Society's ChildS


Airplane

Boeing and Airbus days numbered? - Russia & China reveal their alternative


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 16:46 UTC
Chinese & Russian Commercial Plane
© Reuters A man takes picture of the model of a widebody jet, which is planned to be developed by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and Russia's United Aircraft Corporation at an air show, the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China, November 2, 2016.
A mock-up of a wide-body passenger aircraft jointly being developed by Moscow and Beijing has been presented at Airshow China. The new plane is expected to challenge the Airbus-Boeing duopoly.

Manufacturers Russia's United Aircraft Corporation and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) have announced the start of the search for suppliers. They didn't provide any details on financing or technical specification.

"We will choose suppliers who have rich experience in development, whose products are competitive globally, and who can continually guarantee quality from the development stage until the planes go into operation," Guo Bozhi, general manager of COMAC's wide-body department told Reuters.

US firms Honeywell and United Technologies Corporation have reportedly discussed the jet with COMAC officials at the air show.

The Russia-China joint venture will start this year, according to Guo. The firms plan a maiden flight in 2022 and deliveries to begin in 2025 or later.

"A wide-body jet is an extremely complicated product, which will require a lot of skills (to develop) and require broad industrial knowledge," Guo told reporters. "China and Russia each have their own advantages."
Read More...
Dollars

Anonymous citizen donates $2.5 million to bail out Dakota Pipeline protesters

Nick Bernabe
Activist Post
Tue, 01 Nov 2016 14:39 UTC
dakota pipeline arrest
Following the recent mass arrests of 141 people at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site located near Standing Rock, North Dakota, an anonymous donor just donated $2.5 million to bail out everyone who was arrested at the protests.

The news came after Tamara Francis-Fourkiller, a tribal leader from the Caddo Nation tribe in Caddo County, Oklahoma, was arrested at Standing Rock. Francis-Fourkiller was released after spending two days in jail, but her family says she was just an innocent observer in the clashes between militarized law enforcement and Native American activists, or "water protectors."

[UPDATE 11/1 4:35 pm EST: A statement from Red Owl Legal Collective/National Lawyers Guild that is advising Standing Rock has issued a statement saying the $2.5 million has not been received yet. We are waiting on confirmation from the Caddo Nation tribe.]
Read More...
Bulb

Colin Kaepernick hosts free youth camp to teach kids how to deal with oppression

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 16:34 UTC
kaepernick
After earning both soaring praise and burning ire for sitting out the national anthem, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has turned his protest against police brutality into a positive force for change — by opening an education-based camp to empower kids.

Kaepernick, in other words, wants to teach young people how to be the change — to educate themselves and stay healthy and safe.

On Saturday, Kaepernick hosted a free youth camp called Know Your Rights — a "free campaign for youth to raise awareness on higher education, self empowerment, and instruction to properly interact with law enforcement in various scenarios," the website explains.

Hundreds of black and Latino children attended the camp, which took place in Oakland, according to the New York Daily News, and the quarterback now plans to expand the program beyond the Bay area.

"We're here today to fight back and give you all lessons to combat the oppressive issues that our people face on a daily basis. We're here to give you tools to help you succeed," Kaepernick told attendees, the Daily News reported. "We're going to give you knowledge on policing history, what the systems of policing in America were based on, and we're also going to teach you skills to make sure you always make it home safely."
Read More...
Red Flag

Colleges across US taking steps to purge male students of "toxic masculinity"

William Nardi
The College Fix
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 16:07 UTC
masculinity
Universities across the nation are taking steps to actively purge male students of what's been labeled "toxic masculinity."

Examples abound of campuses hosting training sessions, group meetings, lectures and other programs to effectively cleanse what many campus leaders and left-leaning scholars contend is an unhealthy masculinity in young men today.

On campus, toxic masculinity is often blamed for sexual violence, body shaming, a "hyper-masculinized sporting culture," acts of domestic terrorism and much more.

For example, a class at Dartmouth College this semester, "The Orlando Syllabus," identifies so-called toxic masculinity as playing a role in the mass murder spree at a Florida club during the summer. This despite the fact that the gunman, Omar Mateen, told police on the phone as he committed the massacre he did it on behalf of ISIS.

Other instances of combating toxic masculinity on campus can be found at both the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke University, which launched programs specifically designed for male students to delve into "violent masculinity" and "healthier masculinity" and discuss issues like gender fluidity.

"How has the concept of masculinity contributed to the perpetration of violence in our society?" asks the UNC Men's Project website.

Read More...
Newspaper

Swiss police raid suspected 'ISIS-linked' mosque, arrest imam and alleged radicals


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 13:23 UTC
Swiss police
© Reuters
Swiss police have raided a mosque which was previously suspected of involvement in radicalizing young Muslims. Four people, including the mosque's imam, have been arrested.

The An'Nur mosque in the city of Winterthur was raided on Wednesday following reports that on October 21 its imam called at a sermon to kill Muslims refusing to participate in communal prayer, Zurich's public prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The police arrested the Ethiopian religious figure and three others. It also searched the mosque and the houses of the three men. The four arrestees are facing criminal proceedings, the statement said without elaborating on what relationships the three men had to the sermon.

A further four men aged 23 to 25, who were present at the mosque at the time of the raid, are believed to have violated Switzerland's immigration law, the police said.
Read More...
USA

Disenfranchised: Report finds over 6 million Americans not allowed to vote over felony convictions


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 16:01 UTC
digital voting
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
More than 6 million Americans will not be able to vote next week due to current or past felony convictions, nearly double the number of convicted felons that were denied the franchise in 1996.

A record 6.1 million Americans with a felony conviction on their record are not allowed to vote based on state laws restricting their voting rights, according to a recent report by the Sentencing Project. This figure is a marked increase from previous decades: In 1976, an estimated 1.17 million people were disenfranchised; in 1996, 3.34 million; and in 2010, 5.85 million, according to the report.

The current total of disenfranchised former felons equates to about 2.5 percent of the overall US voting-age population, or one in 40 adults, the report found.

More than half, or 3.1 million, of disenfranchised former felons are those who have completed their sentences in 12 states that have post-sentence voting restrictions.

Voting restrictions for convicted felons also disproportionately impact people of color, the report said. One in 13 voting-age African Americans is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than the non-African American population. More than 7.4 percent of adult African Americans are impacted by disenfranchisement laws compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American adult population.
Read More...
Propaganda

Swedish newspaper stirs anti-refugee sentiment by publishing dubious letter from 'pro-vandal refugee'


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:35 UTC
Swedish refugees
© Johan Nilsson / Reuters
A refugee in Sweden has said it is "clear as hell" that young people like him are behind a spate of car arsons across the European country, blaming it on the failings of the Swedish society.

In a letter penned to the Swedish VLT newspaper, the unnamed young man blamed discrimination from those in power for making him and others like him feel unwelcome in the country.

The man, who claimed to be from a residential area of Skallberget in the city of Vasteras in central Sweden, said he arrived to the European country "in the early age." Suggesting that he himself has never been convicted of anything, he said that he was yet "one of those who have been most badly treated."

Comment: It's hard to tell whether or not such a letter is authentic. It's possible that the letter was written by a resentful refugee as an outlet for frustration, even though he never says in the letter that he personally participated in the destruction or vandalizing of property. It's also possible the letter was written by a sock-puppet who wants to drum up anti-refugee sentiment. In any case, the responsibility belongs to the media in the content it publishes, knowing how the public will respond. The content of the letter is not representative of the population of refugees as a whole and so it should be considered in that light.

Refugees do have a social obligation to abide by their hosts rules and norms. And likewise, given the West's support for the destruction of refugees homes and society, the hosts at the very least also have an obligation to provide suitable accommodations.

Read More...
Snakes in Suits

UK pedophile soldier caught in sting with fake 15yo Tinder date


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:30 UTC
UK soldiers
© Reuters
British soldier Nicholas Mathews has been jailed after being snagged in a sting set up by another soldier posing as a 15-year-old girl in a plot orchestrated by the so-called 'Vigilante Nonce Hunting Group.'

The Tinder dating app led Mathews to believe he was speaking to a girl named 'Ellie,' whom he arranged to meet for sex, despite learning that she was just 15 years of age.

The legal age of consent in the UK is 16.

However, 'Ellie' was, in fact, a false identity set up by another soldier named Daniel Sutor, who had launched the so-called 'Vigilante Nonce Hunting Group' to hunt pedophiles.
Read More...
Quenelle

Dakota Access protesters threaten with arrest on public lands by National Guard


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:16 UTC
National Guard Dakota Access Pipeline
© Alexander Rubinstein / RT
Members of the North Dakota National Guard have threatened to arrest people on Army Corps of Engineers land who are protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The land should be open to the public ‒ unless the government decides it isn't.

Protesters canoeing down the Missouri River in North Dakota on Tuesday afternoon stopped to set up a fire on the riverbank on Army Corps of Engineers land. At that point, they were approached by "heavily armed" members of the National Guard and told that they would be arrested for trespassing if they didn't leave, RT America's Alexander Rubinstein reported.
Read More...
Stormtrooper

Terrible idea: US special forces demand more resources, fewer missions from next president


RT
Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:11 UTC
U.S. Army Special Operations
© U.S. Army Special Operations Command / Facebook
The next US administration should rethink the use of special forces, giving them more resources and fewer missions to ease their "heavy burden," top officers have said in a newly released paper.

With just one week to go until the US presidential election, six former Special Operations Forces (SOF) commanders as well as some 50 active-duty officers were asked by the Virginia-based think tank CNA to reflect on how the next administration should use the troops for covert missions abroad.

"Countering terrorism will initially be a priority for the next administration and SOF will play a central role in this mission," said the CNA report, which was based on anonymous discussions among SOF officers during a half-day meeting.

Comment: This SOF rhetoric is exactly what the US doesn't need. The SOF enable the US to destabilize countries and regions which is a bad policy and is acting as a 'bad cop' for the world. But we couldn't agree more that SOF needs fewer missions - much fewer.

Read More...