Society's ChildS


Video

'Wormwood' crime documentary on the death of Frank Olson is an LSD-soaked masterpiece

Matthew Gault
Motherboard
Thu, 28 Dec 2017 11:10 UTC
Wormwood film series
© Netflix
Errol Morris dissects MKUltra, the CIA's mind control experiments - and redefines the true crime genre in the process.

America loves watching true crime documentaries. There are several television channels dedicated to the subject, dozens of podcasts, and hundreds of movies. Most of them tell the story of a violent crime, then unravel its mysteries. There are variations on the theme-authorities catch a killer or don't, the wrong person is accused, or the bad guy gets away-but they all follow a similar pattern.

Then there's the work of director Errol Morris. He wants the audience to understand not just the crime, but the way the crime affected everyone around it, and what the story people tell about the crime says about them.

Wormwood is his new documentary miniseries on Netflix that -on its surface - it's about LSD, the CIA, and the clandestine MKUltra project. From the early 1950s until 1973, the CIA and the Pentagon used torture, hypnosis, and drugs such as LSD to attempt to control the human mind. It didn't work, and the project killed Frank Olson.

Comment: For more background on this story, see:

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No Entry

Rising number of deaths among the homeless perpetuate crisis in Seattle, Washington area

Vernal Coleman
The Seattle Times
Sat, 30 Dec 2017 06:00 UTC
The chapel at Saint Martin de Porres shelter
© Alan Berner/The Seattle TimesThe chapel at Saint Martin de Porres shelter in Seattle has symbols memorializing residents of the shelter, volunteers and longtime supporters who have passed away. The shelter is for men age 50 and older, and it is run by Catholic Community Services.
As 2017 comes to a close, Seattle and King County have made significant strides in addressing homelessness. But with 133 deaths of people without permanent homes recorded so far this year, there's still a long way to go.

The toll of the region's homelessness crisis has been building since early in the year.

By April, the list of people who died while homeless or without a verifiable address reached 48. In September, it passed 93, the previous year's total.

By the close of November, the King County medical examiner's list reached 133, surpassing the previous high of 111 from 2006.

The list is a grim indicator of what many people living without shelter and those involved in the region's fight against homelessness both acknowledge: For all the progress made toward the goal of making homelessness "rare, brief and one-time," the reality on the streets remains stubbornly unchanged.
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Attention

Police officer killed, 3 wounded, 'rioter' open fires during rallies in Iran - state media


RT
Mon, 01 Jan 2018 18:56 UTC
Iran protests
© AFPAn image grab taken from a handout video released by Iran's Mehr News agency reportedly shows a group of men pushing traffic barriers in a street in Tehran on December 30, 2017.
One officer was killed and three were wounded in the protests in Iran, Reuters reports, citing state media. It is understood that a "rioter" opened fire on police in Najafabad, although the timing of the shooting is unclear.

"A rioter took advantage of the situation in the city of Najafabad and fired shots at police forces with a hunting rifle," Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi, a police spokesman, told the Iranian state broadcaster as cited by the news agency. He confirmed that one officer was shot dead in the incident and three more sustained injuries.

The shooting has resulted in the first reported casualties among Iranian law enforcement since the beginning of the protests, which have engulfed the Islamic Republic since December 28.

Earlier on Monday, it was reported that the number of civilians killed amid the pro-and anti-government demonstrations has grown to 10. More than 400 people have been arrested in the protests, AFP said.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

The parallel worlds of Gaza and Israel

Stanley L. Cohen
CounterPunch
Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
GAZA
© unknown
History is inexplicable. It has a way of seizing the chosen few to deliver a commanding message that transcends the tapered, often rote, confines of time, place and journey. Like the mystery of magic, defining moments seem to find powerful launch through the flash of a sudden second and echo through the voice of those destined to become iconic well beyond the rhyme of powerful lyric alone. To them, theirs is a journey of the ages. For those fortunate enough to witness such passage it is a transcendent reminder that greatness is measured not through acquired wealth or power but by the prompt of the principle, courage and sacrifice of the few.

Who can forget Faris Odeh, 15 years old when he stared down a tank with little more than a stone in his hand, murdered by Israel in Gaza? Or 23 year old Rachel Corrie, on that mist covered morning, armed with a bullhorn as she faced off against a bulldozer to save a home, murdered by Israel in Gaza.

And now legend has taken 29 year old Ibrahim Abu Thuraya from us. Disabled but not disarmed, he had the boldness to stand his ground clutching his weapon, the flag he loved... murdered by Israel in Gaza.

What is there about a tiny enclave known as Gaza that so offends, so alarms, so intimidates Israel? It would be far too easy to say nothing and simply reduce it to Tel Aviv's voracious chase of its off-shore gas reserves or its potential as a Mediterranean tourist coastline ...once cleansed of its native population and the destruction which bears the marked Star of David.
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Pills

Feds use computer data to combat the opioid epidemic

Sadie Gurman
Yahoo News
Mon, 01 Jan 2018 21:01 UTC
opioid abuse training
© AP Photo/Keith SrakocicIn this Dec. 21, 2017, photo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cessar, shows a report on a program involving opioid abuse in Pittsburgh.
The pain clinic tucked into the corner of a low-slung suburban strip mall was an open secret.

Patients would travel hundreds of miles to see Dr. Andrzej Zielke, eager for what authorities described as a steady flow of prescriptions for the kinds of powerful painkillers that ushered the nation into its worst drug crisis in history.

At least one of Zielke's patients died of an overdose, and prosecutors say others became so dependent on oxycodone and other opioids they would crowd his office, sometimes sleeping in the waiting room. Some peddled their pills near tumble-down storefronts and on blighted street corners in addiction-plagued parts of Allegheny County, where deaths by drug overdose reached record levels last year.

But Robert Cessar, a longtime federal prosecutor, was unaware of Zielke until Justice Department officials handed him a binder of data that, he said, confirmed what pill-seekers from as far away as Ohio and Virginia already knew. The doctor who offered ozone therapy and herbal pain remedies was also prescribing highly addictive narcotics to patients who didn't need them, according to an indictment charging him with conspiracy and unlawfully distributing controlled substances.
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Attention

New Jersey 16yo kills parents, sister, family friend just minutes before new year

M. L. Nestel
ABC News
Mon, 01 Jan 2018 20:55 UTC
Semiautomatic and military-style weapons
© George Frey / Reuters
Minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve, a 16-year-old boy allegedly used a semi-automatic rifle owned by a family member to shoot and kill his parents, sister and a family friend inside the parents' home in a coastal city in southern New Jersey, the county prosecutor said.

The teen, whose name has not been released, is in police custody in connection with the shooting deaths of his father, Steven Kologi, 44; mother, Linda Kologi, 42; sister, Brittany Kologi, 18; and a family friend, Mary Schultz, 70, who was residing at the Kologi home in Long Branch, New Jersey, according to Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni and a statement from his office.

The teen's brother and grandfather apparently escaped harm. They "thankfully left the home and came out OK," Gramiccioni said at a press conference Monday morning.

Police arrived on the scene shortly after receiving a call from inside the home about shots fired at 11:43 p.m. on Dec. 31, a statement from the prosecutor's office said.

The boy was arrested at the scene without incident, Gramiccioni said.

The prosecutor said he expects that the teen will on Tuesday be charged as an adult with four counts of murder and one count of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

No possible motive was revealed.

"It's a terribly tragic incident," Gramiccioni said.
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2 + 2 = 4

Deranged racist professor resigns one year after tweeting "All I want for Christmas is white genocide"

Timothy Meads
Townhall
Sat, 30 Dec 2017 20:44 UTC
white genocide
Campus Reform reports that the controversial Drexel professor who tweeted last year on Christmas Eve "All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide" has left the university. His abrupt resignation comes after what he says was a year of "prolonged harassment by right-wing white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs."

Political science and global studies professor George Ciccariello-Maher announced via Facebook that he would be resigning in order to continue "to support and work with (students) informally, whether in reading groups, in the streets, or both" so that he can battle against the so called "Right and White Supremacists" with the "establishment of the Campus Antifascist Network."
"After December 31st 2017, I will no longer work at Drexel University. This is not a decision I take lightly; however, after nearly a year of prolonged harassment by right-wing white supremacist media outlets and internet mobs...my situation has grown unsustainable," he wrote. "Staying at Drexel in the eye of this storm has become detrimental to my own writing, speaking, and organizing."
Adding,
"We are at war, and academia is a crucial front in that war. This is why the Right is targeting campuses with thinly veiled provocations disguised as free speech. My case and many others show just how cynical such appeals are, and how little the Right cares about academic freedom. They will continue to attack me and many others, but from these attacks new unities spring dialectically forth: an upsurge in new AAUP chapters and the establishment of the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN), among others."
He left his readers with a call to action.
"In the face of aggression from the racist Right and impending global catastrophe, we must defend our universities, our students, and ourselves by defending the most vulnerable among us and by making our campuses unsafe spaces for white supremacists."
Ciccariello-Maher does not mention what these "attacks" entail and neglects to mention that his Christmas Eve 2016 tweet was not the only controversial thing that he has said over the past year.

Comment: Good riddance. Ciccariello got off lightly by resigning. Just imagine the fallout if he would have called for "black genocide", "Jewish genocide", or claimed that "blackness" is what causes a disproportionate amount of crime in the U.S. The man is ideologically possessed and should not be around young people.

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Heart - Black

Lawsuit filed against New Jersey cops filmed attacking an innocent man fleeing from a burning car

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Sat, 30 Dec 2017 20:39 UTC
police assault
A high-speed chase in Jersey City ended when the car police were chasing crashed, turned another man's car into a ball of flames. But it's the chaotic insanity which followed the crash and the fire that has now resulted in the indictment of several Jersey City police officers and a massive lawsuit against the city and the department.

The innocent victim of gross police negligence and brutality, Miguel Feliz, has filed a $25 million claim against Jersey city and its police department for excessive force used on him in the June 4th incident. Feliz has been unable to return to work since police caused his car to be set on fire, in turn, setting Feliz on fire, and then brutally attacking him.

As TFTP reported last month, the group of New Jersey police officers involved have been indicted, including two for attempted murder, after they were caught on camera kicking Feliz as he crawled from the burning wreckage of a crash involving the pursuit of Leo Pinkston.

The officers face a slew of charges each:
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Ambulance

Two more dead in Iran protests - death toll now 12


Al Jazeera
Mon, 01 Jan 2018 20:23 UTC
Tehran Iran protests Dec 2017
© ReutersPeople protest in Tehran, Iran December 30, 2017
At least 12 people have been killed in Iran, according to local news media reports, as anti-government demonstrations continued across the country for a fourth night.

Thousands have engaged in protests since the first rallies against the high cost of living on December 28, marking the biggest show of dissent in Iran since huge rallies took place in 2009.

State TV reported on Monday that 10 people were killed in several cities on Sunday, and showed footage of damage allegedly caused by protesters.

The report did not provide further details about the deaths.

Local media reports said that of those who died, six were killed in Twiserkan, in Hamedan province, and three others in Shahin Shahr, in Esfahan province.

Another person was killed in Izeh, while two others died in Dorud, in western Iran, late on Saturday.

Comment: The protests don't appear to have been fully coordinated. Rather, it appears as though several economic protests have been hijacked by a small minority with political demands. Remind you of anything? Libya, Syria...

See also:

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Sherlock

Amtrak derailment investigation gets even stranger - few details, rumors of poor training procedures

Russell G. Quimby
The Hill
Sun, 31 Dec 2017 20:18 UTC
Amtrak derailment washington state
Amtrak passenger train #501, derailed near DuPont, WA
As a retired National Transportation Safety Board railroad and rapid transit accident investigator, the more I hear about the Dec. 18 derailment of Washington state Sound Transit Cascades Train 501, the stranger it gets. Confirmed "facts" seem to be very few so far.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident, which killed three people and injured more than 50 others, and is still trying to determine the probable cause and prevent such accidents in the future.

People have an innate need to know, particularly with unexpected public transportation accidents as part of their own sense of security and trust. The sooner we know, the better.

But we could be waiting a while before we hear from the safety board about what led to the derailment. The length of time the safety board has taken to produce "the facts," let alone a public report, has greatly lengthened over the past two decades, mostly due to safety board management.

An accident investigation has gone from nine months to over two years for a "major" investigation such as this accident. The prolonged process has been sold to Congress and to the public as a way to produce more thorough reports and recommendations, although the success of these efforts is debatable. In the interim, the public is left guessing.

Comment: See also:

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