Society's ChildS

Handcuffs

Colorado woman who cut baby from womb of stranger given life sentence

Catrece Dynel Lane
© Longmont Police Dept / ReutersCatrece Dynel Lane is shown in this booking photo provided by the Longmont Police Department near Denver, Colorado March 19, 2015.
The Colorado woman who lured an expectant mother to her home under the false pretense of giving her free maternity and baby clothes, only to cut her baby from her womb, has been sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Dynel Lane, 35, was given the lifelong sentence Friday for attacking and butchering Michelle Wilkins, 27, and killing her unborn baby girl in March 2015.

Arrow Down

The pathology of America's entitled upper middle class

upper middle class

The upper middle class is well and truly doomed by self-delusion and the pathology of entitlement.


Two recent articles describe America's entitled (and doomed) upper middle class: the top 5% of households with incomes above $206,500 annually and individuals with incomes of $160,000 or higher annually. (source: Historical Income Tables: Households Census.gov)

The first describes how businesses are responding to the new Gilded Age in which spending by the top 5% has pulled away from the stagnating bottom 95%:

Pistol

11yo Alabama boy shoots intruder, mocks him for 'crying like a baby'

taladega, al boy
© WVTM 13 News / YouTube Chris Gaither
An 11-year-old boy from Talladega, Alabama, boasted about shooting at a fleeing burglar 12 times and mocked the man (whom he had wounded in the leg) for "crying like a baby".

Chris Gaither told WVTM news he was home alone Wednesday morning when he heard an intruder breaking into his house.

Heart - Black

Kenya sets 100 tons of ivory on fire to combat poaching

Kenya ivory
© Thomas Mukoya / ReutersA section of an estimated 105 tonnes of elephant tusks confiscated ivory from smugglers and poachers burns in flames at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya, April 30, 2016.
Some 100 tons of ivory were set ablaze by Kenyan authorities in a bid to combat wildlife trafficking and poaching. The ivory stockpile was worth some $170 million and is the largest in history ever to be burnt.

The ceremony was held in Kenya's Nairobi National Park on Saturday and is set to last for a few days. Some 105 tons of elephant ivory, 1.35 tons of rhino horn, along with animal skins which had been collected across Africa, are to be reduced to ash in a crematorium which took Kenya 10 days to build.

The event was attended by the Kenyan president and other African heads of state including the president of Gabon who said that by the symbolic action they wanted to send a strong message to people involved in all kinds of illicit activities.

Attention

13 killed in helicopter crash near Bergen, Norway

A search and rescue vessel patrols off the coast of the island of Turoey, near Bergen, Norway, as emergency workers attend the scene after a helicopter crashed believed to be have 13 people aboard, Friday, April 29, 2016.
© Rune Nielsen A search and rescue vessel patrols off the coast of the island of Turoey, near Bergen, Norway, as emergency workers attend the scene after a helicopter crashed believed to be have 13 people aboard, Friday, April 29, 2016.
A helicopter transporting North Sea oil workers crashed off the coast of western Norway yesterday, killing all 13 people on board, rescue services said.The Super Puma chopper went down around midday in the archipelago off the coast of Bergen, Norway's second-biggest city.

Eleven bodies have been recovered and the two remaining people are presumed dead, rescue services said. "We presume that all 13 are dead," Sola rescue centre spokesman Borge Galta told Media

Search and rescue operations were called off late yesterday. The aircraft was carrying 11 Norwegians, one Briton and one Italian, rescue services said.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known.



Eye 2

Rape and self-immolation in Australia's refugee centers

Nauru immigrant center
© Will Burgess / Reuters
A woman raped in Australia's offshore detention camp in Nauru has been refused to travel to Australia for an abortion, while an Iranian refugee has died two days after setting himself alight in protest at his treatment at the facility.

While the number of asylum seekers flowing into Australia remains tiny compared to that of Europe, migration is a constant political issue in the land down under. When refugees reach Australian shores, they are usually deported back to the state of origin or are detained in offshore facilities located on a distant island country of Nauru or Manus Island, a part of Papua New Guinea. However, these facilities turn out to be far from homey stay.

The Nauru camp has come into the focus of international attention this week, after two major incidents occurred. This Tuesday, while the representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Office were visiting the facility, an Iranian immigrant named Omid deliberately set himself alight. He received critical burns over 50% of his body, and eventually died yesterday, April 29th. According to his roommates, he did this in protest at his treatment in the facility.

Comment: Further reading:


Handcuffs

Corrupt court jails dad for non-payment of child support โ€” for kids who live with him

jail bars_hands
© www.wisegeek.com
On Friday, New Jersey residents joined together in solidarity in Hackensack to march in support of Henry Peisch. Peisch is a loving father of seven who's has been in jail for over three weeks for failure to pay court-ordered child and spousal support.

The disturbing part of Peisch's case is the fact that his children live with him. Only one child currently lives with the Mother, yet the court forces Peisch to pay his ex-wife support for four children plus $581 per week in spousal support.

Since their divorce, the court has been awarding custody of each child to Peisch after a series of motherly mishaps. In spite of Peisch being granted custody, the court is choosing to enforce an outdated order that fails to function in reality.

It seems the court is more interested in extorting money from Peisch than they are with actual justice.

Alarm Clock

5-year-old dead and brother badly injured in abuse case so horrific that cops needed counseling

Rachael Bostian, Theresa Hawkins-Stephens and Ramona Bostian
Rachael Bostian, Theresa Hawkins-Stephens and Ramona Bostian
5-year-old boy died and his 6-year-old brother remains hospitalized after their mother and two other women brutally beat them for stealing food.

Police responded about 8 p.m. Wednesday to a motel in Middletown, Ohio, where a woman said the younger boy had died after slipping away from their campsite.

Comment: A sad and incredibly gruesome case. Unfortunately it's only one among many. For more, see these SOTT articles:


Key

Louisiana prisoner freed after 40 years of unconstitutional life sentence

Gary Tyler freed
© Free Gary Tyler / FacebookGary Tyler, pictured on the right in this undated photo.
Gary Tyler was released from Louisiana's notorious Angola prison after serving 41 years of an unconstitutional life sentence for the murder of a white high school student in 1974.

Tyler, who was 16 at the time, was convicted of first degree murder by an all white jury, for the fatal shooting of fellow Destrehan High School student, Timothy Weber, 13.

The murder occurred during a period of high racial tensions and violence as the state introduced school segregation.

Tyler was released on Friday after pleading guilty to the crime. He was handed a reduced sentence of 21 years, but the 57 year old has already served nearly twice that, so he is now free.

Attention

Belgian police knew of Paris attackers' plans since 2014

abdeslam
Brahim Abdeslam and Salah Abdeslam
Belgian police are in hot water after a watchdog report accused authorities of failing to place the Abdeslam brothers under adequate surveillance despite the fact that it was known since 2014 that the would-be Paris attackers were preparing an "irreversible act."

The report, presented to Belgian lawmakers and seen by a number of publications, says the police had information on the brothers' radicalization, their relation to the would-be mastermind of Paris attacks Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and their apparent intention to perpetrate some kind of a terror act since at least the middle of 2014.

Additionally, the police found out in January 2015 that both Salah and Brahim Abdelslam intended to go to Syria, according to Le Soir newspaper. They had been questioned in relation to this. However, when the Belgian prosecutor requested to wiretap the brother's phone calls, the idea was reportedly turned down due to "lack of resources."


Comment: Turned down why? Similar events happened in the U.S. in 2000/2001 when two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers traveled to the States (al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi). The CIA's Alec Station knew they had ties to al-Qaeda (including the 1998 African embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole), yet blocked agents from passing information about them to the FBI when they entered the U.S. The most likely reason? They were already being surveilled, most likely by a friendly foreign intelligence service, or the CIA itself. FBI surveillance would have messed up their plans, which were deliberately allowed to continue, or worse, directly facilitated by CIA.