Society's ChildS


House

SWAT team destroys man's home, offers no apology nor compensation


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:39 UTC
Leo Lech stands on a pile of wood
© Denver PostLeo Lech stands on a pile of wood in his neighbors yard that overlooks the back of his home. A fence was place around the perimeter of his home after the police incident ended on Thursday.
A manhunt for a shoplifting suspect turned disastrous for one homeowner who committed no crime other than living in house and being in the wrong place and the wrong time. The homeowner is now suing the city of Greenwood Village for compensation.

Leo Lech's home in Greenwood Village, Colorado had a market value of $450,000. That was before Robert Jonathan Seacat took shelter in the two-story home back in June 2015. The following actions from police left Lech's home with a lower market value, to say the least.

"They came and they destroyed the house. It was condemned, it had to be torn down, and they offered me $5,000," Lech told the Denver Post.

Lech is now suing the city to try to recoup some of his losses from the home he rented to his son.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Trump Taj Mahal casino closing after years of losses, 11,000 lose their jobs


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:04 UTC
Trump casino
© Mike Segar / ReutersStriking workers from the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, arrive to protest outside the offices of investor and casino owner Carl Icahn in midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.
The Atlantic City casino, Trump Taj Mahal, opened by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will shut down after the US Labor Day holiday following the longest strike in the city's 38-year gaming era.

Donald Trump opened the casino in 1990, calling it "the eighth wonder of the world". It is currently owned by billionaire Carl Icahn.

In the closure announcement on Wednesday, the managing company blamed workers for blocking the casino's "path to profitability."

Comment: This is perfect example of how Trump takes care of people who depended on him for jobs.

Read More...
Handcuffs

Man pulled over speeding state trooper, lets him off with a warning


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:30 UTC
Texas police officer pulled over for speeding
© The Battousai / YouTube
A man put a police officer under a citizen's arrest when he noticed the Texas state trooper speeding without flashing his emergency lights. It was all caught on the citizen's dashboard camera.

Phillip Turner claims that on Monday night, he noticed a Texas trooper flying down Interstate-35 sans emergency lights and going well over the speed limit. Turner is no stranger to interacting with the police: He is a videographer for the police watchdog group Photography is Not a Crime.

The Austin resident followed the trooper and flashed his brights at him, then both pulled over.
Read More...
Passport

FATCA causing ever more Americans to renounce their citizenship

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
FATCA
A rapidly deteriorating political situation, accompanied by shrinking incomes and disastrous social conditions with racial problems to top it all off wouldn't go unnoticed in any state.

The inhabitants of such a country in the long-run would be appalled by the prospects of living in poverty for the rest of their lives, surviving on crumbs that fall from the oligarchs' table. Nobody wants to live without prospects or hope, therefore, people are often leaving such states in droves, renouncing their citizenship with no intention to ever return again.

And we are not talking here about those who fled the poorest countries of the world, even though a massive flow of such people has swept Europe over the last 12 months due to the massive number of refugees fleeing hunger, poverty and conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. In fact, we are talking about the so-called "stronghold of democracy," namely the United States.

The rapidly deteriorating living conditions of common Americans have been covered only by a handful of media sources, both in the mainstream and the alternative media. However, what the US media and politicians prefer to keep silent about is the massive exodus of American citizens from the United States.
Read More...
Bomb

Feds investigate pipe bomb explosion on Maryland police vehicle


RT
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 23:55 UTC
Pipe bomb attack
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Federal agents joined local police to investigate a pipe bomb explosion that damaged a Maryland police vehicle. No one was injured but the explosion sent shrapnel into a nearby house and damaged the cruiser's windshield.

Residents began calling 911 early Wednesday morning complaining about what sounded like an explosion in Thurmont, a town in suburban Maryland.

"One of my officers went to his residence and parked his cruiser on the street as he usually does at about midnight and then around 12:30 one of the neighbors heard a big explosion," Thurmont police Chief Greg Eyler told The Frederick News-Post. "It looked like a metal pipe bomb was detonated on the hood and the windshield of the cruiser."

Comment: See also: Baltimore police serving arrest warrants kill black mother Korryn Gaines, 5yo also shot

Read More...
Fire

Footage surfaces of men in Paris suburb torching bus, reportedly shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Great)


RT
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 21:30 UTC
Saint-Denis bus fire
© Daily Video/YouTube
Footage has surfaced showing a group of young men setting a bus alight with Molotov cocktails after blocking its way with makeshift barricade in Paris. The perpetrators were reportedly heard shouting 'Allahu Akbar'.

The footage, which started to spread on social media on Wednesday, shows the attack that occurred in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis last week.

A group of young men is seen rolling trash containers to the midst of the road in front of an approaching bus to "set up a trap to force the bus to stop," police said, as cited by L'Express. In the video, which was presumably shot from one of the nearby buildings, the attackers are heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great, in Arabic).

After bringing the vehicle to a halt, the assailants forced the driver and five passengers out. The men then start kicking the bus and smashing its windows, before finally throwing Molotov cocktails at the vehicle, causing an explosion and a massive fire. Three water cannons were dispatched to the scene to tackle the blaze. No one was injured in the incident.

Read More...
Cult

FBI entraps and arrests DC Metro cop for trying to help ISIS


RT
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:38 UTC
DC ISIS
© Reuters

A Metro Transit police officer in the Washington, DC area has been arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to Islamic State. He also previously traveled to Libya in an attempt to help overthrow the Gaddafi government.

The officer, Nicholas Young, was trying to help Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) operatives find ways to communicate in secret, the Department of Justice said in a statement. The officer was sending "stored value" gift cards for mobile messaging accounts to IS abroad.

According to an indictment filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Young was convinced by an undercover FBI officer to send him codes for 22 mobile messaging cards.


Comment: Yet another FBI-produced entrapment of someone "planning terror," or, in this case, aiding and abetting terrorists.


Young was arrested at work Wednesday morning at the Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters.

The Metro Transit Police Department is the law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the DC area's subway system. Young never posed a credible or specific threat to the Metro system, authorities said, according to the Washington Post.
Read More...
Stormtrooper

What happened to GI Jane? Few US women sign up for combat


Sputnik
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:44 UTC
boots_military
© Flickr/ copsadmirer
The US Army rolled out a new policy in January the US Army that allows women to apply for frontline fighting jobs. Despite the changes being met with massive praise, very few women are signing up for the positions.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement in December 2015 that women would soon be able seek combat positions, but so far, only around 100 women have signed up.

"Unfortunately, we have not had a sufficient number of serving female soldiers and [noncommissioned officers] volunteer to transfer into these mentorship and leadership roles," Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey said in a memo to troops, the Army Times reports.

The over 220,000 previously men-only positions include infantry soldiers, cavalry scouts and tank crewmembers. The Army's plan to introduce women to these roles was to first train female lieutenants and sergeants and then move on to lower-ranking soldiers, the Fiscal Times explained.

Issues with the new policies have also been seen in the Marines, where the majority of women are failing the tests required to get into the combat jobs that are newly opened in their ranks.

In June, the Associated Press reported that six out of seven women who have taken the physical fitness test for the Marines combat roles have failed, a rate of 85.7%. Among men, the failure rate is approximately 2.7%.

Comment: Next step will likely be forced registration for the military draft. The war machine must be fed!

Read More...
Cowboy Hat

Profit before safety: U.S. Nuclear 'Regulatory' Commission routinely fails to enforce safety codes putting all of us at risk from accidents

Linda Pentz Gunter
The Ecologist
Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00 UTC
Vermont yankee nuclear power fire
The transformer fire at Vermont Yankee nuclear power station, 18th June 2004.
The NRC routinely fails to enforce its own safety codes at nuclear power plants, writes Linda Pentz Gunter - putting all of us at risk from accidents. It's the US's most extreme example of regulatory capture, rivalling Japan's 'nuclear village' of crony agencies and feeble regulation that led to the Fukushima disaster. How long can it be before the US experiences another nuclear catastrophe?

Fetch the comfy chair! The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in town to enforce its own safety regulations at your local nuclear power plant. Reactor owners have been duly warned. Comply or else ...

Or else what? Three more last chances? No, unlike Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition, the NRC isn't bothering to read the charges. It's handing out immunity.

The US still has 30 operating reactors of the same General Electric design that exploded at Fukushima. Yet the NRC has decided not to require a significant safety retrofit that it had ordered in 2013, and that would have reduced the radioactive consequences of a major accident at one of these dangerously flawed reactors.

Or rather, the NRC will require it, but only after the reactor closes. The Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey, which happens also to be the world's prototype for the Fukushima reactors, is scheduled to close on December 31, 2019.

Comment: Many, if not most, of our regulatory agencies have a long history of protecting industry interests over public and environmental health. The CDC, FDA, USDA, and EPA for are all perfect examples of regulatory bodies that have been completely taken over by the same industries they have been tasked to regulate, leaving us all at their mercy.

Read More...
Clipboard

Residency registration nightmare: Over 3M EU nationals living in UK would take 140 years


RT
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 09:27 UTC
Map UK destinations
© thebeerbarrel.net
It would take approximately 140 years to process permanent residency applications for the 3-million-plus EU citizens currently living in the UK if they were all to apply now, a new post-Brexit referendum report warns.

Oxford University's Migration Observatory has stressed in its report, entitled Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? The Status of EU Citizens Already Living in the UK, that protecting the long-term status of EU migrants already in Britain will be a real challenge. "Given the sheer number of EU citizens who would need to register and the potential complexity of the process, this will be a formidable task," Director of the Observatory Madeleine Sumption said in a statement.

Researchers studied the existing process that the Europeans can use to apply for permanent residency in Britain to analyze potential problems the government may face if any new registration scheme was introduced following the Brexit vote. "If all EEA [The European Economic Area] citizens already living in the UK in early 2016 applied for permanent residence at once, this would represent the equivalent of around 140 years' worth of work at recent rates of processing for this type of application," the study found.

Comment: Immigration of existing EU residents in the UK is now linked to the Brexit referendum, culminating in a slew of complications involved in sorting this out. Solutions will be forth coming as will a manageable process, but there is strategic mileage to be gained as long as this is perceived to be a negative and overwhelming problem.

Read More...