Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Amid the carnage in Yemen, civilians also face consequences of the US war on terror

Bethan McKernan
The Independent
Thu, 16 Nov 2017 10:12 UTC
Yemen war
© GettyChildren sit amidst the rubble of a house hit by Saudi-led coalition planes; amid that bombardment they also face raids by US forces searching for terrorists
Six months after US Navy Seals raided their village in search of al Qaeda jihadis, neither the mental or physical wounds endured by the Adhal family are healing.

Twelve-year-old Othman Mohammed Saleh al Adhal spoke quietly, focussing on the middle distance rather than his interviewers, as he recounted what happened in tiny Adhlan in Yemen's Marib province on 23 May.

"I was sleeping outside because it was hot," he said.

"Then you could hear the planes and helicopters. I was scared so I ran back to the house to find my mum. That's when an American appeared. I screamed ... He shot me twice."

Othman gestured to his forearms, both of which bear bullet wound scarring. By the time the gun battle died down an hour later and Othman found his mother, she was weeping over the bodies of his two older brothers.

Comment: Contrary to the narrative that the US is fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen, we have this piece of data:
The AP reports on something that has been more or less common knowledge for years:
The leader of al-Qaida' branch in Yemen said that his militants have often fought alongside Yemeni government factions - remarks that could embarrass the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the impoverished Arab country's Shiite rebels.
More on the human tragedy of Yemen and the US collusion in it:

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Info

Tesla sued for failing to stop alleged "systematic racial discrimination" of employees


RT
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 21:20 UTC
tesla racism
Tesla is facing its first-ever class action lawsuit over allegations the company is a "hotbed for racist behavior." RT spoke with the attorney representing the plaintiffs, who accused the company of failing to end racial discrimination against employees.

Attorney Lawrence A. Organ told RT that this is the third lawsuit he has filed on behalf of Tesla employees claiming racial discrimination, but the one filed Monday is the biggest of them all as it is a class action suit. The first lawsuit involved co-workers using the N-word, which was caught on video and sent to RT by Organ. The second involved a picture of what is referred to as a "piccaninny," which the attorney describes as being a way to depict black people in a "demeaning" way following the Civil War.

Organ said that after the second lawsuit, more people began complaining of similar instances and "we came to a belief that the problems were more systematic than just localized in the company." He noted that in all of the cases "the conduct is similar and the failure by the human resources department to address these issues is similar."
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Gear

Pentagon confirms active-duty service member has received sex-reassignment surgery

Lolita C. Baldor
Yahoo News
Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
us military
An active-duty service member has received gender-reassignment surgery, the Pentagon said Tuesday, amid ongoing debate over whether transgender troops should be allowed to continue to serve in the military,

Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White said the surgery was done Tuesday in a private hospital and was paid for by the military's health coverage because the doctor deemed it was medically necessary.

"''Military hospitals do not have the surgical expertise to perform this type of surgery, therefore it was conducted in a private hospital," White said, adding that because this service member "had already begun a sex-reassignment course of treatment, and the treating doctor deemed this surgery medically necessary, a waiver was approved by the director of the Defense Health Agency."

Comment: I'm a transgender, decorated veteran, and I oppose military-sponsored sex changes
Critics of tax-funded 'sex-change' surgery note that battle-readiness is diminished after the surgeries, which RAND explained require 21 days of medical leave plus at least 90 days of medical disability. Even more recovery time is needed for men to undergo the sex change to a woman, making a soldier non-deployable for at least 135 days. RAND also acknowledged that in some cases complications from elective genital surgery might make a soldier unfit for duty permanently, as up to 20 percent of men undergoing 'vaginoplasty' have serious complications.
See also:
Feminist Camille Paglia: 'Transgender mania is a symptom of West's cultural collapse

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Fire

BREAKING NEWS: Four people are taken to hospital as fire breaks out in 15-storey tower block near Belfast, Northern Ireland

Abe Hawken
Daily Mail
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:44 UTC
Photographs posted online showed smoke and flames coming from the Coolmoyne House tower block in Dunmurry, in the west of the capital
Photographs posted online showed smoke and flames coming from the Coolmoyne House tower block in Dunmurry, in the west of the capital
Four residents living in a high rise tower block are being treated by paramedics after a fire broke out at their 15-storey building.

Photographs and footage posted online showed smoke and flames coming from the Coolmoyne House tower block in Dunmurry, near Belfast.

Emergency services are currently tackling the blaze which comes just five months after the tragic Grenfell Tower incident in west London.
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Arrow Up

California NAACP calls for investigation of all Gülen-affiliated charter schools

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heili
Cloaking Inequality
Fri, 10 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
gulen
© REUTERS
Did you know that Muhammed Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi (pictured), an Imam who exited Turkey and is sequestered in rural Pennsylvania, is operating the second largest affiliated network of charter schools in the United States? (Yes, this is the same Gülen that Michael Flynn allegedly was trying to have extradited from the United States)

In the past I have blogged about the Gülen-affiliated charter schools in the posts Bad Charters, Bad Charters, "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you" and Gulen-affiliated charter schools are bad apples? and Empire of Deceit says charters squandering taxes and violating immigration laws.

When I watched the film Killing Ed, I was skeptical, as I am paid to be. So when I was in Houston to give a talk at Rice University, I ran into a former Gülen Harmony student and asked a few questions.

Q: Was it true that the Gülen schools were populated with many teachers from Turkey who had difficulty speaking English

A: Yes

Q: Was it true that some students didn't actually do their own science projects as alleged in the film Killing Ed.

A: Yes

Comment: Gulen's US-based madrasahs, which span the globe (over 600 schools, with over 4 million followers), particularly in Central Asia, are widely regarded as CIA fronts. His 'schools' are banned in Russia. All signs point towards Gulen being a key player in the creation and maintenance of the U.S.'s radical Islamic groups. The following is what Sibel Edmonds had to say about Gülen's network and how it is being used in Central Asia:
"He has since established more than 300 madrasahs in Central Asia and what he calls universities that have a front that is called Moderate Islam, but he is closely involved in training mujahideen-like militia Islam who are brought from Pakistan and Afghanistan into Central Asia where his madrasahs operate, and his organization's network is estimated to be around $25 billion.

He has opened several Islamic universities in the United States. As I said it's being promoted under Moderate Islam. It is supported by certain U.S. authorities here because of the operations in Central Asia, but what they have been doing since late 1990s is actually radical Islam and militizing (phonetic) these very, very young, from the age 14, 15, by commandoes they use, and this is both commandoes from Turkish military, commandoes from Pakistani ISI in Central Asia and Azerbaijan, and after that they bring them to Turkey, and from Turkey they send them through Europe, to European and elsewhere."
See also:
Tajikistan to discontinue Gülen schools, citing 'shadowy mission'
Wolf in sheep's clothing: Who and 'what' is Fethullah Gülen?

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Arrow Down

The disastrous fallout of campus postmodernism

Michael Shermer
Scientific American
Fri, 01 Sep 2017 18:46 UTC
postmodernist cartoon
© Izhar Cohen
The roots of the current campus madness

In a 1946 essay in the London Tribune entitled "In Front of Your Nose," George Orwell noted that:
"[...]we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
The intellectual battlefields today are on college campuses, where students' deep convictions about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and their social justice antipathy toward capitalism, imperialism, racism, white privilege, misogyny and "cissexist heteropatriarchy" have bumped up against the reality of contradictory facts and opposing views, leading to campus chaos and even violence. Students at the University of California, Berkeley, and outside agitators, for example, rioted at the mere mention that conservative firebrands Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter had been invited to speak (in the end, they never did). Demonstrators at Middlebury College physically attacked libertarian author Charles Murray and his liberal host, professor Allison Stanger, pulling her hair, twisting her neck and sending her to the ER.**
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Megaphone

Thousands of teens gather for apparent flash-mob in downtown Brussels - Event busted by riot police


RT
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:07 UTC
police riots brussels
© Nils Quintelier / Global Look PressNovember 15, 2017 - riot police at the Muntplein - Place de la Monnaie, during a face-off between the police and youngsters, in the city center of Brussels
Violent clashes have erupted in central Brussels as police were confronted by "hundreds of young people" who had reportedly gathered to meet a social network star. The youths threw projectiles at police and damaged stores and cars in the area, local media report.


Comment: It was mostly teens, and the 'star' they apparently went to see - or who may have organized it - is also just a kid who is renowned on local social media networks for his pranks.


The clashes broke out at the Place de la Monnaie, a square near the Belgian federal opera house in central Brussels. The unrest reportedly began when police officers approached a large group of youths gathered at the square.

The gathering started throwing projectiles at the officers and even forced them to retreat, Belgian broadcaster RTBF reported. The police then called for backup and attempted to disperse the crowd.


Comment: So it escalated quickly then.


A video posted on Twitter shows police officers in riot gear supported by a water cannon moving along the streets of the Belgian capital.

Comment: The authorities are being ridiculous in their reaction to this particular incident, although it's easy to see why they're hysterical about a large public gathering in the city after going through cycles of terror attacks, martial law, and riots in recent years.

Just last weekend there was a riot nearby when some among the thousands of Moroccan football fans (who have been a large minority community in Brussels for decades) clashed with riot police as they celebrated their 'origin' country's success on qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The 'generalized chaos' out there could well be having cumulative effects, where one thing rolls into another - harmless flash-mobs will soon look, to the authorities, no different from riots, from protests, from pleas for food...

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Info

Sports Minister Kolobkov: 'Russia fulfilled all WADA criteria, should be reinstated'


RT
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:19 UTC
Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov
© Denis Balibouse / ReutersRussian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov
Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov believes the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) has fulfilled the criteria set out for it to be reinstated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Kolobkov, along with the president of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), Alexander Zhukov, represented Russia at the WADA Executive Committee Meeting on Wednesday in Seoul, South Korea.

"Together with the president of the ROC, we tried to explain our stance on RUSADA and its reinstatement. We spoke about what has been done in recent times," Kolobkov said, TASS reported.

Comment: See also:

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Stock Down

Migrant crisis fail: Over 850k people hit by housing shortage in Germany - Homelessness up 150%


Reuters
Tue, 14 Nov 2017 18:08 UTC
Groebenzell
© REUTERS/Michaela RehleGeneral view at residential building of village Groebenzell near Munich, Germany August 24, 2016.
A housing crisis is spreading in Germany, the Federal Homelessness Association said on Tuesday, forecasting that 1.2 million people could be living in shelters by 2018.

The report came amid heightened concern about Germany's rising poverty rate and ability to integrate 1.1 million migrants that have arrived over the past two years, drawn by the country's reputation for affluence, efficiency and stability.

The homelessness association said that more than 850,000 people lacked their own accommodation in 2016, up 150 percent from 2014, and half of those affected were migrants.

A total of 52,000 people were living on the streets in 2016, up a third from 2014, the group said in its report.

Comment: Migrants first, Germans last? And the German establishment wonders why its citizens are so fed up and turning to the right? It doesn't take a brain surgeon to follow the cause and effect here. Who wins in this migrant crisis? Not the migrants, not their home countries, not their destination countries. Who benefits from keeping Europe weak and polarized?

See: The Truth Perspective: Weapons of Mass Migration: Interview with Michael Springmann on Europe's Migrant Crisis

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Attention

UAE minister warns all European mosques should be placed under state surveillance


RT
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:03 UTC
Shoes
© Odd Andersen / AFP
A loose oversight over mosques is what contributes to the rise of Islamist terrorism in Europe, an UAE minister warned. He then called on Germany and its neighbors to introduce stricter regulation over Muslim prayer halls to prevent radicalization.

"You can't just leave a mosque open and allow anyone to go there and to preach. You need to have licences," Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al-Nahyan, the minister for tolerance of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), told Germany's DPA news agency as he commented on the security situation in Europe. He added that the governmental noninvolvement into the activities of religious communities is what has led to the rapid rise of extremism.

Muslims in Germany as well as in the neighboring France, Belgium and the UK had been radicalized exactly due to the fact that authorities in these countries did not pay enough attention to what happened in the mosques on their territory, the minister argued. "Germany and other European states must eventually exert stricter control over such meeting places of Islamists," he said.
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