Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Heart - Black

Family furious after Alaska Airlines kicks son with Down Syndrome off plane for throwing up


RT
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 19:32 UTC
down syndrome sick
© Twitter/hessybaby93
A family was booted off an Alaska Airlines flight and stranded at the airport after their son with Down syndrome was sick before boarding. The company says he posed a health risk.

The family was traveling to Seattle from St. Louis on Monday after an Easter trip, when Alaska Airline attendants demanded they disembark the plane.

"After boarding the flight, Patrick threw up a little and the airline workers kicked my family off the flight," the boy's sister, Meaghan Hess, a third-year law student, told NBC. She was not traveling with her family when the incident took place.
      Read More...
Propaganda

Propaganda Alert: WaPo writer calls supporters of Laura Ingraham 'Russian bots'

Amanda Erickson
Washington Post
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 19:10 UTC
laura ingraham
Embattled Fox News host Laura Ingraham has found some unlikely allies: Russian bots.

Russian-linked Twitter accounts have rallied around the conservative talk-show host, who has come under fire for attacking the young survivors of the Parkland school shooting. According to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks the spread of Russian propaganda on Twitter, the hashtag #IstandwithLaura jumped 2,800 percent in 48 hours this weekend. On Saturday night, it was the top trending hashtag among Russian campaigners.


Comment: "Russian propaganda" has now just become a euphimism the MSM uses for anyone who doesn't toe the US Empire's line on any idea that it is spreading to control the thinking of people. We should all be concerned that if you think differently than the accepted mainstream version of any event, you'll be labeled a 'Russian bot'. Anybody who still thinks for themselves is just a Putin plant now!


The website botcheck.me, which tracks 1,500 "political propaganda bots," found that @ingrahamangle, @davidhogg111 and @foxnews were among the top six Twitter handles tweeted by Russia-linked accounts this weekend. "David Hogg" and "Laura Ingraham" were the top two-word phrases being shared.

Wading into controversy is a key strategy for Russian propaganda bots, which seize on divisive issues online to sow discord in the United States. Since the Feb. 14 Parkland shooting, which claimed 17 lives, Russian bots have flooded Twitter with false information about the massacre.
      Read More...
Eye 1

Facebook admits it violated user privacy by going into their accounts and deleting messages from execs


RT
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 19:03 UTC
zuckerberg
© Mladen Antonov / AFP
As the firestorm surrounding Facebook's handling of user data continues to rage, it's now emerging that the social media site giant reached into people's accounts and deleted messages from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

Citing multiple sources, Techcrunch is reporting that people's interactions with Zuckerberg have mysteriously disappeared from their inboxes, although their responses to the media mogul remain. If a user deletes chats on Facebook messenger, they disappear only from their own account, meaning that the company accessed people's accounts to delete messages from its top brass.

Facebook told the tech news site that the messages were deleted for security reasons. "After Sony Pictures' emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives' communications. These included limiting the retention period for Mark's messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages," the company said.
      Read More...
People 2

Nearly a third of college kids are hungry and homeless

Mará Rose Williams
The Kansas City Star
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 18:59 UTC
food pantry
© Mará Rose Williams
Like a lot of colleges across the country, the University of Missouri stocks a food pantry near its campus to help the growing number of students who experience food insecurity while they are at school.
Sarah Barrett didn't need a grand study to tell her a bunch of students on Kansas State University's campus had been going without food.

As an assistant dean of students, she had heard enough of them talk about choosing books or housing costs over food to know that the university needed to do something to help its hungry students.

K-State students are not alone. The problem of college students' inability to afford food is common on campuses across the country.

According to a first-of-its-kind survey of two- and four-year private and public schools, 36 percent of students on college campuses in the U.S. do not get enough to eat.

On Wednesday afternoon just after the noon lunch hour, the UMKC Kangaroo Pantry opened its doors to a short line of students needing food. Katie Garey, who manages the pantry, and a student volunteer were busy stuffing plastic bags with nonperishable food items requested by the handful of students who filled out order forms that day.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Russian Flag

Made in Russia: Food production booming thanks to import substitutions and Western sanctions

Paul
Russia Feed
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Russia food production
A relatively recent phrase is now part of the lexicon of everyday life among Russians, it is "import substitution", or if it were marketed in the USA, it would probably be packaged as "Made in Russia".

Sanctions and similar geopolitical micro-management policies instituted by Western countries, and directed against Russia have added urgency to efforts in transferring key components of agricultural, consumer and industrial business to domestic producers. At the end of the day, it is hoped (by local companies) that Russian ones will replace the majority of foreign goods traditionally imported.

The import substitution projects are considered here to be a temporary phenomenon, a temporary tool for adjusting to the current situation.

According to President Putin. "The idea of import substitution itself is not universal and is not what we should strive for in the long run, because import substitution should not undermine competition. This is an extremely important thing. We should aim at producing products of such quality and price that it is competitive not just on our own, but on the world's markets."

Comment: It's heartening to see how the machinations of the West keep backfiring so splendidly:

      Read More...
Eye 2

Great Return March: 7 Palestinian protesters killed after IDF launch tear gas and open fire on Gaza border


RT
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 20:13 UTC
Israeli soldiers are seen next to the border fence on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border
© Amir Cohen / Reuters
Israeli soldiers are seen next to the border fence on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as black smoke rises while Palestinians protest on the Gaza side of the border. April 6, 2018
A 16-year-old boy is among the seven killed at the Gaza-Israel border during the second week of the Great Return March protest. Dozens of Palestinians have also been injured by the Israel Defense Forces.

The Palestinian Red Crescent earlier confirmed the first death as that of a 38-year-old man, telling RT.com: "PRCS teams provided first aid to 81 injured in Gaza strip; 36 out of the total number are live bullets injuries." Three of those are serious injuries to the chest and head. The second casualty was also 38, while the third was a 16-year-old boy, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. Seven people have been reported dead so far.

The IDF launched tear gas and opened fire on protesters in the northern Gaza Strip, east of Jabaliya, Haaretz reports, with Israel deploying snipers and tanks along the border as protests gain traction. Palestinians have burned tires during protests in an effort to obstruct the view of Israeli snipers, while Israel says the smoke could hide terrorists.

      Read More...
Attention

Escondido, CA votes to support Trump's lawsuit against sanctuary cities

Kyle James
The Goldwater
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Escondido CA sanctuary city
An Escondido City council meeting ended Wednesday evening with a vote 4-1 in favor of supporting president Trump's lawsuit against sanctuary cities. The council filed a legal brief in support of the lawsuit which seeks to challenge the legality of three California state laws which took effect last year.

Among the three controversial laws is a statue that limits cooperation between law enforcement at the local level and federal immigration authorities. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the laws unconstitutional and said they compromise the public's safety. The one city council member who went against the vote is Councilmember Olga Diaz.

With the vote to join the lawsuit succeeding in Escondido, the city has become the first in San Diego County to join the fight against the liberalism that seeks to protect undocumented criminals and fugitives. The vote is a brief glimmer of hope for the people of other California cities where a vote has not taken place to separate them from the madness of sanctuary cities.

Comment:

      Read More...
Binoculars

Big Brother is watching: Is a building wave of discontent ready to crash down on Silicon Valley tech companies?

Liberty Smoke
New Right Network
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
tech company monopoly
The Shadow banning and shutting down of accounts on Twitter, along with demonetizing content on YouTube has caused a lot of frustration and resentment. A building wave of discontent is about to crest and crash down on many of the Tech companies strutting around like roosters. The moguls of Silicon Valley thinking they need to manipulate and run this country is arrogant and dangerous.

Teddy Roosevelt was the original Trustbuster, and boy did he go big. Starting with the titan of industry, J.P. Morgan, he went on to busting dozens more. Roosevelt changed business in this country forever. From the meat industry to railroads, to Standard Oil, Roosevelt had an impact. It is still uncertain whether the trust-busting of Roosevelt and his successor, William Taft, was good for the public and businesses, but it changed the way business was viewed and practiced.

Comment: As the tech giants provide a valuable service to the establishment by controlling the official narrative, there's little incentive for the government to change what works so well as a control mechanism.

      Read More...
Attention

Police are losing control of the streets, warns former Met officer

Vikram Dodd and Damien Gayle
The Guardian
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 17:09 UTC
Victor Olisa
© Steve Brown/BBC
Victor Olisa, in 2015, in post as a chief superintendent in north London.
A former senior police officer has warned that Scotland Yard appears to have lost control of London's streets and has accused the Metropolitan police leadership of a "deafening" silence as the capital's murder toll for the year moved past 50.

The day after two further murders in Hackney, east London, Victor Olisa, the Met's former head of diversity and head of policing in Tottenham, said he feared that the violence could get worse.

He warned that budget cuts and new demands on police were taking officers off the street and away from gathering intelligence. "Communities are saying we don't see the police around any more," he said. "It appears to people I have spoken to as though the police have lost control of public spaces and the streets."

Olisa said Met chiefs should have been more visible after this week's rise in violence.

"The silence from senior officers in the Met is deafening," he said. "They should say we need more information from the public; this is what we are doing; this is what the results are."
      Read More...
Attention

As Oklahoma teachers forced to beg for funding, government accused of covering up fraud in state agencies

Rachel Blevins
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
oklahoma teachers strike
More than 30,000 teachers gathered to protest at the Oklahoma State Capitol this week, and while they are demanding that the state pass a bill that would provide an additional $150 million in education funding, some taxpayers are questioning why the teachers aren't calling for the government to be held accountable for the way it is spending the money it already has.

While teachers march with signs that say "Fund Our Schools" and they share photos online of dilapidated textbooks that need to be replaced, they are calling on the state to solve their problems by increasing taxes. However, a study conducted by the 1889 Institute revealed that in 2014, only 48 percent of public school revenue came from the state.

The other 41 percent of revenue came from the district and 11 percent came from the federal government. Even if the state increased taxes and allocated more money for the education budget, the state's more than 500 districts are responsible for determining the salaries of teachers and support staff as long as they are over a state minimum schedule.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts