Society's Child

The Venezuelan demonstration you didn't hear about

Cheryl LaBash
Workers World
Thu, 08 Sep 2016 13:51 UTC

Red-clad supporters of President Nicolás Maduro packed Avenida Bolivar in the heart of the capital for as far as the eye could see.

What the media left out

The international corporate media reported on a large demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sept. 1. But there were two demonstrations that day. The one not covered in the U.S. was huge and in support of the progressive government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Red-clad supporters packed Avenida Bolivar in the heart of the capital for as far as the eye could see. They were responding to the call for a "Great Occupation" issued by Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to defend peace in Venezuela.

A New York Times article on Sept. 2 did not even mention #LaCalleEsChavista, meaning "the street supports the Chávez program."

Instead, the media widely reported on the action built for weeks by the anti-Chavista electoral coalition called Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), which was limited to the more affluent suburb of Miranda. MUD had projected that a million people would come to the capital on Sept. 1 to "take Caracas" and overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution.

Comment: No country is too insignificant for the Empire to meddle in. It's Venezuela's misfortune to be a resource-rich relatively close to the U.S. How dare it spend its budget on the "little people" when U.S. corporations could be making so much profit?

Dakota Pipeline: Armed troops deployed with militarized checkpoints ahead of court ruling

Jay Syrmopoulos
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple has activated the North Dakota National Guard ahead of a federal judge's expected Friday ruling on a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to stop the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline. While Dalrymple claims the measure is meant to ensure public safety, the reality is that the state intends to use the Guard to assist in denying access to the protest camps in the event that the federal court rules against the tribe. With the protest camps at one point swelling to over a reported 4,000 individuals, the state is attempting to employ a denial of access strategy in the event that it grows in the wake of the expected federal court ruling.

During a press conference announcing the activation of the National Guard, Dalrymple stated that a contingent of 24 Guard members will assist law enforcement in providing security at a number of traffic checkpoints approximately 30-miles from the protest site. Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann, the head of the Guard, says another 100 Guard members will be on standby if needed to respond to any "incidents."

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who also sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), is expected to rule by Friday on the tribe's request to temporarily halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline. Earlier this week, Boasberg granted in part and denied in part the tribe's request for a temporary restraining order to stop the project. He said he would decide by Friday whether to grant the larger challenge to the pipeline, which would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits, according to Reuters.

The tribe has been leading a protest for months, with the main protest camps where the pipeline route passes near its reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border, swelling to over 4,000 people in recent weeks.

Comment:
© tspr.org
Timeline and updates

August 2016

After covering the camp in the spring of 2016, Unicorn Riot returned to Standing Rock Reservation on Wednesday, August 10th, when Standing Rock tribal members and allies blocked the entrance to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site.
August 11th, a dozen or so people were arrested blocking the construction site entrances.
Day 3, the fight to protect land & water intensified around the construction sites of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
© thebakken.com
4th day, the pipeline resistance encampment swelled and prepared for more action.
August 15th, land defenders stormed the construction site halting construction, and thenext day construction was halted as well.
August 17th saw State Police begin checkpoints, roadblocks, and psyops as protesters united to defend water.
August 24th, camps prepared as Federal injunction hearing looms.
Camps organize to stay as injunction postponed.
On August 31st, Non-Violent Direct Action stopped DAPL construction for over 6 hours.

September 2016

Indigenous Water Protectors Swarm Dakota Access Pipeline Site, Stop Work
Request by the Standing Rock Sioux to stop the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline
September 9th, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple has activated the North Dakota National Guard
September 9th, Federal judge denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request for a temporary injunction to halt the construction
Parties to appear for a status conference on September 16

Son killed by private DC police, mother suspects cover-up

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 02:00 UTC

The death of Alonzo Smith has already been ruled a homicide by Washington DC's medical examiner, but Alonzo's mother said she's waited 10 months for answers and fears she has been deceived. "The hardest part of this, outside of my son being murdered by law enforcement who took an oath to protect and serve, is the Metropolitan Police Department and the US attorney's office are conspiring together and refusing to release the two names of the officers who murdered my son," Alonzo's mother, Beverly Smith, told RT. "It has been 10 months now and I have not heard anything from anyone concerning my son's case - only that it is still under investigation."

Alonzo Smith was found unable to breathe and in handcuffs on November 1 last year in a second-floor hallway of a Southwest Washington apartment building, according to police. District officers had responded to a call about an assault. Police accounts have not provided details about what happened before the DC officers responded to the encounter between Smith and security guards [private police] at around 4:00 a.m.

The report did say, however, that officers administered CPR before he was rushed to United Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Video of efforts to resuscitate Smith have been released but not of what happened before he was found handcuffed and unable to breathe. A DC medical examiner's office in December ruled the death of the 27-year-old teacher's assistant a homicide.

LaShon Beamon, spokeswoman for the DC Office of the Medical Examiner said Smith died of "sudden cardiac arrest," complicated by "acute cocaine toxicity while restrained," according to the Washington Post. She listed a secondary cause of death as compression.

Comment: As more and more police departments necessitate manpower, or cheap labor, or a need to create layers between the public and the justice system, the use of private police continues to grow. These substitutes become the interface with the public, less equipped to handle an emergency, untrained in community relations. Protecting private police, ensures the above.

See also: Armies and police are being privatized around the world and business is booming

'Killed trying to save people's lives': Aleppo neighborhood loses last surgeon in militant fire

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 21:20 UTC

The neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo has lost its last senior medic. He was killed in rebel fire while trying to fulfill his duty - to help the weak and the sick amid the hostilities, his family told RT.

Dr. Shahed was killed on Thursday by a Katyusha rocket fired from the rebel-held Kafr Hamra area in Aleppo Province, Lizzie Phelan reported.

"He [Shahed] died because they called him and told him there was shelling and some people were in the medical center who needed his help, so he went to try and save their lives, and he was killed," the surgeon's wife, Mayada, said.

His wife added that Dr. Shahed "was always helping people."

One American's reason for moving to Russia

Yakov Germanov
Fort Russ
Sun, 04 Sep 2016 12:08 UTC

Comment: The rest of this American cultural refugee's story has since been published by Fort Russ, so we're re-running it with Part 2 included.

Katehon recently ran an article about the Russian Federation possibly offering to open it's gates to cultural refugees from the western world. I decided that I should author a piece about this subject - because I am in fact myself a cultural refugee from the western world who lives in Russia.

To be clear, I consider myself a cultural refugee, not an expat. An expat is a person who leaves a country and resides in another country not as a citizen but as a guest. A cultural refugee is a person who enters a country to become part of its culture because his origin culture is diseased. I work my best to assimilate to Russian cultural norms and, given my Slavic origins, it is not particularly difficult. As my ancestors dreamed about leaving Europe for a better life in the USA, I dreamed about leaving the USA for a better life in Europe.

My first few visits back to Europe were - well, enjoyable, but they did not quite "fit" me. I had seen Denmark, Sweden, France, Holland, and Switzerland. While all were quite nice, a variety of factors led me to visit Russia next. When I got on my first plane to Russia, I didn't know what to expect, as my Russian-Polish ancestors who left there so long ago never had much good to say about it, though I grew up with my grandmother drinking Stolichnaya (during the Cold War!) and her cooking borscht and pelmeni. I grew up wearing Topachki (similar to slippers, but a lot of people, myself included, use sandals - mine are Adidas, of course). It was during my first visit to Moscow that I really felt a strong sense of "home", and knew that Russia was the country for me.

Germany: Two planes collide in mid-air during air show; 2 dead

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 19:35 UTC

Two people have been killed after two airplanes crashed head-on during an airshow in Grossrückerswalde in the eastern state of Saxony in Germany.

The incident happened on Saturday afternoon during Flugplatzfest 2016.

Police in Chemnitz confirmed that after colliding, the glider crashed to the ground, killing its two occupants, while the ultralight aircraft was able to land at a nearby airport, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Most people today want to be propagandized

Daniel Lattier
Intellectual Takeout
Wed, 31 Aug 2016 17:47 UTC

There's a principle in hypnotism that goes like this: A person cannot be hypnotized against his will. He must be a willing subject. He must be fully cooperative.

So it goes with propaganda. For propaganda to be effective, it requires submissive subjects. As Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy wrote, propaganda is a "co-production in which we are willing participants."

Propaganda is typically defined as the dissemination of particularly biased information in support of a political or ideological cause. In his 1965 book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, philosopher Jacques Ellul provided us with some of the basic characteristics of propaganda: it thwarts dialogue, it is geared toward the masses, it utilizes various media, it is continuous, it is not intended to make one think.

'Incarcerated Workers' stage nationwide prison labor strike 45 years after 1971 NY's Attica riot

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 13:14 UTC

On the 45th anniversary of the famous Attica riot, inmates across the US are attempting to bring attention to the dire circumstances that prison populations endure, in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, by going on strike.

September 9, 2016 marks 45 years since the prisoners in New York's Attica Correctional Facility took over the prison to demand humane treatment. In the four-and-a-half decades since then, little has improved, according to those living behind bars.

Inmates are protesting a myriad of problems facing the incarcerated population, such as the low wages they receive for work they are required to do by penitentiaries that benefit the facilities themselves and private companies that contract out labor to prisons.

Some inmates' grievances were outlined in a list of demands posted on the Industrial Workers of the World Incarcerated Workers' Facebook page, containing complaints about the conditions prisoners in South Carolina face.

Comment: See also: Bend the bars: US inmates organizing nationwide strike in protest of prison slavery

Bittersweet progress: Russian teen genius with cerebral palsy invents communication software for the disabled

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:45 UTC

Dozens of articles have been published about Ivan Bakaidov, a St Petersburg schoolboy with cerebral palsy (CP), who has learned how to program, and ride a trike. But the plaudits lay bare the obstacles and low expectations faced by the disabled in Russia.

Headlines have called the 17-year-old 'the cerebral palsy genius' and 'the Russian Stephen Hawking' (the English physicist actually suffers from ALS, a different condition) but Bakaidov has repeatedly batted away those compliments, saying that his is merely a sound mind locked within an uncooperative body.

That is not to belittle his achievements.

Bakaidov was a year old when he was diagnosed with CP, a neurological disorder that severely hampers his movement, and is accompanied by dysarthia, an inability to use his vocal chords to effectively articulate sounds, meaning he cannot be understood by any but his closest family members.

Suspicious gas canisters found near Marseille synagogue

RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 16:16 UTC

A suspicious vehicle containing two gas canisters has been found near a synagogue in Marseille, France, just a week after a similar incident near Paris' Notre Dame cathedral led to the arrest of several Islamic State sympathizers, local media report.

Comment: See:

The suspicious car was found in southern France on Saturday morning next to the Community Centre of Bar Yohaye (local synagogue), La Provence newspaper reported.

Two gas cylinders were found in the car, the paper said, adding that the area has been put under heavy security.

The police Prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône, Laurent Nunez, confirmed to la Province that no detonators were found in the car, adding that it was too early to draw parallels between Saturday's incident and the one that took place in Paris last week.

Comment: In a climate of hysteria, all that's needed to "draw parallels" and make a connection is to make a statement denying any connection has been found. It's a positive feedback loop where both real and imagined threats only serve to heighten the hysteria. The strategy of tension becomes self-perpetuating.

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Society's Child

The Venezuelan demonstration you didn't hear about

Dakota Pipeline: Armed troops deployed with militarized checkpoints ahead of court ruling

Son killed by private DC police, mother suspects cover-up

'Killed trying to save people's lives': Aleppo neighborhood loses last surgeon in militant fire

One American's reason for moving to Russia

Germany: Two planes collide in mid-air during air show; 2 dead

Most people today want to be propagandized

'Incarcerated Workers' stage nationwide prison labor strike 45 years after 1971 NY's Attica riot

Bittersweet progress: Russian teen genius with cerebral palsy invents communication software for the disabled

Suspicious gas canisters found near Marseille synagogue

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