Society's ChildS


Pistol

Albuquerque to host police shooting tourney

Albuquerque Police Shooting Tourney
© Associated Press
It might be a good time for the homeless, or teenagers, or Latinos, or African-Americans, or...actually, shit, pretty much everybody in Albuquerque to get out of town because about 500 cops from across the nation and beyond are set to descend on New Mexico's largest city to play with their guns.

In one of the more shockingly tone-deaf events in recent memory, the shooting scandal-plagued Albuquerque Police Department and the National Rifle Association are gearing up for the Albuquerque Police Pistol Combat Tournament and National Police Shooting Championship in September.

Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry says that they are thrilled to host the event - but the angry families of the many, many victims of recent police shootings in Albuquerque are calling the event "insulting" both to them and their city.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, armed security guards actually locked the doors to Mayor Berry's City Hall office on Wednesday after a small group of protestors - mostly the families of police shooting victims - attempted to personally deliver a letter condemning the event.

The guards promised to deliver the letter to the mayor, but refused to allow them into his office to meet with him in person.

According to the NRA (PDF), in addition to target and speed shooting tournaments, one of the main event programs, "incorporates competitive based skill and scenario courses of fire to allow you to practice and evaluate your skills using your duty firearms and gear in hypothetical police related encounters and solve the challenges presented according to your own tactics. Just bring your duty guns, gear, ammunition, and a desire to learn and have fun."
Don't have a Patrol Rifle or Patrol Shotgun? We have ones you can use, just bring your own ammunition.
There will also be a number of vendor booths set up, where visiting police officers - when they're not having fun competitively pretending to kill people in "skill and scenario courses of fire" - can learn all about the latest weaponry and tactical gear available to their departments back home.

Any way you look at it, Albuquerque seems a blatantly antagonistic location for a law enforcement shooting competition - especially given that there have been an awful lot of people shot and killed by the Albuquerque Police Department since just 2010 alone - 40 shootings, 26 of them fatal.

Attention

Russian war photographer Andrei Stenin who disappeared in Ukraine still missing: Not a word from Kiev

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© RIA Novosti/Dmitry AstakhovRussian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed his concern Thursday over the disappearance of Rossiya Segodnya's Russian photographer Andrei Stenin (#FreeAndrew).

"Today, we are all concerned about the photographer from Rossiya Segodnya agency, Andrei Stenin, who disappeared in Ukraine, and we hope that he'll return home," Medvedev said at the opening of an exhibition in Moscow called Looking Into War's Eyes.

A Russian journalist working for Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency, Andrei Stenin, went missing in eastern Ukraine on August 5. Stenin's current whereabouts are unknown.

On August 9, Rossiya Segodnya filed a request with the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to take immediate action to locate the photographer.

Comment: A compilation of Andrei's work in Ukraine:




Propaganda

How Fox news created bogus Ferguson story based on 'stupidest man on the internet' blog post

How did Fox News run a totally bogus Ferguson story? Welcome to the truly slimy side of the right-wing hit machine

Putin - Poroshenko 2
© Fox News/AP/Michael Caulfield/Cliff OwenTucker Carlson, Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter
The killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed young black man shot at least six times by police officer Darren Wilson, and the resulting protests in Ferguson, Missouri, left the right-wing media machine in something of a conundrum. Days ticked by and still there was no viable right-wing narrative.

Then, six days after the shooting, Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson bowed to pressure from the community and media and identified Wilson as the cop who shot Brown. At the same time, Jackson released two new bits of information. He said Wilson had been taken to a hospital after the shooting with swelling to his face. He also released a store surveillance video that showed Brown reaching over a counter and grabbing a handful of cigars, then pushing a store clerk on his way out.

This was a turning point in the story: Ferguson police seemingly wanted to transform Michael Brown from an innocent victim to a criminal. Still, it was hard to justify killing a young man with no previous record - especially shooting him six times, for allegedly stealing a handful of cheap cigars.

It wasn't long before Fox News was pushing a new narrative: Michael Brown wasn't just the latest in a depressingly long line of unarmed young black men to be gunned down by a white cop. He was a thug, they suggested, a criminal who deserved what he got, because he posed a deadly threat to Officer Wilson.

This was proven, Fox News reported with an unnamed source, because "the officer had sustained a fractured eye socket in the incident." Ann Coulter even suggested, incorrectly, that we'd seen X-rays of the fracture. Fox went on to claim "solid proof" of a battle between Wilson and Brown for the officer's handgun.

It was not long, of course, before CNN and others disproved such bogus claims. But how did such fiction make it all the way to an outlet as major, if intellectually challenged, as Fox News?

Comment: Another example of the psychopathic wishful thinking of Fox News and Jim Hoft.


Cut

Five-year-old Navajo boy denied admission on first day of school because his hair is too long

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Five-Year-Old Navajo Malachi Wilson was denied admission into kindergaten because hair is too long
For five-year-old Malachi Wilson, the first day of kindergarten will always be one he remembers. As it turns out, Monday, which was the first day of school for students at F.J. Young Elementary School in Seminole, Texas, was not Malachi's first day of school because he was sent home because of the length of his hair.

School principal Sherrie Warren informed April Wilson, Malachi's mother, that Malachi's hair is too long since he is a boy; therefore, he would not be able to attend classes until he got a haircut.

Malachi is Navajo on his father's side of the family and Kiowa on his mother's side.

Seminole is located in southwest Texas. F. J. Elementary School is home of the Seminole Indians. A sign near the school's gymnasium reads: "Welcome to the Tribe."

Comment: As if the Native Americans haven't been screwed over enough, denying a 5 year old going to school because of his hair?! Discrimination and racism is alive and well in the ponerized good old US of A.


Light Saber

Real conscience: Russia to insure Ukrainian refugees receive their pensions

ukraine refugee russia
© RIA Novosti / Alexey MalgavkoRussian EMERCOM workers meet Ukrainian refugees at a train station in Omsk
All Ukrainian refugees of pension age will receive their pensions in Russia, Deputy PM Olga Golodets has said in a radio interview.

She oversees the social and health policies of the government, and said that Russia and Ukraine had a bilateral agreement allowing citizens to receive pensions in another country if the need arises. "We will pay the pensions to the refugees," Golodets told reporters. She declined to expand on the approximate number of future recipients saying that the number of Ukrainian refugees in Russia was constantly growing.

The deputy PM also told reporters she estimates about 50,000 Ukrainian children will start attending Russian schools at the beginning of the new academic year on September 1.

Earlier this month the United Nations released a report estimating the number of Ukrainian refugees in the Russian Federation at 730,000. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that this number was nearing 1 million.

Comment: Unlike the psychopathic US/NATO, Russia cares about the humanitarian crisis and is taking steps to actually HELP the people:



Arrow Down

'After' Great Recession - Americans are unhappy, worried, pessimistic

from phys.org
Unemployed workers signing up for benefits.
The protracted and uneven recovery from the Great Recession has led most Americans to conclude that the U.S. economy has undergone a permanent change for the worse, according to a new national study at Rutgers. Seven in 10 now say the recession's impact is permanent, up from half in 2009 when the recession officially ended, according to the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Among key findings in "Unhappy, Worried and Pessimistic: Americans in the Aftermath of the Great Recession," the center's latest Work Trends report, are:
  • Despite sustained job growth and lower levels of employment, most Americans do not think the economy has improved in the last year or that it will in the next.
  • Just one in six Americans believe that job opportunities for the next generation will be better than for theirs; five years ago, four in 10 held that view.
  • Roughly four in five Americans have little or no confidence that the federal government will make progress on the nation's most important problems over the next year.

Vader

Big surprise: Americans' strongly negative views of Obama significantly outweigh the strongly positive

obama
© REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Americans are more than twice as likely to say they "strongly disapprove" (39%) of President Barack Obama's job performance as they are to say they "strongly approve" (17%). The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama has increased over time, while the percentage who strongly approve has dropped by almost half.

In the first year of Obama's presidency, the percentages of Americans who had strong views about the job he was doing were essentially tied, but the strongly negative responses now significantly outweigh the strongly positive ones. The largest segment of Americans today, 39%, strongly disapprove of Obama's job performance, while 14% moderately disapprove. Another 27% moderately approve, while 17% strongly approve.

Strong disapproval of the president's job performance has been within 30% to 39% the four times Gallup has asked the question -- in 2009, 2010, 2011, and now this year -- but has risen by five percentage points since 2011, and by nine points since the first month Obama was in office. At the same time, strong approval has fallen by nine points in the last three years, and by 15 points since January 2009.


Comment: Hardly big news since Obama has done nothing but disappoint all those who were foolhardy enough to believe his election propaganda. The honeymoon is definitely over.
All over for Obama? Polls say public has given up on his ability to accomplish anything
The Growing Nose of Barack Obama


Headphones

Ferguson shooting audio recording confirmed to be real by software developer

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© Reuters / Adrees LatifA local resident stands with his arm up over a makeshift memorial at the site where unarmed teen Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri August 27, 2014.
A new audio recording that allegedly captures a series of gunshots at the time of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, has been confirmed to be real by the developers behind the software used to capture it.

The 12-second audio clip first came to light on CNN earlier this week, and features a man chatting with a friend of his using a video-recording messenger system called Glide. As the unnamed individual records his message, a string of gunfire can be heard in the background. Numerous gunshots can be heard before the action is broken up with a pause. Shortly afterwards, though, another barrage of shots occurs.

At least 10 gunshots total can be heard during the recording, which Glide certified as being captured at 12:02 pm on Saturday, August 9th. This is the same time that 18-year-old Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

"A Glide user living nearby (whose identity is being protected) was simply using the Glide app on their smartphone exactly as it was designed - to instantly communicate with a friend through our real-time video texting service," the app stated on its blog. "Simultaneously, they also captured audio in the background of the gunshots allegedly fired at Michael Brown."

"Because Glide is the only messaging application using streaming video technology, each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second."

Eye 1

Ferguson protests prompt calls for cops to wear on-body cameras

On-body cameras mean police use less force, and a range of new apps are giving citizens new ways to hold errant police officers to account
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© WTVR
Who watches the watchmen? Since the riots started in Ferguson, Missouri, many have decried the police shooting of teenager Michael Brown and brutal crowd-control tactics at the protests following his death (see "Crowd-control policing in the US is stuck in riot mode"). The uproar has turned into a call for better surveillance of the police. How might that be done?

The US Department of Justice has the power to investigate and overhaul problematic police departments. Ferguson has not yet been investigated, but it's a likely candidate.

"Police misconduct is not usually just caused by one rotten apple. It is caused by a rotten barrel," says Stephen Rushin at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. "A lot of people would argue that you're seeing that in Ferguson."

For the US public, an investigation would not be enough. A petition to the White House has called for a "Mike Brown Law", requiring all police to wear an on-body camera while on duty. It garnered more than 100,000 signatures, which obliges the White House to respond to the request.

On-body cameras automatically record an officer's interactions from a first-person perspective. Quite a few US cities are using them, including Salt Lake City in Utah, and Oakland in California. Last year, Barak Ariel at the University of Cambridge conducted the first major study of on-body cameras, with police in Rialto, California. He found that officers were 60 per cent less likely to use force when wearing them. Citizen complaints, too, fell sharply. Ariel's group is now monitoring the cameras' impact in two dozen police departments around the world.

Comment: Cameras will not change the violent nature of police.
  • Police State USA: Dozens arrested, reporters detained, assembly rights restricted



Map

Donetsk armed forces kicking SS and taking names: Kiev nazis lose control of Novoazovsk, rebels advance in southeast

Novoazovsk
© AFP Photo / Alexander KhudoteplyMembers of Ukrainian volunteer battalion Dnipro stand in a truck covered in steel plates near the small southern Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk, Donetsk region, on August 27, 2014.
Kiev's troops had to leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Novoazovsk to save their lives, said the country's Security and Defense Council. The authorities admitted that self-defense forces are advancing and leading a counteroffensive in the southeast.

Along with Novoazovsk, Kiev troops have lost control over the villages of Amvrosiivka and Starobeshevo in the Donetsk Region of Eastern Ukraine.

According to Ukraine's Security and Defense Council, on Wednesday Kiev's troops were shelled by Grad rocket launchers and then attacked by two military columns of self-defense troops.

The columns included tanks and armored infantry vehicles.

"Later in the afternoon two Russian columns entered Novoazovsk," the council said in a statement.


Comment: Ha! Kiev is like the school bully who finally gets pounded by the scrawny kid he's been beating on for months. "He and his big Russian friends teamed up on my, I swear!" Sorry guys, but it turns out the DPR and LPR are just a whole lot better than you. No Russians required.