Society's ChildS


Bell

Best of the Web: "I Cannot Eat Your Prayers": How Student Debt Changed One Woman's Mind on "Christian Charity"

From an evangelical home to over $100,000 in student loans and healthcare debt, one writer faces the ways in which even progressive Christianity comes up short.

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© Jasmic
I'm going to tell you a story. It's the story of a good girl from a quiet town who prayed, studied hard, said no to drugs, and otherwise did everything she was told - and then went on to become Sallie Mae's bitch and lost just about everything. This story is mine.

I grew up in an evangelical home, and was an earnest "liberal-evangelical" into my early twenties. Now I think that my former religious faith - not unlike my faith in the U.S. higher education system - gave me a warped sense of optimism about the way the world works. I believed in faith-based platitudes, plus a few secular ones. Examples:
  1. God has a plan for my life.
  2. My whole future is ahead of me.

Eye 1

Hysteria Alert: US Passenger's frosted cupcakes spark airport terror alert

cup cake
© File pictureTerror!: Airport security staff confiscated two cupcakes claiming the icing could be explosive
A woman who just flew back home from Las Vegas says an airport security officer confiscated her frosted cupcake because he thought the icing on it could be a security risk.

Rebecca Hains said the Transportation Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport took her cupcake Wednesday, telling her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives.

'I just thought this was terrible logic,' Hains said Friday.

Hains, who lives in Peabody, just north of Boston, said the agent didn't seem concerned that the cupcake could actually be explosive, just that it fit some bureaucratic definition about what was prohibited.

Family

Russia: 50,000 take to the streets of Moscow as protests continue over Putin vote-rigging claims

More than 50,000 people took to the streets of Moscow today as opposition forces challenge Vladamir Putin's government in a new wave of protests against alleged election fraud.

Organisers of the demonstration hope it will be as large as a protest two weeks ago that drew tens of thousands - the largest show of discontent since the 1991 Soviet collapse - although rallies in other cities in the far east and Siberia earlier today drew much smaller crowds.

Rally participants began gathering on a broad avenue about 2.5 kilometres from the Kremlin on a snowy day. Nearly 53,000 people have so far signed up on Facebook to take part.

Russia protest 1
© APTurnout: Tens of thousands of demonstrators rally in the Russian capital in what is believed to be the largest protest so far against election fraud
Russia protest 2
© ReutersRidicule: As thousands take to the streets of Moscow in protest, a placard shows Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin draped in a condom in reference to remarks he made mistaking white ribbons worn by protesters for contraceptives

Christmas Tree

Nike sneakers frenzy as US police resort to pepper spray and arrests

Air Jordan XI Retro Concords
Air Jordan XI Retro Concords
A new brand of Nike basketball shoes has triggered shopping madness across the US complete with fights, arrests and even pepper spraying. It's nothing new, though - "sneaker wars" involving mugging and even killing have broken out in the past.

­Fights erupted in queues across the nation for the new version Air Jordan XI Retro Concords, which went on sale at midnight on Friday. Thousands of people had been waiting in the cold for hours to grab the sneakers for $180. The sneakers are already on sale on eBay for more than $500.

Outside Seattle, police pepper-sprayed about 20 people in an attempt to restrain a crowd of 2,000 agitated sneaker- seekers who broke down the doors of the Westfield Southcenter mall, the Seattle Times reports.

Police also had to break up scuffles over line-cutting or pushing. In NYC, 19-year-old Vincenzo Gavrity was arrested after a fight with another customer. "F**k you, I'm getting my shoes," the shopper declared, punching a cop who was trying to handcuff him, according to the New York Daily News.

Cult

Israeli extremists spread violent mayhem

Manger Square Christmas tree
© Musa Al Shaer / GettyA Palestinian municipal worker decorates Bethlehem's Christmas tree in Manger Square.
If Christian pilgrims traveling to Bethlehem for Christmas this week happen to witness violence, for the first time militant Jews, not Palestinians, are most likely to be the perpetrators.

Now that a far right-wing government has governed Israel for almost three years, settlers feel emboldened so that Jewish extremists are wreaking havoc and mayhem. West Bank Palestinians, meanwhile, are standing by quietly, largely minding their own business - even as these settler-marauders repeatedly attack them. This has never happened before.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority now employs a widely respected police force that has effectively kept the peace. And so it certainly will in Bethlehem. Secret cooperation between Palestinian police and Israeli security forces is "one of the reasons Israeli citizens enjoy such a calm security situation of late," Reuven Pedatzur, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote last summer, before the settler-extremist violence had reached its zenith.

But in just the last few weeks, these settlers have burned two mosques, torched Palestinian homes and cars, threatened Israelis they perceive to be leftist and attacked an Israeli army base, wounding one of its officers. That final act, attacking the army, finally roused the government from its lackadaisical approach to the violence.

Stormtrooper

Welcome Home! US Soldiers just back from Iraq get new orders: Afghanistan

 Soldiers arrive at their home base in Fort Hood, Texas, last week after being one of the last U.S. combat units in Iraq.
© CNN
Soldiers arrive at their home base in Fort Hood, Texas, last week after being one of the last U.S. combat units in Iraq.

Atlanta, Georgia -- Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said.

News of the pending Afghanistan deployments came as families at bases across the country were celebrating the return in recent days of troops who turned off the lights at a number of U.S. bases ahead of an end-of-the-year deadline to leave Iraq.

"We are glad that we have brought all soldiers back home in time for Christmas to spend with loved ones. We do have to put information out about an upcoming mission, though," the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, said Tuesday on its Facebook Page.

Heart - Black

US: Police torture and kill man with pepper spray

Tampa, Florida- No doubt you've heard the adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture of 62-year-old Nick Christie could be worth thousands of dollars when a jury sees it.


The photo shows the Ohio man restrained inside the Lee County Jail with his body covered in pepper spray.

"This photo is a picture of a man who is strapped to a chair naked inside a jail for hours with a hood over his face. That evokes thoughts of being tortured," says Cleveland-based lawyer Nick DiCello who represents the Christie family.

Cult

Israel's treatment of women is hardly that of a democracy

Israel bus
© David Silverman/GettyA woman on a bus looks out at an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in Jerusalem, Israel.
A 'dignified' dress code and gender segregation show Israel is fast becoming bigoted about dissent and difference

While we've been distracted by alarmism over newly elected Islamist leaders enforcing hijabs and bikini bans in the Arab world, Israel is already embroiled in attempts to rein in this unruly matter of female "immodesty".

Last week, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on businesses in the southern town of Sderot signing up to a "dignified" dress code - whereby female employees must be "modestly" clothed. So far 20 stores have adopted this long-sleeves directive, initiated by a religious group which says it did not actively threaten to boycott non-signatory shops - but which, nonetheless, has considerable buying power. Not surprisingly, the women subjected to this new code have described it as religious coercion.

Family

Kremlin nervous as protesters return to streets of Russia

Anti Putin protest
© Mikhial Metzel/APA demonstrator holds a poster showing a photo of Vladimir Putin and the words "No! 2050" during a mass rally in Moscow, Russia.
Tens of thousands of Russians expected to demonstrate against election results that saw Putin's party take majority in Duma

Tens of thousands of Russians are expected to take to the streets on Saturday despite Kremlin efforts to ease tensions over disputed elections and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency.

More than 50,000 people have indicated their intention to attend a protest on Moscow's Sakharov Prospect, named after the late leading Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov. Thousands more have signed up via social networking sites for protests in more than 80 Russian cities.

The protesters are hoping to capitalise on the momentum launched earlier this month, when up to 50,000 people turned out in Moscow alone demanding the Kremlin overturn parliamentary election results that saw Putin's United Russia take a majority in the Duma despite widespread accusations of fraud.

Stormtrooper

US: Occupy Albany Camp Dismantled As Police Pepper Spray Protesters

Occupy Albany
So much for the holiday spirit.

Police pepper sprayed Occupy Albany protesters in front of a man dressed as Santa Claus on Thursday night. The incident occurred as police dismantled the protester's camp, the AP reported.

After a judge issued a court order allowing the city to remove the camp's tents, a large group of city workers and police officers entered the camp. As the last tent was being removed, protesters began to fight back, holding on to it and engaging the cops in a tug-of-war. The AP reports that at least 5 protesters were pepper sprayed, 4 were arrested and 1 was taken away by an ambulance.

Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings defended the police action and insisted there was "no legal ambush" or "planned force."

Watch police clash with protesters in the video below.