Society's ChildS


Attention

Texas 'affluenza teen' who killed 4 while drunk driving now out of jail


Time
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:50 UTC
Ethan Couch
© APIn this Feb. 5, 2016 file photo provided by the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department, Ethan Couch, 18, appears in a booking photo, in Fort Worth, Texas
A 20-year-old Texas man who as a teenager invoked "affluenza" in his defense after killing four people in a drunken wreck has been released from jail.

Tarrant County sheriff's spokesman David McClelland says Ethan Couch was released Monday from the county jail near Dallas after serving nearly two years for a revoked probation.

Couch was 16 in June 2013 when he struck and killed four pedestrians. A psychologist at his manslaughter trial blamed his irresponsibility on family wealth, dubbing it "affluenza." A juvenile court sentenced him to 10 years of probation.

Comment: The whole family seems destined for a life of crime and irresponsibility.

Read More...
Dollars

The Pentagon's staggering $700 billion budget is financed entirely by debt

Marko Marjanović
Checkpoint Asia
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 19:39 UTC
pentagon debt
The US just passed a $1.3 trillion budget with $700bn for the military and the projected deficit of $800bn
As Russia steadily slashes its military spending and announces cuts will continue for the next five years through 2022, the US is going in the other direction and shoveling ever more fantastic sums of money into the military and parasite defense corporations. (Around half of Pentagon budget now goes to contractors.)

US Congress passed a $1.3 trillion budget for the fiscal 2018 last week that allocates $700 billion to Pentagon. For fiscal 2019 the military has been promised $716 billion.


Comment: See also: America is broke and 'fiscally responsible' Republicans couldn't care less

Read More...
Cow

'Christian Privilege' - University seminar highlights the latest idiotic SJW cause

Caleb Parke
Fox News
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 19:33 UTC
Jeezus
© unknownJesus: the great oppressor
George Washington University is hosting a seminar on combating "Christian privilege" in America.

According to an event description, students in a 90-minute training session will learn about ways American Christians receive things they don't deserve and are not worthy of getting: "How do we...acknowledge that Christians receive unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country?"

The Multicultural Student Services Center (MSSC) at GWU is hosting "Christian Privilege: But Our Founding Fathers Were All Christian, Right?!" Thursday as part of its "Excellence in Leadership Seminar," as first reported by The Christian Post.

According to the website, MSSC Associate Director and LGBTQ Resources Director Timothy Kane will discuss how American Christians have "easier" lives and get "built-in advantages over non-Christians" as well as making "room for all religious and secular identities on an equal playing field."

But the Christian privilege seminar doesn't just focus on one religion, it also singles out a race: white people.

Students will learn about "white privilege specifically" and the "role of denial when it comes to white privilege," the event description says, adding they will be able to list examples of Christian privilege and learn three ways to be an ally with non-Christians.

Other seminars offered by GWU's MSSC include: heterosexual privilege, cisgender privilege, abled-body privilege, socio-economic privilege, LGBTQIA diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, and transgender diversity and inclusion.

Each of the privilege seminars states that they focus more specifically on white privilege.
Read More...
Red Flag

Professors at Temple University are trying to erase the 'outdated' gender binary system

Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:43 UTC
gender pronouns
Some faculty members at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are looking to "unlearn" the "gender binary system."

The gender binary refers to the traditional classification of human gender into two distinct categories, masculine and feminine. Some professors at Temple University are looking to erase this "outdated" classification altogether.

Heath Fogg Davis, a professor of political science at Temple, argues in his new book that he wants to live in a world in which everyone uses a "gender-neutral pronoun."

"My argument in the book is not that we try to live beyond gender, but [to minimize] the formal use of gender and gender policies because of the ways it infringes on people's individual autonomy," Davis said. "In an ideal world, I wish that we all used a gender-neutral pronoun."

Comment: Watch Dr. Debra Soh break down the scientific realities behind gender:



Read More...
Arrow Down

First it was Confederate monuments, now statues will topple that are offensive to Native Americans

Jaweed Kaleem
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 04:00 UTC
Ted Hernandez
© Jaweed Kaleem/Los Angeles TimesTed Hernandez, Chairman of the Wiyot Tribe, supports removing the McKinley statue.
Over the decades, this quiet coastal hamlet has earned a reputation as one of the most liberal places in the nation. Arcata was the first U.S. city to ban the sale of genetically modified foods, the first to elect a majority Green Party city council and one of the first to tacitly allow marijuana farming before pot was legal. Now it's on the verge of another first.

No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds. But Arcata is poised to do just that. The target is an 8½-foot bronze likeness of William McKinley, who was president at the turn of the last century and stands accused of directing the slaughter of Native peoples in the U.S. and abroad.

"Put a rope around its neck and pull it down," Chris Peters shouted at a recent rally held at the statue, which has adorned the central square for more than a century. Peters, who heads the Arcata-based Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People, called McKinley a proponent of "settler colonialism" that "savaged, raped and killed."

A presidential statue would be the most significant casualty in an emerging movement to remove monuments honoring people who helped lead what Native groups describe as a centuries-long war against their very existence.
Arcata McKinley statue
© North Coast JournalMcKinley statue, Arcata, California
Read More...
Star of David

Recent protests in Gaza - another example how the Israeli right is immune to criticism

Daniel Amir
Independent
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Gaza Strip wounded
© APHamas called for the protest to be peaceful, yet they were met with live fire from Israel.
The line between criticism of Israel and prejudice against Jews is both fine and blurred. In Israel, these accusations are weaponised against politicians and activists that step out of line.

On Friday, as Jewish people prepared to celebrate Passover and Christians gathered for Easter, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip participated in largely non-violent protests as part of the Great Return March. Palestinian participants began walking towards the fence that separates the strip from Israel and were met with live fire that saw hundreds of people injured and 16 killed.

The protests were held to commemorate Land Day and demonstrate for the rights of Palestinian refugees to be resettled in Israel. Israel's response was that Hamas, which controls the strip, had "cynically" sent women and children to the fence as a human shield. Rather than expressing the grievances of Palestinians at large, then, the protests were to be seen in the context of long-standing tensions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Gold Coins

Harvard investigation: Doctors paid big to prescribe addictive opioids

Phillip Schneider
Waking Times
Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
opioids
In 2010, it was found that roughly 100,000 Americans die each year from prescription drugs alone. When it comes to opioids, the number of deaths is in the tens of thousands while a quarter of patients who were given a short-term prescription transitioned to long-term use.

Now, according to a recent Harvard University analysis, doctors who prescribe these pain-killers are being paid huge sums of money from their manufacturers.

The research, which was conducted by Harvard scientists and CNN, discovered that in 2014-2015 thousands of doctors were paid over $25,000 from opioid manufacturers and hundreds more were rewarded with six-figure sums. Also, the more opioids that were prescribed, the larger the reward.
"It smells like doctors are being bribed to sell narcotics, and that's very disturbing." - Dr. Andrew Kolodny, Executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing

Comment: More about America's scourge-like opioid crisis, and what's causing it:

Read More...
Star of David

Discourse shifting? Killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters has turned into a public relations nightmare for Israel

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Land Day protests, israel tear gas Gaza protesters
© Agence France-PressePalestinians fleeing as tear gas grenades begin to drop during a demonstration near the border with Israel east of Gaza City to commemorate Land Day.
Something has shifted in the discourse of Israel since the Friday killings of 17 Palestinian protesters in Gaza, many of them plainly unarmed, by Israeli snipers from across a security fence: the hasbara- Israeli propaganda- is not working.

The country has plainly done something indefensible. The usual defenders are silent, and the criticism from the left/center is stronger than ever. Senator Bernie Sanders's sharp criticism is actually leading the U.S. discussion of the event.

Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now captures the moment, tweeting in Hebrew (roughly translated):
"National Public Radio" Morning Edition, the United States's largest radio network, opened its news: Israel says it will not investigate the circumstances of the 15 Gaza residents killed on Friday's clashes. Another propaganda achievement of the government whose army is the most moral in the world.

Comment: Israel has literally been getting away with outright murder for decades and clearly considers itself above the law. Whether the international outrage will finally gather enough momentum to force a change in Israeli policies toward the Palestinians remains to be seen, but we are not holding our breath.

See also:

Read More...
House

Moscow home-buying has boosted demand as Britain spooks wealthy Russians


RT
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 13:40 UTC
Moscow, Russia
© Maksim Blinov / Sputnik
The forced return of wealthy Russians from Europe as a result of explicit threats issued by UK authorities has boosted demand for premium property in Russia's real estate market.

The number of inquiries for luxury property in Moscow and the Moscow region surged by 21 percent in the first quarter of the current year, according to market research carried out by consulting and real estate company, Metrium Group. Nearly 66 percent of the inquiries reportedly came from the UK, 23 percent from Germany, and nine percent from the US.

According to Russia's Central Bank data, the volume of cash remittance for buying elite property from abroad hit an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2017, when Russian immigrants transferred some 7.1 billion rubles ($122 million), representing 36-percent growth. The analysts say that the previous peak was fixed in the first quarter of 2014, when Russians brought back $102 million to buy real estate.

Comment: See also: Fallout: Blaming Russia for ex-spy poisoning could harm British business

Read More...
Jet1

US Air Force will deploy Ospreys to Tokyo base early despite Japanese requests to ground aircraft


RT
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 19:19 UTC
CV-22 Osprey aircraft
© United States Air ForceA CV-22 Osprey aircraft
The US military announced it will deploy five Air Force CV-22 Ospreys to a base in Tokyo, more than a year early. It follows a series of issues with the tilt-rotor aircraft, including a crash that killed three US marines.

The Ospreys are due to arrive at Yokota Air Base in the Japanese capital later this week. The arrival will mark the first time that Ospreys have been stationed at a Japanese military base outside of Okinawa, according to the Japan Times.

The five units are part of a deployment of 10 Ospreys that was initially scheduled to take place in the fiscal year which begins October 2019. However, the date for the five Ospreys was moved up in order to address "regional stability concerns in line with the recently released 2018 National Defense Strategy," the US military said in a statement cited by Stars and Stripes. It went on to state that the deployment "provides a platform that can rapidly react to natural disasters or crises."
Read More...