Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Displaying signs of psychopathy, defendants in Becky Watts trial 'live in fantasy world'

Nathan Matthews, Shauna Hoare, Becky Watts
Nathan Matthews (top right) and girlfriend Shauna Hoare (bottom right) are accused of murdering Becky Watts (left)
The trial of a man and woman accused of murdering teenager Becky Watts has been told the defendants live in a "fantasy world" where "lies are told".

Prosecutor William Mousley QC said the couple had "lied and lied and lied again" at Bristol Crown Court.

The jury heard Becky's stepbrother Nathan Matthews and his girlfriend Shauna Hoare "did not like her" and wanted her as a "sexual plaything".

Mr Matthews and Ms Hoare deny murdering the 16-year-old.

Mr Matthews admitted he had killed Becky after panicking during an attempt to kidnap and scare her, but insists Miss Hoare had no part in it.

In his closing statement, Mr Mousley told the jury: "The real world where you and I live is a world of good sense and logic, where obvious and safe conclusions can be drawn from the evidence."

He said the world in which the defendants lived was "where lies are told, they are all innocent lies and that fantasy world where nobody tells anyone else what they have done and nobody displays any emotions".

Road Cone

Crumbling infrastructure: 99-year-old dam may collapse from winter rains and spill arsenic-contaminated tailings

Eastwood Multiple Arch Dam
© City of JacksonThe Eastwood Multiple Arch Dam in Jackson, Calif. following tree trimming operations in August 2015.
State officials are warning that a 99-year-old dam in Northern California is at risk of collapsing if a big rainstorm comes through.

The concrete Eastwood Multiple Arch Dam in Jackson was built in 1916 and holds back large quantities of arsenic-contaminated tailings left over from gold mining.

In June, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that the dam was structurally unsound.

California Department of Toxic Substance Control officials say they recently began a $1 million emergency repair operation that is expected to be completed this month.

The city of Jackson says the National Weather Service will issue a warning if rainfall amounts reach certain levels that could exacerbate the dam's structural problems.

Comment: How long will these repairs hold, and how many other such structurally unsound dams exist that are not being repaired? Questions that almost seem like wasted breathe when the media focuses on irrelevant nonsense like how Russia could 'annihilate' US Army.


Arrow Down

More school hysteria: Student suspended for dietary supplements

vitamins high school
New York high school student Wyatt Hatfield was suspended from school Oct. 13 after bringing in Vitamin C supplements. The school's policy reportedly says that students can't possess "look-a-like drugs."

Hatfield, a junior at Marathon High School in Marathon, New York, had put a combination of supplements in his lunch bag on Oct. 13, WBNG reports. The supplements included vitamin C, olive leaf extract and Echinacea, all of which had been left on the school bus.

According to superintendent Rebecca Stone, all medications have to be approved by a parent or doctor and then stored at the nurse's office. While Stone said that the policy has been in place for years, Hatfield argued against it.

"I found it quite ridiculous that I was being suspended for dietary supplements," Hatfield told WBNG.

Arrow Down

Hundreds of thousands of social housing tenants face a rent rise of up to £3,000 a year in the UK

council tenants outside of welfare housing
© Getty ImagesRent rise: People in social housing will be worse off
Experts warn George Osborne's little noticed 'pay to stay' scheme will leave an estimated 250,000 people in social housing worse off.

Hundreds of thousands of council tenants are facing a steep rent rise of up to £3,000 a year.

Experts warn George Osborne 's little noticed "pay to stay" scheme will leave an estimated 250,000 people in social housing worse off.

Under the Budget measure anyone earning more than £30,000 a year (£40,000 in London) will have to pay the market rate for rents.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tanks calculates this would see nearly one in ten council and housing association tenants having to pay an extra £3,000 a year on average.

The IFS also said the Chancellor 's plan to cut rents by 1% for all other tenants will "be of little or no direct benefit" to most of the 3.9 million households in England living in social housing.

It says as most of their rent is covered by housing benefit, they will not be better off.

And because councils and housing associations will have less rental income fewer houses will be built, the IFS says.

Comment: Cutting benefits to those that actually need it is not how truly democratic governments behave.


Dollar

'A new type of mafia': Rome trial begins of 46 politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen accused of systematic corruption

Rome mafi trial
© Reuters Alessandro Diddi, the lawyer of convicted murderer Salvatore Buzzi, arrives at Rome’s Palace of Justice on Thursday for the start of the trial.
Prosecutors say year-long investigation exposed how millions of euros were skimmed off city hall contracts by 'a new type of mafia'

A one-eyed former neo-fascist gangster has gone on trial alongside 45 other defendants accused of running a mafia crime ring in Rome that skimmed millions of euros off city hall contracts.

Prosecutors say a year-long investigation uncovered systematic corruption in Rome as politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen conspired with mobsters to rig public tenders on everything from creating refugee centres to rubbish collection.

Massimo Carminati, a one-time member of Rome's notorious far-right Magliana gang, and his sidekick Salvatore Buzzi, a convicted murderer, are accused of running the crime ring, which prosecutors say represented a new type of mafia in Italy.

Comment: That politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen are revealed as 'the new mafia' should come as no surprise for anyone who has been paying attention.


Bad Guys

At least 16 reportedly dead after tailings pond dam breaks in Brazil

Dam collapse Brazil
Tailings pond dam has collapsed
Witnesses report the town of Bento Rodrigues, near Mariana, Brazil, has completely flooded

A dam in the south-eastern Brazilian town of Mariana in the state of Minas Gerais has broken, killing at least 16, according to local media.

Witnesses report the town of Bento Rodrigues, near Mariana, has been completely flooded; the town has a population of 620.


Comment: More collapses. Symbolic of our world?


Quenelle - Golden

Hysterical society: Newborn removed because mother drank non-psychoactive marijuana tea to ease her labor pains

Hollie Sanford and family
© Fox 8 NewsHollie Sanford and family.
A Cleveland, Ohio magistrate recently ordered a newborn baby to be confiscated from her family because her mother drank reportedly non-psychoactive marijuana tea to ease her labor pains. The decision to remove the child from her parents' home came despite the opinion of the county's child services agency that the baby should stay with her family.

Hollie Sanford and her husband Daniel welcomed their daughter, Nova, in late September; and to do so, Hollie opted to use a marijuana tea to lessen the pains of childbirth. After researching her options, she concluded the tea would be safer than other pain treatments. To be sure, use of painkillers and opiates during pregnancy has led to increased rates of withdrawal among newborns.

Comment: It's shocking that in this case Children's Services is actually displaying common sense and empathy. The magistrate, however, needs her law license suspended.


Stormtrooper

'Disgusting' police behaviour at London student protest angers public

london student protest
© Sky News

The large police presence at yesterday's demonstration has been criticised by members of the public, protesters and politicians.

The student demonstration against the Government's plans to cut education grants was for the most part, peaceful non-violent protest. The most hostile behaviour came only in song-form, regarding what protesters thought of Prime Minister David Cameron and his fellow Tories. That was until the demonstration arrived outside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Black bloc anarchists and police officers clashed outside the building, leading to a swift police presence in the area. For the majority of protesters, it was a moment of confusion - why are all these fluorescent jackets appearing and surrounding us?

Comment: For 'Black bloc anarchists' insert - 'the tried and tested tactic of inserting agent provocateurs into a protest'. A practice we see repeated again and again. Usually accompanied by the observation, as above, that the rest of said protest was "peaceful" and "non-violent". Yet always it's the minority, intent on violence, that grab the headlines - as intended.


Airplane

One killed in small plane crash off New York City's coast

Image
© NYPD
A small plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New York City late on Wednesday, killing at least one person, police said.

The single engine airplane went down in Breezy Point, Queens, around 7:30 p.m., New York police said.

Some of the plane's wreckage has been located and one body was pulled from the water, a police spokesman said. No further details were available.

It was unclear if there were other victims.

Search teams, including divers, were continuing "to collect & search for debris. Investigation will continue through the night," the department's Special Operations Division said on Twitter.

Several witnesses called authorities to report seeing the plane crash into the water, WABC-TV reported. The plane was registered in New Hampshire and had a flight plan to go from New Hampshire to Philadelphia, the station reported.

The Federal Aviation Administration would investigate, the agency said.

Bizarro Earth

Police state education - cops called every 2.6 seconds

cops in school
© cops.usdoj.govLaw enforcement, a daily occurrence in US schools.
Police presence in schools has been a topic of heavy debate in recent weeks due to a viral video that showed a police officer brutally assaulting a young girl as she sat at her desk in class. These cases are sadly common, and now seeming to take place on a daily basis all across the country.

According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Justice, 76% of all high schools in the country have police officers working on the campus all day, and teachers are calling them in for the most trivial disciplinary problems. According to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Education and published by NBC News, in the 2011-2012 school year, teachers called the cops on students a total of 31,961 times in the state of California alone, leading to 6,341 arrests.

With 175 8-hour-long school days, that means that every 2.6 seconds a cop is called!

At one California school district, in particular, East Side Union High School District in San Jose, police were called on students 1,745 times during the 2011-2012 school year. This one school called the police on students more than ten times a day! East Side Union Superintendent Chris Funk admitted that his staff relies way too heavily on the police presence at the school. "I think that we had a practice here where we were relying too much on having the officer do the facilitation and the legwork versus the administration doing the legwork," Funk said.


Comment: Does the presence of law enforcement solve problems and make the educational experience better? Or, does this approach stifle responsibility, solution-making, respect and cooperation? Has the police force become the administrator's personal "baby-sitter/bouncer" and what does that say about the future of education and community life? If the US is already a police state, there is no impetus for personal growth, nor the opportunity to learn from mistakes, nor the goals to self-organize and determine one's civic environment. Dead ends and robot people, the wave of the future.