Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Use once, then throw away: 40,000 U.S. veterans are homeless


RT
Tue, 02 Aug 2016 15:31 UTC
veteran
© David Ryder / Reuters
The Obama administration's six-year effort to completely eradicate veteran homelessness has met half of its goal, reducing it by 47 percent. However, despite coordinated federal, state and local efforts, 40,000 veterans are still homeless.

"[We've] got to keep fighting for the dignity of every veteran. And that includes ending the tragedy, the travesty of veterans' homelessness," said commander in chief, Barack Obama, before an audience at the Disabled American Veterans annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday. "Two states, Virginia and Connecticut, as well as 27 cities and towns across the country have effectively ended veteran homelessness."


Comment: Obama is right. But doesn't it speak volumes that there was a problem in the first place? What kind of country treats its soldiers like this? First they send them off to fight in illegal wars of aggression, then throw them to the wolves if they manage to come back alive. There's no dignity in being cannon fodder for the Empire.


The White House goal was to eradicate veteran homelessness over five years under an initiative known as Opening Doors, launched in 2010 and involving federal and state actors and nonprofit organizations and institutions. The administration spent $16 billion the program, and increase the overall Veterans Affairs budget by 85 percent, according to the Washington Times.
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Pistol

Disturbing video shows police knock on door and kill innocent woman's elderly dog as it ran away

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:55 UTC
surveillance camera picture
© Brandee BuchmanThe dog's owner set up surveillance cameras to keep a close eye on classic cars in their driveway. They never imagined capturing video of their dog being shot and killed.
Disturbing video from a homeowner's surveillance cameras shows the moment police "murdered" her beloved dog.

In an instant, over a decade of companionship with the dog she rescued from a shelter ended with a bullet.

Northland, Missouri, resident Brandi Buschman is the latest to mourn a beloved pet because police officers reacted with gunfire instead of restraint — a law enforcement response so common, it has been given a name: puppycide.

"They killed her, and she died right there in front of my steps," Buschman lamented in an interview with local CBS affiliate KCTV5. "She ain't deserve that."
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Sheriff

Woman calls 911 during traffic stop over fears of Houston cop - who then attacks her

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 07:49 UTC
Earledreka White and Officer Gentian Luca
© Via YouTube/LiveLeak Official ChannelEarledreka White and Officer Gentian Luca (YouTube)
Newly released video disputes police claims about a black social worker's violent arrest earlier this year while talking to a 911 dispatcher during a traffic stop in Houston.

A police officer pulled over Earledreka White in March for crossing the double white line, and she called 911 to ask for police backup because she was afraid of the officer who stopped her, reported the Houston Chronicle.

"I would like another officer to come out here," she says to the dispatcher. "My heart is racing. I'm really afraid."

The 28-year-old White was placed in handcuffs and charged with resisting arrest during the encounter, and then jailed for two days — where she feared she might end up dead like Sandra Bland, another black woman arrested in Texas following a routine traffic stop.

White said she remained calm throughout the encounter, and she has accused the officer of unnecessarily escalating the situation.

"Being pulled over is not the troubling part — what happened after being pulled over is what baffles me," White told the newspaper. "As I tell the dispatcher that this man is threatening to 'Tase' me, he backs away, then comes back and literally tries to break my arm."

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Info

Gallup poll: Americans' interest in watching Summer Olympics drops to new low

Art Swift
Gallup, Inc.
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:52 UTC
Forty-eight percent of Americans say they plan to watch a "great deal" or "fair amount" of the 2016 Summer Olympics. This is a sharp drop from 59% in 2012 and easily the lowest percentage planning to watch compared with the past four Summer Games.
Gallup poll - Summer Olympics
Thirty percent say they plan to watch "not much" of the Olympics, and 21% say "none at all" -- the highest percentage saying so since Gallup began asking this question in 2000.

These results come from a July 13-17 Gallup poll asking Americans about their plans to watch the Olympics, which begin this week in Rio de Janeiro. Many athletes' decisions to opt out of the games because of concerns about the Zika virus have already blemished the Rio Olympics. Other controversies have marred the games, including the banishment of the Russian track and field and weightlifting teams due to their widespread drug use. Reports of rooms in the Olympic Village smelling like gas, along with blocked toilets and exposed wires -- as well as accounts of sewage in the waters that athletes will swim and row in -- have dominated headlines. All of these issues may explain why Americans find the idea of watching the Rio Olympics less appealing than previous Summer Games.

Sharp Decline Among Women Fuels Drop in Viewing

Men (49%) and women (47%) have roughly the same interest in watching the Rio Olympics. Yet the decline in interest among women is stark: For the 2012 London Olympics, 63% of women said they planned to watch the Olympics a great deal or fair amount.
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Eye 2

Arizona woman who faked cancer for free abortion found guilty of cheating veterans' organization of $25,000


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:44 UTC
Chalice Renee Zeitner
© Arizona Attorney General
An Arizona woman, previously accused of faking her cancer to make the government pay for an abortion, has now been convicted of scamming a veterans' organization for tens of thousands of dollars.

Chalice Renee Zeitner was found guilty of defrauding charities at Veterans Hope and Armed Forces Racing and spending $25,000.

Zeitner, 31, used multiple identities to forge relationships with the organizations. In one case, she claimed to be a Marine Corps veteran, in the second a race-car driver, and a South African attorney in the third.

She also opened a credit card account using personal information from the founder of Veterans Hope.
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Gold Bar

Rattled investors seek shining path to gold and silver


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 14:20 UTC
Gold coins in the Austrian auction house
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Gold prices have surged nearly 30 percent this year, proving the commodity to be a commonly favored safe-haven for investors in the face of increased market volatility and uncertainty.

On Wednesday, gold reached its highest level in 33 months outperforming many other commodities as well as S&P 500 index. The precious metal peaked at $1,372 per troy ounce.

The rally of another precious metal has been even more impressive. The price of silver since the beginning of the year has gained almost fifty percent, trading at over $20 per ounce as of Thursday.

Comment: This news will also propel the gold and silver prices higher: Desperation? Bank of England cuts interest rates for first time in seven years, extends QE

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Network

Cryptocurrency exchange hack steals $72 million worth of Bitcoins


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:42 UTC
Physical Bitcoin
© Jim Urquhart / Reuters
The price of Bitcoin has plummeted once more after a major digital currency exchange in Hong Kong admitted that over $72 million worth of the cryptocurrency might have been stolen following a cyberattack on the company's systems.

Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex halted trading after discovering a "security breach" that resulted in "some" of their clients losing their bitcoins. While the company did not announce the scale of the attack, some estimates show up to 120,000btc have been moved out of the users' online wallets, which equals to roughly $65 million at current prices.

"We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen," the company said. Also stopping any withdrawals and deposits, the company said it is now working with authorities to investigate the matter.

"We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation. While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected," Bitfinex said in a statement.
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Bad Guys

Jailed Islamic State jihadist warns 'loads of attacks in England, Germany & France'


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:25 UTC
Islamic State militants
© Stringer / Reuters
A former Islamic State jihadist, German-born Harry Sarfo, has revealed that the terrorist group is actively seeking volunteers in Germany and the UK to carry out "loads of attacks at the same time in England, Germany and France."

Members of the far-reaching Islamic State's (IS, formerly ISIS) intelligence service, called Emni in Arabic, allegedly told Sarfo they were first and foremost interested in waging terrorism across the globe.

In an interview with the New York Times, Sarfo, who is currently serving a three-year term on terrorism charges at a maximum security prison near Bremen, recalled what one masked commander once told him.

"He was speaking openly about the situation, saying that they have loads of people living in European countries and waiting for commands to attack the European people. And that was before the Brussels attacks, before the Paris attacks."
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Pistol

Norwegian man arrested after threatening to 'shoot and kill' Maine police in Dallas-style attack


RT
Thu, 04 Aug 2016 13:17 UTC
Portland police
© Steve Dipaola / Reuters
A man was arrested after threatening to "shoot and kill as many police officers" as he could, in the style of the Dallas sniper attack. The threats were posted on Twitter and via email, prompting the evacuation of a local courthouse and a parking garage.

The alleged perpetrator, Espen Brungodt, a 28-year-old Norwegian, is believed to have sent the menacing messages to the Portland Police Department, public safety officials in Maine and two staffers at the Portland Press Herald newspaper.

The threats circulating on Twitter originated from the account @brownclown42, under the name of John Mackenzie. The account has since been deleted.
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Info

Another Savchenko hunger strike: But you'll never hear about this one!


Fort Russ
Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:08 UTC
Nadiya Savchenko
Chroniques du Grand Jeu (The Great Game Chronicles)
Translated from French by Tom Winter, August 2, 2016

What haven't we heard of the hunger strike of the poor and heroic Savchenko, locked up in the jails of the ogre Putin. For our small infiltrated corporate media, she was the muse of the fight for freedom against the Russian brutes, and no matter that she was a killer of journalists, and too close to neo-Nazi groups.

Moscow shrewdly released her late in May (in exchange for two Russian instructors). Cleverly, because this free electron is totally uncontrollable and does not have a much higher opinion of the pro-Western oligarchs than the Russians themselves. The wily Lavrov warned: let it be a headache for Kiev. As for us, we wrote shortly before:
"And then there is the release of the raving mad, the neo-Nazi heroine of the Western media, the killer of journalists, Nadia Savchenko. In exchange, one must add, for two Russian prisoners that the Ukrainians accused of being agents of the GRU (not impossible). And there, the Kremlin may have played a very fine hand. Savchenko is a real psychopath and her return to Kiev is truly a poisoned chalice for the junta. Just landed at the airport, bare of foot and threatening of tone she declared her candidacy for president and spat on the "shirkers". Her aura and her support of the neo-Nazi militias may well take her further, to the great dismay of pro-Western oligarchs each one more rotten than the next."
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