Society's ChildS


Cross

Christian ex-mayor admits to raping Ohio 4-year-old - blames her as 'willing participant'

Richard Keenan
© WKNBRichard Kennan
A former Ohio mayor has admitted to repeatedly raping a child, prosecutors said — but the self-described Christian blames the girl for her own sexual abuse.

Richard Keenan, who served as mayor of Hubbard in 2010 and 2011, was indicted last month eight counts of rape and 12 counts of attempted rape and gross sexual imposition, reported the Youngstown Vindicator.

The 65-year-old Keenan pleaded not guilty last month during a court appearance, but prosecutors said he admitted to sexually assaulting the girl over a three-year period, beginning when she was 4 years old.

Prosecutors said Keenan confessed to the sex abuse to his wife, a pastor, a social worker and his brother- and sister-in-law.

According to court filings, the child told Keenan's wife about the abuse and she confronted him — and he then admitted "I did it." Keenan also admitted the abuse during group discussions at a nearby hospital, and he then voluntarily checked himself into a psychiatric facility because he was suicidal.

Comment: To learn more about sexual predators among us and how to protect yourself and your children, listen to or read our interview with Dr. Anna Salter, author of the best-selling book, "Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders, Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children".


HAL9000

Simulated world? Bank of America researchers claim there's 50% chance we live in a Matrix-style virtual reality

matrix code
© GettySecretsRandom hexadecimal codes like matrix style
Top bank analysts claim there's a 50% chance our world is a computer simulation and we're all plugged into a Matrix-style virtual reality. And they also reckon if it's true - then there's no way we'll ever find out about it.

The Bank of America's Merrill Lynch made the astonishing claim in a research note citing comments by top scientists, astrophysicists and philosophers.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk is one of those who is almost certain our world is run by artificial intelligence developed by a future civilization.

His mind-bending theory is backed up by the bank's analysts who said in a report our world could actually be a simulation created by a future civilisation.

Biohazard

Doped up cop passes out while snorting Xanax in police cruiser and crashes into middle school

cop snorting xanax
A Raleigh County Sheriff's deputy was recently arrested after he was found unresponsive in his patrol car — after crashing it into the entrance of a middle school.

Sgt. Roger Dale Richmond Jr. of Shady Spring, 41, was taken into custody and charged with Driving Under the Influence of a Controlled Substance (DUI) and Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance, according to WVVA.

Police say Richmond, now a former sergeant, notified fellow officer, Lt. T.L. Miles, that he had been involved in a motor vehicle collision. Police say they were investigating skid marks at a nearby gas station when they followed fresh ruts in the embankment and dirt on the road. About a mile and a half down the road from the gas station, deputies found Richmond's marked patrol car smashed up at the entrance of Shady Spring Middle School. The front bumper had been torn off and the tire was entirely gone.

As police approached the vehicle, they saw an unconscious Richmond in the front seat. Upon further inspection, they noticed a short straw used for snorting crushed pills between his legs. Police also found that the front seat of the car was covered in a powdery blue substance.

2 + 2 = 4

The changing trends of homeschooling in America

homeschooling
© CC BY-SAHomeschooling is a growing trend in America. Children learning at Woodlands Nature Station in Kentucky. Land Between the Lakes KY/TN,
As children head back to school, an increasing number of their homeschooled peers will be starting their academic year as well. Homeschooling in the United States is growing at a strong pace.

Recent statistics indicate that 1.5 million children were homeschooled in the United States in 2007. This is up significantly from 1.1 million children in 2003 and 850,000 children in 1999.

The homeschooling movement first emerged in earnest during the 1980s. Back then it was largely led by evangelical Christians. But as the movement has grown, it has also changed. Today's homeschooling families may increasingly welcome cooperation with their local public school districts. In my own research, I have seen how diverse homeschoolers now are. This diversity challenges any simplistic understanding of what homeschooling is and what impact it will have on the public school system.

So how do we understand this evolution in American education?

Comment: Another reason the statistics may be going up for homeschooling is the growing concern among parents about the declining quality of American Education and the implementation of abysmal curriculums like Common Core.

Christopher Chase makes some important points about 'education systems' as a whole:

It's a Pink Floyd World - Welcome (back) to the machine - Kids
In most nations, educational systems are set up the same way animals are trained, where children who comply with adult demands are given a pat on the head and rewarded. Those who endure the training process increase their chances of getting into "good" colleges, and hopefully moving on to "good" jobs in the global economy.

Those who are bored, confused or disinterested may eventually find themselves with lower paying jobs and run the risk of being drawn toward "harmful" and "antisocial" activities such as gang membership, drugs, crime or alcoholism. Schools are society's indoctrination system, created to train and measure our children, using test scores to determine their future social status.

Pink Floyd's social criticism was pretty much on target. The system has been set up this way since the beginning of the last century, as a way of programming children, much as soldiers are trained, to serve as "tools" for those in positions of authority. It's a highly mechanistic and authoritarian system, not at all in tune with the creative and holistic ways young people naturally learn.

Time is cut up into disconnected periods, while children are forced to comply with the instructions of a single adult, rather than freely exploring what interests them. Subjects are taught in fragmented compartments, as if they had no connection to one another or the real world. We learned math and science for tests, not for building our own homes, managing bank accounts, understanding the global economy or experiencing how we are connected to the rest of the Universe.



Laptop

Facebook loses bid to block 14yo girl's lawsuit over nude image posted on 'shame page'

Facebook logo
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Facebook has lost a legal bid to prevent a 14-year-old girl from suing the social media giant over a naked photo that was posted on a "shame page." The social network insists it is protected under European law.

A high court judge in Belfast rejected an attempt by Facebook to have the girl's claim thrown out on Monday.

The teen, who cannot be named due to her age, is seeking damages for misuse of private information, negligence, and breach of the Data Protection Act, after a naked photo was posted on a "shame page" several times between November 2014 and January 2016.

The girl's lawyers allege the nude photo was obtained through blackmail and was published as a form of revenge.

Horse

45,000 Wild horses to be killed by Bureau of Land Management

Horses to be killed
© Paulo Whitaker / Reuters
Few animals in the US are as romanticized as horses. From gracing the covers of cheesy romance novels or spaghetti westerns, to being the stereotypical rich person's pet, horses occupy a unique cultural space. But the US government is about to kill 45,000 of them.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is under fire after deciding to euthanize 45,000 unadopted wild horses it has been keeping in holding facilities across the US. The wild horses were removed from their natural habitat by the BLM so that privately-owned cattle could graze on the land for profit.

The decision hasn't been particularly well received. The Humane Society referred to it as "a complete abdication of responsibility for their care," and panned the bureau for not using birth control to curtail the growth of the population.

Handcuffs

Research shows families and communities shoulder over half the $1.2 trillion that mass incarceration costs U.S. society

prison inmates
© Joshua Lott / Reuters
Imprisoning millions of Americans comes at a cost, and not just for local, state and federal government budgets. A new study finds society itself is missing out on more than $1 trillion, mostly impacting the family members and communities of the incarcerated.

"For every dollar in corrections spending, there's another 10 dollars of other types of costs to families, children and communities that nobody sees because it doesn't end up on a state budget," Michael McLaughlin, a doctoral student and certified public accountant, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

McLaughlin is the lead researcher for "The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the US," a study recently conducted by Washington University in St. Louis. Along with a team of researchers, he and Carrie Pettus-Davis, a co-director for the Smart Decarceration Initiative and director of the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, both Washington University-based, determined that the "annual economic burden" of US incarceration is an estimated $1.2 trillion, according to The Source, a Washington University publication.

The $1.2 trillion figure is nearly 6 percent of GDP and is 11 times the cost of what governments pay for corrections, the study reports, based on 22 costs from three categories: "costs of corrections," "costs borne by incarcerated persons," and "costs borne by families, children, and communities."

Comment: Prisons have openly given up the pretense of being 'correctional institutions'. They are for-profit enterprises housing a huge population of slave labor. Social costs don't enter into this psychopathic equation at all.


Dollar

Supervisor of "massive fraud" at Wells Fargo Bank leaves her job with $125 million bonus

Carrie Tolstedt
Carrie Tolstedt
There was a burst of righteous populist anger anger last week, when it emerged that Wells Fargo had engaged in pervasive, "massive" fraud since at least 2011, including opening credit cards secretly without a customer's consent, creating fake email accounts to sign up customers for online banking services, and forcing customers to accumulate late fees on accounts they never even knew they had. For this criminal conduct, Wells was fined $185 million (including a $100 million penalty from the CFPB, the largest penalty the agency has ever issued). In all, Wells opened 1.5 million bank accounts and "applied" for 565,000 credit cards that were not authorized by their customers.

As "punishment" Wells Fargo told CNN that it had fired 5,300 employees related to the shady behavior over the last few years. The firings represent about 1% of its workforce and took place over several years. The fired workers went to far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said. What was hushed away is that not a single employee will go to prison, and that ultimately it will be Wells Fargo's shareholders - such as Warren Buffett - who will end up footing the bill.

What Wells did not disclose publicly to anyone is that the head of the group responsible for Wells' biggest consumer fraud scandal in years, is quietly leaving the bank with a $125 million bonus, a bonus which as Fortune's Stephen Gandel writes today will not see even one cent clawed back as part of the dramatic revelations.

War Whore

Bullied 7-yo handcuffed by school cop, ACLU files lawsuit against Kansas City Public Schools

police brutality child handcuffed
© KMBC 9 News Kansas City / YouTubeKalyb Wiley Primm
The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri has filed a lawsuit against Kansas City Public Schools in response to the 2014 handcuffing of a second grader who was crying and screaming in class while being bullied.

In 2014, Kalyb Wiley Primm, who was seven years old and less than four feet tall at the time, was being teased for having a hearing impediment inside a classroom at George Melcher Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri, according to the lawsuit. He began to cry and scream. School resource officer Brandon Craddock heard the cries and pulled Primm out of the classroom to take the boy to Principal Anne Wallace's office.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Primm family, alleges that Craddock pulled a "frightened" Primm by one arm through the hallway of the school. When Primm held on to a handrail with his free hand, Craddock twisted the boy's arms and handcuffed him.

"Instead of stopping or employing any de-escalation techniques, Defendant Craddock twisted (Kalyb's) arms and handcuffed ... his arms behind his back, and then led him to the front office in handcuffs," the lawsuit says.

Comment: Cops are being used in ever larger numbers to "control" students. SRO programs socialize students for an over-policed world, normalizing it to the point where students accept metal detectors, unannounced, suspicion-less locker searches and even the use of drug-sniffing dogs.


Pistol

"Failed to eliminate threat": Brave cop fired for NOT killing a man who was attempting 'suicide by cop'

Ronald D. Williams
Ronald D. Williams Jr., Killed by police on May 6, 2016 — seen here holding son.
Weirton police officer Stephen Mader exhibited extreme bravery and restraint earlier this year when he chose not to kill a suicidal man. For displaying such courage and reserve, Mader's department fired him.

On May 6, 2016, Mader responded to a call about a domestic incident. When he showed up to the call, Mader confronted Ronald D. Williams Jr., 23, who was armed and in a diminished mental state.

Madar said that he began talking to the young man in his "calm voice."

"I told him, 'Put down the gun,' and he's like, 'Just shoot me.' And I told him, 'I'm not going to shoot you brother.' Then he starts flicking his wrist to get me to react to it.

"I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and de-escalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop" situation.

Comment: Because Mader had been hired less than a year prior and West Virginia is an "at-will" employment state, he had no legal recourse in the matter.