Society's Child

World's First partial face transplant performed in France

AlJazeera
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 UTC

Doctors in France say they have performed the world's first partial face transplant, forging into a risky medical frontier with their operation on a woman disfigured by a dog bite.

The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and chin grafted onto her face from a brain-dead donor whose family gave consent.

The operation, performed on Sunday, included a surgeon already famous for transplant breakthroughs, Dr Jean-Michel Dubernard.

"The patient's general condition is excellent and the transplant looks normal," said a statement issued on Wednesday from the hospital in the northern city of Amiens where the operation took place.

Cult-ivating Terror

Joe Quinn
SOTT.net
Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC

Excerpted from SOTT Essay: Cult-ivating Terror: A brief analysis of the origins and effects of the cult phenomena in modern society

[...] One religious professor in 1994 well summarized the popular perspectives concerning the identification of "cults" in an online posting, shortly after the tragedy at Waco, that deserves some consideration:

70% of rivers, lakes polluted in China

www.chinaview.cn
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC

China has 70 percent of its rivers contaminated and 75 percent over-enriched, according to information from a symposium in east China's Jiangxi Province Wednesday.

Support the Troops - Because It's Damn Sure George Bush Doesn't

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC

The average age of an graduating American Marine is 19. During their boot camp training, they are effectively brainwashed and taught the finer points of killing without remorse, or "for fun" as many of them have described it. While officially classed as "men", when we factor in the severely retarded state of the American society, and particularly the American education system that spawned them, the recruits are in fact little more than children, albeit trained killer children.

Small wonder then that, when let loose on the streets of Iraq with a gun and a Humvee and told to "go get some bad guys", these gun-toting grunts should end up killing and torturing indiscriminately, and in doing so, stoke the flames of hatred and anger among the Iraqi people.

Of course, we realise that the average American soldier that blows the head of an Iraqi child cannot be held fully accountable for his misdeeds. If it were not for the elitist social policies, dehumanising military policies, Orwellian education policies and the fascist propaganda of US government officials, there would be far fewer impoverished, dumbed- down, aggressive and wholly deceived teenage American boys to sign up to fight the wars for profit of their so-called leaders.

The shocking use of police stun guns

NewScientist
Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:00 UTC

"Tasers are suffering from mission creep," says Nick Lewer, who studies conflict resolution at the University of Bradford in the UK. "From being an alternative to lethal firearms they are now becoming an indiscriminate compliance tool."