As school children my friends and I were very interested in archaeology and ancient civilizations. We read all the available books. My best friend intended to become an archaeologist and to explore ancient ruins about which we imagined more than we actually knew.

As far as I can discern these days no one in the general population has any thoughts of Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, Ur. For the American young the 1940s, not 2,500 BC, is the ancient past.

A time so long ago that it predates the Old Testament by 2,000 years is probably imagined as a brutal and politically incorrect time of inhumanity and human sacrifice. In short, a script for a horror fantasy movie or a video game.

In actual fact, these civilizations were more advanced and more humanitarian than our own. They were more advanced because the rulers were focused on ensuring the society's longevity by maintaining a livable balance between debtors and creditors. It has all been downhill ever since.

The rulers maintained social balance and, thereby, the life of the society by periodically cancelling debts. The rulers understood that compound interest resulted in debt growing faster than the economy. The consequence would be foreclosures on agricultural land, which would shift riches and power into a small oligarchy of creditors. The ruler and the society would be deprived of a self-supporting population on the land which provided tax revenues, soldiers for the military, and corvee labor to maintain public infrastructure. Disaster would follow. A grasping oligarchy could overthrow the ruler or the dispossessed population could flee to a potential invader offering their military services in exchange for debt forgiveness.

To protect their societies from dissolution by unpayable debts, rulers periodically cancelled agrarian debts owed by the citizenry at large, but not mercantile debts among businessmen.

The reason for debt forgiveness was stability, not egalitarianism.

Authorities in France will now be notified by psychiatric healthcare professionals if they feel a patient is in danger of "terrorist radicalization," sparking renewed concerns over the future of doctor-patient confidentiality.

In a decree published Tuesday, the French Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn announced that authorities will be able to merge two streams of personal data in cases where a suspect is hospitalized without consent "for the purpose of preventing radicalization."

The first stream includes data such as the name and date of birth of those undergoing "psychiatric care without consent" under a system codenamed Hopsyweb. The second data stream covers a person's profile from their Terrorism Prevention and Terrorization Reporting File (FSPRT).

In certain cases, regional magistrates and the prefect of police in Paris will be notified when the personal information of a forcibly hospitalized patient match those contained in the FSPRT system.

A young couple was set on fire outside Mumbai, allegedly by relatives who opposed their marriage as the two came from different castes. The pregnant woman died in the attack, while her husband sustained life-threatening burns.

Mangesh Ransingh (23) and his 19-year-old bride Rukmini were allegedly immolated by three family members on the bride's side, including the woman's own father. Rukmini was 2 months pregnant at the time of the attack, police say.

Things turned violent when Ransingh came to pick up his wife from a visit to her family's house in a village just a few hours from Mumbai on May 1. The family reportedly refused to release Rukimi, at which point Ransingh got into a fight with two of Rukmini's uncles and her father. The three men then allegedly assaulted the young couple before dousing them in kerosine and setting them ablaze.

Arizona legislators have officially declared pornography a "public health crisis," passing a bill urging the state to "systematically prevent exposure and addiction" - but insisting they won't try to ban it outright.

The bill warns that "children are being exposed to pornography at an alarming rate, leading to low self-esteem, eating disorders, and an increase in problematic sexual activity at ever-younger ages." Adults aren't safe either, suffering "toxic sexual behaviors, emotional, mental and medical illnesses and difficulty forming or maintaining intimate relationships."

While proponents insist the resolution isn't a plot to outlaw porn - its most direct provision urges the state to "educate individuals and families about [porn]'s harms and develop pornography-recovery programs" - some lawmakers want it to go further, while others denounce it as legislative virtue-signaling, worrying it distracts from actual public health crises like homelessness and opioid addiction.

A stunning new three year performance audit of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services found that the system designed to protect the state's vulnerable children had prior contact with 102 children who died during 2015 to 2017.

In a new Performance Audit of DCFS Investigations of Abuse and Neglect released Tuesday, state auditors found that 15.5% of children whose deaths were investigated by DCFS had prior contact with the department through abuse or neglect investigations. The report found that there were 163 prior investigations for these 102 victims, with one victim even investigated nine times before their death. In addition, because of an issue with the system DCFS uses to track its cases, auditors wrote that "it is difficult to know if these are all the death victims with prior contact with DCFS."

In the three years from 2015 to 2017, auditors found that DCFS investigated 450,483 allegations of abuse or neglect. About quarter of those investigations, 114,653, were found to be bona fide by the department. In the report, auditors highlight the welfare agency's failure to follow procedures for conducting investigations, including the ability to have them completed in a timely manner. According to the report, in the latest year studied, more than 12% of investigations were not completed within 60 days. The audit found "required interviews with the alleged victim and perpetrator were not always completed in a timely manner" and that department data showed that "the alleged victim was not interviewed within 24 hours in more than 29 percent of cases" and the "alleged perpetrator was not interviewed within 7 days in 24.5 percent of cases."

One person died after two suspected student shooters opened fire at a STEM school in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. Eight others were injured and both suspects are in custody, officials said.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office said it responded to the STEM School Highlands Ranch just before 2 p.m. Tuesday when a school administrator called dispatch to report shots fired. Authorities believe the suspects, first described as an adult male and a juvenile male, used a handgun. The younger suspect was later identified as a female.

"Two individuals walked into the STEM school, got deep inside the school and engaged students in two separate locations," Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said.

The sheriff's department confirmed that one student, an 18-year-old male, was killed in the shooting. The father of Kendrick Castillo told NBC News that his son was the student killed, but the family declined to be interviewed Tuesday night.

Just because "it's like that on purpose" doesn't mean that the look-at-me hideousness on display at the Met Gala is above criticism - in fact it arouses an almost visceral rejection.


I don't want to think of myself as too narrow-minded to understand the intent behind what is essentially a corporate-sponsored experimental fancy dress party for celebrities. In fact, I would venture that I myself have worn much riskier choices relative to the normal people around me (and I don't have fawning assistants and fashion editors to validate my every sartorial idiocy).

But, seriously: Jared Leto in a crystal-harness gown holding his own head, corseted actor Ezra Miller with seven eyes on his face, performer Billy Porter carried in on a palanquin by six bare-chested buff men in lame trousers.

Yes, I know that the theme was camp, the justification for all the over-the-top gaudiness.

The French government has been forced to shamefully admit that they made totally false accusations that May Day Yellow Vest anti-government protesters tried to break into the Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital in order to "attack", "assault" and "steal". Countless mainstream media are just as covered in ignominy for having repeated these untrue claims.


I was right there when it happened, covering it for PressTV, so I witnessed exactly what transpired.

In fact, I even gave a live interview at the exact time of the incident, just after 4pm. I don't have a copy of that for now, but I hope to get one soon: certainly, I can explain what happened and why.

Why it happened: A new rule permitting even worse police brutality against Yellow Vests

When two high school athletes who were born male but identify as female took first and second place at Connecticut's girls indoor track championship this year, it wasn't just a local news story.

To some, it was a story of triumph and courage. The winner, a junior from Bloomfield High School, set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds in the 55-meter dash, and went on to win the New England titles in both the 55-meter dash and the 300-meter dash.

To others, it was a story of shock and disappointment: Is this the end of women's sports?

A 25 percent tariff on Chinese goods coming into the USA. That'll git her done, all right - if you mean pulling the plug on America's holographic economy. For about thirty years this is how it worked: China sent a massive volume of finished goods to us and we paid them with a massive volume of US Treasury bonds at ever-lower interest rates. A great deal for us while it lasted. Or so it seemed. Eventually, China caught on to the swindle and began liquidating its US bond holdings to buy gold and other real goods like African mining rights and farmland, Iranian oil, and port facilities in strategic corners of the world.

Now China has obviously designed a policy to dissociate itself as much as possible from the losing trade racket with us and replace the American market by increments with whatever customer base it can cobble together from the rest of the world. The Belt-and-Road initiative to physically link China with Central Asia (and beyond) with railroad lines and highways through some of the most forbidding terrain on earth was an out-front part of the plan, which we haplessly financed by buying all that stuff they sent over here for decades, and giving them the time to complete that colossal project.