Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Psychopathic Michigan GOP official: 'Herd all the Indians' to Detroit, build a fence and throw in corn

patterson
© WXYZ
A Republican county official in Michigan is in hot water after making racial comments about Detroit, including the idea that the city should be turned into a detention center for "all the Indians."

In a recent interview for a profile by The New Yorker titled Drop Dead, Detroit! Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson admitted, "Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I'm called a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know? Tough sh*t."

Patterson recalled telling his children to "get in and get out" if they needed to go to Detroit.

"And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That's just a call for a carjacking," he said.

Patterson also proposed a fix to Detroit's financial problems: Turn the city into a reservation for Native Americans.

"I made a prediction a long time ago, and it's come to pass. I said, 'What we're gonna do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and the corn.'"

Attention

Kiev protests escalate: Police - outnumbered by protesters armed with firebombs - respond with stun grenades, teargas and water cannon

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© Julia Kochetova/Demotix/CorbisA scene of destruction in Kiev, where protesters burned four police buses and two lorries.
The sound of stun grenades continue to ring out and charred vehicles are smouldering in Kiev after a night of fierce clashes between protesters and police.

The leaders of the opposition, including former heavyweight boxer Vitali Klitschko, dismissed the violence as the work of "provocateurs" and were due to hold negotiations with the government later on Monday.

The anti-government protests, which have beset Kiev for two months, escalated into fiery street battles with police on Sunday as thousands of demonstrators threw rocks and firebombs and set police vehicles on fire. Dozens of protesters were injured and 100 police sought medical attention, with 61 being admitted to hospital.

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© Julia Kochetova/Demotix/Corbis Ukranian police used cold water to disperse protesters as temperatures plunged in Kiev.
Police responded with stun grenades, teargas and, for the first time in the country's history, water cannon, but were outnumbered by the protesters. Many of the riot police held their shields over their heads to protect themselves from the projectiles thrown by demonstrators on the other side of a cordon of buses.

The violence was a sharp escalation of Ukraine's two-month political crisis, which has brought round-the-clock protest gatherings, but had been largely peaceful. President Viktor Yanukovych last week signed an array of laws severely limiting protests and banning the wearing of helmets and gas masks. Many of the demonstrators wore hardhats and masks in defiance of the new laws.

Stop

KKK marks MLK Day by handing out fliers branding King 'a communist pervert'

MLK KKK flyer
© unknown
A white supremacist group marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day by passing out disparaging fliers in towns around the country.

The fliers were left on front lawns and driveways by The Loyal White Knights of The Ku Klux Klan and have been reported in east Texas, southern Kentucky, central North Carolina and central Virginia.

The fliers claimed the federal holiday celebrated "a communist pervert" and usually included a mugshot taken of King after his arrest during the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott and inflammatory information lifted from a mostly debunked chain email.

Among other false claims, the fliers allege that King's "aids" used tax-exempt donations to his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to hire white prostitutes and engage in group sex.

King's successor as SCLC president, Ralph David Abernathy, disclosed that the civil rights leader had engaged in extramarital affairs, but he had no sexual involvement with prostitutes or white women and did not use church donations for sexual encounters.

Residents who awoke to the fliers, which sometimes were placed inside baggies and weighted down with small rocks, said they were disturbed by the message and its timing.

Powertool

West Virginia chemical spill company files for bankruptcy

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© Steve Helber/APA leak from the Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston contaminated water supplies for hundreds of thousands of residents.
The chemicals maker Freedom Industries Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, eight days after a leak from one of the company's storage tanks contaminated drinking water for hundreds of thousands of West Virginia residents.

A chemical used to process coal spilled into the Elk River in Charleston last week, prompting the state's governor to declare a state of emergency and ban the use of drinking water. More than 200 people have visited emergency rooms with nausea.

As a result of the leak, vendors have demanded Freedom pay in cash, draining the company of financing and prompting it to seek bankruptcy, according to documents filed in the US bankruptcy court in Charleston, West Virginia.

"Likewise, the defence of the numerous suits filed against the debtor will exhaust the debtor's liquidity," Freedom said in a court filing. The bankruptcy filing will put a stay on more than 20 lawsuits filed against the company over the spill.

Bulb

8 Habits of Intolerant People

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I find it difficult to believe that there still remain so many people who are intolerant of others; like those who are so vehemently against gay marriage even though other people's intimate relationships do not directly hurt them. It turns out these people share some similar traits. Over my years as a psychotherapist, I have worked with many people who have personality issues. I have observed the following about those who are quick to anger, resentful and begrudging of others.

Arrow Down

Rise in 'funeral poverty' means more than 100,000 in UK cannot afford to die

Funerals
© The Independent, UKDamning study says there is a lack of support to help Britain’s poorest pay for funerals.

Never mind the cost of living crisis - the rise of "funeral poverty" in Britain means more than 100,000 people will be unable to afford the cost of dying this year, researchers have said.

The average price of arranging a funeral, burial or cremation service with state administration now stands at £7,622, and has risen by 7.1 per cent in the past year alone.

Combined with the financial challenges faced by the poorest people in recession-hit Britain, it means the level of "funeral poverty" is up 50 per cent from three years ago.

According to a study from the University of Bath's Institute for Policy Research (IPR), the hundreds of thousands of people who will struggle to afford to die in 2014 will also leave their families with an unnecessarily difficult challenge to apply for state support.

For families on low incomes, the Social Fund Funeral Payment, first introduced in 1988, is intended to take the financial pressure away from giving their loved-one a proper funeral.

But the IPR report called for a review of the Department for Work and Pensions-administered payment, describing it as "outdated", "overly complex" and "insufficient" to meet the needs of the poorest in society.

In spite of the lowest-ever recorded mortality rates for England and Wales, the cost of dying has steadily increased over recent years.

The average cost of a funeral actually rose by 80 per cent between 2004 and 2013 and the costs of dying are expected to continue to increase over the next five years.

On average, the price of a typical funeral, including non-discretionary fees and a burial or cremation, is £3,456.

Piggy Bank

'Can't afford to die': British families on low incomes struggle with 'funeral poverty'‏

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© Reuters/Darren StaplesA man walks through a cemetery in Nottingham, central England
Over 100,000 people in the UK will hardly manage to pay for a funeral this year. With the average cost of dying having risen by 7.1 percent, the poor simply cannot afford to pay the costs of funerals, a survey has found.

The average cost of dying, including funeral, burial or cremation and state administration, currently stands at £7,622 ($12,528), a rise of 7.1 percent in the past year, according to the latest study at the University of Bath's Institute for Policy Research.

"With growing funeral costs, quite simply growing numbers of people might find they can't afford to die," Chief Executive of the International Longevity Centre-UK, Baroness Sally Greengross, stated on the University's website.

Bulb

Problem Sizing

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© Unknown.Waterwheel -simple solution for a heavy burden
This story about the Waterwheel really moved me:

"When Cynthia Koenig, a young social entrepreneur from New York, learned that millions of girls and women around the world spend hours each day collecting water from distant sources, she decided to create a new way to help people in poor communities transport water and it's called the WaterWheel. Koenig's WaterWheel allows people to roll water in a 50-liter container versus carrying it in 5 gallon (19 liter) jugs."

If you are from the Indian Sub-continent, this is a plight that you are all too familiar with. Yet when its quantified, the facts are staggering:
  • 200 million hours are spent everyday balancing 5 gallons of water on your head as you walk from sources that are miles away.
  • And the world over, 1 in 7 live over a kilometer away from a water source.
  • Carrying water leads to chronic head, neck and back pain.
  • 75% of girls between the age of 15-17 in the Indian State of Rajasthan drop out of school because of such pressures on their time.
  • With WaterWheel, valuable time is freed up for women and girls to spend time on income generating work as well as an increased likely hood that young girls will now be educated.
I get energy and inspiration from folks I interact with at work and play every day. And from such stories. This holiday break I chose to skip crystal balling 2014 and enjoyed focusing on learning from stories and people that inspire me. And this was one of them.

Bizarro Earth

China pollution wafting across Pacific to blanket U.S.

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© Reuters/China Daily"A growth-at-all-costs economic model has poisoned much of the country's air, water and soil."
Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of U.S. demand for cheap China-manufactured goods.

On some days, acid rain-inducing sulphate from burning of fossil fuels in China can account for as much as a quarter of sulphate pollution in the western United States, a team of Chinese and American researchers said in the report published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a non-profit society of scholars.

Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China's export-dependent factories, it said.

"We've outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us," co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.

Between 17 and 36 percent of various air pollutants in China in 2006 were related to the production of goods for export, according to the report, and a fifth of that specifically tied to U.S.-China trade.

Comment: Detoxify or Die!


Hearts

Flashback "Kangaroo Care" in action: Clinically dead baby revived by Mother's touch

After being told her newborn son was dead, mother Kate Ogg was able to cuddle and caress her baby's limp body back to life, astonishing doctors.