Society's ChildS


Attention

Okinawa: Boy injured as parts fall off of a US military helicopter mid-flight


RT
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 14:58 UTC
military copter
© WikipediaA US Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion
A Japanese schoolboy has reportedly become the latest victim of the much-maligned US military presence in Okinawa. An American helicopter is said to have started falling apart directly above a schoolyard, resulting in injuries to the child.

On Wednesday morning, an angular object roughly 3ft (1 meter) across fell onto a sports field packed with elementary school children near the Futenma US military base in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. The object was discovered to be a helicopter window, complete with the frame, that had fallen off an American CH-53 aircraft flying above the school grounds.

One 10-year-old boy, out of some 50 children who were assembled in the sports field, was slightly injured in the incident, Reuters reports, citing a prefecture official. The exact cause of his injuries was unclear.

Three US helicopters were flying over the school at the time of the incident, according to Japanese media. They also report that there were around 30 children in the schoolyard and that the boy suffered an injury to his left hand.

Comment:

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Arrow Down

Mexico: Man faces homicide charges for approving building that collapsed in earthquake


telesur
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 14:15 UTC
mexico earthquake
© ReutersSoldiers and rescue workers search in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 20, 2017.
Mexico City prosecutors have arrested a man for approving a seven-story building as "safe" for residential living, but which collapsed in the city's 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 19, killing two women.

Authorities have not released the man's name or profession, saying only that he faces possible homicide charges for signing off on the building in 2016. They did tell the press that the collapsed building didn't meet construction specifications legally required for the site and had "little resistance" in an earthquake-prone region.

Outside experts say the building should have been able to withstand the earthquake had it been constructed according to 2016 building standards.

Another person has already been arrested in the case.

The Mexico City Prosecutor's Office has nearly 150 investigations open related to the Sept. 19 earthquake, including the collapse of the Enrique Rebsamen school, where 28 students and teachers were killed. Investigators already found that school officials paid a US$1,400 fine in 2014 in order to avoid being shut down for faulty construction that wasn't up to code.
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Smoking

British Columbia Ferries bans smoking on ships and at all terminals


CBC News
Tue, 22 Aug 2017 15:30 UTC
BC ferry
© Susan Maclean
BC Ferries will ban smoking on all ships and at all of its terminals by January 2018.

They will also forbid passengers from remaining in cars on closed decks during sailings starting in October.

In a release, BC Ferries says the smoking ban came from provincial regulations that increased no-smoking buffer zones from three metres to six metres around any "doorway, intake or open window" to a public space or workplace.

They say buffer zones of that size are impossible to maintain on vessels and decided to extend the no-smoking policy to terminals as well.

"This new policy supports the health and wellness of our customers and employees, as it helps control their exposure to secondhand smoke," said BC Ferries President and CEO Mark Collins in a statement.
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Blackbox

Moscow university student reportedly attacked for offending Muslims, Christians, & 'all women' on social media


Meduza
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 13:18 UTC
Cuban and Russian national flags
© Reuters/Enrique De La OsaThe Cuban and Russian national flags
On December 8, a group of Moscow university students attacked a classmate and forced him to apologize on camera for comments he published on social media

Oleg Tereshchenko (who uses the online pseudonym Alexey Knyazev) told Meduza that he left campus on the afternoon of December 8. The 18-year-old management student at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) says he then ran into his classmate, Rashid Khamokhoev. Tereshchenko says the two had never spoken in person before, but they had interacted online, where they'd discussed various Muslim traditions. The two young men peacefully continued this conversation, while walking off campus, until they encountered another five students from RANEPA (Tereshchenko isn't naming them publicly, and they have yet to name themselves). The group then forced Tereshchenko to apologize for his comments about Islam on the Vkontakte student community "Love and Hate at RANEPA." In particular, they ordered him to apologize for his comments in a discussion about families in the North Caucasus forbidding their girls from dating Russian men. Tereshchenko had written that Russian federal laws do not allow such restrictions on individuals' freedom. The group of men recorded his apology on their smartphones.
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Green Light

Flashback Senators Schumer and Gillibrand pulled visa strings for athlete accused of sex abuse

Bob Fredericks
New York Post
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 13:11 UTC
Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer
© Helayne SeidmanKirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer
A snowshoe racer from India who got a visa after Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand pulled some strings was being held Friday in an upstate jail on a sex charge.

The US embassy in New Delhi rejected Tanveer Hussain's application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship last month, Fox News reported.

Local officials then appealed for help to Schumer and Gillibrand, and their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which let Hussain successfully reapply for a visa.

"Obviously, this is a troubling matter for him - these are troubling accusations," Brian Barrett, Hussain's lawyer, told Fox. "He is in good spirits and he looks forward to fighting these charges."

Comment: Being a professional athelete comes with privileges. See also:

Trump saved basketball player from Chinese prison, now he is leaving the country

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Attention

Insanity: Teacher faces sack after mistakenly calling trans student 'girl', despite immediate apology (UPDATE)


RT.com
Mon, 13 Nov 2017 12:05 UTC
students in class
A schoolteacher could be out of a job, suspended for calling a trans pupil by the wrong gender while praising a group of students for a job well done.

Mathematics teacher Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, told a group of students that included a teen who identifies as a boy "Well done girls," when he spotted them working hard in class. Sutcliffe said he was then corrected by the student, and apologized immediately.

The Oxfordshire teacher was suspended six weeks after the incident, when the student's mother lodged an official complaint. The school has conducted an investigation into the complaints made against Sutcliffe, and he faces a disciplinary hearing this week.

Comment: Readers, do not fall into the trap of thinking that just because this teacher apologized immediately that the issue should be put to rest. His apology is not good enough! The fact that he said the hateful thing he said is evidence that he has internalized discrimination to the extent that it is part of his genetic makeup and therefore he cannot be trusted to provide a sufficiently safe teaching environment for the one transgender ladyboy/girlman in the school. He should be fired, forthwith, and spend the rest of his life thinking about the horrible thing he did and attempting to atone for it, although it is highly unlikely there is anything he could do to make up for such a transgression.

Update:

The teacher is now suing the school:
The Christian is now suing the school for constructive dismissal and discrimination.

Mr. Sutcliffe later told senior staff that he didn't think it was wrong to call a biologically female pupil a girl, but insists he did not use the term on purpose because he is a professional.

Now, he is arguing that forcing him to abide by transgender ideology, despite his personal beliefs, has breached his rights.

In a letter to the head teacher, he wrote: "As a Christian, I do not share your belief in the ideology of transgenderism.

"I do not believe that young children should be encouraged to self-select a 'gender' which may be different from their biological sex.

"Or that everyone at school should adjust their behaviour to accommodate such a 'transition'; or that people should be punished for lack of enthusiasm about it."

A statement released by the Christian Legal Centre, who are representing him, explained that Mr. Sutcliffe hadn't received formal training on transgender ideology.

"The child had self-declared as 'male', but Mr. Sutcliffe, who had been given no formal instruction on how he was to refer to the pupil, said 'well done girls' in her (sic.) presence," the statement said.

"When the pupil became irate, Mr. Sutcliffe sought to diffuse the situation and apologised.


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Shoe

Trump saved basketball player from Chinese prison, now he is leaving the country

Carlos García
The Blaze
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:23 UTC
UCLA basketball players LiAngelo Lonzo LaMelo LaVar Ball
© Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images for Crosswalk ProductionsFormer UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball will be playing in Lithuania for the rest of the season after he was suspended over a shoplifting incident in China that required the intervention of President Donald Trump. Pictured from left are Lonzo Ball, LaMelo Ball, LiAngelo Ball and LaVar Ball.
Suspended UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball is going to play in Lithuania after a very public feud between his father Lavar Ball and the president over his role in saving his son and two other players from imprisonment in China.

Comment: Basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested in Hangzhou, accused of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store. As Trump was visiting China at the time, he brought up the situation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who said he would ensure fair treatment and expeditious legal processing for the players. The players' chargers were reduced and the case resolved.

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Video

The documentary must not be allowed to die

John Pilger
Counterpunch
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 23:01 UTC
documentary
© MattysFlicks / CC BY 2.0
I first understood the power of the documentary during the editing of my first film, The Quiet Mutiny.

In the commentary, I make reference to a chicken, which my crew and I encountered while on patrol with American soldiers in Vietnam.

"It must be a Vietcong chicken - a communist chicken," said the sergeant. He wrote in his report: "enemy sighted". The chicken moment seemed to underline the farce of the war - so I included it in the film.

That may have been unwise.

Comment: Here are a couple to start with:

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Arrow Down

Disbelief as Boston Globe confirms median net worth of black Bostonians is $8


RT
Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:49 UTC
black women
© Reuters
The Boston Globe had to explain there were no typographical errors in its report about Boston's black community. Readers contacted the paper after it reported the median net worth of African-American households in the Boston area is a paltry $8.

The Boston Globe's Spotlight investigation team cited the statistic in its first installment of a series focusing on Boston's black community and the city's reputation as one of the most racist urban regions in America.

Sandwiched between other realities facing African-Americans living in the periphery of Massachusetts' capital, the eyebrow-raising statistic left many readers wondering if the number was a typo, prompting the Boston Globe to write a follow-up article the next day, on December 11, titled: "That was no typo: The median net worth of black Bostonians really is $8."
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Camcorder

Video surfaces showing killer cop Philip Brailsford beating up teens months before he murdered Daniel Shaver

Jack Burns
Free Thought Project
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 12:38 UTC
Philip Brailsford
Arizona police officer Philip Brailsford became known on the internet after he was caught on video shooting and killing pest control worker Daniel Shaver. However, before Brailsford was acquitted of murdering Shaver-who was innocent and unarmed-he reportedly had a history of violent behavior.

In January 2016, police arrived at the hotel Shaver was staying in after someone claimed they saw a man with a rifle. While Shaver did have a gun in his room, it was a pellet gun using in his business of pest control. Last week, a jury found Brailsford not guilty in Shaver's homicide. However, there are still members of the public who do not believe he is innocent, and they are determined to prove Brailsford's true character.
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