Society's ChildS


Fire

Terror coverage study: UK's MSM fans flames of Islamophobia

East West
© conservativepapers.comPoint of view: Therein lies the difference.
Mainstream media in the UK is exacerbating Islamophobia by referring to politically motivated murders perpetrated by Muslims as "terror" attacks, while branding similar crimes by white supremacists "racially motivated," a new study argues.

Researchers at Birmingham City University examined media coverage of the Lee Rigby murder. The British soldier was attacked and killed in Woolwich in May 2013 by two men who claimed to be retaliating against Britain's military presence in Islamic countries.

Rigby's murderers were quickly and repeatedly described by both police and the media as "terrorists" and as having committed an act of "terrorism." In contrast, when Muslim pensioner Mohammed Saleem was brutally murdered by Ukrainian Pavlo Lapshyn, the killing was labelled "racially motivated." This is despite the fact Lapshyn was charged under the Terrorism Act.

Researchers trawled through more than 1,000 articles from UK newspapers in the three weeks following Rigby's murder. They also reviewed mentions of Saleem's murder in Birmingham, which occurred one month before the Rigby attack.

The academics at Birmingham City University claim British mainstream media is contributing to a "rising moral panic" against Muslim communities through its inappropriate use of language. "We found that almost all articles we reviewed about the Woolwich murder of Lee Rigby used the term 'terrorism' to describe the attack," said Associate Professor Imran Awan. "Yet the attack on Mohammed Saleem was immediately labelled as 'racially motivated' by the police, and despite Ukrainian Pavlo Lapshyn being found guilty under the Terrorism Act, many newspapers continued to label him as a 'white supremacist' rather than a 'terrorist'. A stark difference in comparison to the case of Lee Rigby."

Comment: Since almost all media (exception being counter-hegemonic alternative media, such as SOTT) take their marching orders from about six global sources, it is a slam dunk that the public will be unduly swayed by whatever commentary is spoon fed to the outlets. If the PTB want Islamophobia, the labeling and slant will be its consistent and prevalent reflection.


Wolf

Boston bans the sale of cats, dogs, and rabbits from pet stores and public grounds

Animal shelters
© Credit: pawshpal.com
It is now illegal for commercially-bred animals to be sold at both pet stores and public grounds in Boston, Massachusetts.

Last year, a huge roar of praise was noticed around the net when the state of Arizona ruled that all dogs sold must come from shelters.

Now, the city of Boston is following its lead by making it illegal for dogs, cats, and rabbits from commercial breeders to be sold at both pet stores and public grounds, including parking lots and outdoor markets.

The Dodo reports that the momentous win for animal advocates and the furry ones they aim to protect was made law into law when the city's mayor signed it on Wednesday.

Comment: See more: Co-founder of "Dog Tales Rescue and Sanctuary" can't decide which dogs to save- buys entire shelter instead


Hearts

Meet Ahmad Dawabshe, the five-year-old sole survivor of the Duma, West Bank firebombing

Ahmad Dawabsheh
© Tasnim News Agency5-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh

Comment: Endless horror and tragedy for the families of Palestine. All thanks to evil Israel and its equally evil Western supporters. The lies and silence are complicity to such heinous war crimes.

Eight months after the firebombing that killed five-year-old Ahmad Dawabshe's baby brother and parents in the occupied West Bank village of Duma, he is still undergoing treatment in the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan.

Ahmad is energetic and enthralled with car-racing video games, like any child his age. "People see that he's coming and going and playing and laughing. But his health situation now - he has serious injuries and will need a long time to heal," his maternal grandfather and caretaker Hussein Dawabshe told me in the hospital lobby.

Having suffered second-degree burns, Ahmad wears a special hooded layer 23 hours per day to treat scarring, only removing it to bathe.


The Palestinian Authority is paying for Ahmad's medical expenses, after Israel refused to recognize him as a victim of terror.

Ahmad and his grandfather rarely leave the hospital. In front of a Ramat Gan supermarket last month, Hussein Dawabshe told me, Israeli children he estimated to be twelve years old recognized Ahmad and threw metal cans at them before he chased them away. "There are good Israelis, but there are also bad ones. Sometimes it's not easy to tell which is which," he said.

He has devoted his life to taking care of Ahmad, leaving his other children. "I am willing to stay and keep taking care of Ahmad for one, two, three or ten years. What matters is that Ahmad is not in danger. I want him to live without trouble and fear."

Pistol

4yo boy shoots gun enthusiast mom in the back

Jamie Gilt
© Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense / FacebookJamie Gilt
Florida investigators are trying to figure out how a four-year-old boy got a hold of his mother's loaded gun and shot her. The mother heavily promoted gun ownership on Facebook and had previously posted about her son getting "jacked up" to go shooting.

Jamie Gilt was driving down State Road 20 to pick up a new pony on March 8 when she was shot in the back by her son sitting in the backseat, forcing her vehicle and a hitched horse trailer to stop in the middle of the traveling lanes, according to officials, WJAX reported.

Not only is Gilt a fan of horseback riding, she has not hesitated to show her enthusiasm for gun culture. The 31-year-old mom from Jacksonville once wrote on Facebook, "Even my 4 year old gets jacked up to target shoot with the .22."

Both her personal Facebook account and a public page she set up, "Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense," have been deactivated.

Comment: You would think someone who is promoting guns the way she was would not be so careless.


Sheriff

Ridiculous: Man who was tased by cops while cooking soup finally has charges against him dropped

taser
© AFP
John Antoine, an 86-year-old Tasered by a police officer while cooking soup, has been cleared of charges, a court ruled. The elderly man's apartment had been raided by officers searching for his granddaughter's boyfriend, said to be suicidal after running out of medication.

The incident took place while Antoine was cooking soup at his Brooklyn home back in October. Standing in the kitchen with a knife in one hand and an onion in the other, little did he imagine that a group of five armed police officers was about to break into his apartment.

The officers were looking for the 23-year-old boyfriend of Antoine's granddaughter, as the young man was thought to be emotionally disturbed after he ran out of medication.

"The police came in and say, 'You so and so, put down the knife,' and I said, 'Why are you coming in my apartment? What do you want?'" Antoine told NY Daily News. "They wouldn't tell me."

Comment: The police commend an officer who tased an elderly man in his own home, who was in the middle of cooking. The police must call that intelligent restraint because more often than not they end shooting and killing people in that situation. When only tasing someone becomes restraint, you know that police have lost all sense of control.


Stock Down

Recovering economy? 'Walmart customers too broke to shop'

Empty shelves at Walmart
© Nicholas EckhartA Walmart store that's about to close.
You may find that the below report is, as President Obama might suggest, once again "peddling fiction."

But for the average American, we can assure you that the economic recession is a very real situation.

Walmart, which made its billions serving low to middle income Americans, is struggling and it's because their core customer base is too broke to shop. As Michael Snyder recently pointed out, they are just one of many domestic retailers laying off workers amid falling store sales. But they are certainly the biggest and baddest of the retailers out there. If they are having problems it should be a big red warning sign that despite mainstream cheerleaders telling us not to panic because the economy is still in good shape, we are in for some rough times ahead - in fact, the rough times are a reality right here and now.
Walmart's customers are too broke to shop

Walmart is facing a "perfect storm" that's hurting its sales growth, according to Moody's.

The company's core customers are struggling with flat income levels, andsavings from lower fuel prices aren't translating into more retail spending, Moody's vice president, Charles O'Shea, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

The business is also under pressure from deflation in key product categories, such as food, and the effects of the strong dollar abroad.

"Walmart is facing an almost perfect storm when it comes to top-line growth," O'Shea wrote. "Until the health of the lower-to-middle-income consumer improves, Walmart will continue to face macroeconomic headwinds in the US."

Walmart said last month that it's expecting virtually no sales growth in the coming fiscal year.

Source: Business Insider via Yahoo

TV

Best of the Web: Hungry for truth: Study finds RT watched by over 70 million people weekly, half of them watching daily


Comment: In just 10 years, RT has done something astonishing: held up a mirror to the Western pathocracy for a global audience, and in the process done pretty serious damage to Pentagon's quest for 'full-spectrum dominance' - this is, after all, a war for people's minds above all else.

RT doesn't always get it right, of course, but we'd rate their truth frequency hit rate somewhere in the high 80s, whereas the vast majority of Western mainstream media languishes in the low teens.

So if you are gonna watch news on TV, ditch CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox, Sky, ABC, BBC, France24, ZDF et al, and tune into RT!


RT newsdesk
© Evgeny Biyatov / Reuters
RT ranks among the top five most-viewed international news channels in Europe and the US, the biggest study yet of the Russian network's viewership by Ipsos reveals. Seventy million individuals switch to RT TV channels weekly, with 35 million watching daily.

The study was conducted by the world's third largest market research company, based in France, in 38 countries out of the 100+ where RT programming is available. The survey was taken between August-November 2015, just as RT was preparing to mark its 10th anniversary.

"Ipsos has decades of experience in international audience measurement, and we've worked with dozens of premier broadcasters from around the world. We are happy that RT chose Ipsos to conduct their biggest audience survey yet,"said Ipsos Connect MENAP CEO, Elie Aoun.

Europe is the region where RT has the largest audience, with 36 million people watching the channel weekly. Eleven million get their news from RT at least once a week in the Middle East and Africa. In India, Ipsos included only English-language viewers, who constitute about 10 percent of the country's population, and among them 7 million viewers watch RT weekly.

In the US, RT's weekly audience is above 8 million viewers, the study showed, which places the broadcaster among the top-5 international TV news channels.

Jet5

Top guns: Russian aircraft impress Syrians with amazing stunts

Russian SU-30 fighter jets
© Sputnik/ Dmitri Vinogradov
Russian pilots have long been hailed as the best in the world and Syrians, according to reports in social media, have recently been able to see Russian stunt-flying for themselves.

Video footage published on YouTube appears to show two Russian fighter jets performing a stunt in Syrian skies.


The video is said to have been filmed in the Syrian province of Latakia, which hosts the Hmeymim air base. Russian aircraft, which take part in Moscow's anti-Daesh campaign, are stationed at the base.

Calculator

U.S. Air Force veteran convicted in 1st court victory for ISIS support on home soil

Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh
© U.S. Attorney's Office/ReutersTairod Nathan Webster Pugh, one of the first U.S. defendants to face trial for supporting IS, is shown in this government exhibit image provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
A US Air Force veteran from New Jersey has been found guilty by a New York court of supporting ISIS and planning to travel to Syria to fight with the group. The accused is one of about 80 Americans the government has been trying to put away on the charges.

Tairod Pugh, 48, a New Jersey native, stands guilty of providing material support to Islamic State (IS/ISIS, formerly ISIL) and obstruction of justice. He now potentially faces the maximum sentence of 35 years for the crime, after being found guilty by an anonymous jury of eight, the Wall Street Journal reports. The sentencing is scheduled for September 16.

Pugh, who is a Muslim convert, served in the Air Force in the period from 1986 to 1990, the Justice Department said. Pugh was first caught trying to make it to Syria from Turkey in January of last year, but the former Air Force mechanic was intercepted by Turkish security and deported to the US, where the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force acquired a warrant and arrested him at his father's house in Asbury Park, NJ soon thereafter.

Pugh's father appeared taken aback by the verdict. "I didn't expect this," he said after the hearing. Pugh's attorney, Eric Creizman, added: "I feel bad for him and his family. I think the jury gave fair consideration to the evidence. I'm disappointed with the outcome."

But being the first to be successfully tried and convicted of the crime on US soil, Pugh's case represents a high-profile victory, stretching back two years to a wide crackdown on IS supporters on home soil. It took the jury a week of testimony and seven hours to reach a verdict.

Comment: See also:


Eye 1

SOTT Exclusive: Psychopathic producers, abusive companies, and the greed of Sony

kesha sony
© Getty28-year-old singer Kesha burst into tears after judge rules she must honour her Sony contract with producer Lukasz Sebastian (mostly known as 'Dr. Luke') who allegedly drugged and raped her.
Greed, abuse, sexual exploitation, and psychopaths lurk in the shadows of the music and film industries, and even pageants. Child star Corey Feldman bravely came out years ago about having been abused by movie moguls. But these moguls are seemingly untouchable. Power and money hold actors, models and musicians alike hostage, out of fear of having their careers ruined. Going public about abuse in the entertainment world was rare, until recently. Regardless of the threats she received, Kesha Rose Sebert plucked up the courage to come out about her assault, claiming that producer Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald drugged her before taking sexual advantage of her.
"Soon after moving to Los Angeles, Dr. Luke began to violently abuse the young Ms. Sebert... Dr. Luke continuously made sexual advances towards Ms. Sebert. He forced Ms. Sebert to take drugs and alcohol in order to take advantage of her sexually while she was intoxicated." - Kesha's attorney
If the allegations against "Dr. Luke" are true, he checks most personality traits that characterize a psychopath. A comprehensive timeline on what happened to Kesha Rose can be read here. Since going public, Kesha has been attempting to terminate her contract with Sony. Last month, however, a judge ruled that Kesha could not be let out of her contract with the company and has to stick to her agreement to make six more albums. The singer burst into tears upon hearing the judge's ruling.