Society's ChildS


Cult

Creepy clergy: Michigan pastor pleads guilty to climbing ladder to spy on couple having sex

Image
© Kent County JailJeremy Grinnell
A former pastor and Christian university professor plead guilty Tuesday in Kent County, MI Circuit Court to charges that he climbed a ladder to peer into an upstairs window at a couple having sex.

Michigan Live reported that 42-year-old Jeremy Grinnell plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of surveilling unclothed persons that stemmed from an incident on Nov. 7, 2013.

Grinnell reportedly propped a ladder against the side of a Cannon Township couple's home, climbed to a second floor window and spied on the man and woman as they had sex. He returned to the house later that evening, but was caught by the male resident, who called police. Grinnell was arrested at the scene.

Heart - Black

Institutional Failure: Students at Columbia University distribute "rape list" after school fails to protect victims

Image
© Kiera Wood/Columbia Daily SpectatorStudents are protesting and petitioning (right) Columbia University to be more open in reporting the outcomes of sexual-assault cases at the Manhattan Ivy League school.
Students at New York's Columbia University have taken matters into their own hands after the school was accused of mishandling sexual assault cases.

According to WABC, a list of alleged rapists began appearing this week around campus, including in several of the women's bathrooms. Students were also reportedly handing out fliers with the same names.

Earlier this month, CNN reported that a group of 23 students filed a federal complaint against the university, saying that the school failed to protect them from sexual assaults. The complaint said that the school discouraged reporting assaults, and failed to properly punish rapists.

MIB

Arizona: Teenage predator sexually assaulted 18 girls, maybe more, police say

Image
© AP/Pinal County SheriffTyler Kost
An Arizona teen accused of multiple sex crimes against one underage girl has been re-arrested as the number of potential victims climbs to 18, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office (PCSO) said Thursday evening.

According to CBS affiliate KPHO, police had been investigating allegations that 12 more girls were victimized by the same man, 18-year-old Tyler Kost, of San Tan Valley in suburban Phoenix. Now sheriff's investigators say another five cases have been identified, and they expect the number of victims to continue to grow.

Kost had posted bail after he was arrested on Monday, reports the station. After he was picked up again, detectives requested that he be held on a "no bond" status, PCSO spokesman Tim Gaffney said.

Nearly all of the potential victims are high school students, according to sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Pat Ramirez. Investigators said that one girl was only 13 years old, while the oldest victim is 17.

Pistol

What's the beef? USDA goes shopping for submachine guns

Assault Weapons
© AFP Photo / Ethan MillerThe USDA is looking to pack some heat.
What does the National Weather Service, Social Security Administration and now, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), all have in common? These government agencies are all hoarding weapons and ammunition for no good reason.

In August 2012, it wasn't just conspiracy theorists who sounded the alarm after it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was in the process of buying 750 million rounds of ammo. That mindboggling order came on the heels of another 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets it already bought earlier that year. The ostensible reason: target practice.


Comment: Hollow points are bullets that you use specifically to kill your target. They're designed to punch large holes in soft tissue, insuring a kill by doing the most damage per hit.

From wikipedia: When a hollow-point hunting bullet strikes a soft target, the pressure created in the pit forces the material (usually lead) around the inside edge to expand outwards, increasing the axial diameter of the projectile as it passes through. This process is commonly referred to as mushrooming, because the resulting shape, a widened, rounded nose on top of a cylindrical base, typically resembles a mushroom. The greater frontal surface area of the expanded bullet limits its depth of penetration into the target, and causes more extensive tissue damage along the wound path.

That's 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition for an agency, created in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, that is supposed to "respond to domestic emergencies." But what would such a "domestic emergency" look like that requires the firepower to fight the equivalent of about a dozen Iraqi wars, with ammunition that is banned by the Geneva Convention?

Quenelle

Inequality reaches inhuman proportions as UK's richest pathocrats own one third of country's wealth

Image
© Reuters/Darren StaplesA man walks from his Ferrari as a carriage passes during the fourth day of the Royal Ascot horse racing festival at Ascot, southern England, June 21, 2013.
Briton's wealthiest people own a third of the country's GDP, with a combined fortune of 874 billion dollars, which is an increase of 15.4 percent on last year's total, according to an annual survey.

The Sunday Times Rich List shows that the United Kingdom's richest are richer than ever before, which is in sharp contrast with many ordinary Britons who are struggling after five years of austerity.

"I've never seen such a phenomenal rise in personal wealth as the growth in the fortunes of Britain's 1,000 richest people over the past year," said Philip Beresford, who has compiled the list since 1989.

Comment: Meanwhile, austerity bites hard for the common men and women, with declining health, forced labour, and food poverty on the rise


Map

Why most of the western half of the U.S. is completely unsuitable for strategic relocation

Image
If there is one thing that you cannot live without, it is fresh water. Just try it some time. Seriously - try to live for 24 hours without using a single drop of fresh water. You will quickly learn how indispensable it is. Unfortunately, a lot of people that are "strategically relocating" to another part of the United States are not taking the availability of fresh water seriously when making the decision about where to move. If you live in an area that receives very little precipitation and that is not close to a consistent source of fresh water, what would you do if something happened and the water got shut off? Without water, you cannot grow food, you cannot cook, you cannot wash your clothes, you cannot take a bath and you cannot even use the toilet. The most basic things that we do in life are totally dependent on the availability of fresh water. So why are so many "preppers" considering moving to some of the driest areas of the entire country?

Thanks to the drought that never seems to end, there are some southwestern cities that are now rapidly running out of water. Just check out what is happening right now in one city in Arizona...
In the northern Arizona city of Williams, restaurant patrons don't automatically get a glass of water anymore. Residents caught watering lawns or washing cars with potable water can be fined. Businesses are hauling water from outside town to fill swimming pools, and building permits have been put on hold because there isn't enough water to accommodate development.
And in some areas of southern Nevada, the authorities are actually paying people to remove their lawns because there is so little water.

So why would anyone that wants to become independent of the system actually move to those areas?

Handcuffs

Juvenile injustice: Kids are being tried in kangaroo courts

handcuffs
© Jean-Christophe Riou/Getty ImagesColorado recently passed a law meant to address the denial of counsel to children in juvenile court
Of all the constitutional rights afforded to Americans, the right to counsel is one of the most well known. In movies and TV shows, cops recite Miranda rights immediately upon arresting anyone, informing suspects of their right to an attorney even if they cannot afford one. This protection for indigent defendants was ensured by the Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963; four years later, another case established due process rights for children. In that case, called In re Gault, the court ruled that "Under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court."

But in juvenile courts across the country, children often face the full weight of the criminal justice system without the protection of a defense attorney. According to a report from the U.S. Attorney General's office, "Some systems ensure that every child in the system is represented, while others allow 80-90 percent of youth who are charged with offenses to appear without counsel." Children may be unrepresented for a variety of reasons, including lack of access to a public defender or pressure from judges or prosecutors to waive their constitutional right to an attorney.

Comment: You can tell a lot about a nation by the way it treats its children.


Ambulance

French Fighter jet crashes into field

Image
© Javier Rodríguez
A French Air Force Mirage jet crashed in a field near Briey, in north-eastern France, yesterday.

Authorities confirmed that the pilot ejected and parachuted to the ground safely as his single-seater Mirage 2000-5F jet went down at about 4.30pm in a field near houses in the tiny village of Barroches, Meurthe-et-Moselle, about 100km north of Nancy.

No one on the ground was injured. The pilot, from the 116 air base at Luxeuil-Saint-Sauveur, was found in a tree and taken to hospital as a precaution.

An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing and the area around the site has been sealed. In June 2013, a Mirage 2000 jet crashed in the Haute Saone in central France.

Nuke

Fascists from the Right Sector attempt to enter Europe's largest nuclear power plant in S.E. Ukraine

Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant
© wikipedia commonsBiggest nuclear power station in Europe; about 50 km from Zaporozhye / Ukraine. Photo from the "Nikopol" bank of the river Dnjepr
Ukrainian police stopped a group of armed men from entering Europe's largest nuclear power plant, located in southeastern Ukraine. In video footage allegedly showing the attempted break-in, the men say they are members of the Right Sector group.

The gunmen were stopped Thursday at the entrance of the city of Energodar, near Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, the facility's press service said in a Friday statement on its website.

The power plant's authorities said the incident did not affect the station's operations. However, security at the plant and throughout Energodar has been heightened.

Several cars full of men who introduced themselves as members of the notorious neo-Nazi group Right Sector were stopped at a checkpoint near Energodar, Ukraine's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. The men were wearing masks, had guns, and said that they were headed to "protect the nuclear power plant and the city from possible seizures," according to the paper.

"We moved out to protect the city, but we were stopped and circled by police," a Right Sector member told RBK Ukraine.

Local police said they confiscated the men's weapons and launched a criminal investigation.

Footage posted on Svoboda TV's YouTube account on Thursday - allegedly shot during the attempted break-in - shows a group of masked men preparing to enter Energodar.

Comment: The EU should think twice about supporting headless fascists in Ukraine, whose mindless actions are an endangerment to not only democracy, but also to the human species.


Quenelle

East Ukraine's Kharkov region to hold independence referendum - according to peoples movement "Southeast"

Kharkov rallies
© ITAR-TASS/ Sergei Kozlov Kharkov rallies for referendum
East Ukraine's Kharkov region will hold a regional independence referendum following south-eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, member of the coordinating council of movement "Southeast" Yuri Apukhtin said at a rally near the monument to Soviet leader Lenin on the Square of Freedom in this Ukrainian city on Sunday.

"Kharkov region will hold a referendum on independence following Donetsk and Lugansk. Our task is not to participate in Ukrainian presidential elections in any case. We should meet on this square on May 25. We do not recognise these elections," he stated.

Meanwhile, Apukhtin criticised the second all-Ukraine national unity roundtable meeting in the city of Kharkov on Saturday. In his words, he refused to participate in this meeting, though he was invited to attend it.

Representatives from movements "Southeast", "Borba" (Struggle) and the Ukrainian Communist Party are participating in the rally on the Square of Freedom. Many demonstrators came with Russian national flags.