Society's ChildS


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Outrageous! Prosecutor to rape victim: 'Maybe you had a weak moment"

Tucker Reed
© Neon Tommy
In May 2012, Tucker Reed sat in the office of Rouman Ebrahim, Los Angeles County deputy district attorney for the sex crimes division, listening to him explain why the man who had confessed to raping her would not face criminal charges.

According to a transcript of that meeting, Ebrahim said it wasn't his job to say whether or not he believed Reed, or tell her whether or not she had been raped. He explained that no one who had experienced a sex crime, or who had ever been accused of one, would end up sitting on the jury. So his job was to filter out cases in which 12 jurors, who "have no experience in any kind of sex crimes occurring in their life," would concur beyond a reasonable doubt that a rape had taken place.

"And that is a mountain that is going to be very hard to climb in front of a jury in trying to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt," Ebrahim said. "That's the main problem here."

"I need to clarify," Reed pressed, "Regardless of the evidence that I have presented, you are worried about the way the jury is going to react to the evidence, and therefore screening out my case?"

"Yes," Ebrahim responded. "I have to take into account what the jury's going to do. I can't just proceed on a case not taking into account what a reasonable jury would do, absolutely."

Reed's experience highlights what survivors, activists and experts have characterized as a critical flaw in how the criminal justice system prosecutes sexual violence.

Amid recent accusations that colleges are mishandling reports of sexual assault on campuses, like Reed's case against the University of Southern California, observers have questioned why colleges are tasked with handling these cases in the first place. They often argue that felony crimes such as these should be left entirely to the criminal justice system -- but such arguments assume that the guilty are more likely to be punished under that system, which is rarely the case.

Although roughly 1 in 6 women nationwide are victims of sexual assault -- with the rate being higher for women in college, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey -- rapists often escape jail time. Only between 8 percent and 37 percent of rapes ever lead to prosecution, according to research funded by the Department of Justice, and just 3 percent to 18 percent of sexual assaults lead to a conviction.

Arrow Down

Philadelphia mother dies in jail while being punished for kids missing school

Eileen
© Police State USAEileen DiNino died in jail because she couldn’t afford government fines.

A mother of seven children was sentenced to jail time because she couldn't afford the government fines imposed on her after her children had skipped school multiple times. She died halfway into her 2-day sentence.

Eileen DiNino, 55, was found dead in her cell on June 7th, 2014, in Berks County Jail. Her children had a habit of skipping school and the government had imposed a number of truancy violations on her. The violations followed with fines and court costs, which accumulated to over $2,000.00, the Star-Tribune reported.

DiNino was unable to pay the steep fines, so she was sentenced to 48 hours behind bars - tantamount to debtor's prison.

She passed away one day into her sentence.

"The woman didn't have any money," said Diana L. Sealy, whose son married DiNino's daughter. "Years ago, I tried helping her out. She had all these kids."

An autopsy has been completed, WFMZ reported, and no foul play is suspected, but the coroner is awaiting toxicology results before determining a cause of death.

Even the judge who reluctantly sentenced her to jail questioned the laws that criminalized her.

Camcorder

Caught on tape: Ukraine army shell hits Russian TV crew

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© UnknownScreenshot from VESTI video
A TV camera recorded the moment Russian journalists (from Rossiya TV) came under fire while working near Lugansk, E. Ukraine.

Two journalists died from wounds sustained during the Ukrainian military barrage. Reporter Igor Kornelyuk passed away on the operating table, a doctor at a local hospital confirmed to RT. The second alleged victim, sound engineer Anton Voloshin, reportedly died at the attack scene.

2 Russian journalists killed in Ukraine military shelling

The footage was taken in Mirny, near Lugansk. After a first barrage the camera catches two distant figures taking shelter. The next mortar rounds targeted the area near the journalists. The camera is put down and turned over.

The footage was made by cameramen Viktor Denisov, the third journalist with the Rossiya channel crew.

Stormtrooper

'Dangerous, alienating, sociopathic': Former police captain on arming US cops with military gear


Dangerous, alienating, and sociopathic: the policy of arming police to the teeth with military-grade gear shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how crime is solved and what it means for a cop to walk the beat, former Captain Ray Lewis told RT.

Nine-foot tall, 55,000 pound, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored-fighting vehicles rolling through the streets of America.

Millions of dollars' worth of military gear being distributed to local police forces on an annual basis.

Drones, M-16s and so many other hand-me-downs from over a decade of war making their way from US forces abroad to a local police force near you.

If you really believe any of this is making you safer, Lewis, who spent 24 years on the force, says you should think again. Endangering lives, alienating communities, turning minority neighborhoods into occupied territory and compromising the very ability for police to do their jobs; these are just a few of the reasons the former commissioner believes main street is being sold down the river for power-hungry cops and ruthless corporate interest.

Calculator

Total debt in America hits a new record high of nearly 60 trillion dollars

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What would you say if I told you that Americans are nearly 60 TRILLION dollars in debt? Well, it is true. When you total up all forms of debt including government debt, business debt, mortgage debt and consumer debt, we are 59.4 trillion dollars in debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is difficult to describe it with words.

For example, if you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you had spent 80 million dollars every single daysince then, you still would not have spent 59.4 trillion dollars by now.

And most of this debt has been accumulated in recent decades. If you go back 40 years ago, total debt in America was sitting at about 2.2 trillion dollars. Somehow over the past four decades we have allowed the total amount of debt in the United States to get approximately 27 times larger.

Stock Down

Ukraine Nazis turns Russians off nationalism - survey

Russian nationalists
© Reuters / Tatyana MakeyevaRussian nationalists hold a banner as they attend a "Russian March" demonstration on National Unity Day in Moscow November 4, 2013.
Russians believe the recent regime change in Ukraine was a nationalist and fascist coup, and its consequences have already changed attitudes towards nationalist groups inside Russia and abroad, according to the latest research.

The Politech agency has prepared the research paper 'Ethnic issues in Russia in the context of Ukrainian crisis' for the Public Chamber, Kommersant daily reports.

According to the poll, 53 percent of Russians understand the recent events in Ukraine as a nationalist coup and not as a democratic revolution. At the same time, 49 percent of respondents in Russia said that ethnic Russians in Ukraine should not form their own nationalist groups, but instead fight against all manifestations of nationalism.

Most Russians also said they did not support introducing visa regime with the 'brotherly' Ukrainian nation.

The attitude to Russian domestic nationalists has also changed for the worse - 58 percent of respondents described it as negative, compared to about 50 percent one year ago.

The Politech analysts noted that ethnic Russians were slightly more tolerant of nationalism than representatives of other peoples of the Russian Federation, but even among them the negative attitude to nationalism was dominant. When poll participants were asked to describe their current political preferences, only 2.5 percent said they would vote for a nationalist party.

Comment: "Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception." --George Orwell

They say a genius learns from the mistakes of others. If these trends continue, bravo Russia. But the problem isn't nationalism per se. Russians, and people around the world, need to learn that the force responsible for all the unsavory qualities of nationalism is psychopathy.


USA

Has the Dept. of Homeland Security become America's standing Army?

"A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty." - James Madison

"Here [in New Mexico], we are moving more toward a national police force. Homeland Security is involved with a lot of little things around town. Somebody in Washington needs to call a timeout." - Dan Klein, retired Albuquerque Police Department sergeant
DHS
© Wikimedia Commons
If the United States is a police state, then the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is its national police force, with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies. In fact, although the DHS' governmental bureaucracy may at times appear to be inept and bungling, it is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to building what the Founders feared most - a standing army on American soil.

The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHS - with its 240,000 full-time workers, $61 billion budget and sub-agencies that include the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) - has been aptly dubbed a "runaway train."

In the 12 years since it was established to "prevent terrorist attacks within the United States," the DHS has grown from a post-9/11 knee-jerk reaction to a leviathan with tentacles in every aspect of American life. With good reason, a bipartisan bill to provide greater oversight and accountability into the DHS' purchasing process has been making its way through Congress.

A better plan would be to abolish the DHS altogether. In making the case for shutting down the de facto national police agency, analyst Charles Kenny offers the following six reasons: one, the agency lacks leadership; two, terrorism is far less of a threat than it is made out to be; three, the FBI has actually stopped more alleged terrorist attacks than DHS; four, the agency wastes exorbitant amounts of money with little to show for it; five, "An overweight DHS gets a free pass to infringe civil liberties without a shred of economic justification"; and six, the agency is just plain bloated.

To Kenny's list, I will add the following: The menace of a national police force, a.k.a. a standing army, vested with so much power cannot be overstated, nor can its danger be ignored. Indeed, as the following list shows, just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to police agencies in the form of grants.

Phoenix

Another message from the Universe: Night inferno as refinery explodes in Russia

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© 24.mchs.gov.ruFire at Achinsk refinery in Russia's Krasnoyarsk region on June 16.
At least five people were killed and seven others injured after a gas blast caused massive blaze at an oil and gas refinery in Western Siberia Sunday night.

The disaster at Achinsk refinery in Krasnoyarsk region happened late on Sunday as the night shift was putting equipment back online after scheduled maintenance, the plant's owner reported.

Comment: Take a look at only a small collection of all the recent explosions:


Bulb

EU to limit food-based biofuels due to their competition with food production and environmental contamination

biofuels
© Reuters / Simon Akam
EU ministers have agreed to 7% cap on the use of food-based biofuels in transport fuel. The agreement comes after a long-standing controversy, with biofuels being criticized for adding to environmental problems.

The so-called "first generation" biofuels are made from crops such as maize, beetroot, or rapeseed. They were initially backed by the EU as a way to tackle climate change and reduce EU dependence on imported oil and gas. However, research has since shown that biofuels do more environmental harm than good.

Making fuel out of crops has been criticized for displacing other crops and forcing the clearing of valuable habitats and virgin vegetation, particularly mangrove swamps in Southeast Asia. Biofuels have also been blamed for inflating food prices by competing with food production, which leads to shortages and higher prices in some of the world's poorest countries.

Comment: The biofuel industry not only pollutes but endangers the world's poorest and most vulnerable. This hoax was based on the idea that these fuels would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for a world that is not warming, and to replace a fuel source that is, in all likelihood not in danger of disappearing.

Biofuels will not feed the hungry
The Great Biofuel Hoax
Biofuels pollute more than oil, leaked data show


Bad Guys

Police beat 70 year old man thinking he was drunk, before asking if he was diabetic!

Thomas Mathiew
Thomas Mathieu
Police officers allegedly beat a 70-year-old man under suspicion of DUI for non-compliance when he was actually suffering from a diabetic attack.

The event was caught on dash cam video.

Thomas Mathieu stopped his car in a turn lane because he felt he was about to have a low blood sugar incident.

Mathieu claims he did this so he would not cause danger to others on the road.

What happened next Mathieu does not remember.

"I don't know what happened from there on," said Thomas Mathieu to News 4 San Antonio. "I woke up with my face in the ground."

The dash cam video shows the entire disturbing incident.

Comment: Police are increasingly using brute force and asking questions later, and are rarely disciplined for even the most brutal acts. Now they rightly assume they can do as they wish, killing people and their pets with impunity.
Why have police in America turned into such ruthless thugs?
Ridiculous: Man gets 35 yr sentence for killing police dog while cops shoot citizens' dogs right and left
Austin Police Officer Fatally Shoots Dog After Going To Wrong Address