Society's ChildS


Rocket

Rocket hits Basra oil headquarter site of Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell


RT
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:08 UTC
exxon iraq
© Reuters / Essam Al-SudaniIraqi soldier guards at the entrance of the West Qurna-1 oilfield, operated by ExxonMobil
A rocket was fired at the headquarters of a number of global oil companies, including ExxonMobil, west of Basra, Iraq on Wednesday, injuring three Iraqi workers.

Iraqi police said the rocket hit the Burjesia residential and operations headquarters, but no responsibility has been claimed for the short-range Katyusha missile that landed just 1,000 yards from Exxon's operation and residential area. Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Italian Eni SpA also operate out of the site.

The US evacuated hundreds of diplomatic staff from its Baghdad embassy in May, citing threats from Iran. Exxon staff were also evacuated at the time, and had just begun to return to Basra before this attack. After the rocket incident, Exxon said it was evacuating 21 foreign staff immediately.

There have been two attacks on bases housing US military personnel in Iraq in the last few days.

Comment: Is a pattern developing here? See:

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Propaganda

Readers call out NYT for abetting war against Iraq, now Iran

James North and Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Sun, 16 Jun 2019 17:56 UTC
New York Times headquarters
New York Times headquarters
The New York Times is out again this morning and the newspaper that so tarnished its reputation by drumming the march to war in Iraq 17 years ago hasn't learned its lessons. The scorecard on the paper's offerings on Iran today is miserable:
  • Zero reporting/skepticism about the actual facts of the attacks on tankers and other U.S. provocations.
  • An "analysis" that makes it seem like "hardliners on both sides" want increased confrontation, even war.
  • One passing reference to the fact that a decade ago "Israel was repeatedly talked down from attacking Iran's nuclear facilities." But zero reporting about the Israeli connection today.
  • No reporting about the Donald Trump-Sheldon Adelson-John Bolton connection.
The one mild exception to the ineptitude in the Times is an analysis of the evidence by Eliot Higgins of bellingcat - who doesn't get to the point, that the evidence is only from one side and unconvincing, till the very end of a long article. His key sentence - "Nothing presented as evidence proves that the object was placed there by the Iranians." - should have opened his article, not been buried 3 paragraphs from the end.

The milquetoast editorial that the Times ran yesterday against escalation but approving of sanctions on Iran ("Dialogue between the Trump administration and Iranian government would be wise, though Iran may prove unwilling to talk") didn't even make it into the print edition.

The most remarkable exception to this pattern is the "Readers' Comments" on the NYT editorial. There were 473 of them before the Times closed the discussion, and we could not find a single one that is supportive of war or of U.S. efforts to continue pressure on Iran. So Bret Stephens gets to spur on a war in his Times column, but the paper's readers are universally against the idea. Moreover, they hold the Times responsible and see through the equivocations in the editorial. Several point out that the press was the handmaiden of the Iraq disaster.
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Megaphone

Uruguayans take to the streets to protest 5G technology

Jacob Atkins
Contexto
Mon, 17 Jun 2019 17:05 UTC
5G network
As reported recently, Uruguay was the first country in Latin America to install a commercial 5G network. Despite making history, protests recently erupted in the Maldonado region over the potential health risks associated with 5G technology.

In Summary

Residents in Maldonado's La Barra and El Tesoro neighborhoods demanded the removal of recently installed 5G antennas. Demonstrators urged officials not to install any more devices until it is certain whether or not they are harmful.

"5G is killing us," said one of the protesters during a protest on June 8. "Antennas were placed in La Barra and Nueva Palmira for the time being, but (authorities) will do it throughout the country."

Nowadays, many countries are racing to install 5G networks throughout the world. So far, Uruguay joins other nations such as Japan, Spain, the United States, among others, in pioneering these innovations.

Comment: See also: Objective:Health #15 - The Dangers of 5G & WiFi - With Scott Ogrin of Scottie's Tech.Info

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Stock Down

Boeing's newest problem: Pilots are too weak to use the cockpit hand-crank

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 16:22 UTC
boeing 737 cockpit
One of the biggest flaws keeping Boeing's 737 MAX 8 grounded has nothing to do with AI and advanced flight-control software. Instead, it's an issue of whether all pilots will have enough upper body strength to turn a crank - a surprisingly low-tech hangup in a scandal that was catalyzed by malfunctioning software.

Boeing has scrambled to redesign the 737 MAX and its software to eliminate the safety flaws that contributed to the crash landings of two jets in under six months from October to March. All told, 346 people died after the 737's MCAS anti-stall software misfired, driving the planes into deadly downward spirals.

Now, the latest obstacle for Boeing, which hadn't been reported before WSJ published a story on Wednesday morning, appears to be convincing regulators that all pilots will possess the upper body strength to turn a crank that controls a panel in the rear of the plane. That panel, in turn, can change the angle of the plane's nose, potentially saving it from the types of malfunctions that afflicted the two planes that crashed. Apparently, during times of crisis, when the plane is moving unusually fast at an unusually steep angle, the crank can become extremely difficult to move.
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Info

Kyle Kashuv responds to ex-GOP rep who compared him to school shooter

Rebecca Klar
The Hill
Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:16 UTC
Kyle Kashuv
© Getty Images
Parkland shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv said Tuesday he would not accept comparisons to the shooter who murdered his classmates.

Kashuv's comment were in response to former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) who said Kashuv's past racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric is similar to that used by school shooters.

"I've said repeatedly that I'm horrified by comments I sent a few years back - I'll spend years working to make it right. I will accept and learn from criticism, but I will NOT accept being compared to the shooter who murdered my classmates," Kashuv said.

Comment: David Jolly probably made some off-color jokes or comments when he was a kid too. The difference is that that was a long time ago for Jolly and the internet wasn't around for people to save and share those comments later.

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Smoking

Nanny state: San Francisco votes to ban e-cigarettes not approved by FDA

Owen Daugherty
The Hill
Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:04 UTC
e-cigarette, vape
© Getty Images
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously voted to ban the sale of e-cigarettes in city limits if they are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The decision brings San Francisco one step closer to becoming the first U.S. city to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes. A final vote is required before it becomes law.

"This temporary moratorium wouldn't be necessary if the federal government had done its job," Dennis Herrera, the city's attorney, said in a statement announcing the decision. "E-cigarettes are a product that, by law, are not allowed on the market without FDA review. For some reason, the FDA has so far refused to follow the law."

Comment: Ah, the infamous "but who will protect the children" line used to justify all kinds of nanny state interventions into the private life of citizens. Do children in San Francisco not have parents?

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Marijuana

Nevada becomes first state to ban employers from testing workers for marijuana use

Elias Marat
The Mind Unleashed
Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
spliff
In a move that could blaze a small but important trail for workers' rights across the U.S., Nevada has passed a bill telling employers and state agencies that they can no longer refuse to hire workers on the basis of their testing positive for cannabis. It's a long way to come for a state that was once infamous for its notoriously strong prohibitionist laws penalizing those in possession of marijuana.

Last week, Governor Steve Sisolak signed AB 132, which prohibits the denial of employment to cannabis consumers after drug pre-screenings. Advocates are hailing the passage of the bill because it finally clears a major gap in the law between states that have rendered marijuana totally legal for medical or recreational purposes and those U.S. companies that try to block their workers from toking up at all.

In Nevada, as in the other several states that have made recreational cannabis legal across the country, employers were still able to turn people away from jobs if they failed the "whizz quiz," or urine-based drug tests. NFL players seeking to recover from the intense physical pressures of football are unable to use cannabis-based remedies, doctors have lost their licenses for using medicinal cannabis, and 48 percent of businesses in otherwise weed-friendly Colorado have "well-defined" rules that allow them to fire employees if marijuana is detected in a worker's test results.
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Dollar Gold

Facebook cryptocurrency launch meets widespread skepticism, demand for safeguards


RT
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 08:37 UTC
FB currency
© Reuters / Dado Ruvic
The much-hyped launch of Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra has met a brick wall of institutional skepticism as politicians and regulators take one look at CEO Mark Zuckerberg's privacy record and raise a collective eyebrow.

Calibra, the new Facebook subsidiary which will operate Libra, has made no secret of its ambitions to branch out from funds transfer into credit, bill payments and other more sophisticated products. Such consolidation of power in the hands of a company that already has a monopoly on online social interaction for its 2-billion-plus users - and a terrible record of protecting users' privacy - has understandably worried the skeptics.

"Any further concentration of personal data poses additional risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals," European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli told Business Insider. "It would be deeply concerning, for example, for a company with access to massive volumes of personal information, gathered through its social media platforms and communications services, to be able to combine this information with the tracking of online digital purchases."

Comment: As the above article points out, the idea that a company with as little trust-worthiness as Facebook should be trusted with financial transactions is questionable, at best. While its likely many users will jump on board (a large percentage of them probably being those without access to more established financial institutions), one has to wonder it this is really a good idea.

Libra explained:

See also:

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Handcuffs

Kim Kardashian strikes deal with Lyft to help 5,000 former inmates land jobs

Maria Goncalves
Inquisitr
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 09:42 UTC
Kim Kardashian Donald Trump
She may still be studying to officially become a lawyer, but Kim Kardashian is already doing as much as she can to help soon-to-be-released prison inmates.

The Keeping Up With the Kardashian star headed to the White House last Thursday to meet up with President Donald Trump in an effort to back criminal justice reforms, with a focus on helping recently-incarcerated people or soon-to-be-released prisoners experience an easier integration back into society, as The Inquisitr previously reported.

One of the biggest struggles faced by individuals who have done time is to find fair housing and employment opportunities once they are out. But now, TMZ reported that the KKW Beauty founder has partnered with the rideshare service company Lyft to help inmates get jobs once they are released from jail.
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Attention

Extinction Rebellion protesters glue themselves to Brisbane's busiest street

Joanne Nova
JoNova
Wed, 19 Jun 2019 08:27 UTC
Extinction rebellion in Australia
© Liam Kidston.Source:News Corp AustraliaSergio and Ebony glued themselves to the road.
Master Plan: Let's fight extinction ...by gluing ourselves to a road.

Lo! Australia voted, and the large Adani coal mine magically emerged from eight years of red tape. But the anguish has just begun. Rebels are gluing themselves to main roads to stop traffic in Brisbane. The Environment Minister admits she shed tears and just yesterday was caught using the word "devastated". On Friday, there's a national day of "action" (or inaction perhaps, on crosswalks).

This is only going to get worse. Its the logical end in a country with no conversation. It makes sense if you think the world is going to end. In a mature community they'd hear other voices. In Australia, they hear The ABC.

So what does it take to get in the national media these days? Two people lie down...


Comment: EnvironMentalism is spreading. See also:

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