Society's ChildS


Che Guevara

Teachers' union leader Weingarten blames screens, not herself, for falling test scores

Aaron Withe and Tina Snider
RealClearPolitics
Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:42 UTC
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is sounding the alarm about the decade-long decline in student test scores, pointing to screens and devices as a culprit. She's calling it a "call to action."

She left out the part about how she helped cause the problem in the first place.

For two years during the COVID pandemic, Weingarten and the AFT fought aggressively to keep schools closed. In July 2020, as the Trump administration urged schools to reopen, Weingarten called the push "reckless," "callous," and "cruel," and threatened the possibility of safety strikes.

Internal emails later released by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee showed the AFT had access to draft guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control before it was made public, as well as proposed specific language that could trigger renewed closures.
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Beaker

Two researchers charged with allegedly trying to smuggle mpox through Detroit Metro Airport

DeJanay Booth-Singleton
CBS News
Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:52 UTC
Vincent Munster Claude Kwe smuggle monkey pox
© Fox 5 DCVincent Munster, 53, a citizen of the Netherlands, and Claude Kwe, 38, a citizen of Cameroon, were charged with smuggling vials of contagious viruses and making false statements to federal law enforcement, June 2, 2026.
Two foreign nationals working at the National Institutes of Health are facing charges for allegedly trying to smuggle mpox into the United States through the Detroit Metro Airport.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Vincent Munster, 53, a citizen of the Netherlands, and Claude Kwe, 38, a citizen of Cameroon, are accused of providing federal authorities with false statements after arriving at the McNamara Terminal on Jan. 25, 2026. Officials say the two people, who were researchers, originally traveled from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where an mpox outbreak was ongoing.

Customs and Border Protection officials spotted the individuals with a black plastic case, according to a criminal complaint. When asked, Munster and Kwe told federal officials the case was carrying diagnostic and testing equipment.
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Health

Israel must allow ICRC to visit Palestinians in prison, Supreme Court rules


Al Jazeera
Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00 UTC
red cross vehicle
© File/Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty ImagesSince the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been banned from visiting Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons
Israel's Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a government policy banning representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

The court ruled on Wednesday that by preventing the Red Cross from visiting prisoners, the government had contravened Israeli and international law, and therefore the policy must be repealed.

It also ruled that the government failed to present a legal foundation for its policy on annulling all visits after the Hamas-led attack on October 2023, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and more than 240 were taken captive.

The assault triggered a brutal war in Gaza, which has been defined as a genocide by several prominent scholars and an independent United Nations inquiry. The Israeli army killed more than 72,950 people in the enclave, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, and reduced most of the besieged territory to rubble, and forced the displacement of nearly 1.9 million Palestinians.

Violence across the occupied West Bank perpetrated by Israeli forces also intensified to unprecedented levels. All visits to prisoners were halted, and information about them was not shared - something that used to be standard practice before the war. Back then, Israeli authorities accused Hamas of failing to secure access to the captives in Gaza.

Comment: This took how many years and 27 extensions...?

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Star of David

Digitally annexing the West Bank: Israel moves its theft of Palestinian land online

Qassem Muaddi
Mondoweiss
Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00 UTC
Row of israeli flags
© Mohammed Nasser/APA ImagesIsraeli flags flutter near an archaeological site near the town of Sebastia (One flag refused to fly!)
A new Israeli digital registry imposes de facto sovereignty over 60% of the West Bank. Palestinians must register under Israeli authority or risk losing their land, but Israeli legal loopholes are designed to invalidate their claims either way.

Israel's annexation of the West Bank is moving full steam ahead on the ground, but it's also going online. Last Wednesday, the Israeli government launched a new digital platform for registering lands in the West Bank, open for use by Israelis and Israeli corporations.

The new platform allows the registration of property and applies to lands in Area C of the West Bank, which comprises over 60% of the territory under the 1993 Oslo Accords. The rest of the West Bank is divided into Areas A and B, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) has varying degrees of civil and security control.

The launching of the platform comes on the heels of previous Israeli moves to alter how land ownership works in the West Bank, starting with an Israeli government decision in June 2025 to make Palestinian lands in Area C open to registration by anybody, including Israeli settlers. Since then, the Israeli government has taken several more steps to advance its annexation of the West Bank — not only with laws that lay the groundwork for annexation, but by exercising actual Israeli authority over Palestinian lands.

Comment: If there isn't a handy, self-serve law on file, Israel creates it.

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Warning

Millions of lives at stake as conflicts continue to widen in Africa

Bharat Dogra
Global Research
Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00 UTC
Crisis in Sudan
© Lindsay MackenzieCrisis in Sudan
At the start of the year 2026, there was a very serious humanitarian crisis already in Africa. Look at any listing of the countries most affected by humanitarian crisis and you find that countries of Africa have an exceptionally high representation in this.

It is increasingly clear that droughts and other disasters in times of climate change as well as distorted development patterns prevalent today (but with their roots in colonial and neo-colonial policies) are a chronic cause of this humanitarian crisis. However very violent conflicts and wars have emerged as the most important factor in the most extreme distress suffered by people. This is clearly avoidable, but the tragic reality is that in the absence of strong, well thought and continuing peace processes, actually the distress caused by conflict, civil war and war has been steadily increasing.

Describing the situation in Sudan at the beginning of 2026, a statement by the WHO dated 9 January 2026 (titled 'Sudan: 1000 days of war deepen the world's worst health and humanitarian crisis') said that 20 million people need health assistance and 20 million people desperately need food. On the whole 33.4 million people of Sudan would need humanitarian assistance in 2026 (out of a total population of about 53 million), this note said. 13.6 million persons had been displaced by the Sudan civil war at this time. This note also said that health facilities had suffered extensive damage in the course of the civil war.

Comment: As the up-tier countries suck all the air out of the news, the African continent is suffering badly from its own ongoing demise.

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Cardboard Box

Since lockdowns, a 12% GDP loss; half of US dollar purchasing power stolen

Jeffrey Tucker
Brownstone Institute
Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00 UTC
dollar sign
Many of us have had the intuition that the economic damage from 2020 - including industrial stoppages, monetary printing, supply-chain disruptions, extended school closures, and general population demoralization - was in fact far greater than official statistics indicate.

What follows will shore up this intuition, using new techniques and numbers from an innovative project called RealityIndex.co.

It's true that official data is bad enough, showing a 26% loss in purchasing power, slow growth in output, and only marginal improvements in real income. The labor participation rate and worker/population ratio never fully recovered and continue to fall.

labor force
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Blackbox

Bass advances to runoff In LA mayoral race; Pratt leads contenders for second spot

Jackson Richman and Beige Luciano-Adams
ZeroHedge
Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:58 UTC
Spencer Pratt Karen Bass los angeles
© GettySpencer Pratt and Karen Bass are locked in a race for the top two spots in the Los Angeles mayoral election
Votes to determine the runner-up, who will advance alongside incumbent Mayor Karen Bass to the general election, are still coming in.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass advanced to the November runoff election for Los Angeles mayor.

The Associated Press called Bass's advancement after 1:30 a.m. ET on June 3. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt and Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman lead 11 other candidates in the race for runner-up.

The runner-up will face Bass in the runoff election on Nov. 3.

Bass campaigned on issues including affordability, public safety, and homelessness. Pratt focused his campaign on crisis management, fiscal responsibility, government reform, public safety, homelessness, infrastructure improvements, support for small businesses, and oversight of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
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Bizarro Earth

White girls raped by dogs, whisky bottles, and hundreds of Muslim men: Britain's migrant grooming gang scandal exposed


Remix
Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:12 UTC
Rupert Lowe
Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe told Westminster that Parliament had a duty to confront the full horror of rape gang abuse and stop "talking" while children continued to be failed

Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe used a Westminster Hall debate on Monday to confront MPs with harrowing testimony from White girls and women who were raped, tortured, trafficked, and degraded by migrant grooming gangs, and abandoned by the very authorities that should have protected them.

The debate was secured after 260,974 Brits signed a petition calling for Parliament to address the rape gang scandal. Lowe opened by thanking the signatories and welcoming survivors who were sitting in the hall, saying the debate was not about politics, but about them.

"I want the world to hear what we heard during the two weeks of our independent rape gang inquiry hearings, an inquiry that should never have needed to happen," Lowe said.
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Pumpkin 2

Artificial Intelligence (AI) heralds a post-human era of economic, social and moral upheavals


Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Economist
Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00 UTC
ai threat
"Artificial Intelligence (AI) will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have." — Eric Schmidt (1955- ), former Google CEO, in a keynote address to University of Arizona graduates, that was booed by students, Friday, May 15, 2026.

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire." — Sundar Pichai (1972- ), Chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and of its subsidiary Google. (Statement made in 2018, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland).

"The development of full Artificial Intelligence (AI) could spell the end of the human race... it would take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded." — Stephen Hawking (1942- 2018),British physicist, in an interview with the BBC, December 2, 2014.

"Any technology that facilitates attackswithout seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict." — Pope Leo XIV (1955- ), in his first encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas' (or Magnificent Humanity), May 25, 2026.

***

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and of work-automation is progressing rapidly with many potential applications and benefits in many areas. It is going to define the economic future.
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Fire

Election interference scandal is uncovered in two major California hubs

Zain Khan
New York Post
Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:14 UTC
vote drop box california
© KTLA 5Election officials said preliminary information suggests the damage was limited in scope and occurred during a relatively short window between a scheduled ballot pickup and the following morning’s collection.
An election interference scandal has already rocked California as a voting site was vandalized and burned mail-in ballots were found in a drop box.

The incidents, which officials described as isolated but serious, have sparked an investigation and renewed warnings that any attempt to interfere with the voting process will carry criminal penalties.

Election workers discovered vandalism Sunday morning at a vote center located at Cesar E. Chavez Park in Long Beach, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office.

Officials said staff responded immediately and voting operations continued without interruption.

Comment:



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