Society's ChildS


Horse

Political Correctness in Ancient China

Stefan Verstappen
chinastrategies.com
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 19:24 UTC
Zhao Gao
© danieldendy.blogspot.com
Excerpted from: The Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China, Stefan Verstappen

Qin Dynasty China, 221 to 206 BC

The notorious eunuch Zhao Gao is credited with helping to bring down the house of Qin, ending China's first and shortest imperial dynasty.

After the first emperor died, Zhao Gao conspired with the chief minister Li Si to dispose of the legitimate heir to the throne and install a weak and corrupt puppet emperor, Huhei.

Having established his influence over the young emperor, Zhao Gao was nervous about possible opposition from the other ministers of state. So he devised a test to see which ones would be faithful to him. One day he brought a stag into the court and presented it to the emperor explaining that it was a horse.
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Attention

Some voting machines may be hackable after all: Cellular modem allows results to be sent over the Internet

Russ Baker
Who What Why
Wed, 14 Dec 2016 19:21 UTC
Connector
For weeks now, we've heard that voting machines cannot be hacked because they are not connected to the Internet. We now learn that is not true.

It turns out that machines which electronically record and tabulate votes are in fact equipped with modems — permitting communication with the outside world.

In an affidavit, John R. Brakey, an Arizona-based election integrity activist currently seeking a hand count in a number of Wisconsin counties that used optical scanners to recount paper ballots, states his knowledge that:
"...many of these counties are vulnerable to insider or sophisticated hacking because election results are transmitted through a cellular modem that is connected to the Internet."
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Blackbox

Dramatic surge in populist movements rising up against the Establishment makes for uncertain 2017

Catherine Triomph
Yahoo
Tue, 13 Dec 2016 19:24 UTC
Donald Trump
© Mike Segar / Reuters
Donald Trump and Brexit: 2016 was a year of populist earthquakes on both sides of the Atlantic, spelling huge uncertainty for upcoming European elections and the direction of US policy.

On June 23 and November 8, barely 20 weeks apart, millions of Britons and Americans rejected the establishment in what Richard Wike of the Pew Research Center interpreted as a surge of anxiety about globalization, immigration and terrorism.

Globalization and immigration have shifted the jobs market and demographics in the West. Many people, even in a country built by immigrants such as the United States, draw a connection between crime and immigration, Wike said.

Across Europe, from the Netherlands to Poland, from Sweden to Italy, comparisons with the 1930s have become an echoing refrain.
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Star of David

Saga of the Murdering Medic shows Hasbara has hardened into Israeli construction of reality

Yakov Hirsch
Mondoweiss
Wed, 14 Dec 2016 17:26 UTC
Azaria's conviction
In the beginning of January 2017, Israeli sergeant Elor Azaria is going to be found guilty for the execution of Abd al Fatah Al-Sharif lying prostate on the ground in Hebron last March 24. And the Israeli political reaction to that verdict will be transformative. It is then that the hasbara culture cultivated by Benjamin Netanyahu will at last be confronted by a sane Israel led by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The discourse that will resound in Israel in defense of Azaria will be incoherent to anyone who is not an adherent of the hasbara culture that now permeates that society. Naftali Bennett, the education minister under Netanyahu, has already been saying that Azaria needs to be pardoned if convicted.

We have already heard from soldiers who say they will go "AWOL" or even desert should their fellow combatant be convicted of manslaughter charges by the military court.

The saga of the Murdering Medic is so important because it has revealed the way that "hasbara" - or the Israeli tradition of spinning its actions to try and make them acceptable to the world - has so deeply affected the spinners themselves that hasbara has hardened into an Israeli construction of reality, so much so that the many participants in that reality no longer think it is necessary to even spin bad events.

Comment: Snipit from Netanyahu's bloody incitement to the world:
Netanyahu has spouted so much Hasbara in his life he forgot it originally had a purpose? And now that Israel has won and settled as much as the occupied territory as they could possible get away with he just cant stop? And even though there is no need to dehumanize the Palestinians anymore, he just is unable to pass up the photo opportunity of a 13 year old dead girl's room with blood all over the room and even a teddy bear to boot. Who is going to dare point out this happened in the occupied territories? This murdered girl with blood on the walls has to be worth at least a week's worth of news cycles no matter what the crazy settlers do in the meantime.

But whatever Netanyahu was thinking with this video, it is sure to raise even more questions among the Israeli officials in and out of government who view Benjamin Netanyahu as the biggest threat to the whole Zionist project.

Finally: Netanyahu was speaking to the English-speaking world, to us. This video, this "narrative" must be fought tooth and nail. The "ideology" and the "story" Netanyahu is telling about Jews and their enemies in this video is the most toxic propaganda, not least to the Israeli public themselves.

As I will demonstrate in weeks to come: It has been toxic to our culture and politics here in the U.S. I believe it has poisoned our souls.
Further reading:

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Ambulance

Woman killed after falling into vat of chocolate

Richard Hartley-Parkinson
Metro UK
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 17:54 UTC
Svetlana Roslina
© East2West newsSvetlana Roslina with her husband Vladimir on their wedding day
A woman has died after falling into a giant mixer that was stirring molten chocolate.

Svetlana Roslina, 24, is believed to have been crushed to death as she tried to get out of the vat at the factory in Fedortsovo, north of Moscow.

There are mixed accounts as to how she ended up in the vat with one witness saying she was emptying ingredients into the container while another said that she was trying to retrieve her mobile phone.
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People

Does the media lie? 91% of French respondents say yes in a Twitter poll


RT
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 17:48 UTC
camera bearing the French television channel
© KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFPA camera bearing the French television channel "BFMTV" logo in Paris.
A French journalist created a stir on Twitter after launching an open poll which asks if people think the media lies. At least 91 percent of the respondents said 'yes,' adding that the media hides information, and even comparing journalism to prostitution.

The poll was launched by French journalist Jean-Jacques Bourdin, editor-in-chief of RMC radio, earlier in December. He asked one simple question: "Does the media lie to you? Vote."

Almost 8,000 people answered, and on Tuesday, Bourdin unveiled the final results, with 91 percent of the respondents saying, "Yes, the media lies to us."

"Media are partisan and distribute biased information," one person wrote under Bourdin's post.
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Handcuffs

In shock: Indiana town's entire police force resigns, alleging malfeasance


RT
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 17:38 UTC
Bunker Hill, IN police department
© Baker Gonzales / YouTube
The marshal and four deputies of a small town in northern Indiana abruptly quit their jobs, claiming the town council had asked the police department to do "illegal, unethical, and immoral things," while leaving officers underfunded.

Michael Thomison, the town marshall of Bunker Hill, Indiana, resigned this week, as did four reserve deputies, leaving the town without its own law enforcement officers, according to the Kokomo Tribune. The town will rely on the Miami County Sheriff's Office for patrol and emergency response until a new marshal is hired.

The local building commissioner also resigned "due to the actions of the current town council."
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Robot

Google employees confess all the things they hated most about working at Google

Jim Edwards
Business Insider
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 15:37 UTC
Google employees
© Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
A job at Google.

It's career heaven, right? How could a gig at the biggest, most ambitious tech company on the planet possibly be bad?

Well, take a look at this Quora thread, which is being constantly updated by current and former Google employees to dish the dirt on working for the search giant.

Turns out that working at Google isn't all free food and bike rides around campus.

Take their complaints with a grain of salt. These are the complainers, after all. But we've heard many of these same things from our own sources.
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Handcuffs

Woman who claimed to be attacked by anti-Muslim Trump supporters has been arrested for filing false police report


RT
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:52 UTC
Yasmin Seweid
© The Nassau County Police Department / FacebookSeweid claimed the men yelled "Donald Trump!" as they attacked her.
New York Police arrested a woman who claimed she was the victim of an anti-Muslim attack by men screaming "Donald Trump" after it emerged she had fabricated the entire story.

Student Yasmin Seweid, 18, claimed she was verbally attacked by "three drunk, white men" shouting "Donald Trump" at her during a subway ride on December 1.

"They kept saying, 'You don't belong here, get out of this country, go back to your country,' and finally they came really close and they were like, 'Take that rag off your head,'" Seweid told CBS at the time, adding that one of the men tried to pull off her hijab before she fled.

It's understood that at one point police had been close to finding one of the fabricated attackers, based on a description provided by Seweid. The teen wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post that she found the incident "dehumanizing" and that she couldn't speak about it "without getting emotional."

Seweid also described how president-elect Donald Trump "just promotes this stuff and is very anti-Muslim, very Islamophobic, and he's just condoning it."

Protests were held at New York's Grand Central station in response to the alleged attack.
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Handcuffs

Former cop charged with homicide in fatal on-duty shooting of Sylville Smith

Ashley Luthern
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:53 UTC
Sylville Smith
© Smith family photoSylville Smith holds his infant son, who is now 2.
Former Milwaukee police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown was charged Thursday with first-degree reckless homicide in the fatal on-duty shooting of Sylville Smith, which sparked riots in Sherman Park in August.

The homicide charge against Haeggan-Brown is only the second filed against an on-duty Milwaukee police officer in modern history.

The criminal complaint says Heaggan-Brown's first shot hit Smith in the arm while Smith was throwing a gun over a fence.

The second shot, which hit Smith in the chest, was fired after Smith tossed the gun and fell to the ground with his hands near his head.

Smith's mother, Mildred Haynes, said she is happy with the decision but thinks the charges should have been more severe.

"He shot him in the arm and shot him again in the chest...To me, he shot to kill," she said.

Comment: See also:

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