Society's Child

Israel's talking points on Gaza protest murders are indefensible

Marilyn Garson
If Americans Knew Blog
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 17:20 UTC

Even before the protest began, Israeli spokespeople framed it preemptively as a Hamas production, even though it was supported by Gaza civil society organizations and all political parties. Civilian Gazans' willingness to walk to that fence measures their yearning to express themselves as humans and claim their freedom, even at immediate risk.

In 1988 at the gates of Jerusalem's Old City, I watched Palestinian youths face down Israeli soldiers. The soldiers held rifles, while the Palestinians held stones. That asymmetry sent the Judaism of my childhood crashing headlong into my sense of justice. The stones demanded that I ask, "What could make a young man risk his life this way?"

My work with war-affected communities later brought me to the Gaza Strip. Living there from 2011 to 2015, I confronted Israel's power from the ground.

Malaysia passes Anti-Fake News bill as governments worldwide crack down on free speech

John Vibes
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 16:52 UTC

As governments across the world attempt to fight back against "fake news," Malaysia has set a troubling precedent by banning news stories it deems to be "fake" with a new law that imposes a penalty of up to 6 years in prison for violators.

Under the new bill, titled Anti-Fake News 2018, "news, information, data, and reports which is or are wholly or partly false" are now illegal. The penalties do not only apply to the news organizations and websites where these stories originated, but they will also be extended to the average person who might share a story on social media without knowing whether or not it is true.

Initially, the government wanted to impose a 10-year penalty for those who are found guilty of these laws but were met with a massive public outcry, so they slightly lowered the maximum sentence to 6 years.

Malaysia's communications and multimedia minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Salleh Said Keruak said in a recent statement that this law was necessary in order to save democracy:

Iraq court condemns 6 Turkish women to death for ISIS membership

Rudaw
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 16:55 UTC

A Baghdad court on Monday sentenced six Turkish women to death and a seventh to life in prison for membership of the Islamic State jihadist group, a judicial source said.

The source told AFP that the women, all accompanied by small children in the court, had surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters after having fled Tal Afar, one of the last ISIS bastions to fall to Iraqi security forces last year.

The women told the court they had entered the country to join their husbands fighting for ISIS in the "caliphate" which the group declared in 2014 in territory straddling Iraq and Syria.

Iraq in February condemned another 15 Turkish women to death on the same charge.

Comment:

California's assault weapons ban and gun confiscation laws did not prevent the YouTube shooting

Awr Hawkins
Breitbart
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 16:38 UTC

California has an "assault weapons" ban and firearm confiscation orders, but neither control prevented the Tuesday attack at YouTube's San Bruno headquarters.

Ironically, "assault weapons" bans and confiscation orders have been put forward as controls needed in the aftermath of the February 14 Parkland school shooting. Gun control proponents also pushed universal background checks and waiting periods following the Parkland attack, but California has both of those too.

In fact, California has some of the most stringent gun controls in the country. The "assault weapons" ban, confiscation orders, universal background checks, and 10-day waiting period are complimented by a requirement that would-be firearm owners acquire a safety certificate from the state, that all firearms be registered with the state, and that law-abiding citizens pursuing a concealed carry permit demonstrate "good cause" for wanting to carry a gun.

House call: Faulty tanker crashes into 18th century waterfront mansion in Istanbul

RT
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 11:37 UTC

© Yoruk Isik
The damaged Hekimbasi Salih Efendi Mansion is seen after the Maltese flagged tanker Vitaspirit crashed into it by the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul, Turkey April 7, 2018.

A Maltese-flagged tanker, carrying barley from Russia to Saudi Arabia, has destroyed a 19th-century waterfront mansion in Istanbul, after some technical malfunctions caused it to steer off-course while navigating the Bosphorus.

The entire incident, filmed from multiple angles by onlookers, unfolded shortly after 3pm local time on Saturday, after the large tanker 'Vitaspirit' entered the Bosphorus Strait from the Black Sea.

Trump was right: For every Amazon package it delivers, the Postal Service loses $1.46

Brian McNicoll
The Washington Examiner
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 15:38 UTC

An old salesman joke: A salesman says, "We sell below cost." A customer asks how he can do that. "Simple," he says. "We buy below cost."

For a day or so last week, Jeff Bezos passed Bill Gates as the richest man in the world. And that's pretty much how he did it.

Bezos runs Amazon, which is primarily a shipping business. It relies on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver two-thirds of its packages. In many places now, it locates a depot near a post office, presorts the packages, and delivers them to the post office. The Postal Service, which has a monopoly on last-mile delivery, does the rest.

The Postal Service is happy because it can report healthy increases in sales in the package delivery department. Postal employees are happy because it means work seven days a week - the Postal Service operates on Sundays almost solely to deliver for Amazon.

Comment:

What exactly is the Skripals' situation at Salisbury hospital?

The Off Guardian
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 15:02 UTC

Salisbury NHS Trust hospital

The UK has publicly said it is looking for "transparency" in the Skripal investigation. Currently this seems no more true than any other part of the UK's narrative. In fact the opposite would seem to be the case. The situation with the Skripals in regard to Salisbury NHS Trust hopsital is particularly opaque as things stand.

Just to quickly recap.

1. The March 22 High Court judgment by Mr Justice Williams makes it clear the UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or even deny the existence of the Skripals' Russian relatives, claiming there was very little evidence there even were any such relatives, even after Sergey's niece Viktoria had been interviewed by UK media outlets, and using this fabricated "lack of evidence" as a reason for not contacting the relatives or involving them in considerations of Yulia Skripals' welfare.

2. The Russian embassy has repeatedly said it is being illegally denied access to the Skripals, and there is evidence the pair have been denied due process.

Comment:

Police, who were warned San Bruno shooter would 'go after YouTube', found her prior to the shooting

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC

The father of the San Bruno shooter, who opened fire in the YouTube headquarters Tuesday, reportedly warned police -- who talked to his daughter that morning -- that she "hated" the company and may go after them.

Chaos erupted in California on Tuesday as a woman, now identified as 39-year-old San Diego resident Nasim Aghdam, walked into YouTube's headquarters and began shooting people with a handgun. Aghdam wounded three YouTube employees in her rampage before reportedly turning the gun on herself and ending her life.

According to a spokesman for the San Francisco General Hospital, a 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman was in fair condition.

During the shooting, multiple employees inside the building were updating their family members in real-time using social media. One of those employees, Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi, a company product manager, posted on Facebook that he was OK before giving his eyewitness account.

Comment: Why weren't the family's warnings taken more seriously by the police who located the daughter prior to the shooting?

See also:

The Bayer-Monsanto merger - more bad news for the planet

Ellen Brown
Truthdig.com
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 14:14 UTC

Two new studies from Europe show that the number of birds in agricultural areas of France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that more than three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits and the aerators of the soil.

The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by the Germany-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup, have delivered a one-two punch to monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds. But rather than banning these toxic chemicals, on March 21 the EU approved the $66 billion merger of Bayer and Monsanto, the U.S. agribusiness giant that produces Roundup and the genetically modified (GMO) seeds that have reduced seed diversity globally. The merger will make the Bayer-Monsanto conglomerate the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, giving it enormous power to control farm practices, putting private profits over the public interest.

The consilience crisis in academia

Phil Theofanos
Quillette
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 13:49 UTC

The term 'consilience' has the enigmatic ring of some arcane secret quarantined in Ivory Towers, accessible only to the ghosts of wizened sages haunting cloistered halls. This is true in some sense - it was first conceptualized by the now-quite-dead William Whewell, a 19th-century natural philosopher, linguistic sorcerer, and polymath also credited with coining terms such as scientist and physicist, among other esoterica. Whewell made contributions to many budding fields of inquiry, a fact key to appreciating the definition of 'consilience' offered by gold-star biologist E. O. Wilson in hi 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge:

...literally a "jumping together" of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.

Is this not a case of, The pot calling the kettle black.

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Society's Child

Israel's talking points on Gaza protest murders are indefensible

Malaysia passes Anti-Fake News bill as governments worldwide crack down on free speech

Iraq court condemns 6 Turkish women to death for ISIS membership

California's assault weapons ban and gun confiscation laws did not prevent the YouTube shooting

House call: Faulty tanker crashes into 18th century waterfront mansion in Istanbul

Trump was right: For every Amazon package it delivers, the Postal Service loses $1.46

What exactly is the Skripals' situation at Salisbury hospital?

Police, who were warned San Bruno shooter would 'go after YouTube', found her prior to the shooting

The Bayer-Monsanto merger - more bad news for the planet

The consilience crisis in academia

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