Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Flashback John Pilger in conversation with Julian Assange

John Pilger
johnpilger.com
Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:50 UTC
Julian Assange 2010
An extended interview with Julian Assange recorded during filming of John Pilger's latest film The War You Don't See.

The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders, in politics and journalism.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

Chris Hedges: The war on Assange is a war on press freedom

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:01 UTC
Mr. Fish Assange
© Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The failure on the part of establishment media to defend Julian Assange, who has been trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, has been denied communication with the outside world since March and appears to be facing imminent expulsion and arrest, is astonishing. The extradition of the publisher - the maniacal goal of the U.S. government - would set a legal precedent that would criminalize any journalistic oversight or investigation of the corporate state. It would turn leaks and whistleblowing into treason. It would shroud in total secrecy the actions of the ruling global elites. If Assange is extradited to the United States and sentenced, The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other media organization, no matter how tepid their coverage of the corporate state, would be subject to the same draconian censorship. Under the precedent set, Donald Trump's Supreme Court would enthusiastically uphold the arrest and imprisonment of any publisher, editor or reporter in the name of national security.

Comment: The fact that more people aren't up in arms and making a lot of noise about the injustice Assange is facing is simply tragic. Love him or hate him, an attack on Assange is really an attack on the free press (which is already on the verge of extinction).

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Pistol

Murder suspect shoots 3 officers in Kansas City before being fatally shot in gunfight


RT
Mon, 16 Jul 2018 10:09 UTC
Crime scene
© Stephen Maturen / AFP
A murder suspect in Kansas City shot three police officers before he was fatally shot during a gunfight with other officers, according to local authorities.

The incident began when officers were conducting an investigation at the Sky-Vu Motel while seeking a person of interest in the death of Sharath Koppu, an Indian student at the University of Missouri, who was shot and killed after an unknown person opened fire during an attempted robbery at the restaurant where Koppu worked.

During that investigation, the officers encountered a suspect who fired on them with a rifle, Kansas City Police tweeted on Sunday. Two officers were struck but remain in stable condition.
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Camcorder

Passenger dragged along platform by moving train in shocking CCTV footage


RT
Mon, 16 Jul 2018 12:56 UTC
Man dragged by train
© Shivangi Thakur / Aaj Tak / Facebook
CCTV cameras caught the horrifying moment a passenger was dragged along a platform in India by a train that threatened to pull him under its wheels.

The young man was attempting to board a train at Panvel Station in Mumbai on Saturday, when he became stuck between the train's closing doors, according to the Times of India.
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Bizarro Earth

SF Mayor: 'There's more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen'

Bigad Shaban, Robert Campos and Anthony Rutanashoodech
NBC
Sat, 14 Jul 2018 12:36 UTC
Homeless man in San Francisco
© Frederic J. Brown
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, in her first one-on-one interview since taking office, said homeless advocacy groups that receive funding from the city need to better educate the homeless to "clean up after themselves."

"I work hard to make sure your programs are funded for the purposes of trying to get these individuals help, and what I am asking you to do is work with your clients and ask them to at least have respect for the community - at least, clean up after themselves and show respect to one another and people in the neighborhood," Breed told the Investigative Unit, referencing her conversations with nonprofit groups aimed at serving the homeless.

When pressed about whether her plan calls for harsher penalties against those who litter or defecate on city streets, Breed said "I didn't express anything about a penalty." Instead, the mayor said she has encouraged nonprofits "to talk to their clients, who, unfortunately, were mostly responsible for the conditions of our streets."

Comment: See also: San Francisco is now a sh*thole: Logs over 16,000 feces complaints in one week

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Bacon

Office rental business bans meat at company events and won't let employees expense meals that include meat because it's bad for the environment


Business Insider
Mon, 16 Jul 2018 11:03 UTC
WeWork is going vegetarian.
WeWork
© WeWork
In an email to about 6,000 employees on Friday, the $20 billion office rental company announced that it will no longer reimburse employees for meals that include red meat, poultry, or pork and will stop serving meat at company events.

Employees who need medical or religious allowances are being referred to the company's policy team.

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Colosseum

Riots break out amid celebrations in France over World Cup win


Sputnik
Mon, 16 Jul 2018 07:18 UTC
france world cup riot 1
© REUTERS / Gonzalo Fuentes
Two fans have reportedly died during celebrations in France after the country won the 2018 FIFA World Cup by beating Croatia 4-2 in the final.

On Sunday France secured its second World Cup championship title at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium, 20 years after winning its first World Cup on home soil in 1998. Fans across the country immediately took to the streets to celebrate their national team's victory.

The nation celebrated through the night. The celebrations, however, were marred by the deaths of two fans and violence, which erupted in Paris late on Sunday.



Comment: Weren't all the riots and hooliganism supposed to be happening in Russia? Looks like people should be more worried about it in Europe rather than over there, despite all the media fear mongering.

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Cloud Lightning

When financial collapse in America goes kinetic

James Howard Kunstler
Clusterfuck Nation
Mon, 09 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
collapse
I suppose many who think about the prospect of economic collapse imagine something like a Death Star implosion that simply obliterates the normal doings of daily life overnight, leaving everybody in a short, nasty, brutish, Hobbesian free-for-all that dumps the survivors in a replay of the Stone Age - without the consolation of golden ages yet to come that we had the first time around.

The collapse of our techno-industrial set-up has actually been going on for some time, insidiously and corrosively, without shattering the scaffolds of seeming normality, just stealthily undermining them. I'd date the onset of it to about 2005 when the world unknowingly crossed an invisible border into the terra incognito of peak oil, by which, of course, I mean oil that societies could no longer afford to pull out of the ground. It's one thing to have an abundance of really cheap energy, like oil was in 1955. But when the supply starts to get sketchy, and what's left can only be obtained at an economic loss, the system goes quietly insane.


Comment: The 'peak oil' scare has since been fairly debunked. But do read on...

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Heart - Black

Inside Amazon's fast-paced warehouse world: Workers are under pressure, afraid to take bathroom breaks

Nina Shapiro
The Seattle Times
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Amazon warehouse workers afraid to go to the bathroom or take a sick day. Unattainable productivity targets. Constant surveillance. How accurate is author James Bloodworth's portrayal? A tour in Kent delivers some answers.
Amazon packing workers
© Alan Berner / The Seattle TimesAmazon workers stand at their stations in a Kent warehouse, which employs 2,500 people who handle goods coming in and out. Computer screens are ubiquitous, giving workers information about their tasks and running updates on their rate per hour.
Working at an Amazon warehouse in the U.K., James Bloodworth came across a bottle of straw-colored liquid on a shelf. It looked like pee.

How could he be sure? "I smelt it," said the 35-year-old British journalist and author, talking about his new book "Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain." It was definitely pee, he said.

As he tells it, urinating into a bottle is the kind of desperation Amazon forces its warehouse workers into as they try to avoid accusations of "idling" and failing to meet impossibly high productivity targets - ones they are continually measured against by Big Brother-ish type surveillance.

It didn't help that the nearest bathroom to where he worked was four flights of stairs below.

Comment: See also:

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Shopping Bag

Australian supermarkets work to prevent "bag rage" as plastics ban takes effect

Alison Bevege
Yahoo! News
Sat, 14 Jul 2018 12:46 UTC
shopper
© ReutersA shopper selects items inside a plastic bag-free Woolworths supermarket in Sydney June 15, 2018.
Australia's biggest supermarket chains are scrambling to combat "bag rage" as frustrated shoppers vent their anger over the removal of single-use plastic bags.

One man put his hands around a supermarket worker's throat, the West Australian newspaper reported, while grocery stores are putting on more staff to help customers get used to the change.

The removal of single-use plastics is part of a national push to reduce waste. As of July 1, major retailers in all but two Australian states will be fined if they supply single-use plastic bags. National supermarket chain Coles, owned by Wesfarmers, on Sunday removed single-use plastic bags from its stores, shortly after rival Woolworths banned the bags on June 20.

Consumer complaints forced Woolworths to backflip on charging customers 15 Australian cents (11 U.S. cents) for a reusable plastic bag, with the retailer now offering them free until July 8.

Comment: See also:

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