Society's ChildS


Pistol

White supremacist runs down and kills black teen while girlfriend cheers him on

white couple
A white supremacist mowed down an African-American teenager with his car and smashed youth's head into the window of a convenience store as his girlfriend cheered him on. Both have been indicted for murder.

Larnell Malik Bruce, 19, was charging his phone outside a 7-Eleven in Gresham, Oregon, just before midnight on August 10, a female acquaintance told local police.

But his evening suddenly took a violent turn after 38-year-old Russell Courtier and his girlfriend, 35-year-old Colleen Hunt, allegedly approached him. Courtier and Bruce engaged in a physical altercation, with Hunt yelling "Get him, baby!" as the fists flew, the Portland Mercury reported.

The 38-year-old managed to smash Bruce's head into the store window, cracking a pane of glass and prompting the 7-Eleven clerk to call 911.

War Whore

Philadelphia cop exposed as neo-nazi after BLM protest photos emerge

Phila cop
"God and Country": The peace officer was a big fan of World War II regalia and fascist iconography. Photo: Evan P. Matthews (left) / Philly Antifa (right)
Photos surfaced Wednesday on social media showing Philadelphia police officer Ian Hans Lichtermann displaying his Nazi tattoo while working the #BlackResistanceMarch during the Democratic National Convention in July. After the photos were posted, local activists discovered that the officer had previously been exposed as a member of a neo-Nazi organization who had quit the force, only to resurface in uniform once again at the anti-police brutality rally.

In the photos that led to the discovery, the police officer had a large tattoo of an eagle and the familiar Nazi symbol, with German-style text reading "Fatherland" on his left forearm.

The photo showed the officer, identified as Lichterman based on his name patch, tattooed with an assault rifle and a U.S. flag on his right forearm accompanied by the text "For God and Country"—the motto of the American Legion, a U.S. veterans' organization that openly supported fascism prior to the Second World War.

Laptop

Which country has the best programmers?

In a study of hundreds of thousands of programmers, China and Russia were found to produce the best software developers
HackerRank programmer ranking
© HackerRankHackerRank maps out the competition.
If you ever wondered about which country produces the best programmers, wonder no more.

A new report from California-based HackerRank, a service that administers tests to developers around the world, says it's China.

Second place goes to Russia, and Poland takes bronze. Traditional programming powerhouses like the US and India came in at 28th and 31st, respectively.

HackerRank offers its community of programmers, apparently 1.5 million strong, with challenges to hone their skills. It examined data from these challenges from the last few years to come up with the rankings, scoring developers from different countries and finding national averages.

Stop

No vaping in British Columbia! E-cigarettes banned in workplaces, parks and beaches

Vaping
© AP/Nam Y. Huh
Starting Thursday, e-cigarettes will be treated the same as tobacco in B.C.

New regulations mean that vaping will no longer be allowed in workplaces or on parks or beaches. It will also not be allowed in a car when someone under 16 years old is present.

New rules also mean anyone who wants to smoke will have to be six metres away from a building opening.

Recently, the provincial government also banned the sale and advertisement of e-cigarettes to youth as well.

The B.C. Government says the Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act is "designed to protect youth from the unknown effects of e-cigarette vapour and from becoming addicted to nicotine, which is why it treats e-cigarette use exactly the same as tobacco, with the same bans and restrictions."

A vaporizer is defined as an electronic cigarette or other device that contains a power source and heating element that's designed to heat a substance to produce a vapour to be inhaled through the mouth.

Comment: Tobacco and nicotine have been demonized for quite some time now. The fairly new trend of vaping nicotine may be dangerous - who knows? Carcinogens have been found in e-cigarettes. They also reportedly have chemicals in them that have been linked to lung disease along with toxic compounds linked to oral disease. A similar trend happened with tobacco.

Unfortunately, people are vaping to quit smoking or they think that it's a healthier option than tobacco. To the contrary, there are many amazing health advantages to smoking tobacco. Given the history of junk science (lies) behind the anti-tobacco movement, it makes us wonder why something so beneficial is being portrayed as so wicked!


Airplane

'1,000 foot drops': Severe turbulence causes multiple injuries on Houston to London flight

United plane
The United Airlines flight from Houston, Texas in the US to London Heathrow had to be diverted to Shannon Airport.
A plane passenger said he feared for his life as a transatlantic jet dropped in severe turbulence injuring 16 people on board before landing at Shannon Airport.

Gregory Giagnocavo, a telecoms investor and entrepreneur from Colorado in the US, was on the United Airlines flight when it suddenly plummeted four times.

"These were petrifying, enormous drops. A part of me didn't know if we were going to make it. It was that bad," he said.

"I gripped the arm rest and thought whether the next sound was going to be hitting the water."

Flight UA880 from Houston, Texas, to London Heathrow was over the Atlantic at about 3.20am on Wednesday morning when it hit what the airline described as severe and unexpected turbulence.

Eye 2

Black Lives Matter a 'radical movement' revealed by hacker Guccifer 2.0

Pelosi Black lives matter
© Gerald Herbert / ReutersHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi watches election returns at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters in Washington.
Hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' has been a thorn in the side of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after he says he broke into their computers. Now he has released several internal memos, including one calling Black Lives Matter a "radical movement."

In a memorandum to fellow DCCC staff members from last November, Troy Perry outlined the background and demands of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Presidential candidates have struggled to respond to tactics of the Black Lives Matter movement," Perry wrote. "While there has been little engagement with House candidates, candidates and campaign staff should be prepared."

Heart - Black

Slap in the face ruling: Black student gets $1 damages from each of 18 cops that falsely tasered, beat him

cops gone wild
© constitutional rights
An 18-year-old black high school student in South Bend, Indiana, has been awarded a mere $18 in damages for being attacked, tasered and unlawfully arrested four years ago, the Washington Post has reported.

The youth apparently matched the police description of a criminal they were after. Officers were looking for Dan Jones, DeShawn Franklin's older brother, following a call about domestic violence. They knocked on Franklin's door at about 2:30am, and entered without asking permission or producing a warrant.

Franklin was sleeping at home when armed police stormed into his bedroom, dragged the teenager outside, handcuffed him and put in the back of a police car.

They soon understood that they had arrested the wrong person, but Franklin was still taken into custody - for resisting his unlawful detention.

Eagle

Latvian neo-Nazis tear down Soviet WWII monument to fallen sailors

Latvian monument
© Nacionālā apvienība / Facebook
A neo-Nazi group, including former Latvian Nazi Waffen SS veterans, has demolished a monument to fallen Soviet troops in a Latvian town with the support of a nationalist party which forms part of the ruling coalition in Latvia's parliament.

The monument to fallen Soviet sailors in the northern Latvian town of Limbazi, located about 100 kilometers from Riga, was demolished by activists from neo-Nazi group Daugavas Vanagi (the Daugava Hawks), which calls itself an organization of the former Nazi Waffen SS Legion veterans.

The demolition was also supported by the National Alliance, which is a part of the ruling coalition in the Latvian parliament.

The party even posted a video of the demolition on its Facebook page with a march playing in the background.

Comment: How interesting that aspiring US-vassal states like Ukraine, and now Latvia, have such strong pro-Nazi political parties - and are both so vehemently anti-Russian.


Star of David

'The defiant femininity of Israel's female soldiers': you're kidding, right?

Eden Abergil Facebook photo in August 2010 of herself with Palestinian prisoner
© Eden Abergil Facebook
Vice, a publication that has done some excellent work reporting on the occupation, has gone in for Jim Crow journalism: a series of intimate portraits of Israeli female soldiers taken by a former Israeli soldier under the self-parodying headline, "The Defiant Femininity of Israel's Female Soldiers." The story appeared two days ago on Vice's photo pages, along with this text, aiming to justify the pictures as a form of protest.
Mayan Toledano's intimate series showing female Israeli soldiers was inspired by her own experience in the Israeli military. Her time in the army left her feeling stripped of all vestiges of femininity and any sense of herself as an individual, and in the photos collected here, she shows female Israeli soldiers whose girlishness and teenage boredom act as a subtle but undeniable form of protest.

Megaphone

An exception to free speech: School teacher suspended for defending Palestine at Toronto rally

Nadia Shoufani
Canadian school teacher, Nadia Shoufani
Schools open again next Tuesday in Mississauga after the summer break.

But Nadia Shoufani does not know if she will be back in class with her students in the Southern Ontario city, just outside Toronto.

The elementary school teacher has been suspended for almost a month, as the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board investigates her over a speech supporting Palestinian rights that she gave at a rally in Toronto.

The rally on 2 July marked al-Quds Day, normally the last Friday of Ramadan, which many people observe as a day of solidarity with Palestinians.

Since then, Shoufani has been the target of a campaign by pro-Israel groups in Canada which seek to have her dismissed for allegedly supporting "terrorism."

During her address, which can be seen on video, Shoufani defends the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and colonization. She says she speaks on behalf of Palestine solidarity groups frustrated at the "silence towards what's happening in occupied Palestine." She condemns extrajudicial executions by Israel, land theft by settlers, home demolitions and arrest raids.