Society's ChildS

Star of David

Deaf teenager is latest Palestinian victim of Israeli aggression during 'Great March of Return' protests

Tahrir Mahmoud Wahba
18-year-old Tahrir Mahmoud Wahba
Two Palestinians, including a deaf teenager, succumbed to wounds sustained during the ongoing "Great March of Return" protests in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 18-year-old Tahrir Mahmoud Wahba, who was deaf, died on Monday morning.

The teenager was shot with live ammunition by Israeli forces during protests on Friday April 13th in the southern Gaza Strip district of Khan Younis, near the al-Awdeh refugee camp.

Late Sunday night, the ministry reported that a Palestinian "youth," identified as Abdullah Muhammad al-Shamali, succumbed to wounds he sustained last Friday.

Al-Shamali was a resident of the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. According to the Ministry of Health, the deaths of Wahba and al-Shamali brought the total death toll in Gaza since the "Great March of Return" began on March 30, to 41 Palestinians, including at least three minors and a journalist.

Comment: See also:


Laptop

MSNBC Russiagater host says Wayback Machine 'hackers' made her blog look homophobic

Joy Reid
© Brian Cahn / Global Look PressMSNBC's Joy Reid interacts with the students surrounding the stage at Washington University, site of the second presidential debate between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid claims her old blog has been hacked and updated to include anti-gay content to make her look bad.

The weekend host apologized last year for a number of homophobic blog posts she wrote from 2007 to 2009 about Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who was married to a woman at the time. Among other homophobic comments, Reid called Crist "Miss Charlie" and suggested he was "ogling male waiters" on his honeymoon.

But this week the story became more sinister. The Twitter user who initially discovered Reid's homophobic postings has now unearthed some articles which also appear to have come from her old blog, and sound far worse.

Jamie Maz found the old articles through the Wayback Machine - an online archive that stores old content even after it has been deleted - of Reid's blog as it had been.

Mediaite has reported some of the highlights, including comments about how "most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing" and about how finding gay sex "gross" is just "intrinsic" to being straight.

Stop

Silence of the shams: Western media puts Syrian boy's witness account on hold

Syrianboy
© SputnikHassan Diab
If it doesn't fit the narrative, there's no harm in shelving it. It appears that evidence proving the purported chemical weapons attack in Douma was staged has been largely disregarded by the mainstream newsmakers in the West.

The alleged attack and the subsequent airstrikes by the US, UK and France have been dominating the Western news agenda for several weeks now.

On April 7, several media outlets reported that the Syrian army had used chlorine in Douma, killing up to 70 people and injuring hundreds. Footage showing the aftermath of the "attack" appeared on social media, showing men and women shouting, rushing and hosing down adults and children inside a hospital building.

The video has been acquired and shown by most Western news media under the tagline "Children are treated after a suspected chemical attack in rebel-held Douma, Syria" or similar headlines.


Comment: See also:


Star of David

Brooklyn, NY: Warnings of increased 'bias attacks' against Jews, who are 'very, very nervous'

JewsNYC
© Times of Israel
Some leaders in Brooklyn's Jewish community say bias attacks are happening more frequently.

The most recent incident left a man badly bruised. It was captured on camera and now police are searching for the attacker. Police are keeping watch at the scene of the latest attack on Rutland Road near Schenectady Avenue. Many Jewish leaders say this is happening too frequently to be a coincidence, CBS2's Janelle Burrell reported.

"People are very, very nervous about what is going on," said Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

Jewish leaders including Hikind told Burrell they believe the recent attacks in Brooklyn aren't isolated. "They're not anomalies?" Burrell asked. "No, not at all. In between these two incidents, there are so many others. Many of them don't get reported," Hikind said.

Stock Down

What's the next big financial crisis? Bankrupt public-employee pensions

$50bill on map
© Thomas White/Reuters
Pension Crisis: As the media relentlessly focus on the federal government's burgeoning debt, a new report says that states face their own ticking debt bomb: the exploding liabilities for lavish state and local public-employee pensions. Reform won't be easy, but there is no choice.

A new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that the problem is getting out of hand. In 2016, the most recent full year for which data are available, states were more than $1.4 trillion in the red. Pension debt has increased for 15 straight years, and shows no signs of abating.

Indeed, as Reason blogger Eric Boehm notes, "The really scary part is that pension debt keeps increasing despite the fact that taxpayers' contributions to state-level pension plans have doubled as a share of state revenue in the past decade."

Worse still, as performance lags expectations, desperate pension fund managers have gone in for increasingly risky investments - meaning that workers' pensions might not be as safe as they think.

The Pew report is blunt:
"Many state retirement systems are on an unsustainable course, coming up short on their investment targets and having failed to set aside enough money to fund the pension promises made to public employees."

Bomb

Silence from UK govt reprehensible after deadly Saudi-led airstrike on Yemeni wedding

plane soldier
© Ali Owidha / Reuters
The UK has come under fire for failing to criticize a reported deadly airstrike by Saudi Arabia-led forces on a wedding party in Yemen. Anti-arms campaigners denounced the government's ongoing Saudi weapons sales.

According to Khaled al-Nadhri, a leading health official, the majority of the 20 dead were women and children. The crowd had gathered in a tent for the wedding in the district of Bani Qayis, reports the Independent. Hospital chief Mohammed al-Sawmali says 46 people who were injured in the attack, including the groom, were brought to the local al-Jomhouri hospital to receive treatment.

Many on Twitter have questioned why there has not been any response from the UK government to the latest reports of civilian deaths in Yemen, orchestrated by Saudi Arabia. Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) notes the Saudis have bought "ยฃ4.6 billion [US$6.4 billion] worth of arms" from the UK since March 2015. The UK government has been quick to criticize other reported attacks on civilians, including those in Syria.

Comment: For more on this airstrike, see also: Upwards of 50 killed in Saudi-led air strikes on Yemeni wedding


Heart - Black

Left-wing hypocrisy and Twitter mobs

inquisition tribunal painting Goya
© Francisco Goya / Google Art Project"The Inquisition Tribunal"
I grew up working class, and proud. My father was a Marxist who was active in the labour movement, campaigned for Canada's left-wing New Democratic Party, and educated me about the harms of capitalism. Throughout my teen years and young adulthood, I never questioned which side I was on. To this day, I remain steadfast in my belief that everyone deserves access to affordable housing, free health care, and advanced education. I believe that poverty is unacceptable and that wealth is unethical. I believe racism and sexism are embedded within our society. I'm pink, through and through.

But politics aren't just about words and ideas. They're also about ethics and action -- both personal and political. And though I remain a leftist in my principles, I can no longer stand in solidarity with former fellow travellers whose ethics are dictated by social convenience, who prioritize retweets over free inquiry, democracy, and debate, and who respond to disagreement with calls for censorship (or worse). These feelings aren't new for me. But they've recently come into sharper focus.

Comment: Ms. Murphy finds herself in good company:

Lindsay Shepherd: A short video statement on why I no longer call myself a leftist




Eye 2

'Globalism is spiritual and demonic at its core', say US theologians

Globalism
As the radical ideology of globalism comes under increasing pressure worldwide, a number of prominent theologians are joining the discussion, blasting the internationalist movement as "demonic" and even "anti-Christ" in nature. With a link on the subject to the widely read Christian Post appearing this week on the influential Drudge Report, the sharp criticism is making major waves worldwide. But the argument is hardly new.

Of course, critics of globalism who deal primarily in the physical realm have long attacked globalists and their political schemes to subvert national sovereignty as dangerous, totalitarian, extreme, kooky, fringe - even treasonous. But as globalism becomes politically toxic around the world and across the political spectrum, the spiritual implications of globalism are coming under fresh scrutiny too.

There are numerous different definitions of globalism. Until recently, even the word itself was relatively obscure, used mostly by the alternative media to describe the views of establishment figures pushing what they themselves tout as the "New World Order." At the core of globalism as it is presented publicly, though, is the idea that nation-states and borders need to give way to international governing institutions such as the United Nations, the European Union, and other outfits.

Critics oppose the scheming for a broad range of reasons. For one, globalism aims to disenfranchise citizens and strip them of their right to self-government at the local, state, and national level in favor of what is euphemistically referred to as "global governance." If "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," as the old saying goes, the implications of total power at the global level are obvious. And that is just the start of the problem. Globalists tend to be fanatically anti-liberty, too.

Comment: This is interesting, but it should also borne in mind that the vehicle of 'globalism' for the past 150 years or so has been - at least in part - the USA's evangelizing 'liberty' across the whole world.


Bizarro Earth

Top liberal think-tank that issued policy proposals for sexual harassment facing allegations of sexual harassment

Clinton Neera Tanden
© Yuri Gripas / ReutersFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) smiles next to President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden, October 24, 2013.
A leading liberal think tank run by a longtime adviser to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is facing allegations of serious sexual harassment which went undealt with by management, a new report claims.

The Centre for American Progress (CAP), headed by Clinton associate Neera Tanden, has released four policy proposal papers on dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace, but former staffers have come forward with stories of repeated harassment at the think tank, BuzzFeed reports.

In an exit memo, one former employee named only as Mary told her colleagues that she and others had faced "retaliation"for coming forward. She said that the worsening environment and treatment by supervisors outweighed "the seemingly positive act" of reporting the harassment.

Info

Armenia isn't undergoing a color revolution - Armenians are just fed up with Sargsyan

armenia protests
One of the great problems caused by the US's 'colour revolution/regime change' policy is that it is sometimes difficult to separate a genuine political crisis and real protests from US confected ones.

Recent events in Armenia provide a good example.

Over the last week Armenia's has been hit by a massive wave of protests following the ruling party's attempt to appoint Armenia's longstanding leader and former President Serzh Sargsyan to the post of executive Prime Minister.

The protests, with took place in several cities including the capital Yerevan and in which by some accounts some members of the military joined in eventually led to the forced resignation of Prime Minister Sargsyan and of his government.

Talks are now underway on setting up a new government.

Comparisons with the events in Ukraine in 2013-2014 are irresistible, and many see in the events in Armenia a repeat of those events, with a 'pro-Russian' leader - Sargsyan - ousted by pro-Western protesters in what is essentially a 'colour revolution' coup orchestrated by the US.

In my opinion this comparison is misleading and is almost certainly wrong.