Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Police Chief: Officers' use "pain compliance techniques" on 16-yo boy is "nature of our business"

Cassandra Rules
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:00 UTC
After reviewing videos uploaded to social media from an incident on Friday the Aspen police chief is defending his officers and saying no further investigation is required.

The unsettling video features police using "pain compliance techniques" on a 16-year-old boy during a marijuana arrest.


The video is just shy of a minute and a half long and does not show the entire encounter. However, the department has stated that the high school student was unarmed and did not exhibit any violent behavior. If he was unarmed, and not violent, why do we allow this child abuse to go unquestioned?

Officer Adam Loudon claims that he was making his rounds alone when he saw the boy rolling what appeared to be a joint at a bus stop by his high school. When he approached the teenager and confronted him about it, the student reportedly did not answer and tucked something into his sleeve.

Loudon then decided that this was probable cause and grounds for arrest. The officer began to cuff the boy who was attempting to back away and like any teen would do, to try to talk his way out of it.

The impatient officer then restrained the boy against the wall of the bus stop and called for back up, apparently incapable of dealing with the nonviolent student on his own.

Approximately three minutes later Chip Seamans and Aspen firefighter Ken Josselyn arrived to aid Loudon with his "pain compliance techniques."
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Arrow Down

Indonesian high school students told to undergo 'virginity tests' to graduate

Matthew Champion
i100.independent.co.uk
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 18:57 UTC
Students in Class
© i100.independent.co.uk
Female high school students wishing to graduate in the Indonesian city of Jember will have to undergo 'virginity tests' under new proposals.

Of course, boys are excluded from any such tests, which officials in the east Javan city want to introduce to prevent high school students from having sex before marriage.

Indonesia has a chequered past with so-called tests, admitting in 2013 that they were mandatory for female recruits wishing to join the military or police.

Human Rights Watch said the 'tests' had been recognised internationally as violations of the right to non-discrimination and the prohibition against "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" under treaties ratified by Indonesia.
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Hardhat

Longshore workers have answer for clearing ship congestion: Let us do our jobs

Robert ("Bobby") Olvera, Jr.
Random Lengths News
Thu, 22 Jan 2015 20:17 UTC
Published on January 22nd, 2015 | by Zamná Ávila
© Zamná Ávila

The Port of Los Angeles, the nation's busiest container Harbor facility and second-ranked Port of Long Beach, handle about 40 percent of America's imports, with an estimated $1 billion in cargo moving through the ports every day.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the region are connected to the two ports.

Terms and conditions of employment for longshore and marine clerk labor at the ports are governed by a contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) which is comprised of stevedoring, shipping, and marine terminal companies. The labor contract expired in July 2014. A new contract is under negotiation.

While dockworkers have continued to work in good faith without a contract since July 1, 2014, PMA has launched a very public attack campaign leaving many people (and many in the media) under the false impression that congestion problems at the ports are a direct result of job actions taken by ILWU. In reality, the problems at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are a result of mismanagement by PMA and its member companies that began before the 2008 labor contract expired.

Within the past six years, port congestion has steadily increased as cargo ships have more than doubled in size and capacity. According to World News (WN.com), the size of cargo vessels crossing the Pacific Ocean have increased in size from two football fields to the equivalent of four football fields.

These megaships require up to eight "gangs" or crews, to handle cargo. However, since July 2014 (when the labor agreement with ILWU expired), PMA, in a mind-boggling move, reduced the number of gangs assigned to large cargo vessels to three, constituting a 75 percent reduction of workers. To make matters even worse, on New Year's Eve 2014, PMA announced an additional reduction in the workforce, assigning only one gang per ship during the night shift. That translates to reducing the number of crews assigned to unloading cargo by a staggering 87 percent. More recently, on Jan.13, 2015, night crews serving vessels were dropped by PMA altogether.

As a direct result of PMA's actions, more than 7,000 full-time longshore workers face steeply reduced hours of work. In addition, about 8,000 part-time or "casual" longshore workers will have little to no work available to them. Such drastic cuts in the workforce not only impact the families of the workers whose hours have been cut, but add to congestion at the port. This congestion financially impacts thousands of local and national businesses that rely on the ports to unload their merchandise in a timely manner.
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Camcorder

Hebron is Beautiful: Life through the eyes of a Palestinian teen

Alex Shams
Desertpeace
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 19:24 UTC
The short documentary "Khelil Helwa (Hebron is Beautiful)" follows a young boy from Hebron's Tel Rumeida neighborhood as he goes about his daily life, uncovering the matrix of Israeli military control that defines every aspect of life in the occupied West Bank. For Palestinians, the footage may at first appear somewhat unremarkable, and the scenes of soldiers barking orders and even arresting the film's 15-year-old star, Awni Abu Shamsiya, are heart-breakingly familiar. But for Israeli-American filmmaker Yuval Orr, it was the hope of showing the footage to Israeli audiences that motivated production. "I want Israelis to see more films that challenge what they think they know, or challenge the moral stance that is very easy to take at a distance," he told Ma'an during an interview in West Jerusalem. "How many Jewish Israelis really go to Hebron if they're not soldiers or settlers?"

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Briefcase

Great news! Palestine opens first embassy in Western Europe


Sputnik
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 19:13 UTC
Image
Palestine opens its first embassy in Western Europe, Swedish PM's press service confirmed.

The Palestinians are opening an embassy in Stockholm Tuesday night. It marks closer ties between the two countries just months after Sweden became the first western EU country to recognise Palestine as a state.
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Wall Street

Another JPMorgan banker dies after murder-suicide

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Mon, 09 Feb 2015 22:49 UTC
Image
By now, there have been so many banker-related suicides that it has become a moot point of i) tracking them all or ii) trying to find a pattern. And yet, one name continues to stand out: JPMorgan. The bank which has been most prominent among the list of "suicided" bankers notched one more casualty over the weekend when "a JPMorgan Chase & Co. employee strangled and stabbed his wife to death before turning the knife on himself, according to police who are treating the couple's death in Bergen County, New Jersey as a murder-suicide."

Bloomberg reports the gruesome details according to which Michael A. Tabacchi, 27, and his wife, Iran Pars Tabacchi, 41, were found dead Friday about 11:30 p.m. in the bedroom of their Closter home after a 911 call placed by the husband's father, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said in an interview. Closter is located in northern New Jersey, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from midtown Manhattan.

Comment: Wonder what he knew that would make him take himself and his wife's life? Fortunately the children were spared.

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Attention

Not lovin' the American Dream any more: McDonald's employee trashes restaurant after being fired

Keiligh Baker
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 09 Feb 2015 22:26 UTC
Image
This is the moment the man batted a pile of drinks cups to the floor as he rants at the other employees
A furious McDonald's employee has been caught on camera having a meltdown of epic proportions and trashing the restaurant after being fired.

A customer in the St Paul branch in Minnesota filmed the incredible moment the as yet unnamed member of staff started smashing up the restaurant in a fit of rage.

The disgruntled now ex-employee can be seen still wearing his red McDonald's t-shirt and black hat as he swears, shouts and trashes the area behind the counter.

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Pistol

Cop kills Iowa woman in front of her husband and 4-year-old son, then kidnaps the dog for good measure

Cassandra Rules
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 08 Feb 2015 21:02 UTC
dog
Sammy, the playful dog that 'forced' Officer Jesse Hill to discharge his firearm
On January 6, Burlington Police Department officer Jesse Hill shot and killed unarmed 34-year-old Autumn Mae Steele in front of her husband and their 4-year-old son. The officer was supervising a domestic dispute when he deemed it necessary to shoot the family's dog, Sammy, but shot Autumn instead.

Witnesses say the dog was being playful, but the officer "felt threatened" when the dog jumped on his back, so the officer pulled out and began shooting. At some point, the officer slipped and fell as he was firing, and one of the bullets struck Steele in her chest.
"The dog startled the officer. The officer began shooting at the dog. The officer was still shooting when he fell down in the snow," one witness explained.

"It appeared he was shooting at the dog when (the officer) fell to the ground. It's my belief the woman was shot accidentally," said another witness.

Seconds after the shooting another Burlington officer arrived on the scene and both officers tried to calm Gabriel Steele, who wanted to help his wife.

"I'm a combat veteran," he screamed. "What are you guys (police) doing? Let me help."
Autumn Mae Steele was taken by ambulance to a hospital where she later died from the injury.

Comment: No doubt the state would like to add insult to injury and put their dog down as well.

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Stormtrooper

Officers assigned to schools ask judges for authority to arrest and pepper spray 'unruly' kids for 'misbehaving'

Jackson Marciana and Reagan Ali
Counter Current News
Sun, 08 Feb 2015 15:39 UTC
pepper spray
Either accounts were recently presented to US District Judge Abdul Kallon in a lawsuit whose outcome is expected in a decision Monday. However the judge rules, it may end up determining whether police that work within schools as "School Resource Officers" are allowed to pepper-spray students for being "unruly."

The suit explains that schools should "have the tools to help calm down a conflict," but that should "not involve spraying chemicals in kids' faces."

Mother Jones reported that the suit was filed in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It alleges that eight students, "suffered physically and emotionally from unnecessary use of pepper spray."

The suit specifically names six school cops, as Birmingham Alabama Police Chief A.C. Roper. The suit has class action status, meaning that the decision the judge hands down will apply to all of the district schools, and may indirectly impact decisions across state lines in the future.

"We want it to be declared unconstitutional because it allows officers to spray people, specifically students, without considering a wide variety of factors - such as whether they are in a school environment, the fact that they are in a closed environment, and the fact that these things that they are accusing kids of doing and acting on are actually just student misconduct issues," Ebony Howard, the SPLC staff attorney said.

Comment: Probably a good lesson to learn these days. Officers are anything but fair when responding to a situation. Occasionally folks may get lucky and interact with a genuinely nice officer who is doing his job without abusing his authority, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. It's a sad state of affairs when hundreds of kids have been pepper sprayed at school, land of the free? Hardly.

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Attention

French volunteers explain why they're fighting for Novorossiya

Mikhail Chernov
Russia Insider
Mon, 09 Feb 2015 19:30 UTC
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French volunteers see the war in East Ukraine as proof of NATO's imperial ambitions.

This article originally appeared at Lenta.ru. It was translated for Russia Insider by Johanna Ganyukova.

Lenta.ru spoke with French volunteers fighting in Donbass.

As the civil war in Ukraine continues, it seems the cause of the break-away republics of Lukhansk and Donetsk is attracting support not only from ex-military from the former Soviet bloc - such as Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia - but perhaps more unexpectedly from western countries such as France. Indeed when a French sergeant, Mael Shle, left his post in the French army last week to fight in Donbass, it caused nothing less than a scandal in the country. Mael, along with fellow 'deserters' Francois Mau D'Eme and Nicolas Perovich spoke about what motivated them to change allegiances, and the dissatisfaction with French society and the army which led to this:
All of us served in the French army as mountain shooters and we believe that we've done enough for our country, much more than the average French person would do, and yet we've not received any special recognition for it. France doesn't look after its military...So when we left France we didn't look back, but instead searched for something of our own, something entrenched in tradition and ideology. It is a classic literary scenario: leave everything in the past and start life again from scratch...

- Francois

Comment: Very bold of these soldiers risking their lives for a cause where they may find their compatriots fighting for Kiev.

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