Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Florida teen tries to use parents' money to kill them

Sarah Wilson , Myrt Price , Samantha Manning
WFTV
Wed, 11 Sep 2019 20:47 UTC
Alyssa Hatcher
A 17-year-old Lake County girl is behind bars after investigators said she tried to hire people to kill her own parents.

Deputies said she stole their debit card and took out more than $1,400 to try and pay two different people to kill them.

Alyssa Hatcher is a student at Umatilla High School. Deputies said a tip by another teenager led them to discover her plan to have her parents killed.

"Her of all people, that was very shocking to me," a student said. "She's such a sweet girl. She's very caring."
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Footprints

Is the US playing a 'double game'? Some border residents upset with US safe-zone patrols, YPG


Sputnik
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 10:26 UTC
US/Turk patrols
© AP/Turkish Defence MinistryUS and Turkish patrols around Syrian town Manbij in November, 2018.
Over the weekend the United States and Turkey began their first joint patrols in the northern part of Syria along the border with Turkey. This comes after Ankara and Washington agreed last month to set up a "safe zone" along the Syrian-Turkish border that would serve as a buffer between the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG.

The American-backed YPG militias have led the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against Daesh, but many residents of border towns and villages are suspicious of Turkey's cooperation with the United States because they do not regard the US as a real ally of Turkey due to American support for the Kurdish forces.

Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group and an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting to establish a Kurdish autonomous region in southeast Turkey since the early 1980s.

Locals in the Turkish border towns of Akçaoba, Akçakale, and Ziyaret are in favour of creating a buffer zone but under the control of Turkey without US involvement. They believe that America is playing a double game and is in the region to further its own goals. That's the view of local resident Mahmut Sönmez:
"We want Turkey to control the 'safe zone' because this issue is directly related to our security and the security of our country. We live right on the border, and the presence of YPG here worries us all very much. Our security will be ensured when the YPG units are withdrawn from the border and the Turkish military takes their place. Turkey should create a 'safe zone' as soon as possible, and not follow the United States lead, which deliberately drags out time."
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Take 2

Best of the Web: William Peter Blatty's counter-countercultural parable in The Exorcist

Kevin Mims
Quillette
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:47 UTC
exorcist child
In her new book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics (excerpted in Quillette on August 27), essayist and cultural critic Mary Eberstadt documents just how damaging the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and its normalization of divorce in particular, has been to America's children. She mentions many publications that comment on "the correlations between crumbling family structure and various adverse results," particularly for the children of divorce. The authors she cites include former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, social scientist James Q. Wilson, and Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce.

A writer she doesn't mention, however, is William Peter Blatty, author of the blockbuster 1971 horror novel The Exorcist. Those who have never read the novel, or are familiar only with its 1973 cinematic incarnation, probably believe the book to be a potboiler about demonic possession. But it is also an allegorical warning about the importance of the traditional family unit and the devastation wrought when it breaks down. Curiously, this aspect of the novel went largely unnoticed by the book's earliest reviewers.

Back in 1971, the advent of no-fault divorce laws in the United States was seen in liberal circles as an unalloyed benefit for society. Thus, the book critics for most of the mainstream publications that bothered to review The Exorcist — Time, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc. — treated the book as either a modern day pastiche of Poe and Mary Shelley, or else as a traditional story of the battle between Good and Evil. What's odd about this is that Blatty made no effort to hide his social conservatism. You don't have to be a postmodern literary detective to find it in the subtext. Blatty was not a subtle writer, and he set his message out on the page for all to see, although very few have ever remarked upon it.
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Attention

Militants open fire in US-held Rukban 'refugee camp' after civilians demand seized UN food


Sputnik
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 17:32 UTC
rukban
© AP Photo / Raad Adayleh
Militants have opened fire at a market in Syria's Rukban refugee camp to disperse civilians demanding that delivered humanitarian food be distributed among them, the head of the Russian centre for Syrian reconciliation said on Thursday.


Comment: In other words, the camp is controlled by thieves and knaves. Good job, USA.


According to Maj. Gen. Alexey Bakin, citing the refugees, a significant amount of cargo earlier delivered by the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to Rukban has been seized by militants and moved to a base of the Kuwat Shahid Ahmad al-Abdo militant group, located to the north of the camp.

"On 11 September, militants opened fire with small arms at a market in Rukban to disperse civilians demanding food," Bakin said at a briefing.

The Rukban camp houses some 25,000 people in conditions described by the World Health Organization as "deplorable" - lacking food, access to medical care and basic amenities.

The camp is located in the US-controlled zone around its unauthorized military base at At-Tanf, making it hard for humanitarian workers to access the area.

Comment: The area occupied by the U.S. just happens to be one of only two border crossing points with Iraq. The U.S. continues to hold the area out of pure spite and malevolence, preventing trade between Syria and Iraq to resume to its pre-war levels. And of course, the Americans are utilizing terrorists to keep it so. That's a given.

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Compass

UK survey shows one third of families sit in silence over meals

John Anderer
Study Finds
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:21 UTC
Family at dinner
© olly - stock.adobe.com
Dinner, or any other meal for that matter, in the average suburban home is supposed to be a time for the family to come together, spend some time with each other, and share what is going in their lives. That is, at least, the general belief or notion that has persisted culturally for ages. Alas, it seems "the times they are a-changing" — according to a new survey of 2,500 U.K. parents, a third of families sit in complete silence during meal time.

It seems that many parents just don't know what to talk about with their kids; three in ten respondents said they struggle to come up with dinner-time conversation topics.

Just sitting down at the dinner table together as a family is a struggle for many as well. The survey, put together by Tex-Mex food producer Old El Paso, found that four in 10 parents don't even eat dinner at the same time as their children on most days. Additionally, one in 10 never eat dinner at the same time as their families.

All in all, only a fifth of respondents reported eating dinner with their families every night of the week.
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Magnify

'Adorkable' or rapist? Uncovered documents challenge Zoe Quinn's abuse story (but #MeToo won't care)

Igor Ogorodnev
RT
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 17:14 UTC
Zoe Quinn
© YouTube/Critical PathZoe Quinn
In 2012, feminist activist Zoe Quinn called her romance with game creator Alec Holowka "adorkable". Seven years later, she decried the same relationship as abuse. The troubled Holowka was then disgraced and took his own life.

There is something touchingly naïve about journalists at Canadian alternative news site The Postmillenial going on an old-fashioned internet deep dive to compare Quinn's contemporaneous accounts of her relationship with indie developer Holowka, with her current description. As if they assume that her credibility with the mainstream media and #MeToo campaigners rests on facts, the psychological plausibility of her narrative, or personal trustworthiness, consistency and objectivity.

Nonetheless, it all makes for interesting -if somewhat macabre- reading now.

A quick summary of the accusations. Quinn, already a lightning rod for her originating role in the online culture war Gamergate, made allegations against Holowka, renowned for breakout indie hit Night in the Woods, posted on her Twitter late last month.
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Violin

New Zealand man brings emotional support clown to redundancy meeting

Damien Venuto
The New Zealand Herald
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 05:57 UTC
Emotional support clown
© The New Zealand Herald/Supplied
A Kiwi adman has chosen an unusual support person to accompany him to a redundancy meeting.

In lieu of the usual suspects of a friend, colleague or family member, the member of the creative team at FCB hired a professional clown to attend the meeting with him.

An image sent to the Herald overnight shows the staffer, sitting alongside his support clown while he talks to the individuals running the meeting.

In the strange world of support creatures, this adds another colourful addition to a quirky crew that already includes hedgehogs, peacocks and goats.

The Herald understands that the clown blew up balloons and folded them into a series of animals throughout the meeting.

It's further understood that the clown mimed crying when the redundancy paperwork was handed over to the staffer.
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Cardboard Box

State Department, local police investigated 2018 burglary of Mike Pompeo's storage units in Wichita, Kansas

Bryan Lowry
The Kansas City Star
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 20:44 UTC
Mike Pompeo
© The Kansas City Star
A break-in at a self-storage facility, usually a routine piece of police business, rose to a matter of diplomatic security in Wichita last year after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had two units burglarized, according to a police report.

Pompeo's involvement prompted the State Department to dispatch a security officer to East Side Mini Storage last November to review the scene and meet with local police. The thief used a grinding tool to break into four storage units, including two belonging to the nation's top diplomat, according to the Wichita Police Department.

The former Wichita congressman's units "appeared to contain tables, chairs and miscellaneous Pompeo campaign items," the police report said.

Another victim of the burglary said at one point there were 20 police officers on the scene.

"I half expected Black Hawk helicopters to show up," said Bradley Sampson, who had his storage unit broken into during the same incident. "Heaven forbid they take some of his bottled water or campaign signs."
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Arrow Down

South African business confidence falls to lowest level in 34 years


Reuters
Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:36 UTC
south africa economy
SACCI said the current state of fiscal deficiencies, social injustices, and unemployment were the likely cause of crime, violence, looting and anti-foreigner sentiments currently dominating news headlines.
South African business confidence fell to its lowest level in 34 years in August, as a sharp drop in export volumes and a weaker currency aggravated already tough economic conditions, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry's monthly business confidence index (BCI) fell to 89.1 in August from 92.0 in July, the lowest level since the inception of the index in April 1985 when the measure was at 88.1, the business body said.

"We're not talking about the same set of circumstances as back then, but you are seeing a similar economic climate," said SACCI economist Richard Downing.

"This time the main thing is the difficulty government is having in implementing what needs to be done".

Seven of the thirteen sub-indices in the BCI deteriorated between August and July, four improved, while two remained unchanged, SACCI said.

Comment: As South Africa re-elects ANC, the West has to admit post-apartheid SA has failed
What's wrong with the country that went to the polls on Wednesday to vote for a new National Assembly, goes well beyond the hard facts - unedifying as those are.

It's not that half the population lives in absolute poverty, that more than a quarter of adults are unemployed, or that the country has yet again been declared officially the most unequal in the world. Nor is it the economic growth rate that has stagnated at below a two percent average for a decade, as the rest of the world recovered from the global crisis, or the regular blackouts, the violent crime rates, or that one in five adults is infected with HIV.

Rather, the story since 1994 is of a country being given a historic chance to show the way to prosperity and democracy for Africa - and failing to take it, exactly as the pessimists predicted. [...]

What societal model has the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, built in the stead of apartheid? A virtual one-party rule unchallenged in six elections in a row, creeping racialism, an elite black class built on patronage, and rampant corruption, with officials chafing at the colonial institutions and norms safeguarding it from becoming like the rest of the continent.
See also:

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Bullseye

Sweet revenge: France once denied Moscow Mistrals over Crimea reunification, now Russia will make its own carriers... in Crimea


RT
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 11:46 UTC
ENS Anwar El Sadat, a French-built Mistral-class amphibious assault ship
© Stephane Mahe / ReutersENS Anwar El Sadat, a French-built Mistral-class amphibious assault ship, in Saint-Nazaire, France, 2016.
Paris refused to sell helicopter carriers to Russia after its reunification with Crimea. Now Moscow will reportedly build its own ships of this class, using the technology, training and cash from the aborted deal with France.

The first of the two Russian-made helicopter carriers will be laid down next May, with one of them set to be completed by 2027, sources in the ship-building industry told TASS on Thursday. The vessels will reportedly carry up to 10 helicopters each and have large hangar-like well decks to deploy landing craft. The contract for the ships will be signed "in the coming months," the source said.

Filling the gap

The new vessels will significantly up Russia's naval game, since Moscow is in dire need of modern amphibious assault ships, according to RT's defense expert Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok. The existing amphibious APCs are "very bad swimmers," which are only able to "land troops in secure coves with calm waters."

Moreover, Khodarenok believes that modern warfare challenges would make it "impossible" to deploy the Soviet-era tech during actual combat. A new type of vessel is required to fill this gap, and this is something Russia has been working on.

Comment: France is now changing its stance on Russia having had time to consider the disadvantages of alienating this powerhouse:

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