Society's ChildS


Bullseye

Activists arrested and detained for bringing a peace offering to Wisconsin drone base

drone protest
Last week, peace activists Brian Terrell and Kathy Kelly were arrested as they attempted to deliver a load of bread and a letter to drone operators working at Volk Field, an air base where drones are launched. On behalf of a group called Creative Nonviolence, Terrell and Kelly were hoping to deliver their peace offering to a few drone operators and hopefully have a conversation.

However, they were quickly arrested for trespassing on the airbase.

Before her arrest, Kathy Kelly said "Living alongside ordinary people who can't escape drone surveillance in places like Iraq, Gaza and Afghanistan and knowing that a drone operator could be ordered to assassinate civilians who have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide affected my conscience. I wanted to ask drone operators in Volk Field whether they had been asked to target any people for possible assassination that day. I want to ask how the base training manual teaches people to distinguish between civilians and armed combatants. If an operator wants to quit, what does the commander of Volk Field do?"

Red Flag

The death of Concepcion Picciotto's radical message on Zionism and Israel's nukes

Concepcion Picciotto
Concepcion is known — with William Thomas, who died a few years ago — for leading what is apparently the longest protest in U.S. history: Against nuclear weapons in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House. She died last month.

As WTOP — the local news station noted today: "Picciotto's nuke vigil became a permanent fixture across from the White House for five consecutive presidents, including President Barack Obama, but not one of the presidents ever spoke to her."

Tom Hastings, with trembling hands holding the microphone, sobbed "I built nuclear weapons for 23 years" and then that Concepcion "was so unselfish" — as she literally died to the end for peace, with failing health, virtually homeless, continuing the vigil. She was almost like a protester who immolates themselves, but in slow motion.

At the memorial service, the speakers included former CIA man Ray McGovern who noted the Washington Post's apparent proclivity for questioning Concepcion's sanity, and asked who was the mad one here given the Post's apparent view that her desire to prevent nuclear war was at best quaint. Her lawyer, who spoke first and long, did some of the same, but seemed at one point to frame the nuclear threat stemming from the doctrine of MAD, mutually assured destruction, as a relic of the Cold War. He almost echoed a patronizing tone that one might hear from the Post, referring to his arguments with her, barely disguising an eyeroll.

Comment: Thankfully, we do see Concepcion's message being carried forward even if many in her community of activists aren't:

Now it's Israel's turn to open its nuclear program to IAEA inspection, or face sanctions


Handcuffs

About time: Former TEPCO executives indicted over cover-up of Fukushima meltdowns

fukushima
© Koji Sasahara / Reuters
Three former executives of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have been indicted for allegedly failing to take measures to prevent the nuclear disaster caused by massive tsunami waves striking the complex in 2011, local media reported.

The three top officials of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) were indicted on charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, the Kyodo news agency reported on Monday. The officials are Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, who was chairman of TEPCO in 2011, and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto, 65; and Ichiro Takekuro, 69, the report added.

Earlier this week, TEPCO admitted that its staff should have reported the meltdowns almost immediately, stressing that the employees had failed to follow damage assessment guidelines.

Comment:



Sheriff

Police sergeant orders officers to beat underaged suspects, now faces 14 years in prison

Anthony Robinson
© DeKalb police photoFormer DeKalb police sergeant Anthony Robinson is accused of ordering officers to beat young burglary suspects
Police Sgt. Anthony Robinson was recently found guilty of ordering other officers under his authority to assault underage suspects while they were in handcuffs. Robinson reportedly told officers Blake Norwood and Arthur Parker to beat up four different suspects, on different occasions. Three of the four suspects were reportedly minors at the time of the beatings.

One victim named Travarrius Williams told Channel 2 reporters that he was badly beaten well after his arrest while he was restrained.

"They were punching, kicking, stomping. They broke my teeth on the back of the windshield," Williams said.

Snakes in Suits

Study finds that South Carolina judges exhibit 'massive' racial bias against blacks

black man court
© Issac Brekken / Reuters
Black people in South Carolina are treated much less fairly by the legal system than in any other state, a British-American study on criminal sentencing patterns reveals. It identified a clear racial bias, affecting both decision-making and the severity of the sentence.

The study found that blacks are more likely to be sentenced for things like petty crimes, and that their sentences were usually harsher than their white counterparts.

For the research, the University of Sheffield analyzed 17,000 sentencing decisions by South Carolina courts from 2000, when data was last collated. Dr Todd Hartman, of Sheffield, and Rhys Hester, of the University of Minnesota, tested for something called the "liberation hypothesis."

Comment: Further reading: 40 reasons U.S. jails and prisons are full of black and poor people


Black Cat

MSM pushes old crackpot theory that JonBenét Ramsey lived and became Katy Perry to make readers of alternative media seem crazy

Jonbenet/Katy Perry
This one is making headlines all over the place in the last 24 hours, and it reeks of the same agenda-driven psyop gusto that's behind the flat Earth theory: something over-the-top put in place and widely publicized as much as possible to make all conspiracy theorists (aka critical thinkers who do not automatically believe everything they are told by the government and mainstream media outlets without questioning said events) look insane to the rest of the general public, thus discrediting them, all conspiracy theories, and the entire alternative media movement.

See the video that started it for yourself:

Comment: Or, is the MSM so devoid of substance and so utterly vapid that they feel compelled to scrape the bottom of the barrel in entertainment news 'National Enquirer' style?


Pistol

Police shoot another kid in Salt Lake City, he was 'armed' with a broomstick

Police shooting, cops
© APSelam Mohammad, a friend of the shot boy, was stopped by police as he walked away from the scene of the shooting at 200 South Rio Grande Street in Salt Lake City, 27 February 2016.
A teenage boy has allegedly been shot by police while holding a broomstick in Salt Lake City, sparking angry protests. Witnesses told local media the incident happened at around 8.15pm on Saturday evening (3.15am GMT) near a homeless shelter in the US city's downtown area.

Selam Mohammad said his friend was 16 and had been shot in the chest and stomach after he got into a fight with another person. Mohammad told the Salt Lake Tribune that the teenager was holding part of a broomstick at his side when officers ran up.

"They told him to put it down, once, and started shooting him as soon as he turned around," he added, saying his friend was hit in the chest and stomach. Authorities did not immediately confirm the boy's condition or the circumstances of the reported shooting.

Detective Greg Wilking told the Tribune that "shots were fired" but not how many or who by, and police later said up to two officers were involved.

Comment: The police in the US are getting dangerously close to inciting riots. The more easily and frequently they use violence as a first resort, the more likely it will be reciprocated against them by affected communities. This is foolish and dangerous, making communities more dangerous when the police are ostensibly there to deescalate and restore order.


Pocket Knife

String of knife attacks on New York City subways are part of a disturbing new trend

knife attack nyc
© Darren Ornitz / ReutersA disturbing rise in knife attacks on NYC subways has taken place in recent weeks
A man was slashed on the subway Friday morning in Midtown — in an incident that's part of a disturbing trend across the city, both above and underground.

A 60-year-old man from Mahwah was making his way onto a crowded train around 8:15 a.m. when he got into an altercation with another man, 1010 WINS' Al Jones reported. Police said the suspect started cursing, sparking the quarrel between the men, CBS2's Tracee Carrasco reported.

At the 57th Street and Seventh Avenue station, serving the N, Q and R lines, the suspect slashed the 60-year-old victim with a small knife in the chin and face before taking off, police said.

The victim continued on his way to work and then called 911 when he arrived at his job at Chopard Watches and Jewelry at Madison Avenue and 63rd Street.

Comment: One thing is clear, the public is demanding an increase is police presence. Given how the police, especially the NYPD treat minorities and the public in general, that may make the problem worse.


Bad Guys

The girls, the paedophile and Cardinal Pell

Australia's worst paedophile priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale, once lived with a young clergyman who is now Cardinal George Pell. As the Cardinal prepares to give evidence to the child abuse royal commission, two women break decades of silence to tell Debi Marshall about their ordeal in Ridsdale's care - and their disappointment with Pell.

 Gabbi Short
© Paul Harris and Thom Rigney Gabbi Short
In 1973, a young Father George Pell, flushed with success from his recent studies in Rome and Oxford, returned to his home town of Ballarat and took up residence in the St Alipius presbytery; a place, it would be publicly revealed more than 20 years later, that was a paedophile's paradise and a child's nightmare.

His housemate that year was the tall, rowdy and popular parish priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale. What the parents and parishioners who worshipped God and obeyed the sanctity of the church and its messengers did not know was that from early in his priesthood, Ridsdale was subject to a psychiatric report. He was already a serial child abuser who sodomised children at will, picking them off when and where his desires dictated: in front of a church altar, at the presbytery, or on camping or fishing trips.

Comment:


Light Sabers

KKK rally in Anaheim, CA erupts in stabbings, 13 arrests

KKK, stabbing
© Luis Sinco / Los Angeles TimesDemonstrating the collapse of the US in slow-motion, 3 people were stabbed at a KKK rally in California
Three people were stabbed and 13 others were arrested when a Ku Klux Klan rally in Anaheim erupted in violence Saturday, police said. A small group of people representing the Klan had announced that it would hold a rally at Pearson Park at 1:30 p.m., police said. By 11 a.m., several dozen protesters had shown up to confront the Klan. About an hour later, several men in black garb with Confederate flag patches arrived in an SUV near the edge of the park.

Fighting broke out moments after Klan members exited the vehicle. Some of the protesters could be seen kicking a man whose shirt read "Grand Dragon." At some point, a protester collapsed on the ground bleeding, crying that he had been stabbed.

A Klansman in handcuffs could be heard telling a police officer that he "stabbed him in self-defense." Several other people were also handcuffed. Witnesses said the Klansmen used the point of a flagpole as a weapon while fighting with protesters. Two other protesters were stabbed during the melee — one with a knife and the other with an unidentified weapon, said Sgt. Daron Wyatt of the Anaheim Police Department.

Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said he was standing near the KKK members when several protesters attacked them with two-by-fours and other weapons. Several of the Klan members jumped in the SUV and sped off, leaving three others to "fend for themselves," Levin said.

Levin had been trying to interview the KKK ringleader, whom he identified as William Quigg, an Anaheim resident. Quigg is the leader of the Loyal White Knights in California and other Western states, a sect of the hate group that aims to raise awareness about illegal immigration, terrorism and street crime, Levin said. They see themselves as a "Klan without robes" and model themselves after David Duke, the Louisiana-based former grand wizard of the Klan, Levin said.