Society's ChildS


Black Cat

'Obama is Worse than Bush' on Marijuana Policy Says Top Drug Reformer

Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:11 UTC
Image
© Flickr user vhhammer
Rob Kampia, director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), has been working on drug policy issues for 17 long years, and during that time he's seen a dramatic shift toward legalization in the U.S. political climate.

Unfortunately for reform advocates, he told Raw Story recently that the shift in presidential politics has gone in the exact opposite direction. "We started MPP when Clinton was president," Kampia explained. "Clinton was horrible. Bush was worse than Clinton... and Obama is worse than Bush."
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Sheriff

Best of the Web: Debtors' Prison USA: Jailed for $280

Alain Sherter
Associated Press
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:43 UTC
Image
© Stockphoto
How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."

Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
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Take 2

BP Faces Legal Action From Russia Over Leaks Into the Ob and Yenisei Rivers

Terry Macalister
Raw Story
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:06 UTC
Image

BP has stepped into a new row over oil spills - this time in Russia - less than 24 hours after announcing it was going to pay out $8bn in America for polluting beaches with the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

Shares in TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture, slumped 5% after a meeting chaired by Vladimir Putin heard how legal action seeking damages was being prepared over leaks from pipelines into the Ob and Yenisei rivers. Natural resources and ecology minister Yuri Trutnev, whose ministry has a track record of successfully stripping companies such as Shell of their assets over ecological misdeeds, told Putin he was planning to go to court.

"I ordered Rosprirodnadzor [the environmental regulator] to prepare a lawsuit to seek damages and offered the company to lay out a plan on overhauling their pipeline system," he said, according to the meeting transcripts published on the government website on Thursday. "Please, act in line with the law," Putin was reported to have said in response.
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Attention

Meenakshi Thapar- Bollywood Actress Beheaded By Co-Stars

Mark Hanrahan
Huffingtonpost.com
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:21 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Bollywood actress Meenakshi Thapar reportedly has been gruesomely killed by two of her co-stars in a failed attempt to extort money from her family.

26-year-old Thapar was strangled and then beheaded after allegedly being kidnapped by two aspiring actors that she met on the set of her latest film Heroine.

Amit Jaiswal, 36, and his lover Preeti Surin, reportedly decided to kidnap Ms. Thapar after listening to her boast about her family's wealth and status in Dehra Dun, in the Himalayan foothills of northern India, according to Britain's Daily Telegraph.

The New York Daily News quotes Indian police as saying Amit Jaiswal and his girlfriend Preeti Surin allegedly lured Thapar on a trip with them to the town of Gorakhpur. According to the report, the pair then took Thapar capitve and sent threatening communications to her mother, saying they would force her to make pornographic films if their demands were not met.
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Bomb

Nicolas Sarkozy: Why is the French President so Disliked?

Hugh Schofield
BBC.co.uk
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:45 UTC
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© Agency France Presse

If President Nicolas Sarkozy fails to win a second term, as many polls are predicting ahead of Sunday's first round of voting, perhaps the biggest factor will be the personal loathing that he elicits in so many of the French. What's behind it?

From the moment he took office in 2007, no French president in modern times has been the object of such blatant dislike.

It is an animosity quite distinct from opposition to his actual policies.

All leaders expect hostility for the things they do. Few get it in such measure for the things they are.

"There is an irrational hatred of Nicolas Sarkozy among much of the public, and it is playing a major part in this election," says Jean-Sebastien Ferjou who edits the news website Atlantico.

"I say 'irrational' because that is what it is. Polls show that if you ask people about this or that policy of Sarkozy's - but don't mention his name - they will tend to support it.

Comment: Perhaps the real reason for "Sarkophobia" is that the French on an unconscious level recognize pathology when they see it. For more information on Sarko's machinations, see these Sott exclusives:

New Sott Report: Toulouse Shootings: Mohamed Merah Sacrificed To Give Sarkozy Election Win?

Sarkozy The American's 9/11: Mohamed Merah: 'Liquidated' French Intelligence Asset

Sarkozy's Backers To Use Toulouse Attacks To Steal French Election - UPDATE!

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Pistol

Gun Industry's Economic Impact Skyrockets During Obama Years

Tim Devaney
The Washington Times
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00 UTC
IND UK guns
© Josh Anderson / Associated PressA customer admires the goods in a gun shop in Greenbrier, Tennessee
The economic impact of the firearms industry is up 66 percent since the beginning of the Great Recession, providing an unexpected shot in the arm for the economy, according to a new study.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation says the economic impact of firearm sales - a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales - hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008.

Jobs in the firearms business jumped 30 percent from 2008 to 2011, when the industry employed 98,750.

The industry paid $2.5 billion in federal taxes in 2011, up 66 percent in three years.

"Ours is an industry with a rich history and heritage that remains vital and important to the American economy today," NSSF Senior Vice President Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement. "To millions of Americans our industry's products represent liberty, security and recreation."

Some in the industry attribute the jump in sales to fears the Obama administration will tighten gun control laws in a possible second term.

"There's a concern that in the second term the Obama administration would lead an attempt to restrict gun ownership," Mr. Keane said.
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Clock

Last Surviving FBI Agent at JFK Autopsy Who 'Did Not Believe the Single Bullet Theory' Dies


The Mail Online
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:23 UTC
Kennedy @ Dallas
© XB0002
The last remaining FBI agent present for the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy has died, and with him goes one more account version of what happened when the 35th President was assassinated.

James Sibert was 93-years-old when he died two weeks ago, but he is undoubtedly going to live on in history as one of the people that helped promote the conspiracy theories that followed the president's death that continue to this day.

In interviews following his retirement from the FBI, Mr Sibert publicly said that he 'didn't buy the single bullet theory' which was what the government investigation concluded as fact.

The shooting death of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 while he was riding in an open-topped convertible along a parade route in Dallas, Texas.

Because of the hurried pace of the investigation, the quick vigilante murder of the lone suspect, and conflicting reports of who knew what have spawned on an undying slew of conspiracy theories that Mr Kennedy was shot by a long list of people other than Lee Harvey Oswald, the man officially thought to have 'acted alone'.
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Key

Baltimore, Maryland Woman, 90, Locks Police Officer in Basement, Wins $95,000 Settlement

Author
Source
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:40 UTC
police car
© Alamy
In one of the more unusual police brutality lawsuits in recent years, 90-year-old Baltimore resident Venus Green was awarded a $95,000 settlement earlier this month after a 2009 incident in which she locked a police officer in the basement of her home.

According to WBAL TV, police came to Green's home after her grandson Tallie had been shot. Green told the TV station that Tallie had been shot at a convenience store, but officers insisted it happened in Green's home, and that Tallie had either been shot by Green or had shot himself. With that, one officer forced his way into her home, without a warrant, toward the basement where Tallie lived to look for blood or other evidence.

Green told WBAL the officer shoved her, pushed her over a chair, handcuffed her and insulted her. When the officer then went into her basement, she says she shut the door and locked him inside. She later brought a civil rights lawsuit, and in early April accepted the city's settlement offer. "[I'm a] law-abiding citizen," Green told WBAL. "I've never been arrested, I paid my taxes, owned my home, my husband died 34 years ago. [I] raised my son and I have been brutally abused. I feel like the police department needs to go back to school."
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Pistol

Florida Teens Executed Over Drug Deal

Michael Allen
Opposing Views
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:48 UTC
Florida drug killing
In Orlando, Florida, Orange County sheriff's deputies identified two bodies found burning along a popular bike trail as 16-year-old Nicholas Presha and 18-year-old Jeremy Stewart. They were apparently shot execution style over a possible drug deal gone bad. Authorities believe the pair owed $500.

The bodies were reportedly found early Sunday morning just off Cady Way Trail near Full Sail University. In a 911 call released by police, a caller says: "I can't tell if there is two mannequins or two people burning."
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Light Saber

About Time! Monsanto sued for poisoning Argentine farmers


Russia Today
Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:59 UTC
Monsanto poisons farmers
© Reuters/Sarah ConardMembers of the "Occupy" movement in the Midwest protest against Monsanto's agricultural practices in front of the Missouri Botanical Garden during the "Occupy the Midwest" regional conference in St. Louis, Missouri March 16, 2012
A lawsuit filed this week claims that the Monsanto corporation, "motivated by a desire for unwarranted economic gain," knowingly poisoned farmers that were pressured to use the company's chemicals.

Farmers from Argentina claim that agricultural giant Monsanto, along with Philip Morris and other major American tobacco companies, asked them to use chemicals on their crops that caused "devastating birth defects." The plaintiffs say that the corporations being included in the suit were aware of the implications but failed to warn the farmers, instead acting "by a desire for unwarranted economic gain and profit."

In the suit, filed this week at New Castle County Court in the state of Delaware, Monsanto, Philip Morris and others are said to have "wrongfully caused the parental and infant plaintiffs to be exposed to those chemicals and substances which they both knew, or should have known, would cause the infant offspring of the parental plaintiffs to be born with devastating birth defects." A 55-page complaint filed in court alleges that those chemicals caused conditions to develop that include cerebral palsy, epilepsy, spina bifida, congenital heart defects, Down syndrome, missing fingers and blindness.
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