Society's ChildS


Bad Guys

Muammar Gaddafi's grisly death raises questions the length of Libya's revolutionary road

Andrew Gilligan
The Telegraph
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:05 UTC
The manner of Gaddafi's killing raises questions for the militias that make up the new Libya, writes Andrew Gilligan in Sirte.


The highway from Benghazi to Sirte was the Libyan revolution's battleground and success gauge: the road it drove up, retreated down, drove up again, then got stuck on for months; the road, this Thursday, on which it trapped and killed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

All along the revolutionary road, less than 48 hours after that final triumph, we found something unexpected: a smidgeon of sympathy for the dead dictator.

In Benghazi, on the main square where it all started, they were slaughtering camels in celebration. There they sat, eight of them, feet tied so they could not move, quivering with fear as they were beheaded one by one. As soldiers fired rifles in the air, members of the cheering crowd held up the severed heads as trophies. They daubed their hands in the camel-blood, and gave the V-for-victory sign with dripping fingers.

But away from the square, the birthplace of the revolution was not in party mood. The streets were fairly quiet. And in the cafes, people were watching TV pictures - more graphic than any shown in Britain - of a bloodied Gaddafi dragged along and beaten, feebly protesting, before a gun was put to his head.

The picture then cut to the dead ex-leader being rolled onto the pavement, blood pooling from the back of his skull.
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Stormtrooper

US, Utah: Police pepper spray Haka dancers at football game


The Associated Press
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC

Police in a small Utah town are being accused of overreacting after using pepper spray to break up a group of Polynesian men and boys performing a traditional dance called the Haka after a high school football game.

The police action came after a pair of officers unsuccessfully attempted to disperse the dozen or so performers who were blocking an exit after the Union-Uintah game Thursday night, the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune reported.

A form of the Haka has been popularized by rugby players in New Zealand who chant, beat their chests and gesture aggressively before matches. The Maori tradition also can include fierce facial expressions. Haka are now performed at football and rugby games around the world.

The group in Roosevelt, a town of 8,000, had traveled about 125 miles east from the Salt Lake City area to watch a relative play his final game for Union, which lost to rival Uintah and finished the season without a victory.
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Pistol

US, Georgia: Sheriff: Fort Gordon soldier kills deputy, self


The Associated Press
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:52 UTC
police, crime scene
© unknown
Authorities say a Tennessee National Guardsman training at a Georgia military post shot and killed a sheriff's deputy, then committed suicide alongside a road.

Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength said evidence shows 26-year-old Christopher Michael Hodges fired 35 rounds from his M4 semiautomatic rifle during the incident early Sunday morning. The Augusta Chronicle reports that Hodges and 47-year-old Deputy James D. Paugh were found dead on the side of Bobby Jones Expressway.

Hodges had been training at Fort Gordon.

Strength said Paugh was off duty and on his way home when he saw a suspicious car on the side of the road. He was shot several times when he stopped to check on the car and apparently fired two shots from his service weapon before he was killed.
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Info

Life's Extremes: Tightwads vs. Spendthrifts

Adam Hadhazy
Live Science
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:11 UTC
Infograph
© Karl Tate / Live Science

In the shop window gleams the coolest pair of shoes ever. Despite being able to afford them, some people will walk away, while others - though the purchase blows a hole in their personal finances - grab the kicks anyway.

We all have to spend money for necessities, such as groceries or rent. Occasionally, we also indulge on unhealthy treats and entertainment. Two contrary sorts of people, however, struggle to open their wallets even for things they really need - "tightwads" - while others can't stop their shopping sprees - "spendthrifts."

"Tightwads spend less than they should," said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. "They recognize that they should be spending more for their own wellbeing. The spendthrifts are the opposite. They spend more than they should spend by their own self-definition."

Studies have revealed a possible basis in the brain for why money burns a hole in some peoples' pockets while the mere thought of spending makes others grimace. Understanding why people under- and over-spend can help with ensuring they don't unduly burden themselves - or their bank accounts - when making a purchase.
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Phoenix

Fire halts Swedish nuclear reactor


RIA Novosti
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:09 UTC
Image
© © AFP/ Paul Madej / Scanpix SwedenOskarshamn. Archivbild.
A nuclear reactor in the Swedish town of Oskarshamn was closed down on Saturday night after a fire broke out at the nuclear power plant, Sweden's newspaper Local reported on Sunday, referring to the plant's operator, OKG.

The fire broke out in the turbine hall of unit 2 and was quickly put out by the plant's own emergency services, after which the reactor and the turbine were closed down as a precautionary measure.
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Stop

Dozens missing after Nepal bridge collapse


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:52 UTC
Image
© Agence France-PresseMap showing location of the suspension bridge which collapsed in Nepal on Saturday
Rescuers were searching Saturday for more than 40 people, including a bus carrying Indian tourists, after an overloaded suspension bridge collapsed in southern Nepal, killing two people, police said.

Emergency personnel had managed to pull just four people alive from the fast-flowing Trishuli River and recovered the bodies of an Indian and a Nepali, said Gorkha district police officer Krishna Acharya.

"Two people have died when the suspension bridge over Trishuli river connecting Gorkha and Chitwan districts to the Prithvi Highway collapsed this afternoon (Saturday)," he said.

"There were 47 people on the bridge when it crashed and plunged into the river," he told AFP.
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Stop

India: 31 killed, over 100 injured as wooden bridge collapses in Darjeeling


NDTV
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 02:23 UTC
Image
© Unknown
At least 31 people have been killed and more than 100 injured as a wooden suspension bridge collapsed at Bijanbari, 40 kilometre from Darjeeling in West Bengal.

While 10 people died on the spot, the rest succumbed to their injuries in hospitals. The death toll may rise as some of those injured are critical.

Over a 100 people had gathered on the bridge to listen to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leaders. The pressure of the crowd led to the collapse of the bridge.

The suspension bridge was built in 1972. It was meant for pedestrians but over time was used by motorcycles which weakened it.

The Army's Mountain Brigade at Darjeeling has sent troops to the site for assistance.

The West Bengal government has announced a compensation of Rs. two lakh to the families of those killed.
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Family

Class War in America

Stephen Lendman
SteveLendmanBlog
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 20:56 UTC
class warfare
© Unknown
Class war raged for decades. Business and America's super-rich always win. In his 1925 short story titled Rich Boy, F. Scott Fitzgerald said:
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early...They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we.."

"Even when they enter deep into our world....they still think that that they are better than we are. They are different."
In his article, titled "The Truth About 'Class War' in America," economist Richard Wolff said:
"The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies."

Corporate giants and America's super-rich waged war against working Americans and won. Notably since the 1970s, "(b)usiness and its allies shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals."
Since WW II, tax rates on super-rich Americans fell from 91% to 35% today. Obama's deficit cutters want it lowered to 24% along with eliminating some deductions with loopholes to compensate and save others. Moreover, they want the top corporate tax rate slashed from 35% to 26%.

Many corporate giants, in fact, pay minimal or no taxes. Some, like General Electric, get generous rebates in highly profitable years. They game the system, benefiting form tax laws they write. American workers lose out from greater than ever burdens on them.
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Bad Guys

Convicted pedophile shuffled between Scout troops in Canada, U.S.

Judith Lavoie and Derek Spalding
National Post
Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:34 UTC
Image
© UnknownRichard Turley in his scouting uniform in the 1980s
A Scout leader, later convicted of numerous sexual assaults against children, was shuffled from a Scout group in central Victoria to a Sea Scout group in Cordova Bay, - about 10 kilometres across town - after regional Scout Canada leaders decided suspicions of abuse were not hard enough evidence to go to police.

Richard (Rick) Turley, 58, who was involved with Scouts in California and in Victoria through the 1970s and '80s and who spent years preying on victims in Victoria and other Vancouver Island communities, is a focal point of a widespread investigation by the CBC's The Fifth Estate and Los Angeles Times.

The investigation into Scouts in both Canada and the United State claims the organizations kept confidential lists of pedophiles.

In the 1980s, when Turley started volunteering with the 2nd Douglas Scout Group in Victoria, which met at Craigflower elementary school and included boys from the Gorge, View Royal, Burnside and Tillicum areas, had already had been convicted in the U.S. of kidnapping a boy he met through Scouts and served time in a state hospital as a "mentally disordered sex offender."
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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: 300,000 babies stolen from their parents - and sold for adoption: Haunting BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic church in Spain

Polly Dunbar
The Daily Mail
Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:59 UTC
Identity crisis:
stolen spanish babies
© Rex/BBCRandy Ryder as a baby being cradled in a Malaga hospital in 1971 by the woman who bought him
Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals.

The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco's dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.

Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.

Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth.

But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial.

In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents.

Comment: Trafficking infants and protecting paedophiles. How can any sane person stay affiliated with such a corrupt organization as the Catholic church?

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