Society's ChildS


Attention

Connecticut Lawmakers Vote to Repeal Death Penalty

Image
© Andrew Sullivan / The New York TimesRepresentative Patricia M. Widlitz was for the repeal bill.
US - The Connecticut House of Representatives gave final legislative approval on Wednesday to the repeal of the state's death penalty, moving it one step closer to becoming the fifth U.S. state in recent years to abandon capital punishment.

The 86-62 vote followed 10 hours of debate in the Democratic-controlled House and came after last week's Senate vote to abolish the death penalty. The bill now goes to Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, who has vowed to sign it into law.

"The death penalty doesn't bring finality," said Democratic Representative Gerald Fox, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "The cost of the death penalty and the litigation that ensues places a financial burden on the judicial system and the state. We have learned in recent years, we have made mistakes."

Connecticut would join 16 other states and the District of Columbia without capital punishment. Its measure would replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. The repeal applies only to future sentences. The 11 men now on Connecticut's Death Row would still face execution.

But some legal experts have said defense attorneys for current Death Row inmates could use the repeal measure to win life sentences for their clients.

Sheriff

Zimmerman Charged with Second-Degree Murder in Trayvon Martin Shooting

George Zimmerman
© The Associated PressGeorge Zimmerman
US - George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., has been charged with second-degree murder in the 17-year-old's death. Zimmerman has been transferred to Seminole County jail, according to news reports, and is being held without bail.

"Just moments ago we spoke by phone with Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton," Angela Corey, the special prosecutor investigating the case, said at a news conference in Jacksonville. "Three weeks ago our prosecution team promised those sweet parents we would get answers to all of their questions, no matter where our quest for the truth led us. And it is that search for justice for Trayvon that has brought us to this night."

"We did not come to this decision lightly," she said, declining to discuss specifics of the investigation. "We do not prosecute by pressure or petition ... We're law enforcement. We enforce the law."

Comment: Please read the Sott Focus: Hysterization Via Racism in the Trayvon Martin Case for a better understanding of the dynamics at play in the Trayvon Martin case.


Smoking

Anti-Smoking Fascism: Health Canada Debuts Graphic New Cigarette Pack Warning Labels

smoking
© unknown
Health Canada has unveiled a new set of gruesome images to adorn cigarette packages.

The Toronto Sun calls the new warning labels, replacing those first mandated in 2000, the toughest the Canadian tobacco market has ever seen.

Under new guidelines first announced in March, the warnings must cover three quarters of cigarette and little cigar (cigarillo) packages, up from 50 per cent under the previous rules.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said larger warnings are intended to "better reach people with low literacy levels, heavy smokers, and people thinking about quitting," the Sun reported.

"As a result of action taken by our government, smoking rates in Canada are at an all-time low."

The war on tobacco has been non-partisan, with Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and now the laissez-faire Conservatives committed to reducing smoking rates and their inevitable health costs.

Pocket Knife

Syria truce deadline passes, no reported violence

The deadline for a U.N.-backed ceasefire aimed at halting more than a year of violence in Syria passed on Thursday with no immediate reports of fighting, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the sound of explosions in the town of Zabadani, close to the border with Lebanon, shortly after the 6 a.m.deadline expired, but said it was not clear what had caused the blasts.

A resident of the town said there had been shelling of the town overnight, but that she heard nothing after the deadline. Other activists in the cities of Hama, Homs and Damascus said the situation was calm.

Syria's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday it would halt operations on Thursday morning, but made no mention of an army pullback from cities and said it would confront "any assault" by armed groups. Attacks on opposition neighborhoods over the last week have fuelled doubts it would comply with the truce.

Comment: Needless to say, keep an eye on this topic.

One can imagine the defenders have only their limited means. To psychopaths salivating at their prey, the joy of destruction and plundering may be about to begin. Why war, misery, false posturing, deception? How has the more empathic race become sick and willing to do the bidding of these creatures? What do psychopaths, that spend human lives as if they are a commodity, think about humans?

"Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure." -Agent Smith The Matrix

Think about it.


Eye 1

Facebook Will Give Detailed, Complete Printout of Your Activity to Police

Facebook servers
© FacebookThe interior of Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon.
If police officers were to file a subpoena for your Facebook information, they would receive a printout of the data from the social network. This printout would be so detailed, complete and creepy that you should strive to be a good law-abiding citizen, just to prevent it from ever existing.

We have just learned about the true nature of Facebook's responses to subpoenas thanks to documents uncovered by the Boston Phoenix, an alternative weekly.

While researching a story about a man dubbed the "Craigslist Killer," reporters at the Phoenix had access to "a huge trove of case files released by the Boston Police Department." And in the process of sifting through all of those documents, they discovered the Boston Police's subpoena of the suspect's Facebook information - as well as the data provided by the social network.

USA

US Voting System is a Complete Farce: Why It's Impossible to have a Legitimate Election

James O'Keefe, who was single handedly responsible for freezing millions of dollars of wasted government funds to the ACORN association of community organizations due to fraudulent and criminal practices, now demonstrates why it's patently impossible for the United States to have a legitimate election.

This time O'keefe's shocking hidden video records poll workers on Primary Day in Washington, DC offering US Attorney General Eric H. Holder's voting ballot to a complete stranger, while other voting locations in the district offer to sign for ballots. Eric Holder has said multiple times there exists no evidence of Voter Fraud...until now.

While the police state control grid tightens all around us, tracking every email, phone call, retail purchase, and our day-to-day movements, the one thing no one in government wants to track is who is actually casting the votes for elected representatives, even though these very people hold the future of 310 million Americans in their hands.


Bizarro Earth

Destroying a Continent

Hidden agendas
© Unknown
"With the end of the old Cold War, a new opportunity arose. The economic and political crisis in the Third World could now serve as retrospective justification for (neo)imperialism", writes renowned journalist, author, John Pilger, in his book Hidden Agendas.

Pilger arrives at the logical conclusion, "Although the word remained unspeakable, imperialism's return journey to respectability had begun."

On Thursday, March 22, 2012, the German Bundestag planned to debate its historic role as a former coloniser, particularly in Namibia.

Germany had kept a thundering silence until now on its history as a former colonial power, having committed genocide against the people of the Herero, the Nama and the San. These human beings were not fed porridge and carrots.

They were just slaughtered.

However, not only Namibia suffered a severe double-stroke of inhumane Caucasian-Christian misfortunes.

But, my country of birth, Namibia, was twice colonised.

Heart - Black

NATO left boat people to die - The dark side of the West's 'humanitarianism'

Geospatial analysis corroborates survivors' claims of being left to die in Mediterranean populated by 38 military vessels.

'left-to-die' boat
© UnknownThe satellite image of the 'left-to-die' boat.
The 19 interviews by Goldsmiths researchers into the 'left-to-die-boat' ignored by Nato vessels in the Mediterranean in April 2011 has determined that 72 migrants were ignored by all Nato and non-military entities encountered in the two weeks drifting slowly in the sea, despite a clear distress call.

The migrants' vessel was established to have been within Nato's maritime surveillance area for 15 days, drifting in Libyan territorial waters, while Nato patrolled the area to prevent the flow of arms and mercenaries and prevent attacks.

The area was populated by at least 38 maritime assets as well as many additional aerial assets during the time of the event.

Nato maritime command in Naples and participating states were informed of the presence of a vessel in distress, and the military and naval assets had the detection capability to detect the migrants' vessel during its 14 days of drift back towards the coast of North Africa.

The independent research's geospatial report determined the movements of the boat, using a drift model to simulate the trajectory of the rubber vessel after the boat drifted in high waves for two weeks between 28 March and 10 April, when it landed in Ziltan.

Attention

Experts Sound Alarm: Looters Tear Up Syria Archeological Treasures

Syrian ruin
© n/a
Syria's year-long revolt has exposed to looting and destruction the country's archaeological treasures, including the ancient city of Palmyra and the Greco-Roman ruins of Apamea, experts warn.

Most vulnerable are strife-torn areas that have fallen outside the full control of the regime where looters have already targeted museums, excavation sites and monuments, they say.

"In the past three to four months there has been a lot of looting," said Hiba al-Sakhel, director of museums in Syria.

"In Apamea, we have a video showing looters removing mosaics with drills," she said. "And in Palmyra there is a lot of looting and clandestine digging."

Sakhel said other historical sites across the country have fallen prey to looters who are taking advantage of the violence that has swept the country for more than a year to pilfer antiquities.

She said although the practice has been ongoing for years, the pace has increased as a result of the unrest, which has left many sites unprotected and inaccessible.

Star of David

Palestinian Ethnic Cleansing in real time: A humble shepherd is run off his grandfather's grandfather's land because of settlers' 'security'

Peter Beinart was motivated to cry out to Americans about the occupation when he saw a shocking video of a Palestinian being arrested at his farm near Hebron for insisting on his rights to village water.

Well it's two years after that video. And here is another, from last month, shocking in its bald exposure of the humiliations of Palestinians, inflicted by Jewish soldiers acting in my name and Beinart's name.

A shepherd with a crooked staff insists on his right to graze his sheep on village lands near the settlement of Otniel. He is accompanied by Israeli and international activists, god bless them. The soldiers run him off.


You will see the shepherd getting angry, as he should get angry, at about minute 3. The man has nobility. (He is facing the same blank authority that Jews faced in the Pale of Settlement)

You will see the officer explaining that the settlers fear terrorists at minute 7:30 or so. And this is why the shepherd must not come too close. On his village lands.