Society's ChildS


Stock Down

Irish exodus casts shadow on recovery from financial crisis

As an unemployed electrician, Alan Douglas has endured a difficult few years, not least because of the collapse of the once buoyant Irish building industry. But getting a letter from the Irish welfare authorities advising him to take a job in Coventry in the UK was a new low.

"It made me feel like I was being pushed out of my own country," says Mr Douglas, 26, from Bray, near Dublin.

He is one of 6,000 people who have received letters encouraging them to look for jobs abroad. One jobseeker was sent details of a job as a bus driver in Malta, which paid just €250 (£209) a week but came with a "Mediterranean climate".

Irish exodus
Emigration has reached record levels, with 75,800 people between 15-44 leaving last year.

Arrow Down

Texas teen who killed four people got off on probation because he's rich

Gavel
© Shutterstock
A 16-year-old boy who drunkenly killed four people got probation this week because the judge - with no apparent irony - agreed with the boy's defense that he was a victim of "affluenza," whose parents taught him wealth and privilege shield consequences. The teen had faced up to twenty years in prison.

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Couch admitted to four counts of manslaughter after he and seven other boys stole alcohol from Walmart, piled into his car and struck and killed four pedestrians while going 70 miles per hour in a 40 zone.

One of his passengers remains in the hospital with severe brain damage, and nine other bystanders were also injured.

Couch's BAC was a .24 and he also had Valium in his system. According to reports, he was belligerent at the scene, at one point saying, "I'm outta here." Prosecutors were hoping to get up to 20 years.

Vader

"Oh you're gonna shoot me?" Last words of former valedictorian shot to death by police officer

Image
Cameron Redus
Another tragic police shooting happened last week in San Antonio. A 23 year old college student and prior valedictorian, Cameron Redus, was killed by a University of the Incarnate police officer Thursday night. Redus was pulled over for allegedly speeding when the situation escalated into the officer firing multiple shots at Redus, killing him on site.

"I heard (a man) say, 'Oh, you're gonna shoot me?' like sarcastic almost," said Mohammad Haidarasl, 22, who was on his couch in his ground-floor unit at the Treehouse Apartments in Alamo Heights at about 2 a.m.

Less than a minute later, Haidarasl heard four to six gunshots.

According to KTRK,

It's news that has shocked two communities - the shooting death of 23-year-old Cameron Redus by an officer with the University of the Incarnate Word Police Department in San Antonio.

"He's not an aggressive person at all, so the story just doesn't really make sense to any of us," said Sarah Davis, one of Redus' longtime friends

"Cameron was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest person," added friend Annie Jones. "So compassionate."

Redus graduated from Baytown Christian Academy: where he was co-valedictorian. His mother is a teacher there.

Comment: All over America police are acting like ruthless thugs, shooting or tasering people and animals for little if any reason.
The entire country has been transformed into a police state, and most unfortunately quite a few Americans seem to like it that way. See: Why have police in America turned into such ruthless thugs?


Meteor

Obamacare could force THOUSANDS of volunteer fire departments to close


Volunteer fire departments all across the U.S. could find themselves out of money and unable to operate unless Congress or the Obama Administration exempts them from the Affordable Care Act.

'I thought the kinks were worked out of Obamacare at the first of the month,' Central Florida volunteer firefighter Carl Fabrizi told Sunshine State News.

'Man, oh, man, this could potentially destroy some real good companies in Florida.'

The U.S. Department of Labor takes the term 'volunteer' literally, but the IRS says volunteer firefighters are technically employees if they're on the job more than 30 hours per week, making them subject to Obamacare's employee-mandate rules.

Pirates

Fullerton police lawyers: Kelly Thomas killed himself

DA Rackauckas
© Orange County RegisterDistrict Attorney Tony Rackauckus, holding a baton police used to smash a defenseless Kelly Thomas, says Fullerton cops should be accountable for the gruesome, fatal beating.
Day One of the prosecution's case against two Fullerton cops accused of using excessive force in 2011 to kill an unarmed homeless man had an eerie resemblance to another trial that landed Orange County in embarrassing international headlines a decade ago.

In Corona del Mar, three young men--including the son of a wealthy, corrupt assistant sheriff--got a 16-year-old girl highly intoxicated and, after she'd fallen unconscious, stripped her before videotaping themselves sexual assaulting her vagina and rectum with a Tree Top Apple Juice can, pool cue, Snapple bottle and lit cigarette.

Defense lawyers put Jane Doe, that victim, on trial and brought in so-called expert witnesses who opined that the girl faked her stupor for the Sony camcorder after asking her assailants to film her in a necrophilia sex scene she could presumably use to enter the Los Angeles porn world.

Today, inside Judge William R. Froeberg's 10th floor courtroom--just beneath the location of the infamous Haidl Gang Rape trial, acclaimed defense lawyers for ex-officers Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli offered jurors similarly ludicrous stories.

Ramos attorney John Barnett, who also served as a losing defense lawyer in the Haidl case, portrayed victim Kelly Thomas as a menacing physical specimen who scared a large group of towering, fully-armed, veteran cops that chased, surrounded, punched, kicked, restrained, clubbed and shot Taser blasts into the homeless man's relatively small frame for five minutes.

Heart - Black

Insanity! School suspends six-year-old for kissing classmate on the cheek, calling it "sexual harassment"

cheek kiss
© Unknown
Hunter Yelton, a six-year-old boy in Canon City, Colorado, had a big crush on a girl in his class, so he thought there was nothing wrong with giving her a kiss on the hand. He had previously given her a kiss on the cheek. The girl was seemingly unfazed, but the school was not happy with it. Now, the first grader has been suspended for what school officials call sexual harassment.

"She was fine with it, they are 'boyfriend and girlfriend'," said Yelton's mother Jennifer Saunders. "The other children saw it and went to the music teacher. That was the day I had the meeting with the principal, where she first said 'sexual harassment'. This is taking it to an extreme that doesn't need to be met with a six year old. Now my son is asking questions... what is sex mommy? That should not ever be said, sex. Not in a sentence with a six year old."

Most would agree with Saunders that it was an innocent kiss between two young children, but school officials don't see it that way, and now the six-year-old will have sexual harassment on his school record.

"How can you do this? How can you say this about my child? Remove sexual harassment, remove it from his record. I'm going to stand up and fight for him because that's not the case, that's not what happened at all," said Saunders.

Candle

Yuanyuan has reportedly survived a beating by a girl, 10, in Chongqing, China

Yuanyuan
© News.com.auYuanyuan: the baby boy who was beaten by a 10-year old girl in the Chinese city of Chongqing.
New reports suggest a toddler who was beaten by a 10-year-old girl has actually survived and is in hospital with fractures and a ruptured lung.

Earlier reports said that Yuanyuan, who is nearly two years old, died after being beaten by the 10-year-old and thrown off a 25th floor balcony in Chongqing, China.

CCTV footage showed Yuanyuan's mother accidentally leaving her child in an elevator. The girl is then seen getting in the elevator, picking up the child before dropping him twice, kicking and stomping on him.

Question

Insult about Rupert Murdoch buried in Sunday Telegraph puzzle

CrossWord Puzzle_1
© Sunday Telegraph
Led Zeppelin became famous for it. So too did AC/DC, and apparently even Jay-Z.

It's called "Satanic backmasking" - the embedding of secret messages into music lyrics.

Now it seems that something similar is going on in the kids' pages of Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Telegraph.

Heart - Black

Paedophile Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins 'begged female fan to abuse her 10-year-old daughter'

Ian watkins
Shocking: Ian Watkins pictured himself performing a sex act in a Skype conversation, where he also begged to abuse the daughter of a fan he was having sex with
Paedophile rock star Ian Watkins begged a lover to let him abuse her 10-year-old daughter and even suggested they have a child together so he could rape it, it emerged today.

A female fan has also revealed the Lostprophets singer even offered to DJ at her child's birthday party in return for sex with the little girl.

For years the woman, in her twenties, had sex with Watkins as he flew her to gigs around the world, but she broke it off when she realised 'he is just insane'.

But before then they exchanged lewd messages online where the singer showed himself performing a sex act and asked if the 10-year-old could watch.

Comment: A seminal book about the disturbing inner world of child abusers and how to protect our children from them comes from Anna Salter, titled Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders. The book and it's subject was last SOTT Radio's topic, you can listen to the interview with the author here: Predators Among Us: Interview With Dr. Anna Salter.


Extinguisher

Commuter train hits truck carrying gasoline in Jakarta - 5 dead in fireball

Jakarta crash
© Agence France-Presse/Bima SaktiPeople look on as a fire is extinguished following a collision between a commuter train and fuel truck at Bintaro, western Jakarta, on December 9, 2013
A commuter train hit a truck hauling gasoline in Indonesia's capital Monday, killing five people and sending a fireball of orange flames and black smoke shooting skyward.

The accident in southern Jakarta killed the train engineer, his assistant, a technician and two female passengers, said Jakarta Deputy Police Chief Brig. Gen. Sujarno, who revised the death toll down by two, explaining that police earlier thought the truck driver and his assistant had also died. They were instead among nearly 100 people injured, he said by text message.