Society's ChildS


Cross

Serial blasphemer: Belgian model arrested, again, this time for nude photo shoot at the Vatican

Marisa Papen Vatican
© CEN/Jesse Walker from ENKI EYEWEMarisa crossing a street in the Vatican City near the St. Peter's Basilica with a huge wooden crucifix.


Marisa Papen has previously been imprisoned after posing nude at the Karnak Temple Complex near Luxor, Egypt.


A Playboy model who has posed naked at the Vatican while holding a large wooden crucifix in the latest of a series of controversial photoshoots has been arrested.

Belgian model Marisa Papens is seen dragging the cross across a street with St Peter's Basilica visible in the background - while nude.

Another of the pictures shows Papen sitting naked on some bibles on the wet cobblestones of St Peter's Square while other snaps show her tied to the cross.

Comment: If one's only goal is to attract attention, shock through blasphemy is a rather easy target. Despite all their self-congratulation, and false martyrdom (10 hours in jail; what saints), there's nothing particularly provocative or interesting in their stunts. Papen seems bent on going after low-hanging fruit in order to court controversy, having previously posed nude at the Egyptian temple in Luxor and the Western Wall in Jerusalem. While she acts like there's a message behind these stunts, it seems more likely to be a product of a combined thrill-seeking and daddy issues.

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Cow

Cows are getting a bad rap and it's time to set the record straight: Giving up meat won't save the planet

cow eating hay
© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesA cow eats hay at the Faria Dairy Farm June 2, 2009 in Escalon, California.
As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Advocates urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment. Some activists have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption of it.

A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. And its persistence has led to false assumptions about the linkage between meat and climate change.

My research focuses on ways in which animal agriculture affects air quality and climate change. In my view, there are many reasons for either choosing animal protein or opting for a vegetarian selection.

Comment: The myth that animal agriculture is somehow bad for the environment (or anything beyond negligible) just refuses to die. All in all, it's a distraction from the real environmental concerns that carry a much greater impact than CO2.

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Cult

Why do fundamentalist Christians unconditionally support Israel?

US and Israeli flags
It appears that many fundamentalist Christians support the hard-line policies of the Israeli Government (currently consisting of the parties Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Kulanu and the Jewish Home) more blindly and fanatically than most Jews do. Christian and Jewish Zionist organizations in the US have combined their lobbying efforts, their targets being governors and state legislatures.

Approximately 26 states - more than half - have enacted laws or executive orders to prohibit their state governments from awarding contracts to companies that support the BDS program, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israeli program. This BDS movement uses boycott-related tactics against Israel or the Israeli-Occupied Territories in an attempt to get Israel to stop oppressing the Palestinians.

This is where American politicians interact with international issues and lobby groups. For instance, Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, a Christian fundamentalist, issued an executive order on November 16, 2018 that states that "the Commonwealth of Kentucky unequivocally rejects the BDS practices and stands firmly with Israel," noting that these BDS practices "threaten the sovereignty and security of a US ally and friend of the Commonwealth."

Comment: See also:


Star of David

Texas elementary school pathologist who lost job for refusing to sign Israel loyalty oath files free speech lawsuit

Bahia Amawi, pro-Israel oath
In order to continue to work, Amawi would be perfectly free to engage in any political activism against her own country, participate in an economic boycott of any state or city within the U.S., or work against the policies of any other government in the world — except Israel.
A children's speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she "does not" and "will not" engage in a boycott of Israel or "otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm" on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.

The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who received a master's degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in evaluations for young children with language difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her own.

Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with the Pflugerville Independent School District, which includes Austin, to provide assessments and support for school children from the county's growing Arabic-speaking immigrant community. The children with whom she has worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since her work for the school district began in 2009, her contract was renewed each year with no controversy or problem.

But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the school district once again offered to extend her contract for another year by sending her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has received and signed at the end of each year since 2009.

She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition: a certification she was required to sign pledging that she "does not currently boycott Israel," that she "will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract," and that she shall refrain from any action "that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory."

Comment: There is a legal precedent favoring Amawi's lawsuit - earlier this year a federal court ruled that a similar law in Kansas designed to punish people who boycott Israel was an unconstitutional denial of free speech. The judicial decision definitively declared those efforts - when they manifest in the US, to be a direct infringement of basic First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Israel, terrified because the world is finally seeing its pathology, is using every means available, with its typically malevolent and extreme methods to halt the BDS movement:


Quenelle

Western class conflict has reached a critical juncture

globalism
Thanks to the Gilets jaunes in France, a few astute social theorists are finally being heard on YouTube, despite mainstream resistance and diversion. They are finding words more lucidly than could be achieved in the absence of such revolutionary upheaval.

I'm referring to the renowned French economic analyst and essayist Charles Gave who, in his near-twilight years, has broken rank with his class in order to impart a penetrating and devastating analysis of the current French melt-down, based on the original work of French social geographer and author Christophe Guilluy.1

Guilluy has been describing an emerging Gilets jaunes backlash for some fifteen years, through his analysis of the class structure, and its geographical, demographic and ideological basis, in France; which is virtually identical in most Western nations, certainly the UK, Canada, the USA and many more.2

Basically, what was a relatively stable, balanced and integrated post-second-world-war working-class / middle-class / professional-class / managerial-class societal structure, has, over the course of several decades, and accelerated by the fall of the Soviet Union, devolved into three classes separated by large geographical, wage, ideological and mobility gaps.

Comment: Don't miss: The indiscreet charm of the Gilets Jaunes and The Hitlergate Hearings


War Whore

Man pepper-sprayed in face by Belgian police collapses, left by wayside

Pepper spray
© AFPPolice officers use pepper spray toward a protester during a demonstration in Brussels.
As mayhem descended on the streets of Brussels, one man, apparently a protester, was seen being pepper-sprayed in the face at very close range by police officers. He then collapsed on the pavement and was given no help.

Over 5,000 people gathered in Brussels to voice their anger over the controversial UN migration pact, which was signed earlier in December in Marrakech, Morocco. Dubbed the 'March against Marrakech,' the rally quickly descended into chaos, with protesters scuffling and clashing with police. Officers resorted to using water cannon and tear gas.

However, one of the videos that emerged from the scene is particularly unsettling. It shows a man, probably a demonstrator, running towards a group of police officers in full riot gear. It's not clear whether he wanted to shout something or hit a policeman. But he's not given a chance to do anything.

Heart - Black

Disney Channel actor arrested for trying to entice 13yo in Utah

Stoney Westmoreland
Stoney Westmoreland
A 48-year-old Disney Channel actor on a family show that films in Utah was arrested Friday after allegedly arranging online to have sex with someone he believed was 13 years old.

Stoney Westmoreland was arrested for investigation of enticing a minor by internet or text, a second-degree felony, and four counts of dealing in materials harmful to a minor, a third-degree felony, court documents state.

According to an affidavit filed in 3rd District Court, the actor began communicating online with a user he believed was underage "on an internet app used for dating and meeting people for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity."

Tornado2

'Democratic spin machine': Trump lashes out at SNL over 'one-sidedness', suggests it should be tested in court

Trump rant against SNL
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst“It’s all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can't be legal?”
Donald Trump has lashed out at Saturday Night Live, suggesting its "one-sidedness" should be tested in courts. It comes after SNL did a take on the film "It's a Wonderful Life" which imagined a world where Trump wasn't president.

The spoof on the classic Christmas flick, in which actor Jimmy Stewart gets a visit from an angel named Clarence, turned Trump (played by Alec Baldwin) into the lead character. The angel took the leader on a journey to see what the world would be like if he wasn't president.

But if there's no Muslim ban, what about a potential terrorist attack?" Trump asked in the sketch. "It was foiled by a team of transgender Navy seals," Clarence the angel responds, referencing the ban that was announced by Trump in threesurprisetweets in July 2017.

Comment: Trump's sense of humor is understandably wearing thin after two-plus years of constant media bashing:


Dollar

Federal jury awards over $6M to Missouri teen who was tased into cardiac arrest by cop during 2014 traffic stop

Independence MO cop stuns Bryce Masters into cardiac arrest
A federal jury has awarded more than $6 million in damages to an Independence teen who was nearly killed by a former Independence officer with a stun gun during a 2014 traffic stop.

Bryce Masters was 17 at the time of the September 2014 confrontation with former Officer Timothy Runnels.

Witnesses testified that Masters went into cardiac arrest when Runnels shot him in the chest with a Taser after Masters refused to get out of his car.

Masters filed a federal lawsuit in 2017 against the city, Runnels and TASER International, the company that makes the stun gun used by police.

Comment: See: Bryce Masters: Tased in the heart for 23 seconds, dead for 8 minutes, faces a lifetime of recovery after brutal police attack


Boat

Norwegian military releases haunting footage of warship wrecked after NATO training to counter Russian 'aggression'

KNM Helge Ingstad, norway sunken warship trident juncture
The ship is currently lying at a depth of about 30 meters (98 feet) in the fjords of Øygarden in southwest Norway. The Navy has plans to lift the wreck, but the operation would require specialized equipment and better weather conditions.
The Norwegian military has shared underwater footage of the KNM Helge Ingstad, a warship that collided with an oil tanker and sank while returning from a massive NATO drill hosted by the country.

The eerie images of the wrecked frigate were taken by Norwegian divers and robotic submersibles earlier this month during an operation to recover anti-ship missiles from the 134-meter sunken vessel. One video clip shows the damage caused to the Helge Ingstad's hull and lower decks when she collided with an oil tanker on November 8.


Comment: Norway's participation in NATO's 'fun and games' has proven to be enourmously expensive as well as annoying to the locals: