Society's ChildS


Eye 2

Bryan Singer again accused of rape and molestation of underage boys as more accusers come forward

Chris Spargo
Daily Mail
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:17 UTC
Bryan Singer
Hollywood heavyweight: Four new men have come forward alleging that they were raped or molested by Bryan Singer (above in 2017) in the past 20 years
Bryan Singer is once again being accused of raping multiple underage teens in a shocking expose published by The Atlantic.

Four new men have come forward to share their stories, which are remarkably similar to those shared by a number of men in the past.

The youngest accuser claims that he was just 13 when Singer molested him on a film set, while others recount being plied with drugs and alcohol before being led to a bedroom by the director.

That youngest victim said that as he watched the Harvey Weinstein scandal unfold, he started to think: 'Me too-only I was a kid.'

This comes one day after Oscar voters awarded the director's latest film, Bohemian Rhapsody, with five Oscar nominations.

Comment: Hollywood is plagued by reports of pedophilia and sexual assault:

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Dollars

Lebanon's economy looking desperate as search for cash infusion continues

Dana Khraiche & Paul Abelsky
Bloomberg
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 11:46 UTC
Beirut Lebanon
© Sima Diab/BloombergHookah pipes stand outside an empty store for rent at the Solidere shopping district in Beirut.
The ruler of one of the wealthiest nations in the world barely spent a few hours in Lebanon but he left much trepidation, hope and confusion in his wake.

An Arab economic summit opened in Beirut with a report in local media on Sunday that Qatar is prepared to deposit $1 billion with the Lebanese central bank. If true, it could be just the cash infusion Lebanon's tottering economy needs to reassure bond holders still reeling from mixed remarks by officials about the possibility of debt restructuring.

But Lebanon's caretaker economy minister, Raed Khoury, said that while other officials had told him of Qatar's deposit, he couldn't confirm it. Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil was even more evasive.

Comment: Moody's Investors Service have downgraded Lebanon's credit rating to a level on par with that of Ukraine. The National reports:
Lebanon has the world's third-highest level of debt to GDP and Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said on Sunday it faces an economic crisis that could turn into a financial one.

Mr Hariri has pledged to carry out reforms that could unlock billions of dollars of international investment.

The International Monetary Fund has stressed the importance of Lebanon managing its debt, while bond yields and the cost of insuring against Lebanese sovereign debt showed signs of stress in recent months.

The inflation rate increased from 1.5 per cent in 2017 to 7 per cent last year, leaving Lebanese consumers with a shortage of money and less buying power.

Economic growth slowed from 8 per cent in 2010 to 0.6 per cent in 2017, according to the country's statistics agency.

The IMF projects a GDP growth of just 1 per cent for 2018.

The political and economic crisis has aggravated public discontent. Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Beirut last month, where they called for the government to fall for what they described as poor management.
Also see:

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Quenelle

Covington Catholic's Nick Sandmann: I wasn't smirking, I was just smiling

Elisha Fieldstadt
NBC News
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 11:35 UTC
Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann
Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann
The Covington Catholic High School student who was seen in a widely circulated video appearing to face off with a Native American activist during protests in the nation's capital last week said he wasn't disrespectfully smirking at the activist but rather smiling.

"I see it as a smile, saying that this is the best you're going to get out of me," Nick Sandmann, a junior at the Kentucky school, said. "You won't get any further reaction of aggression. And I'm willing to stand here as long as you want to hit this drum in my face."

"People have judged me based off one expression, which I wasn't smirking, but people have assumed that's what I have," Sandmann said.

Comment: Also see:

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No Entry

Longest US gov shutdown in history: 800,000 federal workers to miss second paycheck, some IRS employees stay home

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 10:51 UTC
IRS employee
© Rick Bowmer/APIRS employee Christine Helquist joins a protest rally in Ogden, Utah, on Jan. 10.
With negotiations behind the partial government shutdown showing no signs of a breakthrough, an estimated 800,000 government employees are set to miss a second paycheck on Friday.

Roughly 420,000 federal employees are working without pay, while around 380,000 have been furloughed amid the longest shutdown in US history, according to CNBC.

While the actual economic impacts are thus far thought to be limited, specific companies and industries are feeling the effects.
Commercial airlines, for example, are facing slower demand as airports struggle with understaffed security checkpoints, are losing revenue. Last week, Delta said it had lost $25 million in revenue on account of the shutdown.

The hit to the overall gross domestic product in the first quarter is also difficult to quantify. Economists have come up with a range of numbers, but they agree that the longer the shutdown goes on, the wider the damage to economic growth. -CNBC
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Syringe

Flashback Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal defies injury and age to win record 11th French Open title


Sott.net
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 10:31 UTC
More dodgy Western sporting results
rafael nadal drugs
The Guardian on yesterday's 'historic' French Open victory for Rafael Nadal:
Rafael Nadal pushed his 32-year-old body to the edge and the rules to breaking point, albeit unwittingly, to win his 11th French Open title on a warm, humid Sunday afternoon, an achievement that reduced him to tears of joy.

His lower left arm cramped on him about half an hour from the end at just the moment his opponent, Dominic Thiem, surrendered to the lassitude that paralysed his otherwise stout resistance and, in the still sunny autumn of his days, the Spaniard cruised further away from all his rivals on his favourite surface with a 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 win that took him two hours and 42 minutes on his beloved Court Philippe-Chatrier.

Whether he is now fit and willing to play Queen's Club before Wimbledon remains doubtful. He has cancelled the warm-up twice now, after the rigours of the clay season. He sounded non-commital.
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Chess

Al Nusra terrorists suffer 'heavy losses' after attacking Syrian army in Idlib


Sputnik
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 12:03 UTC
Militant Syrian Army
© Sputnik / Iliya Pitalev
Militants from the Al-Nusra Front terror organization have attacked Syrian army positions in Idlib de-escalation zone near Abu-Duhur and Abu-Sharjah settlements.

The terrorists' offensive near Abu-Sharjah settlement was thwarted by Syrian Army's fire and the terrorists withdrew to their original positions, the Russian Defence Ministry's Reconciliation Centre for Syria reported.

"Jabhat al-Nusra gangs have simultaneously attacked positions of government troops near Abu-Duhur and Abu-Sharjah settlements," the Reconciliation Center's head Lt. Gen. Sergei Solomatin said.

Comment: RT has published more details of the attack:
Hundreds of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists on board dozens of armored trucks with mounted machine guns have tried to breach Syrian army positions in a mass coordinated attack in the Idlib de-escalation zone, the Russian military said.

Two groups of al-Nusra militants numbering up to 200 fighters each attacked Syrian Arab Army (SAA) positions in the Abu al-Duhur and Abu Sharja communities in Idlib, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said.

Jihadists sent a suicide bomber squad to breach SAA defenses in the Abu al-Duhur area, but an anti-tank missile eliminated the explosive-laden car just before the death-mobile could strike the front line of the government forces. Government forces scrambled to repel the charge, but despite their resistance, the terrorists briefly managed to penetrate 1.5 kilometers past the army's defense line before being pushed back by the reinforcements that arrived to counter their intrusion.
The Russian Defence Ministry has since responded, stating that these provocations threaten the Russian air base:
"The current situation around Idlib is of serious concern. The situation in this de-escalation zone is rapidly deteriorating. The territory has actually been taken under the full control of militants from the al-Nusra alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham", Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday, adding that the provocations posed serious danger to civilians and Syrian troops in the area, as well as to the Russian Hmeymim air base.

Earlier in the day, Moscow addressed Ankara, informing the Turkish side about the situation in Idlib, where settlements and Syrian troops are being attacked by militants.


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TV

Lawyer for Covington Catholic families gives media 48 hours to 'retract and correct' smears

Debra Heine
PJ Media
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
Covington Lawyer
© Image via YouTubeLawyer Robert Barnes on Fox and Friends.
Robert Barnes, the lawyer representing the Covington Catholic High School kids who were smeared by the media, is warning reporters, celebrities, and others with large media platforms that they have until Friday to correct the record, or they will be sued.

Because of their sloppy reporting of what transpired in Washington, D.C., when two groups of protesters confronted a group of Catholic high school students who were waiting to catch a bus last Friday, the teens and their families have become the subjects of ongoing threats and harassment from a hateful online outrage mob.

On Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, Barnes, who is representing the families at no cost, explained that because the kids are private citizens and minors, anything someone says about them that is false can be libel, according to the law. Rather than proving malice, "all you have to prove is negligence," he said.

Comment: This is getting serious. Considering the number of "journalists" and media personalities are doubling down and continuing to libel the Covington kids, there could be a whole lot of lawsuits coming down. It remains to be seen if anything comes of this, but it would be nice to see the outrage mob experience some actual consequences for their egregious behavior.

See also:

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People 2

Thank you, APA, for showing me my toxic masculinity

Clay Routledge
Quillette
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC
toxic masculinity sign
© Sundry Photography / Shutterstock
People who don't live in northern climates may not realize that construction doesn't stop even in the coldest months. I live in North Dakota and was driving by a building site just the other day and saw a bunch of men stoically working in subzero temperatures and generally miserable weather conditions. I then started thinking about the other difficult and dangerous jobs that are dominated by males such as logging workers, fishing workers, roofers, and iron and steel workers.

For some strange reason, men seem to be uniquely willing to do dangerous jobs. In fact, economist and American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark J. Perry has documented a gender occupational fatality gap. Turns out that even though men make around 53 percent of all workers in the United States, they account for about 93 percent of workplace fatalities.

Thanks to the new guidelines from the American Psychological Association (APA) for practice with men and boys, male psychology is no longer a mystery and mental health professionals are now equipped with the tools they need to combat the worst forms of it. According to the APA, boys and men are at risk of suffering from traditional masculinity which is on the whole unhealthy. Turns out, the traditional masculinity that drives many of us men to be confident, assertive, adventurous, stoic, and willing to take risks for our goals, the people we love, and sometimes even complete strangers are bad for us and society.

Comment: This is probably one of the funnier, and more poignant, responses to the APA guidelines we've seen, pointing out the hypocrisy of the guidelines as well as elucidating the inevitable ends of this ideological implementation. Masculinity isn't toxic unless it's taken to extremes - but the same could be said about any behavioral trait. The APA would do wise to stop listening to ideologues and drop the activist narratives and get back to what one assumes was the original intent of the institution - actually helping people.

See also:

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Attention

New York legislature votes to legalize abortion up to birth, let non-doctors commit abortions

Calvin Freiburger
Life Site
Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:20 UTC
New York
© Shutterstock.com
Both chambers of the New York state legislature voted Tuesday on legislation to enshrine a "fundamental right" to abortion in state law and eliminate protections for preborn babies until birth, in votes set to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

The state Senate voted 38-24 in favor of the so-called "Reproductive Health Act" Tuesday evening, the Albany Times-Union reports, a bill that has repeatedly cleared the state Assembly in years past but been blocked by the formerly-Republican Senate. Following the Senate vote, the Assembly passed it 92-47.

The bill declares that "Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion," erases the state's recognition of preborn babies older than 24 weeks as potential homicide victims, removes abortion from the penal code entirely, and allows licensed health practitioners other than full doctors to commit abortions.

Comment: See also:

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Heart - Black

The Left owns the bigotry at the heart of the Covington affair

John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 09:54 UTC
covington kids nathan phillips
After days of outrage and condemnations, the Covington affair has revealed a disturbing bigotry among far too many media figures and outlets on the left.

At a few days' remove from the Covington Catholic High School incident at the Lincoln Memorial, we can be reasonably sure there will be no apologies or corrections forthcoming from the major media outlets that rushed to vilify the students involved. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and dozens of lesser news organizations that condemned the high schoolers from Kentucky have not retracted or walked back their initial, warped narrative: that racist white teens harassed an elderly Native American man.

Nor will there be any public contrition from many individual members of the media who were in the vanguard of the online mob. CNN's Reza Aslan tweeted an image of one of the boys and asked, "Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid's?" Filmmaker Michael Green tweeted the same image with the comment, "A face like that never changes. This image will define his life. No one need ever forgive him."

Comment: It's a mark of the ideological possession of the Left, that even when confronted with visual evidences of the Covington incident, they still cling to their outrage. Even the outing of faux 'elder' Nathan Phillips fraudulent background, and history of provoking confrontations doesn't faze them. Feelings over facts.

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