Society's ChildS


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Sweden will officially recognize the state of Palestine on Thursday

sweden palestine flags
Sweden is set to officially recognize the state of Palestine on Thursday in a move that will make it the first major European country coming up with this decision, the country's Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said.

"Today the government takes the decision to recognise the state of Palestine," Wallstrom as quoted by Agence France-Presse.

The minister also added that this decision will serve as an important step "that confirms the Palestinians' right to self-determination".

The intention to recognize the state of Palestine was first announced by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in his inaugural address to the parliament on October 5.

Arrow Down

Ponerized Detroit labor unions have betrayed the work force

detroit bankruptcy
The Detroit bankruptcy case, which will conclude with a federal judge's November 7 ruling on the city's restructuring plan, has brought to light once again the anti-working class character of the trade unions.

In their closing arguments before the federal bankruptcy judge, Steven Rhodes, on Monday, the representatives of the city and the state gloated that they had so quickly wrapped up the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. The "radical" restructuring plan, said Jones Day attorney Bruce Bennett, had not been "watered down." Indeed, the final proposal includes savage attacks on the working class - including pension cuts in violation of the state constitution and the virtual elimination of retiree health benefits.

Michigan's special attorney general, Steven Howell, told the court the "Chapter 9 filing had not been popular." Nevertheless, the initial objectors "were now supporters," he said, singling out the unions as examples of the "new spirit of cooperation" in Detroit.

Howell was acknowledging that the unions have played a critical role in the conspiracy to rob workers of basic social rights - a conspiracy involving the Democratic mayor and City Council, the Republican governor, the Obama administration, Judge Rhodes and Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr. The "spirit of cooperation" is directed against the widespread anger of workers throughout the Detroit area over the measures that are being implemented on behalf of the banks and large bondholders.

Throughout the bankruptcy, the unions have acted not as defenders of the workers, but as creditors with some of the biggest claims on the city's assets. The token opposition that the unions presented early on was aimed at securing a better deal for the wealthy executives who run them.

Comment: It has become clear that the Unions have been infiltrated and corrupted from the inside, so that they now serve the interests of the elites. This process has been documented by Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes. This is what results when conscience-lacking psychopaths take control of organizations and gain the power to command the people to obey their "authority" blindly. Breaking with the Democrats will not change anything, as both political parties in the US have long been corrupted by this ponerological process and now both serve only their elitist masters.

See also: Corporate political conspiracy behind bankruptcy of Detroit revealed and Paul Craig Roberts: Labor's demise is America's demise


Propaganda

The failure of American journalism and mass media

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© Screen shot of journalist Gary Webb from Vimeo.
There is more truth about American journalism in the film "Kill the Messenger," which chronicles the mainstream media's discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie "All the President's Men," which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.

The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy - even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.

When Webb, writing in a 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News, exposed the Central Intelligence Agency's complicity in smuggling tons of cocaine for sale into the United States to fund the CIA-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, the press turned him into a journalistic leper. And over the generations there is a long list of journalistic lepers, from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone to Julian Assange.

The attacks against Webb have been renewed in publications such as The Washington Post since the release of the film earlier this month. These attacks are an act of self-justification. They are an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite. The mass media, like the rest of the liberal establishment, seek to wrap themselves in the moral veneer of the fearless pursuit of truth and justice. But to maintain this myth they have to destroy the credibility of journalists such as Webb and Assange who shine a light on the sinister and murderous inner workings of empire, who care more about truth than news.

Comment: The US public has been kept in dreadful ignorance of the Elite's real intentions for a very long time. A famous quote from President Woodrow Wilson from nearly a 100 years ago comes to mind, and can easily be applied to the mass-media:
"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."



Heart - Black

Hysterical Islamophobia: Dad threatens 'sh*tstorm' if daughter's world history class includes Islam

Angry Man
© Shutterstock.comAngry man yells into phone
An angry father has been banned from a Maryland high school's campus after he made vague but ominous threats against the school because his daughter's history homework mentioned the Islamic faith.

BayNet.com reported that La Plata High School in Charles County, Maryland has issued a No Trespass order after parent Kevin Wood - a former U.S. Marine - called the school and threatened to disrupt classes if his daughter's world history class continued to study the religion and its impact on human history.

Wood reportedly telephoned Vice Principal Shannon Morris last thursday enraged over a homework assignment which dealt with the formation of Middle Eastern empires centuries ago. History teacher Katie O'Malley Simpson said that the history curriculum has never been considered controversial in the past.

"The assignment has been given for years," O'Malley-Simpson said.

La Plata High School Principal Evelyn Arnold issued a "No Trespass" order against Wood after hearing about the contentious call, in which Wood promised to come to the school and disrupt classes if Islam was mentioned any further.

O'Malley-Simpson called the decision to ban Wood from campus "unusual," saying, "We don't file no trespassing charges lightly. We would only do that when we feel someone has threatened the safety of staff and students."

Heart - Black

'A generation cast aside': Child poverty on rise in world's richest countries

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UNICEF report finds erosion of social safety nets has fueled child poverty crisis. (Image courtesy of UNICEF report)
Children remain "the most enduring victims" of the recession in the world's wealthiest nations, where 2.6 million children have fallen below the poverty line since 2008, a new report from UNICEF reveals.

The annual study, Children of the Recession: The impact of the economic crisis on child well-being in rich countries, was released Tuesday in Rome. It finds that in the 41 richest countries at least 76.5 million children live in poverty.

"Many affluent countries have suffered a 'great leap backwards' in terms of household income, and the impact on children will have long-lasting repercussions for them and their communities," said Jeffrey O'Malley, UNICEF's Head of Global Policy and Strategy.

Comment: One billion about half of the two billion children on the planet live in poverty, 22,000 dying each day due to dire living conditions, meanwhile a small number of rapacious wealthy "elite" amass billions, enough to end the suffering of children four times over.

$240 billion amassed by 100 richest people enough to end extreme poverty four times over: Oxfam


Arrow Down

Deep undercover: Police officer in UK fathered a child with an activist as part of an investigation

Court settlement raises new questions about ethics of police infiltration
UK Metropolitan Police
© CGP GreyMetropolitan police officer Bob Lambert’s mission was to work his way into the “intensely furtive, hard-core wing of the animal rights movement.
What are the limits - if any - to undercover policing? At what point is a moral, ethical, or legal threshold crossed when an undercover operative insinuates himself into a targeted group or the lives of its members?

Last Thursday British media reported that the UK's Metropolitan Police would pay £425,000 (about $686,000) in a settlement with a woman, known only as Jacqui, who was conned by a man who fathered her first child, said that he loved her, and then one day disappeared. She knew him as Bob Robinson. His real name, as she would learn 25 years later, was Bob Lambert. He was an operative with the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a special unit within the British police that infiltrated a host of environmentalist groups to gather intelligence. In several cases the operatives, almost always men, established long-term intimate relationships with women in order to gain access to the world of underground animal rights or environmental activists.

Jacqui's was 22 when she first met Lambert. He was more than ten years older than her, and had already been a member of the Metropolitan police for several years. He went undercover in 1983 not long before he met Jacqui. As Rob Evans and Paul Lewis explain in their book Undercover, Lambert's mission was to work his way into the "intensely furtive, hard-core wing of the animal rights movement: the Animal Liberation Front." Having a girlfriend who was already trusted and well connected within activist circles was one of the easiest ways to become a "deep swimmer," a phrase used by members of the SDS to describe spies who completely immersed themselves in the groups they were monitoring. In addition to Jacqui, Lambert is known to have had romantic relationships with three other women during his career as an undercover operative. Seven other women have also filed charges against the Metropolitan police.

Family

Diplomacy on the human level: Ukrainians and Novorussians sit down and talk

Mozgovoi
Alexey Mozgovoi.
Something fantastically interesting has happened in Novorussia: two senior Novorussian commanders, Igor Bezler and Alexei Mozgovoi have attempted to communicate with those Ukrainians who are on the other side.

Though I am not sure about the exact dates of the events (all I have is the dates of the posting on YouTube), this apparently began when Igor Bezler agreed to be interviewed by three TV crews at the same time: a Russian one, a Novorussian one, and a Ukrainian one. The big news here was, of course, that a Ukrainian journalist was given access to the city of Gorlovka, currently surrounded by Ukrainian forces, and that she got to speak with the local people, including combatants and then that she was given access to Bezler himself. Since all the journalists were more or less openly accusing each other of "filtering the truth" all parties agreed that the full recording, unedited, would be made available on YouTube. Now please keep in mind that in Banderastan, Russian journalists are blacklisted, Russian TV stations banned, and that the people in the junta controlled Ukraine are told that the other side are terrorists and Russian soldiers. Oh, and the Ukrainian media is the most disgusting, sold out, subservient, propagandistic you can imagine. And then suddenly, at least one Ukrainian TV crew agrees to show the face of one of the most feared Novorussian commanders and he gets to speak his mind.

But the next event was even more amazing. Alexei Mozgovoi agreed to a videoconference with not only Ukrainian journalists, but with actual field commanders of the Ukrainian military. To see Mozgovoi and the Ukrainians speak directly to each other was absolutely amazing. And here I have to apologize. I will not ask our translators to translate and subtitle the full thing. First, there were not one, but two such videoconferences. Then, we are talking about three long videos, see for yourself:

Bezler interview: Published on Oct 21, 2014 (length: 2 hours 17 min)


Comment: "Both sides have much more in common than what separates them." Isn't that the truth! We've been saying it for years: the problem is psychopaths. Until both sides realize that they face a common enemy, one that they vastly outnumber, there will never be peace. But that means SEEing the objective reality here: the psychopaths here are the neo-Nazis plaguing Ukraine, the oligarchs, the CIA masters. Once that vast gulf of difference in terms of humanity is seen, the differences between Ukrainians and Novorussians pale in comparison. It provides the contrast necessary for making real diplomacy possible: an acceptance of normal, cultural differences, and the humanity that unites people in all cultures, with which psychopaths share virtually nothing in common.


USA

New video shows what it's like for a woman to walk around NYC being harassed by men for 10 hours

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A new video by filmmaker Rob Bliss and the advocacy group Hollaback shows the kind of street harassment often hurled at women in New York City, Mashable reported.

The video, "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," shows Shoshana B. Roberts silently walking through Manhattan behind Bliss, who is filming her with a camera hidden inside a backpack. Though she does not engage with anyone, she is "complimented," told to "smile," and leered at by men.

"What's up girl? How you doing?" one man says early on. "Somebody's acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say thank you more."

Other men are shown following Roberts without her consent, including one who tails her for five minutes.

"Maybe the guys who see this and don't understand may still think there's nothing wrong with this," Bliss told Think Progress. "But at least for the first time, they got to experience a little bit of what it's like to go through a day of getting harassed."

According to another advocacy group, Stop Street Harassment, 65 percent of U.S. women have experienced street harassment.

"Street harassment is a new term for an old phenomenon. It can include stalking, groping, verbal and physical assault that happens in public space," Hollaback states on its website. "Even though there are no population level studies, smaller city-wide studies in the US, Canada, Egypt, and India indicate that it is a pervasive and serious problem."

Roberts, who became part of the project after answering a classified ad, said the video captured "really just a day in the life for me."

Watch the video, as posted online on Tuesday, below.


Ambulance

Chicago school evacuated and 9 students hospitalized over gas leak

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© CBSHarper High School
As many as nine people were taken to hospitals Wednesday morning, after high carbon monoxide readings were detected at a West Englewood high school.

Around 10 a.m., firefighters conducted a hazardous materials response at Harper High School, at 65th and Wood, due to high carbon monoxide levels. The school was evacuated, and will be closed for the rest of the day.

People's Gas spokeswoman Bonnie Johnson says Peoples Gas "is supporting [the Chicago Fire Department] in their investigation into a foreign odor at Harper High School."

Chicago police said nine students were hospitalized as a precaution, although the Fire Department said six students and one teacher were hospitalized.

Students who weren't sick were being bused to other schools.

Officials said a construction crew was relining sewers in the area, and vapors from the sewer might have seeped into the school, raising carbon monoxide levels, and making some people feel ill.

Pistol

Gunman in North Carolina shoots and injures two men in front of courthouse

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© AP Photo/The Rocky Mount Telegram, Adam JenningsThe North Carolina State Highway Patrol works at the scene of a shooting on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014 at the Nashville courthouse in Nashville, N.C
A gunman opened fire on two men in front of the courthouse in this small North Carolina town on Tuesday, sending panicked lunchtime shoppers ducking into shops along the normally quiet main drag.

The suspect was caught by late afternoon after a manhunt that included dozens of armed officers canvassing the woods along a state highway with a police helicopter flying overhead. A second suspect was still on the loose. Authorities didn't offer a motive but believe the victims were targeted. Both were expected to survive.

The shooting shattered the calm of the sunny lunch hours along Nashville's main street, which is flanked by the courthouse on one side and one-story shops across the street. Witnesses on the strip that includes a flower shop, cafe and furniture store said violence is unusual in the town of about 5,500.

"We heard gunshots, like: Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!" said Judy Winstead, who works at a real estate office across from the court. "It was very loud, and when we came out we even smelled gunpowder."