This program is mind blowing, when you consider the many connections between pop culture and music icons, and the military industrial complex. There is obviously a great deal that hasn't been explained to the naive and believing public, who identify with these figures, and refuse to ask critical questions that could diminish the popular images with whom they identify. Nevertheless, there are endless connections between these celebrated individuals and ongoing experiments in MK Ultra and mind control - perhaps operating on the mass population level.

If even some of this is true, it is interesting and significant; but more so, this is a window into the doors of perception that were used to steer the CIA-created counterculture in order to re-engineer society.

Staff in 47 Christian schools serving Palestinians within present-day Israel have gone on strike to protest against funding cuts imposed on them by the government. They say they may escalate their protest by seeking the closure of Christian holy sites that attract thousands of tourists each year.

While the State of Israel previously funded up to 70 percent of the budget for these schools, it has sharply reduced its contribution during the past few years.Today, the state pays only 29 percent of their operating costs. Palestinian citizens of Israel perceive the cuts as an attack on their culture and identity.

The Christian schools — which teach 30,000 children — are among the few Palestinian institutions in present-day Israel that survived the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing conducted by Zionist forces during and after Israel's establishment in 1948. Run on a semi-public basis, they follow the core Israeli curriculum but also give lessons on religion and Palestinian history.

The funding cuts appear discriminatory. Schools for ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel have similarly been run on a semi-public basis, even though they focus on religious instruction, rather than the Israeli curriculum.Yet the Israeli government has steadily increased its funding for such schools in recent years to the extent that they are almost totally financed by the state's budget.

Palestinian Christians comprise less than 2 percent of Israel's population. Their schools — which accept Muslims and Druze students, too — are high-performing, with a large number of their pupils later attending university.

A Muslim schoolboy was questioned by staff about Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) after he used the term 'eco-terrorist' in a classroom discussion about the environment.

The 14-year-old, who wishes not to be named, said the experience of being taken out of his class and questioned about an international terrorist organization was "scary."

Central Foundation School in Old Street, London, said they acted to protect the welfare of the child in line with the government's controversial counter-extremism 'Prevent' policy.

The schoolboy's parents are taking legal action against the school, claiming he was left "visibly distressed" by the experience.

Molotov cocktails, car bombs and IEDs, they've been a common sight in one part of Albuquerque this week. Investigators have been blowing stuff up left and right, and all that destruction, is part of an effort to make you safer. "Unfortunately this is the world we live in, IEDs, bombs of various types, we certainly see them throughout the world being used in domestic terrorism," said ATF Special Agent Tom Mangan.

That's why investigators are here in Albuquerque this week sharpening their skills. ATF officials have brought together state and local bomb technicians and first responders. Mangan said, "We want to bring this collective, there are no egos here, we check those at the door."

The group spent classroom time examining bomb pieces before and after blasts. Now they're out in the desert just south of the Sunport, seeing the explosions firsthand, then taking a hard look at what's left behind. "They're going to shift through that scene, looking for pieces and components, set those aside and then they will reconstruct that device," said Mangan.

Pieces that could mean little by themselves, but all together help investigators put the puzzle back together. Mangan said, "We're all here to determine the cause and origins of these blasts and ultimately leading to the arrest of that person or persons who are responsible in the real world."

The Game

In October of 1994, University of Manitoba psychology professor Bob Altemeyer performed an experiment. After screening participants using a personality survey disguised as an opinion poll, he selected 68 highly authoritarian college students to play a political governance and resource management simulation called the Global Change Game. In this game, each player represents 100 million people in one of nine different regions of the world. Play consists of making decisions about how to deal with various social, economic, and environmental matters. Each player's viability depends on three factors: food, health care, and employment. Lose access to one factor, and you earn a black armband. Earn three black armbands and all the people you represent die. A worldwide environmental crisis occurs at a randomly determined point during game play, testing the players' ability to respond to a global emergency.

The game also involves regional leaders, called "Elites", who control their region's bank account, which they can use to buy factories, hospitals, armies, and so on. They're allowed to travel the world, to make deals with other Elites, and to declare war if they can gather enough support from their fellow region members. Success in war means increased territory and assets. Elites can also secretly funnel some of their region's money into their own pockets. (Unbeknownst to the rest of the players, the Elites are simultaneously vying for the prize of World's Richest Person.)

The Global Change Game was originally designed to educate students about various challenges facing the modern world, including population growth, hunger, climate change, international relations, war, and resource distribution. But that day in 1994, Bob Altemeyer used it for a different purpose: to see what would happen in a world populated exclusively by right-wing authoritarians.

It looks like Team Australia, smells like Team Australia, sounds like Team Australia. But in fact it was a game used to simulate real world global politics, and the results were startling. Back in the real world, Dr Lissa Johnson looks at the collision of government and fantasy in the lucky country.

In 2003 Robert Altemeyer, the father of contemporary Right-wing authoritarianism research, reported on a series of global leadership simulations. Publishing in the Journal "Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy" Altemeyer named his paper, "What Happens When Authoritarians Inherit the Earth? A Simulation".

The last couple of weeks in Australian politics brings Altemeyer's simulations to mind, not because our reality looks like what happens when authoritarians inherit the earth. Because it looks worse.

Using a paradigm known as the Global Change Game, Altemeyer created two mock worlds, one in which leaders and followers were high on Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and one in which they were low. Right-wing authoritarianism correlates with political conservatism and involves punitive submission to authority and the status quo.

Americans are no strangers to embarrassing exports (sorry for Grey's Anatomy and Papa John's pizza, Planet Earth!). And our political nutbaggery is no exception. But when it comes to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, we may have outdone ourselves. The GOP frontrunner is a woman-hating reality TV star whose campaign has mostly focused on his lust for ethnic cleansing. The global reaction to Trump mania has been a sense of disgust; Trump is the native son of a country that worships selfishness above empathy, corporate interests over justice and notoriety over prestige. As French author Marie-Cecile Naves put it to Politico, "Trump represents the America we love to hate...He is our negative mirror image, a man we see as brutal, who worships money and lacks culture — someone who lets us feel a bit superior about being European."

In short, the rest of the world seems as flabbergasted about Trump's rise as we should be. Here's how seven other countries have reacted to his befuddling popularity.

1. Mexico

Mexicans have a special right to resent Trump, given his well-documented disdain for them. He's pushed blackmailing Mexico into paying for a border fence, called undocumented Latinos "rapists" who are "bringing drugs and crime," and even vowed to implement a mass deportation of millions of undocumented people and their American children. One July issue of Mexican comic book El Peso Hero featured its hero slugging Donald Trump in the mug on its cover, just as Captain America once socked Hitler. Not to be outdone, Mexican artist Dalton Javier Avalos Ramirez designed a special Donald Trump piñata so people can fulfill their dreams of bashing Trump with a stick.

2. France

France's Liberation Newspaper didn't go for subtlety in its August 27 cover story, "Trump: The American Nightmare." Text that ran alongside his pink grimace declared him to be "vulgar and opportunistic." Resentment against Trump has long been brewing in the land of brie and berets: back in January, he sparked widespread outrage when he blamed the Charlie Hebdo murders on strict gun laws. (Say quoi?!) More recently, Trump's nationalism and tendency to make outrageous comments in the media led a columnist at Le Figaro to dub him the American Le Pen, a comparison to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the notorious patriarch of France's far-right. Le Pen could also give Trump a master class on how to alienate practically everyone with reactionary bullshit: over the past year, Le Pen has gone off the deep end by denying the Holocaust and singing the praises of Nazi-collaborationist Vichy government occupiers who deported thousands of Jews during WWII.

A 26-year-old aspiring chef-cum-philanthropist in Massachusetts wants to retool the food truck trend as a way to feed the homeless—but will he be able to get his Helping Hand Food Truck gassed up and ready to roll?

Last month, Corey Phelan launched a Kickstarter campaign with a noble goal: to serve up fresh food made from locally sourced ingredients out of a food truck to anyone who shows up curbside, regardless of their ability to pay.

"While the truck will operate as a business to paying customers who are able to afford their food, I would like to take this opportunity to try and change the way business is done," Phelan writes on his Kickstarter page, citing his experience as a volunteer at a homeless shelter when he was younger, combined with his lifelong desire to own his own business. "Instead of fixed prices for meals, I am going to implement a Pay What You Can/Will policy, which will allow our customers to set the price they think is appropriate for our food and services."

It all sounds a bit starry-eyed, to be sure, which is perhaps why Phelan has only managed to raise $635 (as of this writing) toward his goal of $90,000, despite having started his campaign at the end of June. But at a time when a startling number of municipalities across the country are going so far as to criminalize feeding the homeless, Phelan may very well have hit on a promising way for people do to some good on their lunch break without ending up in handcuffs.

A 3-year-old North Carolina girl, whose father is accused of trying to drown her and her siblings, has died, police said on Wednesday.

An off-duty sheriff's deputy pulled two girls, ages 3 and 5, from a pond in Durham on Sunday night, according to police. Their 7-year-old brother escaped from the scene and sought help.

Alan Tysheen Eugene Lassiter, 29, of Raleigh was charged with three counts of attempted murder. He remained in jail on a $2.5 million bond on Wednesday.

A police spokeswoman declined to say whether Lassiter would face murder charges, saying only that the investigation is ongoing.

In a 911 call released by police, a man who identified himself as the children's father said he had drowned his two daughters in a lake near an apartment complex.

He said he had been trying to seek help from authorities who instead sought to take his children away.

The two girls were given CPR and taken to a local hospital. The 5-year-old was released on Wednesday, police said.

A police spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the boy had not been in the pond. Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said statements made by the boy to police prompted a third attempted murder charge.

A Japanese-based company Softbank, which has created Pepper the robot, has forced customers to sign a document forbidding its owners from using the humanoid for sexual purposes, as well as creating sexy apps.

Even after having paid nearly $2,000 US dollars for the robot, users may have to return Pepper to its makers should they get too personal with the emotional artificial being.

The clause reads that Pepper must not be used "for sexual activity and actions for the purpose of indecent acts, or acts for the purpose of meeting and dating and making acquaintance of the opposite sex."

Incidentally the child-sized robot has already fallen victim to a hacker prank receiving a pair of virtual breasts on its touch screen. The female developer who reprogrammed the robot to shake its hips and moan when its "breasts" are touched and called it Peppai - a mix of the brand name and Japanese word for breasts "oopai" - said she has done it "for the purpose of testing sexual harassment".

Pepper has been created by Aldebaran Robotics and Softbank Mobile, one of the largest mobile phone operators in Japan. It is already greeting and interacting with customers in stores.

Pepper is now available for use at home, though people have found that communication is really her only asset, as her domestic skills, such as cleaning or cooking are severely lacking.