Society's ChildS

Christmas Tree

Danish school cancels Christmas because education law forbids 'preaching' to non-Christian children

church goers attendance
© Global Look Press
Parents of local children, education officials and leading Danish politicians have criticized a primary school after it chose to cancel the traditional Christmas service, due to the presence of students of immigrant backgrounds.

"We took the decision because we have children who are not Protestant," Marianne Vederso Schmidt, the head of Gribskolen in Graested, a town of fewer than 5,000 people in eastern Denmark, wrote in an intranet posting earlier this month.

Schmidt noted that the decision may have been overdue, as the education law forbids preaching "and it must be left to the individual families whether they want to privately attend a service."

Comment: Note that all of these diktats come from the upper levels of the education board and were not called for by the minority groups they claim to be protecting. And surely the event can be voluntary? It is true though that many areas of Europe (and even in the US) that have a history based in the Christian tradition have seen the numbers of those attending church, and their beliefs in general, dropping dramatically:


Bizarro Earth

Surgeon pleads guilty to burning his initials on patients' organs

A surgeon who left his initials on his patients' livers has pled guilty to two charges of assault by beating.

Liver surgery
© Fabian Bimmer / ReutersLiver surgery
Simon Bramhall, a liver, spleen and pancreas surgeon, carried out the branding in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in 2013. He used an argon beam, a device used by surgeons to prevent bleeding and sometimes to mark where to operate on an organ.

Bramhall pled guilty at the Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday, but pled not guilty to assault causing actual bodily harm. He will be sentenced on January 12.

Take 2

Morgan Spurlock, director of 'Super Size Me', wonders 'when will they come for me' and confesses to rape

Spurlock wrote that he has 'been unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend' he's ever had, adding that his hatred of this behavior 'didn't make me stop'

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock
© Mark O'Neill / PostmediaFilmmaker Morgan Spurlock poses with an 'Egg McMuffin.'
For weeks, women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against powerful men. On Wednesday evening, one man went against the grain and admitted his own long history of sexual misconduct against his classmates, co-workers and his two wives.

"Super Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock, who wrote that he "built a career on finding the truth," shared a detailed account of his misconduct stretching back to his college days in a confessional blog post that he tweeted with the note, "I am Part of the Problem."

Handcuffs

Cops taser grandpa to death while he was handcuffed in back of police cruiser (VIDEO)

Delbert McNeil
An investigation into the death of a 49-year-old Texas man is now underway after he died while in police custody earlier this month. The Free Thought Project was given exclusive video of the tragic last moments of Delbert McNeil's life as he screamed in agony while police tasered the handcuffed grandfather in the back of their cruiser-until he died.

Hamlin Police Department claim they responded about 1:10 a.m. on December 2 to reports of a "male suspect, possibly under the influence, throwing items in front of a local business."

While the police claim the caller said the man was throwing things, according to the niece of the woman who called, Tabitha Brown, who is also the victim's daughter, her aunt called police because she saw a "man walking in the road." She did not know this man was McNeil.

According to Brown, the responding officer was Hamlin Police Officer Nic Puente-who she says has a history with McNeil and open lawsuits against him for excessive force.

McNeil has a history of mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In fact, he was once found not guilty by reason of insanity for an altercation he had with police in Odessa, Texas in 2014. McNeil has a fear of police and the Hamlin department knew this, according to the family.

Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: Massive Corruption Leads to 92% of Ukrainians Wanting Old Government Back, Thanks America!

Yanukovych Putin
Ukraine has long been known for pervasive corruption. Yet, the current US-backed regime in Kiev takes the cake - or rather, it steals it from disabled children.

Ukraine is so corrupt, Joe 'attaboy' Biden commented that corruption was "eating Ukraine like a cancer." He should know too, after one of his sons cashed in on the firesale of state assets following the US regime change operation there in 2014.

Not to be outdone, the first lady of Ukraine, Marina Poroshenko, is embroiled in a corruption scandal of her own. The country's Ministry of Justice suspects her involvement in a money-laundering scheme with funds meant for the families of children with disabilities. If true, it sounds like she could be a viable candidate for Ukraine's next president. She could do lunch and compare schemes with that haggardly has-been Hillary.

But the Ukrainian First Lady is probably just taking her lead from her husband. President Petro Poroshenko and his supporters have been making moves to do away with the country's anti-corruption bodies, drawing criticism even from the West. The head of Ukraine's anti-corruption committee, Yegor Sobolev, has recently been dismissed. He condemned the move saying, "the former and present corrupt elite have colluded. Their plan is to break the independence of anti-corruption bodies and replace them with fake ones." To make matters worse, Western governments have dumped millions of their citizens' tax-dollars into Ukraine's anti-corruption programs, with the result being... more and more corruption. Amazing!

Pumpkin 2

SOTT Focus: Dutch 'Purple Friday' Encourages Blurring The Lines Between Male And Female

purple friday sebastian
© RTV Utrecht/Kees Hoogendijk15-year-old Sebastien (male), who calls himself 'genderqueer', often goes to school wearing a short skirt and long heels.
Last Friday was 'Purple Friday' in the Netherlands, a day on which students are encouraged to wear purple to school in order to show their solidarity with homosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians and transgenders. Since 2010, 'Purple Friday' takes place annually on the second Friday of December. It was inspired by the equivalent annual 'LGBTQ awareness day' in the US, called 'Spirit Day'.

The Dutch organization for LGBT men and women - COC Nederland - organized this year's 'Purple Friday' across more than 900 high schools. This year's theme was 'pigeonholing'. An article on the COC website explains what they mean:
Around 250,000 students will wear purple clothing on that day to show that everyone can be themselves at school, whatever your sexual orientation or gender identity is. This year, students will be campaigning against pigeonholing. Can a boy wear make-up at school? Is it alright if a girl wants to be a car mechanic? Can boys kiss with boys and girls with girls? Will students who don't feel comfortable with the label 'boy' or 'girl' also be accepted? These are the type of questions students will ask on Purple Friday with posters, events, parties and by wearing the color purple.
poster coc
© COC NederlandOne of the posters used by COC Nederland. The elderly couple are saying: "In our time, you could immediately see who was a boy...and who was a girl." The girl (?) wearing boyish clothes says: "Welcome to our time!". The sign on the right says: "Wear purple to school to show that you're not pigeonholing."
It is a rather sad state of affairs to see Dutch authorities blurring the lines between what is male and female, in the process leading children on a path of confusion and dividing society between people who find such behavior (rightly) disturbing - thereafter labeling them as 'bullies' - and people who find such behavior hunky-dory.

Evil Rays

Ex-Facebook chiefs feel guilty for its 'social destruction', which has nothing to do with Russia!

Facebook
Former executives at Facebook are now coming out to condemn how the social media giant is "destroying society and civil discourse" and spreading "misinformation." Moreover, they say, it's got nothing to do with Russia.

One of the former Facebook gurus is Chamath Palihapitiya who told a business conference in the US that he doesn't even let his own children use the social media platform, so harmful is it, in his view.

Those admissions should be seen as a welcome rational perspective to counter the hysterical Western mainstream media discourse propagated over the past year, which seeks to blame Russia for interfering in elections and sowing discord in society - largely, it is claimed, through manipulation of social media like Facebook.

Road Cone

Six children dead after train collides with school bus in southern France

France train
© GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP
At least four children were killed and 19 more injured when a school bus collided with a train in southern France on Thursday. The school bus was reportedly cut in two in the collision.

The incident happened outside the town of Perpignan near France's Mediterranean coast and the border with Spain, local media reports. BFMTV first talked of at least three fatalities, but later the Interior Ministry raised the total casualties to four dead.

On top of that, over a dozen sustained various injuries, with seven of them getting injured seriously, the ministry said. All those victims are school-bus passengers. On board the train, there were 25 people, three of who were slightly injured, Reuters reported.

Comment: Authorities have updated the death toll to six.


Arrow Up

Navajo Nation sues 'predatory' Wells Fargo for $50mn for using 'unlawful practices'

Wells Fargo
The Navajo Nation is suing Wells Fargo for $50 million, saying the bank used "unlawful practices" to trick its members. The suit comes on the heels of a new study suggesting the tribe could benefit from evolving energy markets.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in New Mexico on Wednesday. The suit says that Wells Fargo employees routinely tricked members into opening unnecessary bank accounts, and then set up credit or debit cards without consent and collected fees that had not been authorized. The tribe declared Wells Fargo had engaged in "predatory and unlawful practices."

The complaint filed in relation to the lawsuit further states that elderly Navajos were duped into purchasing products so Wells Fargo could meet sales quotas and collect fees.

"Under intense pressure from superiors to grow sales figures, Wells Fargo employees lied to Navajo consumers, telling elderly Navajo citizens who did not speak English that in order to have their checks cashed they needed to sign up for savings accounts they neither needed nor understood," the complaint read, AZ Central reported.

Comment: More on Wells Fargo's banking practices:


V

British tribunal recognizes Wikileaks as media organization

assange
© Peter Nicholls / Reuters
Julian Assange's WikiLeaks has been recognized as a "media organization" by a British tribunal, a ruling which may help Assange's defense against extradition to the United States, on press freedom grounds.

The UK's information tribunal, which is roughly equivalent to a court, published a ruling on Thursday that stated: "WikiLeaks is a media organization which publishes and comments upon censored or restricted official materials involving war, surveillance or corruption, which are leaked to it in a variety of different circumstances."

The tribunal, headed up judge Andrew Bartlett, QC, made the comment under the heading "Facts,"according to the Guardian.

The US has been seeking to prosecute Assange since 2010, when WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of confidential US defense and diplomatic documents. US attorney general Jeff Sessions said in April this year that the arrest of Assange is a priority.