Society's ChildS


Bad Guys

Syrians and Iraqis struggle to escape as ISIS tightens its grips

Syria
© Flickr/ Beshr Abdulhadi
The jihadist group Daesh seems to be tightening its grip on the movement of civilian population in the areas under its control: people who reside there are now forced to register with the militant government, which confiscates their passports, plus there are restrictions on what people can take in and out, according to Business Insider magazine.

The problem is not getting into the cities under Daesh (also known as Islamic State/ISIL/ISIS) control, the problem is getting out.

The New York City-based magazine spoke with a resident of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the group's territory, which it calls itself a 'caliphate.'

"Leaving the city is now really hard," Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, an activist with the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, told the outlet. "The problem is not going to Raqqa, it's how to get out."

Comment: The people struggle to escape this hellish and genocidal regime, but whenever the terrorists themselves are in a bad spot the US finds a way to help them out:


Alarm Clock

Armed militia occupy forest reserve HQ in Oregon, call 'US patriots' to arms, Bundy bros join protest

Burns OR militia protest
© Les Zaitz/The Oregonian via APHundreds of protesters poured into Burns, Ore., to rally for two ranchers convicted of arson before splitting off and taking over a wildlife refuge.
Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's three sons and "about 150" militiamen have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge HQ to protest the pending imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers accused of arson, arguing the federal government has no authority in local cases.


"We're going to be freeing these lands up, and getting ranchers back to ranching, getting the loggers back to logging, getting the miners back to mining where they could do it under the protection of the people and not be afraid of this tyranny that's been set upon them," Ammon Bundy, who appears to be the leader of the group, said in a Facebook video posted by Sarah Dee Spurlock on Saturday.

Bundy appears to be standing at the scene of the takeover, surrounded by several men in military-style uniforms with rifles and hand-held radios.

Comment: The reaction of a normal population when oppressed by a psychopathic system? Unfortunately that system is capable of shaping and directing that reaction to its own ends.


V

SOTT Focus: The Fear of Death and the Human Need for Heroes

candle
We recently celebrated my Grandma's 101st birthday. While we were sipping champagne, she said, out of the blue: "I heard that Russia will save us". It was a most unexpected remark given that we had never spoken about Russia, much less global politics. Rather than question her about it however, I understood that Grandma is aware of the current rhetoric about a possible 'nuclear war' between Russia and the West and, having lived through two world wars, she'd rather not have to endure another. So I just replied: "Yes, you are right, Vladimir Putin and Russia will save us," and the conversation moved on.

Despite my reassuring, hopeful answer, I doubt that Vladimir Putin, or anyone else for that matter, will save 'us', 'the world' or anything else. But Grandma's observation puzzled me. I was wondering where she got this information from. It's unlikely she got it from French mainstream media, which are aligned with their Western counterparts in conducting an anti-Russian/anti-Putin disinformation campaign. Maybe a member of staff at her nursing home ventured a similar remark? Maybe it came to her via some form of limbic resonance with supporters of Russian government policy?

Beyond the origin of Grandma's remark, I also have been wondering about Putin's influence on the global population, not on the political, economic or geostrategic level (which has been extensively covered by other observers), but on a deeper, more subtle symbolic level.

Stormtrooper

Social suicide: The 'law and order' of a militarized police force

Swat Police
Want a ringside seat for the war on crime? Go to killedbypolice.net. A few hours ago (as I write this), the site had listed 1,191 police killings in the U.S. this year. I just looked again.

The total is up one.

This, about killing number 1,192, is from the Fresno Bee, which the site links to:

"Authorities have identified the woman fatally shot by a deputy early Tuesday as a 50-year-old military veteran.

"According to Merced County Sheriff's Sgt. Delray Shelton, Siolosega Velega-Nuufolau was shot after waving a kitchen knife 'in a threatening and aggressive manner' at the deputy.

"Authorities were called to the scene in the 29000 block of Del Sol Court (in Santa Nella, Calif.) by a neighbor, who reported that Velega-Nuufolau was in the neighbor's driveway, screaming for someone to call 911 at about 12:30 a.m. It is not clear why she wanted authorities called."

Comment: And by the time December 31st, 2015, ended, the number was up to 1,200.


Snakes in Suits

The well-deserved fall of Chicago's mayor Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel
© Jim Young / REUTERS / LANDOVA majority of Chicagoans now think that the Mayor should resign.
It's hard to remember a time when Rahm Emanuel wasn't a Democratic Party superstar. Go back to 1991, when the thirty-two-year-old took over fund-raising for Bill Clinton. He was soon renowned for making the staff come to work on Sundays, shrieking into the phone to donors things like "Five thousand dollars is an insult! You're a twenty-five-thousand-dollar person!"—and, not incidentally, helping Clinton afford the blitz of TV commercials that saved him from the Gennifer Flowers scandal, clearing his course to the White House. The legend continued through this past April, when Rahm—in Chicago and D.C., he's known by that single name—won a second term as the mayor of Chicago in a come-from-behind landslide.

Nine months later, Chicagoans—and Democrats nationally—are suffering buyer's remorse. Last month, a Cook County judge ordered the release of a shocking dashcam video of a black seventeen-year-old named Laquan McDonald being shot sixteen times by a policeman while he was walking away. Five days later, the officer was charged with murder. The charge came after four hundred days of public inaction, and only hours before the video's release. Of almost four hundred police shootings of civilians investigated by the city's Independent Police Review Authority since 2007, only one was found to be unjustified. So the suspicion was overwhelming that the officer would not have faced discipline at all had officials not feared a riot—especially after it was learned that McDonald's family had been paid five million dollars from city coffers without ever having filed a lawsuit. Mayor Emanuel claims that he never saw the video. Given that he surely would not have been reëlected had any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll showed that only seventeen per cent of Chicagoans believe him. And a majority of Chicagoans now think he should resign.

Comment:


Evil Rays

ISIS New Years Eve terror plot story in Rochester, NY is yet another FBI fabrication

Emanuel Lutchman

Sensational media accounts leave out or bury key details.


Another major holiday, another sensational ISIS terror plot the FBI takes credit for preventing. This time, the case splashed across the news is that of Emanuel Lutchman, a 25-year-old panhandler in Rochester, New York who allegedly plotted to attack a restaurant on New Years Eve. All major network broadcasts led with the story and it was breathlessly featured everywhere from the New York Times to CNN. There's only one problem: the story is wildly inaccurate and in many ways factually false.

Like many 11th-hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go on is a DOJ criminal complaint that's released to the press. Statements from the accused or their lawyers very rarely reach the public. And the criminal complaint and the FBI press release are framed to deliberately deceive the media.

Let's run down some of the key claims made by the media and why they're either factually incorrect or misleading.

Comment: It seems the FBI has recently been given its marching orders: "We need more domestic terror threats and we need them now! Do whatever the heck you have to earn your paychecks!!" And so they are. It was only a few days ago that we learned that the FBI lured an intellectually disabled teen into another terrorist plot. When will someone with a little integrity and backbone in the US government say something about this fundamentally malevolent pattern of manufacturing terror and ruining lives?

By now we are all too familiar with the pathetic efforts of the FBI and the sickening stories surrounding them:


Video

Footage of Kodiak police arresting, pepper-spraying an autistic man outrages Alaskan town

Kodiak police
© Viral Time Life/You Tube
Bodycam footage of Kodiak police arresting and pepper-spraying an autistic man has caused major upset in the Alaskan town.

The controversial recording of the September 16th arrest was finally obtained on December 31st through a public records request.

The arrest led some Alaskan community members to accuse local police officers Kathleen Gambling, Phillip Christman, and Sargent Francis de la Fuente of using excessive force in arresting 28-year-old Nick Pletnikoff.

Incident reports written by the officers say they arrested Pletnikoff after responding to a call from two tourists who said Nick had "forced his way into their vehicle and was in the process of rifling through their belongings." The officers insist "that any use of force was minimal and necessary under the circumstances," according to police reports obtained by KTUU.

In the footage, Nick can be heard yelling, "I want to go home!" and "I'm sorry!" Sargent de la Fuente wrote in his report that Pletnikoff was "very strong" and resisted attempts to subdue him.

Following the arrest, Pletnikoff's mother Judy approached officer de la Fuente and told him of her son's condition. "Judy told me Pletnikoff was autistic and usually goes inside cars because he likes cars, but does not steal anything," de la Fuente wrote.


Sheeple

What has happened to civic outrage?

pitchforks, protest
© Dan Lipinski/flickr/cc
If only the people who engage in "road rage" would engage in "corporate rage" when they are harmed by cover-ups or hazardous products and gouging services, aloof CEOs would start getting serious about safety and fair play. With press report after press report documenting how big business stiffs millions of its consumers and workers, why is it that more of these victims do not externalize some of their inner agonies by channeling them into civic outrage?

It has happened on occasion and with good results. After Candy Lightner lost her daughter to a drunk driver, she founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 as the only way she could deal with her intense grief. Asked what her principal motivation was in building a national movement to put homicide-producing drunk drivers behind bars, she replied: "Revenge."

Medical malpractice victims or their next of kin have started special lobbying associations to stop the attempt by the insurance companies and physician lobbies to weaken the rights of patients to have their full day in court against their negligent harm doers. They also inform the public about the need to discipline bad doctors and careless hospitals so as to reduce some of the 100,000 fatalities a year (according to the Harvard School of Public Health) from malpractice.

Handcuffs

Former Texas Officer of the Year accused of being a member of Mexican drug cartel

Efrain Grimaldo
Caught on video illegally selling assault rifles and sensitive information to undercover informants, a former officer of the year has also been accused of secretly working for Los Zetas cartel in a drug trafficking conspiracy in operation since 2006. Although the cop allegedly provided the cartel with firearms, bulletproof vests, luxury vehicles, police scanners, and database access, recently filed court documents revealed at least two convicted cocaine traffickers are cooperating with the government against the disgraced cop.

On September 2, 2014, Efrain Grimaldo, the nephew of Houston Police Officer Noe Juarez, was sentenced to 33 years in federal prison after caught smuggling 1,640 kilograms of cocaine throughout the southern states and east coast. On June 24, 2014, Efrain's brother, Sergio Grimaldo, was extradited from Mexico and later charged along with Officer Juarez for participating in a conspiracy to distribute five or more kilograms of cocaine. Juarez was also charged in a separate conspiracy to possess firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.

Comment: Following in the footsteps of the CIA? Is there a more convenient place to run a drug-trafficking operation than from within corrupt US police departments?


USA

Political discourse is now more lowbrow and anti-intellectual than ever before

trump, authoritarian
Having attended a Donald Trump rally in New Hampshire earlier this week, Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe was not terribly impressed with the candidate, the message, or the supporters. "After listening to Trump for more than an hour," Lehigh reported, "I came away struck by one thing: how little of substance he'd actually uttered." Instead, the Globe columnist observed, Trump's message was "a populist stew of braggadocio, bluster, and bombast, seasoned with resentments he and his backers share."

And those resentments run deep. Lehigh noted that the key issue repeatedly mentioned by Trump's supporters—and the issue that drew some of the loudest applause—was the GOP frontrunner's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This proposal strikes many as strange, especially with Trump promising he'll make Mexico pay for it, but what's truly bizarre is that it would resonate so much with voters in New Hampshire—a state that borders Canada, not Mexico, and a state where Hispanics comprise only two percent of the population.