Society's ChildS


Attention

US and UK schools plagued with wave of bomb threats

Police line tape
© Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Bomb threats prompted lockdowns and evacuations in dozens of elementary and high schools across the US and UK, leaving classes to be resumed only after police failed to find any explosives or other dangerous items.

The threats led to the evacuations of schools in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin.

Media outlets in the United Kingdom also reported evacuations at dozens of schools up and down in that nation.

Compass

Elites 'southern charm' of church and state, spreading through US?

church state separation
"He was his slave." The man was casually describing the connection between a relative and "an old black man" who worked on an extended-family tract outside the city. They rode around together in the relative's truck doing chores, he said, and the "slave" was allowed to live in a house on the property.

That wasn't a recitation of family lore from some olden time. It referred to this century.

Drive the highways and notice the convict gangs bagging trash along the shoulders. Pass prison fields where mounted guards with shotguns herd inmates hoeing crops. You wouldn't know slavery ended a century and a half ago because it didn't, except legally.

See the columned mansions behind mossy oaks along city streets and realize that within them live the direct descendants of slave plantation masters, timber barons, and shipping magnates who scooped up the region's resources and sold them to the world. The crafty heirs of this inheritance didn't squander it. They magnified and diversified it into investment portfolios conferring the quiet authority that accompanies wealth.

In this ghostly form slavery survives, more pervasive and powerful than the embodied form of a single old handyman "slave" puttering around in a pickup on a small family acreage in the countryside.

Dollar

'I'm not independently wealthy': Bundy lawyer wanted Koch brothers to pay client's fees

Rancher Cliven Bundy.  Mike Blake / Reuters
© Mike Blake / ReutersRancher Cliven Bundy.
The defense attorney for Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy tried to get in touch the billionaire Koch brothers to help them fund his client's defense, according to an email obtained through a public records request.

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) obtained an email that shows Joel Hansen, the defense lawyer for Cliven Bundy, contacting Utah state Representative Ken Ivory, hoping that the legislator could help him get in touch with the billionaire Koch brothers, who are known for donating to conservative causes.

Ivory is an advocate for transferring control of land owned by the federal government in Utah back to the state, having sponsored successful state legislation in 2012 that did just that.

Such legislation has goals, though likely not methods, that might align with those of Bundy, who made headlines in 2014 for his armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada over cattle grazing rights. Bundy and 18 of his supporters were subsequently indicted on federal felony charges.

Comment: See also: Agents provocateur: Is the Oregon occupation being stage-managed?


Footprints

Parallels between 1930s Germany and Israel today

General Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army
General Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army
"Please don't write about Ya'ir Golan!" a friend begged me, "Anything a leftist like you writes will only harm him!"

So I abstained for some weeks. But I can't keep quiet any longer.

General Ya'ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, made a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day. Wearing his uniform, he read a prepared, well-considered text that triggered an uproar which has not yet died down.

Dozens of articles have been published in its wake, some condemning him, some lauding him. Seems that nobody could stay indifferent.

The main sentence was: "If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016."

All hell broke loose. What!!! Traces of Nazism in Israel? A resemblance between what the Nazis did to us with what we are doing to the Palestinians?

Comment: Israel is on the precipice of self-destruction with its oppression of Palestinians, covert and overt aggression towards other countries in the Middle East, and the death of whatever soul it has left to it as a nation. Individuals like General Ya'ir Golan, and the author of the article, and others understand that the situation is untenable and may be giving the last gasps of warning, conscience and rationality that Israel may ever see.

Further reading:


Hourglass

Utah teen in critical condition after long-time friend stabs him with sword during sleepover

Sword
© Global News
A 17-year-old is in critical condition after police say his friend stabbed him with a sword during a sleepover early Saturday morning.

"It was a tragic, very uncommon and strange event," Unified Police Lt. Lex Bell said, but he added that it could have had a deadly ending if it weren't for the aid of several firefighters who helped an officer subdue a violent suspect.

Bell said it happened just before 6 a.m. when police were dispatched to a home near 7000 West and Long Ridge Drive.

He said the victim was laying in his bed when his longtime friend, also 17, took a sword from the victim's blade collection and ran it through his abdomen. Police aren't sure if the victim was awake when it happened, Bell said.

"The question of the day is: Why did this happen? The two had been friends for years, as I understand it," the lieutenant said. The victim's parents ran into the room when they heard a commotion.

"When the father gets in the room, the suspect is trying to get another weapon to stab the victim again, it sounds like," Bell said. "So the father grabbed him and there was a physical altercation." The mother called 911, and an officer arrived minutes later and ran inside, the lieutenant said.


Alarm Clock

Shocking! 15-year-old girl has sex with 25 'willing' boys in Florida high school bathroom

South Fort Myers High School
© WZVNSouth Fort Myers High School

Comment: Children and young adults are being sexualized very early in life. Sexual imagery is everywhere and beamed into households every night. It's tragic to witness the continuing decay of our society because of the depraved leadership of psychopaths.

See also:

South Fort Myers High School officials believe as many as 25 boys had "inappropriate activity" with a 15-year-old female student inside of a bathroom on campus Tuesday.

Students told NBC 2 the incident occurred in a girl's bathroom after classes ended and involved the school's football team.

"A bunch of football players went into a room with a girl and had sex with her, and a bunch of the football players were suspended," student Alex Bailey said. "So we might not have a football team this year."


Comment: Not having a football team is the least of the problem.


Students contend participants recorded the encounter.

Principal Melissa Layner learned of the incident and contacted Lee County Sheriff's deputy Jarrod Cantrell, the school's resource officer. Cantrell recovered surveillance video from the school hallway showing "25 male students go inside the restroom over the time-frame of a female being inside the restroom," according to a police report cited by the News-Press.

Layner said the female student "confirmed she had sex with a number of willing males."

Officials contacted the special victims unit and the Florida Abuse Hotline, took sworn statements from students, and confiscated a student cell phone. District spokeswoman Amity Chandler said students were involved in an "inappropriate activity" and were disciplined, but refused to provide details, the News-Press reports.

Eye 1

British marines charged and sentenced for torturing subordinate

Royal Marine Ian Tennet
Royal Marine Ian Tennet, at a martial court in Portsmouth.
Four British Royal Marines have been charged with subjecting a colleague to a brutal initiation ceremony involving "waterboarding" and other forms of torture.

Royal Marine Ian Tennet, Lance Corporal Scott Simm, and James Taylor, a lance corporal in the Royal Marines Reserves and Former Marine Ryan Logan were charged with the ill-treatment of Carlo Nicholson (pictured below), a subordinate.
Carlo Nicholson
Tennet was sentenced to 11 months in jail while his two accomplices were given eight months each.

Heart - Black

Twisting young minds: Lego joins the toymaker violent 'arms race'

lego violence
© Tyrone Siu / Reuters Toy Lego characters depicting a scene of protesters confronting riot police are seen on a table outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong
There's a new "arms race" gripping the globe, but this time happening in the world of toys, according to New Zealand researchers.

The beloved and iconic Lego brand has increased the amount of pieces depicting violent weapons in bid to boost sales, according to a study by NZ's University of Canterbury.

The interlocking brick manufacturer has released more than 12,000 sets since 1949, but the first weapons didn't appear until 1978.

Back then, they were tiny axes made for a medieval castle set, but since then "violence in Lego products has increased significantly," found research published in the Public Library of Science journal.

"This increase is not in line with their policy that 'Lego products aim to discourage pretend violence as a primary play incentive'. The violence in Lego products seems to have gone beyond just enriching game play," writes the study's authors.

"To catch the attention of their customers, toy manufacturers are locked in a metaphorical arms race for exciting new products," added the authors. "In this race they do not only compete with other toy manufacturers but also with television and video games, which have become more violent over the years."

Comment: The fact that toy manufacturers must resort to using violence to capture the attention of young children speaks volumes about the moral degradation of society.


Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: The mental disease of late-stage capitalism

late-stage capitalism
You are “supposed” to feel shame when it’s not your fault.
I've been talking with a lot of my friends recently — in private where they felt comfortable letting their guard down — about the dirty little secret no one is supposed to talk about.

The shame people feel when they can't find a job...

...or pay their bills.

...or go to the dentist.

...or that they have to move back in with their parents.

...or they can't afford to have children.

We are supposed to pretend, in this stupendously individualist culture, that it is our fault. The buck stops here. I am responsible for my failings in life.

Comment: Free-market capitalism: Reducing humans to cash cows
Far from protecting her own citizens' property and economic interests, however, the domestic activities of the US increasingly reveal finely honed mechanisms resulting in asset seizure and transfer of wealth. In order to accomplish these aims, certain established checks and balances have been nullified or bought off...

There is a quasi- religious aspect to the worship of the free market. The free market, we are told, will inherently provide for the crème de la crème to rise to its proper altitude. The invisible hand of the free market will enable only the best products to succeed. And the devotees will tell you that this is in everyone's best interest.

However, consumerism has a dark side. Where everything is commodified, everything becomes gauged by its monetary value alone. Other considerations—truth, beauty and emotional attachment come to mind—may suffer under a bottom line valuation system.



Eye 2

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood: Hollywood is in the grip of powerful pedophiles

elijah wood
Elijah Wood
Elijah Wood has been in the entertainment business most of his life. Starting out doing local modeling and commercial work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he quickly moved out to Los Angeles with his family as an eight-year-old in the mid-1980s, where he got work on the Paula Abdul music video "Forever Your Girl" and gained acclaim in the 1990s movie "Avalon."

Though it seems like a glamorous way to be brought up, Wood, 35, is revealing for the first time that Hollywood is dealing with a child sexual abuse epidemic. In a revealing piece on the "Lord of the Rings" star for The Sunday Times, Wood is quoted saying child actors are regularly "preyed upon" by "vipers" in Hollywood.

Wood told the Times he "never went to parties where that kind of thing was going on," because his mother, Debra, protected him from interacting with people who could take advantage of him. But he did note, "I've been led down dark paths to realize that these things are probably still happening."

Wood is not the first former child star over the years to make this claim. In 2011, Corey Feldman told ABC's "Nightline" that he has been a victim of sexual abuse by men in Hollywood.

"I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia," he said. "That's the biggest problem for children in this industry... It's the big secret."

Comment: From London, to Washington DC, Tel Aviv and Hollywood - pedophiles in very high places are regularly discussed and exposed, but rarely do we ever see action taken by law enforcement.

Men Who Hate Women: The Franklin Scandal and the Truth About Our Leaders

Pedophiles run the government and nobody gives a damn!

UK 'Establishment': Unmasking psychopathic faces - Pedophilia and murder in VERY high places