Society's ChildS


Biohazard

Doped up cop passes out while snorting Xanax in police cruiser and crashes into middle school

Matt Agorist
Free Thought Project
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 14:56 UTC
cop snorting xanax
A Raleigh County Sheriff's deputy was recently arrested after he was found unresponsive in his patrol car — after crashing it into the entrance of a middle school.

Sgt. Roger Dale Richmond Jr. of Shady Spring, 41, was taken into custody and charged with Driving Under the Influence of a Controlled Substance (DUI) and Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance, according to WVVA.

Police say Richmond, now a former sergeant, notified fellow officer, Lt. T.L. Miles, that he had been involved in a motor vehicle collision. Police say they were investigating skid marks at a nearby gas station when they followed fresh ruts in the embankment and dirt on the road. About a mile and a half down the road from the gas station, deputies found Richmond's marked patrol car smashed up at the entrance of Shady Spring Middle School. The front bumper had been torn off and the tire was entirely gone.

As police approached the vehicle, they saw an unconscious Richmond in the front seat. Upon further inspection, they noticed a short straw used for snorting crushed pills between his legs. Police also found that the front seat of the car was covered in a powdery blue substance.
Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

The changing trends of homeschooling in America

Kyle Greenwalt
The Conversation
Sun, 11 Sep 2016 14:12 UTC
homeschooling
© CC BY-SAHomeschooling is a growing trend in America. Children learning at Woodlands Nature Station in Kentucky. Land Between the Lakes KY/TN,
As children head back to school, an increasing number of their homeschooled peers will be starting their academic year as well. Homeschooling in the United States is growing at a strong pace.

Recent statistics indicate that 1.5 million children were homeschooled in the United States in 2007. This is up significantly from 1.1 million children in 2003 and 850,000 children in 1999.

The homeschooling movement first emerged in earnest during the 1980s. Back then it was largely led by evangelical Christians. But as the movement has grown, it has also changed. Today's homeschooling families may increasingly welcome cooperation with their local public school districts. In my own research, I have seen how diverse homeschoolers now are. This diversity challenges any simplistic understanding of what homeschooling is and what impact it will have on the public school system.

So how do we understand this evolution in American education?

Comment: Another reason the statistics may be going up for homeschooling is the growing concern among parents about the declining quality of American Education and the implementation of abysmal curriculums like Common Core.

Christopher Chase makes some important points about 'education systems' as a whole:

It's a Pink Floyd World - Welcome (back) to the machine - Kids
In most nations, educational systems are set up the same way animals are trained, where children who comply with adult demands are given a pat on the head and rewarded. Those who endure the training process increase their chances of getting into "good" colleges, and hopefully moving on to "good" jobs in the global economy.

Those who are bored, confused or disinterested may eventually find themselves with lower paying jobs and run the risk of being drawn toward "harmful" and "antisocial" activities such as gang membership, drugs, crime or alcoholism. Schools are society's indoctrination system, created to train and measure our children, using test scores to determine their future social status.

Pink Floyd's social criticism was pretty much on target. The system has been set up this way since the beginning of the last century, as a way of programming children, much as soldiers are trained, to serve as "tools" for those in positions of authority. It's a highly mechanistic and authoritarian system, not at all in tune with the creative and holistic ways young people naturally learn.

Time is cut up into disconnected periods, while children are forced to comply with the instructions of a single adult, rather than freely exploring what interests them. Subjects are taught in fragmented compartments, as if they had no connection to one another or the real world. We learned math and science for tests, not for building our own homes, managing bank accounts, understanding the global economy or experiencing how we are connected to the rest of the Universe.


Read More...
Laptop

Facebook loses bid to block 14yo girl's lawsuit over nude image posted on 'shame page'


RT
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 14:00 UTC
Facebook logo
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Facebook has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing the social media giant over a naked photo that was posted on a "shame page." The social network insists it is protected under European law.

A high court judge in Belfast rejected an attempt by Facebook to have the girl's claim thrown out on Monday.

The teen, who cannot be named due to her age, is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence, and breach of the Data Protection Act, after a naked photo was posted on a "shame page" several times between November 2014 and January 2016.

The girl's lawyers allege the nude photo was obtained through blackmail and was published as a form of revenge.
Read More...
Horse

45,000 Wild horses to be killed by Bureau of Land Management


RT
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 04:08 UTC
Horses to be killed
© Paulo Whitaker / Reuters
Few animals in the US are as romanticized as horses. From gracing the covers of cheesy romance novels or spaghetti westerns, to being the stereotypical rich person's pet, horses occupy a unique cultural space. But the US government is about to kill 45,000 of them.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is under fire after deciding to euthanize 45,000 unadopted wild horses it has been keeping in holding facilities across the US. The wild horses were removed from their natural habitat by the BLM so that privately-owned cattle could graze on the land for profit.

The decision hasn't been particularly well received. The Humane Society referred to it as "a complete abdication of responsibility for their care," and panned the bureau for not using birth control to curtail the growth of the population.
Read More...
Handcuffs

Research shows families and communities shoulder over half the $1.2 trillion that mass incarceration costs U.S. society


RT
Tue, 13 Sep 2016 13:06 UTC
prison inmates
© Joshua Lott / Reuters
Imprisoning millions of Americans comes at a cost, and not just for local, state and federal government budgets. A new study finds society itself is missing out on more than $1 trillion, mostly impacting the family members and communities of the incarcerated.

"For every dollar in corrections spending, there's another 10 dollars of other types of costs to families, children and communities that nobody sees because it doesn't end up on a state budget," Michael McLaughlin, a doctoral student and certified public accountant, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

McLaughlin is the lead researcher for "The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the US," a study recently conducted by Washington University in St. Louis. Along with a team of researchers, he and Carrie Pettus-Davis, a co-director for the Smart Decarceration Initiative and director of the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, both Washington University-based, determined that the "annual economic burden" of US incarceration is an estimated $1.2 trillion, according to The Source, a Washington University publication.

The $1.2 trillion figure is nearly 6 percent of GDP and is 11 times the cost of what governments pay for corrections, the study reports, based on 22 costs from three categories: "costs of corrections," "costs borne by incarcerated persons," and "costs borne by families, children, and communities."

Comment: Prisons have openly given up the pretense of being 'correctional institutions'. They are for-profit enterprises housing a huge population of slave labor. Social costs don't enter into this psychopathic equation at all.

Read More...
Dollar

Supervisor of "massive fraud" at Wells Fargo Bank leaves her job with $125 million bonus

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 03:50 UTC
Carrie Tolstedt
Carrie Tolstedt
There was a burst of righteous populist anger anger last week, when it emerged that Wells Fargo had engaged in pervasive, "massive" fraud since at least 2011, including opening credit cards secretly without a customer's consent, creating fake email accounts to sign up customers for online banking services, and forcing customers to accumulate late fees on accounts they never even knew they had. For this criminal conduct, Wells was fined $185 million (including a $100 million penalty from the CFPB, the largest penalty the agency has ever issued). In all, Wells opened 1.5 million bank accounts and "applied" for 565,000 credit cards that were not authorized by their customers.

As "punishment" Wells Fargo told CNN that it had fired 5,300 employees related to the shady behavior over the last few years. The firings represent about 1% of its workforce and took place over several years. The fired workers went to far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said. What was hushed away is that not a single employee will go to prison, and that ultimately it will be Wells Fargo's shareholders - such as Warren Buffett - who will end up footing the bill.

What Wells did not disclose publicly to anyone is that the head of the group responsible for Wells' biggest consumer fraud scandal in years, is quietly leaving the bank with a $125 million bonus, a bonus which as Fortune's Stephen Gandel writes today will not see even one cent clawed back as part of the dramatic revelations.
Read More...
War Whore

Bullied 7-yo handcuffed by school cop, ACLU files lawsuit against Kansas City Public Schools


RT
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 02:19 UTC
police brutality child handcuffed
© KMBC 9 News Kansas City / YouTubeKalyb Wiley Primm
The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri has filed a lawsuit against Kansas City Public Schools in response to the 2014 handcuffing of a second grader who was crying and screaming in class while being bullied.

In 2014, Kalyb Wiley Primm, who was seven years old and less than four feet tall at the time, was being teased for having a hearing impediment inside a classroom at George Melcher Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri, according to the lawsuit. He began to cry and scream. School resource officer Brandon Craddock heard the cries and pulled Primm out of the classroom to take the boy to Principal Anne Wallace's office.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Primm family, alleges that Craddock pulled a "frightened" Primm by one arm through the hallway of the school. When Primm held on to a handrail with his free hand, Craddock twisted the boy's arms and handcuffed him.

"Instead of stopping or employing any de-escalation techniques, Defendant Craddock twisted (Kalyb's) arms and handcuffed ... his arms behind his back, and then led him to the front office in handcuffs," the lawsuit says.

Comment: Cops are being used in ever larger numbers to "control" students. SRO programs socialize students for an over-policed world, normalizing it to the point where students accept metal detectors, unannounced, suspicion-less locker searches and even the use of drug-sniffing dogs.

Read More...
Pistol

"Failed to eliminate threat": Brave cop fired for NOT killing a man who was attempting 'suicide by cop'

Matt Agorist
Free Thought Project
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 00:00 UTC
Ronald D. Williams
Ronald D. Williams Jr., Killed by police on May 6, 2016 — seen here holding son.
Weirton police officer Stephen Mader exhibited extreme bravery and restraint earlier this year when he chose not to kill a suicidal man. For displaying such courage and reserve, Mader's department fired him.

On May 6, 2016, Mader responded to a call about a domestic incident. When he showed up to the call, Mader confronted Ronald D. Williams Jr., 23, who was armed and in a diminished mental state.

Madar said that he began talking to the young man in his "calm voice."

"I told him, 'Put down the gun,' and he's like, 'Just shoot me.' And I told him, 'I'm not going to shoot you brother.' Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.

"I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and de-escalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop" situation.

Comment: Because Mader had been hired less than a year prior and West Virginia is an "at-will" employment state, he had no legal recourse in the matter.

Read More...
Ambulance

Muslim tourist set on fire in New York City, just hours before 9/11 memorial service

Tom Boggioni
Raw Story
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 17:57 UTC
Muslim women
© Shutterstock
Police in New York City are searching for an assailant who set a Muslim woman on fire Saturday night, just hours before 15th anniversary memorial services for victims of the 9/11 attack began, reports the New York Daily News.

According to police, the woman — who is visiting from Scotland and was wearing traditional Muslim clothing — was window-shopping Saturday night when she felt heat on her arm and saw that her sleeve had been set on fire. "She saw [the suspect] pull a lighter away and walk away," a source explained. "He doesn't say anything."

Police state the woman was able to extinguish the flame as her assailant got away, with police labeling the attack a hate crime.

"I would obviously be concerned because it's symptomatic of the overall rise in Islamophobic sentiment in our society," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "That's based on the spike across the country in hate crimes and hate incidents, in recent days and over the past year,."
Read More...
Target

Italian town devastated by earthquake sues Charlie Hebdo for its cruel cartoon


RT
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 19:20 UTC
italy earthquake
© Stefano Rellandini / ReutersA general view after earthquake that levelled the town in Amatrice, central Italy, September 1, 2016
The Italian town of Amatrice, devastated by an earthquake on September 24, has filed a lawsuit against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for "senseless" cartoons depicting quake victims as types of pasta.

"This is a grisly, senseless and unconscionable insult to the victims of the natural disaster," Mario Cicchetti, a lawyer representing the town hall of Amatrice, is quoted as saying by Italian news outlet ANSA.

Despite being an "inviolable right" in both France and Italy, not everything can be satire, the lawyer added.

Cicchetti has filed the legal complaint on behalf of the town's authorities at the magistrate in Rieti, near Amatrice. The lawsuit cites "aggravated defamation" by Charlie Hebdo, notorious for its provocative cartoons, Reuters reports.

According to the outlet, quoting Cicchetti, the legal case can be handled in Italy because the pictures "had been widely seen and shared there." The magistrate in Rieti is yet to decide how to proceed with the case. So far there has been no comment from Charlie Hebdo.

Comment: See: Charlie Hebdo's new caricature depicts Italian quake victims as pasta & lasagna

Read More...