Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe

9/11 jumper
© AP / Richard DrewA person falls from the north tower of New York’s World Trade Center after terrorists crashed two hijacked airliners into the 110-story twin buildings on Sept. 11, 2001.

I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the towers. I walked quickly into the New York Times newsroom at 229 W. 43rd St., grabbed a handful of reporter's notebooks, slipped my NYPD press card, which would let me through police roadblocks, around my neck, and started down the West Side Highway to the World Trade Center. The highway was closed to traffic. I walked through knots of emergency workers, police and firemen. Fire trucks, emergency vehicles, ambulances, police cars and rescue trucks idled on the asphalt.

The south tower went down around 10 a.m. with a guttural roar. Huge rolling gray clouds of noxious smoke, dust, gas, pulverized concrete, gypsum and the grit of human remains enveloped lower Manhattan. The sun was obscured. The north tower collapsed about 30 minutes later. The dust hung like a shroud over Manhattan.

I headed toward the spot where the towers once stood, passing dazed, ashen and speechless groups of police officers and firefighters. I would pull out a notebook to ask questions and no sounds would come out of their mouths. They forlornly shook their heads and warded me away gently with their hands. By the time I arrived at Ground Zero it was a moonscape; whole floors of the towers had collapsed like an accordion. I pulled out pieces of paper from one floor, and a few feet below were papers from 30 floors away. Small bits of human bodies - a foot in a woman's shoe, a bit of a leg, part of a torso - lay scattered amid the wreckage.

Cult

US: Texas Senator Demands That Air Force Answer to Him for Pulling "Jesus Loves Nukes" Training

nuclear jesus

This summer, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) scored a big victory, getting the Air Force to review all of its so-called "ethics" training. This decision by Air Force leadership was made after thirty-one Air Force officers decided to take a stand against what some officers had nicknamed the "Jesus Loves Nukes speech," part of the Air Force's missile launch officer training. These Air Force officers came to MRFF for help with getting this overtly Christian "ethics" training removed from the "Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare" class, a mandatory part of the first week of training for all officers in missile launch training at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

In late July, Truthout.org exposed the content of this training in an article titled "Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons." The Air Force immediately suspended the training.

Palette

US: Oakland Children's Museum Cancels Palestinian Children's Art Exhibit Under Pressure from Local Jewish Groups

drawing, palestine children

Berkeley, CA's Middle East Children's Alliance broke the news yesterday that the exhibit of children's artwork from Gaza that they had worked on for months with Oakland's Children's Museum of Art was suddenly canceled by the board before the planned September 24 opening reception. The show featured drawings by children about Israel's infamous Operation Cast Lead, the military assault of December 2008-January 2009 that led to the deaths of some 1,400 Palestinians, over 300 of them children.

Extinguisher

US: In Rick Perry's Texas, Firefighters Forced To Pay For Gear, Engine Fuel

rick perry
© Getty ImagesUnder Governor Rick Perry, Texas has slashed firefighting budgets.

Washington -- In Texas, firefighters aren't just battling the wild fires raging around Austin and Houston. The state's first responders have also had to deal with budget cuts affecting everything from fuel purchases to hoses and air tanks.

In some cases, fire officials say, firefighters have had to pay out of pocket for basic necessities like proper protective gear and fuel to get them to the scene. One fire department that battled the blazes in Bastrop County had to pay for a hose, recalled Bastrop City Fire Chief Henry Perry, speaking to The Huffington Post during a break from working the wild fires.

"That fire department has been on this fire every day," he said. "Before this fire, they were having to buy stuff out of their own pocket." Perry said he knows of at least one other department whose firemen had to pay for equipment maintenance and engine fuel.

Robot

Men Growing Up to be Boys

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© Unknown
When CBS unveiled its short-lived series Love Monkey in January, leading male television critics could barely contain their enthusiasm. The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley was far less impressed, especially with its lead male character, thirty-something music producer Tom Farrell, whose "endearing foibles" included "self-absorption, wanting what he cannot have and an inability to commit."

Based on the eponymous 2004 novel by Kyle Smith, Love Monkey offered the latest iteration of "lad-lit," a genre popularized by the likes of Nick Hornby, whose novels inevitably featured a confused, neurotic, discontented man-boy being dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood, usually by his girlfriend.

Dollar

Marc Faber's Warning Shocks CNBC Anchors: 'Don't Store Your Gold In The United States!'



Card - VISA

American Football: Parties, payments and Prostitutes: lurid scandal of US college football

  College football provides some of the most colourful images of the American sporting calendar
© GETTY

College football provides some of the most colourful images of the American sporting calendar

University of Miami debacle has exposed the sham of amateurism in sport that generates billions

One of autumn's great sporting shows has just begun. Last Thursday, at 6pm Eastern time, the Louisville Cardinals beat the Murray State Racers 21-9 in a televised game, and for the next four months, Americans will be transfixed by the raucous pageant of college football - that is, if they can escape the reek of what may be the biggest single scandal ever to hit a sport which has had more than its share of them.

Nevin Shapiro was a Florida businessman who operated a $930m (£580m) Ponzi scheme in the grocery business and is now paying for his crime in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. But that is not why for football cognoscenti he is now a household name.

Video

US - Harvard University Police: Man Stole 500+ Lbs Of X-Ray Film

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© MassMostWantedHarvard University Police say this man stole 500-600 lbs. of old X-Ray film.
Cambridge - Harvard University police are looking for a man who made off with 500 to 600 pounds of old X-Ray film.

Police say the man showed up at Harvard posing as a worker from EVOLVE Corporation, a company that recovers old X-Ray film and made off with the large load of film.

According to investigators, the old film contains silver and can be refined to extract the silver.

One X-Ray recycling company CBSBoston.com spoke with said the silver in the film could be worth as much as $700.

Police posted surveillance photos of the suspect on MassMostWanted. They are asking anyone who recognizes the man in the photo to contact them.

Bizarro Earth

US: New York Woman Bit By Rat in Rare Attack While Waiting For Train at MTA station

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© Mark A. HermannA rat immerses itself in dinner, a discarded styrofoam platter of french fries and chicken wings, on the subway platform at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station.
A hungry rat chomped on a straphanger's foot as she waited for a train in a downtown subway station, transit sources said.

The woman was sitting on a bench on a J train platform inside the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station about 9:30 a.m. Monday when the rodent skittered up to her and bit down on her flesh, the sources said.

Bleeding from the wound, the woman ran to a nearby service booth and asked for help - completely freaking out.

"She was pretty frantic and upset," a transit worker said. "You could actually see the bite."

The woman, who is in her 20s, was taken to New York Downtown Hospital, where she was treated and released, authorities said.

Star of David

Israel faces worst crisis with Egypt for 30 years as diplomats flee

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© Amr Abdallah Dalsh/REUTERSProtesters use a light pole to knock down a concrete wall built in front of the Israeli embassy
Attack on embassy is latest storm to engulf Jewish state as relations with Turkey also deteriorate

Israel is facing its worst crisis with Egypt for 30 years after being forced to airlift diplomats and their families to safety during the storming of its embassy in Cairo by a violent mob.

The siege of the embassy ended, with the 86 Israelis fleeing, only after intervention from the White House following phone calls between the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and US President Barack Obama.

The attack was the latest diplomatic storm to engulf the Jewish state, whose relations with another ally, Turkey, have worsened over the past nine days. Israel is also facing a "diplomatic tsunami" at the UN later this month when a majority of countries are expected to back recognition of a Palestinian state.

The embassy attack, in which a security wall was demolished and a group of protesters reached the door of the embassy's secure area, threatened to cause "serious damage in peaceful relations between our two countries", the prime minister said.

Comment: As countries continue to isolate Israel, how will the "shitty little country" react?

From Wikipedia:
In 2001, Daniel Bernard came to public attention when, as French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, he was quoted as saying: "All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel." The diplomat added, "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?"