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Anti-bullying program is the most effective in the world because it targets bystanders

Lisa Winter
A-Plus
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:53 UTC
Finland cracked the code.

Bullying girls
© PeopleImages / iStock
Nearly 1 in 4 students will experience it to an unhealthy degree and become victims of bullying. As kids and teens who get bullied are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those who aren't, schools are taking steps to rein in this harmful practice.

A new study published in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology has found the KiVa International program from Finland to be among the most successful against bullying. This is likely due to its unique approach of targeting not the bully nor the victim — but the bystander.

Comment: While it's good to see anti-bullying programs working to help kids be more empathetic, it's a shame we live in a world where they need to be implemented in the first place. For more information, see:

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Snakes in Suits

They must be joking: Fortune magazine names Monsanto one of world's most admired companies

John vibes
True Activist
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 01:00 UTC
Monsanto
In a list released this week by Fortune Magazine, Monsanto was named one of the world's most admired companies. Monsanto was honored as No. 1 in its industry sector, biotechnology, although they have very little competition in that market, and the list was decided by dubious means.

According to Business Wire, the honor that Monsanto received was decided by company surveys and peer ratings from senior executives, directors and analysts, in other words, it was based on the opinions of people within the industry, and within the company.

Monsanto Chairman and CEO, Hugh Grant, said in a statement that this is the third year that they were named as the top of their sector by Fortune.

Comment: The idea that the editors of this magazine could even consider Monsanto as admirable, given the devastation this corporate monstrosity has brought to bear on the world highlights their level of ponerization.

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Pirates

Beauty to die for: Skull style and corpse chic in fashion design, imagery and branding

Jacque Lynn Foltyn
Scan
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 21:50 UTC
death fashon

Comment: The culture of death is prevalent in the fashion world. Where violence and dehumanization are glamorized in photo shoots. This trend has been going on for years and is so disturbing, it has caused outrage.


Introduction

Is fashion something to die for? If one examines the content of fashion magazines, websites, videos, blogs, and fashion itself, the answer is a resounding "yes". Death is a fashion star, used to sell clothing, accessories, brands, celebrity, magazines, style-based television programming and websites, and cross-media collaborative efforts. From Alexander McQueen and Ralph Lauren to Target and H&M, skulls, crossbones, and skeleton motifs have taken over fashion. Death is the darling of not only the fashion set but also of the masses - and their dogs, who wear skull bedecked cardigans and collars and lounge on skeleton embossed beds. In mainstream fashion and lifestyle magazines, models, actors, stylists, and socialites not only model skull style, they model 'death' itself, in gruesome pantomimes of murder, suicide, and eco-disaster. These "corpse chic" (Foltyn, 2008b, 2009) narratives are 'ripped from the headlines', but are also inspired by literature, music, cinema, and true-crime television genres; they are the basis for photos shoots for the reality TV program America's Top Model. In the twenty-first century, and in more ways than one, fashion, to paraphrase Karl Lagerfeld, is not only "ephemeral" and "unfair"; it is "dangerous" (2006).
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Attention

Another one? Mysterious snipers spotted in Kiev during new Maidan

Ollie Richardson (translator)
Fort Russ
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 00:47 UTC
kiev snipers
In Ukraine, people are actively discussing the information on the unknown sniper groups who arrived in the center of Kiev.
On the Ukrainian social networks there were photos of unknown snipers taken by witnesses in the center of Kiev.

The photos were published on Sunday morning outside the walls of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. There were men dressed in strange uniforms.

The people of Kiev, with a disturbing sense of humor, asked each other, not "musicians" again? Since the riots on the Maidan, they are sometimes called snipers because of the similarity between the cases of the rifles and the protective cases of musical instruments.

"These musicians like to play at the funeral of a new 'heavenly thousand'", — said opponents of the Maidan.

As a reminder, "a Third Maidan", organized by the so-called Revolutionary right-wing forces (RPS), is ongoing in the centre of the Ukrainian capital.

Comment: Will this 'Maidan' fizzle out without U.S. State Department support and cookies? Just more of the same? Guess we'll just have to wait and see!

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Handcuffs

Egyptian author publishes book with sex and drug references, gets two years in jail

Ruth Michaelson
The Guardian
Sat, 20 Feb 2016 21:29 UTC
Naji court case
© Ramy Yaacoub/AP
Ahmed Naji, centre with head bowed, at the court hearing in Cairo on Saturday.
The Egyptian author Ahmed Naji has been given a two-year prison sentence for "violating public modesty" after publishing a book with references to sex and drugs.

Ramy Yaacoub, a political analyst and friend of the defendant, tweeted a picture of Naji bowing his head in the darkened courtroom as his case was fought. The ruling was initially overturned in January, but after an appeal by the prosecution the case returned to court and Naji was given the maximum possible sentence on Saturday.

An Egyptian citizen brought charges against the author after an excerpt of his novel The Guide for Using Life was published in the magazine Akhbar al-Adab. The editor of the magazine, Tarek El Taher, was also given a fine equivalent to £885.
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Newspaper

Malcolm X remembered 50 years after his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom


Democracy Now
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 20:32 UTC
Malcolm X
© cbsnews.com
This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, one of the most influential political figures of the 20th century. He was shot dead as he spoke before a packed audience at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965. Malcolm X had just taken the stage when shots rang out riddling his body with bullets. He was 39 years old. Details of his assassination remain disputed to this day. We air highlights from his speeches, "By Any Means Necessary" and "The Ballot or the Bullet." We also speak with journalist Herb Boyd, who along with Malcolm X's daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, co-edited The Diary of Malcolm X: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964.

Comment: Malcolm X: Capitalism is cowardly and like a vulture, 'can only suck the blood of the helpless'
Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation - which he said were a sham - and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. He had no hope that those who managed empire would ever get in touch with their better selves to build a country free of exploitation and injustice. He argued that from the arrival of the first slave ship to the appearance of our vast archipelago of prisons and our squalid, urban internal colonies where the poor are trapped and abused, the American empire was unrelentingly hostile to those Frantz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth." This, Malcolm knew, would not change until the empire was destroyed.

"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck," Malcolm said. "Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely."


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Ambulance

Man arrested for unpaid ambulance bill dies in police custody; case highlights illegitimacy of Utah's 'justice courts'

William N. Grigg
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 19:52 UTC
Rex Iverson
Bear River, Utah resident Rex Iverson, 45, died in the Box Elder County Jail on January 23 after being incarcerated for his failure to pay an ambulance bill. A deputy arrested him on a $350 bench warrant issued by the justice court on December 29. He was found unresponsive in his cell by a detention deputy a few hours after being arrested.

"We go to great lengths to never arrest anybody on these warrants," Box Elder County Chief Deputy Sheriff Dale Ward told the Ogden Standard-Examiner. "The reason we do that is we don't want to run a debtors' prison. There is no reason for someone to be rotting in jail on a bad debt."

Over the past three years, reports the Standard-Examiner, thirteen people have been arrested and jailed on civil bench warrants of the kind that resulted in Iverson's fatal incarceration. Roughly half of those arrests arose from civil judgments obtained by government agencies, the rest from private debts. Apart from Iverson, all of those thus imprisoned were released within 12 hours after posting bail or making a promise to appear in court.
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Newspaper

Crime lab scientists file suit claiming pressure from officers to overlook false DNA test results

John Vibes
The Free Thought Project
Sun, 21 Feb 2016 17:06 UTC
DNA arrest
A group of scientists who worked at a crime lab for the New York State police are now suing the department, claiming that the agency encouraged them to overlook false test results so they could get more prosecutions. The three scientists who filed the lawsuit said that they attempted to correct some of the errors that were taking place in the crime lab, and they were silenced and retaliated against because the errors were working out in the department's favor, and ensuring them more prosecutions.

Scientists Shannon Morris, Melissa Lee and Kevin Rafferty are seeking monetary damages in the lawsuit, but it has not been revealed how much. The group says that they wanted to implement the computerized DNA analysis system called TrueAllele in their crime lab, to ensure that the results of their tests were correct. The crime lab was working with the program for a short period of time before it was ultimately canceled by the department. However, the state police rejected the suggestion and they began to put more pressure on the scientists to secure convictions.

According to lawyer John Bailey, who will be representing the scientists, the crime lab in question had a culture of corruption.

Comment: It's sickening that even the scientific evidence that can mean the difference between freedom and a life behind bars -- or worse -- can't be relied upon. These police gangs are corrupt to their very cores.

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Attention

Saxony: Mob threatens and chants "go home" at refugees, shocks officials


RT
Sat, 20 Feb 2016 05:28 UTC
Threatening mob in Germany
© janboehm / YouTube
German officials say they are ashamed after a video emerged which showed a mob shouting and blocking a bus of refugees, among who were women and crying children. The video has gone viral and has sparked a heated debate online.

The video posted on Friday showed a group of men blocking a bus full of refugees in the town of Clausnitz, in the eastern German state of Saxony.

The video shows them shouting in German "we are the people" and urging the refugees to "go home."

A witness told the Freie Presse newspaper that one of the protesters had threatened the refugees with a cut-throat gesture.

In the video footage, women and children could be seen through the windscreen of the bus with a sign stating "enjoy your travel." The footage shows a boy crying and stepping out from the vehicle.

Comment: Utterly heartbreaking to see such things - and all the xenophobia, racism, fear and hatred - manipulated into being by Western governments seeking to divide and conquer Europe.

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Heart - Black

What a waste! NYPD forces vendors to throw out improperly displayed fruit

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Sat, 20 Feb 2016 16:32 UTC
NYPD
© Getty Images
A video was submitted to the Free Thought Project this week that is sure to infuriate all who see it.

In the video, which was originally posted on the Facebook page of Gary Schlesinger of Brooklyn, New York City trash collectors are being ordered around by an NYPD cop. They are picking up dozens of cases of fruits and vegetables — and throwing them into the back of a trash truck.

According to Schlesinger, "NYC [is] cracking down on fruit stores that put out merchandise more than 4 feet from store."

The food was allegedly blocking a sidewalk, so, instead of asking the owner move it, or merely confiscating it from a non-compliant owner and giving it to a food shelter, the government's decision was to put it in a landfill.
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