Society's ChildS


Video

Still getting bread and circuses: For decadent and immoral, look no further than current television shows

Ring master
© sbs.com.auLadies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to... the circus!
If you ever want to see the results of a society that has become entirely too permissive — read: decadent and immoral — look no further than the current crop of television.

I know, I know, it's been said about the boob tube for years that it's a barometer of social decline. To my mind, though, it's gotten worse in the last few years, and it's missing key elements.

Back in the day (don't worry, there won't be snow involved), TV shows rarely showed humanity at its most open or even at its worst, and each television show usually allowed some redemptive arc, that solved all sorts of problems.

Heck, the "Brady Bunch" solved pretty much every Standards and Practices-approved teenage problem in less than 30 minutes. Yes, there weren't any pregnancy- or drug-charged episodes. Yes, it could be construed as being less than an accurate portrayal of real life.

It really wasn't supposed to be. It was supposed to make you think, and feel good, and realize that all is not wrong in the world.

But today's fare is pushing the envelope of tragic."Teenage Mom," "Little Honey Boo Boo," "19 and Counting," "Fear Factor," or any other number of shows of this ilk are making a spectacle of the bottom of the barrel of humanity.

Moreover, it's an example of what happens when you glorify the tragic, and the compounding effect of constant exposure to this kind of fare.

In order to keep the masses in line, Roman emperors put on entertainment — or contests, if you will — of men and women slashing and hacking and killing each other. Kinda kept peoples' minds off of being hungry and poor and generally miserable. As time went on, things escalated, and eventually, ended up serving no purpose other than distraction.

Comment: Bread and Circuses...American style


Black Magic

Horrific: Pennsylvania mother fakes cancer for sympathy, severely beats 11-month-old daughter during 'week of hell'

Ashley Reichard
© Levittown PatchAshley Reichard
The Deputy District Attorney told the judge the baby's injuries were "horrific" and the child "could have died."

A Levittown woman who authorities say "severely" beat and abused her 11-month-old baby was sentenced Wednesday to six to 12 years in state prison.Ashley Reichard, 27, also lied about having cancer to get sympathy, the Bucks County District Attorney's office said.

According to information provided by the District Attorney's office, the abuse Reichard imposed on her daughter in 2014 during what the deputy district attorney called a "week of hell" was "among the worst" witnessed by a pediatric child abuse expert who testified in court.

During that week, Reichard admitted to authorities that she had slammed her daughter to the floor six times. She also admitted putting the baby unbuckled into a stroller then "forcefully" tipping her forward so the infant fell face-first onto a cement walkway. She also told authorities she smashed her baby's head into the floor. The baby had burns on her legs, authorities said. Reichard never elaborated on how the burns got there.

Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Schorn told the judge the baby's injuries were "horrific" and the child "could have died." As a result of the abuse, the baby suffered multiple skull fractures, an upper leg fractured in two places, fractures on both sides of her jaw, bruising from blows to her face and lower back, a perforated eardrum, a scratched cornea, and second-degree burns on both thighs, the Bucks County District Attorney said.

Reichard did not seek medical help for the baby until forced by others to do so, authorities said. Reichard pleaded guilty but mentally ill on Oct. 6 to felony aggravated assault. "What you did to the child is, quite frankly, unspeakable," Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. said in court.

According to the District Attorney's office, the child, now two and a half, has fully recovered from her injuries and lives with her father. Dr. Carla Parkin-Joseph, a pediatrician and child-abuse expert, described the baby's abuse as "probably one of the worst cases I've seen in my experience."

Comment: It's possible this woman is a psychopath. In The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley writes that the psychopath periodically needs to take vacations into filth and degradation.

From The Psychopath - The Mask Of Sanity - Special Research Project of the Quantum Future School:
One very interesting aspect of the psychopath is his "hidden life" that is sometimes not too well hidden. It seems that the psychopath has a regular need to take a "vacation into filth and degradation" the same way normal people may take a vacation to a resort where they enjoy beautiful surroundings and culture. To get a full feeling for this strange "need" of the psychopath - a need that seems to be evidence that "acting human" is very stressful to the psychopath - read more of The Mask of Sanity, chapters 25 and 26.



Shopping Bag

Learning from the food crisis in Venezuela

Venezuelan market
Venezuela is out of food.

After several years of long lines, rationing, and shortages, the socialist country does not have enough food to feed its population, and the opposition government has declared a "nutritional emergency." This is just the most recent nail in the beleaguered country's slow, painful economic collapse.

Many people expect an economic collapse to be shocking, instant, and dramatic, but really, it's far more gradual than that. It looks like empty shelves, long lines, desperate government officials trying to cover their tushes, and hungry people. For the past two years, I've been following the situation in Venezuela as each shocking event has unfolded. Americans who feel that our country would be better served by a socialist government would be wise to take note of this timeline of the collapse.

Hardhat

Appalachian coal mining operations are destroying forests, polluting streams and flooding communities

coal mining appalachian mountains
An explosive is detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains, Wise County, Virginia. Critics refer to this type of mining as 'mountaintop removal mining' which has destroyed 500 mountain peaks and at least 1,200 miles of streams while leading to increased flooding
For more than forty years, mining companies have been destroying entire mountain peaks in West Virginia, Kentucky and other areas of Central Appalachia.

The technique, known as mountaintop mining, practice provides much-needed jobs and the steady supply of coal that America relies on for more than half of its electricity needs.

But residents say they are paying a high price, with the practice destroying forests, polluting streams and flooding communities - and now a new study has backed up their claims.

Scientists have found mountaintop coal mining has made parts of Central Appalachia 40 per cent flatter than they were before excavation.

Comment:
Community Impacts of Mountaintop Removal

Communities near mountaintop removal sites frequently experience contaminated drinking water supplies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that iron and manganese concentrations surpass drinking water guidelines in at least 40% of wells on the Appalachian Plateau, and in about 70% of the wells near reclaimed surface coal mines of the region.

Coal slurry, the waste left after washing and processing coal with water and chemicals, is highly toxic and can leach into groundwater.
Coal sludge, or slurry, is the toxic byproduct of removing coal from rock, and it contains dangerous heavy metals such as antimony, beryllium, cadmium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, lead, manganese, nickel, selenium, arsenic and mercury.

The forceful blasting from mountaintop removal often occurs close to homes, and at all times of the day. Drinking water wells and building foundations crack from the sheer force of the explosions, significantly depreciating property values, which is oftentimes a family's most substantial asset. Communities are blanketed in dust, and sometimes pelted by rocks ranging from pebble to boulder size.

Before coal companies remove a mountaintop, they strip the land clean. Without trees on steep mountain slopes, rainfall can quickly accumulate to dangerous levels, subjecting nearby communities to powerful flash floods. Some of the most devastating flash floods occurred in Mingo County in southern West Virginia in May 2009, when rising water forced residents from their homes and prompted then-Governor Joe Manchin to declare a state of emergency. It was the 19th flood in 11 years to hit Mingo County and surrounding areas of southern West Virginia's coalfields.



TV

Watch what you say in front of your Smart TV

samsung smart tv
In a troubling new development in the domestic consumer surveillance debate, an investigation into Samsung Smart TVs has revealed that user voice commands are recorded, stored, and transmitted to a third party. The company even warns customers not to discuss personal or sensitive information within earshot of the device.

This is in stark contrast to previous claims by tech manufacturers, like PlayStation, who vehemently deny their devices record personal information, despite evidence to the contrary, including news that hackers can gain access to unencrypted streams of credit card information.

The new Samsung controversy stems from the discovery of a single haunting statement in the company's "privacy policy," which states:
Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.

Comment: Cutting edge technology is not worth losing your privacy.


Clock

Single, global time zone?

World Time Zones
© Thinkstock/iStock
Are time zones obsolete? According to two Johns Hopkins University professors, Steve Hanke and Richard Henry, an economist and an astrophysicist, respectively, the world would be better off if everyone set their watches to the same time, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Trying to change how the world tells time might seem like a crazy idea at first glance, but in a globally connected world, a single time zone has its benefits.

For starters, time zones are political creations, not scientific ones. The world isn't divided into 24 precisely demarcated lines based on sunlight patterns. Instead, there are around 40 different locally observed times created by different nations and regions. Some countries, such as Nepal, Venezuela or North Korea, have 30- or even 45-minute offsets separating their time from their longitudinal neighborhood.

Countries also change their time zones regularly. As the Washington Post mentions in an interview recently with Hanke and Henry, five countries changed theirs last year.

Arrow Down

US Okinawan military base secretly contaminating local waterways with toxic chemicals

water contamination kadena air base
© Jon MitchellA fire extinguishing agent is washed out in a storm drain at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture on Dec. 4, 2013, in a photo obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act
U.S. documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that lax safety standards at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa may be to blame for the recent contamination of local drinking water sources.

The internal reports expose a spate of accidents at the base during the past 15 years that have involved at least 21,000 liters of fire extinguishing agents — some of them toxic.

In one incident last May, described by base officials as "vandalism," a drunk U.S. Marine activated a firefighting system. It filled a hangar with more than 1,500 liters of JET-X 2.75 percent — a foam classified by the U.S. government as hazardous. It contains chemicals known to cause cancer, and neurological and reproductive disorders.

Although the agent flowed off the base into nearby waterways and the ocean, military officials decided not to report the accident to Japanese authorities or local residents.

Other incidents at Kadena, the largest U.S. air base in the Pacific, included the escape of approximately 17,000 liters of fire extinguishing agents during a three-day period in 2001, attributed by base officials to mechanical and electronic malfunctions.

Comment: It's little wonder the Japanese are fed-up with the US military presence:


Book 2

D.C. madame: Will her 'little black book' see the light of day?

Deborah Jeane Palfrey
© AP PHOTO/JACQUELYN MARTINDeborah Jeane Palfrey
Yes, Madam. Call us crazy, but we do think it's a little strange when a person ends up dead exactly the way they said would never happen. Especially if that person was in possession of documents that could topple the careers of hundreds of powerful people.

"D.C. Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey said she would never commit suicide.

Now, to be sure, we know that some people who make such declarations do go on to kill themselves. And we know that no physical evidence was reported that proved Palfrey was murdered.

Still, we find her death worth a closer look. Especially since she said, shortly before her death, that someone had put out a contract on her.

Her death was two election cycles ago, but now, her little black book is in the news again. Which is all to the good, in our opinion. Any attention to her rather suspicious death is more than welcome.

Comment: See also: Kevin Barrett: Is Obama killing 'kill list' critics?

Palfrey's story is not the first of its kind. Henry Vinson went through the same thing (though Vinson went to prison and thankfully wasn't murdered!) back in the 80s, in a scandal that overlapped with the Franklin pedophile-ring scandal.


Sheriff

News crew inadvertently captures brutal arrest on camera in Tennessee

Memphis PD
© Via Youtube/Papa Bear
Reporters with the Local 24 news crew inadvertently caught a brutal arrest on camera while working on an unrelated story at the Country Squire Apartments in Cordova. While the crew was filming for their other story, they heard sirens and noticed a man running away from police.

While he was in front of the cameras, the man dropped to the ground where he was repeatedly bludgeoned with the officer's baton and kicked several times. After assaulting the man, the officer ordered him to put his hands behind his back. The man obeyed and the officer lifted him up from the ground by his handcuffs while having his other hand around the man's throat. He then kicked the suspect into the back of squad car.

The film has sparked an investigation into the officer's actions and has even drawn comments from state lawmakers. "There's obviously some abuse going on here, excessive force. When I'm looking at a young man that's on the ground and supporting himself with one arm laying down, that is not a position where he's a threat to anybody standing," State Representative G.A. Hardaway said after watching the video.

Steve Mulroy, a former federal prosecutor and civil rights lawyer for the Department of Justice, also expressed his disgust with the incident, saying, "When the suspect was already down on the ground with his arms indicating that he was going to comply, offering no resistance and not failing to obey any commands from the officer, it was not justified for the officer to strike him with the nightstick or to kick him."

"That's unacceptable, completely unacceptable. It unravels every bit of goodwill that has been rolled out. Any child that sees that is going to be imprinted with it for lifetime. Any adult is going to be imprinted with it. They're going to teach their children that this is what the police do," he added.


Comment: That is exactly the point of allowing police brutality. It's state-sanctioned terror passed down through generations; a tactic the 'powers that be' use to control and terrorize populations. See: Does fear lead to fascism? A culture of fear and the epigenetics of terror



Comment: See also: Authoritarianism and Psychopathy


Ambulance

Teen loses an arm in botched Craigslist robbery

SUV hits gate
© Sam Costanza/NY Daily NewsA police officer secures the handgun (on grass at officer's feet) that was dropped when the robber was struck by the gray SUV (pictured l.) on Avenue M near E. 86th St. in Canarsie.
A robbery victim, who decided to take the law into his own hands by mowing down an armed teen thief, severing his right arm, is now in handcuffs himself, police said.

Police arrested the robbery victim, Philip Pierre, 39, of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and charged him with attempted murder. The alleged teen thief, Zachary Sam, 17, also of Canarsie, Brooklyn, was charged with robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in the Craigslist robbery gone wrong. Both were charged on Friday.

Police sources say the teenager connected with Pierre on Craigslist on Friday. Pierre was selling a pair of Air Jordan sneakers.

They met about 1 p.m. near Avenue M and East 84th Street in Canarsie, where Sam got into Pierre's Honda Pilot SUV and pulled out a gun, a police source said. The teen allegedly stole the Jordan Retro 8 sneakers and walked away.

Comment: The driver's life was no longer in danger once the teen left the vehicle. Running him over was an act of retribution.