Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

The NYPD is essentially refusing to do its job and yet New York hasn't collapsed into chaos

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 04:58 UTC
nypd
© Flickr
The NYPD has basically stopped doing its job since the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu earlier this month, according to reports in the New York Post and New York Daily News, and yet the city hasn't descended into total chaos.

The Post reported that arrests were down 66% in the week following the deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, compared to the same period in 2013.

For certain offenses, the arrest levels are staggeringly low, according to the numbers put out by the Post.
Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame.

Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent - from 4,831 to 300.

Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241.

Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau - which are part of the overall number - dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.
It's not a slowdown - it's a virtual work stoppage, reported the Post yesterday.

The Post says these numbers were obtained hours after revealing that cops were turning a blind eye to some minor crimes and making arrests only "when they have to" since the execution-style shootings of Ramos and Liu.

Some of the reason for the drop off in police activity is that there are some safety concerns. However, one of the Post's sources says that yes it's partly out of safety concerns and partly a continuation of the childish and embarrassing protest against Mayor de Blasio's response to the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who killed Eric Garner last summer.
Read More...
Pistol

The psychopathic police state: War on Black America

Stephen Lendman
Global Research
Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesCivil rights activists say the US has a long history of police brutality against African-Americans.
Black Americans are in the eye of the storm. Militarized cops target them nationwide.

According to Operation Ghetto Storm, police, security guards, and other self-appointed enforcers kill black youths and adults on average every 28 hours.

"(S)tate-sanctioned killings." Casualties of war. Ongoing daily against black Americans. Compounded by other systemic abuses.

Including judicial unfairness. Get tough on crime policies. Mandatory minimum sentences. Guilty unless proved innocent. Three strikes and you're out.

Racist drug laws. Stop-and-frisk. Driving while black. Filling the world's largest gulag. Mostly with people of color.

Comment: The Police State, can also be summed up by Chris Hedges here:
The tyranny of law enforcement in poor communities is a window into our emerging police state. These thuggish tactics are now being used against activists and dissidents. And as the nation unravels, as social unrest spreads, the naked face of police repression will become commonplace. Totalitarian systems always seek license to engage in this kind of behavior by first targeting a demonized minority. Such systems demand that the police, to combat the "lawlessness" of the demonized minority, be, in essence, emancipated from the constraints of the law. The unrestricted and arbitrary subjugation of one despised group, stripped of equality before the law, conditions the police to employ these tactics against the wider society. "Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states," Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
"The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police."
The following are just a fraction of the articles you can read on SoTT related to this subject:

The path to tyranny: The Nazi Gestapo and the US police state
Police brutality is nothing new, it's just militarized

Read More...
Rose

22-day old baby found starved to death in Florida; parents charged with murder

Letitia Stein
Rawstory
Wed, 31 Dec 2014 09:06 UTC
Image
© Mirrror.co.ukBetsey Kee Stephens
The parents of a 22-day-old baby found starved to death in Florida have been charged with first-degree murder, police said on Tuesday, accusing them of neglecting the suffering infant.

Ruby Stephens, 23, and Roy Stephens, 48, of Indiana were visiting relatives in central Florida on Dec. 23 when they called for emergency help after discovering the baby was unresponsive in their car, according to Lakeland Police.

Betsey Kee Stephens was declared dead at the hospital.

"She suffered tremendously over the 22 days that she was alive," Mike Link, assistant chief of Lakeland Police, told a news conference.

He called photographs of the baby "absolutely horrible."

A medical examiner later determined the death was a homicide resulting from "starvation due to neglect," according to an arrest report.

An autopsy found the infant weighed four pounds and one ounce (1.8 kg) at death, having lost about 2-1/2 pounds (1.13 kg) since her birth. Normal weight for her age was about eight pounds (3.6 kg), the medical examiner's office noted.

The baby was dehydrated and appeared not to have been fed for six to seven hours prior to her death, according to the report.

The mother initially told police that she had been breast-feeding the baby every few hours. But after police told her about the autopsy's findings, she acknowledged that the baby likely had not been fed for much of their day-long road trip, with highway traffic making it difficult to exit to feed her.

Comment: The so-called parents were eating at an 'all you can eat' buffet when the baby was found dead. This is unbelievably tragic.

Read More...
Video

Oliver Stone says Ukrainian coup has CIA fingerprints


Sputnik
Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:01 UTC
Image
© Sputnik/ Grigoriy Sisoev
US filmmaker Oliver Stone is currently engaged in production of a documentary about Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country following the February coup, according to the post on his Facebook page published Tuesday.

"[I] Interviewed Viktor Yanukovych 4 hours in Moscow for new English language documentary produced by Ukrainians. He [Yanukovych] was the legitimate President of Ukraine until he suddenly wasn't on February 22 of this year. Details to follow in the documentary," Stone said.

Comment: The chances of the West changing their version of the Ukrainian coup will be slim to none despite Stone's valiant efforts to get the truth out.

Read More...
Light Saber

Public feminists, atheists, journalists and other activists: Living with the reality of death threats

Valerie Tarico
Valerie Tarico Blog
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:32 UTC
death threat target
© AwayPoint
More than twenty years have passed, but Jonathan Hutson still vividly remembers one specific day during his stint as editor of a New Hampshire weekly.
[I was] writing a series on the titans of trash - about racketeering by the nation's two largest garbage haulers. A lawyer came to my office one day to convey a warning about my latest investigative reporting. "Jonathan, I hope I don't open up the pages of the Union Leader one day," he said, "to read that the editor of a certain weekly newspaper got into his car, turned over the ignition, and got blown sky high." "That shall not happen," I said. "How can you be so sure?" "Because I don't own a car."
To some extent the specter of violent death hangs over us all, lurking at the edge of consciousness most of the time, perhaps brought into focus by a mass shooting in which victims remind us of our children or friends, or of ourselves. Or maybe we are shaken by a local story about domestic violence, a murder suicide, a drive by, or road rage turned lethal.

For women in particular, the threat never completely disappears. A cartoon that made its way around Facebook underscores the point. On one side a thought bubble above a male figure reads, "What if she gave me a fake number?" On the other, a bubble above a female says, "What if he rapes and kills me?"

Mercifully, for most of us most of the time, the risk of violence seems small and distant. Even so, it can shape how we live. It can make us hesitate to say no. Or yes. It can make us hesitate to stay home alone. Or go out at night.

Or speak our minds.

Fear has the power to paralyze and silence even strong, determined people, which is why threats of violence are such a potent, common, and toxic presence in political discourse. Consequently, it is a wonder, and a gift to us all, when engaged citizens like Jonathan Huston refuse to be silenced.

Comment: Is there any more proof that "freedom of speech" or "freedom of conscience" is a myth in the West? We laud those with the courage of their convictions, applaud their actions even, but too often overlook the high price they and their families pay to be at the forefront of positive change.

Read More...
Pistol

Tragic accident: Two-year old fatally shoots his mother in an Idaho Walmart

Jack Linshi
Time
Wed, 31 Dec 2014 17:32 UTC
Walmart
© Dystopos
A two-year-old boy in an Idaho Walmart accidentally shot and killed his Mother on Tuesday, authorities said.

The woman, 29, was shopping in the Hayden, Idaho store with the boy and three other children when he reached into her purse and discharged the concealed weapon, the Associated Press reports. They were in the northern Idaho town to visit relatives. The store was closed following the shooting.
Read More...
Yoda

Czech veteran returns NATO medals - cites 'shame' for having served 'criminals'


RT
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 20:54 UTC
nato medal
© wikipedia.orgThe NATO ISAF medal
A former military doctor who participated in missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan has asked the Czech Defense Ministry to take back his NATO medals, calling the North Atlantic alliance a "criminal organization" with "atrocious interests."

Lieutenant Colonel Marek Obrtel, former chief of the 11th Czech military hospital in Afghanistan, who also served in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, wrote to the Czech Defense Ministry and government in an open letter.

Obrtel said he was giving back four NATO medals he received for his role in international peacekeeping missions as he was "deeply ashamed" of having served in the organization, "led by the US with its monstrous interests around the world."

Comment: The lieutenant colonel has made a brave public gesture. It's frightening to speak the truth from the belly of the beast. More power to him.

Read More...
Eye 1

Psychopathic Algorithm: Facebook apologizes for 'Year in Review'

Lauren O'Neil
CBC
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 18:01 UTC
Image
If you've logged into Facebook at all in recent weeks, you may have been met with a prompt to "see what your year looked like" through an auto-generated timeline of photos you've shared on the social network in 2014.

This annual feature, called "Year in Review," is meant to highlight your "most significant moments" over the past 12 months based on which of your posts were engaged with (read: liked, shared, commented upon) the most.

For those who've enjoyed a good year, these customized social scrapbooks can serve as a pleasant reminder of everything celebrated and accomplished in 2014.
Read More...
Heart

Buenos Aires: Orangutan, ruled a non-human person, will be freed from zoo


Buenos Aires Herald
Sun, 21 Dec 2014 17:41 UTC
Sandra the orangutan
© APDo I not bleed? ... Sandra ponders life inside her enclosure at Buenos Aires' Zoo. She has lived her entire life in captivity.
An orangutan held in the Buenos Aires zoo can be freed and transferred to a sanctuary after a court recognized the ape as a "non-human person" unlawfully deprived of its freedom, local media reported.

Animal rights campaigners filed a habeas corpus petition - a document more typically used to challenge the legality of a person's detention or imprisonment - in November on behalf of Sandra, a 29-year-old Sumatran orangutan at the zoo.

In a landmark ruling that could pave the way for more lawsuits, the Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA) argued the ape had sufficient cognitive functions and should not be treated as an object.

The court agreed Sandra, born into captivity in Germany before being transferred to Argentina two decades ago, deserved the basic rights of a "non-human person."

Comment: Zoos are little more than animal prisons. Hopefully, Sandra can live out the rest of her days in relative peace.

Read More...
Airplane

Philadelphia-Manchester flight is forced to make emergency landing after flames appear under the plane

Steve Hopkins
Daily Mail, UK
Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:25 UTC
Image
A flight to Manchester was returned to Philadelphia yesterday after a suspected maintenance issue led to flames shooting out from under the plane and a series of loud banging noises
A passenger on a flight to Manchester that was returned to Philadelphia after an engine problem has told how he feared for his life after seeing flames shoot out from under the plane.

John Vien was on his way back to New Hampshire to visit his family for New Year's yesterday when the emergency happened.

Mr Vien, who was one of 75 passengers on the plane, said the mood inside the cabin quickly went from panic to hysteria. From his window seat he filmed the flames.

Read More...