Society's ChildS

Passport

FATCA causing ever more Americans to renounce their citizenship

FATCA
A rapidly deteriorating political situation, accompanied by shrinking incomes and disastrous social conditions with racial problems to top it all off wouldn't go unnoticed in any state.

The inhabitants of such a country in the long-run would be appalled by the prospects of living in poverty for the rest of their lives, surviving on crumbs that fall from the oligarchs' table. Nobody wants to live without prospects or hope, therefore, people are often leaving such states in droves, renouncing their citizenship with no intention to ever return again.

And we are not talking here about those who fled the poorest countries of the world, even though a massive flow of such people has swept Europe over the last 12 months due to the massive number of refugees fleeing hunger, poverty and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. In fact, we are talking about the so-called "stronghold of democracy," namely the United States.

The rapidly deteriorating living conditions of common Americans have been covered only by a handful of media sources, both in the mainstream and the alternative media. However, what the US media and politicians prefer to keep silent about is the massive exodus of American citizens from the United States.

Bomb

Feds investigate pipe bomb explosion on Maryland police vehicle

Pipe bomb attack
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Federal agents joined local police to investigate a pipe bomb explosion that damaged a Maryland police vehicle. No one was injured but the explosion sent shrapnel into a nearby house and damaged the cruiser's windshield.

Residents began calling 911 early Wednesday morning complaining about what sounded like an explosion in Thurmont, a town in suburban Maryland.

"One of my officers went to his residence and parked his cruiser on the street as he usually does at about midnight and then around 12:30 one of the neighbors heard a big explosion," Thurmont police Chief Greg Eyler told The Frederick News-Post. "It looked like a metal pipe bomb was detonated on the hood and the windshield of the cruiser."

Comment: See also: Baltimore police serving arrest warrants kill black mother Korryn Gaines, 5yo also shot


Fire

Footage surfaces of men in Paris suburb torching bus, reportedly shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Great)

Saint-Denis bus fire
© Daily Video/YouTube
Footage has surfaced showing a group of young men setting a bus alight with Molotov cocktails after blocking its way with makeshift barricade in Paris. The perpetrators were reportedly heard shouting 'Allahu Akbar'.

The footage, which started to spread on social media on Wednesday, shows the attack that occurred in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis last week.

A group of young men is seen rolling trash containers to the midst of the road in front of an approaching bus to "set up a trap to force the bus to stop," police said, as cited by L'Express. In the video, which was presumably shot from one of the nearby buildings, the attackers are heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great, in Arabic).

After bringing the vehicle to a halt, the assailants forced the driver and five passengers out. The men then start kicking the bus and smashing its windows, before finally throwing Molotov cocktails at the vehicle, causing an explosion and a massive fire. Three water cannons were dispatched to the scene to tackle the blaze. No one was injured in the incident.


Cult

FBI entraps and arrests DC Metro cop for trying to help ISIS

DC ISIS
© Reuters

A Metro Transit police officer in the Washington, DC area has been arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to Islamic State. He also previously traveled to Libya in an attempt to help overthrow the Gaddafi government.

The officer, Nicholas Young, was trying to help Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) operatives find ways to communicate in secret, the Department of Justice said in a statement. The officer was sending "stored value" gift cards for mobile messaging accounts to IS abroad.

According to an indictment filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Young was convinced by an undercover FBI officer to send him codes for 22 mobile messaging cards.


Comment: Yet another FBI-produced entrapment of someone "planning terror," or, in this case, aiding and abetting terrorists.


Young was arrested at work Wednesday morning at the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters.

The Metro Transit Police Department is the law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the DC area's subway system. Young never posed a credible or specific threat to the Metro system, authorities said, according to the Washington Post.

Stormtrooper

What happened to GI Jane? Few US women sign up for combat

boots_military
© Flickr/ copsadmirer
The US Army rolled out a new policy in January the US Army that allows women to apply for frontline fighting jobs. Despite the changes being met with massive praise, very few women are signing up for the positions.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement in December 2015 that women would soon be able seek combat positions, but so far, only around 100 women have signed up.

"Unfortunately, we have not had a sufficient number of serving female soldiers and [noncommissioned officers] volunteer to transfer into these mentorship and leadership roles," Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey said in a memo to troops, the Army Times reports.

The over 220,000 previously men-only positions include infantry soldiers, cavalry scouts and tank crewmembers. The Army's plan to introduce women to these roles was to first train female lieutenants and sergeants and then move on to lower-ranking soldiers, the Fiscal Times explained.

Issues with the new policies have also been seen in the Marines, where the majority of women are failing the tests required to get into the combat jobs that are newly opened in their ranks.

In June, the Associated Press reported that six out of seven women who have taken the physical fitness test for the Marines combat roles have failed, a rate of 85.7%. Among men, the failure rate is approximately 2.7%.

Comment: Next step will likely be forced registration for the military draft. The war machine must be fed!


Cowboy Hat

Profit before safety: U.S. Nuclear 'Regulatory' Commission routinely fails to enforce safety codes putting all of us at risk from accidents

Vermont yankee nuclear power fire
The transformer fire at Vermont Yankee nuclear power station, 18th June 2004.
The NRC routinely fails to enforce its own safety codes at nuclear power plants, writes Linda Pentz Gunter - putting all of us at risk from accidents. It's the US's most extreme example of regulatory capture, rivalling Japan's 'nuclear village' of crony agencies and feeble regulation that led to the Fukushima disaster. How long can it be before the US experiences another nuclear catastrophe?

Fetch the comfy chair! The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in town to enforce its own safety regulations at your local nuclear power plant. Reactor owners have been duly warned. Comply or else ...

Or else what? Three more last chances? No, unlike Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition, the NRC isn't bothering to read the charges. It's handing out immunity.

The US still has 30 operating reactors of the same General Electric design that exploded at Fukushima. Yet the NRC has decided not to require a significant safety retrofit that it had ordered in 2013, and that would have reduced the radioactive consequences of a major accident at one of these dangerously flawed reactors.

Or rather, the NRC will require it, but only after the reactor closes. The Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey, which happens also to be the world's prototype for the Fukushima reactors, is scheduled to close on December 31, 2019.

Comment: Many, if not most, of our regulatory agencies have a long history of protecting industry interests over public and environmental health. The CDC, FDA, USDA, and EPA for are all perfect examples of regulatory bodies that have been completely taken over by the same industries they have been tasked to regulate, leaving us all at their mercy.


Clipboard

Residency registration nightmare: Over 3M EU nationals living in UK would take 140 years

Map UK destinations
© thebeerbarrel.net
It would take approximately 140 years to process permanent residency applications for the 3-million-plus EU citizens currently living in the UK if they were all to apply now, a new post-Brexit referendum report warns.

Oxford University's Migration Observatory has stressed in its report, entitled Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? The Status of EU Citizens Already Living in the UK, that protecting the long-term status of EU migrants already in Britain will be a real challenge. "Given the sheer number of EU citizens who would need to register and the potential complexity of the process, this will be a formidable task," Director of the Observatory Madeleine Sumption said in a statement.

Researchers studied the existing process that the Europeans can use to apply for permanent residency in Britain to analyze potential problems the government may face if any new registration scheme was introduced following the Brexit vote. "If all EEA [The European Economic Area] citizens already living in the UK in early 2016 applied for permanent residence at once, this would represent the equivalent of around 140 years' worth of work at recent rates of processing for this type of application," the study found.

Comment: Immigration of existing EU residents in the UK is now linked to the Brexit referendum, culminating in a slew of complications involved in sorting this out. Solutions will be forth coming as will a manageable process, but there is strategic mileage to be gained as long as this is perceived to be a negative and overwhelming problem.


Airplane

American Airlines pilot confronts, subdues irate passenger

pilot subdues passenger
© World Breaking News / YouTube
Airline passengers behaving badly is not unheard of, but rarely is the pilot forced to get physically involved. However, this was recently witnessed on a flight bound for Charlotte, North Carolina: A passenger spat, cursed and even knocked a flight attendant to the floor.

The newly released video, first obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader, shows an unruly passenger on an American Airlines flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, being subdued by a pilot after he ignored directives from flight stewards to "take a seat!"In the video, Michael Kerr from Lexington, Kentucky, threatened to break the pilot's jaw. After trying to force himself off the plane, and knocking a flight attendant to the floor, the pilot clearly had enough, taking Kerr to the aisle floor.


V

Assange: US only has circumstantial evidence that Russia was behind DNC email hack

Assange
© REUTERS/ Peter Nicholls
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told RT he believes the US only has circumstantial evidence that Russia is behind the hack that led to the release of sensitive emails from the Democratic National Convention database.

"There are claims that in the metadata after someone has done a document to PDF conversion and in some cases, the documents - the language of the computer that was used for that conversion, was Russian," Assange told Afshin Rattansi, the host of RT's Going Underground.

Assange added that any evidence Russia was involved is merely circumstantial and could have been planted deliberately by "someone who wanted to make it look like a Russian" was behind the hack.

Previously Assange said that he believes the accusations from the Democrats are an attempt to deflect attention from the contents of the leaked documents.

Windsock

Mother of teen who shot at police blames Black Lives Matter

black lives matter
© Andrew Kelly / ReutersPeople hold up a banner during a Black Lives Matter protest outside City Hall in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 1, 2016
The mother of a teen who shot at police officers while with his cousin, said that they had been "doing what Black Lives Matter wanted them to do."

Police in Pennsylvania were responding to gunshots Friday morning when their vehicle came under fire by two teenagers. The teens were arrested on Tuesday. The mother of one holds Black Lives Matter at least partially responsible.

"They are in jail for doing what Black Lives Matter wanted them to do: shoot at cops," Luz Rentas said in a statement to several media outlets, Associated Press reported. "The truth is that these are two punk kids following the orders of an irresponsible organization and now they're gonna pay for it."


Comment: Ms. Rentas isn't thinking clearly. BLM as a movement does not give orders to kill cops.