Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Six year old child pulled from class, handcuffed under stairs at Chicago school

Natalie Martinez
NBC Chicago
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
chicago child handcuffed
A woman is outraged after she says her daughter was handcuffed while at school.

Marlena Wordlaw said her 6-year-old daughter Madisyn Moore was pulled out of class at Fernwood Elementary for taking candy off of a teacher's desk. Wordlaw said her daughter was then handcuffed under some stairs at school to teach her a lesson.

Madisyn explained how the school security guard handcuffed her after lunch.

"They hurted," Moore said. "He snatched me out of my class. He made me get out in my handcuffs."

Comment: Violence and oppression are now common in U.S. schools, where children are suspended, handcuffed, arrested and even tasered for what used to be considered childlike behavior.

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Bad Guys

Atlanta airport evacuated due to suspicious package amid reports of active shooter


RT
Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:34 UTC
atlanta airport
© Tami Chappell / ReutersHartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was evacuated after a suspicious package was found, the airport announced on Twitter. Unconfirmed reports on social media said there was a shooting on the premises.

The public areas of the domestic terminal were evacuated, according to the airport's official Twitter account. The "incident was cleared" shortly after the announcement, and people began returning to the airport's atrium area.

Airport officials told local ABC affiliate WSB that the suspicious package was found in the south baggage claim area. Both the north and south terminals were evacuated.

The package was labeled suspicious after an explosive dog alerted to it, according to airport officials cited by NBC affiliate WXIA. According to the airport, there was little impact on operations.
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Newspaper

Liberal Islamophobia and the Brussels bombings

Mohamad Elmasry
Middle East Eye
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 13:45 UTC
Group of Muslim students
© AFPA group of Muslim students take selfies before Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a speech at a campaign rally on 5 March, 2016 in Wichita, Kansas. During the speech, after they voiced some protests, they were removed from the convention centre.
Glaringly absent from American news media are opinion polls showing that Muslims are no more likely to accept violence than other groups

No sooner had the Belgian attacks happened, commentators on social media began linking the terror acts to the Islamic faith, with the hashtag #StopIslam trending on Twitter.

Empirical data show that Islamophobia, defined by Professor Todd Green as "an irrational fear, hostility or hatred of Muslims or Islam" is on the rise in American society.

Many Americans are increasingly scared of Muslims, and, given rising anti-Muslim hate crimes - the FBI says anti-Muslim hate crimes have increased fivefold since the September 11 terror attacks - many American Muslims are also growing more scared for their personal safety.

Given attacks by Muslim extremists - including the 11 September 2011 attacks - some fear of Muslim terrorists is obviously warranted. But much of Islamophobia borders on the absurd. Islamophobic statements, sentiments and policies tend toward exaggeration and overgeneralisation, and are divorced from empirical realities.

Recent statements made by Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump offer useful cases-in-point. In a recent CNN interview, Trump stated that "Islam hates us." Trump also claimed last week that 27 percent of Muslims are radicals who are "very militant".

No one knows where or how Trump's campaign team came up with the 27 percent figure. He may have consulted with noted Islamophobe Brigitte Gabriel, who famously claimed that Muslim radicals represent "between 15 to 25 percent" of the global Muslim population. "You're looking at 180 million to 300 million people dedicated to the destruction of Western civilisation," Gabriel asserted. Prominent media personality Glenn Beck, meanwhile, has claimed that 10 percent of the world's Muslims are terrorists.

Comment: See also:

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Family

Indian Child Welfare Act: State of California returns 'Lexi' to her family

Suzette Brewer
Indian Country
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 02:12 UTC
Lexi goes home
On Monday, March 21, pandemonium broke out in Santa Clarita, California, at the home of foster couple Summer and Russell Page as social workers from the Department of Children and Family Services arrived to pick up a 6-year-old girl who was being held by the couple in defiance of a court ordering her returned to relatives after a five-year custody battle.
On Monday, March 21, pandemonium broke out in Santa Clarita, California, at the home of foster couple Summer and Russell Page as social workers from the Department of Children and Family Services arrived to pick up a 6-year-old girl who was being held by the couple in defiance of a court ordering her returned to relatives after a five-year custody battle. At 2:45 p.m. PST, the sobbing girl was carried to a vehicle and whisked away as dozens of media outlets and protesters looked on, bringing an end to a stand-off over the child's custody that had made headlines around the world.

The girl, who goes by the name "Lexi," was ordered to be placed with relatives, including her biological sister, in Utah in compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act. Her identity was released to the media by the Pages over the weekend, including a Facebook page titled "Save Lexi," in which they sought public support in defiance of the court's order, according to legal experts in California.

Comment: There are many states in the US that snatches young Native Americans from their homes and places them in foster care for bogus reasons. Bottom line it's big money for the state.

* Each year, South Dakota removes an average of 700 Native American children from their homes. Indian children are less than 15 percent of state's the child population, but make up more than half the children in foster care.

* Despite the Indian Child Welfare Act, which says Native American children must be placed with their family members, relatives, their tribes or other Native Americans, native children are more than twice as likely to be sent to foster care as children of other races, even in similar circumstances.

* Nearly 90 percent of Native American children sent to foster care in South Dakota are placed in non-native homes or group care.

* Less than 12 percent of Native American children in South Dakota foster care had been physically or sexually abused in their homes, below the national average. The state says parents have "neglected" their children, a subjective term. But tribe leaders tell NPR what social workers call neglect is often poverty; and sometimes native tradition.

* A close review of South Dakota's budget shows that they receive almost $100 million a year to subsidize it's foster care program.

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Airplane

Parts of Denver International Airport evacuated over security threat

Elizabeth Hernandez
The Denver Post
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 02:12 UTC

No threat was found at Denver International Airport after an evacuation of a section of the main terminal because of potentially suspicious packages.

Denver police cleared a part of the main terminal on the west side between doors 600 and 610 on level six and 500 to 510 on level five, according to an airport tweet. Level five is the bag claim and passenger pickup level, and level six is for passenger dropoff and check-in.

The terminal re-opened to the public just after 4:45 p.m.

Airport officials said "several packages"were screened to determine the validity of the threat that was originally reported by TSA.

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said the alert was "strong enough" to prompt an evacuation and full response.

Airport officials did not make any ties or connections to the terrorist attacks in Brussels.

"We are just looking at this particular incident," officials said. "We would respond like this on any day."
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Boat

Secret mission: 730 pounds of plutonium being shipped to South Carolina on an armed British ship

Erik Shilling
Atlas Obscura
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 22:44 UTC

An armed British ship carrying 730 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium left a port in Japan Tuesday, destined for a secret mission to South Carolina.

Authorities have declined to say anything about the trip, citing security concerns. But Kyodo News has reported that the shipment is part of a 2014 agreement Japan struck with the U.S. to decrease its massive stockpile of plutonium.

The ship, accompanied by a second vessel, is headed for the Savannah River Site, a nuclear reservation in South Carolina, where the plutonium is to be downgraded and stored.
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Shopping Bag

Ramping up the fear: Portion of Denver airport evacuated due to suspicious package

Elizabeth Hernandez
The Denver Post
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 22:15 UTC
Denver airport
© Joe Amon, The Denver PostThe Denver International Airport and hotel from the far side of the airfield.
A section of Denver International Airport has been evacuated because of a possible suspicious package, officials said Tuesday.

Denver police are evacuating a part of the main terminal on the west side between doors 600 and 610 on level six and 500 to 510 on level five, according to an airport tweet. Level five is the bag claim and passenger pickup level, and level six is for passenger dropoff and check-in.

Affected ticket counters include: American Airlines, Aero Mexico, Air Canada, Lufthansa and British Airways. Flights are continuing, the airport said, although delays are possible.

Details about the the DIA threat have not yet been released, other than saying police are investigating a suspicious package.

"As a precaution, TSA is deploying additional security to major U.S. airports and at various rail and transit stations," said a tweet from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
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Bacon n Eggs

Supporting the troops: Soldiers share photos of mold & maggots in army issued food


RT
Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:29 UTC
undercooked chicken
© Facebook
British soldiers have taken to social media to share shocking photos of meals allegedly prepared for them by Ministry of Defence (MoD) contractor Sodexo as they petition the government for better quality food.

Military personnel across the UK have posted pictures of revolting meals allegedly served in army mess halls.

The nauseating photographs show maggot-infested tomatoes, raw chicken, and moldy eggs covered in green spots.
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Water

Unsolved burglary where water files kept 'an inside job' says Flint police chief

Molly Young
MLive
Tue, 22 Mar 2016 20:33 UTC
City of Flint Municipal Center
© Mlive.com
Mystery still surrounds an unsolved December break-in at an executive office inside City Hall where Flint water files were kept.

As of Friday, March 18, there were still no suspects in the case, and officials say it may never be known what -- other than a TV -- was taken.

But the city's new police chief Tim Johnson says it's too suspicious that there was a break-in where important documents were kept, just as investigations began heating up and decision makers were beginning to be held accountable.

"It was definitely an inside job. The power cord (to the TV) wasn't even taken. The average drug user knows that you'd need the power cord to be able to pawn it," Johnson said.

The office was not assigned to any city employees at the time of the break-in, city officials have said."It was somebody that had knowledge of those documents that really wanted to keep them out of the right hands, out of the hands of someone who was going to tell the real story of what's going on with Flint water," he said.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said documents were strewn about the room, and it is impossible to know if any of them were taken. Weaver wasn't so quick to allege it was an inside job, but did say the situation seemed odd and suspicious to her. "Well sure (it's suspicious) when they go into a room where all the water files were and they take a TV, but not the cord to make it work, yes," she said.

Comment: The crisis in Flint is about more than water

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Eye 2

It CAN happen here: the rise of fascism in the United States

Andrew J. Wood
Counterpunch
Mon, 21 Mar 2016 19:56 UTC
trump fascism
Ordinarily, I abhor political comparisons to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. No matter the similarities with other authority figures, however authoritarian or totalitarian, Hitler represents a particular sequence of events in world history, and this particularity is glossed over in such comparisons. The comparison of public figures to Hitler is often based on intellectually lazy equivalences of evil. Such comparisons often focus on the authoritarian tendencies in all governments in a way that avoids nuance, rigor, and specificity, and additionally haphazardly flatten differences in regime types. This simplistic comparison is especially troubling now, when it has proliferated to the point were not only politicians of all stripes are subject to it, but even professional athletes, actors, and others in celebrity culture are called fascist whenever they do or say something divisive. The critique of fascism loses much of its weight when it is ascribed to anyone and anything that we don't like.

I too am guilty of these comparisons, as a young radical critiquing the George W. Bush presidency, for the far-right, nationalistic militarism seemed to fit in nicely with a wider critique of fascism. As I studied, learned, and grew intellectually, however, I came to see these easy comparisons as dishonest and stifling to the formations of deep understanding of particular regimes and how their power might be resisted. Yet, despite my aversion to what I (and others) refer to jokingly as reductio ad Hitlerium, we seem to have arrived at a Weimer moment in United States' American politics. We are quite evidently witnessing a figure running for the highest elected office in the U.S. who is by every measure modeling himself, his movement, and his rise to power on the populist far-right rhetoric of European fascism in the mid-20th century. This person is, of course, Donald J. Trump.
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