Society's ChildS


Wolf

'Death Squad': Full horror emerges of how rogue U.S. brigade murdered and mutilated innocent Afghan civilians - and kept their body parts as trophies

Daniel Bates and Mark Duell
The Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:06 UTC
  • Rolling Stone reveals how U.S. troops murdered Afghan civilians
  • Soldiers cut off 15-year-old boy's finger and kept it as trophy
  • Video captures U.S. troops cheering as airstrike kills two Afghan civilians
  • New pictures show dead Afghan man's head on a stick
  • Soldier stabbed the body of a dead Afghan civilian
  • Military tried to pull pictures out of circulation to avoid another Abu Ghraib
  • Army says photos are 'in striking contrast' to its standards and values
    •
The Pentagon tonight apologised after shocking new details emerged of how American soldiers formed a 'death squad' to randomly murder Afghan civilians and mutilate their corpses.

An investigation by Rolling Stone magazine details how senior officers failed to stop troops killing Afghans and keeping their body parts as trophies.

In one horrific episode, the magazine claims troops threw a grenade at an innocent Afghan boy before chopped off his finger and later using it as 'gambling chip' in a game of cards.

The disturbing detail included in the dossier accuses American troops of a new level of depravity and is likely to be a public relations disaster for the military.

The U.S. Army says the photos of American soldiers posing with dead Afghans are 'in striking contrast' to its standards and values - apologising for any distress caused by the images.

Image
© Rolling StoneDead: Afghans are tied to a post in one of the many images published by Rolling Stone from the 'Kill Team'

Image
© Rolling StonePhoto: Jeremy Morlock, right, poses with David Bram with weapons that they have taken from dead Afghans
Read More...
Laptop

Doctors Warn About 'Facebook Depression' In Teens

Lindsey Tanner
CBS News
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 06:15 UTC

Add "Facebook depression" to potential harms linked with social media, an influential doctors' group warns, referring to a condition it says may affect troubled teens who obsess over the online site.

A New Condition?

Researchers disagree on whether it's simply an extension of depression some kids feel in other circumstances, or a distinct condition linked with using the online site.

But there are unique aspects of Facebook that can make it a particularly tough social landscape to navigate for kids already dealing with poor self-esteem, said Dr. Gwenn O'Keeffe, a Boston-area pediatrician and lead author of new American Academy of Pediatrics social media guidelines.

With in-your-face friends' tallies, status updates and photos of happy-looking people having great times, Facebook pages can make some kids feel even worse if they think they don't measure up.
Read More...
X

EU to ban cars from cities by 2050

Bruno Waterfield
The Telegraph, UK
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© AlamyTop of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of 'zero' for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities
Cars will be banned from London and all other cities across Europe under a draconian EU masterplan to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years.

The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050.

The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.

Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities.

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

"That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."
Read More...
Stormtrooper

US: Border agent shot man in back 3 times

Amanda Lee Myers
Associated Press
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:28 UTC
Phoenix, Arizona - A Mexican man was climbing a ladder at an Arizona-Mexico border wall when a Border Patrol agent fatally shot him three times in the back, a sheriff's spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Monday.

Cochise County sheriff's investigators have no indication that Carlos La Madrid, 19, assaulted or tried to assault the agent when he was shot March 21, said agency spokeswoman Carol Capas.

La Madrid had fled police in the Arizona border city of Douglas in a truck and drove to the border with Mexico. He was climbing a ladder and trying to cross the border, and another man atop the wall began throwing rocks at the pursuing agent, Capas said.
Read More...
Pistol

US: Sheriff: Fla. teen with gun charged after pistol-whipping mother, forcing her to buy her a car


The Associated Press
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:18 UTC
Authorities in southwest Florida say a 17-year-old girl pointed a gun at her mother, pistol-whipped her and forced her to drive to a dealership to buy her a used car.

The sheriff's office in Lee County said Monday that the teen has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, among other counts, and was being held at a juvenile detention centre. The Associated Press doesn't identify minors charged with juvenile crimes.

According to officials, the mother said she didn't want to press charges because her daughter had been accepted to several Ivy League schools.

Authorities said they decided to arrest the teenager after learning that the gun had been stolen last year. The teen was not charged in that crime.

Read More...
Eye 1

Vanishing act by Japanese executive during nuclear crisis raises questions

Andrew Higgins
The Washington Post
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:46 UTC
Masataka Shimizu
© Associated PressMasataka Shimizu

Tokyo - In normal times, Masataka Shimizu lives in The Tower, a luxury high rise in the same upscale Tokyo district as the U.S. Embassy. But he hasn't been there for more than two weeks, according to a uniformed doorman.

The Japanese public hasn't seen much of him recently either. Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, the company that owns a haywire nuclear power plant just 150 miles from the capital, is the most invisible - and also most reviled - chief executive in Japan.

Amid rumors that Shimizu had fled the country, checked into hospital or even committed suicide, company officials said Monday that their boss suffered an unspecified "small illness" due to overwork after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami crashing onto his company's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Latest helicopter footage of Fukushima


YouTube
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:31 UTC
Workers are still battling to contain radiation leaks at a nuclear plant severely damaged by the disaster. Japan's nuclear agency says levels of radioactive iodine in the sea near the plant have risen to almost two thousand times the usual level.

Read More...
Wine

North Dakota economy booms, population soars

Dennis Cauchon
USA Today
Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:13 UTC
Image
North Dakota, the state with the nation's lowest unemployment rate, capped a decade of economic prosperity with dramatic population growth in its biggest cities.

Fargo added nearly 15,000 residents to hit a record population of 105,549, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday. Its fast-growing neighbor of West Fargo added an additional 11,000 residents to reach a population of 25,830.

Fargo has seen steady growth over the decade - the housing boom missed it - to reach a size that surprised city officials.

"Above 100,000? Wow. That puts us into a different category of city. That's great," says Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker. The city is now home to about one of every six North Dakota residents.

Fargo's growth is especially striking considering North Dakota's population is only 672,591, the nation's third smallest. The state's total population grew 4.7% from 2000 to 2010, below the national average of 9.7%, but robust for a region that has suffered for decades from a depopulation of the Great Plains.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Oregon: Mysterious wheat crop loss puzzles researchers

Peter Beland
Oregon Business
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:57 UTC
Wheat
© Oregon Business

Freak rainstorms fell. Fungi spread. Viruses attacked. Clouds of herbicides drifted. Not necessarily in that order or combination and what exactly happened remains unclear. But what is known is that last fall swaths of wheat on roughly 40,000 acres - worth about $15.4 million - in Umatilla, Morrow and Gilliam counties turned yellow and withered in a perfect storm of bad conditions.

Oregon State University plant pathologist Christopher Mundt got a call in October from OSU Gilliam County extension agent Jordan Maley. "I knew something was wrong when he called; I mean, he's a fourth-generation farmer," says Mundt. A crop disease specialist who will excitedly talk about the decades during which he purposefully stressed plants to infect them with all manner of afflictions, Mundt was a bit dumbfounded when Maley described the isolated 150-acre field in Eastern Oregon that had splotches of withered plants. The young wheat leaves were bursting out the sides of the plant instead of sprouting upward, curling up like an accordion. "I saw things I have never seen before," says Maley. "It's been very controversial. When it boils down to it, we really don't know what's going on."

The ravaged wheat in Gilliam County was not the only strange thing cropping up in Eastern Oregon wheat fields last fall. According to Maley, September saw two inches of rain in one day in Gilliam County, about 15% of the arid county's total annual precipitation. Rain fell throughout the region during a time when growers usually can count on weed-free fields to plant the soft white winter wheat for which the Northwest region is known, a crop that has seen a meteoric rise in value worldwide in the past year. With the unusual and early rain, weeds bloomed throughout the region.
Read More...
Cowboy Hat

Joe Bageant, 'Redneck' Rebel and Popular Progressive Author, Dies at 64


Alternet.org
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:20 UTC
Image
© Rich Cooley/DailyWriter Joe Bageant sits inside his Winchester home by his laptop computer. His book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War," examines problems with political rivalry within the United States today.
Progressives have lost one of their most talented writers in Joe Bageant, who assailed the corporate takeover of American democracy and the collapse of the middle class.

On Sunday March 27, progressives lost one of their most talented authors in Joe Bageant, who died at age 64 after a four month bout with cancer. The recipient of high praise from luminaries such as Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn, Bageant was one of AlterNet's most popular essayists for his work on the corporate takeover of American democracy, the destruction of the middle-class over the past four decades and the plight of Redneck America. Bageant grew up in Winchester, Va. and his work often dwelled on the misery and duldrums of rural blue collar life.

Dave Pollard, a colleague of Bageant's, summed up the author's unique approach and insight reviewing Deer Hunting with Jesus, Bageant's 2008 book, a revisit to his Virginia roots:

Comment: For more of Joe Bageant's articles, see this Sott link:

AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM? Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady Gaga

Read More...