Society's ChildS


War Whore

UK: Stop The War Protests Against Iran And Syria Intervention


The Huffington Post, UK
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:35 UTC
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© Press Association
Hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered in central London today at a demonstration against Western intervention in Iran and Syria.

The rally, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, took place outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square with a number of speakers addressing the 200-strong crowd.

Protesters waved banners bearing the words "Don't attack Iran" and "Hands off Iran and Syria", while the crowd joined together in chanting: "One, two, three, four, we don't want another war. Five, six, seven, eight, stop the killing, stop the hate."

The coalition opposes all military intervention from the West in Iran as concern that the Middle Eastern country is developing nuclear weapons grows.

The group says there is "absolutely no justification" for Western countries to become involved.

Stop the War Coalition activist John Rees said the uprising that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a year ago proved that oppressed people in the Middle East could fight for themselves.

He said: "Here is a people who without the bombers and the bullets, the tanks and the soldiers, or the United States, or Britain, or any of the Western powers, pulled down a dictatorship on their own.

"Even after a year's still further struggle, there is not one single Egyptian revolutionary who will ask for support from the United States or military assistance from the United States, and it is because of this: they are still being shot down in the streets by Egyptian soldiers who are using American weapons and American bullets, so why would they ask for help from their killers?""
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Airplane

US: Bill Would Require Independent Study of X-Ray Body Scanners

Michael Grabell
Pro Publica
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:03 UTC
Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill in the coming days that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide.
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© Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesTransportation Security Administration agents screen passengers at Los Angeles International Airport on May 2, 2011.
The Transportation Security Administration began using the machines for routine screening in 2009 and sped up deployment after the so-called underwear bomber tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day of that year.

But the X-ray scanners have caused concerns because they emit low levels of ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and mutate genes, potentially leading to cancer. ProPublica and PBS NewsHour reported in November that the TSA had glossed over cancer concerns. Studies suggested that six or 100 airline passengers each year could develop cancer from the machines.

Shortly after our report, the European Union separately announced that it would prohibit X-ray body scanners at its airports for the time being "in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety."

The new bill drafted by Collins would require the TSA to choose an independent laboratory to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint. The peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.
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People

Corporations Have No Use for Borders

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:44 UTC
standoff with protesters at the G-20 Summit
© AP / Carolyn KasterA police officer holds a tear gas launcher at the ready during a standoff with protesters at the G-20 Summit in Toronto in June 2010.
What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010's G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.
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Dollar

Best of the Web: Finally!! We Can Now See the True Cost of Globalisation


The Guardian
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
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© nowtoronto.com
The worldwide public realises there is something deeply wrong with today's world economic system

When Karl Marx called for the workers of the world to unite, it seems unlikely he had in mind an iPhone boycott. But suggestions for just such a campaign in the US have thrown the spotlight on possible abuses at firms producing goods for hi-tech giant Apple, urging the public to think again about what happens at the other end of the production pipeline that leads to its swish, minimalist stores. Stung by the criticisms, Apple boss Tim Cook told his staff last week: "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain," and the company is now inspecting scores of factories, providing the latest evidence that the public is no longer willing to ignore the dark underbelly of world capitalism.

Before the Great Crash, critics of globalisation were isolated on the loony fringe: tear-gassed in Seattle and whacked with truncheons in Prague, as the west's leaders gathered to congratulate themselves on reaping the benefits of unfettered world trade.

When the Asian financial crises of the 1990s toppled governments and forced one desperate country after another into mass impoverishment and emergency bailouts by the International Monetary Fund, the west's leaders - even many on the left - explained it away as a result of shoddy governance or poor economic management, instead of a devastating side-effect of globalisation.

And even after the financial shock waves rippled out from the American housing market in 2007 and caused catastrophic collateral damage in countries across the globe, and the deepest world recession since the 1930s, many felt that a few tweaks to bank capital rules, and sharper teeth for financial regulators, would fix the system.

Yet two things have derailed world leaders' attempts to get back to business as usual. The first is that in many countries, more than four years on from the start of the credit crisis, millions of people still wait for economic recovery to take hold. Growth is sickly or non-existent; unemployment is rising; the only people who seem to escape are a tiny, super-rich elite.
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Document

In interviews, American Muslims Say They Reject Separate 'Sharia' Law System

Liz Goodwin
The Lookout
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/M. Spencer GreenThe Islamic Society of North American conference in 2006
A new study based on interviews with more than 200 North American Muslims concludes that a recent spate of state laws banning "sharia law" from the court system may be an overreaction to a non-existent threat.

Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana each passed laws or referendums to ban state judges from considering sharia and other foreign laws last year, and more than 20 other states have debated similar legislation. Newt Gingrich has called for a federal law to ban sharia, while his fellow Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has said sharia law is an "existential threat" to America.

The qualitative study, by University of Windsor law professor Julie MacFarlane and published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding think tank, is the first to ask American Muslims what they think of sharia, or Islamic religious law. MacFarlane interviewed 101 Muslim men and women, 41 imams and 70 community leaders and specialists about their uses of Islamic law in everyday life. (About a quarter of the respondents live in Canada, but MacFarlane found no significant difference between the Canadian and American responses.)

MacFarlane asked the respondents whether they thought American courts should apply Islamic law to non-Muslims in the legal system. All of them said no.
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Handcuffs

US: Night in the Cells Accidentally Became Two Years in Solitary

Guy Adams
The Independent
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
Suspected drunk driver wins $22m after he was forgotten, isolated - and terribly neglected.
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© The IndependentStephen Slevin at the time of his arrest for drink driving in August 2005, left, and when he was released in May 2007, right

Stephen Slevin was driving along a rural highway in southern New Mexico in August 2005 when traffic police pulled him over and arrested him on suspicion of drink-driving, along with a string of other motoring offences.

By the time all of the charges against him were dismissed and Mr Slevin was released from custody, it was 2007. For reasons that remain unclear, officials had forced him to spend the intervening two years in solitary confinement.

During the ordeal, he claims to have been denied access to basic washing facilities for months at a time. He'd lost a third of his body weight, grown a beard down to his chest and was suffering from bed sores. Prison officials had also ignored his pleas to see a dentist, forcing him to pull out his own tooth. They declined other requests for attention, including an audience with a mental health professional. He duly became delirious and says that by the time of his release he'd "been driven mad".

This week, a jury in Albuquerque ordered Dona Ana County, which was responsible for incarcerating Slevin without trial, to pay $22m (£14m) in compensation. It was the largest award ever granted to a US prisoner whose civil rights have been violated.
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Attention

US: Highway Patrol: At Least 9 Dead in Nighttime Wrecks on Hazy Interstate 75 in North Florida


The Associated Press
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:23 UTC
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© The Associated Press/The Canadian Press/The Gainesville Sun/Matt StameyOfficials work at the scene of a multi-vehicle wreck on Interstate 75 at Paynes Prairie on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, south of Gainesville, Fla.
At least nine people died in a series of crashes apparently caused by heavy smoke and fog overnight on Interstate 75 in north Florida, authorities said Sunday.

Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Patrick Riordan said the pileups happened around 3:45 a.m. Sunday on both sides of I-75 south of Gainesville. All lanes of the interstate remained closed as investigators began trying to figure out what caused the early morning crashes.

Riordan said several people were injured and taken to Gainesville hospitals. Their conditions were unclear.

At least 17 people hurt in the wreck were being treated at Shands at the University of Florida, the hospital said on its website.

The FHP had closed the highway briefly overnight because of a mixture of fog and smoke from a marsh fire in the Paynes Prairie area south of Gainesville.
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2 + 2 = 4

Canada, Ontario: Teacher Loses Licence After Sex With Students


CBC News
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00 UTC
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© unknown
An Ottawa high school teacher has had her teaching licence revoked after admitting she had "inappropriate relations" with three male students.

Joanne Léger-Legault pleaded no contest to the allegations of professional misconduct presented to the Ontario College of Teachers discipline committee, which heard the case last year.

She admitted to having an "intimate sexual relationship" with two of her students and kissing a third student on the lips.

The Ontario College of Teachers officially stripped the licence of the former teacher of A.Y. Jackson Secondary School and Merivale High School in late September. The news was not widely known until now.

The incidents investigated involved four teenage boys and happened during school years from 2001-02 to 2005-06.
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USA

Best of the Web: World Gone Mad! British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes

Richard Hartley-Parkinson
UK Daily Mail
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:47 UTC
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Leigh Van Bryan was due to go to Los Angeles with his friend Emily Banting but was stopped when he arrived in the U.S. over tweets he had sent.
Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to 'destroy America' and 'dig up Marilyn Monroe'.

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: 'Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?'

After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

Despite telling officials the term 'destroy' was British slang for 'party', they were held on suspicion of planning to 'commit crimes' and had their passports confiscated.

Comment: This situation is a good reminder of a quote from Andrew Lobaczewski's book Political Ponerology which addresses hysterisation in society that opens the door to totalitarianism in one form or another:
The traditional interpretation of these great historical diseases [of Pathocracy] has already taught historians to distinguish two phases. The first is represented by a period of spiritual crisis in a society, which historiography associates with exhausting of the ideational, moral, and religious values heretofore nourishing the society in question. Egoism among individuals and social groups increases, and the links of moral duty and social networks are felt to be loosening. Trifling matters thereupon dominate human minds to such an extent that there is no room left for thinking about public matters or a feeling of commitment to the future. An atrophy of the hierarchy of values within the thinking of individuals and societies is an indication thereof; it has been described both in historiographic monographs and in psychiatric papers. The country's government is finally paralyzed, helpless in the face of problems which could be solved without great difficulty under other circumstances. Let us associate such periods of crisis with the familiar phase in social hysterization. [...]

States of Societal Hysterization

When perusing scientific or literary descriptions of hysterical phenomena, such as those dating from the last great increase in hysteria in Europe encompassing the quarter-century preceding World War I, a non-specialist may gain the impression that this was endemic to individual cases, particularly among woman. The contagious nature of hysterical states, however, had already been discovered and described by Jean-Martin Charcot .

It is practically impossible for hysteria to manifest itself as a mere individual phenomenon, since it is contagious by means of psychological resonance, identification, and imitation. Each human being has a predisposition for this malformation of the personality, albeit to varying degrees, although it is normally overcome by rearing and self-rearing, which are amenable to correct thinking and emotional self-discipline.

During "happy times" of peace dependent upon social injustice, children of the privileged classes learn to repress from their field of consciousness the uncomfortable ideas suggesting that they and their parents are benefitting from injustice against others. Such young people learn to disqualify disparage the moral and mental values of anyone whose work they are using to over-advantage. Young minds thus ingest habits of subconscious selection and substitution of data, which leads to a hysterical conversion economy of reasoning. They grow up to be somewhat hysterical adults who, by means of the ways adduced above, thereupon transmit their hysteria to the next generation, which then develops these characteristics to an even greater degree.

The hysterical patterns for experience and behavior grow and spread downwards from the privileged classes until crossing the boundary of the first criterion of ponerology: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals.

When the habits of subconscious selection and substitution of thought-data spread to the macrosocial level, a society tends to develop contempt for factual criticism and to humiliate anyone sounding an alarm. Contempt is also shown for other nations which have maintained normal thought-patterns and for their opinions. Egotistic thought-terrorization is accomplished by the society itself and its processes of conversive thinking. This obviates the need for censorship of the press, theater, or broadcasting, as a pathologically hypersensitive censor lives within the citizens themselves.

When three "egos" govern, egoism, egotism, and egocentrism, the feeling of social links and responsibility toward others disappear, and the society in question splinters into groups ever more hostile to each other.

When a hysterical environment stops differentiating the opinions of limited, not-quite-normal people from those of normal, reasonable persons, this opens the door for activation of the pathological factors of a various nature to enter in.

Individuals we have already met [psychological deviants such as psychopaths, schizoids, characteropaths, etc] who are governed by a pathological view of reality and abnormal goals caused by their different nature are able to develop their activities in such conditions. If a given society does not manage to overcome the state of hysterization under its ethnological and political circumstances, a huge bloody tragedy can be the result. ...
For more information on ponerology - the science of evil, see these Sott links:

Political Ponerology: A Science of Evil Applied for Political Purposes

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

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Whistle

Confessions of a Frustrated Pharmacist

Stuart Lindsey, PharmD.
Orthomolecular.org
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:08 UTC
When an insider breaks ranks with pharmaceutical orthodoxy, it is time to take notice. "Whistleblower" may be an overused term, but the article that follows might be well worth readers' consideration before standing in line for their next prescription refill. - Andrew W. Saul, OMNS Editor

I'm a registered pharmacist. I am having a difficult time with my job. I sell people drugs that are supposed to correct their various health complaints. Some medicines work like they're supposed to, but many don't. Some categories of drugs work better than others. My concern is that the outcomes of treatment I observe are so unpredictable that I would often call the entire treatment a failure in too many situations.
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