Society's ChildS


Water

Flint, Michigan: Outbreak of legionnaire's disease and water contamination; National Guard called in to assist

flint water tower
As Flint, Michigan residents continue to deal with a state of emergency declared over their contaminated water supply, a sharp increase in cases of an atypical pneumonia known as Legionnaires' disease has hit the community.

On Wednesday, state officials hosted a press conference acknowledging the uptick in the cases of Legionnaires' disease, but gave no new advice to the public regarding water usage, saying they have yet to determine the cause of the disease. Dr. Eden Wells, chief medical executive of the state's Department of Health and Human Services, said a more thorough analysis was still to come.

Between June 2014 and November 2015, there were 87 cases of Legionnaires' disease in Flint, with 10 ending in death, according to Wells. The fatality rate for the disease ranges from 5 to 30 percent depending on access to antibiotics and other factors, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

Cardboard Box

American nightmare: The death of the middle class and the rise in poverty

unemployment, middle class
Over the past month, many US media publications have been sounding the alarm: death of the middle class of America and the end of the "American Dream".

According to the independent American portal - "End Of American Dream", one of the main reasons for this is that the rate of the cost of living increase in the United States is higher than the growth of wages. In particular, the cost increase for food, rent, health insurance, and therefore the number of the "working poor" in the country is increasing exponentially every year. However, the current US authorities do not care about the decline of the middle class, which once supported the country.

For example, health insurance premiums have been increasing 3 times faster than the federal officials say, and in 2016, across the whole country, an increase of 20.3% in these payments is expected, which would affect millions of families. Since July 2012, the food price index rose from 73 to 162 kinds of products. Today, 47 million Americans live in poverty, every fifth child in America is issued food stamps, 1.5 American families live on less than $US 2 a day, and each year 46 million Americans use the services of food banks.

In these circumstances, the future does not look very bright for the "ordinary hard-working Americans", since a large number of Americans, previously considered as a part of the middle class, are losing their jobs and homes. Homelessness and complete impoverishment have become a real prospect in the life of the middle-class, and with its disappearance - the death of the "American dream".

Comment: Yet, Obama had the temerity to say in his recent State of the Union address that "The United States of America right now has the strongest, most durable economy in the world." Nothing could be farther from the truth, yet that statement is only one in a long list of his lies and misleading statements.


Pills

Replace our sick narcotics policies

Drugs and money
Existing narcotics policies lock-up addicts, punish them, instead of deal with the problem, which is the explosion of burglaries and robberies that are produced by addicts. Those thefts are resulting actually from the inflated, black-market, price that addicts must pay gangsters to feed their addiction. If the drugs were instead sold by the government, at the free-market prices that would exist if these drugs were legally sold over-the-counter as regular non-prescription and unpatented medications (and if the product is grown and manufactured by a government-owned corporation which is the only legal supplier of the product, and which wholesales the product at the price that would prevail if it were produced and marketed as a regular free-market product), then this would immediately put all of the illicit dealers out of business, and it would also immediately end the thefts, which are resulting from the need that addicts have to possess enough money to pay gangsters for their drugs at the current sky-high (artificially high) black-market price.

Addicts already suffer more than enough from their addiction, which does nobody but the gangsters they pay any good. What our government's existing policies are doing is to force addicts to steal and pay that money to gangsters in order to be able to slake the addict's need. A person who before addiction might have had no criminal record at all, becomes now a veritable theft-machine, in order to feed his addiction.

Stock Down

The world's bond bubble is about to burst

Wall Street
© Unknown
The bursting of the bond bubble has begun.

As I've outlined previously the primary concern for Central Banks is the bond bubble. CNBC and other financial media focus on stocks because the asset class is more volatile and so makes for better content, but the foundation of the financial system is bonds. And bonds are THE focus for Central Banks.

In the simplest of terms, the world is awash in too much debt. The bond bubble was close to $80 trillion in size going into 2008. The Central Banks had a choice to either let the defaults hit and clear out the garbage debt from the financial system or attempt to inflate the debts away.

Comment: Also see: Financial analyst: For 2016 "...have a healthy storage of food, precious metals and supplies"


Brick Wall

Following his remarks about banning Muslims, Irish people lodge petitions to ban Donald Trump from Ireland

Donald Trump
Politicians in Ireland will discuss banning Donald Trump from the country following his remarks about banning Muslims from America.

Two separate petitions, 'Ban Donald Trump from Ireland' and 'Ban Donald Trump from Entering Ireland', were lodged in December by members of the public to the government's Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions.

The petitions were lodged in the days following Trump's statements that there should be a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States".

The Republican presidential hopeful owns a luxury hotel and golf course in county Clare on the west coast of Ireland.


Info

Royal Bank of Scotland: 2016 will be a 'cataclysmic year' and 'investors should be afraid'

Royal-Bank
The Royal Bank of Scotland is telling clients that 2016 is going to be a "cataclysmic year" and that they should "sell everything". This sounds like something that you might hear from The Economic Collapse Blog, but up until just recently you would have never expected to get this kind of message from one of the twenty largest banks on the entire planet. Unfortunately, this is just another indication that a major global financial crisis has begun and that we are now entering a bear market. The collective market value of companies listed on the S&P 500 has dropped by about a trillion dollars since the start of 2016, and panic is spreading like wildfire all over the globe. And of course when the Royal Bank of Scotland comes out and openly says that "investors should be afraid" that certainly is not going to help matters.

It amazes me that the Royal Bank of Scotland is essentially saying the exact same thing that I have been saying for months. Just like I have been telling my readers, RBS has observed that global markets "are flashing the same stress alerts as they did before the Lehman crisis in 2008″...

Propaganda

FBI to investigate Philadelphia cop shooting as terrorist attack

Philadelphia police shooting
© Reuters/Philadelphia Police Dept/HandoutA still image from surveillance video shows a gunman (L) approaching a Philadelphia Police vehicle in which Officer Jesse Hartnett was shot shortly before midnight January 7, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The FBI is investigating the recent shooting of a Philadelphia police officer as a terrorist attack, FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday, a Pennsylvania newspaper reported.

Comey's comments at a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Pittsburgh and reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, were confirmed to Reuters by an FBI spokesman.

FBI investigators were seeking to find out if suspected gunman Edward Archer, 30, was in touch with or inspired by anyone linked to Islamic State, the report said.

Philadelphia police have said Archer pledged allegiance to the militant group before allegedly opening fire on police officer Jesse Hartnett in his patrol car last Thursday night.

"Your parents' al Qaeda was a group that was focused on national landmarks, sophisticated ... events, carefully chosen operatives, lots of surveillance, and then trying to deliver the big thing. That was al Qaeda's culture," Comey said, according to the newspaper.

"This is entirely different, first in the way the message comes. They are crowd-sourcing terrorism, using Twitter and other forms of social media to try to motivate anybody" to conduct an attack, he was quoted as saying.

Police said on Sunday that a man stopped officers patrolling near the site of the attack and warned that Archer had been part of a group of four men who may pose a danger to police.

In the attack caught on video, a gunman police say was Archer was seen shooting into a patrol car driven by Hartnett, 33, who was shot in the arm but managed to fire back. Archer, who sustained a bullet wound to the buttocks, was arrested at the scene and charged with attempted murder.

Archer, police say, told them that the attack was done "in the name of Islam."

Comment: One of the many things Reuters (and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) fails to tell you is that the Islamic State was created and is funded by the U.S. This terror organization is supported by countries all over the globe, their dirty deeds and ideology are plastered all over the news. The purpose? Terrorizing people and terrorizing countries into compliance. The puppet masters behind events like this want Americans and everyone else to be so afraid that they will be willing to accept further fascist measures and restrictions. If you think that is a bit far-fetched, you need to consider the wicked immorality of psychopaths.


Sheriff

Bigot cop who pulls gun on a non-Muslim Asian man, accuses him of being "an ISIS", and punches him in the groin claims 'self-defense'

Philip J Clark
© The Free Thought Project
A sheriff's deputy with Lewis and Clark County was arrested Monday morning after allegedly pulling a gun on a man at a party and assaulting him.

On December 4, Philip Jay Clark, 49, showed up to a bonfire party "super intoxicated," according to the victim, identified as C.F. in court documents.

"He (C.F) said Clark, 'Got a little bit violent and a little bit aggressive right away.' He said it seemed like Clark wanted to fight. He said after shaking Clark's hand Clark, 'pulled out his gun, pointed it at me and then laughed, handed it to somebody else like we were about to fight ...,'" according to documents.

According to court records, Clark began hitting C.F. before asking him to name the capital of Thailand and punched him in the groin, yelling "Bangkok." The drunken bigot cop then walked away.

As C.F.'s friend was telling him that it would probably be a good idea for him to leave, Clark became aggressive once again. He then pulled out his pistol, with his finger on the trigger, shoved it in C.F's face and began referring to his non-Muslim Asian victim as "an ISIS."

"[I was] 100% positive he was gonna start shooting,'" C.F. said, according to the documents.

Star of David

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in the crosshairs

Boycott Divest Sanctions
Most readers will know that the United States has served as the patron of Israel for decades. Why has it done so? The commonly given reasons are suspect. It is not because the two countries have overlapping interests. The U.S. seeks stability in the Middle East (mostly by supporting dictators) and Israel is constantly making things unstable (mostly by practicing ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, illegally colonizing conquered lands and launching massive assaults against its neighbors). Nor, as is often claimed, is the alliance based on "shared Western values." The U.S. long ago outlawed racial, ethnic and religious discrimination in the public sphere. In Israel, religious-based discrimination is the law. The Zionist state's values in this regard are the opposite of those of the United States.

So why is it that a project that seeks to pressure Israel to be more cognizant in foreign affairs of regional stability, and more democratic and egalitarian in domestic affairs, is now under fire by almost every presidential candidate standing for the 2016 election?

Robot

Waking up? Americans are not siding with Obama on Russia

obama
© abcnews.go.comState of the Fictional Union Speech
  • Russia props up Assad, no mention of Russia fighting ISIS
  • Ignored Russian allegations against Turkey-ISIS oil smuggling
  • Blamed Ukraine crisis on Russia instead of US coup d'état
  • Americans cynical of Obama's versions of Russia and the Middle East
US President Barack Obama's last State of the Union (SOTU) address was a "shallow attempt" to fabricate an acceptable foreign policy record through ignoring well-established facts, says a former US Army psychological warfare officer, Scott Bennett. Obama delivered his last SOTU on Tuesday, trying to sell optimism to a frustrated nation. The American president's speech came as he still has one full year in the White House.

The 44th US president sought to paint a hopeful portrait of America with a recovering economy and better standing in the world, while trying to contrast the Republicans' grim assessment of the state of the nation with his own optimism. Laying out his vision for America's future, Obama said economic opportunity, security and peace were within reach, but "will only happen if we fix our politics."

Comment: "The talk of America's economic decline is political hot air," Obama said. "Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. Let me tell you something: the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Period. It's not even close."

Need we say more?