Society's ChildS


Bomb

Israelis stock up on self-defense weapons 'preparing for attack'

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© Reuters / Amir CohenA Jewish settler walks with his son in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Maon, south of Hebron
Tensions are running high in Israel after the fatal stabbings of two Israelis by Palestinian assailants in Tel Aviv earlier this week. Israelis are stocking up on self-defense weapons in fear for new attacks and another Intifada, local media reports.

"We're sold out of everything!" an employee of an IDF weapons shop told the Jerusalem Post reporter.

"It's crazy. I've never seen anything like this," he said, adding that "everyone" is buying the merchandise.

Many Israelis are afraid to go outside without a knife in the pocket for fear they could be attacked at any moment.

Comment: Netanyahu's relentless pursuit of terrorism that Israel created seems to be ramping up along with the rest of the Middle East's instability. The psychopaths in power cannot see the eventual outcome of their actions. Obtaining power while instilling fear is the only thing they know how to do. Humans and nature will respond to this inequality. Read Pierre Lescaudron's book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection: The Secret History of the World for more information.


Bad Guys

Attorney for Texas oil giant says facial expressions made by pipeline protesters are "assault"

#KMFace
© TwitterRainforest Action Network employees showing their #KMFace
In 2012, Texas oil giant Kinder Morgan announced plans to triple the size of their Canadian pipeline:
The expansion involves twinning, or building, 610 miles of new pipeline along the existing 715-mile route between Edmonton in Alberta and Burnaby, British Columbia, a suburban community just outside Vancouver.
Many Canadian residents are outraged and have tried to block the expansion, some even chained themselves to fencing around a test site to prevent the company from conducting tests in British Columbia. Kinder Morgan responded by suing protesters and claiming the dirty looks they gave Kinder Morgan employees constitute "assault":
Mr. Kaplan had argued the defendants conspired against Kinder Morgan, employing social media and telephone networks to harm the oil company and pipeline builder Trans Mountain as they seek to nearly triple capacity by expanding a route under Burnaby Mountain.

He entered into evidence photographs of protesters wearing facial expressions he said demonstrate anger and violence.

"One of the things I will argue is that is not only intimidation, but that is actually an assault," he said on Wednesday.
Opponents of the pipeline latched onto this ridiculous legal argument and the "assault" faces went viral under the #KMFace hashtag. Jump below the fold to see some of the reactions.

2 + 2 = 4

No kidding! Princeton study says U.S. is an oligarchy

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American media is fond of speaking about "Russian Oligarchs" as if Russia were the only nation that allowed accumulation of such unprecedented wealth. The Yeltsin days of dis-order and collapse indeed saw the rapid rise of many fortunes and oligarchs - persons of very much wealth. Some of them have proven patriotic citizens, some like Khodokorvsky or the late unlamented Boris Berezhovsky proved to be loveless gangsters. A new study, however by a Princeton University Professor of the influence of very wealthy or economically powerful persons on American political policies makes clear for the first time that a genuine American Oligarchy has staged a slow coup d'etat over US foreign and domestic policy over the past three decades since the era of Ronald Reagan. This American oligarchy today is the major force for war and dis-order across the planet.


I completed by undergraduate university studies in one of America's most elite universities, Princeton. It was during the early 1960's and classmates came from elite preparatory private schools like Andover or Exeter. Classmates with names like Firestone or Prince Faisal were attending. Then tuition cost $650 a year, the price I paid for my used 1956 Chevy. I was only able to pay that because I was awarded a full university scholarship, raised by a working mother with modest income. Today tuition for one year at Princeton costs $41,820. Princeton speaks of money and elite families. So I noted with great interest a new study published by two Princeton professors on wealth in America since 1981.

Martin Gilens is Professor of Politics at Princeton University together with Benjamin I. Page Professor at Northwestern University have published results of a unique analysis "using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues." The study concludes that, "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination..."

Comment: If the word oligarchy doesn't hold that much meaning to you here are a few synonyms provided by Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group:

noun dictatorship


Bell

Mexicans protest and clash with police after government declares missing 43 students dead

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Angry protests swept Mexico over the weekend in the wake of a press conference Friday in which Jesús Murillo Karam, the country's attorney general, declared that 43 missing teaching students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in the state of Guerrero are all dead. Murrillo based this evaluation on confessions by gang members that they had killed the students, who were handed over to them by the police, and then burned their bodies.


Demonstrations in both Mexico City and the Guerrero capital of Chilpancingo saw clashes with police and attacks on government buildings. In the capital, a small group of demonstrators launched an attack on the historic National Palace in the city's main square (El Zócalo). They first used metal security barriers to ram the building's wooden door and then doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.


Some demonstrators questioned why it took police so long to respond to these acts, suggesting that they could have been the work of provocateurs.

Whatever the case, Mexico's president, Enrique Peña Nieto, sought to exploit them, using an impromptu press conference at the Anchorage, Alaska, airport to declare that he joined all Mexicans in saying "no to violence," thus attempting to equate the abominable crimes carried out against the Guerrero normalistas, as the teaching students are known, with isolated acts of property damage by protesters.

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Translation: What if your son was the 44th?
On Monday, protesters, led by teachers, students and relatives of the disappeared normalistas, as the student teachers are known, overwhelmed riot police and set up a blockade of the international airport in Acapulco, the Pacific coast resort that is Guerrero's largest city.

Last Wednesday, university students struck across Mexico, and a hundred thousand people marched in downtown Mexico City in protest over the killings. This followed weeks of marches and protests throughout the country, and internationally.

Stormtrooper

Michael Brown grand jury decision whether to indict Darren Wilson imminent - Missouri national guard on standby

Ferguson grand jury
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesMissouri Governor Jay Nixon discusses security concerns for when the grand jury's decision in the Michael Brown case is announced.
Governor announces policing plans for protests that could happen when grand jury decides whether to indict police officer who killed Michael Brown

The Missouri national guard will be on standby to deal with any protests after a grand jury announces its decision on whether to charge the police officer who shot dead an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, the state governor announced on Tuesday.

The governor, Jay Nixon, said the national guard had been involved in extensive police planning for any eventuality after the announcement of a decision by jurors considering the potential prosecution of officer Darren Wilson, who killed Brown on 9 August.

National Guard forces "will continue to be available when we determine it is necessary to support local law enforcement", Nixon told a press conference. "I'm prepared to make that order," he said. "At the time operationally that it is necessary to move forward, we will."

Authorities around Ferguson, a northern suburb of St Louis, are braced for further unrest amid widespread expectations that Wilson, 28, will not be indicted for the shooting, which took place in sharply contested circumstances after he stopped Brown and a friend for jaywalking.

Intense protests in the days after Brown's death met a militarised police response that drew sharp criticism from regional leaders and civil rights organisations. Nixon on Tuesday declined to comment on whether police were again prepared to use teargas and rubber bullets.

Life Preserver

Dozens of Indian women critical, ten dead after mass sterilization

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© India TodayA woman at the sterilisation camp in Bilaspur
Ten women have died in India and dozens more are in hospital, many in a critical condition after a state-run mass sterilisation, a local official said Tuesday.

Many of the more than 80 women who underwent sterilisation at the free government-run camp in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday fell ill shortly afterwards, the official told AFP.

"Reports of a drop in pulse, vomiting and other ailments started pouring in on Monday from the women who underwent surgery," said Sonmani Borah, the commissioner for Bilaspur district where the camp was held.

Television footage showed women on stretchers being rushed into hospital with anxious relatives by their side.

Borah said authorities would investigate the incident.

Local governments in India often offer incentives such as cars and electrical goods to couples volunteering for sterilisation to try to control the country's billion-plus population.


Authorities in eastern India came under fire last year after a news channel unearthed footage showing scores of women dumped unconscious in a field following a mass sterilisation.

The women had all undergone surgical procedures at a hospital that local officials said was not equipped to accommodate such a large number of patients.

The Indian Express Daily said the surgeries in Chhattisgarh were carried out by one doctor and his assistant in around five hours.

"There was no negligence. He is a senior doctor. We will probe (the incident)," the chief medical officer of Bilaspur R.K. Bhange told the newspaper.

Comment: What a horrific way to control a population.
  • India: Rajasthan in 'cars for sterilisation' drive



Stock Down

Forecasters predicting grim fate for economy as false prosperity parallels that of 2007

economic disaster
The parallels between the false prosperity of 2007 and the false prosperity of 2014 are rather striking. If we go back and look at the numbers in the fall of 2007, we find that the Dow set an all-time high in October, margin debt on Wall Street had spiked to record levels, the unemployment rate was below 5 percent and Americans were getting ready to spend a record amount of money that Christmas season. But then the very next year the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression shook the entire planet and everyone wondered why most people never saw it coming. Well, now a similar pattern is unfolding right before our eyes. The Dow and the S&P 500 both hit record highs on Monday, margin debt on Wall Street is hovering near record levels, the unemployment rate has ticked down a little bit and Americans are getting ready to spend more than 600 billion dollars this Christmas season. The truth is that the economy seems pretty stable for the moment, and most people cannot even imagine that an economic collapse is coming. So why are so many really smart people forecasting economic disaster in the near future?

Comment: The worst part of this is that most people are completely unprepared for another collapse. It is far better to be prepared for collapse than caught unaware.

See: Should one prepare for a collapse or not?

Also see our Forum thread here on Preparedness.


Crusader

Moral bankruptcy: Putin's shawl chivalry gets blanket coverage from Western media


Comment: Putin certainly drives the world crazy. Any innocent gesture is interpreted as if it's of planetary importance. There's a reason Forbes picked him as the most powerful person on the planet...


putin Peng Liyuan
© Reuters/StringerRussia's President Vladimir Putin (R) helps put a blanket on Peng Liyuan (2nd R), wife of China's President Xi Jinping at National Aquatics Center, or Water Cube, in Beijing, November 10, 2014.
An apparently innocuous gesture from Vladimir Putin, who put a shawl around the shoulders of China's First Lady Peng Liyuan during a fireworks display, has attracted accusations of being Russia's "Don-Juan-in-Chief" from Western media.

The Russian president followed his country's cold-weather etiquette, when he offered what appeared to be a shawl or blanket to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping's wife during a chilly outdoor fireworks display at the APEC summit in Beijing. The camera caught the former renowned folk singer courteously accepting the offer, before exchanging the shawl for a coat handed to her by an assistant. Meanwhile, Xi sat a few meters away, talking animatedly to Barack Obama.

Monday's momentary humanizing episode might have passed without mention, but the image proved a boon for journalists possibly bored with the intricacies of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.


Comment: Even if there will be hard times in Russia economically, the only people that will continue to whine will be the paid "5th column". That's what the West and its psychopaths fail to understand - that the key point of Putin's politics is giving people meaning. That's why he talks about love and makes sure to give an example of thoughtful and appropriate behavior. And that's why he created the new Unity Day holiday.

It's because Russians are at their best during hard times, especially if there is a higher meaning behind them. Just look at WWII. That's why the '90s were so devastating: it was a time of total moral bankruptcy. And that's why despite all the foreign hooplah, Putin is going to succeed, simply because while Europe is promoting nihilism and various filth like giant green butt plugs, and while the U.S. has Miley Cyrus and her pornographic 'musical' performances to offer, Putin talks about mutual respect, friendship and love of motherland. And it doesn't matter if many Russians cannot afford to buy blue cheese, as long as they have something higher to believe in, something sorely lacking in the West.


Light Saber

Wounded U.S. veterans sue banks, claim they should pay for Iraq attacks

veterans sue banks
Wounded U.S. veterans and family members of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq sued five European banks on Monday, seeking to hold them responsible for shootings and roadside bombings because they allegedly processed Iranian money that paid for the attacks.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, named Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Standard Chartered.

Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS and Standard Chartered declined to comment. HSBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit was brought under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, a 1992 law that permits victims to bring private suits against alleged financiers of militant operations.

The lawsuit alleges the banks conspired with Iranian banks to mask wire transactions in order to evade U.S. sanctions. The Iranian banks then funneled more than $100 million to militant groups that operated in Iraq at Iran's direction, according to the suit.

The militant groups included a Shi'ite militia in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah, as well as Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the suit says.


Comment: A creative use of the law, and right on point.


Comment: The big American banks should be included too. They provide the funding for the U.S war machine that chews up and spits out its hapless citizens by creating the societal conditions that make the military the only economic option available to most young men.


Stormtrooper

Canadian cops beat up mother: Big Brother USA couldn't be prouder

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© Reuters/Christinne MuschiModern police, striving to project that "we're scary, look like stormtroopers, and can hurt you" image - and succeeding!
A Canadian woman says a police officer beat her with a baton and smashed her face against a table, while the woman's nine-year-old son watched the incident.

Lara Sinclair from Winnipeg filed a report with Canada's Law Enforcement Review Agency (LERA), hoping that it could prevent this happening to someone else.

Sinclair told CBS that police came to her house on the night of Halloween, after reports of a disturbance. Two policemen entered and one of them went to check on the son, while the other talked to the mother.

"He came up to me and poked me," Sinclair said. "I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen and I jumped up and said you don't need to touch me."

Then the officer took out his police baton and began beating her while she tried to defend herself.

"And he hit me and then I fell on the floor," she said.

Comment: All pathocracies need a strong police force with which to enforce their coercive 'authority'. And that's the function cops serve in North America (and elsewhere), whether they know it or not. They exist to traumatize the public and keep them in a state of fear - to make them feel powerless to express their own will. Similar to how the torture porn photos from places like Abu Ghraib served such a purpose: you're either with us or against us, and this is what we can do to you if you're not with us.