Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Blaming the victim: School bans bullied 9-year-old from carrying My Little Pony lunchbag

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© WLOS
A mother and her 9-year-old son say school officials won't let him bring a My Little Pony bag to school. The boy and his mother say he's getting shoved around because bullies think his pick of a favorite toy is for girls. It's a decades-old kids show where pony characters emphasize the bonds of friendship.

It's become anything but friendship for 9-year-old Grayson Bruce. Grayson Bruce, My Little Pony fan, "they're taking it a little too far, with punching me, pushing me down, calling me horrible names, stuff that really shouldn't happen." Grayson picked a Rainbow Dash bag out this year, which he says has intensified the attacks against him. Grayson, "most of the characters in the show are girls, and most of the people put it toward girls, most of the toys are girlie, and surprisingly I found stuff like this."

Grayson has developed a following on Facebook after a friend made a support page for him. Grayson stands by his favorite cartoon and the message he says it sends. His mother says, why not?

Alarm Clock

In the Shadows: How serious is the Military sex assault problem in Hawaii?

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Military sexual assault may happen in the shadows, but Hawaii can be a shadowy place.

Service members have been raped at Kailua barbecues, in Honolulu alleyways, and at bars in Kona and Wahiawa. One attack took place in a parked car in Waikiki. They've been sexually assaulted aboard ships in Pearl Harbor, in government buildings, and in grassy parks on military bases.

A decade of military records, obtained by Civil Beat through a series of open-records requests, details hundreds of sex crimes against male and female service members in Hawaii.

In addition to noting the troubling number and circumstances of such attacks, the records suggest that the underreporting of such assaults continues in all military branches in the state.

In that way, Hawaii is little different from the nation as a whole.

Stormtrooper

Video of Oklahoma cops murdering Luis Rodriguez in broad daylight - Thugs claim they were 'intervening in domestic dispute'

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Luis Rodriguez later died in hospital
"What began as a fun night out to the movies ended in tragedy for one Oklahoma family after a father was beaten to death by police following a domestic dispute," CNN reported.

The incident, which was caught on video, began when Mrs. Nair Rodriguez got into an altercation with her 19-year-old daughter outside the Moore Warren Theatre in the early hours of February 15 and slapped her. A bystander who witnessed the incident reported the event to police.

The mother-daughter disagreement had upset Mrs. Rodriguez so much that she had bolted for the family car. Her husband, Luis followed her to calm her down when he was intercepted by five police who arrived on the scene. However instead of confronting Nair, five cops took down her innocent husband Luis Rodriguez, beating, pepper spraying and pinning him on the road."

Ana Kasparian, Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz (What The Flick?!, TYT Sports) and Brian Unger (Showdown Of The Unbeatables) break it down on The Young Turks:


Comment: See also: Father trying to stop family fight beaten to death by Oklahoma cops


Briefcase

'Pushed to leave': Packing moods among Ukraine's Jewish minority amidst far-right rise

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With the beating of the head of Hatzalah's local branch in Kiev and an earlier attack on a synagogue, many from the Jewish minority tell RT they feel they will be forced to leave the country, where the far-right is capitalizing on the turmoil.

Unknown men have beaten up the leader of a Kiev Jewish movement, hitting him with bats and shouting anti-Semitic slogans, just a month after a rabbi addressed crowds on Square of independence, calling for peace.

The rabbi, Hillel Cohen, was attacked Thursday in the street by two men, who "struck him in the leg, shouting anti-Semitic slurs," the rabbi's wife told Reuters. Then, the two ran off in a car.

Cohen is the head of the Ukrainian branch of Hatzalah, an international volunteer emergency services organization for Jewish communities. Police are now investigating the incident and looking for the assailants.

Airplane

Drug-loaded drone found 'hovering' near Melbourne, Australia prison

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© NBRSMetropolitan Remand Centre, Department of Justice in Melbourne.
Australian police on Monday said they had arrested a man after a drone allegedly carrying drugs was seen "hovering in the vicinity of a prison".

Victoria state police said the unmanned aerial vehicle, which was carrying a small quantity of drugs, was found near the Metropolitan Remand Centre in Melbourne's west on Sunday.

"A man and a woman were located in a car ... with what was believed to be a drone with four engines and a small quantity of drugs," Victoria Police said in a statement.

The 28-year-old man was charged with possessing a drug of dependence and attempting to commit an indictable offence and was bailed to appear in court later this month.

Comment: Drug smuggling prison guards are a huge problem in the U.S. Maybe Australia should look at who is trafficking the drugs inside the prison instead?


V

Thousands picket Donetsk govt building in Ukraine, demand release of local governor

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© AFP PhotoPro-Russian activists hold Russian national flags during a demonstration rally in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 15, 2014
Thousands have gathered in the city of Donetsk, picketing the Security Council building. The protesters called for the current Kiev authorities to release the local governor and pro-Russian activists detained earlier, threatening to storm the building.

The protesters blocked the Security Council building trying to break the doors and smashing windows on Saturday afternoon. Activists removed the Ukrainian flag from the top of the building, hoisting a Russian tricolor.

The protesters were demanding the release of local governor Pavel Gubarev and 70 pro-Russian activists previously detained by the current Kiev authorities. They also urged local law enforcement to take their side.

The local head of the Security Council has promised the protesters to release the activists and Gubarev, according to Life news. He then reportedly escaped through the back door of the building.

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© AFP PhotoPro-Russian activists hold Russian national flags during a demonstration rally in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 15, 2014.

Black Magic

Los Angeles man charged in severed head case

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© APGabriel Campos-Martinez (left), 38, was arrested on suspicion of killing Hervey Coronado Medellin, 66.
Los Angeles County prosecutors have charged a man with murdering his live-in boyfriend and dumping his severed head, hands and feet near the Hollywood sign two years ago.

Police announced the arrest of Gabriel Campos-Martinez, 38, on suspicion of killing Hervey Coronado Medellin, 66, of Los Angeles. Campos-Martinez was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday with the help of local authorities and was being held on $1 million bail pending an extradition hearing.

Campos-Martinez was charged on Monday with one felony count of murder with malice aforethought in the slaying of Medellin, who had been dating Campos-Martinez and was living with him at the time of his disappearance, Deputy District Attorney Bobby Grace said. It wasn't clear if Campos-Martinez was represented by an attorney.

A felony complaint alleges Medellin was killed on or around Dec. 27, 2011. A coroner's report found that he had died of asphyxiation and ruled it a homicide.

Two women discovered Medellin's head while walking dogs on a trail in Griffith Park on Jan. 17, 2012. One of the dogs, which was off its leash, had started to play with a plastic bag. When the dog shook the bag, the head fell out.

Wall Street

Which would benefit the economy more? Large Wall Street bonuses or raising the minimum wage?

Raising the minimum wage would give our economy much more bang for the buck than we get from the financial industry's yearly windfalls.

Purveyors of Ferraris and high-end Swiss watches keep their fingers crossed toward the end of each calendar year, hoping that the big Wall Street banks will be generous with their annual cash bonuses.

New figures show that the bonus bonanza of 2013 didn't disappoint. According to the New York State Comptroller's office, Wall Street firms handed out $26.7 billion in bonuses to their 165,200 employees last year, up 15 percent over the previous year. That's their third-largest haul on record.
wall street minimum wage
© Khalil BendibWall Street charges ahead
That money will no doubt boost sales of luxury goods. Just imagine how much greater the economic benefit would be if that same amount of money had gone into the pockets of minimum-wage workers.

The $26.7 billion Wall Streeters pocketed in bonuses would cover the cost of more than doubling the paychecks for all of the 1,085,000 Americans who work full-time at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

And boosting their pay in that way would give our economy much more bang for the buck. That's because low-wage workers tend to spend nearly every dollar they make to meet their basic needs. The wealthy can afford to squirrel away a much greater share of their earnings.

Arrow Down

Ohio court approves committing woman to psych ward for praying, refusing drugs

Psych Ward
© Alvaro German Vilela
Cleveland - A court approved the involuntary detainment of a woman in a psychiatric ward when hospital staff interpreted her prayers as signs of psychosis, a lawsuit alleges.

The woman, 56, is a Pentecostal Christian and a self-published spiritual author. The violation of her rights occurred last year during an act of spiritual devotion.

As part of her faith, she periodically abstains from food and consumes only water. This process, known as fasting, has been observed for thousands of years for a wide variety of spiritual and health reasons. A fast typically ranges from one full day up to a period of weeks. The Bible states that Jesus Christ fasted for 40 days in the desert.

On July 10th, 2013, Jane Doe was in the 15th day of a fasting period. As her lawsuit states, "while at a BP gas station in the city of Cleveland, Doe became confused and disoriented, and she contacted her mother for assistance."

Doe went to the emergency room at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland. "Blood tests taken at the time of Doe's admission revealed low sodium, potassium and electrolyte levels, indicative of water intoxication and hyponatremia," Courthouse News reported. "Notwithstanding the results of Doe's blood tests, Dr. Brar diagnosed Doe on admission as suffering from bipolar disorder with psychotic features."

Newspaper

Andrew Solomon: The Reckoning

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© Peter LanzaAdam and Peter Lanza on a hike when Adam was about ten. As a child, Peter says, Adam was “just a normal little weird kid.”
In Peter Lanza's new house, on a secluded private road in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is an attic room overflowing with shipping crates of what he calls "the stuff." Since the day in December, 2012, when his son Adam killed his own mother, himself, and twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, strangers from across the world have sent thousands upon thousands of letters and other keepsakes: prayer shawls, Bibles, Teddy bears, homemade toys; stories with titles such as "My First Christmas in Heaven"; crosses, including one made by prison inmates. People sent candy, too, and when I visited Peter, last fall, he showed me a bag of year-old caramels. He had not wanted to throw away anything that people sent. But he said, "I was wary about eating anything," and he didn't let Shelley Lanza - his second wife - eat any of the candy, either. There was no way to be sure it wasn't poisoned. Downstairs, in Peter's home office, I spotted a box of family photographs. He used to display them, he told me, but now he couldn't look at Adam, and it seemed strange to put up photos of his older son, Ryan, without Adam's. "I'm not dealing with it," he said. Later, he added, "You can't mourn for the little boy he once was. You can't fool yourself."

Since the shootings, Peter has avoided the press, but in September, as the first anniversary of his son's rampage approached, he contacted me to say that he was ready to tell his story. We met six times, for interviews lasting as long as seven hours. Shelley, a librarian at the University of Connecticut, usually joined us and made soup or chili or salads for lunch. Sometimes we played with their German shepherd. When Peter speaks, you can still hear a strong trace of rural Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, where he and his first wife - Nancy, Adam's mother - grew up. He is an affable man with a poise that often hides his despair. An accountant who is a vice-president for taxes at a General Electric subsidiary, he maintains a nearly fanatical insistence on facts, and nothing annoyed him more in our conversations than speculation - by me, the media, or anyone else. He is not by nature given to self-examination, and often it was Shelley who underlined the emotional ramifications of what he said.

Comment:
The Sandy Hook Massacre: Unanswered Questions
SOTT Talk Radio: The Sandy Hook Massacre, What Really Happened?