Society's ChildS


Vader

'Lost in Detention': US Immigration Enforcement Criminalises hundreds of Thousands of People


PBS
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 02:28 UTC
A year long investigation by Frontline and the American University Investigative Reporting Workshop examines the current U.S. immigration enforcement system and uncovers hidden stories of abuse in the U.S. detention system. Hari Sreenivasan recently interviewed Frontline Correspondent Maria Hinjosa.

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Vader

Worse than Bush: Obama deports a record 400,000 immigrants

Tom Eley
World Socialist Website
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:19 UTC
Image
For the third straight year, the Obama administration has set a record in the number of undocumented immigrants deported, expelling nearly 400,000 from the US during the fiscal year ending in September.

The number of immigrants deported in 2011 (396,906) is equivalent to the populations of such major US cities as Miami and Cleveland. More than 1 million immigrants have been deported since Obama became president. This is despite the fact that three years of economic crisis have sharply curtailed immigration.

"These record-breaking deportation numbers come at a time when illegal immigration rates have plummeted, the undocumented population has decreased substantially and violent crime rates are at their lowest levels in 40 years," said Joanne Lin, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement.

Behind this forced human exodus, surely one of the largest such operations in history, are countless broken families and communities - fathers and mothers separated from children, husbands from wives, sisters from brothers. As Lin notes, the Obama administration's deportation campaign has left a "wake of devastation in Latino communities across the nation."
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Stormtrooper

US: Occupy L.A. Eviction: Is LAPD Restricting Coverage With Last-Minute 'Pool Media'?

Simone Wilson
LA Weekly
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:15 UTC
occupy la lapd standoff.jpg
© Ted SoquiWill the final LAPD-Occupy standoff be photographed?

​Updated at the bottom: If the LAPD doesn't lift media restrictions, the ACLU plans to file an injunction against them.

Creating limited media pools at high-profile, heavily policed events isn't an uncommon practice at the Los Angeles Police Department.

"When we don't have resources to accomodate every single outlet that wants to be there, we often do that," says Officer Karen Rayner in the media-relations office.
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Beaker

Pepper-Spray Creator Decries Use of Chemical Agent on Peaceful Occupy Wall Street Protesters


DemocracyNow.org
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:42 UTC
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Airplane

American Airlines Bankrupt


Associated Press
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:40 UTC
American Airlines aircraft
© The Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez
American Airlines' parent company is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it seeks to unload massive debt built up by years of accelerating jet fuel prices and labor struggles.

The nation's third largest airline also said its CEO Gerard Arpey will step down. He's being replaced by Thomas Horton, currently the company's president.

Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., along with its regional affiliate AMR Eagle Holding Corp. said Tuesday that they filed voluntary petitions to reorganize.

American says it sought protection to reduce its costs and debt to remain competitive.

The airline says it will continue normal flight operations during the reorganization.

American was the only major U.S. airline that didn't file for bankruptcy protection after the 2001 terrorist attacks. The last major airline to file for bankruptcy protection was Delta in 2005.
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USA

Best of the Web: Former US Senator Mike Gravel: 'What happened to Germany is happening to US'


Russia Today
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:30 UTC
The US is like a drunkard who charges to war with anyone who might pose a threat, ex-Senator and former US presidential candidate Mike Gravel says.


Comment: Do any Sott.net readers know what Gravel is referring to here?
"Most people aren't aware of the fact that last year the Obama administration chased out of the United States, expulsed them, over 500,000 people. Expulsed from the United States."


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Attention

Bullies Use Sexual Taunts to Hurt Teen Girls

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:02 UTC
Bullies
© oliveromg | ShutterstockBullies are now using words like "slut" to taunt other teen and tween girls, regardless of the victim's sexual experience.

In a sobering echo of earlier teen suicides, a 10-year-old Illinois girl took her life Nov. 11 after allegedly experiencing two years of bullying at school. And although Ashlynn Conner was just in fifth grade, her mother says her peers taunted her by calling her a slut.

As nonsensical as the word seems applied to a child, it's a common refrain for young teen and tween bullies, according to psychologist Maureen McHugh of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who studies bullying, sexual harassment, and especially "slut-bashing," the practice of peers labeling other peers as dirty and promiscuous, oftentimes in the absence of any sexual activity at all on the part of the victim.

"Their peers know what kinds of words to use to hurt them," McHugh told LiveScience, adding that sexuality becomes an Achilles heel in the beginning of adolescence.

"Their sexuality is emerging," McHugh said. "It's a kind of vulnerability."
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Info

Tsunami Survivors: We Didn't Understand the Threat

Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:02 UTC
Tsunami
© USGSWave heights from the Japanese earthquake.

By talking with survivors of the devastating tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year, scientists may now have a better idea as to how to help prevent fatalities from such events in the future.

The catastrophic magnitude 9.0 quake that hit Japan in March killed 19,508 people. The resulting tsunami reached heights of up to 100 feet (30 meters) along the coast of northeastern Japan.

In the 115 years before the disaster, a trio of tsunamis hit the region, with one causing 22,000 deaths. In response, many efforts were undertaken to protect against further tsunamis, such as numerous breakwaters - that is, coastal barriers - as well as annual tsunami evacuation drills. Still, the March tsunami claimed many lives, causing up to about 20 percent of deaths from the quake in some areas, said researcher Masataka Ando, a seismologist at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.

To understand why the waves killed so many people despite the precautions, researchers interviewed 112 survivors at public evacuation shelters in six cities in Japan in April and June. The aim was to see why many did not immediately evacuate areas endangered by the tsunami.
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Red Flag

Iranian Protesters Storm British Embassy

Robin Pomeroy
Reuters
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:47 UTC
Iranian protesters
© Atta Kenare / AFP - Getty ImagesIranian protesters gather outside the British embassy as some break into it and bring down the British flag in Tehran on November 29, 2011. More than 20 Iranian protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran, removing the mission's flag and ransacking offices.
Iranian protesters stormed two British Embassy compounds in Tehran Tuesday, smashing windows, hurling petrol bombs and burning the British flag in a protest against sanctions imposed by Britain, live Iranian television showed.

Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said protesters took six British diplomatic staff hostage from an embassy compound in the north of the city but it withdrew the story from its website minutes later without giving any explanation.

The attacks followed the rapid approval by Iran's Guardian Council of a parliamentary bill compelling the government to expel the British ambassador in retaliation for the sanctions. A lawmaker had also warned Sunday that angry Iranians could storm the British Embassy as they did the U.S. mission in 1979.

Several dozen protesters broke away from a crowd of a few hundred protesters outside the main embassy compound in downtown Tehran, scaled the embassy gates and went inside.
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X

GMO Crops Continually Banned Around the World in Display of Health Freedom

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:28 UTC
gmo apples
© n/a
Colorado's Boulder County was the latest health freedom hotspot to stand up against Monsanto and genetically modified produce, with Boulder County advisory committees announcing plans to phase out GMO crops on open space in pursuit of sustainable and ethical farming practices.

The county joins a long list of other political bodies that have banned, condemned, and even uprooted GMO crops across the globe.

Both the Food and Agriculture Policy Council and the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee of Boulder Country voted 5-4 to phase out GMOs in an economically viable way. The transition proves that it is possible to be environmentally conscious, preserve the health of citizens, and still maintain economic stability.

Genetically modified corn has been growing on around 16,000 acres of cropland owned by the county for around a decade. In 2009, public concern over the consequences of GMO crops sparked public debate within the county. Citizens demanded that GMO crops be banned after 6 local farmers asked permission to plant sugar beets that were engineered to resist the herbicide Roundup.
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