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Poll finds Russians' trust in government falls to five-year low


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 16:05 UTC
moscow
© Vladimir Astapkovich / Sputnik
According to the latest poll, only about a quarter of Russians express definite trust in state structures and public institutions. However, citizens' trust in military and security services remains high.

The Levada independent public opinion research center released the results of its latest poll on Thursday saying that after the mid-September parliamentary polls the Russians' trust in government fell to the lowest level in five years, 26 percent, with 70 percent saying that the cabinet "not entirely deserves" or "completely doesn't deserve" their trust.

The positive attitude to the State Duma fell from 40 to 22 percent in five years and the trust in the upper house, the Federation Council, was down from 40 to 24 percent.

The president topped the citizens' trust rating with 74 percent, albeit it was down from record-high 80 percent in 2015. Sixty percent of respondents said they had strong trust in Russia's military forces and 46 percent said they trusted the state security services.
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Question

Unknown contaminant causes hallucinations, spreads to deputies, everyone quarantined

Erin Elizabeth
Health Nut News
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 15:17 UTC
hallucinogenic
Just this week, the Coos County Sheriff's office reported that five people fell ill from an unknown hazardous material AND that it appears to be spreading by contact and causing hallucinations.


The issue began with a 3 a.m. phone call to the police about someone vandalizing a car:
  • A 57-year-old woman reported someone vandalizing her vehicle around 3 a.m. outside the home where she works as a caregiver for a 78-year-old person, in North Bend, Oregon.
  • A deputy checked the area and found nothing.
  • Deputies were then called back at 5:30 a.m. by a similar report.
  • This time, the deputies suspect the woman is having medical issues which are causing her to hallucinate.
  • The woman is taken to Bay Area Hospital for examination. Medical personnel check her and send her home.
  • Then, one of the deputies begins showing similar symptoms and is hospitalized.
  • Then the other deputy, the 78-year-old cared for by the initial patient, and a hospital employee begin showing similar symptoms and are hospitalized.
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Arrow Down

Keith Scott family's private autopsy report rules death was homicide: Shows Charlotte cops shot him 4 times, first in the back


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 14:49 UTC
Keith Scott shooting
© Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department / Reuters
Charlotte police officers point their guns at a fallen Keith Scott after shooting him four times in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S. in this September 20, 2016
A black man shot dead by police in Charlotte, North Carolina last month sustained four wounds, two of which killed him immediately, a private autopsy reportedly shows. Police have neither released their own autopsy, nor charged the white officer involved.

"The cause of death is two, penetrating, indeterminate range gunshot wounds to the back and abdomen," Keith Lamont Scott's family's autopsy report read, according to the Washington Post.

The forensic pathologist, Kim Collins, who conducted the autopsy ruled that the manner of Scott's death was "homicide."

Scott's family had to resort to private forensics examination after the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) refused to provide their autopsy and toxicology analysis to either the family or the press.

"It's a little frustrating, in this age when we keep talking about transparency," Charles Monnett, one of the attorneys representing the Scott family, said, as cited by the Post.

Comment:

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People 2

60% of Americans fear a corrupt government most


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 09:48 UTC
american flag
© Dominick Reuter / Reuters
It is not the "scary clown" epidemic that makes Americans afraid, but more mundane fears, such as corrupt government. Unfair officials terrify people more than terrorism or economic collapse, according to a new survey.

Over 60 percent of adult Americans have confessed that they are "very afraid" of corrupt government officials. That fear is holding its leading position for the second year in the row and is followed by terrorism and money-related concerns.

"People often fear what they cannot control, and we find continued evidence of that in our top fears," Christopher Bader, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Chapman University, said in a public release.

The Chapman University Survey of American Fears ranked the nation's top 10 fears. They included restrictions on firearms and ammunition (38.5 percent), identity theft (37.1 percent), deaths or serious illness of their loved ones (38.1 percent and 35.9 respectively).

Comment: We think you may want to click through and read the source of this article.
According to the demographics gathered in the survey, the most likely person to believe in a conspiracy theory is a Republican who is employed, but has a lower level of income and education. He or she is likely to be Catholic - or a Christian denomination - but attend religious services infrequently.

"Conspiracy theorists tend to be more pessimistic about the near future, fearful of government, less trusting of other people in their lives and more likely to engage in actions due to their fears, such as purchasing a gun," added Dr. Bader.
Well that is unexpected. Unless you read this study Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty by Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte. Which found that:
[a] randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.
And of course this leads to another interesting study Political diversity will improve social psychological science Duarte, Crawford et al.
In the last few years, social psychology has faced a series of challenges to the validity of its research, including a few high-profile replication failures, a handful of fraud cases, and several articles on questionable research practices and inflated effect sizes (John et al. 2012; Simmons et al. 2011). In response, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) convened a Task Force on Publication and Research Practices which provided a set of statistical, methodological, and practical recommendations intended to both limit integrity failures and broadly increase the robustness and validity of social psychology (Funder et al. 2014, p. 18). In this article, we suggest that one largely overlooked cause of failure is a lack of political diversity. We review evidence suggesting that political diversity and dissent would improve the reliability and validity of social psychological science
Now back to Bader:
The 2016 survey shows that the top 10 things Americans fear the most are:
    1) Corruption of government officials (same top fear as 2015)
    2) Terrorist attacks
    3) Not having enough money for the future
    4) Being a victim of terror
    5) Government restrictions on firearms and ammunition (new)
    6) People I love dying
    7) Economic or financial collapse
    8) Identity theft
    9) People I love becoming seriously ill
    10) The Affordable Health Care Act/"Obamacare"
...

What aren't they telling us? American Beliefs in Conspiracy

Beliefs in conspiracy theories were a new element to the 2016 survey and included questions asking about levels of belief in nine different popular conspiracies and conspiracy theories, such as the JFK assassination, Barack Obama's birth certificate, alien encounters, the moon landing, the 9/11 attacks, the AIDs virus and more.

What they learned is more than half of all Americans believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks; as well as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Another 40 percent believe the government is hiding information about extra-terrestrials and global warming; and one-third believe there are conspiracies surrounding Obama's birth certificate and the origin of the AIDs virus. Nearly one-fourth of Americans also believe there is something suspicious about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"We found clear evidence that the United States is a strongly conspiratorial society," said Dr. Bader. "We see a degree of paranoia in the responses. Most indicative is nearly one-third of respondents believed the government is concealing information about 'the North Dakota crash,' a theory we asked about that - to our knowledge - we made up," Dr. Bader continued.

According to the demographics gathered in the survey, the most likely person to believe in a conspiracy theory is a Republican who is employed, but has a lower level of income and education. He or she is likely to be Catholic - or a Christian denomination - but attend religious services infrequently.

"Conspiracy theorists tend to be more pessimistic about the near future, fearful of government, less trusting of other people in their lives and more likely to engage in actions due to their fears, such as purchasing a gun," added Dr. Bader.

...
Here Bader seems surprised that people consider the government corrupt, and that Americans are a "conspiratorial society." He even pretentiously creates a fake conspiracy, and reveals so in a derisive tone. Notice how he end things is a slam dunk leftist fun fest. He reveals his bias and politics, and lacks the self-awareness God gave a flea to realize he's normalizing. It never occurs to him Americans might have reason to believe in conspiracy theories.

Some of the wildest conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be true!
8 Conspiracy Theories About Health That The Mainstream Media Has Been Forced To Admit Are Actually True
The truth about conspiracy theories

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Handcuffs

Feds to press criminal charges against Arizona Sheriff Arpaio over immigration patrols, racial profiling


RT
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 16:12 UTC
sherriff joe arpaio
© Laura Segall
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The federal government charged Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio with criminal contempt charges for violating a judge's order to stop immigration patrols that led to a court finding of racial profiling. If convicted, he could spend six months in jail.

The controversial sheriff is expected to be charged on Wednesday. If convicted of misdemeanor contempt, the 84-year old Arpaio could face six months in jail. The trial is expected to start December 6.

The charges are the latest development in a long-running legal battle over Arpaio's policy of enforcing federal immigration laws. In December 2011, US District Judge G. Murray Snow issued a preliminary injunction ordering Arpaio and his deputies to stop targeting Latino drivers. The Sheriff's Office was discovered, after a three year investigation, to be detaining drivers solely on the belief that they were in the country illegally, without being suspected of a crime. Prosecutors alleged that Arpaio's deputies defied the injunction for at least 18 months. In May 2013, Snow ruled that Arpaio's office had engaged in racial profiling.

Comment: More on the antics of this insane, controversial sheriff:

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Cowboy Hat

Wealthy bigwigs donate lots of money to screw over the homeless in San Francisco

Sophie Kleeman
Gizmodo
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 18:25 UTC
Marissa Mayer and Zachary Bogue
© Getty Images
Zachary Bogue, Silicon Valley investor and husband of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.
Proposition Q, an upcoming ballot measure to rid San Francisco's streets of homeless encampments, has divided the city. One figure firmly on the side of "screw the homeless and their tents" is Zachary Bogue, the Silicon Valley investor and husband of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

As The Guardian reported earlier today, Bogue is one of several tech bigwigs who donated to Housing Not Tents, a pro-Proposition Q campaign. The $2,500 donation can be found buried in the group's campaign filings.

The documents in which Bogue's name appears cover the period from January 1 of this year until September 24. Bogue made his donation on September 15. Other donors named in the filing include Michael Moritz, a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and investors William Oberndorf and Ron Conway.

All three men gave $49,999, which roundly bests Bogue's donation, though "bests" perhaps isn't the right word to use, because Proposition Q has been resoundingly criticized for its approach to San Francisco's homeless population.

The measure would give people living in homeless encampments around San Francisco 24 hours to vacate their tents; it does mandate that the city provide "transportation assistance back to loved ones, temporary shelter or permanent housing" before scrapping an encampment. But, as the San Francisco Chronicle points out, that doesn't mean much when many of the city's shelters can't spare a bed. (The Chronicle advised readers to vote against the measure, which will appear on ballots on November 8.)

"With Proposition Q, we're just taking away someone's tent and making them sleep on the cold concrete," Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told the Guardian. "They're not going to disappear."
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Red Flag

UK police "lost" thousands of victims of modern slavery through failed record-keeping system


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 10:27 UTC
vehicle
© Reuters
Police forces across the country are failing thousands of victims of modern slavery by failing to properly record the crimes and prosecute traffickers, the UK's anti-slavery commissioner has warned, as he called for "urgent improvements" to combat the offense.

In his first annual report, Kevin Hyland highlighted major inadequacies in the recording of modern slavery, noting that in some forces victims are being "lost" in the system.

Hyland, whose job was created under the Modern Slavery Act last year, found 3,146 National Referral Mechanism (NRM) referrals - a process set up to identify and support victims of trafficking - resulted in just 884 recordings of slavery crimes in 2015/16.

Four of the 39 responding forces in England and Wales could not find any internal record of NRM referrals at all, while more than half had trouble answering whether a referral made by their force had resulted in a modern slavery crime record.

Comment: This is nowhere near a recent problem for the UK and elsewhere. The spread of capitalism via globalization has led to a serious problem of the rich and wealthy using the rest of the population as its slave workforce. For anything to change, the world has to rid itself of the psychopaths who are in control throughout the world and happily turn people into slaves to use for their own selfish needs. See also:

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Cult

Australia has a teenaged terror problem: 2 more teens charged with 'imminent ISIS-inspired attack'


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 05:12 UTC
FILE PHOTO Will Burgess/Reuters
© Will Burgess/Reuters
File Photo.
An "imminent" terror attack allegedly inspired by Islamic State was prevented in Australia, Sydney, authorities claimed after arresting and charging two 16-year-old boys with plotting a knife assault.

Two teens were arrested by a counter-terrorism unit on Wednesday at a prayer hall in Sydney's Bankstown, after they allegedly purchased the "bayonet-style" knives from a nearby gunshop. The charges were filed on Thursday, although the specific target of the planned attack remains unknown.

"We did prevent what we would suspect was going to be an attack," Deputy Commissioner of New South Wales Police Catherine Burn said. The authorities believe that the alleged attack was imminent.

"Had we not been in the right place at the right time ... certainly somebody, potentially today, would be, or another day imminently, would be without their life," AFP Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan told local media on Thursday.

The teens were charged with planning an act of terror and being members of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Such crimes could result in a lifetime behind bars.

Comment: That's about the 20th case of 'teenaged terror' in Australia in the last couple of years.

It rather sounds like its government has made a political decision to prosecute teenaged anti-social behavior as 'terrorism'.

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Cult

Indonesia approves chemical castration, capital punishment for pedophiles


RT
Thu, 13 Oct 2016 04:31 UTC
Darren Whiteside/Reuters
© Darren Whiteside/Reuters
Convicted pedophiles in Indonesia could be subjected to chemical castration after the government approved a set of laws to better protect minors against predators. Additional punishments would include harsher prison terms and the introduction of tracking chips.

Despite a strong objection to the introduction of new punishments by the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), lawmakers from ten other parties represented in the government went on to adopt the regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) following President Joko Widodo proposed changes to existing law in May.
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Pistol

No justice: Mistrial allows cops to walk free after murdering man for illegally camping

Claire Bernish
Free Thought Project
Wed, 12 Oct 2016 00:00 UTC
mistrial
Two Albuquerque cops charged with the second-degree murder of a homeless man suffering schizophrenia — whose only crime had been illegally camping — have now been let off the hook for the killing after a hung jury left a judge no choice but to declare a mistrial.

Retired Officer Keith Sandy and Officer Dominique Perez had been charged for the murder of 38-year-old James Boyd in August last year — after Albuquerque police cleared them of wrongdoing — in a rare case where cops were forced to face legal responsibility for a highly questionable and brutal killing.

A mistrial was declared by Judge Alisa Hadfield on Tuesday when only three of twelve jurors voted to convict the two officers — which, though deplorably typical, seems inexplicable given officer helmet-camera footage and several nasty details in the case.


Comment: Yes, inexplicable seems the best way to describe it - unless the prosecutor was completely incompetent and/or allowed jurists to be chosen who demonstrated the traits of brain-dead zombies.


Prior to the fatal shooting, a conversation involving Officer Sandy was captured on tape, revealing not only a lack of compassion or understanding for those with mental health issues, but utter disregard for human life:

Comment: "He mattered. His life mattered," are the words we all too often need to recall as a pathological US police force continues to snuff out life, after life, after life.

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