Society's ChildS

Star of David

It's not anti-Semitic to say Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state - it's just common sense

anti-semitism
As you surely know, the British Labour Party is today embroiled in a controversy over whether certain criticisms of the state of Israel can be considered anti-Semitic. The controversy is sure to come to the United States, even during this political cycle; and without wading into the statements and personalities involved, we need to point out that one aspect of the dispute is the claim that it is anti-Semitic to say - as many advocates for Palestinians do - that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state.

Comment: The Israeli argument boils down to this: "You're racist for pointing out that we're racist." Just imagine a South African supporter of Apartheid whining that all his critics are racist because they point out that Apartheid is wrong, and you'll get the picture. Israel is a racist, Apartheid state that has no right to exist.


Water

Obama drinks Flint water during speech, brands crisis as "a man-made disaster"

Obama
© ReutersObama begins his visit to Flint today.
US President Barack Obama was in the beleaguered Michigan city of Flint for a briefing, community meeting, and speech amid allegations of "wilful and criminal neglect" over its poison water crisis.

Although the White House had not confirmed any plans to do so, Obama drank twice from glasses of filtered city water while in Flint, Michigan on Wednesday, during a speech in which he branded the city's water crisis as a "complete screwup."

During his speech at Flint Northwestern High School, accompanied by boos at the mention of Governor Rick Snyder's name, Obama requested a glass of water, which he told the crowd was "not a stunt."

Comment: See also: Flint will riot 'soon' if you don't #ArrestGovSnyder - Michael Moore to Obama on Facebook


Christmas Tree

Prices of marijuana drop considerably in Washington state after legalization

weed vending machine
© David Ryder / ReutersA view of the screen of a ZaZZZ vending machine that contains cannabis flower, hemp-oil energy drinks, and other merchandise at Seattle Caregivers, a medical marijuana dispensary.
Recreational marijuana use has been legal in Washington State for two years, and while sales of the drug have been filling public coffers with tax revenues, the prices for pot have also been shrinking considerably.

As of March 2016, the price of legal marijuana in Washington was $9.32 per gram, the Washington Post reported, citing data from the state's Liquor and Cannabis board. The wholesale price of the drug was $2.99 per gram.

In September 2014, pot was selling for about $25 per gram, according to a report from KUOW News. By August 2015, marijuana prices had plunged more than 50 percent to $11 per gram.

Although prices initially went up after the drug was legalized, that surge was linked to increased demand and limited supply, according to Steve Davenport of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, who helps aggregate data from the Washington's cannabis board. Since then, prices have been coming down at a rate of 2 percent per month, he told the Post, and they could potentially shrink 25 percent every year.

Eye 2

Cops under investigation for assaulting man who was legally filming them

memphis police
© Francesco DaDon Guglielmette / Facebook
Police in Memphis have launched an investigation after a video was posted online purportedly showing police officers assaulting a man for filming them in the line of duty, even though he has a legal right to do so.

The video was posted to Facebook on Monday by Francesco DaDon Guglielmette who claims he "was assaulted by Memphis police just for recording," which is something that Memphis Police Department have previously stated is allowed.

A number of police officers can be seen talking to a number of men by a police car when Guglielmette is asked to move onto the sidewalk by one of the officers.

"The sidewalk is made to walk, not to stay," the officer says to Guglielmette who is walking away.

Health

Hundreds of frozen food products recalled after listeria outbreak kills two

frozen peas
© Reuters
Hundreds of frozen fruit and vegetable products are being recalled after federal health officials linked them to an outbreak of listeria that has sickened up to eight people in three states. Two of the people affected have died.

The recall affects 358 products under 42 brands sold by the Pasco, Washington-based CRF Frozen Foods, the company announced on Monday. The products being recalled all have expiration dates between April 26, 2016 and April 26, 2018. They have been sold in all 50 US states, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

The recall was initiated after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered the Listeria bacteria during a routine check, ABC News reported.

Bad Guys

Underage Texas girl fights off rapist who 'bought' her virginity from acquaintance for $10,000

Delacruz and Aguilar
© Dallas Police departmentCirino Santiago Delacruz and Adriana Aguilar.
A Texas man is being accused to trying to pay $10,000 to "buy" the virginity of an underage girl, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Cirino Santiago Delacruz, 32, and Adriana Aguilar, 33, have both been slapped with felony trafficking charges after negotiating the price. The two are now in custody.

The incident reportedly happened in December and police were notified when the girl told her parents last month.

Documents obtained by the Morning News say that the girl knew Aguilar, who in December invited her to ride along on some errands. She took the girl to an apartment, where she met Delacruz. At that point, Aguilar told her Delacruz had offered $10,000 for her virginity.

The girl was forced into a bedroom where Delacruz fondled her and attempted to rape her, but she fought her way out. He still paid $100 because he had touched her, the Morning News reports.

The girl told the investigators she feared both Delacruz and Aguilar. Child protective services are now involved with the case.

Nuke

New Mexico Native American tribe threatened by chromium plumes from Los Alamos National Laboratory

map LANL chromium
© www.abqjournal.com
Hexavalent chromium may not be familiar to the average American โ€’ but Erin Brockovich likely is. A plume of the same toxic chemical that led to a movie based on Brockovich is now threatening a Native American tribe's sacred lands and a major aquifer.

Chromium-6 (aka hexavalent chromium) lines the cooling towers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. For nearly two decades, from 1956 to 1972, the birthplace of the nuclear bomb flushed water from its cooling system โ€’ water contaminated by the corrosion-preventing chemical - into Sandia Canyon.

Since then, the runoff has created an underground chromium plume that is a mile long by half a mile wide and 100 feet thick. It's threatening drinking wells, a major aquifer, and the San Ildefonso Pueblo's sacred tribal land, which borders the federal property. The plume was discovered during the installation of a groundwater monitoring well in late 2005, according to Los Alamos.

Scientific research โ€’ and the lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric, for which Brockovich served as a legal clerk โ€’ has shown that drinking water tainted with high levels of chromium-6 is linked to cancer. In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed classifying the chemical as "likely to be carcinogenic to humans when ingested." It has set a maximum contaminant level for all types of chromium, including the hexavalent variant, at 100 parts per billion.



Comment: The Department of Energy estimates the amount of chromium released between 1956 to 1972 was approximately 159,000 pounds. New wells are estimated to cost $3.5M each amongst 50 archaeological sites.


Handcuffs

Police state revenue scheme: Wisconsin town criminalizes bullying

stop bullying
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, one out of every four students (22%) report being bullied during the school year. Often times, when the bullying goes unchecked, students are at increased risk for poor school adjustment, sleep difficulties, anxiety, and depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Bullying can be problematic for many students and is most assuredly unacceptable. However, as long as there have been schools, there have been bullies. Unfortunately, bullying is inevitable.

Adolescent quarrels are a frequent occurrence. As hormones rush in, children attempt to assert control over their environment as well as other children and the result can often manifest into a fight or bullying. Studies even show that bullies suffer from the same symptoms as their victims.

In the past, if a fight were to break out at school, or a child would be caught bullying another child, the teachers, and in some cases, the students would rush in to stop it. In fact, studies show that bullying situations are resolved the majority of the time when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied.

However, in modern day police state USA, normal childhood behavior is now dealt with using police action.

A new city ordinance in Shawano, Wisconson now criminalizes the act of bullying. However, it's not the child who will be punished, it's their parent.

Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: The catastrophic events that have a high probability of leading to an American 'apocalypse'

Apocalyptic scene
Is the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet headed for an apocalypse which will bring it to its knees? We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and apocalyptic themes have become very common in books, movies, television shows and video games. It is almost as if there is an unconscious understanding on a societal level that something very big and very bad is coming, even if the vast majority of the population cannot specifically identify what that is going to be. Last week, the Global Challenges Foundation released a new report entitled "Global Catastrophic Risks 2016" in which they discussed various apocalyptic events that they believe could wipe out more than 10 percent of the population of our planet, and they warned that these types of events "are more likely than we intuitively think"...
Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: "There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won't happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way.

"History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks."

Comment: Do not be surprised if some of these probable developments occur in quick succession, or even more or less simultaneously. It's a good time now to prepare for them.


Brick Wall

Public school or prison? It's hard to tell

school-prison
© "The Simpsons" 20th Century Fox Television
Every weekday morning, from September through June, parents across the country get up earlier than they want to, rush like crazy, wrangle kids into appropriate clothing, and wait in exhausting drop-off lines to get their children to school on time. Why? Because punctuality is a virtue? Or because they are afraid of getting in trouble?

In big cities and small communities, the same routine is repeated with minor variations. Small children and near adult adolescents will spend the majority of their waking hours somewhere they would rather not be. But few people question the set-up. Parents send their kids to school with the best of intentions, wanting to produce happy, healthy, productive adults. Public school is supposed to be for their own good. Very few question its necessity and virtue. No one questions the fact that our country's public schools are looking less and less like places of learning and more and more like places of detention (and I don't mean The Breakfast Club type either).

Comment: How do you prepare a child for life in the American police state? Send them to school:
In an age dominated with news of school shootings, school lockdowns, police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry (leaving children devastated and damaged), reports of school resource officers tasering and shackling unruly students, and public schools undergoing lockdowns and active drills, I find myself wrestling with the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American police state?

It's difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mixโ€”with its battlefield mindset, weaponry, rigidity, surveillance, fascism, indoctrination, violence, etc.โ€”it becomes near impossible to guard against the toxic stress of police shootings, SWAT team raids, students being tasered and shackled, lockdown drills, and a growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Children are taught from an early age that there are consequences for their actions. Hurt somebody, lie, steal, cheat, etc., and you will get punished. But how do you explain to a child that a police officer can shoot someone who was doing nothing wrong and get away with it? That a cop can lie, steal, cheat, or kill and still not be punished?