Society's Child

Hacktivists target Ferguson, Missouri after police kill unarmed teenager

RT
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 17:07 UTC

Hacktivists have set their sights on the town of Ferguson, Missouri after police there on Saturday shot and killed an unarmed man, 18-year-old Michael Brown, elevating a wave of protests that have occurred in the days since to the digital realm.

Demonstrations and vigils across the St. Louis, MO suburb have taken place ever since Saturday afternoon's incident in which Brown was shot eight times by a Ferguson cop after an altercation allegedly occurred between the two, reportedly just days before the victim was expected to begin college. By Sunday, however, peaceful protests aimed at raising awareness of the shooting death began to turn violent in the city of barely 20,000, and local law enforcement responded to reports of riots and looting by deploying SWAT teams and heavily weaponized police.

Comment: The US has turned into a police state where cops have become so maliciously violent that anyone can be killed for little to no reason, and generally there are no repercussions for their outrageous behavior.

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American held without bail after tweeting support for Islamic State

RT
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:28 UTC

An American accused of conspiring to aid the militant group Islamic State was ordered by a New York judge to be held without bail after he was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport earlier this month, according to the New York Daily News.

Donald Ray Morgan was arrested by FBI agents on August 2 at Kennedy Airport when he returned to the United States following an eight-month stay in Lebanon where his wife lives, the Daily News reported.

Morgan was allegedly attempting to broker deals for military-style weapons and ammunition in his home state of North Carolina. He was indicted for possessing a firearm as a felon since he has a previous conviction in North Carolina for firing a gun.

Yet officials also cited concern over his aggressive rants on Twitter under the name "Abu Omar Al Amreeki" during his time in the Middle East.

At a bail hearing last week, assistant Brooklyn US Attorney Nadia Moore painted Morgan as too dangerous to return to North Carolina.

"It's possible that he traffics in guns to people in this organization (Islamic State)," Moore said in Brooklyn Federal Court before Magistrate Ramon Reyes. Islamic State is also known as ISIS, or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Despite sanctions, Russia's GDP increased in second quarter of 2014

RT
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 19:23 UTC

Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.8 percent between April and June, compared to the same period last year, according to a preliminary estimate by Russian statistics bureau Rosstat.

The announcement was made by Rosstat on Monday, and is only a preliminary reading. A final, revised calculation will follow.

The growth is enough to escape falling into a technical recession (two consecutive quarters of contracted growth) but still disappoints the Ministry of Economic Development's baseline estimate that the Russian economy would grow by 1.1 percent in the second quarter.

In the first quarter of 2014, between January and March, Russia's seasonally adjusted GDP fell by 0.5 percent.

California teen dies after smoking synthetic marijuana sprayed with chemicals

KLTA Staff and Lu Parker
KTLA5
Fri, 08 Aug 2014 08:29 UTC

© Facebook
Connor on life support at the hospital. Connor Eckhardt's family wants the story of his tragedy shared, so others will know about the dangers of synthetic pot. Facebook photo

Parents of a 19-year-old California teen who recently died after smoking synthetic marijuana spoke to KTLA about trying to prevent similar deaths from happening in the future.

On July 11, Connor Eckhardt inhaled one hit of dried herbs that had been sprayed with chemicals to cause a pot-like high, his parents said.

"In a moment of peer pressure, he gave into that, thinking that was OK, it was somehow safe, and one hit later, he goes to sleep and never wakes up," Connor's father, Devin Eckhardt, said.

Connor Eckhardt quickly slipped into a coma and experienced brain swelling, his parents said.

Open letter: Jewish survivors and descendents of survivors of Nazi genocide unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza

Celine Hagbard
International Middle East Media Center
Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:20 UTC

A group of Holocaust survivors and their descendants from the U.S. and Europe have signed onto a letter challenging a letter published in the New York Times by fellow Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who they contend promoted "blatant falsehoods to justify the unjustifiable". They argue that their experience of surviving the Nazi genocide has led them to believe that "Never Again" should apply to everyone, including Palestinians.

Their letter reads as follows:

Comment: The letter has been updated with even MORE signatures.

The outrage is growing: Georgia officials oppose federal restrictions on school bake sales, fundraisers

Kyle Olson
Eagnews.org
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 12:36 UTC

Outrage is growing against federal restrictions on school bake sales and fundraisers.

"We don't have enough teachers in our classrooms and now we are expected to hire some type of food police to monitor whether we are having bake sales or not. That is just asinine," John Barge, Georgia state school superintendent tells WSB-TV.

Barge and the state Board of Education are attempting to get an exemption from the snack rules, which would allow only 30 sales per year per school.

Tennessee recently received such a restriction and even still, they were mad. State Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman said it was "quite remarkable" there would even be a cap at all. Other states have not plead for leniency from their federal overlords, so even 30 would be against the law.

"We need this money for competition, for outfits, for buses, without those sales we can't go," Harmony Hart tells the news station. She adds her dance team in Rockdale County is reliant on bake sales.

Petition of 60K: Send Royal Navy hospital ship to Gaza

RT
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:41 UTC

Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition demanding the British government send hospital ship RFA Argus to Gaza to help treat the escalating number of causalities. Downing Street has so far committed a small team of NHS medics.

Currently moored in Falmouth, Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Argus is a 100-bed nautical hospital, which has a "four-bay operating theater with a 10-bed Critical Care Unit, a 20-bed High Dependency Unit and a CT Scanner," according to the Ministry of Defence website.

Campaigners are pushing the UK government to increase its humanitarian aid to the region as the death toll in Gaza broaches 2,000. Their goal is 75,000 signatures. Israel launched operation Protective Edge on July 8. While the international community works toward a ceasefire, protesters have marched worldwide against the Israeli military operation.

A team of NHS medics will soon be deployed to Gaza to help treat the wounded. Downing Street announced it is sending doctors, paramedics, surgeons and anesthetists, who will initially be stationed with Medical Aid for Palestinians at Al Mokassed hospital in East Jerusalem until they are able to enter Gaza itself.

Petitioners, however, argue the prime minister's commitment doesn't go far enough, as they continue to call for the ship's deployment.

Comment: As a UK campaign organizer states: "The scenes coming out of Gaza are truly horrific and we need to act. A health crisis is looming for trapped civilians with dire conditions in the main Gaza City El Shifa hospital. Doctors operate on the floor and in corridors. People die untreated. Only one X-ray machine is working with a lack of doctors, nurses, paramedics and the most basic equipment. We should be at the forefront of the humanitarian response..."

And what from the United States?

Gideon Levy to Israelis: Go to Gaza, see for yourself

Gideon Levy
Haaretz
Sun, 10 Aug 2014 06:28 UTC

In the absence of hatred, one can understand the Palestinians. Without it, even some of Hamas' demands might sound reasonable and justified.

Can we possibly conduct a discussion, however brief, that is not saturated with venomous hatred? Can we let go for a moment of the dehumanization and demonization of the Palestinians and speak dispassionately of justice, leaving racism aside? It's crucial that we give it a try.

In the absence of hatred, one can understand the Palestinians. Without it, even some of Hamas' demands might sound reasonable and justified. Such a rational discourse would lead any decent person to clear-cut conclusions. Such a revolutionary dialogue might even advance the cause of peace, if one may still dare say such things. What are we facing? A people without rights that in 1948 was dispossessed of its land and its territory, in part by its own fault. In 1967 it was again stripped of its rights and lands. Ever since it has lived under conditions experienced by few nations. The West Bank is occupied and the Gaza Strip is besieged. This nation tries to resist, with its meager powers and with methods that are sometimes murderous, as every conquered nation throughout history, including Israel, has done. It has a right to resist, it must be said.

Past is prologue: Diary from victim of Khmer Rouge Survives

Todd Pitman
Japan Times
Mon, 11 Aug 2014 01:11 UTC

Phnom Penh - It was an extraordinary act of defiance, and it was extraordinarily risky. But all he did was take out a pen and write.

Nearly 40 years ago, hunched on the floor of the wood-and-leaf hut he was forced to live in away from his children, Cambodian school inspector Poch Younly kept a secret diary vividly recounting the horrors of life under the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist regime whose extreme experiment in social engineering took the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians from overwork, medical neglect, starvation and execution.

Acutely aware that he could be killed if discovered, Younly hid the diary inside a clay vase. In those dark days, when religion and schools were banned and anyone deemed educated was a threat, he had no right to own so much as a pen and paper.

"Why is it that I have to die here like a cat or a dog . . . without any reason, without any meaning?" he wrote in the spiral-bound notebook's last pages.

Comment: One wonders what will survive our time. You can prevent the reporting of history in two ways. The Khmer Rouge picked the easy way, ban books, ban education. The other way is to ban nothing, but promote ignorance. To proliferate pointless education. Guess which way we chose?

Of course while you're in it, you are so busy surviving that you don't have time to think about the judgement of history.

Kiev shells fall near Donetsk largest chemical plant, risking chemical disaster over a large region

RT
Sun, 10 Aug 2014 23:24 UTC

Ukraine is at risk of an environmental disaster as Kiev's army continues to bomb the Donestk region, nearly hitting its largest chemical plant that stores lethal agents, the plant's spokesperson warned. The minimum impact zone would be at least 300 km.

For the past three weeks, the Ukrainian army has been intensely shelling Gorlovka, located in Ukraine's Donetsk region - home to the nation's largest chemical plant, Stirol.

"Due to the irresponsible actions of the Ukrainian army, citizens of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus are exposed to a deadly threat from an ecological disaster on a daily basis, the size of which cannot be predicted," Pavel Brykov, a spokesman for the plant, said in a YouTube message on Sunday.

According to Brykov, an accident at the plant could cause a toxic leak of nitrochlorobenzene - a lethal substance which, if it enters the human body, affects the liver, heart, and bone marrow, causing death.

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Society's Child

Hacktivists target Ferguson, Missouri after police kill unarmed teenager

American held without bail after tweeting support for Islamic State

Despite sanctions, Russia's GDP increased in second quarter of 2014

California teen dies after smoking synthetic marijuana sprayed with chemicals

Open letter: Jewish survivors and descendents of survivors of Nazi genocide unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza

The outrage is growing: Georgia officials oppose federal restrictions on school bake sales, fundraisers

Petition of 60K: Send Royal Navy hospital ship to Gaza

Gideon Levy to Israelis: Go to Gaza, see for yourself

Past is prologue: Diary from victim of Khmer Rouge Survives

Kiev shells fall near Donetsk largest chemical plant, risking chemical disaster over a large region

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