Society's ChildS


Heart

Russia aiming to become world's biggest exporter of non-GMO food

non gmo food russia
© Aleksandr Kondratuk / Sputnik
Russia could become the world's largest supplier of ecologically clean and high-quality organic food, said President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. He also called on the country to become completely self-sufficient in food production by 2020.

"We are not only able to feed ourselves taking into account our lands, water resources - Russia is able to become the largest world supplier of healthy, ecologically clean and high-quality food which the Western producers have long lost, especially given the fact that demand for such products in the world market is steadily growing," said Putin, addressing the Russian Parliament on Thursday.

According to the President, Russia is now an exporter, not an importer of food.

"Ten years ago, we imported almost half of the food from abroad, and were dependent on imports. Now Russia is among the exporters. Last year, Russian exports of agricultural products amounted to almost $20 billion - a quarter more than the revenue from the sale of arms, or one-third the revenue coming from gas exports," he said.

Putin said that all this makes Russia fully capable of supplying the domestic market with home-grown food by 2020.

In September, the Kremlin decided against producing food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Russia imposed an embargo on the supply of products from the EU and the United States as a response to Western sanctions. After Turkey shot down Russian Su-24 bomber, Russian authorities decided to ban the import of fruit, vegetables and poultry from Turkey. The ban will take effect from January 1.

Comment: Russia once again putting the welfare of its citizens first and foremost.


Palette

Why the art world's raging narcissism epidemic is killing art

Jay Z
© Consequence of SoundJay Z and Marina Abramovic during the 2013 shoot for "Picasso Baby."
Narcissism is everywhere. News anchors say it prevents politicians from keeping their pants on. Teachers and coaches reinforce it by avoiding grades and giving out trophies that read "Participant." Adults and kids push it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, while achievement-free celebrities turn it into worldwide exposure and profitable endorsements. Of course, it was only a matter of time until this blustery but debilitating epidemic struck an already self-absorbed art world.

And strike deep it has! Because artists in our time are defined simply as people who make art, they and those who covet their wares are especially susceptible to the narcissism bug. Take, for a start, American sociologist Howard Becker's modern-day definition of an artist: "If you do it [art], you must be an artist; conversely, if you are an artist, what you do must be art." That précis, of course, contains it's own vain syllogism; some would say it's downright self-aggrandizing. Consequently, just like Donald Trump—the one presidential candidate psychiatrists are willing to go out on limb to label clinically conceited—many artists today resemble textbook cases of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Comment: "When psychopaths rule above, everything below them goes through the process of ponerization, which basically means that humanity and beauty are stripped from the people's minds in a slow but steady pace, until it is replaced with a pathological sense of humanity and beauty - at best a caricature of the original, at worst its exact opposite - which is then reflected in our language, in our art and in our interpersonal relationships."


Stop

Nightmares in Palestine: Families deal with trauma following Israeli torture

Palestinian children
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.

- Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. "Trauma and Recovery"
To understand psychiatric home visits in Palestine necessitates forgoing Western assumptions about patient confidentiality, privacy, and timeliness. Though individual patients often refer themselves to treatment centers after a release from prison, the difficulty of traveling to and from major cities requires therapists to make home visits. Families then participate in the session as a group, thereby coming to better understand their family member's situation and relieving some of their own symptoms as well. Throughout Palestine, families are regularly made to feel that their own house is unsafe and outside of their control. Violence may overtake a peaceful setting without warning, and to resist an arrest would be to invite danger on the rest of the relatives. A study conducted by the Ramallah Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) examining arrests as trauma-inducing events explains that, "92% of arrests [surveyed] happened at home, and most of [them] happened...in the time periods of deep sleep after midnight. This had caused severe emotional and psychological damages to the families, and doubled the impact of emotional suffering and immediate trauma" ("The Impact of Detention on Palestinian Detainees' Families in Israeli Prisons," 2011).

Vader

Renegade Alabama cops accused of falsely arresting 100s of black youths

Squad cars
© Robert Kuykendall
An organization called The Alabama Justice Project obtained the documents and information from a group of police officers who are choosing to remain anonymous due to threats they have previously received from colleagues.

The documents, originally published on a website called The Henry Report, state that for years up to a dozen police officers on a narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on black male suspects. They also allege that the framing of suspects was conducted under the supervision of Steve Parrish, now the current Dothan Police Chief, and former Sergeant Andy Hughes, now the Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama.

Comment: The overall evidence is damning - you can read the extensive in-depth details, and view some of the documented evidence, at The Henry Report:

Leaked documents reveal Dothan Police Department planted drugs on young black men for years, district attorney Doug Valeska complicit


Heart - Black

Unfettered, free-market capitalism - the harm to human dignity

capitalism oligarchs profit
© Olivier Le Moal/Shutterstock.com
On the free market it is legal and customary to violate the dignity of our fellow human beings

When I ask students attending my lectures at the Vienna University of Economics and Business what they understand human dignity to be, I frequently encounter a general, awkward silence. The students do not appear to have heard or learned anything about it in the course of their studies. This is all the more alarming considering the fact that dignity is the highest value: it is the first-named value in countless constitutions and it forms the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Dignity signifies value: the same, unconditional, unalienable value of all human beings. Dignity requires no "achievement" other than existence. It is from the equal value of all human beings that our equality derives - in the sense that all human beings living in a democracy should have the same liberties, rights and opportunities. And only if everyone really does have the same liberties is the condition fulfilled for enabling everyone to be really free.

Immanuel Kant wrote that human dignity can only be preserved in daily life and interactions if we deem and treat each other as being of equal value: "So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means." [emphasis Kant's]

By contrast, on the free market it is legal and customary to instrumentalize our fellow human beings, violating their dignity because our goal is not to protect it. Our goal is to gain personal advantage, and in many cases this can be achieved more easily if we take advantage of others and violate their dignity. What is decisive is my attitude and my priority: am I interested in the greatest good and the preservation of the dignity of all, which is something which affects me automatically and which I benefit from as well, or am I primarily interested in my own welfare and my own advantage, which others might, but will not necessarily draw benefit from? If we pursue our own advantage as our supreme goal, the customary practice is to use others as means to achieve this goal and to take advantage of them accordingly. For this reason, Smith's perversion of goal and by-product leads to widespread violations of human dignity and the systematic restriction of the liberty of many.

Stock Down

Can rising healthcare costs lead to the next Great Recession?

US healthcare cartel
© tnd.com
Why the coming Great Recession is brought to you by the Healthcare Cartel is painfully simple: in an era of stagnant household incomes, every additional dollar devoted to rising healthcare insurance, outrageously unaffordable medications and soaring co-pays is one less dollar that's available to be saved, invested or spent on something other than healthcare.

Recent headlines tell the story: off-patent medications suddenly leap in price, healthcare premiums jump 25+% in a single year, co-pays increase and the deductibles on many insurance plans are so high that the coverage is more phantom than real: if you have to spend $5,000 before your insurance plan pays $1, what value is the coverage?

If the plan costs $5,000 a year, but doesn't pay a dime of expenses until you've spent $5,000, then the plan actually costs $10,000.

Heart - Black

Macedonia police teargas refugees as Europe arrivals reach 1 million

A young migrant girl near Macedonia
© ReutersA young migrant girl holds up a drawing in a makeshift camp on the Macedonian-Greek border, near Gevgelija, Macedonia, Nov. 30, 2015
Macedonian police fired teargas Wednesday at hundreds of refugees who tried to enter the country through its land border with Greece and demanded they be allowed in to continue their journey towards wealthier European countries.

Most of the refugees attacked were from Pakistan, Iran and Morocco who, under new regulations by the non-European Union Balkan nations, are not among the nationalities to be allowed through. Macedonian border authorities are screening the refugees and only letting in those from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

For several weeks, more than 1,500 refugees have been stranded in the border region between Greece and Macedonia and living in tents. Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas said his government was trying to persuade them to come to Athens and apply for asylum in Greece, saying there was accommodation available for them.

Family

Catalonia dismisses court ruling that blocks secessionist bid

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
© EFESpanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy praised the Constitutional Court's decision and said Catalonian independence will never happen
Catalonia's regional government again defied the government in Madrid and dismissed the Spanish Constitutional Court decision to block the secessionist movement, saying that their conviction to gain independence remains unchanged.

"The content of this declaration, approved by an absolute majority, is to remain unchanged no matter how many sentences the Spanish Constitutional Court issues," said Catalonian government spokeswoman Neus Munte.

Earlier in the day, Spain's Constitutional Court blocked the Catalan secession drive, increasing tensions between the regional government and Madrid, while adding to political uncertainty in the country ahead of the Dec. 20 general elections.

Pistol

Black Friday breaks record with 185,000 gun background checks

guns
© Damian Dovarganes, AP
More Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday than any day on record, according to data released by the FBI this week.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 185,345 requests on Nov. 27, one of the largest retail sales days in the country.

"This was an approximate 5% increase over the 175,754 received on Black Friday 2014," wrote Stephen Fischer, the FBI's chief of multimedia productions. "The previous high for receipts were the 177,170 received on 12/21/2012."

Comment: Americans must not feel so safe to live there without guns. Who can blame them?


Pistol

Mass shooting in San Bernadino SWAT team drill nearby

swat team san berbadino
An active shooter situation is currently underway in the 1300 block of South Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino, California.

The shooting apparently took place at the Inland Regional Center, which is a facility that provides services for people who have developmental disabilities. The facility had just celebrated its Christmas party.