Society's ChildS


Pistol

Man eating chicken wings in his backyard shot fives times in the back by cops

Gregory Frazier
Gregory Frazier
Gregory Frazier, 55, was sitting in his backyard after an argument with his daughter, eating chicken wings and fries, when Broward Sheriff's deputies took his life. Frazier had done nothing illegal or threatening, and just wanted the cops to leave him alone.

For telling the cops to leave him alone, he got five bullets in the back.

The tragic story is another example of what can happen when you call the cops. All too often guns are drawn and deadly force is deployed as a first response.

Frazier's sister had called 9-1-1 during an argument he was having with his daughter and niece, Keneisha Woodard. Woodard said he was "a little rowdy with me" and flipped some furniture in the living room. But by the time deputies arrived, he was sitting in the backyard eating food.

Bullseye

Freedom of the press? Democracy Now's Amy Goodman issued an arrest warrant for coverage of Dakota pipeline protest

Amy Goodman
© Democracy Nows
A private security firm, guarding the highly controversial construction of a $3.8 billion oil pipeline, turned mercenary last weekend and were caught on video unleashing vicious attack dogs against a sizable crowd of peaceful protesters — including women and children. And now, the only people to be punished for the vicious attacks, are the ones who filmed it.

Saturday evening, Democracy Now! announced that an arrest warrant had been issued for host and executive producer Amy Goodman. Goodman, along with a team from the media outlet, were in North Dakota last week to cover the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The video taken by Democracy Now! of the horrid abuses inflicted on the protesters by private security quickly went viral. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux and at least 100 other Native American nations as well as activists and advocates peacefully chanted "water is life" while guards held dogs nearby to intimidate the crowd. Without warning, these security henchmen showered the demonstrators with pepper spray and released the dogs — at least six people were bitten, including a young child.

Cardboard Box

Way too little way too late: Ex-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman apologizes for saying post-9/11 air was safe, lies about EPA knowledge

Christine Todd Whitman
© Mark Zaleski/APFormer New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, right, tours the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2 at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, near Spring City, Tenn.
In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) incorrectly assured New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe. To this day, first responders are still being diagnosed with and dying from illnesses born of breathing in the toxic air at Ground Zero.

Now Christine Todd Whitman, who was administrator of the EPA from January 2001 until June 2003, has admitted that she was wrong about the air quality in an interview with the Guardian to be published Sunday.

"Whatever we got wrong, we should acknowledge and people should be helped," she told the British paper.

"I'm very sorry that people are sick," she continued. "I'm very sorry that people are dying, and if the EPA and I in any way contributed to that, I'm sorry. We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had."


Comment: This statement is a flat-out lie. Information on the dire toxicity of ground zero was provided by numerous agencies but purposely ignored and suppressed by Whitman and the EPA:

See: 'Conscience-shocking': Christine Todd Whitman's suppression of information regarding toxicity levels on 9/11's ground zero


Light Saber

People power: Native Argentines fight fracking by global corporations

fracking protest argentina
© Enrique Marcarian / Reuters A banner that reads "No to the deal between YPF-Chevron" is seen outside Argentina's state-owned energy company YPF building in Buenos Aires.
Oil companies looking to expand fracking in Argentina have been met by opposition from indigenous Mapuche communities and environmentalists who say the controversial extraction method has ruined their drinking water and caused cancer.

"The animals drank the water and then they gave birth to kids with just skin, no hair. That's never happened before," Mapuche member Susana Campo toldthe BBC.

Members of the Mapuche communities claim there has been an increase in animal deformities as a result of fracking, which pumps highly-pressurized water deep into rock to release gas and oil.

Comment: There is ample evidence that fracking devastates the environment and endangers the health of those living anywhere near the sites. Governments and corporations are well aware of this, but due to the psychopathic nature of those in charge, the well-being of those most affected by their policies is never of any concern: Fracking - you are not important


Attention

The Venezuelan demonstration you didn't hear about

venezuela protest march
Red-clad supporters of President Nicolás Maduro packed Avenida Bolivar in the heart of the capital for as far as the eye could see.
What the media left out

The international corporate media reported on a large demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sept. 1. But there were two demonstrations that day. The one not covered in the U.S. was huge and in support of the progressive government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Red-clad supporters packed Avenida Bolivar in the heart of the capital for as far as the eye could see. They were responding to the call for a "Great Occupation" issued by Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to defend peace in Venezuela.

A New York Times article on Sept. 2 did not even mention #LaCalleEsChavista, meaning "the street supports the Chávez program."

Instead, the media widely reported on the action built for weeks by the anti-Chavista electoral coalition called Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), which was limited to the more affluent suburb of Miranda. MUD had projected that a million people would come to the capital on Sept. 1 to "take Caracas" and overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution.

Comment: No country is too insignificant for the Empire to meddle in. It's Venezuela's misfortune to be a resource-rich relatively close to the U.S. How dare it spend its budget on the "little people" when U.S. corporations could be making so much profit?


Stop

Dakota Pipeline: Armed troops deployed with militarized checkpoints ahead of court ruling

National guard checkpoint
© facebook.com
North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple has activated the North Dakota National Guard ahead of a federal judge's expected Friday ruling on a request by the Standing Rock Sioux to stop the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline. While Dalrymple claims the measure is meant to ensure public safety, the reality is that the state intends to use the Guard to assist in denying access to the protest camps in the event that the federal court rules against the tribe. With the protest camps at one point swelling to over a reported 4,000 individuals, the state is attempting to employ a denial of access strategy in the event that it grows in the wake of the expected federal court ruling.

During a press conference announcing the activation of the National Guard, Dalrymple stated that a contingent of 24 Guard members will assist law enforcement in providing security at a number of traffic checkpoints approximately 30-miles from the protest site. Maj. Gen. Alan Dohrmann, the head of the Guard, says another 100 Guard members will be on standby if needed to respond to any "incidents."

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who also sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), is expected to rule by Friday on the tribe's request to temporarily halt construction on the Dakota Access pipeline. Earlier this week, Boasberg granted in part and denied in part the tribe's request for a temporary restraining order to stop the project. He said he would decide by Friday whether to grant the larger challenge to the pipeline, which would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits, according to Reuters.

The tribe has been leading a protest for months, with the main protest camps where the pipeline route passes near its reservation near the North Dakota-South Dakota border, swelling to over 4,000 people in recent weeks.



Comment:
Dakota Access pipeline route
© tspr.org
Timeline and updates

August 2016
  • After covering the camp in the spring of 2016, Unicorn Riot returned to Standing Rock Reservation on Wednesday, August 10th, when Standing Rock tribal members and allies blocked the entrance to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site.
  • August 11th, a dozen or so people were arrested blocking the construction site entrances.
  • Day 3, the fight to protect land & water intensified around the construction sites of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
  • Energy transfer crude pipeline
    © thebakken.com
    4th day, the pipeline resistance encampment swelled and prepared for more action.
  • August 15th, land defenders stormed the construction site halting construction, and thenext day construction was halted as well.
  • August 17th saw State Police begin checkpoints, roadblocks, and psyops as protesters united to defend water.
  • August 24th, camps prepared as Federal injunction hearing looms.
  • Camps organize to stay as injunction postponed.
  • On August 31st, Non-Violent Direct Action stopped DAPL construction for over 6 hours.
September 2016
  • Indigenous Water Protectors Swarm Dakota Access Pipeline Site, Stop Work
  • Request by the Standing Rock Sioux to stop the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline
  • September 9th, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple has activated the North Dakota National Guard
  • September 9th, Federal judge denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's request for a temporary injunction to halt the construction
  • Parties to appear for a status conference on September 16



Pistol

Son killed by private DC police, mother suspects cover-up

Alonzo Smith
© facebook.comAlonzo Smith, murdered teacher's assistant
The death of Alonzo Smith has already been ruled a homicide by Washington DC's medical examiner, but Alonzo's mother said she's waited 10 months for answers and fears she has been deceived. "The hardest part of this, outside of my son being murdered by law enforcement who took an oath to protect and serve, is the Metropolitan Police Department and the US attorney's office are conspiring together and refusing to release the two names of the officers who murdered my son," Alonzo's mother, Beverly Smith, told RT. "It has been 10 months now and I have not heard anything from anyone concerning my son's case - only that it is still under investigation."

Alonzo Smith was found unable to breathe and in handcuffs on November 1 last year in a second-floor hallway of a Southwest Washington apartment building, according to police. District officers had responded to a call about an assault. Police accounts have not provided details about what happened before the DC officers responded to the encounter between Smith and security guards [private police] at around 4:00 a.m.

The report did say, however, that officers administered CPR before he was rushed to United Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Video of efforts to resuscitate Smith have been released but not of what happened before he was found handcuffed and unable to breathe. A DC medical examiner's office in December ruled the death of the 27-year-old teacher's assistant a homicide.

LaShon Beamon, spokeswoman for the DC Office of the Medical Examiner said Smith died of "sudden cardiac arrest," complicated by "acute cocaine toxicity while restrained," according to the Washington Post. She listed a secondary cause of death as compression.


Comment: As more and more police departments necessitate manpower, or cheap labor, or a need to create layers between the public and the justice system, the use of private police continues to grow. These substitutes become the interface with the public, less equipped to handle an emergency, untrained in community relations. Protecting private police, ensures the above.

See also: Armies and police are being privatized around the world and business is booming


Heart

'Killed trying to save people's lives': Aleppo neighborhood loses last surgeon in militant fire

Militant shelling killing senior medic
© lizzie_phelan / Instagram
The neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo has lost its last senior medic. He was killed in rebel fire while trying to fulfill his duty - to help the weak and the sick amid the hostilities, his family told RT.

Dr. Shahed was killed on Thursday by a Katyusha rocket fired from the rebel-held Kafr Hamra area in Aleppo Province, Lizzie Phelan reported.

"He [Shahed] died because they called him and told him there was shelling and some people were in the medical center who needed his help, so he went to try and save their lives, and he was killed," the surgeon's wife, Mayada, said.

His wife added that Dr. Shahed "was always helping people."

People 2

One American's reason for moving to Russia


Comment: The rest of this American cultural refugee's story has since been published by Fort Russ, so we're re-running it with Part 2 included.


Katehon recently ran an article about the Russian Federation possibly offering to open it's gates to cultural refugees from the western world. I decided that I should author a piece about this subject - because I am in fact myself a cultural refugee from the western world who lives in Russia.
Mamayev Kurgan
© Rob / Flickr The Motherland Statue in Volgograd, Russia
To be clear, I consider myself a cultural refugee, not an expat. An expat is a person who leaves a country and resides in another country not as a citizen but as a guest. A cultural refugee is a person who enters a country to become part of its culture because his origin culture is diseased. I work my best to assimilate to Russian cultural norms and, given my Slavic origins, it is not particularly difficult. As my ancestors dreamed about leaving Europe for a better life in the USA, I dreamed about leaving the USA for a better life in Europe.

My first few visits back to Europe were - well, enjoyable, but they did not quite "fit" me. I had seen Denmark, Sweden, France, Holland, and Switzerland. While all were quite nice, a variety of factors led me to visit Russia next. When I got on my first plane to Russia, I didn't know what to expect, as my Russian-Polish ancestors who left there so long ago never had much good to say about it, though I grew up with my grandmother drinking Stolichnaya (during the Cold War!) and her cooking borscht and pelmeni. I grew up wearing Topachki (similar to slippers, but a lot of people, myself included, use sandals - mine are Adidas, of course). It was during my first visit to Moscow that I really felt a strong sense of "home", and knew that Russia was the country for me.

Airplane

Germany: Two planes collide in mid-air during air show; 2 dead

saxony Germany
© Google MapsThe crash happened Saturday in eastern Germany.
Two people have been killed after two airplanes crashed head-on during an airshow in Grossrückerswalde in the eastern state of Saxony in Germany.

The incident happened on Saturday afternoon during Flugplatzfest 2016.

Police in Chemnitz confirmed that after colliding, the glider crashed to the ground, killing its two occupants, while the ultralight aircraft was able to land at a nearby airport, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung.