Society's ChildS


Pistol

Tasers Have Killed at Least 500 Americans


RT.com
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:50 UTC
taser
© Ethan Miller / Getty Images / AFP
The Taser, the non-lethal law enforcement weapon that is meant to incapacitate criminals without causing great harm, has killed at least 500 people last decade. The real number of casualties might be even higher.

In the period between 2001 and early 2012, the stun-gun Taser devices used by law enforcement across America have claimed the lives of 500 people.

Amnesty International, the worldwide advocacy group that condemns torture and human rights violations, delivered the news this week with a report released Wednesday. In it, they reveal that the recent death of a Georgia man who died as a result of a Taser blast puts the body count brought on by the device at 500 in barely a decades' time.

Despite being branded as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, hundreds of Americans have died from Taser blasts.

On Monday this week, law enforcement responded to a call of a drunk and disorderly person in Houston County, Georgia. When they arrived at a bar, the man in question, 43 year old Johnnie Kamahi Warren, was already on the ground. According to the local Dothan Eagle, a sheriff's deputy still deployed blasts from a Taser gun on the man. Twice. He died moments later and now the officer who fired those shots is being investigated, all while on paid administrative leave.
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Eye 1

US: Exclusive: 2nd North Carolina Mother Says Daughter's School Lunch Replaced for Not Being Healthy Enough

Madeliene Morgenstern
Theblaze.com
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:41 UTC
Image
© Associated Press
North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler's homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter.

Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn's teacher that the lunch she had packed that day did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria.

Comment: To read about the first North Carolina incident, see this Sott link:

US, North Carolina: State Inspectors Searching Children's Lunch Boxes

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Heart - Black

Facebook asked to change policies after man posts pictures of a woman's rape

Megan Carpentier
Raw Story
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:34 UTC
rapist reid jones
Julia Helene didn't know that she had been the victim of a crime... until pictures of it were posted on Facebook under a fake profile created in her name. Helene told police in September 2010 that another friend showed her the pictures, and they eventually arrested Reid Jones, a chef from Marblehead, Massachusetts. But it wasn't until almost a year after his arrest that he was charged with raping Helene, charges that police and prosecutors say were spurred by further evidence they uncovered in the course of investigating the identity theft and photographing an unsuspecting person. He is still free on bail - and still on Facebook, where he reportedly posted joking references to fleeing to France to avoid prosecution last fall.
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Light Saber

US: Rep. Maloney slams all-male Issa birth control hearing

David Ferguson
Raw Story
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:27 UTC
Rep. Carolyn Mahoney (D-NY) appeared on Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Thursday night to discuss Thursday's Congressional panel on birth control. Mahoney, like many, was taken aback at the panel's near-total exclusion of women and its refusal to hear the testimony of female witnesses. Rep. Mahoney and her colleague Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) finally walked out of the hearing.


On Countdown, Mahoney said, "Half the population of this country are women, and we will not be sent back to the Dark Ages, and we will not be denied our rights."
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Laptop

Hell Is Cheap: China, Apple, And The Economics Of Horror

Richard RJ Eskow
Crooks and Liars
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:06 UTC
China Apple workers
© AFP / Getty Images
I hate what I've learned about Apple's outsourcing to China. I hate knowing that Steve Jobs, who I admired very much in some ways, ignored repeated reports that employees were being cheated and endangered. I hate knowing that his business practices are destroying the kind of good middle-class job his adoptive father had.

I hate watching this week's news stories about China, knowing most of them ignore the fact that American companies who outsource to China have employee fraud and death built into their business plans.

In the words of the old Bob Seger song: Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. But I do.

Where the Blame Belongs

China and trade are back in the news, thanks to the trade visit of Chinese Vice President (and future President, by most reports) Xi Jinping. Last week on The Breakdown radio show I interviewed William K. Black, Jr., the former regulator who is now a Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
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V

US: Anonymous' stages dramatic take-down of FTC websites

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:19 UTC
Anonymous masks
© Flickr user silv_eric
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was feeling the wrath of unknown hackers with the "Anonymous" movement on Friday morning, after seven different government websites managed by the agency vanished from the Internet.

Calling the FTC the "Fuctarded Troglodyte Clusterfuck," hackers chide the government agency for lax enforcement of the national Do Not Call Registry, and for recently allowing search giant Google to merge data-sharing practices between its individual services. They also berated the agency for failing to properly maintain its own websites.

But more than those complaints, the hackers issued a stern warning over the government trade group's support for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Act (ACTA), which essentially extends often-criticized provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act to numerous foreign nations.
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Red Flag

US: Utility Shutoffs Soar Amidst Mass Poverty in Michigan

Lawrence Porter
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:40 UTC
stop shut-off protest
© n/a
In his State of the Union address, Obama pointed to Detroit as an economic model for America. "What's happening in Detroit," he declared, "can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh."

What is actually happening in Detroit - and spreading throughout the country - is a devastating growth of poverty, accompanied by a staggering number of households living without heat or light.

Through monthly inquiries to the Michigan Public Services Commission (MPSC), the World Socialist Web Site has uncovered a staggering growth in utility shutoffs in the state, particularly in southeast Michigan. Nearly 400,000 households were disconnected from either their gas, electricity or both this year by the state's largest energy providers, Consumers Energy (CMS Energy) and DTE Energy.

The two companies disconnected 361,113 families in 2009. In 2010 the number dipped slightly to 346,113, and in 2011 it reached a record 363,179. These figures do not include the 24 additional gas or electricity providers in the state, whose additional shutoffs would put the total well above 400,000.
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Vader

Georgia, US: 7th Grader Accused of Marijuana Possession Forced to Strip in Front of Classmates


New York Daily News
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:16 UTC
superman underwear
© AmazonA student is suing a Georgia school district, claiming he is still traumatized after supposedly being strip searched in front of his classmates, which exposed his Superman underwear. He says he was relentlessly taunted afterwards by the kids.
Sues Georgia school district for taunting he suffered in 7th grade

Atlanta - A Georgia middle school student claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday he was humiliated and traumatized when he was brought to a vice principal's office and forced to strip in front of classmates who said he had marijuana.

The student, then in the seventh-grade, said he still suffers from emotional distress because his classmates taunted him by calling him Superman, the underwear he was wearing when he was strip-searched. The student is suing the Clayton County school district for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.

Clayton County school officials didn't immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit, filed in federal court.

The student, identified in court documents as D.H., said officials at Eddie White Academy initially strip-searched three other students on Feb. 8, 2011, after suspecting they had marijuana. One of them accused D.H. of having drugs, and he was brought to then-vice principal Tyrus McDowell's office.
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Heart - Black

Pastor, Wife Accused of Killing "Possessed" Children

Paula Hancocks
CNN
Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:02 UTC
Seoul - A pastor and his wife are in custody accused of killing three of their children by starving them to ward off evil spirits, police in South Korea said Wednesday.

The couple told police the children -- aged nine, seven and three -- had been ill, which they believed was a sign they were invaded by evil spirits after eating too much on Lunar New Year.

They then cut the children's hair to chase the spirits out and starved them from January 24 until February 2, only allowing them to drink water. Local media reports said the parents had beaten the children with a belt and a fly swatter numerous times.

The pastor, named only by his surname Park, and his wife, Cho, told police they tied the children's arms and legs with stockings. All three died on February 2, the first around 2am, the second at 5am and the third at 7am, according to police in the town of Boseong, more than 186 miles (300 kilometers) south of Seoul.
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Stop

Lebanon: Beirut River mysteriously runs blood red

Van Meguerditchian
The Daily Star
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:44 UTC
Image
© UnknownAuthorities have yet to determine the source of the substance causing the red color.
The Beirut River mysteriously turned blood red Wednesday after a stream of unidentified red liquid began pouring from the southern bank of the river in Furn al-Shubbak. The source of the liquid had yet to be determined Wednesday evening, as the river continued to empty the red-colored water into the Mediterranean Sea.

Government and local officials rushed to the scene at the Chevrolet crossing of Furn al-Shubbak Wednesday morning in an attempt to locate the sewage canal that was dumping the red-colored water but they were unable to locate the source. Accusations were traded among officials from the municipalities of Hadath, Hazmieh, Sin al-Fil, Furn al-Shubbak and Shiyah.

Eyewitnesses working in the area told The Daily Star this was not the first time the river had turned a different color. Several business owners around the Chevrolet crossing said that colored water pours into the river roughly every two months but no one pays attention to it.It was the quantity and brightness of the red liquid that grabbed the attention of many passersby and commuters on different bridges in the city Wednesday.
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