to the fact that we no longer possess any cultural consensus on sexuality, and thus there is virtually no way to implement state-sanctioned sex education without alienating several groups of people who will strongly disagree. LGBT activists are simply never going to agree with Christians, Sikhs, Orthodox Jews, or Muslims on sexuality, and when they claim the right to teach their ideology to other people's children, backlash is inevitable and necessary.

"I think we are probably near the point where the state should get out children's sex education," Peterson noted, "because there is no cultural consent as to what it should be, so I think that should devolve back to the family." For obvious reasons, I believe that the only viable solution to this cultural chasm that preserves parental rights and freedom of religion is to do precisely what Peterson says, and I'm glad to hear that he holds this position and is willing to articulate it publicly.

Comment: Just have a brief look at what sex education has morphed into in recent years:


Snakes in Suits

Snakes in suits: Are psychopaths running the world?

suit and tie
Often when we think of the word psychopath, we think of deranged serial killers that are hopefully locked up in prison for life. While there are many psychopaths who kill for reasons that are unfathomable to most of us and who are indeed in prison, there is an even greater number roaming free in our society and often using their condition to their advantage in any way possible. In fact, it is very likely that you know some - they might even be your colleagues.

Most of us do not know or work with any serial killers, at least not that we are aware of. So, what exactly is a psychopath and how can we define them? The dictionary definition is as follows:
"A person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior."

Comment: One important thing to realize is that it is incredibly difficult to identify a psychopath. Hare himself has said that, even after studying them for decades, he is still repeatedly fooled by efficient psychopaths. Let this serve as a warning against 'spot-the-psychopath' type activities. It may be that anyone you're sure is a psychopath is simply a damaged human being.

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Arrow Up

Russian prosecutors drop murder charges against sisters who stabbed their abusive father

Khachaturyan
Maria (left) and Angelina Khachaturyan, sisters who admitted killing their father, are shown in court in June.
Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office has ordered investigators to drop murder charges against teenage sisters accused of killing their abusive father in a closely watched case that fueled debate on the issue of domestic violence in the country.

Prosecutors on January 30 said the case of sisters Maria, Angelina, and Krestina Khachaturyan should be reclassified as self-defense, likely ending the legal case against the three, their lawyer said.

The sisters stabbed their father to death in a Moscow suburb in July 2017 after enduring what they said was constant humiliation and sexual abuse.

The three sisters confessed to using a knife and a hammer to kill their 57-year-old father, Mikhail Khachaturyan.

Comment: See also: 3 daughters stab father to death after years of alleged abuse in Moscow horror drama


Bacon n Eggs

Tim Hortons pulls Beyond Meat products from Ontario and British Columbia after proving unpopular with diners

beyond meat burger
© Facebook/Beyond Meat
Restaurant Brands International Inc's Tim Hortons said on Tuesday it has removed Beyond Meat Inc's products from its coffee and donut shops in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.

This comes after the coffee and breakfast chain cut Beyond Meat's burgers and sandwiches from its menu in September from all of Canada except the two provinces.

"We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now," said a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons.

Comment: That the plant-based faux meat products have "gained popularity" seems to be directly contradicted by the above article. Could it be that people aren't as enthusiastic about replacing real food with fake alternatives as the hype would have you believe? Fast food chains look at little else but the bottom line, so the true test of the popularity of these hyper-processed monstrosities will be whether or not they continue to be on offer beyond the initial boost of curious dabblers.

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Binoculars

Flashback Undoing the dis-education of Millennials

millennials
I teach in a law school. For several years now my students have been mostly Millennials. Contrary to stereotype, I have found that the vast majority of them want to learn. But true to stereotype, I increasingly find that most of them cannot think, don't know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.

They cannot learn until their minds are freed from that prison. This year in my Foundations of Law course for first-year law students, I found my students especially impervious to the ancient wisdom of foundational texts, such as Plato's Crito and the Code of Hammurabi. Many of them were quick to dismiss unfamiliar ideas as "classist" and "racist," and thus unable to engage with those ideas on the merits. So, a couple of weeks into the semester, I decided to lay down some ground rules. I gave them these rules just before beginning our annual unit on legal reasoning.

Here is the speech I gave them.

Comment: The article was published back in 2017, yet its essence applies even more strongly to what passes for education in the West today. See also,


Clock

'Spring forward' to daylight saving time brings surge in deadly crashes, study

highway traffic
Fatal car accidents in the United States spike by 6% during the workweek following the "spring forward" to daylight saving time, resulting in about 28 additional deaths each year, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research.

The study, published today in the journal Current Biology, also found that the farther west a person lives in his or her time zone, the higher their risk of a deadly crash that week.

"Our study provides additional, rigorous evidence that the switch to daylight saving time in spring leads to negative health and safety impacts," said senior author Cรฉline Vetter, assistant professor of integrative physiology. "These effects on fatal traffic accidents are real, and these deaths can be prevented."

The findings come as numerous states are considering doing away with the switch entirely amid mounting research showing spikes in heart attacks, strokes, workplace injuries and other problems in the days following the time change.

Driving tired, in the dark

For the study - the largest to date to assess the relationship between the time change and fatal motor vehicle accidents - the researchers analyzed 732,835 accidents recorded through the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System from 1996 to 2017. They excluded Arizona and Indiana, where daylight saving time was not consistently observed.

Comment: See also:


Dollars

Coronavirus outbreak: Following the money

wuhan outbreak
The Coronavirus is still the big-ticket news item, with confirmed cases now covering 11 countries. ELEVEN!

Most of the mainstream media are doing that, saying the number of countries rather than the number of people. I suppose because it carries the implication that, somehow, everyone in all those 11 countries is under some kind of imminent threat.

As of the time of writing, the real (or at least reportedly real) numbers stand at 1407 cases, 41 deaths. Which means the mortality rate is now actually below 3%.

For comparison's sake - the death rate of the Ebola virus is 90%, Bubonic plague 40-60%, Smallpox was ~30%, and the 1918 Spanish flu between 10 and 20%. So we're hardly dealing with a big-hitter here.

Even the hysterical-nothing burger that was SARS had a (reported) death rate approaching 10%. [For more on the links between SARS and the Wuhan outbreak see John Rappoport's excellent work on the subject].

Comment: See also: