Society's ChildS


Whistle

Soccer fan detained at game for waving a Palestinian flag as a 'racial slur'

Buthayna Hammad
Buthayna Hammad
Last Sunday, Palestinian-American Buthayna Hammad attended a soccer match at BBVA Compass Stadium, Houston's downtown 22,000-seat soccer-specific stadium, home to the Houston Dynamo. About 15 minutes after the game started Hammad was approached by the head of Compass Stadium's security Nathan Buchanan. Soon she encountered a total of eight security officials, four from stadium security and the other four, Houston police officers.

Why? because she was waving a Palestinian flag. Stadium security informed her that her Palestinian flag implied a "racial slur" and therefore was in violation of BBVA Compass Stadium rules.

Hammad, a native of Houston, is an avid soccer fan. She attended the match with her "alt family from Honduras" including her Honduran boyfriend. The match was between Israel and Honduras.

Gold Bar

Montana residents: Gold in drinking water

Gold in Tap Water_1
© KTVM
Whitehall - Two Whitehall residents say they're finding gold flakes in their tap water and that it's raising concerns about what else might be in the water.

Whitehall is about 25 miles southeast of Butte in Jefferson County. The town gets its drinking water from two wells -- one off Division Street and another a half block east of Whitehall Street. Both wells are right in the middle of town.

NBC Montana was in Whitehall today and saw firsthand gold flakes coming from the faucet.

Mark Brown told us his wife Sharon was finishing up the dishes earlier this week when she noticed something unusual.

Brown explained, "She had pulled the plug to let the water out and there were glistening, gleaming little flecks."

They showed us what they found -- small gold-colored flakes, right in the bottom of the sink.

Brown recalled their disbelief, "That couldn't possibly be gold, huh? And I was sure it wasn't."

Dollars

Greed is good? Where will America's sick obsession with wealth and money end?

Greed
© J. Solana from Madrid, SpainGreed.

Everywhere you look, Americans appear to be extremely obsessed with wealth and money. These days, networks such as CNN endlessly run "news stories" with titles such as "Best cars for the super rich".

We have television shows where people proudly show off how wealthy they are, and it seems like Hollywood is putting out an endless parade of movies that glorify the lifestyles of the elite.

We have hordes of motivational speakers and "life coaches" that will teach you how to be "more successful" in life, and every small movement in the stock market is carefully monitored by the mainstream news media.

Even in the world of faith, we have an entire class of ministers known as "prosperity preachers", and many of those ministers wear that label quite proudly.

Yes, those that grew up in the 1980s may have been the "greed is good" generation, but the truth is that they didn't have anything on us. As a society we love money, and we are not ashamed to admit it. In fact, there are times we absolutely revel in it.

For example, Time Magazine published an article this year entitled "Science Proves It: Greed Is Good" and hardly anyone even raised an eyebrow. But where will America's sick obsession with wealth and money end? Could it end up destroying us?

Shopping Bag

An all new low: Texas woman killed in crash has groceries stolen by witnesses

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© ABC13The Wednesday wreck in Houston killed the mother of two children after a trip to the grocery store.
A 23-year-old mother was killed and her two young children suffered injuries in a wreck Wednesday, Houston police said.

The woman's sons, ages 4 and 6, were in the backseat and were transferred to a hospital with broken bones but no life-threatening injuries, said HPD spokesman Victor Senties.

The mother failed to yield when she was leaving a private drive around 5 p.m., Senties said.

She then lost control of her Toyota 4Runner and hit a tree after a Mercedes E320 traveling northbound at 9600 Fondren Road clipped her. Police said she was travelling at a high speed.

Comment: These thieves ignored the injured children and the DEAD mother and grabbed the groceries? Appalling!


Stormtrooper

Albuquerque campaign against psychopathic police violence intensifies at chaotic protest

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© Adolphe Pierre-Louis/APDavid Correia, a University of New Mexico professor, during a sit-in at the Albuquerque mayor's office. Correia was later arrested.
Activists in Albuquerque have vowed to continue confronting city authorities over police shootings a day after they occupied the mayor's office, prompting chaotic scenes and 13 arrests.

The arrests and detentions on Monday night marked a hardening response by authorities to a campaign which has demanded radical reform of the New Mexico city's trigger-happy police department.

About two-dozen activists staged a sit-in at the office of Mayor Richard Berry, triggering acrimonious exchanges with officials and the suspension of a city council meeting before guards and police hauled them away. It was the third time in recent weeks that the city council has been disrupted.

Chalkboard

Best of the Web: Empire collapsing: Half of Americans earn less than $27,520 a year... and 15 other signs the middle class is dying

Depression
© Sander van der Wel
If you make more than $27,520 a year at your job, you are doing better than half the country is. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can check out the latest wage statistics from the Social Security administration right here. But of course $27,520 a year will not allow you to live "the American Dream" in this day and age. After taxes, that breaks down to a good bit less than $2,000 a month. You can't realistically pay a mortgage, make a car payment, afford health insurance and provide food, clothing and everything else your family needs for that much money. That is one of the reasons why both parents are working in most families today. In fact, sometimes both parents are working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet.

Over the years, the cost of living has risen steadily but our paychecks have not. This has resulted in a steady erosion of the middle class. Once upon a time, most American families could afford a nice home, a couple of cars and a nice vacation every year. When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was middle class. But now "the American Dream" is out of reach for more Americans than ever, and the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes.

Comment: It is necessary to start taking actions so as to be prepared for the coming collapse, as things will only get worse. Dmitry Orlov has written about it extensively and an alternative way forward.

See: The coming collapse: Age of limits 2014

Or listen to the Sott Talk Radio interview: Lessons from collapse of USSR for USA: Interview with Dmitry Orlov


Arrow Up

Soaring food prices and Abenomics' legacy: Japan's greatest "misery" in 33 years

Back in early 2013, in article after article, we warned that Abenomics would be an epic disaster. Actually we take that back: we said it would be an epic disaster for most of Japan's citizens. A select very few, just like in the US, would benefit greatly from the unprecedented asset reflation to follow the massive currency devaluation that the prime minister had just launched.

Over a year later, we find that we were yet again accurate in our forecast.

Meet Mieko Tatsunami, a 70 year old retired kimono dresser from Tokyo. Unlike the scores of paid actors ordered to pitch Abenomics and to spread the gospel of rising asset prices, Mieko shares a most rare commodity in this day of pervasive propaganda: the truth.

"The price of everything we eat on a daily basis is going up," Tatsunami, 70, a retired kimono dresser, said while shopping in Tokyo's Sugamo area. "I'm making do by halving the amount of meat I serve and adding more vegetables."

Ironically, that's what Americans are doing too. Only here the "halving" of the food is done by the food producers, while the consumers rarely if ever notice that they are being jobbed, and are paying the same amount for ever lesser amounts of food. At least in Japan they are honest about food inflation.

As Bloomberg shows, Tatsunami's concerns stem from the price of food soaring at the fastest pace in 23 years after April's sales-tax increase. Rising prices helped push the nation's misery index to the highest level since 1981, while wages adjusted for inflation fell the most in more than four years.
Japan misery index
© Unknown
Ah yes, the title. We weren't kidding. As of this moment, Japan's misery has not been higher in an entire generation! Its Misery index that is, which combines unemployment (3.6%) and inflation (3.4%), and results in an unprecedented 7.0%: the highest in 33 years!

People 2

German company asks for €100,000 on crowdfunding website to develop 'NSA-proof' server, gets €750,000 in 89 mins

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© Protonet
Developers of secure server Protonet asked for some $136,000 on a local crowdfunding website - and were rewarded with $1 million in an hour and a half. The record campaign, one year after Snowden's NSA leaks, ended with more than $2 million raised.

Hamburg-based startup Protonet, which launched its first private cloud device in July 2013 - a month after the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the scale of US internet surveillance - on Wednesday proved the spying scandal is still in full swing.

The small team of 23 asked for 100,000 euros in funding ($135,830) to support its products, including a new model of a secure server for small companies, on the German crowdfunding site Seedmatch. While Protonet had already raised twice as much on the same website last year, the developers were amazed at the speed the people responded to their cause.

Comment: This small example goes to show the extent of public discontent against government surveillance. With the psychopaths in power desperately tightening their grip, more and more people are waking up.


Stormtrooper

Psycho-bully Toronto cop goes "off the chart ballistic"


Militarized bully Cop didn't like me calling 911 to get a hold of a supervisor, so he went ballistic, beating on my window, ordering me out of the car so he could 'protect me' (cuff, stuff, taze and beat) and essentially acting like a wing nut who should not be dealing with the public. If bullies like him are walking around armed, the people who hire him and others like him will have nothing to complain about if the peace officers employed by The Canadian Common Corps of Peace Officers are armed as well.

Pistol

Seattle Pacific University campus shooting leaves one dead, three injured

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© AFP/Getty images/Justin Sullivan
One person has died of gunshot wounds and three other people were injured Thursday afternoon in a shooting on the campus of Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington. Police have one suspect in custody.

One female victim is still in critical condition, while two male victims are in "satisfactory" condition, Harborview Medical Center sources told KIRO. The four victims, each in their 20s, are all believed to be students of the university. Three of the four victims suffered gunshot wounds.

One suspected shooter is in custody, Seattle police told KIRO. The suspect was disarmed by university staff, according to police, after entering Otto Miller Hall on the university's campus.

A building monitor confronted the shooter, according to police, as the suspect was reloading a shotgun. The monitor, a student, pepper-sprayed and tackled the suspect, then was joined by other individuals in neutralizing the shooter before police arrived.