Society's ChildS

Evil Rays

4 teens face life in prison after terrorizing grocery store

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Four juveniles who allegedly rampaged through a Marysville supermarket face up to life in prison after they were charged as adults in Yuba County Superior Court.

Yuba County prosecutors charged the teens on Friday with seven felonies and one misdemeanor.

Superior Court Judge Julia Scrogin set bail at $1 million each for Shateemah Harrison, Alexandria Petrondla Evans and Elias Esquivel, all 15, and Sarah Murphy, 14.

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The teens, who pleaded not guilty, wore Juvenile Hall jumpsuits and were chained at the waist as they appeared in Scrogin's courtroom.

They were charged with felony counts of second-degree robbery, dissuading a witness, criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon, second-degree burglary and vandalism. Esquivel also faces a felony charge of resisting an executive officer.

They also face a misdemeanor count of resisting arrest.

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Revenge: Investigators say they believe the teens were trying to get revenge on the store, where three of them had been arrested for shoplifting on Monday

USA

Man jailed for 3 months freed when "drugs" police discovered on him turn out to be vitamins

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© Shutterstock
A Minnesota man who was arrested in November on drug charges has been released after the "most expensive and most accurate test" available found that the drugs in his possession were over the counter vitamins, the Mankato Free Press's Dan Nienaber reports.

Joseph Burrell was arrested on two felony counts of drug possession on November 14, 2014. According to police, Burrell was initially stopped for driving out of a grocery store parking lot without his lights on. When police searched his vehicle, they found a bag containing powder that a field test determined could be an amphetamine.

Burrell โ€” who acknowledged that he had used drugs in the past, but that he had also just finished in-patient treatment at the New Beginnings drug treatment center in nearby Waverly โ€” insisted that the substance was not illegal, and that he had purchased it to deal with a chronically sore shoulder.

Prosecutors pressured him to plead guilty, but Burrell told the Free Press that he "couldn't plead guilty [to possessing] something I knew wasn't a drug. They set my bail at $250,000 for vitamins."

The charges were dropped after prosecutors used a more sophisticated means of analyzing the powder and discovered that it did, in fact, consist of legally available vitamins.

"I had been sitting in the jail since November with my bail set at $250,000," Burrell told the Free Press. "Then, two days before trial, they dropped the charges and let me go."

TV

Symbolic? Television station apologizes for depicting Obama as rape suspect

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Two nights after briefly portraying President Obama as a sex-assault suspect on its 10 o'clock news, Fox 5 San Diego apologized to viewers.

At 10:04 p.m. Friday the 13th, viewers heard anchor Kathleen Bade say: "The only suspect in a sex assault at SDSU will not be charged." At the same time, a picture of Obama appeared with the legend "NO CHARGES."

The Obama shot lasted about 5 seconds, but it was noticed immediately in the newsroom, said Mike Wille, an assignment editor.

"Yeah, there was an accident when they had an over-the-shoulder" display, Wille told Times of San Diego. "It wasn't on purpose."

Asked why there was no immediate on-air acknowledgment or apology for the error, Wille said: "They really don't do that when it's a small thing like that."

But at 10:31 p.m. Sunday, Fox 5 anchor Misha DiBono read this statement:

"And we have an apology now. Friday night at 10 o'clock, we inadvertently used a photo of President Obama while reporting on a story about charges being dropped in a local case. We regret the error."

Compass

The disaster of human rights in America

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© NBCAntonio Zombrano-Montes shot by police for 'throwing rocks".
Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a 35-year-old Mexican national, was shot to death by police in Pasco, Washington last Tuesday as he was backing away from officers with his hands up. A video of the shooting clearly corroborates claims by Zambrano-Montes's family that he was killed "execution style."

Police claimed that Zambrano-Montes, who had lived in the city for ten years and worked as an orchard picker, may have been "armed with a rock" before he was shot multiple times. Protests erupted over the weekend, with more than a thousand demonstrating in Washington state on Saturday against the killing.

The United States has invaded, bombed and destabilized dozens of countries on the grounds that their regimes perpetrated human rights abuses. In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Obama declared that America leads the world "with the example of our values." He added, "That's what makes us exceptional."

Not only is this sanctimonious drivel completely at odds with the reality of American imperialist foreign policy, which employs mass murder, support for extreme right forces, subversion and provocation as its stock-in-trade, it is belied by the reality of life within the United States itself.

The wave of police violence in the US is one aspect of an escalating assault on the democratic rights of the working class that makes a mockery of the official human rights rhetoric. Were these events occurring in a country targeted for conquest or regime change by the CIA and the Pentagon, that country would be declared a human rights disaster area.

According to a web site that keeps track of police shootings, Zambrano-Montes was the 122nd person to be killed by police in the United States since the start of the year. In the five days since the shooting, another ten people have been killed by police: two black, two white, one Latino. The names and identities of five others have not been released.

In virtually all of these fatal police shootings, the victims have been blasted by a fusillade of bullets, their bodies riddled by ten, fifteen, twenty or more rounds fired off by the killer cops.

The recent incidents of wanton police violence include:

The beating of an elderly Indian man in Alabama as he walked in the street, leaving him partially paralyzed.

Comment: The War on Terror has turned our police force into a profitable militarized extension of the U.S. government. Historically, whenever the people try to rise up, they have to be smashed down by brute force. Police are essentially occupying armies and the enemy is you. It is a system designed to impose fear and curtail dissent, while lining the pockets of corporations.

See also: Oligarchic, corporate elites have created a society of captives


2 + 2 = 4

Award winning Ohio teacher resigns due to Common Core 'drill 'em and kill 'em atmosphere'

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© Mourning JournalStacie Starr
The veteran Elyria Schools educator said Monday she plans to resign at the end of the school year.

Gasps of disbelief followed the announcement made during an education forum aimed at unraveling for parents the intricacies of the standardized testing system. Starr was at the podium, delivering a talk on how special education students are suffering under the new system based on Common Core standards and more rigorous assessments. She said as a veteran intervention specialist at Elyria High School, she could no longer watch silently from within the confines of a structured school day.

Instead, she is leaving education in the traditional sense.

"I am going to teach in a different way," she proclaimed.

Starr wants to start an after-school mentoring program for at-risk students in hopes of saving them from the school-to-prison pipeline.

Starr garnered a reputation of being a rock star teacher long before "Live with Kelly and Michael" picked her as the winner of the 2014 Top Teacher Search. She has mentored middle school boys, putting books in the hands of at-risk youth and ties on their necks to foster a sense of pride. Handing out high school diplomas to those same students was a highlight of her career, a testament that getting a child to graduation sometimes requires more than just lesson plans and homework.

She has coached football, taken students on field trips to meet authors and adopted a "failure is not an option" approach to some of the hardest-to-reach students. Yet with a stellar 16-year career under her belt, Starr said the new testing culture is killing education.

"I can't do it anymore, not in this 'drill 'em and kill 'em' atmosphere," she said. "I don't think anyone understands that in this environment if your child cannot quickly grasp material, study like a robot and pass all of these tests, they will not survive."

Comment: The U.S. education system is not designed to teach children to think or foster creativity. It's main purpose is to create a compliant population that are human capital; unquestioning slaves of corporations and governments.

The Untold History of Modern U.S. Education

Watch Common Core curriculum destroyed in four powerful minutes by Arkansas mom


Better Earth

China executes mining tycoon Liu Han, guilty of running mafia racket - Former Party leader Zhou Yongkang is next

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© SCMP PicturesLiu Han in tears in court last year.
A Chinese mining tycoon linked to former security tsar Zhou Yongkang has been executed, according to state media.

Sichuan native Liu Han, 48, was found guilty of 13 charges - including murder, organising casinos, running a mafia-style gang and illegally selling firearms - and sentenced to death in late May.

He was executed on Monday morning together with his younger brother Liu Wei and three associates, Tang Xianbing, Zhang Donghua and Tian Xianwei, Xianning city intermediate court in Hubei province said.

The court organised meetings between the criminals and their families prior to the executions, Xinhua reported.

Cow

How one Russian farmer repaid his "Lickspittle good-for-nothing" bankers

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© pro-sibir.org
For Russian farmer Alexander Bakshaev, the crushingly high interest rates the banks were charging him on his loan inspired a smelly protest... As Pro-Sibir reports, the fuming farmer repaid his loan with the equivalent value in manure.

As NBC News reports, the manure was worth 40,000 rubles ($610) - the exact amount he owed the bank, Bakshayev told Sibkray.ru.

Heart - Black

Man robs 6-year-old girl selling Girl Scout cookies outside gas station

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© Scripps Media, Inc
Police in Beech Grove, Indiana are trying to identify a man who stole over $300 from a Girl Scout selling cookies outside a gas station, WRTV reports.

Six-year-old Whitney Allen was selling cookies outside of a gas station when a man approached her and her mother and began to browse.

According to Whitney's mother, Stephanie, the man said "'eenie, meenie, miney, mo,' and once he said 'mo,' he snatched my black [money] book right out from underneath my notebook and just took off running."

She noted that she was just as concerned about the fact that the man absconded with her customer's names, home addresses and phone numbers as she was about the missing money.

A local man ponied up $200 to help Whitney cover her losses, and local businesses contributed another $100 to ensure that her day was not a waste.

Sheriff

Cop warns other officers not to arrest man until dashcam is turned off

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© St. Louis Dispatch
In dashcam video released as evidence in an excessive force lawsuit against the St. Louis Police Department, an officer is heard warning her fellow officers to "hold up" with the arrest until the camera can be turned off, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting.

The video, which has been held back since April 10, shows the suspect being dragged from a car, beaten, and kicked by up to seven officers while resisting arrest.

Lawyers for the suspect, Cortez Bufford, 18, released the video after filing the lawsuit on Jan. 22. The video was previously used as evidence to have charges dropped against Bufford.

In the video, police can be seen attempting to take Bufford and a companion into custody after receiving a 911 call about shots fired. As Bufford's companion exits the vehicle and is handcuffed, officer Nathaniel Burkemper argues with Bufford through the car window before reaching inside and opening the car door.

As Burkemper struggles with Bufford, pulling him from the car, multiple officers rush in, kicking him repeatedly while shocking him with a Taser. According to the police report, Burkemper warned the other officers that Bufford had a gun.

Heart - Black

Court demands woman write letters to man in prison who savagely beat her and cut her throat or face jail

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© FacebookNatalie Allman

Comment: This poor woman has had her life unimaginably altered from a violent attack, and the UK courts can't find the common sense to let her get on with her life? They should find themselves in contempt, for reopening the wounds from her attack. This is another sign that our world has lost its sanity and moral center.


A woman who was savagely beaten and had her throat slashed by the father of her children has been told she must write letters to her attacker in jail or face imprisonment herself, The Daily Mail is reporting.

In 2011 Natalie Allman, 29, was tortured for over seven hours and had her throat slashed in front of her twins by her boyfriend Jason Hughes, 42, because he wanted to make her look "ugly" after she attempted to leave him.

Hughes, who lived in Ross-on-Wye in England with Allman, is currently incarcerated, serving a nine year term for the attack that left Allman with a lacerated throat and five facial fractures requiring plastic surgery to repair the damage.

A judge, citing Section 8 of the Children's Act, has told Allman that she must send three letters a year to Hughes, including photographs of their five-year-old boys, updating him on their lives. Failure to do so could result in a contempt of court charges and imprisonment.

In an interview, Allman said she is being victimized again by her former boyfriend.

"We are the victims, not him. I thought he was going to kill me that night for no reason and my boys saw that. They were terrified," she said. "I'm so angry that the law still defends his parental rights and that he is still being allowed to control us from behind bars."