Society's ChildS


Roses

George McGovern: He never sold his soul

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:42 UTC
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© Mr.Fish
In the summer of 1972, when I was 15, I persuaded my parents to let me ride my bike down to the local George McGovern headquarters every morning to work on his campaign. McGovern, who died early Sunday morning in South Dakota at the age of 90, embodied the core values I had been taught to cherish. My father, a World War II veteran like McGovern, had taken my younger sister and me to protests in support of the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War. He taught us to stand up for human decency and honesty, no matter the cost. He told us that the definitions of business and politics, the categories of winners and losers, of the powerful and the powerless, of the rich and the poor, are meaningless if the price for admission requires that you sell your soul. And he told us something that the whole country, many years later, now knows: that George McGovern was a good man.

McGovern, even before he ran for president, held heroic stature for us. In 1970 he attached to a military procurement bill the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which would have required, through a cutoff of funding, a withdrawal of all American forces from Indochina. The amendment did not pass, although the majority of Americans supported it. McGovern denounced on the Senate floor the politicians who, by refusing to support the amendment, prolonged the war. We instantly understood the words he spoke. They were the words of a preacher.
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Arrow Down

Child sacrificed for 'hidden treasure'

Sanjay Pandey
Deccan Herald
Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:35 UTC
In a shocking incident reflecting prevalence of superstitions, a 10-year-old child was allegedly sacrificed in Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli district by some people, in their bid to trace a 'hidden treasure' to become rich.

The child, Aman Kumar went missing from his house at Jamunapur village in the district on October 6. He had gone to see Ramlila but never returned home. His body was recovered from a ditch outside the village a few days ago.

There were injury marks all over the body. A red colour cloth, incense sticks and other articles were found near the body. It prompted police to suspect sacrifice after an exorcism attempt. On Saturday, police claim to crack the mystery and arrested three persons, including a woman, all residents of the same village.

During interrogation, they revealed that they had been told about a hidden treasure in their house by a tantrik - an exorcist. "We were told that if we sacrificed a child, we would be able to find the treasure," they said.

The arrested said they had lured Aman to their house on October 6 night. They tied him with rope and gagged him so that he could not shout for help. He was allegedly strangled during the ritual. They dumped the body in a ditch. Police recovered Aman's hair from the house. The killers kept digging for the elusive 'hidden treasure' after murdering the child but could not find.

Incidents of sacrifice keep happening in the state, especially in the rural areas, though the urban areas are no exceptions.
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Arrow Down

Parents fear sick kids will cost them their jobs

David Mielach
BusinessNewsDaily
Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:16 UTC
Sick Child
© ShutterstockSick child.
Missing work to take care of sick kids is a significant challenge to the work-life balance of parents. In fact, it poses such a challenge that 1 in 3 parents say they are concerned about losing their jobs or pay when they have to stay home to take care of their sick children, new research has found.

"The results of this poll clearly indicate that illnesses that lead to exclusions from child care are a substantial problem for working parents," said Andrew Hashikawa, a clinical lecturer in pediatric emergency medicine at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., which conducted the research."Improving employee benefits related to paid sick leave appears to be important for many parents."

The researchers found that almost half of parents say they had to miss work in the last year to take care of their sick children, while one-quarter of parents say they had to miss three or more days. An additional 31 percent of parents say they don't have enough paid sick time to cover the days needed to take care of ailing children.
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Bulb

Best of the Web: How Psychologists Subvert Democratic Movements

Bruce E. Levine
ZMagazine
Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:10 UTC
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By the 1980s, as a clinical psychology graduate student, it had become apparent to me that the psychology profession was increasingly about meeting the needs of the "power structure" to maintain the status quo so as to gain social position, prestige, and other rewards for psychologists.

Academic psychology in the 1970s was by no means perfect. There was a dominating force of manipulative, control-freak behaviorists who appeared to get their rocks off conditioning people as if they were rats in a maze. However, there was also a significant force of people such as Erich Fromm who believed that an authoritarian and undemocratic society results in alienation and that this was a source of emotional problems. Fromm was concerned about mental health professionals helping people to adjust to a society with no thought to how dehumanizing that society had become. Back then, Fromm was not a marginalized figure; his ideas were taken seriously. He had bestsellers and had appeared on national television.

However, by the time I received my PhD in 1985 - from an American Psychological Association-approved clinical psychology program - people with ideas such as Fromm's were at the far margins. By then, the focus was on the competition as to what treatment could get patients back on the assembly line quickest. The competition winners that emerged - owing much more to public relations than science - were cognitive-behavioral therapy in psychology and biochemical psychiatry. By the mid-1980s, psychiatry was beginning to become annexed by pharmaceutical companies and forming what we now have - a "psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex." Increasingly marginalized was the idea that treatment that consisted of manipulating and medicating alienated people to adjust to this crazy rat race and thus maintain the status quo was a political act - a problematic one for people who cared about democracy.
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Heart - Black

Lawmakers in Japan 'indignant' at alleged U.S. rape

Harumi Ozawa
Google
Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Agence France-Presse/Yoshikazu TsunoAround half of the 47,000 US military personnel based in Japan are stationed in Okinawa
Tokyo - Local lawmakers in Okinawa passed a resolution Monday expressing "overwhelming indignation" at the alleged rape of a Japanese woman by two US servicemen, as temperatures rose over the large US presence.

The resolution, passed unanimously by the island chain's assembly, said US military top brass were not doing enough to control their thousands of personnel.

"Yet another incident has taken place. In fact, the severity of the incidents is intensifying," it said. "With overwhelming indignation, we must question the present efforts of the US Forces to prevent such incidents from happening."

The arrest last week of two 23-year-old sailors for the alleged rape of a local woman worsened already strained ties between the large US military contingent and their reluctant island hosts.

The resolution said more than 5,700 crimes had been committed by US military personnel, their family members or employees in the 40 years since the small tropical island chain was handed back to Japan in 1972.

Figures from the Okinawa prefectural police show the percentage of crimes committed by this group has fallen from a high in 1973 of 6.9 percent of all crimes to 0.8 percent in 2011.
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Newspaper

France 24 TV: Cairo reporter 'savagely attacked'

Jamey Keaten
The Associated Press
Sat, 20 Oct 2012 02:40 UTC
Sonia Dridi
Sonia Dridi
Paris - A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely attacked" near Cairo's Tahrir Square after being seized by a crowd, the network said Saturday. It was the latest case of violence against women at the epicenter of Egypt's restive protests.

The news channel said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked around 10:30 p.m. Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses. France 24 did not give further details about the attack, but it said its employees were safe and sound, though "extremely shocked," and that it will file suit against unspecified assailants.

The network, which receives state funds but has editorial independence, said it and the French Embassy were working to bring Dridi back to France.

"More frightened than hurt," wrote Dridi in French on her Twitter page Saturday. Referring in English to a colleague, she tweeted: "Thanks to (at)ashrafkhalil for protecting me in (hash)Tahrir last nite. Mob was pretty intense. thanks to him I escaped from the unleashed hands."

Ashraf Khalil, who works with France 24's English language service, said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live reports on a side street off Tahrir. He said the attack and rescue took about half an hour, but it felt like a lot longer.
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Che Guevara

Tens of thousands rally in London against austerity


France 24
Sat, 20 Oct 2012 00:00 UTC
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Demonstrators march in central London. Tens of thousands of people marched through London and other British cities on Saturday in protest against spending cuts by Prime Minister David Cameron's struggling coalition government.
Tens of thousands of people marched through London and other British cities on Saturday in protest against spending cuts by Prime Minister David Cameron's struggling coalition government.

Marchers carried signs reading "No cuts" and "Cameron has butchered Britain," condemning the austerity measures introduced by Cameron's Conservative-led coalition in a bid to reduce Britain's huge deficit.

Police said the main march was peaceful, but two people were arrested as breakaway anarchist groups protested outside major companies including McDonald's and Starbucks in the Oxford Street shopping hub.

Scotland Yard did not provide an estimate for the turnout on the three-mile (4.8-kilometre) march route but organisers said police had told them that around 100,000 people attended.

"This is not a crisis that is going to sort itself out through cuts," 19-year-old protester Jonathan told AFP. "We've had a double-dip recession now, and we are here today to show we are not going to stand it any longer."

In Scotland's biggest city Glasgow around 5,000 people took part in a separate protest while there was also a march in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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Clipboard

No-fly list strands man on island in Hawaii

Audrey McAvoy
The Associated Press
Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:20 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Audrey McAvoyIn this Oct. 18, 2012, photo, Wade Hicks, Jr. poses for a photograph outside the pass office at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii -- Hawaii is a paradise for most visitors. But it was Wade Hicks Jr.'s prison for five days.

The 34-year-old from Gulfport, Miss., was stranded in the islands this week after being told he was on the FBI's no-fly list during a layover for a military flight from California to Japan.

The episode left Hicks scrambling to figure out how he'd get home from Hawaii without being able to fly. Then he was abruptly removed from the list on Thursday with no explanation.

It also raised questions beyond how he landed on the list: How could someone on a list intelligence officials use to inform counterterrorism investigations successfully fly standby on an Air Force flight?

Hicks said he was traveling to visit his wife, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who's deployed in Japan. He hitched a ride on the military flight as is common for military dependents, who are allowed to fly on scheduled routes when there's room.

Hicks said that during his layover at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent told him he was on the no-fly list and wouldn't be allowed on a plane.
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Attention

Baltimore buses to tape driver, passenger conversations

Doug Stanglin
USA Today
Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:11 UTC
Maryland Transit
© MTA.Maryland.govA promotional photo for the Maryland Transit Administration.
City buses in Baltimore will begin recording the conversations of bus drivers and passengers this week in a security move that has upset privacy advocates and some Maryland lawmakers, the Baltimore Sun reports.

The first 10 buses will be expanded to 340 by next summer as a result of a decision by the Maryland Transit Administration.

The MTA says the move is aimed at helping investigate crimes, accidents and poor customer service, according to the Sun.

The conversations will be recorded by a locked "black box" that can store up to 30 days of audio and video information. It could be opened in the event of an accident, an incident involving a passenger or a complaint against a driver, the newspaper says.

The buses will be also marked with signs to alert passengers to the open mics.
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Laptop

Foxconn Fiasco: Apple supplier admits using child labor in China


RT
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:26 UTC
Chinese workers assemble electronic components
© AFP Photo/China outChinese workers assemble electronic components at the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, in the southern Guangzhou province.
Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, has admitted to using underage interns in factories in China, employing children as young as 14. It's the latest in the string of scandals surrounding the company's activity in the country.

­The violation was revealed during a Foxconn probe over various media reports, which said that interns from 14 to 16 were working at the plant in the eastern Shandong province for about three weeks.

The company's administration admitted in a statement that their investigation "has shown that the interns in question ... had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks."

The employers were in fact breaching national law, which states the working age starts at 16.
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