Society's ChildS


Gold Seal

SOTT Focus: Vanessa Beeley in Syria: A Photo and Video Diary from Eastern Ghouta, Where Civilians have been Liberated from the West's Terrorists

Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire
Thu, 29 Mar 2018 20:30 UTC
ghouta beeley
© Vanessa BeeleyDriving towards Wafedin camp in Eastern Ghouta that has been receiving civilian evacuees from Eastern Ghouta.
Truth always reveals itself. We have seen it in Homs, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Madaya - in all areas of Syria where civilians are liberated from the US Coalition's proxy army of terrorist groups. Now it is the turn of Eastern Ghouta to expose the Western corporate media campaign for the sensationalist propaganda it has been for the last seven years of this senseless conflict, externally imposed upon the sovereign nation of Syria and its people.

The UN held a press briefing yesterday in Damascus. We arrived late but in time to hear UN figures of 75,000 civilians who have escaped Eastern Ghouta for the safety of the Syrian government centres set up to receive these traumatised civilians as they flee the terrorist occupation of their towns and villages via the Syrian/Russian established and negotiated humanitarian corridors.

According to a UN official, 25,000 of those civilians have been reunited with their families by the Syrian government, the remaining 50,000 are in the IDP centres and are being taken care of by Syrian civil society organisations.

These UN figures are lower than the Syrian Government and Russian negotiator numbers but it is not unusual for the UN to be out of alignment in this respect. Syrian Arab News Agency recently reported numbers closer to 135,000. However these UN figures still expose western media reporting of much lower numbers as deeply flawed at best, deliberately misleading at worst.
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Magnify

IRS audits fewest tax returns in 15 years citing shrinking budget and pressure from Congress to scale back enforcement

David Sherfinski and Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
IRS audit
The IRS is auditing fewer tax returns than at any other time in the past 15 years as the agency struggles with what it says is a shrinking budget and pressure from Congress to be less zealous in enforcement.

Just six out of every 1,000 individual taxpayers faced an audit last year, the government said in the latest IRS Data Book released last week, marking the lowest rate since 2002.

Analysts said that is unlikely to change this year, as the April 17 deadline for this year's filing season nears and as the IRS grapples with endemic budget cuts and the strain of having to administer the new tax law.

Some taxpayer advocates cheered the news, saying it's time the IRS was brought to heel after years of excesses, including targeting tea party groups for illegal scrutiny and making tax-filing season tougher than it had to be as a protest against budget cuts.

Comment: Government logic: IRS paid private debt collectors $20 million to recoup $6.7 million from low-income Americans

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Cult

Israeli airport rejects ad urging women not to give up seats to Haredi ultra-Orthodox men


RT
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 18:09 UTC
Israeli airport
© Nir Elias / Reuters
Israel's main international airport has rejected a billboard campaign calling on women to stand up to gender discrimination by refusing to give up their airplane seats at the behest of ultra-Orthodox men.

The notice, initiated by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) - the advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel - hoped to inform passengers at Ben-Gurion Airport of their rights during the Passover travel season.


Comment: What is a social justice warrior to do? You don't want to support patriarchal oppression, but you don't want to be antisemitic either! So it's better to ignore that contradictory issues such as these - and much worse - exist in Israel.

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Brick Wall

Trump renews calls for stricter immigration laws, accuses Latin American countries of sending 'caravans' of illegals to US


RT
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 03:30 UTC
US bound Central American migrants
© Jose Jesus Cortes / ReutersCentral American migrants board a bus before they continue their journey to the US
President Donald Trump has once again urged US lawmakers to immediately enact stricter immigration laws and build a wall on the southern border to prevent "caravans" of illegal immigrants from entering the US.

Over the past two days, Trump has been bombarding his Twitter followers with messages urging Congress to use the 'nuclear option' if necessary, in order to pass a law that would curb the flight of illegal immigration to the United States. The messages blaming Latin American countries for taking advantage of US immigration laws intensified on Monday.

Comment: 400 sheriffs say 'enough is enough,' demand congress reduce immigration, criminalize sanctuary cities

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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.

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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

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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.
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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:



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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
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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:

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