Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

US: D.C., Park Police Dismantle Occupy Shelter, Arrest 31

Meredith Somers
The Washington Times
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© ReutersHolding out: The final 16 protesters who decided to stay in the shelter which was surrounded by officers
U.S. Park Police and a D.C. police SWAT team clashed Sunday with Occupy D.C. protesters and took down a wooden-frame shelter the Occupiers had brought into McPherson Square and then refused to dismantle.

Sgt. David Schlosser, a Park Police spokesman, said the structure was to be taken down Sunday night. An inspector had viewed it earlier and deemed the shelter not safe.

Sgt. Schlosser said 31 people were arrested Sunday, most for disobeying police orders and crossing a police line. One protester, named David, also was slapped with public indecency and urination charges for allegedly relieving himself from atop the structure. He was the last protester to leave - to cheers from a crowd.

The showdown started before noon when police said organizers would need a permit and that they had an hour to take down the structure, which the protesters set up Saturday night.

Police then arrived on horseback, and the standoff extended into the evening with some protesters still on the roof of the structure as officers using a basket crane, or cherry picker, tried to remove them.
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Wolf

US: Sandusky: 'I'm Not the Monster Everyone Made Me Out to Be'

Leezel Tanglao and Olivia Katrandjian
ABC News
Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
Jerry Sandusky
© unknownJerry Sandusky
Lawyers for one of the alleged victims of Jerry Sandusky said the former Penn State assistant coach's interview with the New York Times goes "a long way toward corroborating the victims' accounts and further expanding the web of liability" in the sexual abuse scandal.

"He admits he 'wrestled' and showered alone with boys, gave them gifts and money, and travelled with them. Surprisingly, Sandusky's interview also revealed that to this day, Penn State has not taken away Sandusky's keys to the Football locker room where so much of the abuse occurred," the statement read.

Sandusky, who was an assistant to college football coaching icon Joe Paterno for 46 years, defended himself against sexual abuse allegations for the first time in an on-camera interview with the Times.

"These allegations are false, I didn't do those things," Sandusky told the Times. "I'm not the monster everyone made me out to be. I didn't engage in sexual acts."

Sandusky, who also ran a charity for disadvantaged youth called Second Mile, has been charged with molesting eight boys over the course of 15 years. He is scheduled to return to court for a preliminary hearing on Dec. 13.

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Attention

Peru Declares State of Emergency

Franklin Briceno
The Associated Press
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Reuters//Enrique Castro-MendivilAndean people protest against Newmont Mining's Conga gold project during a march near the Cortada lagoon at Peru's region of Cajamarca, November 24, 2011.
President Ollanta Humala declared a 60-day state of emergency Sunday in a northern region torn by more than a week of protests against a highlands gold mine, the country's biggest investment, by peasants who fear for their water supply.

The emergency restricts civil liberties such as the right to assembly and allows arrests without warrants in four provinces of Cajamarca state that have been paralyzed for 11 days by increasingly violent protests against the $4.8-billion Conga gold and copper mining project. U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corp. is the project's majority owner.

Dozens have been injured in clashes between police and protesters, some of whom have vandalized Conga property.

Humala said in a brief televised address Sunday night that protest leaders had shown no interest "in reaching minimal agreements to permit a return of social peace" after a day of talks in Cajamarca with Cabinet chief Salmon Lerner and three other ministers.
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Heart - Black

US, Arizona: Critics: 'Tough' sheriff botched sex-crime cases

Jacques Billeaud
The Associated Press
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© The Associated Press/Jack Kurtz/PoolIn this Oct. 18, 2011 file pool photo, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio testifies during the State Bar of Arizona's ongoing disciplinary hearings against former Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas and two assistants, at the Arizona Supreme Court in Phoenix. According to some current and former police officers, hundreds of sex-crimes investigations were allegedly mishandled by Arpaio's office.
The 13-year-old girl opened the door of her home in this small city on the edge of Phoenix to encounter a man who said that his car had broken down and he needed to use the phone. Once inside, the man pummeled the teen from behind, knocking her unconscious and sexually assaulting her.

Seven months before, in an apartment two miles away, another 13-year-old girl was fondled in the middle of the night by her mother's live-in boyfriend. She woke up in her room at least twice a week to find him standing over her, claiming to be looking for her mother's cell phone.

Both cases were among more than 400 sex-crimes reported to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office during a three-year period ending in 2007 - including dozens of alleged child molestations - that were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all, according to current and former police officers familiar with the cases.

In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio's office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations - with victims as young as 2 years old - where the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.

Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants.
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Info

China - Scorpios Need Not Apply: Zodiac Signs Inspire Job Bias

Benjamin Radford
Life's Little Mysteries
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:33 UTC
Horoscope
© Life's Little MysteriesIf you were born between March 21 and April 19, your astrological sign is said to be Aries. But this was only true for a while, back when the system was set up in 600 BC. Today, the Sun is no longer within the constellation of Aries during much of that period. From March 11 to April 18, the Sun is actually in the constellation of Pisces!

Everyone knows (or should know) that it's illegal for businesses to discriminate against people because of their gender, race, religion and other things, at least in the United States. But what about rejecting an applicant based on their astrological sign?

According to a job listing in the Chutian Metropolis Daily newspaper in Wuhan, China, a language training company there is seeking qualified applicants - as along as they're not Scorpios or Virgos. The Toronto Sun reported that Xia, a spokeswoman for the company, said that in her experience Scorpios and Virgos are often "feisty and critical." Xia said, "I hired people with those two star signs before, and they either liked quarreling with colleagues or they could not do the job for long."

She preferred potential applicants who were born under certain constellations, such as Capricorns, Libras and Pisces. To some it may seem like a bad joke, but it's not funny to qualified applicants desperate for a job who get turned away because of the company's credence in astrology.

It's not the first time an employer has come under fire for zodiac sign discrimination. In 2009 an Austrian insurance company advertised, "'We are looking for people over 20 for part-time jobs in sales and management with the following star signs: Capricorn, Taurus, Aquarius, Aries and Leo."
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Stormtrooper

UK: The moment protesters found a plain-clothes cop in their midst

Kevin Rawlinson
The Independent
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:27 UTC
occupy london
© The Independent

Campaigners complain of invasive policing tactics against Occupy movement in London

Usually, it is the police who kettle protesters. The tables were turned, though, when demonstrators unmasked and surrounded a plain-clothes officer who had infiltrated their midst during this week's public sector protests.

The hoodie-wearing interloper was discovered by protesters from the Occupy movement from St Paul's while they were attempting to take over a building near Piccadilly Circus in central London on Wednesday.

The incident, which occurred outside the offices of the mining company Xstrata, was captured on video by The Independent (above, left). Protesters asked the man whether he worked for the Metropolitan Police. He can be seen in the film nodding and answering: "Yeah, I'm a Met Police officer, yeah."
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Sun

The Great Global Warming Fizzle

Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:07 UTC
global warming fraud t-shirt
© n/a
How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastrians converted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can't kill what wasn't there to begin with.

Still, Zeus and Apollo are no longer with us, and neither are Odin and Thor. Among the secular gods, Marx is mostly dead and Freud is totally so. Something did away with them, and it's worth asking what.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.
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Dominoes

Best of the Web: No, America's Unemployment Rate is Not 8.6 Percent


RT.com
Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:39 UTC
unemployed
© n/a
That's just another lie fed to you by the mainstream media and the US government.

News from the Labor Department on Friday revealed that the unemployment rate in America miraculously improved, with only 8.6 of the country without jobs. If you think the news was too good to be true, that's because it is.

As the Department of Labor tells America that the percentage of the country without jobs is at a two year low, many Americans celebrate what hopes to be a recovery from a long-lasting recession that has spawned dire unemployment figures for over two years. On the contrary, the statistics for November are represented as good as the government makes it up to be because just that - it makes them up.

Yes, the US economy spawned around 120,000 jobs last month, but at the same time, around 315,000 Americans left the labor force - that is, they simply gave up. While 8.6 of Americans are unemployed in the sense that they are out of a job and actively seeking work, hundreds of thousands of people have simply stopped even trying to get a paycheck.
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Airplane

Canada Flight Delayed by Portuguese Suspect


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00 UTC
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© unknownA WestJet plane lands on the tarmac in this undated file photo. A WestJet flight headed to Toronto was forced to make an unexpected landing in Thunder Bay, Ont. after a bomb scare.
A Portuguese man on a Toronto-bound Boeing 737 jet whom airline staff wrongly believed was carrying a bomb prompted a late-night emergency landing, Canadian police told AFP on Sunday.

The WestJet Airlines plane left Vancouver with 118 passengers on board but it was diverted to Thunder Bay airport late Saturday after an in-air incident and bomb squad officers were called in, police said in a statement.

"The man has a history of mental health issues. He had become agitated during yesterday's flight from Vancouver to Toronto and had to be restrained by the flight crew," and he was arrested after landing, the statement said.

The aircraft was searched overnight and "an agitated 27-year-old male passenger," was held for a medical evaluation, according to police.
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Info

Monsanto to Stand Trial for Child's Death and Effects of Controversial Weed Killer


agricorporateaccountability.net
Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:24 UTC
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© agricorporateaccountability.net
It has been almost nine years since the death of the Paraguayan child Silvino Talavera, and Monsanto Company has yet to acknowledge that it has anything to do with it.

Eleven-year old Silvino was on the way home on January 2, 2003, passing next to fields growing glyphosate resistant soybeans. He had meat and noodles that his mother asked him to buy for lunch. Suddenly, he was enveloped in a cloud of the toxic herbicide Round-up (glyphosate), being sprayed on the genetically-modified crops from a tractor.

After they ate the meat and noodles, all the family fell ill with nausea and stomach ache, and his younger sister was taken to a hospital. A few days later, a cocktail of pesticides containing glyphosate was again sprayed 15 meters away from Silvino's house. The family, seeking protection, gathered inside one room, but the strong winds carried the pesticides inside the house. Silvino and his sister Sofia became very ill. Their mother again took them to the hospital, where Silvino died on January 7.

It was a clear case of poisoning, and yet Monsanto, the U.S.-based manufacturer of glyphosate, was never held liable by any court of law. This is the anomaly that the Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT) on Agrochemical Transnational Corporations (TNCs) seeks to correct.
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