Society's ChildS


Family

In 40 years, U.S. neighborhoods stricken by poverty almost triples


RT
Thu, 11 Dec 2014 04:31 UTC
Image
© AFP/Mark Ralston
Contrary to the perception in the media, poverty - not gentrification - is booming in US neighborhoods. When such conditions double or triple, areas quickly fall into disrepair, services are cut, and crime escalates, according to a new report.

Media attention tends to focus on poor neighborhoods that are rapidly undergoing gentrification by way of investments and an influx of wealthier new residents, but a paper by cityobservatory.org shows a troubling trend that is more prevalent. The number of poor people living in high-poverty urban neighborhoods has more than doubled, the report found, from two million to four million over the past 40 years. Additionally, the number of high-poverty neighborhoods has nearly tripled from 1,100 to 3,100.

"The direct negative economic consequences of concentrated poverty are well established...fewer local job prospects...poor physical connections to growing job centers...[worse] health...poor quality public services that worsen the experience of poverty for neighborhood residents, and make it harder to attract new residents and businesses, adding to a cycle of decline," said the report's authors Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi.

The study, titled 'Lost in Place,' looks into why the persistence and spread of concentrated poverty - not gentrification - is the biggest urban challenge in the US. It analyzed changes in high-poverty neighborhoods in 51 of the largest metropolitan areas between 1970 and 2010. In these areas, 30 percent or more of the population lives below the poverty line.

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Comment: Under the leadership of psychopaths, our society is collapsing. We are past our expiration date.

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Red Flag

Baltimore police officer assaults, tasers woman who filmed them beating man in custody


RT
Sat, 13 Dec 2014 04:53 UTC
Image
© Screenshot from youtube.com video
Stopping to film Baltimore police officers kicking a handcuffed man, a local woman says she found herself being tasered and arrested while police hurled expletives. She is now suing the department.

Kianga Mwamba, 36, claims she was tasered and arrested by Baltimore Police Department officers in March while filming the arrest of another man on her mobile phone. After she was released, she noticed someone had tampered with her mobile phone - erasing the arrest video. Charges against her were eventually dropped in September, but Mwamba recently served the police department with a lawsuit seeking $7 million.

"I'm in shock for real, like are they really doing this to me," Mwamba, the daughter of a veteran of the Maryland Capitol Police, said as she recalled the arrest in an interview this fall with the Baltimore Sun.

The lawsuit filed with the Circuit Court for Baltimore City last Thursday said the police "attacked" her, "dragged" her from her vehicle, and "threw her onto the street, handcuffed her, tasered her, called her a 'dumb bitch,' and kept her restrained."

The suit alleges the officers arrested Mwamba to "prevent the disclosure of the video taken of them beating a handcuffed man."

Video of the March 30 melee surfaced online this week. Police erased the 135-second recording from Mwamba's phone, but it was recovered from her cloud account, according to the lawsuit.

Comment: This is the power of a dictatorship. In a police state, cops see themselves as occupying 'enemy territory'. They have been brainwashed and trained for it. You, the citizen are the enemy.

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Sheriff

The government controlled warrior class: What is the point of the 'thin, blue line'?

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 19:53 UTC
Ferguson police
© unknown
Like many people, I grew up watching numerous television shows and mainstream movies depicting a world in which the common police officer stood as a sentinel of civilized society against a seething underbelly of violence and chaos just beneath the surface of the world around us. Through public schooling, we were indoctrinated to fear the drug culture as a breeding ground of gangland destruction and to worship law enforcement officials as the only barrier between us and a cocaine-frosted wasteland. We were led to believe that every day police were holding back a tide of crime and terrorism. The so-called "thin blue line" was an indispensable part of a safe and prosperous nation.

To criticize or present opposition to the institution of state and federally funded law enforcement is often considered tantamount to treason - or, at the very least, it is considered unpatriotic. After all, we have all been told every moment of our lives that a world without police would immediately turn into a frothing, frenzied orgy of mass insanity and that average human beings cannot be trusted to take responsibility for the day-to-day security of their neighborhoods and towns. Official doctrine today demands a designated warrior class, separate from the rest of us, to handle the protection and care of weakling citizens.

Comment: The populace's rage against the police is growing stronger every day. See:

Time lapse video shows massive amount of people who protested police brutality today

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Light Saber

Maker Movement: Inspiring curiosity and teaching children creative skills

Chris O'Brien
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 28 Nov 2014 09:00 UTC
Hacker Scouts
© Dan Evans / San Francisco ChronicleChris Cook, right, a founding of Curiosity Hacked, helps children design a logo.
With her right hand, my 8-year-old daughter, Kalian, presses the red-hot soldering iron against the circuit board. With her left hand, she guides a thin, tin wire until it's pressing against both the circuit board and the tip of the iron.

The tin begins to melt. There is a wisp of smoke, and a metallic smell drifts back to where I am standing behind her, a bit nervously, sweat running down my forehead onto my safety goggles (which I have always detested). I am ready to pounce if that soldering iron slips and touches her skin.

Instead, she pulls the iron and wire away. The solder cools, holding in place a metal pin from a computer chip. It's one of 20 solders she must make to attach the chip to the circuit board, and the moment seems to last forever.

Attaching the chip is just one of the tiny steps she and her brother, Liam, 10, will take over the next 10 months to create their own miniature computer, called a Hackerling Circuit.

We were building these computers as part of a program called Curiosity Hacked, started by some friends here. The goal is to teach kids a wide range of digital and analog skills: computer programming, 3-D printing, and sewing and drawing.

Comment: At at time when our schools are increasingly failing to teach children anything of value and in many cases are little more than indoctrination centers, this is an inspiring development that can give children real life skills as well as stimulate their curiosity and creativity. Let's hope this movement continues to expand!

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Clipboard

99% of Americans are absolutely unprepared for disasters


SHTFplan
Sun, 14 Dec 2014 22:29 UTC
car smashed by tree
© unknown
As the biggest storm in five years took aim at California this week cities across the state distributed sandbags, cancelled school and warned residents to prepare for power outages. And though the storm didn't really live up to the media hype, some people did take the warnings to heart and made last minute trips to the grocery store to stock up on foodstuffs and other supplies just so they wouldn't have to go out in the rain.

But not everyone was prepared. One San Francisco resident in particular highlights just how susceptible America is to disasters and what to expect in the event of a widespread emergency.
"I thought we were going to watch tv all day, but now the power's out," Beth Ludwig said. Her mom added that the kids had never experienced a power outage before.

Georgia Virgili was one of the hundreds of thousands in the Bay Area who lost most of the conveniences of modern life.

"I didn't have power," Virgili said. "I couldn't get my car out of the garage, I have no food, I have no cash, so I'm trying to forage for something." (CBS)
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Christmas Tree

Russia donates Christmas tree to struggling Notre Dame Cathedral

Lucy Williams
BBC
Sun, 14 Dec 2014 16:08 UTC

Russia has donated a 25m tree Christmas tree to the Notre Dame cathedral in France, following an appeal for help.

The cathedral had struggled to raise the money for its annual tree and appealed to foreign embassies in Paris for assistance.

"It was a surprise but it won't create problems. It was a gift. No money changed hands. And if it helps to build bridges, so much the better.", said one of the Parisian clergy.

The surprise donation comes at a time of strained relations between the two countries, over Russia's involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.

Comment: If this is propaganda, it's the best sort. A need was made known; Russia immediately and generously stepped up. It would be interesting to know what answers Notre Dame got from other embassies. And where was the French government in all this?

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People

Time lapse video shows massive amount of people who protested police brutality today

Nick Bernabe
TheAntiMedia
Sat, 13 Dec 2014 20:43 UTC
The whole country, and the world, stood up to police brutality and institutionalized racism today.

This short time lapse video puts the protests into perspective. While the mainstream media may report hundreds or maybe a thousand, you need to know the truth. You are not alone, many many other young people around the country have also awaken to the injustices we face.

Here's the proof:

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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: In the grips of psychopaths: Ferguson is Baghdad is New York is Kabul

Sonali Kolhatkar
Truthdig
Thu, 11 Dec 2014 11:00 UTC
Image
© AP/Ted S. Warren Police with wooden sticks stand guard next to a protester with a sign that reads “Justice for Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and justice for us all” Monday in downtown Seattle.
There is a pattern emerging in my Facebook feed this week. One group of friends has been posting stories of police brutality and protests accompanied by personal statements of outrage. Another group has been remarking on the disgusting revelations from the Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA torture report and the need for accountability. There is little overlap between the two groups, and yet the common threads between the U.S.' foreign and domestic policies are disturbingly uncanny.

Whether on the streets of Baghdad or Ferguson, soldiers and militarized police forces have historically enforced control, not law. Behind the prison walls of Guantanamo and Texas, some authorities have tortured and brutalized rather than interrogated. They have not protected nor served; they have attacked and killed. They have not gathered intelligence; they have violated people's humanity.

I am an immigrant to the United States. The names of those killed and tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan invoke in my imagination people who look like me, people I could have known, who could be my family. In the faces of those killed and tortured in Ferguson and Los Angeles, I see my neighbors and friends, people I know and love and think of as family. These are not separate and distinct. The pain I feel while reading the CIA report is as strong as the grief that comes from perusing the images of unarmed people of color who have been killed by U.S. police. The U.S. tortures and imprisons people of color both at home and abroad.

Comment: Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." He was one of only a few leaders in recent history who could see the connections made in the above article, and was murdered for it. What is a little known fact was that, in addition to speaking out against institutionalized racism and economic inequality, he was also very strongly against the U.S.'s war in Vietnam and stood as a stalwart voice in opposition to it.

See the must watch video 'Evidence of Revision' for it's documentation of the real events leading to King's assassination by the psychopathic elite running the United States.

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Che Guevara

'Millions March' sees large demonstrations against police brutality in Washington, DC and New York City


RT
Sat, 13 Dec 2014 21:26 UTC
Time square protests
© Reuters/Shannon StapletonDemonstrators sit during a protest march at Times Square against the verdict announced in the shooting death of Michael Brown, in New York, December 1, 2014.
Protesters are taking to the streets in cities across the US to protest grand juries' decisions not to indict the white officers responsible for the deaths of two unarmed black men, and demand police accountability.

Comment: The right-wing mainstream media wants us to believe it is black people vs. white people. But it is not. White people are also protesting over police brutality. This is a very basic issue: those who have a shred of humanity left, and those who do not. Racism is just a symptom of this more fundamental reality.

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Che Guevara

Protests spread to US congress: Minority congressional staffers plan walkout in wake of Brown, Garner decisions

Athena Jones
CNN
Sat, 13 Dec 2014 18:24 UTC

Congressional staffers plan to walk off their jobs Thursday afternoon to show their support for the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in the wake of the decision by two grand juries not to indict the police officers responsible for their deaths, according to three staffers who plan to participate in the event.

The planned walkout comes after days of protests across the country, including in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators have marched through downtown, blocking roads and bridges on an almost nightly basis since last Wednesday's decision by a grand jury in Staten Island not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Garner.

"We're proud to have this moment of solidarity with the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the thousands of peaceful protesters around the country who are telling this country that black lives matter," said one staffer who was helping to plan the event.

Comment: Prayers may or may not work, but action has a better chance of being effective. Female students are protesting for protection, minimum wage workers are protesting for a better life, women in military are speaking out against injustice, NFL cheerleaders are suing the employers for basic wages and respect.

This is no longer a issue between black vs. white or wealthy vs. poor, it is about psychopaths vs. the rest of the humanity.

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