Society's ChildS


Pumpkin 2

Glorifying genocide: Walmart outrages customers with Israeli soldier Halloween costume

israel idf soldier walmart costume
© walmart.com

Comment: Considering the large quantity of psychopathic behavior being perpetrated by the Israeli army, it's shocking and appalling to see this behavior being both glorified, and marketed to children.


US retail giant Walmart has got into hot water for selling a Halloween costume of an Israeli soldier and a fake "Arab sheikh" nose, sparking a wave of widespread indignation.

The store's website offers sells a soldier's uniform, including a shirt, trousers, belt and hat, bearing Hebrew writing, at the price of $27.44, reduced from $57.62.

Comment: See also: Total war against Gaza: Israeli genocide and its willing accomplices


Family

Syrian refugees return home as Russian intervention brings peace to parts of the country

Syria
© AFP 2015/ LOUAI BESHARA
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said thousands of terrorist are fleeing Syria now, and many refugees are coming back home, according to Russian Senator Dmitry Sablin who recently visited Syria with a delegation.

"Assad praised the actions of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria. He said thousands of terrorists are now fleeing Syria, and refugees are returning," Sablin said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

Recently, a group of Russian lawmakers visited Syria. During the trip, they met with President Assad and high-profile Syrian officials. A number of issues, including bilateral ties and the fight against terrorism, were on the agenda.

Comment: And this positive development is something the US positively cannot stand:


Hiliter

The ugly truth about the American school system

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Prior to the late 1800's, education was a private practice which took place in private institutions or through home schooling. That all changed in 1902 when John D. Rockefeller created the general education board in conjunction with Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller's business and personal adviser and good friend. The general education board was responsible for funding the American public school system, and provided over one hundred million dollars in 1902; they continued their support in a lesser capacity beyond that date. The board was responsible for the creation of the American public school system and has been used as a model globally for more than a century.
"I want a nation of workers, not thinkers." - John D. Rockefeller

Comment: Public education and hystericized society: For children in the U.S., school is the first indoctrination into the American police state


Eye 1

Senate passes cybersecurity sharing act, killing amendments that would address privacy concerns

CISA, cybersecurity act
The Senate on Tuesday passed CISA, a controversial bill encouraging companies to share private user data with the government that is worrying to civil liberties advocates. Four amendments were proposed to address privacy concerns, but they all died on the floor.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) in June 2014 following several high-profile cyber-attacks targeting major US corporations. It would purportedly protect user data from falling into the wrong hands. After debating the merits of the bill, it passed the Senate in a 74 to 21 vote.

The bill now goes to a conference committee between the House of Representatives, which previously passed its own version, and the Senate. If or when that is approved, the bill would head to President Barack Obama.

Comment: CISA represents a major new privacy threat to individual citizens. It lays the groundwork for corporations to feed massive amounts of communications to private consortiums and the federal government, a scale of cooperation even greater than that revealed by Snowden. The law also breaks new ground in suppressing pushback against privacy invasions; in exchange for channeling data to the government, businesses are granted broad legal immunity from privacy lawsuits — potentially leaving consumers without protection if companies break privacy promises that would otherwise keep information out of the hands of authorities.


Wolf

Dozens of German Shepherds help protect tigers in India, illegal wildlife-products trade brings in $12 billion yearly

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In the US and certain other countries, like the UK, German Shepherds are among the most popular dogs used by police. While the dogs can be fierce and learn to display aggression when instructed, their primary skill is to find.

German Shepherds may be used, for instance, to find a suspect inside a building and alert police (via a head camera) to his whereabouts. They're also valued for their ability to track dead bodies and find other valuable pieces of evidence (like a dropped weapon or article of clothing) from which police can draw DNA evidence.1

In countries such as India, German Shepherds are also being used for fighting crime, in the form of wildlife sniffer dogs trained to help stop animal poaching.

Comment: Read more:
  • Poachers slaughtering African elephants on an 'industrial scale': Study



Camera

Amish man challenges federal law requiring photo ID to purchase firearms on religious grounds

Amish man
© Mark Makela / Reuters
In a rare case of gun rights and religious freedom overlapping, an Amish man from Pennsylvania is challenging a federal law that requires a photo ID to buy a firearm, saying that his religious beliefs prevent him from being photographed.

Andrew Hertzler filed a suit on Friday in the US Middle District Court claiming that the photographic identification requirement violates both the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and his constitutional right to bear arms.

Hertzler tried to purchase a firearm at a Pennsylvania firearm dealer with a state-issued ID. The sale was denied because the identification card didn't have a photograph on it, which the law requires.

Light Saber

Palestinian teacher living in Scotland pens open letter to JK Rowling over her support of Guardian's 'Culture for Coexistence' letter

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A music teacher from Dunfermline has crafted a Facebook post to one of her favourite authors, JK Rowling, calling her out over her support of the Guardian's "Culture for Coexistence" letter. Seeing the news on her Facebook of Rowling's support, 25-year-old Mia was shocked and upset, and posted her reaction on social media.

The open letter was written in the hope of JK Rowling spotting it and responding to her long-term fan.

Related: JK Rowling has responded to the letter by Mia. Click here to read it in full.

"I wanted to speak to her, because she had spoken to me and given me so much support over the years through her books that I needed to hear that she was still the same person who argued for freedom and peace in her novels," said Mia.

The letter so far has had over 3,000 shares, it can be read in full below.

Comment: The daily atrocities Israel commits against a defenseless population should outrage anyone who is paying attention. Calls for dialogue have been heard before, and yet today nothing has changed. To continue to blame both sides in the conflict is naive at best and propagandistic at worst. Until Israel is forced to treat Palestinians with respect and uphold international law, nothing can change.

See also: The "Middle Ground" Fallacy in Gaza


Stop

Italian college bans high heels over earthquake safety concerns

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© Stephen Hird / Reuters
An Italian college in the seismically active southern region of Abruzzo has decided that high heels are no longer safe to wear in the area, demanding that its students and staff to switch to more comfortable, plainer and flatter variants.

Heels higher than four centimeters, platform shoes and flip-flops are now outlawed in L'Instituto Technico Industriale in the city of Avezzano as college authorities issue a decree aimed at reducing the rate of accidents caused by footwear.

"The directive is not the fruit of some overly puritanical imagination, but comes down to the need to educate students about safety, especially in an area of high seismic activity." Anna Amanzi, head of L'Instituto Technico Industriale in Avezzano told Ansa.

Comment: It seems a little excessive to ban high heels over safety concerns, and could possibly be an excuse so that the school can prevent students and faculty from wearing provocative clothing, especially since it has already banned miniskirts and low-rise jeans.


Family

Majority of Russians believe EU should send migrants home after wars end

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© Yannis Behrakis / Reuters
According to latest opinion polls, most Russians maintain European nations shouldn't reject migrants from the Middle East and Africa, but also that the refugees should go back home after the end of wars and terrorist attacks in their countries.


Comment: One can only hope that the wars end and terrorists are eliminated so they can go home.


According to the All-Russian Center for Research of Public Opinion (VTSIOM) 60 percent of Russian citizens think that EU countries should grant asylum to migrants until the war in the Middle East is over. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they expect the Russian Federation to also open doors to people who flee the war and terrorism - 13 percent of them think that this scenario is inevitable.

Sixty percent of Russians think that European governments should provide refugees with lodging and allowances and pay for their return home after the end of war.

Only 9 percent of respondents believe migrants now arriving in Europe should be allowed to stay there forever. Fourteen percent say Europe should close its borders and stop accepting migrants no matter what.

Snowflake Cold

Winter is coming: EU leaders bicker and fight while the threat of refugees freezing to death looms high

Jean-Claude Juncker
© AFPLuxembourgish President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker
Migrants crossing the Balkans will begin freezing to death as winter approaches, the head of European Union has said, as leaders warned the continent was "falling apart" trying to deal with the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.


Comment: The biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War is the very crisis that Europe, along with the US and NATO helped to create.


As leaders of eastern European countries turned on each other at a foul-tempered emergency summit in Brussels, they said the Schengen visa-free zone and even the European Union itself could be pulled apart as states threw up borders to halt the influx.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said a solution was urgently needed or thousands of refugee families facing winter temperature on the hillsides and freezing river-banks of Eastern Europe, would die.