Society's ChildS


Bad Guys

The 21st century plague: Deceit and complicity

MarkGB
Renegade Inc.
Tue, 06 Feb 2018 05:45 UTC
hear see speak no evil
The Black Death was a medieval pandemic which swept through the 'old world' in the 14th Century. It arrived in Europe from Asia in the 1340s and killed an estimated 25 million people, about 50% of the population. The social and economic consequences of this were 'permanent': it created a labour shortage which ended the medieval institution of serfdom.

In short: Increased demand for labour + reduced supply of labour + chaos = collapse of status quo.

What emerged from the chaos was a rudimentary 'free market' in labour and goods. The age of capitalism had begun...the unforeseen consequence of a plague, borne on a creature that looked like this:

plague carrying flea

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

Associated Press double standard in reporting Israel-Palestine conflict

Kathryn Shihadah and Alison Weir
If Americans Knew Blog
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:26 UTC
Palestinian boy
© EPAA Palestinian boy weeps for a relative killed by Israeli soldiers during a “clash.” AP reports minimally on such Palestinian deaths.


Associated Press is one of those news sources we expect to be objective and reliable. But when it comes to the subject of Israel-Palestine, things are not always as they seem.

More than half the world's population reads Associated Press content every day.

But a study of news reports so far in 2018 indicates that this trusted news source has been presenting the deaths of Israelis at the hands of Palestinians, and of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis, in two completely different ways.

This pattern may be a factor in how readers perceive the players in this decades-old issue. It is also, quite likely, a factor in how editors all over the U.S., who read AP stories daily, view the conflict.

So far in 2018, eleven Palestinians have been killed and two Israelis.

(Since December 6th, when President Trump announced that the US would recognize Jerusalem as "the capital of Israel," overturning decades of US policy, 27 Palestinians and 2 Israelis have died.)

In AP's 2018 news reports, Palestinian deaths have been reported in far shorter news articles than Israeli deaths, averaging 181 words in length vs. 551.

Comment: It is bad enough that Israel treats Palestinians as sub-human. We don't need the mainstream media doing the same.

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Sheriff

Anti-drug operation carried out by 22 countries, including US, Baltic and EU states, and Iran


TASS
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:11 UTC
military soldiers army
© Nozim Kalandarov/TASS


The operation involves 22 states

The US has joined the Channel anti-drug operation conducted by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the organization's Deputy Secretary General Valery Semerikov said on Thursday.

He pointed out that the CSTO's annual "Channel" operation was aimed at countering drug trafficking.

"It has been generally recognized. The operation involves 22 countries, including the US, the Baltic states, European countries and Iran," Semerikov said.

The CSTO deputy secretary general elaborated that since the start of the operation, more than 360 tonnes of drugs had been seized. In particular, as many as 20.5 tonnes of drugs were seized during the four stages of the operation carried out in 2017.

Comment: 22 countries involved to seize 20.5 tonnes of drugs in one year (2017) doesn't seem that much of a success. For comparison, consider that Iran alone seized over 124 tonnes in the first quarter of 2014.

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Wolf

Young male staffer accuses California #MeToo movement leader Cristina Garcia of sexual misconduct

Kathleen Ronayne
Associated Press
Fri, 09 Feb 2018 10:45 UTC
Cristina Garcia
© AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, FileIn this June 22, 2016 file photo, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D- Bell Gardens, speaks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Garcia, the head of California's legislative women's caucus and a leading figure in the anti-sexual harassment movement is herself the subject of a sexual misconduct claim, Politico reported Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018.
California Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, the head of the Legislative Women's Caucus and a leading figure in the state's anti-sexual harassment movement, is accused of groping a male staffer from another lawmaker's office.

Daniel Fierro told The Associated Press on Thursday that Garcia stroked his back, squeezed his buttocks and attempted to touch his crotch in a dugout after a legislative softball game in 2014.
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Newspaper

Jill Messick's Family issues statement on Harvey Weinstein and Rose McGowan


The Hollywood Reporter
Fri, 09 Feb 2018 10:34 UTC
Harvey Weinstein; (inset) Jill Messick
© Alexander Koerner/Getty Images; Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesHarvey Weinstein; (inset) Jill Messick
Veteran studio executive and producer Jill Messick died by suicide on Wednesday after battling depression for many years, her family tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Messick, who worked at Miramax as a production executive from 1997 to 2003, also served as Rose McGowan's manager in January 1997, which is when, McGowan has claimed, she was raped by Harvey Weinstein.

In a statement following her death, her family says Messick was "victimized" after becoming embroiled in the Weinstein-McGowan allegations. Her name made headlines when Weinstein's attorney, Ben Brafman, released an email on Jan. 30 attributed to Messick in defense of his client. Her family says now that Messick "became collateral damage in an already horrific story."

Messick's family's full Feb. 8 statement is below.
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Sheriff

#PooWatch: UK police tweet updates as they waste 3 weeks waiting for suspected drug dealer to go to the toilet


RT
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:10 UTC
Siegfried Grassegger / Global Look Press
© Siegfried Grassegger / Global Look Press
A drugs suspect accused of swallowing his stash has spent more than three weeks in police custody as officers wait for him to go to the toilet. Officers are tweeting updates of what they describe as #PooWatch.

The 24-year-old man was arrested by officers from Essex Police's Operation Raptor West, the gangs and street crime unit, in Harlow, Essex on January 17. He is charged with two counts of possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply and is allegedly part of a London gang.

He is believed to have inserted a batch of drugs into his body.

Comment: Many countries see the war on drugs have failed, that resources are being wasted on prohibition that has never and will never work. If we consider the sheer quantity of drugs that enter our society, it is fairly certain that the trade is assisted by people in high places, who are also skimming off a massive profit for their nefarious dealings:

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Snakes in Suits

Jordan Peterson is helping disillusioned boys become men - Here's why liberals hate that

Jonathon Van Maren
LifeSiteNews
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 18:55 UTC
Jordan B Peterson
© unknownJordan B. Peterson
Over the past several months, progressive columnists have decided that they have had quite enough of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, the University of Toronto psychology professor who has ruffled post-modern sensibilities with his common-sense analysis and refusal to engage in the use of recently-invented transgender pronouns. Perhaps it is simply jealousy—Peterson has amassed an audience of millions—but the columns condemning him have been painful screeds to read, revealing the inability of their authors to understand either Peterson's ideas or his motivations. A few of them take his work so out of context that they border on slander.

But a good question to ask Peterson's detractors would be why? Why do they hate him so much? Why are so many liberals so determined to mock and malign him at every turn? Why do they see him as such a dangerous figure, when the impact of his work in the real world is so overwhelmingly positive?
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Magnify

Biases in 'equalitarianism' and progressive thought

Bo Winegard
Quillette
Wed, 07 Feb 2018 07:39 UTC
protest

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"I want to understand how a normal brain becomes conservative," my professor said. "That is the thing that most puzzles me." At the time (I was in my early twenties) I completely agreed*. That was the question. Sometimes I would stare at a picture of G. W. Bush like Hamlet staring at a skull, pondering how any sane human could have voted for him. It just didn't make sense. Progressivism was so obviously correct that it baffled me that anyone could deviate from its basic principles. I didn't hate conservatives. I even knew one or two. I was just befuddled by them.

Most social scientists feel today about conservatives as my professor and I did then. Almost all social scientists (especially social psychologists) are socially liberal, and most of them voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. To many of these scientists, conservatives are like eccentric antiquities that belong in a museum, where they can be carefully studied. Consequently, social psychology journals are littered with articles about conservatives. Many paint a Hieronymus Bosch-like picture of them as flawed, fallen creatures: rigid, dogmatic, close-minded, fearful, prejudiced, and inclined to authoritarianism. Scales that describe traits found among conservatives more than progressives have scary names such as Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, and Benevolent Sexism, to name a few.

However, other researchers have expressed concern that this unflattering image of conservatives might be an unfortunate manifestation of bias from within the academy. Because most social psychologists are progressives, they simply take progressivism for granted, assuming that it is the right way to view the world and that, therefore, any divergence from its tenets is wrong and requires explanation. This leads to disparaging depictions of conservatives in the same way that having evangelical Christians study doubters would lead to disparaging depictions of atheists (imagine the scales: Unholy Skepticism Scale, Doubting Thomas Scale, et cetera). Scholars have begun to support this argument with research that suggests that progressives and conservatives are equally biased so long as scholars examine the right topics and targets. In fact, in an upcoming meta-analysis (a study that combines all effects from other studies), Dr. Peter Ditto and his colleagues found no statistically significant difference between progressives and conservatives on measures of bias.

Comment: A very interesting look into some of the biases inherent in what's going on today in politics. Take look at Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind for a deeper examination into the divide between the left and the right. For more on Haidt see: Scientific explanation for 'libtards'? Conservatives have more complex moral compass than liberals

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Attention

UNICEF to RT: 'Extraordinary devastation' - Mosul healthcare inadequate months after 'liberation'


RT
Fri, 09 Feb 2018 09:50 UTC
Local residents carry bodies
© Ari Jalal / ReutersLocal residents carry bodies taken from rubble in Old City of Mosul on January 17, 2018.
The healthcare system in Mosul is still far from adequate due to the "massive extent of devastation" inflicted, more than six months since the end of the battle for the city, UNICEF's representative in Iraq told RT.

The situation in Mosul remains tough, with its residents having extremely limited access to health facilities, despite all the efforts of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and other humanitarian organizations, Peter Hawkins said. The official has recently paid a personal visit to Mosul to hand over equipment to a public health laboratory and witnessed the situation on the ground.

"What we need to understand is the extent of the problem. This is a massive city. Mosul city probably faced one of the biggest urban warfares since World War II and 2.2 - 2.4 million people affected. It's an enormous challenge to everybody to try and clear everything up and get the people working again," Hawkins told RT.

Comment: See also: Where is the coalition? Mosul lies in ruins, corpse-filled and receiving no aid months after liberation

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Stock Down

US stock market plunges again - Dow down another 1,000 points


RT
Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:54 UTC
New York Stock Exchange
© Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
All US stock market indexes were down when they closed amid a volatile trading week that some analysts say could be on pace to match the 2008 financial crisis.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 1,032 points on Thursday, or 4.15 percent, closing at 23,860.46. The Nasdaq Composite was down 274 points, closing at 6,777.16, and the S&P 500 lost 100 points to close at 2.581.

After plunging 666 points last Friday and 1,175 points on Monday, the Dow seemed to stabilize at just under 25,000 on Tuesday, oscillating between 600 points up at its highest and 560 points down at its lowest.

Comment: See also:

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