Society's ChildS


MIB

14 year-old Canadian activist was targeted by GMO lobby

Allison Vuchnic
Global News
Mon, 21 Dec 2015 23:46 UTC
rachel parent gmo activist
Rachel Parent, Canadian GMO labeling activist
Documents reveal a Canadian teenager and her activism on the issue of GMO labelling were the subject of emails strategizing how her message could be counterered.

At the time, Rachel Parent was 14 years old and had a growing social media following. Her message to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food was attracting attention - including from those who promote GMOs in the U.S. Their internal emails reveal they were discussing how they could counter her message.

"To think at this point, I was on their radar and I had no clue," Parent said.

The strategizing was revealed in emails, along with thousands of other pages of documents released in a freedom of information request by US Right to Know (USRTK), a non-profit advocacy group funded by the Organic Consumers Association concerned with the safety of GMOs.

The documents shed light into the increasingly nasty and divisive public relations war over GMOs.


"It's mostly scientists that they attack, but Rachel is a standout. The agrichemical industry is plainly quite threatened by this teenage schoolgirl, so that's why they're after her," Gary Ruskin, the co-director of USRTK said.

Comment: There is no low a psychopathic organization won't stoop to when it comes to preserving profits.

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Bizarro Earth

The creeping villainy of American politics

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 20 Dec 2015 22:22 UTC
Muslim woman
© LM Otero / AP A Muslim woman looks out as protests take place near a mosque in Richardson, Texas, on Dec. 12.
The threefold rise in hate crimes against Muslims since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks and the acceptance of hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse signal the morbidity of our civil society. The body politic is coughing up blood. The daily amplification of this hate speech by a commercial media whose sole concern is ratings and advertising dollars rather than serving as a bulwark to protect society presages a descent into the protofascist nightmare of racism, indiscriminate violence against the marginalized, and a blind celebration of American chauvinism, militarism and bigotry.

The mounting attacks on Muslims, which will become a contagion when there is another catastrophic terrorist attack, are only the beginning. There is a long list to be targeted, including undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals, liberals, feminists, intellectuals and artists. We are entering a new dark age, an age of idiocy and blood. These hatreds, encoded in American DNA but understood as politically toxic by the liberal wing of the capitalist class, have been embraced by an enraged and disenfranchised white underclass. Our failure to curb this hate speech will haunt us. Once a civil society tolerates the intolerant, as Karl Popper wrote, "the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."

The anti-Muslim virus begins slowly. Step by step the hate talk moves from insults, stereotyping and untruths to incendiary calls for vigilantes to attack women wearing the hijab, men wearing kufis, mosques, Islamic centers and schools, and Muslim-owned businesses. It makes sense to many in the white underclass—especially because they have been sold out by the liberals who preach tolerance—that the violent purging of a demonized group from U.S. society can cure the society's malaise and restore safety and American "greatness." But soon all marginalized groups will be at risk. Such a process is what happened in the Weimar Republic. It is what happened in Yugoslavia. It is what happened in Israel.
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Cardboard Box

Gentrification and homelessness in the land of technology dreams

Monica Potts
New Republic
Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
homeless palo alto
The view inside a van parked outside a Palo Alto homeless organization.
Sometime in July 2012, Suzan Russaw and her husband, James, received a letter from their landlord asking them to vacate their $800-a-month one-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, California. He gave them 60 days to leave. The "no-fault" eviction is a common way to clear out low-paying tenants without a legal hassle and bring in people willing to pay thousands more in rent. James was 83 at the time and suffering from the constellation of illnesses that affect the old: He had high blood pressure and was undergoing dialysis for kidney failure and experiencing the early stages of dementia.

Their rent was actually a couple of hundred dollars more than James's monthly Social Security benefits, but he made up the rest by piecing together odd jobs. They looked for a new apartment for two months and didn't find anything close to their price range. Their landlord gave them a six-week extension, but it yielded nothing. When mid-October came, Suzan and James had no choice but to leave. With hurried help from neighbors, they packed most of their belongings into two storage units and a ramshackle 1994 Ford Explorer which they called "the van." They didn't know where they were going.

A majority of the homeless population in Palo Alto—93 percent—ends up sleeping outside or in their cars. In part, that's because Palo Alto, a technology boomtown that boasts a per capita income well over twice the average for California, has almost no shelter space: For the city's homeless population, estimated to be at least 157, there are just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink; a charity organizes a loose network of 130 spare rooms, regular people motivated to offer up their homes only by neighborly goodwill. The lack of shelter space in Palo Alto—and more broadly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which comprise the peninsula south of San Francisco and around San Jose—is unusual for an area of its size and population. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest populations sleeping outside or in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.

Comment: See also: San Francisco: Gentrification and the suburbanization of poverty

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Light Saber

A lonely lawyer in Israel

Uri Avnery
Information Clearing House
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 20:17 UTC
arab girl shot israel
© Screenshot via YouTube
By now every Israeli has seen the TV clip several times - showing a 14-year old Arab girl being shot dead near the central market of Jewish Jerusalem.


The story is well known: two sisters, 14 and 16 years old, have decided to attack Israelis. The clip, taken by a security camera, shows one of them, clad in traditional Arab garb, jumping around on the sidewalk, brandishing a pair of scissors.

The whole thing looks almost like a dance. She is jumping around aimlessly, waving the scissors, threatening no one in particular. Then a soldier aims a pistol at her and shoots her. He runs to the girl and kills her while she is lying helplessly on the ground. The other girl is grievously wounded.

The soldier was lauded for his bravery by the Minister of Defense, a former army Chief of Staff, and by his present successor. Throughout the political establishment, not a single voice was raised against the killing. Even the opposition was silent.

This week one person raised his voice. Avigdor Feldman, a lawyer, informed the Attorney General that he was going to apply to the Supreme Court, asking it to open a criminal investigation against the soldier. He wants the court to order the authorities to investigate all cases in which soldiers and civilians have shot and killed "terrorists" after they had already become unable to act.

In today's Israel, this is an act of incredible courage. Advocate Feldman is no crackpot. He is a well-known lawyer, prominent especially in the field of civil rights.

I got to know him when he was still at the start of his career. He was still a "stageur" - a lawyer who has finished his studies but is not yet a fully licensed advocate - working in a friend's office. He represented me in several minor court cases, and even then I was struck by his sharp mind.

Comment: More and more people are getting tired of subverting their humanity in the name of Israel. See also:

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Pills

Mass intoxication: The narcotics epidemic in American society

Valery Kulikov
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 19 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
big pharma, pharma drug money
In view of the national epidemic of painkiller and psychotropic drug abuse in the United States, along with the legalization of marijuana in the majority of its states, many American experts have noted the emergence of a real narcotics epidemic in the American society. Taking the road to legalizing the supposedly mild drugs, representatives of the leading political and business circles in the US graphically demonstrate to the world the fact that the nation's heath and welfare are not their greatest concern. It seems that receiving extra personal profit and promoting the new gold rush will prove sufficient, thanks to increased marijuana sales, to not only bring down their own populous in narcotic fuelled flames, but to take down other countries, on whom Washington is actively imposing its so-called American democracy and its own business. The enormous drug market is a guarantee that neither the current US authorities, nor the opposition will ever find an answer to the question: who meets the demand and the growing appetite of the Americans for drugs?

As a US study confirms, the new conditions in the country towards the active legalization of marijuana, it has pushed cigarettes out of schools and other educational institutions of the United States. Referring to the recent studies, the conservative news portal and political analysts of the USA, The Daily Caller, said that the growing popularity of cannabis among students can be explained by the fact that all the smaller number consider marijuana as a potentially harmful substance. Yet in 1991 80% of high school students considered cannabis harmful, whereas today this opinion is shared by only 39.5%.


Comment: The elimination of smoking in public spaces is quite in keeping with the efforts of the political elite to control the population. Smoking natural tobacco actually improves cognitive function and lowers social withdrawal, whereas narcotics make people more docile and thus easier to control.

Marijuana for the Masses: Legalized cannabis and why the government wants us to go to pot


Comment:

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X

Farce of human rights: Slave labor and injustice in Saudi Arabia

Jonah Cohen and Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe
New Republic
Mon, 21 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
saudi women
© Peer Grimm/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
A Sri Lankan woman sentenced to be stoned to death on charges of adultery has been granted a reprieve, but she is far from safe.

A married housemaid, she received the death penalty while the man, also a Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given 100 lashes, the New Republic reported earlier this month. Since that article appeared, we received word that the Canadian embassy to Saudi Arabia would try to assist the woman.

The court has now agreed to reopen her case for appeal. But the public still doesn't know her name, for whom she was working, what she testified in court, or who bore witness against her. Not her family, not even her "betrayed" husband, knows that she stands to be executed.

Why won't her name be released? Officials involved with the case claim she doesn't want her family to know how far she's fallen, that she'd feel humiliated. But it's hard to believe that the same court that would stone a woman to death would also protect her from the sting of social scandal. It's just as likely that the housemaid's name is being concealed to stifle media attention, as well as to imply her shame and guilt over a sexual crime for which her male judges might kill her.

Comment: And this is what poses for 'justice' in the nation chosen to head the UN Human Rights council. The blatant hypocrisy and corruption involved in this decision is almost incomprehensible.

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No Entry

Sickening: No indictments in jail death case of Sandra Bland


RT
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 03:21 UTC
Sandra Bland
A Texas grand jury announced Monday that there will be no indictment of county jail employees in the case of Sandra Bland, a black activist who died in custody in jail, local media reported.

The grand jury heard evidence in the Bland case for more than eight hours before announcing its decision, according to KPRC.

Sandra Bland, 28, was found dead in her Waller County jail cell on July 13, three days after she had been arrested during a traffic stop. Authorities claimed she hanged herself. However, her family has contested their findings.

Comment: Sadly, Sandra Bland's jailers have had all the time in the world to "lose" the evidence required to prove that something very, very evil occurred to her in custody. Yet another in the tragically long list of cases that demonstrate how vulnerable African-Americans are in the 'Land of the Free'.

See the must-read Sott Focus: The murder of Sandra Bland and America's 'color revolution'

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Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: Illegal humanity: Activists compelled to arm themselves and openly defy Texas law - in order to feed the homeless

Matt Agorist
Activist Post
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
Homeless fed
When feeding the homeless becomes an act of civil disobedience, Americans have been asleep for far too long.

Luckily, however, there are still good people who are willing to defy such arbitrary and ill-conceived laws and ordinances.

The folks over at the aptly named organization Don't Comply, took to the streets just outside the Austin Street Shelter in Dallas this weekend to perform, what has now become a revolutionary act - feeding the homeless.

"We are not complying with a bad law today," Matthew Short, PR director of Don't Comply said. "Evidently the city of Dallas believes that it's wrong, or bad, or unlawful for us to feed more than a certain number of people at a time. But, during Christmas, we want to show love to our community and give these people a chance to survive the winter, whether it be with blankets or coats, or just giving them a holiday party like today with all kinds of cookies, and goodies, turkey and dressing, and the whole nine yards."

Comment: Imagine: we live in a world where normal people with conscience must break laws - and arm themselves - to do the types of things that our local and federal government should be doing in the first place. But then again, it is the runaway train that is our government which is largely responsible for creating these conditions to begin with. It seems that a few billion dollars taken from the allocated budgets of the surveillance-military-industrial-complex-security-state would require taking away too much funding from the "things that matter" in their warped sense of priorities.

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Books

Homo Sovieticus: Western judgment of the Soviet man

Michael Kirkwood
Russia Insider
Tue, 22 Dec 2015 13:49 UTC
Alexander Zinoviev
© FlickrAlexander Zinoviev
Professor emeritus, University of Glasgow Michael Kirkwood continues with a series of articles about the life and works of the brilliant post war Russian philosopher, author, and dissident, Alexander Zinoviev.

lllustrations are by Zinoviev himself, provided to RI by his family.

The book Homo Sovieticus was published in English translation by Victor Gollancz in 1985, the original Russian version having appeared in 1982 (L'Age d'Homme, Lausanne).

It reflects Zinoviev's earliest experience as an émigré and provides a snapshot of East-West relations at a point near the end of what might be termed "classical Soviet Communism". It is a scathing account of Soviet behavior abroad and of the West's inability to comprehend the true nature of Soviet foreign policy with respect to the West.

The book centres on a group of Soviet émigrés living in a Pension in Germany, each seeking his or her own way to establish a niche in the West. As in The Yawning Heights, they have labels rather than names ('Cynic', 'Enthusiast', 'Whiner', etc.)

Comment: Also see:
With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990's and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversaries expanded.

Western propaganda machine: Distortion, fabrication and falsification in the financial press


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2 + 2 = 4

Critical signs of the fast approaching economic apocalypse

David Haggith
The Great Recession Blog
Mon, 21 Dec 2015 07:20 UTC
economic depression
When I predicted the economic apocalypse would begin for the US this month, I said the stock market would rise euphorically after the Fed raised its interest target. Rise it did. Steeply, too. I also said it would fall shortly after. Fall it did. Quickly, too. Now I'm saying the Epocalypse is here.

Just as I stated that "the rate at which the market goes up now is a measurement of pure euphoria," by the same token, how quickly that euphoria falls off indicates just how far down the downside is. If you have ever floated in the ocean and felt yourself unexpectedly drop way down with the water, you know that means a huge wave is coming up right behind you.

"Particularly watch out," I warned, "if the euphoria cools quickly because, after more than a year of concern over what would happen when stimulus ended, there is a lot of relief the bulls would like to celebrate. If the euphoria cools quickly, it's likely to mean things are ready to go down hard and fast."

While I said in my last article, "Their party could last for days or end tomorrow," I actually anticipated the euphoric rise in the stock market would last several days, given how long investors feared what might happen when the Fed raised rates and how relieved they'd be that the sky didn't fall that day ... and how persistent they have been in taking bad news as good news.
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