Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 04 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Arrow Down

USA: 62 percent of jobs don't support middle-class life after accounting for cost of living

USA flag
© FRANKVANDENBERGH/GETTY IMAGES
Esther Akutekha, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, has a good job as a public relations specialist that pays more than $50,000 a year.

But because of the $1,440 a month rent on her studio apartment in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, she never takes vacations, dines out just once a month and scrapes together dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.

"I'm frustrated with the fact that I'm not going to be able to save anything because my rent is so high," says Akutekha, who says she's 30ish. "I don't even know if I can afford" to have children.

Eye 1

Former CIA coder charged with leaked hacking secrets to Wikileaks says he's being tortured in prison

Central Intelligence Agency
A former CIA coder who allegedly gave files about the agency's hacking tools to WikiLeaks claims he is being tortured in a Manhattan prison, where he is currently being held while awaiting trial for espionage.

In a letter to a New York judge, filed on Monday but later mysteriously removed from court records, Joshua Schulte claims he is being subjected to "torture" in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center.

"Otto Warmbier received better treatment in North Korea that I have received in America," Schulte's letter reads. "Terrorists receive better treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - I have seen the footage myself," Schulte added.

Question

Would America's leftists suborn an invasion?

migrant caravan honduras mexico border
Suborn: to bribe or induce (someone) unlawfully or secretly to perform some misdeed or to commit a crime.

Sometime in the 1960s, as I recall, a prominent person in the news made the sarcastic statement that if an enemy invasion army were to land on our shores, the ACLU would meet the soldiers on the beaches to protect their rights. The ACLU quickly protested, averring that, patriots all, they would do no such thing. Being a parody writer myself, I once wrote a fictional piece about the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) in which an ACLU lawyer sought an injunction against American armed resistance. He stated, "As soon as those Japanese aircraft entered American airspace, their pilots were entitled to the full protections of the United States Constitution, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law."

Today, we are living parody. A massive parade of foreign nationals is marching toward our border, its members openly proclaiming that they intend to illegally enter our country. They have already stormed and breached the southern border of Mexico in a glaring preview of their defiance of law, so they are clearly to be believed.

X

'Intolerant, censorious crybaby' NYC Mayor de Blasio has Milo Yiannopoulos banned from speaking at NYU

Milo Yiannopoulos
© Reuters / Lucas Jackson
Wading into the murky world of campus politics, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has canceled a talk by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at New York University. Yiannopoulos responded by savaging the Democrat mayor.

Yiannopoulos was due to speak to a Liberal Studies class on the intersection of Halloween, culture, and politics, but NYU staff canceled the appearance after a request from the mayor himself, for "public safety reasons."

Earlier on Tuesday, New York City Council members had urged the university to cancel the talk, denouncing the "hate" expressed by Yiannopoulos and the event's proximity to Saturday's shooting dead of 11 worshippers in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The council also pointed out that nearby Halloween parades would have the city's police force stretched thin.

Mr. Potato

Barbra Streisand says Trump is 'making her fat' (and other celebrity midterm declarations)

Barbra Streisand
© Reuters
With midterm elections drawing ever nearer, Hollywood celebrities are getting their hopes up for a 'blue wave' to sweep the US - and it's safe to say many of them will be apoplectic with rage if the Democrats don't deliver.

While one could heatedly debate the merits and failures of Trump's presidency so far, there is no denying that the president has been hugely successful in one particular area: Driving some liberal celebrities completely off the deep end and into crazytown.

Jet5

Russian military: Over 120 civilians killed by US-led coalition airstrikes in Syria in 1 month

Civilian deaths in Syria
© Reuters / Omar Sanadiki; (R) Reuters / Charles Platiau
Scores of civilians have been killed in the past month as a result of indiscriminate US-led coalition strikes in eastern Syria, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The ministry issued the sobering statement during a Wednesday briefing.
More than 120 civilians have died over the past month alone as the result of airstrikes on Syrian settlements in eastern Syria.
It added that Kurdish fighters sometimes come under the coalition's fire. "Low effectiveness" and the "nonselective character" of coalition strikes are to blame for the death toll. What's even more concerning is that the bombardment is being done with the use of "munition banned by international conventions."

Civilian casualties aside, Washington's "poor" strategy - as well as that of its allies - only let Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) reclaim some of the territories lost earlier, the Russian military noted. This includes Hajin, As-Susah, As Safana and Al Marashda. Meanwhile, the terrorists are still being supplied with modern weapons, the MoD said, without pinning blame directly on the US-led coalition. The routes for such supplies are being tracked down and investigated.


Dig

Drug traffickers use tunnels to smuggle wares into US

Tunnel stuff
© Unknown
At the same time a new high-tech tunnel has been discovered nearly ready for transport of people and contraband from Mexico into California, a caravan of some 7,000 migrants from Central America is making its way across Mexico toward the Texas border, believing that President Trump "has to let us in." Who convinced these people America "has to" let them in? News today reports the president has ordered some 5,000 active duty military personnel to the border to work with Customs and Border Patrol officials if necessary.

A massive and highly sophisticated cross-border underground tunnel was recently discovered near Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., situated along the porous U.S.-Mexico border, sparking alarm among America's border control and immigration agencies responsible for policing the southern border.

The tunnel began in a home in Jacume, Mexico, which is less than 100 yards from the U.S. border, and was likely designed to transport drugs and other illegal contraband into the United States, Border Patrol officials stated.

"Sophisticated tunnels take a lot of time and money to make," Border Patrol Agent Tekae Michael told The Los Angeles Times, noting that such tunnels are common in the area. "When we find them, they're a pretty big deal."

The discovery once again underscores the harsh reality of America's immigration crisis, as illegal aliens and illegal contraband continue to flood across the southern border.

Attention

Anger at the media spreads into local communities

FakeNewsShirt
© AP/Jim Mone
Seen at a rally by President Trump in Rochester, Minnesota, October 4, 2018.
The hostility she's felt from the public recently wasn't necessarily the last straw in television news photographer Lori Bentley-Law's decision to quit the business after 24 years, but it was one of them.

Bentley-Law's recent blog post explaining why she was leaving Los Angeles' KNBC-TV hit home for many colleagues. While President Donald Trump's attacks on the media are usually centered on national outlets like CNN and The New York Times, the attitudes unleashed have filtered down to journalists on the street covering news in local communities across the country.

When a president describes the press as enemies of the people, "attitudes shift and the field crews get the brunt of the abuse," she wrote. "And it's not just from one side. We get it all the way around, pretty much on a daily basis."
Sign Fakenews CNN...
© AP/Paul Sancya
Trump rally Washington Township, Michigan, April 28, 2018.

Comment: Unfortunately fake news doesn't translate to fake attacks. The angst of the public is taken out on accessible targets - the crews assigned to the stories, the expendable and replaceable - never the decision makers.


Lemon

CNN's Don Lemon: 'We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat is white men'

CNN's Don Lemon
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst
CNN's Don Lemon
Demonstrating a complete failure to grasp the concept of irony, CNN's Don Lemon urged Americans not to "demonize" each other, and in the same breath called white men "the biggest terror threat in this country."

Speaking with co-host Chris Cuomo on Monday night, Lemon discussed a fatal shooting of two black people in a grocery store in Kentucky, a raft of pipe bombs mailed to Democratic figures, and Saturday's shooting dead of 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The Kentucky and Pittsburgh shooters were white males, while Cesar Sayoc, the mailbomb suspect arrested in Florida last Friday, has identified in the past as Native American.

Lemon's initial message was one of tolerance and openness. "I keep trying to point out to people and not to demonize any one group or any one ethnicity," he told viewers.

Then, as if completely forgetting the last sentence, Lemon switched to what sounded a lot like open racism.


Red Flag

'This country is for white people only': Family subjected to racist abuse while visiting Wellington, New Zealand

Racist abuse in New Zealand
© Global Look Press / Danita Delimont
White & Colored segregation signs at a US National Historic Site.
A Filipino family on holiday in New Zealand has been subjected to a racist tirade from an angry woman who declared that her country was "for white people only." A video of the rant has since gone viral, sparking public outrage.

Krizia Egipto and her family were shopping in Wellington when they were approached by the angry woman who told them they "weren't welcome here."

"The lady said, 'Don't come back here any more. This is only for white people. This country is for white people only,'" Egipto wrote in a Facebook post which has since gone viral.

Egipto and her family left the store where the initial altercation took place, but the woman approached them again elsewhere in the city. The 18-year-old then began to record the woman on her phone - a video that has now been watched over 57,000 times.

In the footage, the woman can be heard telling Egipto to "go home. You have a country."