Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Thousands wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have convictions overturned

Justin Gardiner
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 21:36 UTC
Jailed for falsified drug charges
© thefreethoughtproject.com
After years of injustice, thousands of people wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have their convictions overturned. The ruling centers on drug lab tests that were falsified by a state-employed chemist named Annie Dookhan.
The state's highest court on Wednesday ordered prosecutors to drop a large portion of the more than 24,000 drug convictions affected by the misconduct of former state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, issuing an urgent call to resolve a scandal that has plagued the legal system since 2012.
Dookhan was imprisoned in 2013 after being charged with a suite of crimes relating to her years-long career of deceit, where she falsified tens of thousands of reports to jail innocent people. She would mark results as 'positive' for illegal substances without actually testing them, even adding cocaine to samples when no cocaine was present.

At sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball stated, "Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core."

After the shocking revelations, some of the 'Dookhan-tainted' convictions were overturned, but when 2017 came around, 24,391 of those convictions still remained. Most of these people were poor and charged simply with possession. Many remained in prison or on parole, and many more were denied jobs and housing due to their criminal records.

Comment: See also: Prison industrial complex: Falsified or tainted evidence leads to thousands of wrongful convictions

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Handcuffs

Drug lord El Chapo is extradited to US


RT
Thu, 19 Jan 2017 22:56 UTC
El Chapo
© ForbesJoaquin "el Chapo" Guzman
Infamous Mexican drug lord, Joaquin Guzman - better known as El Chapo - has been extradited to the United States where he'll face multiple drug, homicide and money laundering charges, the country's Foreign Ministry has announced.

The Fifth Collegiate Criminal Court in Mexico City has denied notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, protection under the country's laws according to a statement by the Mexican Foreign Ministry. Therefore, permission to extradite Guzman to the US has been issued, and the "Government of the Republic delivered today Mr. Guzmán to the authorities of the United States of America," reads the statement.

Guzman was airborne shortly after the announcement, a spokeswoman for the Mexican Attorney General told ABC News. She did not elaborate on where exactly he was being transferred to.

In May last year, a Mexican judge approved the US extradition request for Guzman, but the ruling was temporarily suspended after his lawyers appealed citing the potential death penalty their client may face in the US. The Mexican Supreme Court dismissed appeals filed by El Chapo's lawyers aimed at halting the extradition earlier on Thursday. "The judges decided not to hear the [appeal for] protection [from extradition]," a source in the court told AFP.
El Chapo DOJ
© Twitter
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Arrow Up

Beginning in 2009, Obama's longest con was on young people, a 36% increase in Youth Misery Index


New Guard
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Youth Misery Index
© Young America's FoundationWhen snowflakes fall.
The Youth Misery Index (YMI), a figure calculated annually by Young America's Foundation, spiked to a record high of 113.4 in early 2017, up from 109.9 last January, and 83.5 in 2009 when President Obama took office. The Index is calculated by adding youth unemployment, student loan debt, and national debt per capita numbers.

Over the course of Obama's presidency, the YMI has spiked an alarming 29.9 points, an increase of 36 percent.

Young Americans, a generation that provided critical support to the President in 2008 and 2012, have slogged through the last eight years, and will be chained to its impact on their futures for years to come. The youth unemployment rate is almost 15 percent and the average student in the class of 2016 graduated with a record $37,000 in student loan debt. National debt per capita, a remarkable burden that will fall squarely on the shoulders of millennials, is approaching $62,000.

Young Americans are struggling to find employment, drowning in tens of thousands of dollars of personal debt, and facing the prospect of paying off an $18 trillion national debt.

Barack Obama's Presidency has been a boon for youth misery and a disaster for millennials. It's no wonder young people, a critical component of the so-called "Obama Coalition," failed to support Hillary Clinton at the same rate last November.

Comment: For his own narcissistic reasons, Obama cajoled his audiences, set himself up as an idol, made promises that were unrealistic -- most he never kept. When the man defines the rhetoric, you'd best be listening instead to the rhetoric that defines the man.

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Eye 2

Syrian Woman Tells Story Of Torture, Rape, Oppression Under America's Moderate FSA "Rebels" In Syria

Brandon Turbeville
Sott.net
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Syrian women
While the Western corporate media continues to paint terrorists in Syria as being partially moderate and partially extreme, the reality of the situation has become so obvious to those paying even a modicum of attention that scarcely anyone takes such reports seriously. As corporate outlets make outrageous and unproven claims about the "crimes against humanity" of Assad and allege that citizens of Aleppo are committing mass suicide as government forces liberate the city, Syrians have a much different story to tell.

Take, for instance, the story of a 21 year-old Syrian woman who was forced to live with America's "moderate" FSA rebels, who is now so ashamed of her appearance after having been tortured and burned by America's freedom fighters, that she keeps her faced covered as she gives her interview. As Syrian writer and analyst (a Syrian living in Syria), Afraa Dagher wrote for Syria News,
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Attention

Alert in Paris as knifeman attacks metro riders at random


RT
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 17:09 UTC
Paris Metro
© Benoit Tessier / ReutersThe Paris Metro.
A manhunt has begun in Paris after an attacker armed with a knife lunged at multiple passengers on the city's Metro system on Thursday night, local media reported.

According to Le Parisien, the first attack took place at around 9:15pm local time on Line 7 near the Riquet metro station in northeastern Paris. A man, who did not know his assailant, was stabbed three times before being helped by bystanders and paramedics and taken to the hospital, where his condition is said to be stable.

Comment: See also:

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Pistol

5 cops corner a legally blind, mentally ill man before shooting him dead

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 19 Jan 2017 17:58 UTC
police shooting
© CCTVFontana police officers seen training their weapons on James Hall minutes before shooting him dead.
James Hall, 47, is legally blind, mentally ill, and now dead — after being executed by police officers with the Fontana Police Department. The execution happened in a convenience store and was captured on the store's surveillance cameras. The video also contradicts the lies police told to justify killing him.

Hall, who suffered from schizoaffective disorder — a combination of schizophrenia symptoms and mood disorder — was in the midst of an episode when police were called out to a convenience store during the early morning hours of November 22, 2015.

Police say they were responding to reports of a possible armed robbery. However, James Hall never robbed anyone and the video shows he was merely browsing the store when 5 police officers swarmed him.

The cops, who were clearly not trained in deescalating situations with mentally ill people, began yelling at him, pointing guns, and had their attack dog at the ready. All of these provocations served to only further Hall's fears, so he refused to come out.

Several minutes pass before officers opened fire and sicced the dog on Hall, sending him into an utterly panicked state.
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Cell Phone

Slate develops fake news app that allows users to tattle on information they don't like

Daisy Luther
daisyluther.com
Wed, 18 Jan 2017 18:10 UTC
fake news
In a clearcut case of an ironically bearded hipster fox guarding the henhouse of truth, Slate presents a brand new extension that Chrome users can install. The tool not only identifies "fake news" but allows readers to narc on anything they don't like.

Of course, anyone who would accept a word that Slate has to say as "truth" is so far left-leaning that they're about ready to topple over, and will report a lot of true things they just don't like as "fake." We all know that in their eyes "fake" and "something I don't like" are identical in definition, and that definition has nothing to do with the act of thinking critically.

The website describes the extension:
Help us stop the spread of fabricated news.

"Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump." "WikiLeaks CONFIRMS Hillary Sold Weapons to ISIS." These stories and a whole lot more blew up on social media in the run-up to Election Day, spreading misinformation and drowning out legitimate news sources.

That's why we built This Is Fake. This tool both identifies articles in your Facebook feed that intentionally spread misinformation and allows you to tell your friends when they're sharing a fake story. When you connect This Is Fake to your Facebook account, you can also flag fabricated stories for our moderators. Be a good citizen of the internet and help the truth rise to the top of your Facebook news feed.
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Snowflake

Liberals, not conservatives, show more psychotic traits

Danika Fears
NY Post
Thu, 09 Jun 2016 16:54 UTC
bernie supporters
© Getty
Turns out liberals are the real authoritarians.

A political-science journal that published an oft-cited study claiming conservatives were more likely to show traits associated with "psychoticism" now says it got it wrong. Very wrong.

The American Journal of Political Science published a correction this year saying that the 2012 paper has "an error" — and that liberal political beliefs, not conservative ones, are actually linked to psychoticism.

"The interpretation of the coding of the political attitude items in the descriptive and preliminary analyses portion of the manuscript was exactly reversed," the journal said in the startling correction.

"The descriptive analyses report that those higher in Eysenck's psychoticism are more conservative, but they are actually more liberal; and where the original manuscript reports those higher in neuroticism and social desirability are more liberal, they are, in fact, more conservative."
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Pirates

Montana beekeeper stung by beehive theft


Fox5NY
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 08:43 UTC
Beehives
© AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez
A Montana beekeeper says thieves got away with 488 beehives he had taken to California to pollinate almond trees.

Lloyd Cunniff tells the Great Falls Tribune it appeared the thieves used semitrailers to steal about 190,000 bees between Monday night and Tuesday morning in Yuba City, California. He said he was storing the bees on a fellow beekeeper's property before moving them to Fresno, where he had a contract to pollinate almond trees.

Cunniff says the theft will cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. The hives were insured.

Cunniff said he reported the theft to the Sutter County sheriff's department and learned other beekeepers have reported thefts, as well. He says beekeepers also are searching for the missing hives.
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Alarm Clock

Ohio mother arrested after posting video on Facebook of taping 2-year-old toddler to wall

Bill Bush
Columbus Dispatch
Fri, 20 Jan 2017 06:31 UTC
Shayla Rudolph
© NBCShayla Rudolph
A Reynoldsburg woman was arrested after posting video on Facebook of her taping her toddler to the wall so she could do housework without the boy bothering her.

Reynoldsburg police on Thursday charged Shayla Rudolph, 18, with abduction, a third-degree felony. Franklin County Children Services took her 2-year-old son into custody for his safety.

Police said they received information on Wednesday that Rudolph streamed the video live on Facebook. It showed the boy taped to the wall with tape over his mouth. In the video, the child can be heard trying to cry as Rudolph explains that this is a great way to get housework done.

"It appeared the child was restrained by the tape for approximately 15 minutes," Reynoldsburg police said in a news release.

Police became aware of the video from a local television station, they said.

"You've got the best mommy in the whole wide world," Rudolph can be heard telling the boy on the video. "Don't make me put more tape up there. Now sit still. You can see the TV from right there."

"You can't clean without them running around tearing up? Tape them to the wall. You can't cook or none of that because they're running around? Tape them to the wall."

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