Society's ChildS


Che Guevara

Smart move! Chilean activist sets fire to $500 mn worth of student debt documents


RT
Wed, 21 May 2014 04:59 UTC
Chilean artist Francisco Tapia
© UnknownChilean artist Francisco Tapia
Chilean activist and artist Francisco Tapia, also known as 'Papas Fritas,' has stolen and burnt $500 million worth of "pagares," or debt papers. He then uploaded the video onto social media, claiming he had "freed" students by setting the papers alight.

The artist made his claim in a video that went viral on May 12, where he says that debt owed to the Universidad del Mar is now worthless.

The ashes of the burnt legal papers were later confiscated by police after they were displayed at the Centro Cultural Gabriela mistral (GAM) exhibition.

"It's over, it's finished. You don't have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we're poor. I am just like you, living a shitty life, and I live it day by day - this is my act of love for you," Tapia says in the five minutes of the video, parts of which were translated by the Santiago Times.

The theft and subsequent destruction of the documents happened during a 'toma,' or student takeover, of the campus.

Authorities began closing down Universidad del Mar last year due to financial irregularities, and while most of the students had to find an alternative school, the university is still collecting student loan payments. Now the owners of the university will have to sue each of the individual students - a very time consuming and costly process.
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MIB

Journalist Politkovskaya killer suspect delivered guilty verdict by jury


RT
Wed, 21 May 2014 01:46 UTC
Anna Politkovskaya
© AFPA file picture taken on October 16, 2002 , shows investigative journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya
A Moscow city court jury has found five men guilty of taking part in the murder of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. One of the convicted men, a nephew of a Chechen crime lord, was named the reporter's killer.

The jury on Tuesday announced a guilty verdict for three Chechen brothers, Rustam, Ibragim and Dzhabrail Mahmudovs, their uncle Lom-Ali Gaytukayev and the ex-police officer Sergey Khadjikurbanov.

The panel also decided that the investigation presented convincing evidence of Rustam Mahmudov's role as the actual killer in the 2006 murder.

None of the suspects have pleaded guilty. Mahmudov has claimed that neither him, nor his brothers were complicit in the murder, while Khadjikurbanov has asserted that he was slandered by another figure in the case, ex-police colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who earlier struck a deal with the investigation. Pavlyuchenkov, who was initially suspected of organizing the murder, was sentenced to 11 years in jail and was also obliged to pay nearly $100,000 in damages to Politkovskaya's family.

Gaytukayev, on the other hand, is already serving a 2008-imposed 15 year jail sentence for organizing a separate contract killing. He had become known as a crime boss for carrying out large-scale fraud in the early 1990-s, known as "Chechen letters of advice."
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Airplane

Cooperation: Russian, Chinese companies agree to build joint long-range airliner which will rival Boeing and Airbus


RIA Novosti
Wed, 21 May 2014 01:16 UTC
The leaders of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China have signed an
UNAC CEO Mikhail Pogosyan
© RIA Novosti/Sergey GuneevUNAC CEO Mikhail Pogosyan
agreement to cooperate on the development of a new wide-body long-range passenger airliner, the Russian company said in a statement Tuesday.

"The combined efforts of COMAC and UNAC on the joint creation of a new series of long-range planeswill bring cooperation between the two countries in the aircraft industry to a completely different level," UNAC CEO Mikhail Pogosyan said, according to the statement.

The memorandum on cooperation was the result of two years of consultations between Russian and Chinese experts.
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Handcuffs

Occupy activist Cecily McMillan sentenced to 3 months in prison, 5 years probation


RT
Mon, 19 May 2014 17:31 UTC
Image
© Image from facebook.comCecily McMillan
A judge in New York City on Monday morning sentenced Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan to three months in jail and five years' probation for assaulting a police officer during a 2012 protest.

Judge Ronald A. Zweibel's Monday morning decision was handed down in a Manhattan courtroom 14 days after a jury there found McMillan, 25, guilty of deliberately striking a plainclothes New York Police Department officer in the face with her elbow. She faced a maximum of seven years in prison as a result of the second-degree assault conviction.

"A civilized society must not allow an assault to be committed under the guise of civil disobedience," Justice Zweibel said during Monday's hearing, according to a New York Times report published shortly after the sentencing was announced.

Comment: So, she elbowed a cop who was trying to molest/arrest her at an Occupy Wall Street protest. She was detained as a result, received multiple cuts, bruised ribs and had a seizure. How much time did the cops get that "detained" her...?
Welcome to the police state!

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Sheriff

Mistrial for cop who blew up woman's eye balls with pepper spray


RT.com
Tue, 20 May 2014 19:58 UTC
Pepper Spray
© Reuters / Sergiy PolezhakaPepper Spray
A hung jury forced the judge to declare a mistrial in the case of a California police officer who permanently blinded a woman with pepper spray while arresting her for a traffic violation. The former cop was charged with excessive force.

After four days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked at 10-2 in favor of conviction on Tuesday morning, causing Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mac Fisher to end the proceedings. The District Attorney's Office already said it intends to retry the case. In the original trial, Enoch "Jeremy" Clark faced up to 20 years in prison for assault by a peace officer causing injury, assault with a less lethal weapon, battery causing serious injury and assault resulting in great bodily injury after the February 2012 incident. If convicted in a new trial, he would only face seven years in prison, CBS Los Angeles reported.
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Syringe

NYC is now one of the largest distribution hubs in the heroin trade: Drug trafficking at two-decade high


RT.com
Tue, 20 May 2014 17:37 UTC
heroin
© AFP Photo / Spencer Platt
As increased heroin use within the United States comes into sharper view, New York City has emerged as one of the country's largest distribution hubs, with more of the drug passing through it than at any time in the last 23 years.

According to a report by the New York Times, law enforcement has already confiscated 217 pounds of heroin throughout New York City in 2014, up sharply from 139 pounds over the same time frame last year.

Considering the fact that 786 pounds total were seized in 2013 - the largest number in about five years - police are already on track to blow past last year's figures. Since October, 35 percent of all the heroin collected by the Drug Enforcement Administration across the US has been in New York state.

On Staten Island, where the city's overdose rates are the highest, the amount of heroin removed off the street has jumped 61 percent compared to last year.

"It's cheap, it's potent and there's a user demand here right now and they're flooding the market," the DEA's James J. Hunt said to the Times. "In my time, we've never seen the amount of large heroin seizures like this."

Comment: The increase is heroin use appears to coincide with the increasing prescription drug addiction. Overdoses from prescription drugs have reached "epidemic" proportions, especially painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin. Users often switch from painkillers to heroin because it's cheaper and more readily available. But don't expect the government to do anything about either prescription drug usage or heroin - the drug trade is too lucrative for the CIA, the DEA as well as BigPharma.
Heroin's coming back in a big way - in affluent suburbs, small cities and rural towns
Doctors, not drug dealers, are responsible for heroin boom
The Silent Epidemic - Legal Prescription Drug Abuse
War On Drugs Is A Hoax - US military Admits to Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade in Afghanistan
Largest cocaine smuggler in the U.S. revealed: The DEA

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USA

Pennsylvania man arrested for hanging flag upside down


Police State USA
Tue, 20 May 2014 18:21 UTC
Upside down flag
© WJACTVJoshuaa Brubaker’s flag.

Allegheny Township - Police arrested and charged a man with a crime because he hung an American flag upside down on his own property.

Joshuaa Brubaker, of Duncansville, says he is passionate about his Native American heritage and the American Indian Movement (AIM). He grew upset when the site of one of the most infamous massacres in U.S. history has been put up for commercial sale.

"I found that Wounded Knee is up for sale, not only privately but commercially," Brubaker said to WJACTV. He made his displeasure known by flipping over his American flag and painting "AIM" on it.

In 1890, during the height of the American Indian "relocation" effort, U.S. troops disarmed the Lakota people en masse "for their own safety and protection" as they were corralled into their new home. When a deaf Lakota man refused to surrender his rifle to the federal soldiers, most of the tribe was slaughtered. The event is known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, and is still memorialized today.

Brubaker's protest was peaceful and did not infringe on the property rights of anyone else. However, the same could not be said about those who reacted to his protest - offended that he was not waving his flag in a manner deemed proper by the state.

The Allegheny Township Police Department intruded on Brubaker's property and forcibly took down the flag. Mr. Brubaker was charged with 'defiling' an American flag.
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Hearts

Win-win approach: Russia and China to construct first rail bridge across Amur River


RT
Tue, 20 May 2014 11:24 UTC
Google map of Amur river
Google Map
Russia and China have agreed to build the first cross-border rail bridge over the Amur River by 2016, following President Putin's visit to Shanghai. The bridge will cut transportation times and increase trade.

Construction of the bridge is scheduled to start within the next few months.

"It is the first ever bridge between Russia and China. Now generally there are no bridges between our countries: neither automobile, nor railway," Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund told journalists on Tuesday.

"RCIF [Russia-China Investment Fund] not only builds financial bridges between Russia and China, but also invests in the infrastructure to benefit both countries," Dmitriev said in a press release on Tuesday.

The bridge will be a project of the Russian-Chinese Investment Fund and will be able to handle 21 million tons of traffic a year. It will connect the Jewish Autonomous Region with the Chinese province of Heilongjiang.
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Health

Train accident in Moscow: At least 6 killed, 45 injured


RT
Tue, 20 May 2014 10:47 UTC
Train crash in Russia
© Semyon Gutsul
A freight train crashed into a passenger train in the Moscow Region. Dozens of people are injured and at least six confirmed dead. Injured passengers were being carried out of the carriages by hand. Rescuers are working at the scene.

"Today at 12:38pm (08:38 GMT) a freight and a commuter train collided on the Bekasovo-Nara railroad near the regional center of Naro-Fominsk," reported the transport police press service.

According to preliminary reports, six people were killed in the incident, one of them dying in hospital. Five out of six dead were the citizens of Moldova.

Up to 45 passengers have been injured, 28 have been taken to hospitals, 15 of them are in a serious condition. Three of the injured are children.

"We now know about five dead," confirmed the head of Naro-Fominsk Region Vadim Andronov. "It is possible that the number of dead and injured passengers will grow as one overturned passenger carriage has been blocked by a container from the freighter train, which now remains on top of it. Rescuers are entering the second damaged passenger carriage right now.."

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Quenelle

They can't outlaw the revolution

Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
Sun, 18 May 2014 06:53 UTC
Image
© Photo by Lucy Parks CC-BY Cecily McMillan

Update: On May 19 Cecily McMillan was sentenced to three months in jail and five years of probation, plus community service. Click on the word Guardian and the words Huffington Post to see articles on the sentencing.

Cecily McMillan, the Occupy activist who on Monday morning will appear before a criminal court in New York City to be sentenced to up to seven years on a charge of assaulting a police officer, sat in a plastic chair wearing a baggy, oversized gray jumpsuit, cheap brown plastic sandals and horn-rim glasses. Other women, also dressed in prison-issued gray jumpsuits, sat nearby in the narrow, concrete-walled visitation room clutching their children, tears streaming down their faces. The children, bewildered, had their arms wrapped tightly around their mothers' necks. It looked like the disaster scene it was.

"It's all out in the open here," said the 25-year-old student, who was to have graduated May 22 with a master's degree from The New School of Social Research in New York City. "The cruelty of power can't hide like it does on the outside. You get America, everything America has become, especially for poor people of color in prison. My lawyers think I will get two years. But two years is nothing compared to what these women, who never went to trial, never had the possibility of a trial with adequate legal representation, face. There are women in my dorm who, because they have such a poor command of English, do not even understand their charges. I spent a lot of time trying to explain the charges to them."

Comment: Once again police can can use brutality to subdue nonviolent peaceful protesters and walk away scot-free, while peaceful protesters are thrown in prison and denied rights to defend themselves by corrupt judges...welcome to America home of the free!

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