Society's ChildS


Take 2

'Predatory indoctrination': Parents outraged by trans film for kids at Museum of Natural History

trans film dragfox
© DragfoxThe film played on a loop in the museum, surprising parents.
The Museum of Natural History shocked even liberal Upper West Side parents last week by showcasing an animated film featuring a drag-performing fox and a trans kid with an identity crisis - alongside an exhibit "about sea animals."

The eight-minute stop-motion animation short titled "Dragfox" - featuring a "charismatic" fox in drag voiced by Sir Ian McKellen — played last weekend on a loop inside the august Milstein Hall in the shadow of the famed 94-foot long blue whale.

In one scene 11-year-old Sam twirls around with his sister's pink dress, eventually wearing it. The flamboyant fox, "Ginger Snap," snatches it and breaks into a drag musical number as the duo embark on a "magical journey" in the attic.

"What on Earth is this doing playing in the Natural History Museum? No connection whatsoever to space, the ocean, anything," blasted one stunned museum-member mom in an online parents group.

"There's a time and place for drag queens but the AMNH isn't it," added the mom about the museum, which received at least $17 million in government funding in 2024, according to its financial disclosures.

Arrow Down

Mutant rice and Bill Gates's lab rats: Grand experiments in India's fields

Gates and Modi
© Off-Guardian
In late 2024, Bill Gates sparked outrage in India after describing the country as "a kind of laboratory to try things" during a podcast with Reid Hoffman. Gates emphasised the nation's stability as a "testing ground" for global initiatives.

His remarks were widely condemned. Social media erupted, with many Indians accusing Gates of reducing their nation to a mere experimental ground for Western interests. Social media users labelled Indians as "guinea pigs" in Gates' laboratory and questioned the ethics and motives behind such experimentation.

A widely reported response on X captured the sentiment:
"India is a laboratory, and we Indians are Guinea Pigs for Bill Gates. This person has managed everyone from the Government to opposition parties to the media. His office operates here without FCRA, and our education system has made him a hero! I don't know when we will wake up!"
(FCRA refers to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, which regulates foreign contributions to ensure they are not detrimental to the national interest.)

The controversy resurfaced with the 5 May 2025 announcement that India became the first country to officially release two genome-edited rice varieties: Kamala (DRR Dhan 100 Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1. These are not classified as genetically modified (GM) crops. Unlike traditional GM crops, which introduce foreign DNA, these gene-edited varieties use CRISPR-Cas SDN-1 and SDN-2 technologies to alter existing genes.

This distinction is heavily promoted by the agri-biotech industry in an attempt to ensure gene-edited crops bypass strict biosafety regulations and multi-year field trials required for GM crops. In 2022, the Indian government exempted such plants from hazardous substances rules under the Environment Protection Act.

Biohazard

HHS halts work at Fort Detrick's high-risk infectious disease lab following reports of repeated safety violations

fort detrick biolab safety violations closed
© Getty Images/Fox NewsThe Fort Detrick research facility studies treatment and prevention of deadly infectious diseases, including SARS-Cov-2, the Ebola virus, Lassa fever and Eastern equine encephalitis.
Research pause stemmed from poor safety culture at high-risk infectious disease lab, HHS official says

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) implemented a pause on research at one of the nation's most highly secure research labs, following repeated safety incidents that a source familiar told Fox News Digital have been occurring since the Biden administration.

An HHS official confirmed the pause at Fort Detrick's Integrated Research Facility, which conducts risky research on deadly infectious diseases like COVID-19, began Tuesday at 5 p.m.

The facility, which is one of only a handful across North America, is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is located at the U.S. Army base Fort Detrick, outside Washington, D.C. The research there studies treatment and prevention of deadly, "high-consequence" diseases such as SARS-COV-2, the Ebola virus, Lassa Fever and Eastern equine encephalitis.

Comment: This is not the first time there have been safety issues:

CDC suddenly shuts down US Army's Fort Detrick bioweapons lab due to 'lapses in safety'

Fort Detrick's research labs have a long, nefarious history:


V

Two German MEPs to defy Brussels with Moscow visit - media

victory day
© Global Look Press / Natalya Shatokhina
A group of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including two Germans, are planning to travel to Moscow for a two-day visit to take part in Victory Day celebrations and send a message of peace, the news agency dpa reported on Wednesday.

The delegation will reportedly also include MEPs from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Slovakia. The visit will feature "talks with [Russian] parliamentarians as well as politicians and cultural figures," according to German MEPs Michael von der Schulenburg and Ruth Firmenich.

The two MEPs, who represent the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), told dpa they wanted to express support for the unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine announced by Moscow.

"We also want to send a signal that we are committed to ensuring that the guns in Ukraine remain permanently silent," they said.

Red Flag

Crimes of rape have tripled in six years across Spain

unhappy
Spain has seen an alarming rise in sexual violence over recent years, culminating in a record-high number of rapes, which reached 5,206 incidents in 2024, according to new official statistics from the Ministry of the Interior.

With an average of 14 rapes per day across the country, the figure nearly triples the 1,878 cases reported in 2019 when five daily incidents were reported. The upward trend has remained consistent year-over-year since 2018, aside from a brief dip during 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Regional breakdowns show that communities like Catalonia, Madrid, and Andalusia report the highest numbers, although increases have been noted throughout all regions of Spain. Cases involving minors, nightlife-related assaults, and attacks perpetrated by groups of offenders are also on the rise. The grim reality presented by these numbers translates to a woman being raped every hour and 45 minutes in Spain.

Remix News reported in November last year on a La Rázon report that revealed 91 percent of those convicted of rape in Catalonia are foreigners, with immigrants comprising just 17 percent of the region's total population.

Stop

Newark airport experiences another terrifying air traffic control outage, bringing flights to a standstill

airline tower
© REUTERSUnited Airlines Station Operation Center • Newark Liberty International Airport • May 9, 2025
Almost 80 flights have been cancelled and more than 60 delayed at Newark airport after yet another equipment outage brought more chaos to the the NYC-area hub.

A 45-minute ground stop was ordered on Sunday morning by the FAA following the outage at Newark's ATC facility, officials told WABC. Then, a short time later a different outage hit Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — the busiest in the country.

"Runway equipment issues" resulted in delays and ground stops for nearly all flights arriving at Atlanta.

Bizarro Earth

Smartmatic hid meeting with Dem megadonor Reid Hoffman, who financed its suit against 2020 Election

reid hoffman linkedin israel aipac super pacs
© Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for LinkedInBillionaire venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor , newly unsealed court documents allege.

Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax "hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes," as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with Smartmatic for $40 million, according to NBC.

As Washburn reported, Fox had previously expressed concerns about a "deep-pocketed 'third party' behind the suit" — allegations that Smartmatic denied in 2023, according to Reuters. But reporting from The Washington Post revealed Hoffman invested millions in Smartmatic, as the company sued news outlets for their reporting about the 2020 election. In July 2024, the Post reported that Hoffman had "connected with Smartmatic chief executive Antonio Mugica through friends of friends" and was "boosting" its lawsuit against Fox.

Comment: Reid Hoffman has had his fingers in a lot of legal pies trying to derail Trump, most notably bankrolling E. Jean Carroll's rape accusations against Trump.


Star of David

I was in the BBC documentary 'The Settlers.' This is the part of my story they didn't tell.

Mohammed Hureini  Louis Theroux BBC 'The Settlers'.
© Screenshot, 'The Settlers'Mohammed Hureini speaking to British journalist Louis Theroux in the BBC documentary film, 'The Settlers'.
I met Louis Theroux to share my story as a Palestinian under the constant threat of displacement. While the film is an important look into the Israeli settlers trying to erase us, there is one crucial part of our story that was left out.

The BBC documentary The Settlers, directed by Josh Baker and written by Louis Theroux, has recently aired to much international attention. It aims to give Western viewers an inside look into the minds of Israeli settlers - those who occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank, often with open ideological commitment to ethnic cleansing and supremacy.

The film achieves its goal to a certain extent, as it exposed the raw, unfiltered language of settlers who speak brazenly about displacing Palestinians from their ancestral homes.

But while the documentary was willing to give settlers the microphone to lay out their dangerous visions for the future, it fell painfully short in giving equal weight to the lived reality of those whose lives are being shattered by those very ideologies.

Comment: The Zionist reaction was immediate:




The full documentary. Watch for the megalomaniac, arch-psychopath settler leader Danielle Weiss:





Books

Former Harvard dean, leading international relations scholar Joseph Nye dead at 88

Harvard Kennedy School professor Joseph S. Nye Sr.
© Jack R. TrapanickHarvard Kennedy School professor Joseph S. Nye Sr. speaks with HKS lecturer Hannah Riley Bowles at an Institute of Politics forum in February 2024. Nye died on Tuesday at age 88.
Former Harvard Kennedy School dean and prominent international relations scholar Joseph S. Nye Sr. died at 88 on Tuesday.

HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein announced Nye's death in an email to faculty, staff, and students Wednesday afternoon.

Nye, who served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under President Bill Clinton, was one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary international relations theory.

Nye was best known for developing the theory of neoliberalism alongside Princeton professor Robert Keohane. He also coined the term "soft power" in the 1980s to describe a country's non-military sway on the world stage.

Comment: So Nye played a strong role in shaping the neocon mindset. It's sinister ramifications still echo today, in the many failures of the US' exercise of "soft power".


Arrow Up

Record civilian casualties from Ukrainian strikes last week - Moscow

Map Ukrainian civilian strikes
© Rodion Miroshnik; TelegramMap of Ukrainian strikes on civilian targets registered between April 28 and May 4, 2025
Fifteen people lost their lives during the period, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry's war crimes investigator.

Ukrainian forces have killed 15 civilians and injured 142 over the past week, including eight minors, according to Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large tasked with documenting Kiev's alleged war crimes.

Writing on his Telegram channel on Tuesday, Miroshnik noted that the past seven days had been the deadliest for civilians since the beginning of the year. He stressed that Ukraine's forces had launched at least 1,974 munitions at civilian targets in Russian territory over the past week.

The strikes have affected multiple regions, including the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, as well as Belgorod, Bryansk, and Krasnodar.

Comment: 'Someone' is calling the shots. Cui bono?