Society's ChildS


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Cannibal Cult Ate Brains and Made Unmentionable Soup, Papua New Guinea Police Say

Rod McGuirk
Associated Press
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:51 UTC
Canberra, Australia -- Authorities have arrested 29 people accused of being part of a cannibal cult in Papua New Guinea's jungle interior and charged them with the murders of seven suspected witch doctors, police said Friday.

Madang Police Commander Anthony Wagambie confirmed a report in The National newspaper that said the cult members allegedly ate their victims' brains raw and made soup from their penises.

"They don't think they've done anything wrong; they admit what they've done openly," Wagambie told The Associated Press by telephone.

He said the killers believed that their victims practiced "sanguma," or sorcery, and that they had been extorting money as well as demanding sex from poor villagers for their supernatural services.

By eating witch doctors' organs, the cult members believed they would attain supernatural powers and literally become bullet-proof, he said.

"It's prevalent cult activity," Wagambie said. He said he believes there could be between 700 and 1,000 cult members in several villages in Papua New Guinea's remote northeast interior. All of them might have eaten human flesh, he said.
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Sun

Thousands lose electric power in U.S. northeast as substation goes down in fire

Katie Corrado
CNYCentral.com
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 12:47 UTC

Salina, NY -- Thousands of National Grid customers were in the dark during a major power outage on Friday. The outage had the greatest affect on customers in Syracuse and Salina, and was sparked by a fire at a National Grid substation in Liverpool. The substation caught fire around 12:30am on Friday.

A National Grid spokesperson says the fire is believed to be specifically caused by bushlings, which allow energey to pass between pieces of equipment and are a vital component of substations.
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Butterfly

Students sue school district for violating their 'right to read'

Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
The Raw Story
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 11:39 UTC
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© Unknown
Students are suing the state of Michigan and their Detroit-area school district for violating their "right to read."

The class-action lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind, and potentially signals a new wave of civil rights litigation in the United States to enforce laws intended to boost academic achievement, education law experts say.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed what it has dubbed the "right to read" lawsuit on behalf of the nearly 1,000 students in the impoverished district.

Two-thirds of 4th-graders and three-quarters of 7th-graders in the Highland Park school district are not proficient on state reading tests; 90 percent of 12th-graders fail the reading portion of the final state test administered in high school, according to the complaint. Nearly 100 percent of the district's students are African-American.

"A child who cannot read will be disenfranchised in our society and economy for a lifetime," said ACLU of Michigan executive director Kary Moss in a written statement explaining the case. The lawsuit follows a "careful process of investigation that has made clear that none of those [education officials] charged with the care of these children ... have done their jobs."

One of the plaintiffs is a student referred to as S.D. An 8th-grader who has been in the district since 1st grade, his reading proficiency level is at a 3rd-grade level at best, the complaint alleges. Yet he "has never received any individualized reading intervention or remedial instruction from an adult" in the district.
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Magnify

Obama campaign staffer dies after collapsing at Chicago HQ

Alister Bull
Reuters
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:09 UTC
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© Unknown
Washington, July 13, 2012 (Reuters) - A 29-year-old staffer working for President Barack Obama's re-election died on Friday after collapsing at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago, campaign officials said.

There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

Alex Okrent had worked with the Obama team since 2004. The president, who was campaigning in Virginia ahead of the November 6 election, called Okrent's family to express his condolences and also spoke with other campaign staffers in a conference call.
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Question

Researcher Questions a Second Psychologist's Suspect Data

Ed Yong
Nature.com
Sat, 14 Jul 2012 05:21 UTC
Lawrence Sanna departed University of Michigan amid questions over his work from 'data detective' Uri Simonsohn.

Uri Simonsohn, the researcher who flagged up questionable data in studies by social psychologist Dirk Smeesters, has revealed the name of a second social psychologist whose data he believes to be suspiciously perfect.

That researcher is Lawrence Sanna, whose former employer, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, tells Simonsohn that he resigned his professorship there at the end of May. The reasons for Sanna's resignation are not known, but it followed questions from Simonsohn and a review by Sanna's previous institution, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (UNC). According to the editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Sanna has also asked that three of his papers be retracted from the journal.

In both Smeesters' and Sanna's work, odd statistical patterns in the data raised concerns with Simonsohn, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. But the similarity between the cases ends there. Smeesters' resignation was announced on 25 June by his institution, Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which undertook a review and concluded that two of his papers should be retracted. Sanna's resignation, by contrast, remains mysterious: UNC did not release the results of its review, and the University of Michigan will not explain why Sanna resigned.
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Eagle

Homeland Security Given Emergency Internet Control in Obama's New Executive Order

Dara Kerr
Cnet.com
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:43 UTC
Department of Homeland Security
© Department of Homeland Security
A new executive order addresses how the country deals with the Internet during natural disasters and security emergencies, but it also puts a lot of power in the government's hands.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week that could give the U.S. government control over the Internet.

With the wordy title "Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions," this order was designed to empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies.
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Take 2

'The Last War Crime' Debuts At Cannes While Censored In US

Jeanine Molloff
Nation of Change
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00 UTC
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"In spite of strong evidence identifying Dick Cheney as the mastermind behind this torture regime - the subject remains taboo, both in the 'news' business and in Hollywood - that is until Hollywood executives watched trailers for the anti-war documentary."

During this summer of Occupy and subsequent police brutality, the subject of torture is hotly denounced by protesters and conveniently ignored by candidates. Like that ostrich diving head first into the sand of political expediency - Americans want to focus on the alleged debt crisis or gay marriage - anything that absolves us from the messy subject of tortures committed in our names by the Bush/Cheney administration and which continue under Obama to the present day. The entire Bradley Manning debacle speaks volumes to this accusation.

In spite of strong evidence identifying Dick Cheney as the mastermind behind this torture regime - the subject remains taboo, both in the 'news' business and in Hollywood - that is until Hollywood executives watched trailers for the anti-war documentary - The Last War Crime.

Written, produced and directed by a new talent known only as 'The Pen,' this film documents the torture protocol ordained by the Bush-Cheney administration. Since it first circulated a trailer on the web; it has been heavily censored and cyber attacked. You Tube has removed it at intermittent intervals and MTV (which is owned by Viacom) has refused to sell air time for a commercial.
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House

Mortgage Refinancing Denied to Millions of Americans

Diana Olick
CNBC
Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:04 UTC
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© CNBC.com
Mortgage rates hit new lows and applications to refinance fell for the third straight week. It defies logic, unless of course you operate in today's tight mortgage market.

It's not just about the rate anymore. Negative equity, strict underwriting and big bank backlogs are keeping many borrowers from taking advantage of these incredibly low mortgage rates.

"If history is any lesson, the only thing that can really extend refi activity in a low rate environment is a loosening of underwriting standards to bring more borrowers into the market. And that is not likely to happen anytime soon," said Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance.
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Info

Native Americans Hail Rare Bison as Sign from Spirits

Ken Roberts
CantonRep.com
Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:32 UTC
White Baby Bison
© CantonRep.comIs this the fourth?
Here's one bison that won't end up as a burger. An extremely rare white calf was born last month, not on a range where they're known to roam, but on Peter Fay's farm in Goshen, Connecticut. Some Native Americans are hailing the birth as a powerful message from the spirits and are traveling to the farm for naming ceremonies at the end of July.

The calf, which looked "like a ghost" when it was born, shocked Fay, as did the ensuing excitement. Huge crowds are now expected to visit his farm, and the field is being guarded around the clock to protect the pale wonder.

The Lakota Sioux believe that Whope, the goddess of peace, once appeared in the form of a white buffalo calf, and the belief is that the goddess will return once four such calves are born, bringing in 'a new age', which some reckon could be the end of the world.

"We currently have the only three white buffalo in the world, at least to my knowledge," said Thomas Dodson at the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, N.D. Is this the fourth one in the story above?

According to the Hopi culture, the time of prophecy is upon us, the time of the ending of the Fourth World and the beginning of moving into the Fifth Sun or Fifth World. All cultures around our beautiful planet have an ancient knowing of this time and of the great shifts ahead.
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Newspaper

Court orders credit card company to un-block WikiLeaks payments

Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:59 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Whistleblower website WikiLeaks achieved its first major legal victory in a pushback against the U.S.-led financial blockade that's crippled the publication and sapped more than 95 percent of its resources since 2010.

In a ruling by the Reykjavík District Court in Iceland, credit card processing company Valitor, partner of both Visa and MasterCard, is required to un-block future payments to WikiLeaks within the next two weeks or face $6,000 in fines every additional day it delays.

The case was brought by WikiLeaks payment partner Datacell, which was cut off by Valitor after WikiLeaks began publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010. The court ultimately decided that Valitor had violated contract law by cutting off Datacell, which it justified by claiming that its clients are not allowed to accept payments on behalf of others.

"This is a significant victory against Washington's attempt to silence WikiLeaks," site founder Julian Assange said in prepared text. "We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it's done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong. One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history."
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