Society's ChildS


Heart

'Killed trying to save people's lives': Aleppo neighborhood loses last surgeon in militant fire

Militant shelling killing senior medic
© lizzie_phelan / Instagram
The neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo has lost its last senior medic. He was killed in rebel fire while trying to fulfill his duty - to help the weak and the sick amid the hostilities, his family told RT.

Dr. Shahed was killed on Thursday by a Katyusha rocket fired from the rebel-held Kafr Hamra area in Aleppo Province, Lizzie Phelan reported.

"He [Shahed] died because they called him and told him there was shelling and some people were in the medical center who needed his help, so he went to try and save their lives, and he was killed," the surgeon's wife, Mayada, said.

His wife added that Dr. Shahed "was always helping people."

People 2

One American's reason for moving to Russia


Comment: The rest of this American cultural refugee's story has since been published by Fort Russ, so we're re-running it with Part 2 included.


Katehon recently ran an article about the Russian Federation possibly offering to open it's gates to cultural refugees from the western world. I decided that I should author a piece about this subject - because I am in fact myself a cultural refugee from the western world who lives in Russia.
Mamayev Kurgan
© Rob / Flickr The Motherland Statue in Volgograd, Russia
To be clear, I consider myself a cultural refugee, not an expat. An expat is a person who leaves a country and resides in another country not as a citizen but as a guest. A cultural refugee is a person who enters a country to become part of its culture because his origin culture is diseased. I work my best to assimilate to Russian cultural norms and, given my Slavic origins, it is not particularly difficult. As my ancestors dreamed about leaving Europe for a better life in the USA, I dreamed about leaving the USA for a better life in Europe.

My first few visits back to Europe were - well, enjoyable, but they did not quite "fit" me. I had seen Denmark, Sweden, France, Holland, and Switzerland. While all were quite nice, a variety of factors led me to visit Russia next. When I got on my first plane to Russia, I didn't know what to expect, as my Russian-Polish ancestors who left there so long ago never had much good to say about it, though I grew up with my grandmother drinking Stolichnaya (during the Cold War!) and her cooking borscht and pelmeni. I grew up wearing Topachki (similar to slippers, but a lot of people, myself included, use sandals - mine are Adidas, of course). It was during my first visit to Moscow that I really felt a strong sense of "home", and knew that Russia was the country for me.

Airplane

Germany: Two planes collide in mid-air during air show; 2 dead

saxony Germany
© Google MapsThe crash happened Saturday in eastern Germany.
Two people have been killed after two airplanes crashed head-on during an airshow in Grossrückerswalde in the eastern state of Saxony in Germany.

The incident happened on Saturday afternoon during Flugplatzfest 2016.

Police in Chemnitz confirmed that after colliding, the glider crashed to the ground, killing its two occupants, while the ultralight aircraft was able to land at a nearby airport, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Propaganda

Most people today want to be propagandized

mainstream propaganda
There's a principle in hypnotism that goes like this: A person cannot be hypnotized against his will. He must be a willing subject. He must be fully cooperative.

So it goes with propaganda. For propaganda to be effective, it requires submissive subjects. As Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy wrote, propaganda is a "co-production in which we are willing participants."

Propaganda is typically defined as the dissemination of particularly biased information in support of a political or ideological cause. In his 1965 book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, philosopher Jacques Ellul provided us with some of the basic characteristics of propaganda: it thwarts dialogue, it is geared toward the masses, it utilizes various media, it is continuous, it is not intended to make one think.

Bullseye

'Incarcerated Workers' stage nationwide prison labor strike 45 years after 1971 NY's Attica riot

prisoners
© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
On the 45th anniversary of the famous Attica riot, inmates across the US are attempting to bring attention to the dire circumstances that prison populations endure, in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, by going on strike.

September 9, 2016 marks 45 years since the prisoners in New York's Attica Correctional Facility took over the prison to demand humane treatment. In the four-and-a-half decades since then, little has improved, according to those living behind bars.

Inmates are protesting a myriad of problems facing the incarcerated population, such as the low wages they receive for work they are required to do by penitentiaries that benefit the facilities themselves and private companies that contract out labor to prisons.

Some inmates' grievances were outlined in a list of demands posted on the Industrial Workers of the World Incarcerated Workers' Facebook page, containing complaints about the conditions prisoners in South Carolina face.

Comment: See also: Bend the bars: US inmates organizing nationwide strike in protest of prison slavery


Laptop

Bittersweet progress: Russian teen genius with cerebral palsy invents communication software for the disabled

Ivan Bakaidov
© facebookIvan Bakaidov
Dozens of articles have been published about Ivan Bakaidov, a St Petersburg schoolboy with cerebral palsy (CP), who has learned how to program, and ride a trike. But the plaudits lay bare the obstacles and low expectations faced by the disabled in Russia.

Headlines have called the 17-year-old 'the cerebral palsy genius' and 'the Russian Stephen Hawking' (the English physicist actually suffers from ALS, a different condition) but Bakaidov has repeatedly batted away those compliments, saying that his is merely a sound mind locked within an uncooperative body.

That is not to belittle his achievements.

Bakaidov was a year old when he was diagnosed with CP, a neurological disorder that severely hampers his movement, and is accompanied by dysarthia, an inability to use his vocal chords to effectively articulate sounds, meaning he cannot be understood by any but his closest family members.

Eiffel Tower

Suspicious gas canisters found near Marseille synagogue

france
© Jean-Paul Pelissier / Reuters
A suspicious vehicle containing two gas canisters has been found near a synagogue in Marseille, France, just a week after a similar incident near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral led to the arrest of several Islamic State sympathizers, local media report.


The suspicious car was found in southern France on Saturday morning next to the Community Centre of Bar Yohaye (local synagogue), La Provence newspaper reported.

Two gas cylinders were found in the car, the paper said, adding that the area has been put under heavy security.

The police Prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Laurent Nunez, confirmed to la Province that no detonators were found in the car, adding that it was too early to draw parallels between Saturday's incident and the one that took place in Paris last week.


Comment: In a climate of hysteria, all that's needed to "draw parallels" and make a connection is to make a statement denying any connection has been found. It's a positive feedback loop where both real and imagined threats only serve to heighten the hysteria. The strategy of tension becomes self-perpetuating.


Info

'No moderate rebels here': RT talks with Aleppo civilians on new ceasefire deal

Aleppo, Syria
© Muzaffar Salman / Reuters
People living in southern Aleppo seem to have little optimism for a new ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and the US overnight, RT's correspondent Lizzie Phelan found out after talking to residents in the neighborhood.

Aleppo has been a divided city for years and has been the focus of hostilities over the past few months. Phelan walked the city's war-ravaged streets on Saturday just hours after the US and Russia announced a new plan to establish a truce in Syria. At a distance of approximately one kilometer from one of the city's frontlines, it seems that civilians are not very hopeful that it will succeed.

"We hope that the ceasefire holds because it would be good for all Aleppo. If not, let the military operations continue," said one man, who introduced himself as Ayman.

"I don't think this plan will work because there are no so-called moderate rebels in Aleppo. All armed groups are acting like terrorists."

Dollars

Trump & co. poised to reap massive profits on Dakota pipeline

trump oil dakota
As the battle rages between Native Americans attempting to protect their natural resources and Big Oil profiteers seeking to plow through with the North Dakota Access pipeline, political figures remain silent.

Obama, Hillary, and Trump have not said a word about the pillaging of land and water, or the fact that attack dogs have been unleashed on protesters just as they were during 1960s civil rights demonstrations.

While we can chalk up Obama's and Hillary's silence to establishment loyalty, Trump has a deeper interest in the 30-inch diameter pipeline connecting the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields to Patoka, Illinois.

Comment: It's all about lining their pockets at the expense of another. Native Americans know this all too well.


Network

Norway goes berserk over Facebook crack down on iconic Vietnam War photo over nudity, then Facebook u-turns

Photojournalist Nick Ut and Kim Phuc
© Ina Fassbender / ReutersPhotojournalist Nick Ut and Kim Phuc (L) attend the presentation of the latest Leica equipment at Photokina 2012, the world's largest fair for imaging, in Cologne
Norwegians have been accusing Facebook of censorship since the social media giant decided to enforce its nudity rules by deleting the iconic photo of a Vietnamese girl running away in terror after her village was hit by a napalm attack.

The blunder began when popular Norwegian author and journalist Tom Egeland posted a status about how photography can influence the world. Among the eight photos he published was that of Kim Phuc taken in June of 1972 near her home village after it was hit by a napalm attack. Kim, who was nine at the time, ripped off her clothes and ran naked crying and screaming as the napalm burned her skin.

Military photographer Nick Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for capturing the iconic image, but Facebook decided that it didn't comply with its nudity rules and deleted it. The social media giant's decision triggered backlash from Norwegians, who posted the iconic photo in defiance. Facebook responded by routinely deleting it.

Comment: Facebook U-turn: Social network backtracks on 'Napalm girl' photo censorship
Facebook has reversed its decision to block the famous image showing a naked girl suffering from a South Vietnamese napalm attack, after the network was accused of censorship around the world.

The social network was under immense pressure and ridicule after it emerged the website blocked the photo, which shows the naked 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running away in terror after her village was hit by a napalm attack. The photo "breached" Facebook's standards for nudity in the image.

Facebook decided to reverse its decision Friday after it "listened to the community" and recognised the "global importance" of the photo.

"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," Facebook said in a statement.

"It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days," it added. "We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe."