Society's Child

Two Scandinavian backpackers hacked to death in Morocco by 'ISIS terrorists' with one filmed being beheaded

Andrew Koubaridis
news.com.au
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 18:20 UTC

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland

Two Scandinavian backpackers were hacked to death and one beheaded in what is believed to have been a terrorist attack in Morocco.

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, were knifed and beheaded on camera while camping in the Atlas Mountains.

Their bodies were found on Monday morning.

Footage of the horrifying attack has been shared on social media and has caused outrage in Morocco. The footage shows a blonde woman screaming while a man cuts her neck with what appears to be a sharp kitchen knife.

Appeals court ruling: Colleges must censor and block online services if they offend someone

Greg Piper
The College Fix
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC

Dissenting judge to university: Appeal this immediately

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, not his death, which happens in the spring. When it comes to dead litigation, it's apparently the opposite. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has resurrected a lawsuit against the University of Mary Washington for not meddling enough in its students' lives.

Here's some background: A location-based social media app called Yik Yak used to exist. It let users post things anonymously in a given geographic area, such as around colleges. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people posted boorish and offensive things. Even less surprisingly, people with fascist tendencies demanded their universities identify and punish those people.

A feminist group at UMW took this to the next level by filing a lawsuit last year alleging the public university failed to protect them from a "sexually hostile environment." Also named as a defendant was the university's former president Richard Hurley, who allegedly retaliated against the plaintiffs ... by publicly defending the school against the students' claims. I'm not kidding.

The lawsuit's other legal reasoning was not particularly convincing. The plaintiffs said UMW should have shut down Yik Yak by banning the app from the campus network. This would not have stopped anyone with a data signal from using the app. Which is basically everyone.

A federal judge knocked down the lawsuit a year ago, saying that implementing the plaintiffs' demands "may have exposed the university to liability under the First Amendment."

Comment: There are several options, but only one 'choice': freedom of speech.

Peter Schiff on US economy: 'This isn't a bear market, we're in a house of cards that the Fed built

Mark DeCambre
Market Watch
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:51 UTC

Where in the world is Peter Schiff, as the stock market entered an apparent unraveling phase?

Find the chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital, a longtime gold bug and market pundit, on a beach in Puerto Rico, where he's taken up residence as he watches the equity market get rocked.

"I'm watching the U.S. economy implode from the beach," Schiff told MarketWatch during a recent phone interview. "We're in a lot of trouble," he said.

"This isn't a bear market, we're in a house of cards that the Fed built," he said.

India's drug regulator orders Johnson & Johnson to stop manufacturing baby powder using raw materials

Rahul Singh, Krishna N. Das
Reuters
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 17:46 UTC

India's drugs regulator has ordered Johnson & Johnson to stop manufacturing its Baby Powder using raw materials currently in two of its Indian factories until test results prove they are free of asbestos, a senior official said on Thursday.

The official at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), who declined to be named citing the sensitivity of the matter, said a written order had been sent to the U.S. company telling it to stop using the "huge quantities" of raw materials stocked in its plants in northern and western India.

The company said on Wednesday that Indian drug authorities visited some of its facilities and took "tests and samples" of its talcum powder. It also said that the safety of its cosmetic talc was based on a long history of safe use and decades of research and clinical evidence by independent researchers and scientific review boards across the world.

Comment: Previously:

Drunk and crazed cops flash badges, threaten to kill people and carry out mass shooting

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 16:49 UTC

The Bexar County sheriff's department is no stranger to controversy. Their history includes killing children, raping toddlers, and shooting innocent elderly grandmothers. Now, the department is in the spotlight once again-this time, for threatening to carry out a mass shooting.

According to surveillance video and multiple witnesses, two Bexar County deputies were off duty and drinking at Deol's Bar in San Antonio last week when things took a turn for the worse.

"They said that they were going to come back and shoot up the bar and kill people," said Joshua Cornell, a bouncer at Deol's.

According to witnesses, the cops were not only drunk on alcohol but they were also drunk on power as they ordered patrons around and demanded the DJ play what they wanted. The deputies went so far as to show the patrons their badges to demand they comply. When people refused to comply with the power-tripping deputies, the deputies became enraged.

"They were trying to order people around and tell them what they could and couldn't do just because they're Bexar County sheriff," said Cornell.

Because a citizen filmed it, cop found guilty for kicking handcuffed teen's head

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:41 UTC

As TFTP reported in May, a vigilant citizen with a cellphone captured video of the ridiculously excessive force by police on 18-year-old kid who ran from them. In spite of the teen being handcuffed, face-down on the ground, with another officer on top of him, a Franklin Township police officer is seen punting his face like a football. This week, in a rare move, the officer was actually found guilty for his crimes.

Former Franklin Township Police Officer Robert Wells, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, according to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien.

"While we support police officers, whenever an office uses excessive unreasonable force such as this there is just no justification for that," said O'Brien. "Everyone has the right to be free from the use of excessive force by law-enforcement officers."

Fighting the mob: PewDiePie's battle for the soul of the internet

Allen Farrington
Quillette
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:01 UTC

This is a story about the question of who holds power over what we can say, hear, watch and read on the internet - an increasingly urgent issue that many ordinary people have cause to think about every day. And yet the protagonist in this story, the man whose fate symbolizes the future of social media and the corporate web that controls it, is unknown to the vast majority of educated readers.

That man is PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian whose real name is Felix Kjellberg. With 77-million subscribers, he has the most popular YouTube channel in the world. Within YouTube's video subculture, he is regarded as a true celebrity - a sort of Joe Rogan, Kanye West and Ben Shapiro all rolled into one. As of this writing, PewDiePie is closing in on 20-billion total views - roughly equivalent to three views for every human on the planet.

Comment: Love him or hate him (or never having heard of him) by being YouTube's ultimate champion content creator, PewDiePie has painted a giant target on himself for the PC mob to attack. Much like with Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Sargon of Akkad and any number of other targets of the PC police, the accusations against PewDiePie are ridiculous in the extreme. But given what's happening with Patreon at the moment, perhaps these giant social media platforms will think twice about deplatforming users simply because a vocal, outraged minority demands it. YouTube's user base is unlikely to stand for their favourite personality getting the boot because some professional offendees can't get a life.

See also:

A book to inoculate kids against anti-science ideology and teach kids about the nature of genetics

Richard Haier
Quillette
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:01 UTC

A review of Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are by Kevin J. Mitchell. Princeton University Press (October 16, 2018) 304 pages.

Kevin Mitchell's Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are is a book for high school students. And I mean that as a compliment. Profound misunderstandings about the genetic nature of human beings lie at the heart of the social justice movement, as well as some education reforms, attitudes toward mental disorders, aspects of the self-help industry, and social policies including but not limited to immigration, welfare, racism, and sex/gender issues. What a person understands or misunderstands about genetics is a foundation for evaluating new ideas encountered in college, forming political opinions, dealing with difficult co-workers, tackling issues of parenthood and family, and generally living day-to-day life.

If read early enough, Innate might provide some inoculation against bad or naïve information about human nature and the indisputable role played by genes. That is why it belongs on high school reading lists, not just in science classes. Think general liberal education.

Comment: The denial of biological science seems to be reaching a fever-pitch, with attacks on biologists, psychologists, geneticists and others happening almost daily. The ideological left is completely uncomfortable with the truth and are in-turn smearing anyone who dares to report it. This can not be allowed if we expect to continue as a species. Scientific truths should never be so controversial as to be silenced. Science is how we make progress - denial is regression.

See also:

Survey of 'profession ethics' finds Members of Congress rated lower than telemarketers

Paul Bedard
Washington Examiner
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 11:51 UTC

Politicians, lawyers, telemarketers, and journalists sit at the low end of a new survey asking which profession has the highest ethics and honesty.

Nurses are on top of the latest Gallup survey, with 84 percent viewing their profession as one with "very high" ethics.

Last sit members of Congress. Just 8 percent view them as highly ethical and 58 percent view as having "very low" ethics, the biggest percentage in the annual poll taken since 1976.

Below average are journalists - even lower than scandal-plagued Catholic priests. Some 33 percent of those polled said reporters are honest and have high ethics and 34 percent said the industry's ethics and honesty are low.

Family struggling to understand how mom was jailed for 5 months and died before they knew she was there

Pamela Kirkland
CNN
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 11:22 UTC

Janice Dotson-Stephens had a history of mental health problems, her daughter says.

A woman held on a $300 bond for five months died Friday in a Texas jail, and the 61-year-old's family was unaware she had been arrested until it was time for them to collect the body.

Janice Dotson-Stephens had been arrested on July 18 in Bexar County and charged with criminal trespassing. Her daughter, Michelle Dotson, said the Bexar County Sheriff's Office did not have a next of kin listed for her mother. "We asked about her being in jail for so long. We are still getting clarity on the chain of events," she said.

The sheriff's office said Dotson-Stephens died of natural causes. According to the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office, the cause of death was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, or coronary artery disease. They also listed schizoaffective disorder, a chronic mental health condition characterized by symptoms of schizophrenia, as a contributing factor.

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Society's Child

Two Scandinavian backpackers hacked to death in Morocco by 'ISIS terrorists' with one filmed being beheaded

Appeals court ruling: Colleges must censor and block online services if they offend someone

Peter Schiff on US economy: 'This isn't a bear market, we're in a house of cards that the Fed built

India's drug regulator orders Johnson & Johnson to stop manufacturing baby powder using raw materials

Drunk and crazed cops flash badges, threaten to kill people and carry out mass shooting

Because a citizen filmed it, cop found guilty for kicking handcuffed teen's head

Fighting the mob: PewDiePie's battle for the soul of the internet

A book to inoculate kids against anti-science ideology and teach kids about the nature of genetics

Survey of 'profession ethics' finds Members of Congress rated lower than telemarketers

Family struggling to understand how mom was jailed for 5 months and died before they knew she was there

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