Society's ChildS


Attention

Finer order of control: Federal whistleblowers reveal TSA's "Quiet Skies" secret surveillance program for ALL travelers

TSA frisk
It appears that, once again, the government narrative that TSA surveillance and groping is needed to keep Americans safe from the terrorists "over there" is nothing but a justification to violate the rights of everyone.

Thanks to a group of federal air marshals displaying good conscience, we are now learning about a new program that shows the full web of physical and digital surveillance that is being employed by the government to track people far beyond even the dubious "terror watch list." Not only are these marshals ready to talk - they are equipped with documents.

According to the group of marshals who first contacted the Boston Globe, the Quiet Skies program has been active since March. The group stated that immediate concern was registered when it became clear that what they were being asked to observe and document was an expansion of the established protocol of putting attention on people connected to a documented terror watch list. Their duties clearly included domestic surveillance of people who were under no formal suspicion and had no reason to be targeted other than vague behavioral observations and/or made it to the radar due to connections made by artificial intelligence programs regarding their data.

Comment: Like the frog in the proverbial pot of boiling water Americans are slowly being acclimated to being totally surveilled, maneuvered and ultimately controlled - by those who seek an almost unprecedented level of power over others.


Broom

Robert Gore: Now or never

Strike while the iron is hot.
iron
There can be no better advertisement against Democrats, neoconservatives, and never-Trumpers than their display after the Helsinki summit. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

The Democrats' destruction began long before Trump. They are wholly associated with government, their answer to all problems and the source of their identity and power. Where they once had a healthy hostility towards the military and the intelligence agencies, they are now among their stoutest defenders. Their ideology, such as it is, is simply more: more government, taxes, laws, regulations, revenues, power, surveillance, wars, and programs, in short, more blob.

Comment: Perhaps the deep state has more power than Mr. Gore realizes? For more see:


Violin

French inmates complaining of overheated cells get little compassion from social media commentators

Villepinte Seine-Saint-Denis prison
© Philippe Lopez / AFPVillepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) prison
French inmates have released a video showing them being kept in an overheated and sealed cell during the hottest days of summer, but didn't find a lot of compassion online as commentators said it was what the criminals deserved.

Last week, the prisoners of the Villepinte facility in Seine-Saint-Denis, northeast of capital Paris, complained about the unbearable conditions in their cell during the European heatwave and shot a video to back their claims.

"It's 50 degrees (Celsius). It's impossible to breath," one of the inmates says in the footage, which was filmed illegally and passed to Europe 1 by the relatives of the inmates.

Briefcase

Trade spat with Mexico accelerating US' decline as global wheat supplier

Russia wheat export
© Alexey Malgavko / Reuters
Mexican bread, pasta and flour-tortilla makers are seeking alternative suppliers of wheat to reduce their dependence on the United States as trade relations between the two neighbors deteriorate.

Mexico, the top importer of U.S. wheat, is increasingly turning to cheaper supplies from Russia, which surpassed the United States as the top global wheat supplier in 2016.

Now the U.S. market share decline is accelerating as Mexico casts about for more alternative suppliers in Latin America and elsewhere to hedge against the risk that U.S. grains will get more expensive if the Mexican government imposes tariffs, according to interviews with three large Mexican millers, international grains traders, the top Mexican government agricultural trade official and government and industry data analyzed by Reuters,

"It's important to send signals to Mr. Trump," said Jose Luis Fuente, head of Canimolt, a Mexican trade group which represents 80 percent of Mexican millers. Mexico will keep buying American wheat because of its proximity, he said, but "we can't continue to have this absolute dependence."

The shifting supply deals are alarming for the U.S. industry, which has supplied the vast majority of Mexico's wheat since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect.

U.S. wheat exports to Mexico dropped 38 percent in value, to $285 million, in the first five months of 2018. U.S. wheat exports to all countries, valued at $2.2 billion, dropped 21 percent.

Comment: The US is finding its influence waning as countries realize there are now viable alternatives to being bullied by the global hegemon.


Books

The Children of 'Shōgun' and cultural appropriation

James Clavell
© YouTubeJames Clavell
This summer marks the 25th anniversary of the completion of James Clavell's epic Asian Saga-six novels, totaling 6,240 pages in paperback, published between 1962 and 1993. The high point of the saga was the publication in 1975 of Shōgun. Set in the year 1600, it chronicles the exploits-nautical, martial, political, and erotic-of John Blackthorne, a British seaman who finds himself shipwrecked in feudal Japan along with a few other survivors of the Erasmus, a Dutch pirate ship he helped pilot. By order of publication, Shōgun is the third book of the series, but by internal chronology it is the first. It is also, far and away, the most commercially successful book in the series. By 1980 it had sold more than 6 million copies and become the source of one of the most successful TV miniseries in history. It was preceded by King Rat (1962) and Tai-Pan (1966). It was followed by Noble House (1981), Whirlwind (1986) and Gai-Jin (1993).

Grady Hendrix's 2017 book Paperbacks From Hell admirably chronicles the way that a single novel-Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby in 1967-created a boom in cheap paperback horror novels that flourished throughout the 1970s and 80s. Shōgun was the Rosemary's Baby of a somewhat similar publishing phenomenon. It triggered a boom in massive historical adventure novels set in Asia but generally featuring English-speaking protagonists, usually either Americans or Britons. I've long been a big fan of these books which, for lack of a better term, I refer to collectively as 'The Children of Shōgun.'

Comment:


Video

Film review: 'Broken: A Palestinian Journey Through International Law'

Al-Ram separation wall
© AFPIsrael's separation wall is considered to be illegal under international law.
Film by Mohammed Alatar sheds light on the intersection between law and politics in one of the world's most persistent trouble spots

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most complex, multi-layered and protracted conflicts of modern times. One of the many merits of Mohammed Alatar's documentary Broken: A Palestinian Journey Through International Law is that it does not attempt to cover, as so many other programmes have done, the entire history and tangled politics of this conflict.

Instead, it focuses on only one aspect: the separation wall that Israel started building in 2002 in the West Bank and the question of whether it is in keeping with international law.

At first sight, it may seem that the answer is simple and straightforward. Since most of the wall is built on occupied Palestinian territory, and since it is designed to protect Israeli settlements that are themselves illegal, the wall itself must be illegal. But this is not purely a legal issue; rather, it is a bitterly contested political issue.

Evil Rays

James Corbett: Pricking the mainstream newsfeed bubble (VIDEO)

pricking bubbles
Recommended videos. Tailored newsfeeds. Personalized search results. Know it or not, we are increasingly living in filter bubbles that are being determined by algorithms we know nothing about. Worse than that, we are increasingly retreating into the online echo chamber bubbles of our own making. So where is this all heading and how can we steer ourselves away from this precipice? Join James for this edition of The Corbett Report podcast to find out more.


Comment: Corbett takes a little time to get warmed up but makes some excellent points in the following video. Enjoy!



Safe

Safe deposit boxes not so safe in California

lost safe deposit box
A woman says her bank let her safe deposit box vanish. And she's not the only one.

Susan Nomi says when she went to open her Bank of America safe deposit box of 16 years, the entire box was gone.

That's where she kept her family's jewelry and her dad's coin collection.

"I was in shock; I was just like what happened to my box," said Nomi.

She says Bank of America can't explain where her valuables went.

"They don't have an answer. They don't have an answer. They say thanks for letting us know," she says.

Yoda

Ahed Tamimi, symbol of the decades-long Palestinian struggle, prepares for freedom

Ahed Tamimi trial
© Agence France-Presse/FileFebruary 13, 2018, Palestinian teenager and campaigner Ahed Tamimi arrives for the beginning of her trial in the Israeli military court at Ofer military prison in the West Bank village of Betunia. Tamimi is set to go free today after eight months behind bars
A Palestinian teenager jailed by Israel for slapping and kicking Israeli occupation force members in the occupied West Bank is to go free on Sunday after eight months behind bars.

Ahed Tamimi was arrested on December 19, days after she was recorded on video with her cousin Nour Tamimi in the yard of their home in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, telling two occupational force members to leave, then shoving, kicking and slapping them.

She was aged 16 at the time and turned 17 in prison.

She was refused bail throughout her detention and subsequent trial in an Israeli court on charges including assault, stone-throwing, incitement to violence and making threats.

Comment: Ahed was received with joy and tears by her family and many supporters.




People

Russia forms military political directorate to help boost troop morale

Russian soldiers Moscow
© Tatyana Makeyeva / ReutersRussian servicemen are seen onboard a military vehicle in Tverskaya Street in central Moscow
Seeking to boost morale and maintain discipline among troops, Russia has formed a special political directorate within its Defense Ministry and appointed a former head of the counter-terror operation in Syria as its commander.

"Colonel-General Andrey Kartapolov has been appointed Deputy Defense Minister and the head of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Military Forces of the Russian Federation," reads the Defense Ministry's order published on Monday.