Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Undercover video exposes brutal animal abuse at one of Florida's largest dairy farms

mad cows
An undercover video that purports to show workers kicking cows in the head and hitting them with metal rods has prompted authorities to open a criminal investigation at one of Florida's largest dairy farms.

Okeechobee County Sheriff Noel Stephen said during a news conference Thursday that he assigned an investigator to the case involving Larson Dairy. And Florida-based Publix supermarkets announced it has suspended milk deliveries from Larson, adding in a statement the company is "shocked" by the treatment of cows.

Publix said it has contacted the Florida Department of Agriculture about the alleged abuse. In a statement the company said, "we are disturbed by the images and shocked by the cruelty toward animals."

Telephone

Women in Film organization launches their own sexual harassment tip line

Asia Argento
© GettyActor Asia Argento, one of the many women who said Harvey Weinstein assaulted her .
The organization Women in Film is launching a hotline to help women and men in Hollywood report sexual harassment.

The hotline, which launches December 1st, will also be part of an effort that includes a pro-bono legal aid service. Variety reports:
Women in Film said Friday that its Sexual Harassment Help Line and Pro-Bono legal aid panel will be integrated programs to refer men and women in need of assistance to other survivors, designated mental health counselors, law enforcement professionals, and civil and criminal lawyers and litigators. The help line will also serve as a crisis center and centralized information source.
The line was created, Women in Film executive director Kirsten Schaffer says, because their "phones have been ringing off the hook since these harassment stories began to break."

Attention

Weinstein effect: Top Israeli journalists and senior politicians chime in on #MeToo campaign

moshe katsov
Moshe Katsov
The Weinstein effect is spreading. The American actresses who have gone public with their stories about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein over the past month undoubtedly inspired Israeli women to speak openly to the media about the men who harassed and assaulted them. There have been dozens of recent headlines about sexual harassment and assault in Israel. One common denominator among so many of them is that the women sharing their stories are well-known, influential figures at the top of their professions.

For the past few years, most of the stories that have come out about sexual assault have featured perpetrators in positions of power over their victims. Senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers were accused of assault, such as retired general and former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai, Ofek Buchris and Liran Hajbi, and major political figures including former President Moshe Katsav, former ministers Haim Ramon and Silvan Shalom, Knesset member Yinon Magal and highly regarded actor Moshe Ivgy.

Pistol

Blue on Blue violence: Drug bust goes bad for Detroit cops

Detroit Police Officers
© Rebecca Cook / Reuters
The Detroit Police Department is conducting an internal investigation after officers from two of its precincts exchanged blows during an undercover sting operation that went wrong.

The cops in question were working undercover in Andover on Detroit's east side Thursday, posing as drug dealers to entrap customers.

Two special ops officers from the 12th Precinct were pretending to be drug dealers, when two officers from the 11th Precinct approached.

The 11th Precinct police ordered the other officers to the ground, thinking they had nabbed two dealers, WJBK reports

Book

College professors write a book encouraging teachers to push social justice issues in class

college teacher
Two professors just published an entire anthology dedicated to teaching educators how to infuse their curriculum with "social justice concerns."

The book, Promoting Social Justice Through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, published by Indiana University Press, was spearheaded by Georgia Southern Professor Delores Liston, and Regina Rahimi, who teaches at Armstrong State University.

"[T]eachers must recognize their role as one as one of mentor, even peer, on the journey towards greater justice in society." Tweet This

Teachers should use both "critical pedagogy" and "transformative practice" in their classes to promote social justice, Rahimi and Lison argue in the book's introduction.

Critical pedagogy, they say, refers to "a variety of perspectives that encourage learners to think critically," including "multiculturalism, postmodernism, deconstructionism, constructivism, black feminist thought, critical race theory, and critical race feminism."

These theories must then be implemented through "transformative education" or "transgressive practice," both of which refer to the "use of critical pedagogy to engage students in the 'practice of freedom,'" Rahimi and Liston note.

Central to uplifting students is the recognition of students' "lived experience." The oppressed, the professors say, "know their own social locations," and therefore have "epistemic privilege" that gives them access to unique forms of information.

Comment: University offers 30 week program to train campus-based social justice warriors


Footprints

CEO of Podesta Group is leaving the firm to start her own lobbying shop

Tony Podesta
Kimberley Fritts, the longtime chief executive of the Podesta Group, is leaving the firm to start her own lobbying shop, according to three Podesta Group staffers.

Tony Podesta, the firm's founder, tapped Fritts as his successor when he announced he'd step down as chairman last week, hours after an indictment was unsealed, charging Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, with violating foreign lobbying law. The indictment accused Manafort of hiring the Podesta Group to lobby for an ostensibly independent nonprofit that "was under the ultimate direction" of the Ukrainian president, his party and the Ukrainian government.

Comment: Breaking: Tony Podesta quits Podesta Group amid Mueller inquiry


TV

MSM loathes alternative media like 'the builder of a house of cards fears the wind'

It is clear that the MSM pundits slamming alt-media don't know anything about it. If they did they'd have a much better story than they do, albeit a less sinister one.

Obama
When it comes to the daily slandering of so-called alt-media personalities and outlets from broadcasters like RT to independently owned and operated private enterprise websites such as the one you are reading now, one would hope that the so-called journalists of the MSM would actually do some investigating into their own hypotheses.

To listen to MSM, one would think that half of the people in alt-media are paid handsome salaries by a foreign government (usually Russia, sometimes Iran and on fewer occasions Venezuela and North Korea) in order to use the right to peaceful free speech to report on facts and express opinions. According to this same narrative, those who aren't receiving money from the "Kremlin", are "useful idiots" who are expressing their opinions in the purely private sector that neo-liberals lionise, except when it comes to starting a business that involves opinions that contradict their worldview.

Ambulance

Paramedic overdoses while driving overdose patient to hospital

fairborn paramedics
© WKEF/WRGT
A Fairborn firefighter-paramedic driving a suspected overdose patient to the hospital Thursday night began showing symptoms of an overdose himself, prompting his partner to jump into action and stop the ambulance in the middle of the road.

This is the latest - and perhaps most dramatic - case of a public safety employee exposed to an opioid.

"He was not feeling right. He was having issues seeing the speedometer controls," said David Reichert, division chief for Fairborn fire. "His partner in the back was immediately able to stop the medic in the middle of an intersection."

The partner administered Narcan to the firefighter-paramedic. He and the 49-year-old woman patient were taken to Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek, Reichert said. The woman and firefighter, whose names have not been released, have recovered.

"There's nothing like going to the hospital and seeing one of our guys in the hospital bed who has just been given Narcan to pull him away from dying," Reichert said.

Comment: U.S. police warn of opioid drug so potent it can be fatal 'just by touching'


Target

Star Trek's George Takei accused of sexual assault by former male model

George Takei
© APActor George Takei was accused Friday of sexual assault by a former actor and model in Hollywood.
George Takei, best known for his role in "Star Trek," was accused Friday of sexual assault by a former actor and model, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Scott R. Brunton said the incident occurred in 1981 when he was beginning his career in Hollywood. He said he met Takei, who was 43 or 44 years old then, at a bar and the pair reportedly exchanged numbers and talked on occasion.

When Brunton, then 23 years old, broke up with his boyfriend at the time, he said Takei "was a great ear."

"He was very good at consoling me and understanding that I was upset and still in love with my boyfriend," Brunton recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. "He was very good about me spilling my heart on my sleeve."

Following a night out, the duo reportedly went back to Takei's apartment for drinks. During the second round, Brunton said he began "feeling very disoriented and dizzy" and thought he "was going to pass out," he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Biohazard

'Hazardous' smoke in Brussels, residents told to keep doors & windows shut

Power plant
© Emmanuel Dunand / AFPSmoke is pictured billowing from the Drogenbos gas-fired power plant, the country's largest, in Brussels.
A fire at a plant in the Drogenbos municipality to the south-west of the Belgian capital prompted authorities to release a statement warning that the smoke might be hazardous.

Police in Brussels asked residents in the southern and western parts of the city "to close windows and doors" on Saturday afternoon, local media report. Drivers in the area have also been strongly advised to shut off their ventilation, while roads in the affected area have been partially closed off.

"A fire at Engie [facility] in Drogenbos - toxic smells: close doors and windows, shut down ventilation with air coming from outside, remain indoors," a text warning sent by local authorities said.