Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Woman sues LAPD for kidnapping and sexually assaulting her

kim_lapd
© Counter Current News
When Kim Nguyen called a cab after a few drinks, she thought she was on the right side of the law. But in spite of her best efforts, the 27-year-old pharmacist explains she was thrown from a police cruiser after Los Angeles police officers kidnapped and sexually assaulted her while she was waiting for that cab.

Part of the assault on Nguyen was captured on camera, as the young woman was filmed tumbling from a moving LAPD cruiser after being handcuffed and kidnapped while waiting for the cab she called.

Nguyen was just trying to get home in the early morning hours of March 17, 2013, but that's not where her story ends. More on the latest developments in a minute. First, let's make sure you understand just how serious her allegations against the LAPD are. Let's start by taking a look at the video below:

Back in 2013, Nguyen explains that officers confronted her along with two male friends outside of a downtown Los Angeles restaurant at 2 am.

The group had been drinking and they knew they shouldn't drive home. They were trying to do the right thing, making sure not to drink and drive.

But while waiting for the cab, officers told the men to leave them with Nguyen or they would be arrested. Once the men left, the rogue cops kidnapped Nguyen and assaulted her.

In the deposition taped last month it is alleged that the officer in the back of the cruiser with Nguyen had grabbed her left inner thigh. She resisted, but he forced her legs apart.

Then the officer grabbed her chest, and when she tried to push away, he grabbed her by the ear. In the struggle to get him off over her, she explains that officer negligence led to her being ejected from the vehicle at high speeds.

As a result of this, Nguyen spent two weeks in the hospital. Injuries sustained included having to have her jaw wired shut. She also lost all of her teeth from the impact on the street which was caught on video, after she was ejected from the cruiser.

Now, Nguyen has filed a lawsuit against the LAPD, alleging that officers failed to secure her with a seatbelt or lock her door properly. This, her attorney says, is what led to her being ejected from the car.

Nguyen's attorney, Arnoldo Casillas was able to obtain surveillance footage of the incident. The video of the incident clearly shows Nguyen sprawled on the ground with her dress removed from the waist down.

Eye 1

Hysterical America: Alabama school system paid former FBI agent $157,000 to spy on black students

spying through blinds
© ShutterstockMiddle aged man peeping through window blinds
Huntsville City Schools (HCS) paid a former Federal Bureau of Investigations agent $157,000 to direct security last year, but critics contend that the system he implemented is designed to monitor the social media activity of black students, according to AL.com.

Chris McRae, the agent in question, was brought in to oversee the Students Against Fear (SAFe) program, which works by allowing students and teachers to provide anonymous tips to security personnel, who then scour social media sites like Facebook to determine the credibility of the threat.

Over 600 Huntsville City School students had their social media presence monitored last year. Of the students expelled last year for reasons related to social media, 86 percent were African-American. The school system as a whole is 40 percent black - but 78 percent of all students expelled are black.

Comment: Why black kids? Is it not racism to target one section of population for the illegal act of spying, using public tax money?


Eye 1

George Orwell is rolling over - Metropolitan Police uses secret surveillance technology to follow suspects (and innocent folks)

Image
© RIA Novosti / Alexey Nikolsky
Metropolitan Police uses secret surveillance technology to follow suspects and gather data from their mobile phones, The Times reports. The gathering is done to all active mobiles within a certain range - including those belonging to innocent people.

The technology, called an IMSI catcher, also allows for phone calls to be intercepted and listened to. Text messages and emails can also be collected and read. Additionally, it can block phone signals in a specific area.

But it's not just the suspect's phone which is taken under control by the technology; all active mobile phones in the area are. Sources in the Metropolitan Police told The Times that the data of innocent people may also be stored in archives.

Airplane

High strangeness is in the air: German minister's plane disappears from radar 'for hours', causes stir

Image
© AFP Photo / Aris MessinisGerman Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steimeier
Frank-Walter Steinmeier's plane, the German foreign affairs minister, reportedly disappeared for several hours from radar screens on Saturday as he was travelling in Asia, sending diplomats and government officials scrambling in alarm.

The minister was on his way from Seoul, South Korea, to Jakarta, Indonesia, when the incident happened, die Bild-Zeitung reported.

The airbus A 340, "Theodor Heuss", took off from Seoul at 3pm on Saturday and was due to land in Jakarta, the next stop in his Asian trip, after seven hours. Steinmeier was accompanied by actress Natalia Wörner, who was preparing for her role in the German TV series, "The Diplomat".

Comment: Just what exactly is going on with all the recent air-travel related weirdness? Take a look at the following articles as an example: Care to speculate about possible reasons?


Heart - Black

Shades of 'American Psycho': Banker arrested for the murders of two prostitutes in Hong Kong

Bateman American Psycho
© Moviestore CollectionChristian Bale as investment banker Patrick Bateman in American Psycho
The excesses of 1980s New York investment banking as captured best (and with just a dose of hyperbole) by Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho may be long gone in the US, but they certainly are alive and well in other banking meccas, such as the one place where every financier wants to work these days (thanks to the Chinese government making it rain credit): Hong Kong. It is here that yesterday a 29-year-old British banker, Rurik Jutting, a Cambridge University grad and current Bank of America Merrill Lynch, former Barclays employee, was arrested in connection with the grisly murder of two prostitutes. One of the two victims had been hidden in a suitcase on a balcony, while the other, a foreign woman of between 25 and 30, was found lying inside the apartment with wounds to her neck and buttocks, the police said in a statement.

Comment: One wonders if this was the first time this guy has snapped. Hopefully, he'll be locked away permanently to prevent him from striking again. For more on psychopathy see: American Psycho Redux
The two defining characteristics of psychopaths, blunted emotional response to negative stimuli, coupled with poor impulse control, can both be measured in psychological and neuroimaging experiments...They do not seem to process heavily loaded emotional words, like "rape", for example, any differently from how they process neutral words, like "table".



Black Cat 2

Georgia school administrator finally arrested after numerous reports of child cruelty

Larry Morey
A school administrator in Georgia has been charged with child cruelty after a mother alleged he beat her 9-year-old son with a leather belt.

And now, new reports have surfaced that the incident may not have been an isolated case.

Larry Morey, an administrator at ABC Montessori's Ace Academy in McDonough, Georgia, was arrested and booked into the Henry County jail Wednesday after a parent filed a complaint that her son came home from the school with marks on his body.

Gentry Foster is described in a KFOR story about the incident as a "special needs" student. His mother, Lori Cameron, said she believes the school went too far in disciplining her son.

"They lifted him, from what I understand, about 18 inches off the ground and beat him with a leather belt," she said. "I inspected my son and he's covered in bruises and welts."

Comment: Its unconscionable that nothing was done until now to remove this predator from the school, when three other reports were made to police prior to this incident.


Cult

Iraq keeps burning: Islamic State murders 67 more of its tribesmen

The Islamic State (IS) militant group has murdered on Sunday 67 of its Sunni tribesmen for opposing the group's military advancement, Xinhua reported citing official reports.

ISIS
© AP Photo/ Uncredited/Militant WebsiteThe jihadist group murdered 67 men from the families it had captured on the grounds that they were allegedly linked with paramilitary groups supported by Iraq's government.
According to the newspaper, the incident happened in Iraq's western province of Anbar, about 200 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. The jihadist group murdered 67 men from the families it had captured on the grounds that they were linked with Sahwa paramilitary groups supported by Iraq's government. In an earlier killing, 255 tribesmen were executed, according to the newspaper.

Comment: Always remember that the unleashed monster we know as ISIS was originally part of the Syrian "rebellion" that the US supported and armed in the hopes of toppling the Assad government. Remember as well that ISIS provides an excellent opportunity for new military adventures from Washington, including bombing Syria. See:

At least 70 Syrian Army leaders 'slaughtered' as ISIS and Nusra Front militants storm Idlib

Fighting Assad by fighting ISIS: U.S. considers bombing oil pipelines

ISIS: America's mercenary task force


House

Mortgage purchase applications plunge to 19-year lows

Summary Presented with little comment.. because realistically what is there to say about a so-called 'housing recovery' when the volume of applications for home purchases is the lowest since August 1995.

Keep believing that lower rates will support home prices... keep believing the Fed's QE worked... or face facts, this is not your mother's housing market any more...

The Recovery...

Image

Comment: The chart above shows mortgage rates (blue) VS. mortgage apps (red).

Usually those two variable are negatively correlated: when one goes up the other one goes down.

However, since 2008 a de-correlation has occured. Despite the drop in interest rate (which should make mortgages more attractive), the number of mortgage application is decreasing.

Indeed even if interest rates were null, buying a house is simply unaffordable with 80% of the US population facing poverty or near-poverty.


Handcuffs

Return of debtor's prisons: Creditors and judges prey on poor and unemployed

debtor's prisons
The debtors' prison is an old, decrepit institution that many thought was abolished in the 19th century, something little more than a relic of the past. This is a problematic view for two reasons. One, debtors' prisons are rarely explored in the classroom or the larger society. And two, these prisons are making a serious comeback in the United States, which is deeply problematic for the poor and working class.

The History of Debtors' Prisons

The traditional view of debtors' prisons in the U.S. is one of wretched incarceration where debtors were hung out to dry. While this is true, there is also more to the story.

In early colonial America, English law had an influence on colonial law - and laws regarding debt. In 16th century England, creditors had the legal power via the Law of Merchant to regain their money from insolvent debtors. They had this same power in Pennsylvania where, in 1682, the law stated that anyone who was in debt and had been arrested would be kept in prison, or "the debtor [could] satisfy the debt by servitude as the county court shall order, if the creditor desires." While debt servitude was problematic, it provided a way for a debtor to obtain eventual release.

The situation was worse in Massachusetts, which ruled in 1638 that "delinquent taxpayers be jailed, but provided that the Council or any court within Massachusetts could free the prisoner if it found him incapable of paying his taxes." However, as early as the next year, private debtors were being imprisoned as well, and in 1641 the courts ruled that "anyone who failed to pay a private debt could be kept in jail at his own expense until the debt was paid." Laws like these resulted in people dying in prisons when they were unable to pay off their debts.

Comment: More American 'exceptionalism' from the country with the largest prison population in the world. The justice system in fact criminalizes poverty and the system exploits inmates as slave labor. The US prison industrial complex is making a fortune which enables it to buy-off corrupt judges to keep their prisons full.


Black Magic

Ukrainian Nazis threaten military takeover 'if things don't change within 6 months' - Reports of Ukrainian Army teaming up with eastern rebels

Ukrainian punitive battalion
© Anatoli Stepanov/AFPVolunteers of the Ukrainian "Donbass" battalion take part in exercises in their camp on the border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, eastern Ukraine on April 26, 2014. Will they turn against the junta in Kiev if their demands are not met?
Things are neither easy nor settled in Ukraine, though some Western media are touting that stability is on the cards for the future. Despite the recent election in Ukraine putting the fascist Euro-centric faction firmly in control of the Ukrainian parliament, dissatisfaction and mistrust is evident. The low voter turnout was one indication of the terror in the country; more explicitly, fascist commanders of the punitive battalions didn't mince their words about what will happen if things don't go their way:
"There won't be a third Maidan if that happens," Feshchenko, 38, said in the frenetic headquarters of the Dnipro-1 volunteer militia in Dnipropetrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, where he is deputy commander. "There'll be a military takeover."
Another commander was equally uncompromising:
"We're going to give them half a year to show the country has somehow changed, that even if it's hard, there's light ahead," Yuriy Bereza, Dnipro-1's popular commander, told AFP.

Asked what would happen should that deadline pass, another paramilitary member at headquarters, a tall man in civilian clothing with a pistol strapped to his side, didn't hesitate.

"A coup," he said.
The discontent is not limited to fascist elements. Last week, hour-long conversations between militia commanders in Donbass and Ukrainian military field commanders showed a lot of agreements despite obvious disagreements, as The Saker reported: