Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 06 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Pistol

Activist offering $50k reward to find murderer in shooting death of 7yo girl in Houston - Update: Race considered not a factor in shooting

jazmine barnes
© Twitter/@shaunking
Jazmine Barnes
The death of 7-year-old Jazmine Barnes has caught the attention of a community activist in New York City, who has offered a large sum of money to whoever turns in her killer.

Shaun King said he is raising the reward he is offering to $50,000 cash for anyone who turns in the man responsible for the slaying of Barnes.

King shared new photos and videos of Barnes on Twitter along with a post saying the family wanted him to share the images of Barnes and that he was joining in on the search to find her killer.

Comment: The deadly shooting was apparently unprovoked with no motive, so police need all the help they can get to find this murderer.

Update (Jan. 7): Police have announced that the shooting appears to be a tragic case of mistaken identity and that they are looking at two African American suspects. One man has been arrested in connection with the shooting.


Eye 2

Kevin Spacey pleads not guilty to accusations of groping 18yo boy

Kevin Spacey
© EPA
Kevin Spacey appeared in court Monday to answer accusations that he groped an 18-year-old man in a bar on the resort island of Nantucket in 2016.

The two-time Oscar winner pleaded not guilty to a charge of felony indecent assault and battery.

Spacey, sporting a white and purple floral printed shirt and purple tie under a taupe coat, smiled but did not respond to reporters as he entered the court.

Upon entering the courtroom, Spacey sat whispering and occasionally chuckling with his attorney, Alan Jackson.

Attention

6-year-old Michigan girl rescued after posting photos of dead father, unconscious stepmother online

House
Authorities in southeast Michigan say a 6-year-old girl has been rescued from a home after posting photos on social media of her dead father and unconscious stepmother after being alone for up to 24 hours.

The girl, who lived in Mount Morris Township, just north of Flint, woke up around 8 a.m. Thursday and found her father, 40, and his wife, 36, incapacitated on their mattress, according to WJRT.

The girl reportedly threw water on her parents in an attempt to wake them, but neither regained consciousness.

Police said the girl eventually took photos of them lying on the mattress and used Facebook Messenger to send the photos to her grandparents in Tennessee.

Footprints

Gov. Bill Haslam grants full clemency to Cyntoia Brown, eligible for release Aug. 7

Cyntoia Brown
Gov. Bill Haslam ordered an early release for Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman and alleged sex trafficking victim serving a life sentence in prison for killing a man when she was 16.

Haslam granted Brown a full commutation to parole on Monday. Brown will be eligible for release Aug. 7, 15 years after she fatally shot a man in the back of the head while he was lying in bed beside her. She will stay on parole for 10 years.

"Cyntoia Brown committed, by her own admission, a horrific crime at the age of 16," Haslam said in a statement. "Yet, imposing a life sentence on a juvenile that would require her to serve at least 51 years before even being eligible for parole consideration is too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life.

"Transformation should be accompanied by hope. So, I am commuting Ms. Brown's sentence, subject to certain conditions."

Comment: See also: #FreeCyntoiaBrown: The child sex slave jailed for killing her abuser


Play

China unveils new flying saucer-like Sky Hawk stealth drone

China Sky Hawk stealth drone
A video featuring China's flying saucer-like stealth drone, the Sky Hawk, was shown for the first time on China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday, with leading military experts saying the technologies mastered by Chinese developers will allow the drone to fly faster, farther and avoid detection.

Independently developed by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the Sky Hawk conducted a test flight at an undisclosed location in China, the CCTV report said.

The video showed the drone taking off and landing, marking the first time that the aircraft has been publicly seen in flight.

The drone reportedly first flew in February, but no video was available before Saturday's broadcast. It was on display at Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province in November but was never flown there.

The step-by-step revelations mean the drone is being developed and manufactured on schedule, and that China considers the drone feasible, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Featuring a "flying wing" aerodynamic design similar to the US B-2 stealth bomber, the Sky Hawk is a high-altitude, long-range and high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle capable of conducting reconnaissance and patrol missions in hostile environments, CCTV reported.

Comment: The video has been released by Global Times:




2 + 2 = 4

China's population forecasted to reach 1.4 billion by 2029 before starting 'unstoppable decline'

China population
China's population is set to reach a peak of 1.442 billion in 2029 and start a long period of "unstoppable" decline in 2030, government scholars said in a research report published on Friday.

The world's most populous country must now draw up policies to try to cope with a declining labour force and a rapidly ageing population, according to the summary of the latest edition of the "Green Book of Population and Labor" published by the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Growth in the working population had now stagnated, the report said, and the rising number of elderly people will have a far-reaching impact on the social and economic development in the country, especially if fertility rates remain low.

"From a theoretical point of view, the long-term population decline, especially when it is accompanied by a continuously ageing population, is bound to cause very unfavourable social and economic consequences," it said.

Comment: See also: China mulls replacing defunct 1-child limit with 1-child tax as population ages and birthrates don't keep up


Biohazard

Unseen enemy: Superbug epidemic in Gaza makes for worse conditions in treating the injured

Fahed Zuhud
© Médecins Sans Frontières
Fahed Zuhud, 29, has a bone infection resistant to antibiotics
Fahed Zuhud was shot in the thigh by Israeli soldiers in February 2018 but because of superbug infections the wound hasn't healed and he may still lose his leg.

Doctors in Gaza and the West Bank warn they are battling an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, a growing problem in the world's conflict zones and one that risks spilling over borders and diminishing the global medical arsenal against serious illness.

The rise and spread of these virulent infections adds to the devastation of war, increasing medical costs, blocking hospital beds because patients need longer care and leaving people whose injuries might once have been healed with life-changing disabilities.

Gaza is a particularly fertile breeding ground for superbugs because its health system has been crippled by years of blockade and antibiotics are in short supply. Even though doctors know the protocols to prevent the rise of drug resistant bacteria, they do not have supplies to follow them.

Shortages of water, power and fuel for generators mean doctors often cannot meet even basic hygiene standards. Staff sometimes can't even wash their hands, sterilising machines are unreliable, and there are shortages of gloves, gowns and chlorine tablets for sanitising the hospitals, medical professionals say.

Books

Chomsky's never truly earned his prestige

Noam Chomsky
© Andrew Rusk/FLICKR
Noam Chomsky
A large part of Noam Chomsky's public image as an intellectual is derived not from his role in the field of linguistics, but instead from his having co-authored with Edward Herman Manufacturing Consent. The first matter to be discussed here will therefore be Chomsky's contribution to that work; and, more broadly, that work's contribution to human understanding - the actual significance of the book.

Chomsky's contribution to that 1988 book was to describe the selling of specifically the wars in Vietnam and in adjoining Indo-chinese nations, according to that book's main author, Herman's, theory. That theory was called the "Propaganda model of communication". It's the book's theory, or "model," of manufacturing consent for wars. According to their book, the practitioners of this model are the public relations or PR profession that sell, to the domestic American public, invasions and military occupations of foreign lands. This is a specialized field of PR.

Herman's theory (or "model") of political PR (commonly called "propaganda") for the invasion and control of foreign countries, had, itself, actually already been presented 66 years earlier in almost full form in Walter Lippmann's 1922 introduction of that concept, "the manufacture of consent," but Lippmann focused there more broadly, on the selling of all types of governmental polices, and not only on the selling of invasions and military occupations of foreign lands. Lippmann had introduced this broader concept of "the manufacture of consent," in his 1922 book Public Opinion.

Comment: Chomsky is a mixed bag of truth and lies, and likely controlled opposition. Discernment as always.


Russian Flag

Brits delighted with Russian railways, for good reason - they're civilized

trans-siberia railway
Translated and captioned by Leo.

A few months have passed since the end of the World Cup, which our country hosted. In the Western media, enthusiasm from the fans subsided, and the dull anti-Russian propaganda began again. But it is being countered by ordinary foreign tourists.


A couple of Britons - Katie and Robbie - started an online report on Twitter from their journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing. Katie, however, due to British education, is calling our railway miracle the Trans-Mongolian Railway, but we will forgive her.

Interesting, of course, is not the knowledge of ordinary Europeans in geographical names, but how their published photos and videos tear both Western and domestic liberal myths to shreds.

One myth, for example, says that "fine food is only in Europe." The Briton categorically disagrees.

"The food is amazing! It's all fresh and homemade."

Star of David

Five illegal settlers - all minors - arrested in connection with October stoning murder of Aisha al-Rabi

Aisha al-Rabi
© Ma'an News Agency
Aisha al-Rabi, 48, and her husband of 31 years, Yaqoub al-Rabi, 51
Israeli authorities have arrested five Israeli settlers suspected in the killing of 48-year-old Palestinian woman Aisha al-Rabi last month, according to the Shin Bet, Israel's internal intelligence agency.

Al-Rabi was killed in October 2018 when a group of settlers attacked her and her husband's car with rocks on a West Bank highway. The mother of eight sustained a severe head injury that killed her, while her husband and young daughter sustained light wounds.

The Shin Bet said in a statement Sunday night saying that the five Israeli settlers were all minors from the illegal Rehelim settlement in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus, located just off the road where the attack on al-Rabi's car took place.

Comment: Expect the same result in this case. Israel's courts are notoriously soft on violence against Palestinians, especially its advance shock troops, the fanatical squatters.