Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Another cop gets away with murder-shoots innocent unarmed woman

killed by police Yvette Smith
After gunning down an innocent, unarmed woman without warning and falsely claiming she had a gun in her hand, a former deputy was found not guilty of murder this week. Although several other deputies were caught blatantly participating in a cover-up, no other cops face criminal charges for their involvement.

According to Bastrop County Sheriff Terry Pickering's initial press release,

Yvette Smith called 911 to report two men fighting over a shotgun at approximately 12:33 a.m. on February 16, 2014. After disregarding commands to come out, Smith stood in the doorway brandishing a gun. Ignoring further orders, Smith was shot to death while "displaying a firearm."

But according to the police dash cam footage of the incident, no deputies had issued any commands to Smith and she was unarmed when Deputy Daniel Willis killed her. Smith had actually convinced her boyfriend's son to unload the shotgun and leave it on a table before she decided to inform the deputies that everyone was safe.

Heart

Compassionate laundry owner has washed over 5K pounds of clothes for residents of homeless shelter for free

Samuel Van De Cruze, homeless laundry
A homeless individual may be inspired to change their situation, but unless they have a clean wardrobe to wear, they're likely to face some challenges unbeknown to most others.

For this reason, a compassionate laundromat owner decided to wash thousands of pounds of homeless people's laundry for free. HuffPost reports that Samuel Van De Cruze was inspired by his Christian faith to help the less fortunate after witnessing the challenges they regularly face.

Those without a home often walk long distances with heavy loads and young children. And, the additional cost of doing laundry can be a financial burden on most families. Because Cruze recently opened his new business Mr. Bubbles Laundromat in Queens, New York, he decided to offer practical help.

Said Cruze:
"As a Christian, I've been taught to do good works. During my devotions one morning, the thought came to me to do this."

Eye 1

The Wages of Sin: Death throes of American empire and the rise of fascism

urban decay ghetto
© Mel Evans / Associated Press
Camden, one of the poorest U.S. cities, is among New Jersey municipalities suffering a crisis of blight since manufacturing disappeared.
When Plato wrote "The Republic," his lament for a lost Athenian democracy, he did not believe democracy could be recovered. The classical world, unlike our own, did not see time as linear. Time was cyclical. It inevitably brought decay and eventually death, true for both individuals and societies. And in his "Republic," Plato proposed that those who attempted in the future to create the ideal state carry out a series of draconian measures, including banning drama and music, which diverted the citizen from performing civic duties and instilled corruption, and removing children from their parents to provide a proper indoctrination. Plato wanted to slow the process of dissolution. He wanted to stymie change. But that decay and death would come was certain, even in Plato's ideal state.

History has proved the ancient Greeks correct: All cultures decay and die. Dying cultures, even when they cannot fully articulate their reality, begin to deeply fear change. Change, they find, brings with it increasing dysfunction, misery and suffering. This fear of change soon becomes irrational. It compounds decay and accelerates morbidity. To see modern-day victims of this process, we need only look to white American workers who once had good manufacturing jobs and benefited from the structures of white supremacy.

Those who promise to miraculously roll back time rise up in decaying cultures to hypnotize a bewildered and confused population. Plastic surgeons who provide the illusion of eternal youth, religious leaders who promise a return to a simplified biblical morality, political demagogues who hold out the promise of a renewed greatness, and charlatans offering techniques for self-advancement and success all peddle magical thinking. A desperate population, fearing change, clamors for greater and greater illusion. The forces that ensure collective death—including corporate capitalism, the fossil fuel industry and the animal agriculture industry—are blotted out of consciousness.

When a society laments the past and dreads the future, when it senses the looming presence of death, it falls down a rabbit hole. And as in the case of Alice—who "went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it"—language becomes unmoored from experience. Daily discourse, especially public discourse, is, as our presidential campaign illustrates, reduced to childish gibberish.

Jobs are gone. Schools are closed. Neighborhoods and cities are in ruin. Despair and poverty dominate lives. Civil liberties are abolished. War is endless. The society self-medicates. Democracy is a fiction. "Austerity" decisions by government such as the latest slashing of the federal food stamp program, a move that could remove a million people from the rolls, bring more jolts. Shocks like these, as Alvin Toffler wrote, eventually trigger emotional overload; they are "the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time." And, finally, reality is too much to bear and is banished.

Climate change and the looming financial crisis will transform these emotional short circuits into what anthropologists call "crisis cults." Crisis cults serve up illusions of recovered grandeur and empowerment during times of collapse, anxiety and disempowerment. A mythologized past will magically return. The old social hierarchies and rules will again apply. Prescribed rituals and behaviors, including acts of violence to cleanse the society of evil, will vanquish malevolent forces. These crisis cults—they have arisen in most societies that faced destruction, from Easter Island to Native Americans at the time of the 1890 Ghost Dance—create hermetically sealed tribes. We are already far down this road.

Comment: Keep the light of intellect burning bright, see: Knowledge and Freedom: Antidote to the rising fascism


People 2

A glimpse into the mind of a typical Hillary supporter

Hillary supporters
© Russia Insider
"Hillary's appeal is particularly prevalent in cultures where the man's role is rather insignificant, and where not much is expected of him - -these communities form the core of Democratic party: Jews, Blacks, Portuguese, Irish..."

A couple of weeks ago, a well known linguist and a cognitive and brain scientist, George Lakoff, the co-author of a highly popular 1980 book, Metaphors We Live By, decided to use his extensive expertise to answer the question, Why Trump?

His conclusion is rather disappointing in its banality: those who are attracted to Trump and to the Republican party in general, are those who are yearning for a strong, authoritative father-figure:
"What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families. In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father's authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of."
Thus, Trump insistence on winning, his moral certainty, his simplistic understanding of direct economic causality, his anti-PC rhetoric are all made to appeal to disgruntled white males who are rapidly losing grounds in today's complex world, but who grew up with the ideal of a authoritarian family. And, according to Lakoff's foray in psychology, these values are so much ingrained even in people who might first appear as moderate or even progressive, that someone like Trump rapidly triggers and re-activate the "inner authoritarian" world view. Consequently, the more shrill Trump's campaign becomes, the more supporters he gets.

Inspired by this bold analysis, and its cavalier manipulation of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and politics, I propose to offer a counter - argument.

Trump likes to turn on his opponents by saying that they've started it. Well, Professor Lakoff started it. So let me use a similar flight of imagination and insight and try to answer an equally relevant question: Why Hillary?

On the surface of it, Hillary Clinton's candidacy should hardly succeed with US voters: she is a legacy, heritage candidate in traditionally democratic society; she is mired in scandals, she is in cahoots with corrupt lobbyists and bankers, her belligerent foreign policy is pushing US closer and closer to the brink of the next world war. So why is she winning some many primaries? What's there to like? Here are my answers clearly inspired by Mr. Lakoff's analysis.

Comment: Hillary's emails confirm France and US killed Qaddafi for his gold and oil


House

Austrian government plans to seize birthplace of Adolf Hitler

Hitler at a Nazi rally
© NARA/UPIAdolf Hitler attending a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Germany, circa 1928. Austria is reportedly pushing to seize the birthplace of the former Nazi leader in order to discourage Neo-Nazis from using it as a rally point.
Austria is planning to draft a law allowing the state to seize the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, about 71 years since the end of World War II.

The proposal to take ownership of the unmarked building is still being negotiated, New York Times reported, but is expected to head to Parliament by this summer.

Part of the decision to push for government seizure of the property is reportedly due to the occasional reoccurrence of Neo-Nazis who use the it as a focal point. Some fear if left alone, the property may become a shrine to the leader, who was the cause of millions of deaths during the Holocaust.

"We have seen in recent years that expropriation is the only way to prevent the house being used for the purposes of Nazi revivalism," Karl-Heinz Grundböck, an interior ministry spokesman told a local newspaper.

Other reasons stem from an ongoing dispute between the building's owner and Austrian government regarding the building's renovation, according to the BBC.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria in April 1889 in an apartment in the higher levels of the building, the bottom floor of which was then a tavern. He and his family moved to Germany when he was three years old.

The deteriorating building is now owned by a descendent of the original owners, Gerlinde Pommer. The Austrian government has leased the building since 1972 to keep Neo-Nazis from occupying the space.

The building is mostly unremarkable in appearance but does don a single stone sign, a marble slab bearing an inscription translated as "For Peace, Freedom and Democracy/Never Again Fascism/Millions of Dead Warn."

Comment: Chaos and Consent: The Logistics of the One World Government


Pills

Chinese restaurants found spiking their food with morphine to get customers addicted

Chinese Restaurants
Close to 35 restaurants in China have been found to be spiking their food with opiates, including morphine and codeine. There is currently an investing to find out exactly how these establishments have been doing it.

Food that has been found to have been laced with opiates include noodles, hotpot and lobsters, according to local news, and 5 of the 35 restaurants under investigation are currently being prosecuted.

Dollar

Doctors, companies up in arms over Medicare rules that could lower pricey drug profits

Medicaid
© Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
A newly proposed program by the Obama administration would lower the profits doctors currently see when prescribing expensive drugs and increase earnings from generic ones, but the potential move has cancer doctors and drug companies up in arms.

Under a revised Medicare payment scheme, the government is looking to test the effects of reducing the amount of money it pays doctors who choose to treat patients with expensive drugs rather than cheaper, generic ones that are also clinically effective. Both doctors and pharmaceutical companies have criticized the five-year proposal, arguing that it would hurt the business of small clinics and also have negative consequences for patients.

According to a new study from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the proposal would indeed decrease the profits doctors see from prescribing expensive drugs. However, the amount of drugs affected by this plan is small, and the payments doctors would receive from choosing generic drugs would increase.

Comment: See also: How healthcare was transformed to 'sick care' focused on vaccines and drugs


2 + 2 = 4

Texas teacher arrested after being caught on video repeatedly hitting student

Mary Hastings
© KFDMMary Hastings
A Texas high school teacher was taken into custody Friday after video was posted online showing her repeatedly slapping a black student as he sat at his desk trying to cover up.

According to KHOU, Mary Hastings,63, a teacher at Ozen High School near Beaumont was arrested for assault.

In the video — shot by another student, — Hastings can be seen repeatedly hitting the student as he sits at his desk, calling him an "idiot ass," then mocking him afterwards when he asks, "Why'd you do that?"

According to a statement from Beaumont school district, the video of Hastings was then given to BISD police and school administrators.

The geometry teacher posted a bond of $2,500 in the misdemeanor assault charge at the Jefferson County jail and was released.

The school district stated that she has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Watch the video below via KHOU:


Cult

Desperate ex-Scientologist parents using billboards to contact their children in Los Angeles

Desperate parents - call me
© Via twitter@IndieScientologyNews
Fearful that their children have been "brainwashed" by Scientology, two Hollywood parents erected billboards begging their children to call their parents. The $8,000 crowd-funded sign is near Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium.

It bears the simple message "To my loved one in Scientology... call me" with faces of hundreds of individuals that have been lost to Scientology's practice of "disconnection" from non-Scientologists.
Anti-#Scientology billboard finally up in Los Angeles https://t.co/6SO7dJHaW1 via@pagesix pic.twitter.com/IMQ1KUn9CG
— IndieScientologyNews (@IndieScieNews)April 5, 2016
Phil and Willie Jones are both ex-Scientologists and like most who leave the church, they've been ostracized by their loved ones, including three children, who are still members of the church. According to an interview by the Hollywood Reporter, it has been three or four years since they have seen their children and over two since they've talked to them.

Mrs. Jones says that they were drawn into Scientology as teenagers by "hypnotism," "brainwashing," and "mental conditioning." Mr. Jones says that they have given as much as $150,000 of their income to Scientology, but most end up giving more. His eldest child is higher up in the leadership of Scientology and likely has a cell phone but they still haven't heard from her.

"My son and daughter joined the Sea Organization, which is the full commitment," Mr. Jones said. "That's where you sign a billion-year contract... you work 100 hours a week for 10 cents an hour. It's just brutal."

Their youngest son Michael had dreams of being a guitar player but Scientology put him working in the "Celebrity Centre" instead. "They convinced him the music industry is insane and that he could only play guitar once the planet was 'clear,'" his parents explained.

They were asked why they don't just break into the compound and get their children back but the Joneses explained that most are so "brainwashed" that they actually want to be there enduring the harsh treatment. "Because they are so conditioned mentally, they will not want to go.

Comment:


Arrow Up

Small tribe with a big voice vows to stop Chinese oil drilling in a largely untouched area of the Amazon rainforest

Zapara tribe
Wearing a traditional headdress and a white vest woven from the bark of an Amazonian tree, Manari Ushigua held a megaphone to his mouth to denounce Ecuador's latest oil deal: A multi-million dollar contract that will allow oil drilling on his tribe's territory for the first time in four decades.

"We don't want oil drilling in our lands," said Ushigua, one of the most well-known leaders of Ecuador's tiny Zapara tribe. "Our culture is at risk of disappearing; so is our language and our way of relating to the rainforest."

For several years Ecuador has been trying to increase oil production by inviting foreign companies to drill in the Sur Oriente, a largely untouched area of the Amazon rainforest that's about the size of Massachusetts and considered one of the most biodiverse places on earth.

On Jan. 25, the government signed one of the first concessions in this remote area: A four year deal that allows Chinese consortium Andes Petroleum to operate on two parcels of the jungle covering 45% of the Zapara's ancestral lands.