Society's ChildS


Eye 1

New Jersey judge rules to allow cops to entrap suspects using Instagram

Gavel and Computer
© CBS Philly
In what might be the slowest tech news week of the year, there's a weird tidbit out of New Jersey. A U.S. District Judge has ruled that cops are allowed to create fake identities on Instagram to follow suspects. As we've seen in the past, criminals occasionally post evidence of their crimes on social media applications, and image-heavy Instagram is no different.

The ruling came about after police officers befriended a serial burglar - Daniel Gatson - on Instagram. The person had posted shots of certain wares, described in the opinion as "large amounts of cash and jewelry, which were quite possibly the proceeds from the specified federal offenses." He protected his Instagram account, so you had to request to follow him to see the content, and the officers created a fake account to get that access.

Comment: See also:

Facebook Will Give Detailed, Complete Printout of Your Activity to Police

Big Brother USA: NYPD Forms New Social Media Unit to Mine Facebook and Twitter for Mayhem


Heart - Black

Suffering together: The hell in Donbass, brought to you by the U.S.

donbass
This documentary follows the citizens of Donbass, southeastern Ukraine, the target of Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation" for the better part of last year. It documents their suffering, where they live, work, and fight, in this senseless war instigated by the U.S. desire to weaken Russia and her people. What the barbarians directing this war don't understand is that suffering together makes you stronger. The point of no return is passed, the people of Donbass have declared their independence and will never accept rule by people who sought to wipe them out. The conscience of the world stands by the people of Donbass.


Airplane

Brought down by a meteor? AirAsia plane soared 'as fast as a fighter jet' and then fell almost vertically

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Experts examining flight data leaked from the AirAsia crash investigation said the plane behaved in ways 'bordering on the edge of logic' after rising thousands of feet into the air before falling almost vertically
The AirAsia jet which plunged into the Java Sea rose up as fast as a fighter jet and then dropped almost vertically into the water as if being thrust down by a giant hand, crash experts agreed today.

Their conclusion is that the Airbus 320-200 was in the grip of weather so freakishly extreme that there was nothing the pilots could have done to save the jet and all 162 people on board.

The plane behaved in ways 'bordering on the edge of logic,' Indonesian aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman said after examining figures leaked from the official air crash investigation team.

The news came as the first victim of the crash was identified and handed back to her family, and rescuers pulled two more bodies from the ocean, bringing the total recovered to nine.

Comment: What are they hiding? Flight 447 and Tunguska Type Events

Is it Possible that a meteor brought down Air France 447?


Ambulance

Shanghai New Year stampede kills 35 after fake dollar bills thrown into crowd

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© AFP This overhead view shows emergency vehicles (C) amongst the crowd after a stampede by new year's revellers in Shanghai's historic riverfront in Shanghai on January 1, 2015.
At least 35 people have been killed and 48 injured during a New Year's celebration in central Shanghai. The tragedy might have been caused by people rushing to pick up fake money thrown in the crowd.

The stampede happened shortly before midnight local time as a massive crowd was celebrating New Year in Chen Yi Square in Shanghai's Huangpu district, Xinhua reports.

The injured, many of them students, have been rushed to a number of hospitals in Shanghai, including Changzheng Hospital, the First People's Hospital, Ruijin Hospital, and Huangpu District Central Hospital.

Stormtrooper

The NYPD is essentially refusing to do its job and yet New York hasn't collapsed into chaos

nypd
© Flickr
The NYPD has basically stopped doing its job since the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu earlier this month, according to reports in the New York Post and New York Daily News, and yet the city hasn't descended into total chaos.

The Post reported that arrests were down 66% in the week following the deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, compared to the same period in 2013.

For certain offenses, the arrest levels are staggeringly low, according to the numbers put out by the Post.
Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame.

Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent - from 4,831 to 300.

Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241.

Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau - which are part of the overall number - dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.
It's not a slowdown - it's a virtual work stoppage, reported the Post yesterday.

The Post says these numbers were obtained hours after revealing that cops were turning a blind eye to some minor crimes and making arrests only "when they have to" since the execution-style shootings of Ramos and Liu.

Some of the reason for the drop off in police activity is that there are some safety concerns. However, one of the Post's sources says that yes it's partly out of safety concerns and partly a continuation of the childish and embarrassing protest against Mayor de Blasio's response to the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who killed Eric Garner last summer.

Pistol

The psychopathic police state: War on Black America

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© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesCivil rights activists say the US has a long history of police brutality against African-Americans.
Black Americans are in the eye of the storm. Militarized cops target them nationwide.

According to Operation Ghetto Storm, police, security guards, and other self-appointed enforcers kill black youths and adults on average every 28 hours.

"(S)tate-sanctioned killings." Casualties of war. Ongoing daily against black Americans. Compounded by other systemic abuses.

Including judicial unfairness. Get tough on crime policies. Mandatory minimum sentences. Guilty unless proved innocent. Three strikes and you're out.

Racist drug laws. Stop-and-frisk. Driving while black. Filling the world's largest gulag. Mostly with people of color.

Comment: The Police State, can also be summed up by Chris Hedges here:
The tyranny of law enforcement in poor communities is a window into our emerging police state. These thuggish tactics are now being used against activists and dissidents. And as the nation unravels, as social unrest spreads, the naked face of police repression will become commonplace. Totalitarian systems always seek license to engage in this kind of behavior by first targeting a demonized minority. Such systems demand that the police, to combat the "lawlessness" of the demonized minority, be, in essence, emancipated from the constraints of the law. The unrestricted and arbitrary subjugation of one despised group, stripped of equality before the law, conditions the police to employ these tactics against the wider society. "Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states," Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
"The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police."
The following are just a fraction of the articles you can read on SoTT related to this subject:

The path to tyranny: The Nazi Gestapo and the US police state
Police brutality is nothing new, it's just militarized


Rose

22-day old baby found starved to death in Florida; parents charged with murder

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© Mirrror.co.ukBetsey Kee Stephens
The parents of a 22-day-old baby found starved to death in Florida have been charged with first-degree murder, police said on Tuesday, accusing them of neglecting the suffering infant.

Ruby Stephens, 23, and Roy Stephens, 48, of Indiana were visiting relatives in central Florida on Dec. 23 when they called for emergency help after discovering the baby was unresponsive in their car, according to Lakeland Police.

Betsey Kee Stephens was declared dead at the hospital.

"She suffered tremendously over the 22 days that she was alive," Mike Link, assistant chief of Lakeland Police, told a news conference.

He called photographs of the baby "absolutely horrible."

A medical examiner later determined the death was a homicide resulting from "starvation due to neglect," according to an arrest report.

An autopsy found the infant weighed four pounds and one ounce (1.8 kg) at death, having lost about 2-1/2 pounds (1.13 kg) since her birth. Normal weight for her age was about eight pounds (3.6 kg), the medical examiner's office noted.

The baby was dehydrated and appeared not to have been fed for six to seven hours prior to her death, according to the report.

The mother initially told police that she had been breast-feeding the baby every few hours. But after police told her about the autopsy's findings, she acknowledged that the baby likely had not been fed for much of their day-long road trip, with highway traffic making it difficult to exit to feed her.

Comment: The so-called parents were eating at an 'all you can eat' buffet when the baby was found dead. This is unbelievably tragic.


Video

Oliver Stone says Ukrainian coup has CIA fingerprints

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© Sputnik/ Grigoriy Sisoev
US filmmaker Oliver Stone is currently engaged in production of a documentary about Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country following the February coup, according to the post on his Facebook page published Tuesday.

"[I] Interviewed Viktor Yanukovych 4 hours in Moscow for new English language documentary produced by Ukrainians. He [Yanukovych] was the legitimate President of Ukraine until he suddenly wasn't on February 22 of this year. Details to follow in the documentary," Stone said.

Comment: The chances of the West changing their version of the Ukrainian coup will be slim to none despite Stone's valiant efforts to get the truth out.


Light Saber

Public feminists, atheists, journalists and other activists: Living with the reality of death threats

death threat target
© AwayPoint
More than twenty years have passed, but Jonathan Hutson still vividly remembers one specific day during his stint as editor of a New Hampshire weekly.
[I was] writing a series on the titans of trash - about racketeering by the nation's two largest garbage haulers. A lawyer came to my office one day to convey a warning about my latest investigative reporting. "Jonathan, I hope I don't open up the pages of the Union Leader one day," he said, "to read that the editor of a certain weekly newspaper got into his car, turned over the ignition, and got blown sky high." "That shall not happen," I said. "How can you be so sure?" "Because I don't own a car."
To some extent the specter of violent death hangs over us all, lurking at the edge of consciousness most of the time, perhaps brought into focus by a mass shooting in which victims remind us of our children or friends, or of ourselves. Or maybe we are shaken by a local story about domestic violence, a murder suicide, a drive by, or road rage turned lethal.

For women in particular, the threat never completely disappears. A cartoon that made its way around Facebook underscores the point. On one side a thought bubble above a male figure reads, "What if she gave me a fake number?" On the other, a bubble above a female says, "What if he rapes and kills me?"

Mercifully, for most of us most of the time, the risk of violence seems small and distant. Even so, it can shape how we live. It can make us hesitate to say no. Or yes. It can make us hesitate to stay home alone. Or go out at night.

Or speak our minds.

Fear has the power to paralyze and silence even strong, determined people, which is why threats of violence are such a potent, common, and toxic presence in political discourse. Consequently, it is a wonder, and a gift to us all, when engaged citizens like Jonathan Huston refuse to be silenced.

Comment: Is there any more proof that "freedom of speech" or "freedom of conscience" is a myth in the West? We laud those with the courage of their convictions, applaud their actions even, but too often overlook the high price they and their families pay to be at the forefront of positive change.


Pistol

Tragic accident: Two-year old fatally shoots his mother in an Idaho Walmart

Walmart
© Dystopos
A two-year-old boy in an Idaho Walmart accidentally shot and killed his Mother on Tuesday, authorities said.

The woman, 29, was shopping in the Hayden, Idaho store with the boy and three other children when he reached into her purse and discharged the concealed weapon, the Associated Press reports. They were in the northern Idaho town to visit relatives. The store was closed following the shooting.