Society's Child

Germany's literati try to abolish term 'climate hysteria' - which will only create more climate change skeptics

Helen Buyniski
RT
Sat, 25 Jan 2020 08:43 UTC

© Reuters / Wolfgang Rattay
Environmental organizations protest against the commissioning of the North Rhine Westphalian power plant in Germany, January 24, 2020. The placard reads "The climate crisis is killing!"

Germany's literary establishment has declared a moratorium on the phrase "climate hysteria." No wonder "climate denial" is epidemic - there's no better way to convince people something's not real than making belief mandatory.

An annual ritual by German linguists and journalists to exile a term from the language subjected the term "klimahysterie" ("climate hysteria") to the linguistic equivalent of burning at the stake earlier this month, naming it the "un-word of the year" because it "defames climate protection efforts and the climate protection movement, and discredits important discussions about climate protection."

One might think that painting the climate debate in black and white - evil "climate deniers" versus saintly Greta Thunberg and her Extinction Rebellion carbon cult - would be more discrediting to the climate protection movement than begging for some realism from a narrative that is rapidly taking on religious trappings. Implying the keening end-of-timers gluing themselves to trains at rush hour are just as rooted in clear-eyed science as legitimate climatologists is frankly insulting to the latter, and implying both are too sacred to be described with a term like "hysteria" harms the environmental cause far more than any slick oil industry PR.

The media hates Joe Rogan because they don't understand him

Zachary Leeman
RT
Tue, 28 Jan 2020 16:21 UTC

Since being thrust into headlines thanks to his endorsement of Bernie Sanders, Joe Rogan has been slammed as transphobic and racist, but the attacks say more about the modern mainstream media than him.

With a podcast that is consistently at the number one or two spot on iTunes, and a YouTube subscriber base of more than seven million, an endorsement from Rogan is no small thing.

The comedian and former 'Fear Factor' host regularly reaches a bigger audience than most cable news shows and blogs with his varying interviews with just about anyone you can think of - from Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler all the way to presidential candidates like Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang.

Protesters flood streets in Beirut, Lebanon calling to reject new government

Sputnik
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:54 UTC

The protests are taking place in the run-up to a debate in the parliament on the budget for this year that was proposed by the previous government.

Protests are in full swing in Lebanon's capital Beirut as demonstrators continue to voice their objection to the government recently formed under new Prime Minister Hassan Diab.

Beirut has been engulfed in protests over the poor economic situation and endemic corruption since October 2019. The demonstrations were initially caused by a new tax on calls made using WhatsApp, a measure that the government believed would help tackle the country's high public debt.

Comment: See also:

A miracle! Hollywood allows Catholics who are not corrupt or pedophiles to appear on screen again

Michael McCaffrey
RT
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 02:50 UTC

The Two Popes (2019) Dir: Fernando Meirelles

With films like The Two Popes, Hollywood is now making some surprisingly watchable Catholic entertainment with a refreshingly traditionalist bent. But why wasn't it always so, since the idea is just common business sense? Religion films don't work when moviemakers get too political

As a practicing Catholic and a devout cinephile, I am constantly frustrated that Hollywood rarely gets religion right. Films and tv shows that touch upon Catholic and religious themes are often reduced to being either saccharine adoration in the hands of believing "conservatives" or vacuous vilification in the hands of agnostic "liberals".

Considering there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and 84% of all people believe in one religion or another, it would seem a wise choice for Hollywood to explore Catholic and religious themed stories with much more regularity, artistic integrity and sincerity.

Hollywood and the Catholic Church need not be adversaries, as they have a lot more in common than one might think. For instance, they both have gobs of money and their hierarchies are littered with perverts and pedophiles. I'M KIDDING! As I said, I'm a practicing Catholic...and as my Catholic gallows humor shows...I definitely need more practice because I'm not very good at it.

Comment: At the risk of being overly cynical, we suspect that Hollywood moguls have perhaps discovered that offending (or ignoring) a sizable portion of the population is not conducive to fattening the bottom line. Another thing Hollywood adores is virtue-signaling, so it may be useful to be able to give a nod to religion once in awhile.

Passenger plane with 130 on board slides off runway, stops in the middle of a road in western Iran

RT
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 05:48 UTC

A packed Iranian passenger plane skidded of the runway and ended up in the middle of a city street, local media report.

Caspian Airlines Flight 6936 took off from Tehran at around 6:44am local time and was trying to land in the city of Bandar-e Mahshahr in southwestern Khuzestan Province when it skidded off the runway on Monday, Tasnim News said.

Videos from the scene, which are circulating on social media, show the Boeing aircraft lying on its belly in the middle of the road. Passengers were calmly evacuated from the plane, while some wreckage from the fuselage could be seen on the ground.

The aircraft looks mostly intact, and it does not appear that there was major destruction on the ground. Managing Director of Khuzestan Airports Mohammad Reza Rezaei told IRNA that the plane did not catch fire during the incident and no one on board was hurt.

Comment: Also in the news: Mysterious crash in Afghanistan could be USAF plane

Yale will eliminate a beloved introductory art class for being too white, male, and western

Robby Soave
reason
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 09:12 UTC

Enrollment has swelled for Yale University's introductory art history course, which covers "the Renaissance to the present." That's because the school plans to eliminate the popular class after the spring.

According to The Yale Daily News, the art department has decided that the class might make some students uncomfortable due to the "overwhelming" whiteness, maleness, and straightness of the artists who comprise the Western canon (though that last label may be dubious). Indeed, the focus on Western art is "problematic," course instructor Tim Barringer told the student newspaper.

"I want all Yale students (and all residents of New Haven who can enter our museums freely) to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the western tradition," said Barringer. "But I don't mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places."

Comment: This is, more or less, an exercise in soft-censorship. Anyone interested in studying western art history as a minor is now barred from doing so. As the author states, adding a class to the curriculum that focused on non-Western art history would have been a better, and more fair, solution.

See also:

Free period products for trans boys in UK schools is about ideology, not pupils' needs

Frank Furedi
RT
Tue, 28 Jan 2020 07:00 UTC

British schools have been urged to provide free period products to transgender boys. But is the move motivated by pupils' sanitary needs or the government's commitment to institutionalize trans ideology in the school system?

A careful reading of the recent guidance issued by the British Department of Education indicates that it is an ideological document rather than a statement on the sanitary needs of pupils. The guidance assumes that the possession of multiple genders is the norm and states that "girls, non-binary and transgender learners who have periods may all need access" to menstrual products. Policy makers are far less interested in tampons than in communicating the idea that multiple genders is the new norm in schools.

If I believed in conspiracy theories - which I don't - it would be difficult to avoid the conclusion that the institutionalization of trans culture in British schools has become a zealously promoted project. Advocates have no inhibition about imposing their views on the most private and intimate dimensions of a child's experience. They clearly recognize that they are trespassing into areas of children's lives which have little to do with their schooling and education.

Comment: See also:

Insys pharmaceutical founder gets 66 months in prison for bribing doctors to overprescribe opioids after tens of thousands of deaths in US

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 20:45 UTC

Millions of Americans who lived through the financial crisis probably recall that not a single executive of a major investment bank was jailed in the aftermath, despite running organizations seemingly dedicated to perpetuating a criminal fraud on nearly every counterparty and client.

But when Americans look back at the opioid crisis, they'll remember that at least one executive of a major opioid manufacturer and distributor was sentenced to a fairly weighty sentence - five-and-a-half years (66 months) in federal prison - for an illegal kickback scheme that effectively involved bribing doctors to prescribe potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. That's right: Packaged under the name brand Subsys, Insys sold a painkiller made from the same ultra-powerful synthetic opioid responsible for tens of thousands of deaths across America.

According to the FT, which, in partnership with PBS's Frontline, is producing a documentary on the opioid crisis, John Kapoor, the founder of Insys, was sentenced to prison time on Thursday after being prosecuted under the RICO act - a law adopted decades ago to help the DoJ prosecute the mafia.

'I could hear people screaming': Alabama fire chief confirms 8 deaths after fire destroys 35 boats

Donna Thornton and John Bacon
USA Today
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 08:29 UTC

Fire raced through an Alabama dock Monday, killing at least eight people and torching dozens of boats as people leaped into the Tennessee River to escape the roaring flames.

Scottsboro Fire Chief Gene Necklaus said eight people believed to be missing were confirmed dead. He said the death toll could rise as rescuers access sunken hulls.

Thirty-five boats, houseboats and pontoon vessels burned in the fire. Some were docked for recreation, but for some the boats were their homes. Necklaus said the blaze was on the inland side of the dock, making rescues difficult.

Seven people were pulled from the water and treated for minor injuries, mainly for hypothermia from the cold water, he said. Some boats sank at the dock, he said, and some drifted from their moorings and sank.

Jackson County Chief Sheriff's Deputy Rocky Harnen said efforts to find all the boats, account for all the missing, identify those killed and notify families could take several days.

"There were numerous people rescued," Harnen said. "We're trying to get divers down here to search for possible victims."

Comment:

Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna among 9 dead in helicopter crash; feds search for cause - UPDATE

Richard Winton, Dan Woike, Sonali Kohli, Tania Ganguli, Ben Poston
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 26 Jan 2020 00:02 UTC

Kobe Bryant, 41, the legendary basketball star who spent 20 years with the Lakers, was killed Sunday morning when the helicopter he was traveling in crashed amid foggy conditions and burst into flames in the hills above Calabasas.

His daughter Gianna, 13, was also on board, NBA authorities confirmed.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said nine people were on the copter — a pilot and eight passengers. He would not confirm who had died until all the next of kin have been notified, he said. The L.A. County coroner's office said Sunday night that the recovery effort is expected to take several days because of the condition of the crash site and its remote location. Officials have shut down roads leading to the site because of a throng of visitors trying to get there.

Comment: UPDATE 1/27/20

Sputnik reports that the pilot was warned that he was 'too low' moments before the crash and could not be guided by the control tower through the fog:

Details of a helicopter crash that killed basketball superstar Kobe Bryant have emerged with one report saying the pilot was told by an air traffic controller that he was "too low" moments before the crash. The statement was not a warning of an upcoming threat, but that the helicopter couldn't be tracked by radar, meaning Burbank Airport control tower couldn't guide the pilot through the thick fog the helicopter was flying in.

Residents of Calabasas where the helicopter came down told the media they heard a helicopter that was flying too low. "I was sitting on my couch when I heard it go over our roof. I thought to myself, 'Wow they're flying really low today.' It must've been about 100 feet above our roof by the way the house was shaking. [..]

Investigators said the helicopter has a black box, which will likely shed light on what happened Sunday morning. Flight data showed that the pilot apparently got in trouble when the aircraft was over the LA Zoo, where it circled for 15 minutes. The pilot contacted Burbank Airport when he turned to a mountainous area. Several minutes later the helicopter hit the hillside at 1,700 feet.

Bill Gates is going to be the one with the uncertain future,,, * New Lt. Governor of Virginia Winsome Sears: "We're going to have safer...

parzival

The more we hear about adverse affects the more we will merely shrug. It's a catch 22. Is that an asteroid trail in the photo?

sass

Welcome to the new normal. The more sensory exposure we have about such things, the less it is an issue.

sass

more misbehaving phuqqin' jewzskies starring on the sott; speaks for itself

Jibrish

Robert F. Kennedy talks about what is in his book about Fauci: [Link]

parzival

Society's Child

Germany's literati try to abolish term 'climate hysteria' - which will only create more climate change skeptics

The media hates Joe Rogan because they don't understand him

Protesters flood streets in Beirut, Lebanon calling to reject new government

A miracle! Hollywood allows Catholics who are not corrupt or pedophiles to appear on screen again

Passenger plane with 130 on board slides off runway, stops in the middle of a road in western Iran

Yale will eliminate a beloved introductory art class for being too white, male, and western

Free period products for trans boys in UK schools is about ideology, not pupils' needs

Insys pharmaceutical founder gets 66 months in prison for bribing doctors to overprescribe opioids after tens of thousands of deaths in US

'I could hear people screaming': Alabama fire chief confirms 8 deaths after fire destroys 35 boats

Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna among 9 dead in helicopter crash; feds search for cause - UPDATE

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