Society's ChildS


Dollars

Female Democrats set records with political donations

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
© Jerod Harris/Getty ImagesSenator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
With the 2018 elections well underway, women have led a surge in political activity, both as candidates and as donors. We are not only witnessing women setting records in the number of secured major party nominations for the U.S. House, but we are also seeing a significant increase in the percentage of congressional campaign contributions coming from women. However, over the course of this record-breaking political year, the gender gap still looms strong and the party gap even stronger.

Looking at the congressional campaign contributions from women over time, an analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows female candidates tend to benefit most from female donors.

Heart - Black

Italy outraged by 'twisted' Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Genoa bridge collapse

Charlie Hebdo Genoa bridge collapse Italy
© Charlie Hebdo/ Facebook
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has courted controversy once again after publishing a cartoon that appears to mock the Genoa bridge collapse and features an overtly racist caricature of an African migrant.

Some 38 people died when a 100m-long section of the A10 motorway bridge collapsed on August 14. Dozens of cars plummeted nearly 150ft into an industrial area of Genoa where the rescue and recovery effort is still ongoing.

In a front-page cartoon for a recent issue, Charlie Hebdo depicts cars crushed on the ground below a broken segment of the Morandi bridge. Beside the cars is a caricature of a smiling black man with large, pink lips, holding a sweeping brush. The caption reads: "Built by Italians... cleaned by migrants."

Comment: Also see:


Cult

'This is for the little kids': Catholic priest assaulted in Indiana following revelations of systemic coverup of sexual abuse within the church

Priest
© Dylan Martinez / Reuters
A Catholic priest in Indiana has been assaulted by a man who said it was "for all the little kids," just days after the Catholic Church was accused of covering up decades of sexual abuse by over 300 priests in Pennsylvania alone.

The attack on Rev. Basil John Hutsko occured Monday morning in St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church in Merrillville, Indiana. Slammed to the floor of the sacristy by his attacker, Rev. Hutsko heard the man say "this is for the little kids," before he lost consciousness.

Commander Jeff Rice of Merrillville Police confirmed that the attacker had referenced sex abuse to Hutsko during the attack, telling the Chicago Tribune that this information led police to consider the attack a hate crime, without elaborating further.

Rev. Hutsko's assault occurred the same day Pope Francis issued a 2,000-word letter acknowledging the existence of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. The pontiff was responding to the damming Pennsylvania grand jury report released last week, which alleged that as many as 300 priests had cases of child sex abuse covered up by church officials.

Comment: Previously:


Dollar Gold

A free market is incompatible with democracy and inevitably produces dictatorship

money
Who rules the land? A deeper and truer version of this question is: What rules the land? Is it the money (the aristocracy), or is it the people (the public, the residents on that land)? (For the interest of paleoconservatives, the issue of residents' citizenship will come later here, as "immigrants" instead of as "citizenship"; but our basic focus is not ethnicity/nationality; it's class: the money, versus the voters; not the natives, versus the foreigners.)

In a democracy, the public rule - the people do - and it's on authentically a one-person-one-vote basis, and anyone who is a resident in that land can easily vote, just like anyone else who lives there, because only the residents there, during the specific time-period of the voting, are the ultimate decision-makers, over that land, and over its laws. This is what a democracy is: it's one-person-one-vote, and, in the political sense, it's total equality-of-rights and total equality-of-obligations - real and total equality-by-law: equal rights, and equal obligations, for all residents. A democracy applies the same requirements to everyone.

This does not mean that individuals are equal in their abilities and in their needs, and so it's not a statement about the economy; it is purely a statement about the government - a political question. The economy is a separate matter, though it's highly dependent upon the government - the laws that are in place and enforced. Many people confuse these two fields, and mistakenly think that the economy is basic to the government.

So: the economy is dependent upon the government; the government determines the economy, which, in any land, is highly dependent upon the laws that are in place and that are enforced - the government.

Comment: See also:


Cell Phone

New research shows Google's Android collects ten times more data than Apple's iOS

android phone
© Global Look Press/ Rodrigo Reyes Marin
A damning report into Google data collection found that the Android operating system sends ten times more personal information, including location data, to the tech giant than Apple's iOS. The study caused an outcry on Twitter.

Yet, the research by Professor Douglas C. Schmidt from Vanderbilt University claims the figure is only the tip of the iceberg, as it represents activity when a device is stationary, meaning the user is not interacting with it. Once users start using their phone, the data sent to the server increases "considerably".

Disgruntled Android users have flocked to Twitter to accuse the tech giant of "tapping into everything it can."


Comment: Not so sure how Google arrived at 'wildly misleading information' but if their history is indication, how much data they have on their users only scratches the surface. See also:


People

How suspicion leads to the corruption of the liberal mind

key book


What is the difference between leftists and cannibals?
Cannibals don't eat their friends.
~attributed to Lyndon Johnson

I am liberal to my core and like many liberals I've become increasingly disturbed by the escalation of totalitarian impulses on the Left. For the past six years I've been exploring the phenomenon and teasing out its underlying dynamics. While many writers and thinkers have been going head-to-head with extremists and confronting their ideological inconsistencies, the book I've found most helpful is Rita Felski's The Limits of Critique (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Unlike other writers, Felski approaches the dynamic obliquely and her foundational point is more subtle.

How we feel is almost always the first signal we have about the nature of our surroundings. For example, all of us have had the experience of walking into restaurant with a friend; all of us engage in some form of the following when we do: We stop just inside, pause a moment, and get a feel for the place. And every one of us has, at one time or another, turned to our friend and said, "This place feels weird, let's leave." It is our sensate perception of what might be called the atmosphere of a place-or as Felski has it, its "mood" - that can, if attended to, reveal deeper aspects of it nature.

I suspect the discomfort many of us are experiencing with the Left begins, as it did for me, with a strong, pre-verbal aversion to the mood permeating its activism. As the writer Thomas Cook once remarked, "There are moral fault lines to whose subtle trembling we must remain alert." Our sensitivity to that trembling alerts us but it takes time and a great deal of contemplation to unlock just why it has occurred. Felksi is someone who has taken the time.

Comment: See also:


Fire

Russian and Argentinian officials gather to torch 400kg of seized cocaine

cocaine burner
It looks more like a scene from a bizarre drug-cartel action movie, but the Russian ambassador and top Argentinian officials did gather at a crematorium in a Buenos Aires cemetery to incinerate 400kg of cocaine.

The thick white smoke billowing above the La Chacarita cemetery on Tuesday had nothing to do with funeral services. Russian envoy Dmitry Feoktistov, Argentinian Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and National Gendarmerie Director Gerardo Otero were all at the crematorium, wearing surgical masks and tossing dozens of packages of drugs, worth millions of dollars, into the incinerator.


The occult-looking gathering was far from secret, with many cameras present, as it was actually the product of a joint Russian-Argentinian operation earlier this year.

Comment: See also: Argentinian police bust massive cocaine smuggling operation at Russian embassy


Fire

Sweden on fire 2 weeks before election: Buildings, a business and 7 cars torched overnight as wave of arson attacks continue

Swedish firefighter trying to extinguish a burning car.
© TT News Agency/Johan Nilsson / ReutersSwedish firefighter trying to extinguish a burning car.
Several buildings, including a pizzeria and a garage, as well as seven cars, were set on fire overnight in southern Sweden as police remain clueless on how to curb the ongoing wave of arson attacks.

The fire services received calls saying that a house was burning in a residential area of Kristianstad municipality shortly before midnight on Wednesday. The police said that a fire at the local pizzeria had started upstairs and quickly spread through the building.

The firefighters fought the flames for several hours, but couldn't save the building, which was "totally destroyed."

A garage and several other buildings were also set on fire during the night, creating a risk of the flames spreading to nearby homes, but the firefighters managed to localize the blazes.

Comment: Chaos like this isn't likely to be solely the work of amateurs:


Pistol

Gunman opens fire at two policemen near Foreign Ministry building in Moscow (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

A gunman
© Mash / Russia’s Investigative Committee
Scenes from a shootout between a gunman and two police officers not far from the Foreign Ministry building in central Moscow have emerged in shocking CCTV footage. The gunman was shot and died later in hospital from head wounds.

In the footage, watermarked by "[Russia's] Investigative Committee" and published by Telegram channel Mash, the officers are seen taking cover behind a parked car after the first shots were fired at them.

The man with a gun then continues shooting. The brutal gunfight lasts for around 50 seconds before the perpetrator crashes on the pavement after apparently being hit with a bullet.

Newspaper

The Journalist: Life and death in the fake news business

Journalist mouth taped
© THE FREE THOUGHT PROJECT
I wrote this piece based on my knowledge of mainstream and their work, their lives, their forgotten hopes, their realizations (in some cases) that they're trapped in a system.

Most of them don't want to get out. They become creatures of the night they once wanted to illuminate.

You're a mainstream reporter striving to stay afloat. The word has drifted down from the top that this is the season for inflicting wounds on Donald Trump, no matter what, no matter what happened or didn't happen on a rumpled bed in a hotel room in Moscow, no matter what Putin did or didn't do to influence the election, no matter who leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, no matter what Michael Flynn said or didn't say to a Russian on the phone, no matter who or what James Comey is fronting for; every real or possible or non-existent detail needs to be blown up into a gigantic scandal of the moment, this president has to go, and your assignment is to keep cutting him, it's beyond the point where anybody in your business cares who he is and what he's done and what he's doing, so pump up the hysteria, shove in the blade wherever you can, THIS is how your success will be measured, you want a light to shine on you, so attack, attack without let-up, don't think, don't think about what's going on here, the important thing is:

Comment: That may be the longest sentence a person will read, and yet many journalists may have wished they had had the courage to write it near exactly the same.

Many journalists, such as Serena Shim, did not shy away from the truth:

Western intel op? Press TV reporter killed after reporting that ISIS terrorists are entering Syria from Turkey as 'undercover NGO activists'

Other journalists, like John Pilger, also tell it as it is:
"Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over... [they] now mean the establishment point of view... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity."
― John Pilger