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U.S. university's smoking ban is latest nanny state attack on freedom, personal choice

David Masciotra
IndyStar
Fri, 10 May 2013 15:42 UTC
Ball State University
© Ball State University
There is no shortage of petty hall monitors, arrogant bureaucrats and paternalistic politicians who know what is good for us, will threaten us into compliance with their lifestyle choices, and discipline us into shutting up if we feel differently.

Ball State University is the latest institution to participate in the finger wagging of the nanny state elite. The trustees recently announced that students and employees of the college will no longer have the right to consume legal tobacco products on campus grounds. Smoking is permitted only in automobiles with all windows rolled up. Any adult who breaks the seal and allows the slightest streak of smoke to waft into the open air will face a $50 fine.
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Sherlock

CIA involvement in the death of Bob Marley

Alex Constantine
High Times
Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:08 UTC
Bob Marley
© High Times
The following article originally appeared in the February 2002 issue of HIGH TIMES Magazine

Marley knew the drill - in Jamaica, at the height of his success, when music and politics were still one, before the fog of censorship rolled into the island, old wounds were opened by a wave of destabilization politics. Stories appeared in the local, regional and international press downsizing the achievements of the quasi-socialist Jamaican government under Prime Minister Michael Manley. In the late 1970s, the island was flooded with cheap guns, heroin, cocaine, right-wing propaganda, death squad rule and, as Grenada's Prime Minister Maurice Bishop described it three years later, the CIA's "pernicious attempts [to] wreck the economy."

"Destabilization," Bishop told the emergent New Jewel Party, "is the name given the most recently developed method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and violence."
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Black Cat

Man killed in South Russia 'for being gay' - investigators


Source
Mon, 13 May 2013 12:47 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti
Russian investigators confirmed on Monday a man beaten to death last week in Volgograd, south Russia, was the victim of a homophobic gang.

The naked body of the 23-year-old man with various injuries, including to his genitalia, was found in the courtyard of an apartment building on May 10, the day after Russia celebrated Victory Day marking the end of World War II.

The victim's skull was smashed with a 20-kilogram (44 pound) rock and he appeared to have been raped with beer bottles, regional media said. The report said the suspects also tried to burn the body but failed to do so.

"The motive for the crime was the [victim's] non-traditional sexual orientation," senior regional investigator Andrei Gapchenko said, adding two suspected attackers have been arrested and another man is a witness in the case.

The suspects are a 22-year-old man, who studied with the victim at school, and his 27-year-old friend, who was previously jailed for theft. The latter has admitted his guilt, investigators said.
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War Whore

17 hurt at New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting

William M. Welch
USA Today
Sun, 12 May 2013 18:05 UTC

Shots fired during an informal Mother's Day afternoon parade in New Orleans injured 17 people, a police spokeswoman said Sunday.

One of the injured was a girl, 9 or 10 years old, who was grazed by a bullet to her side, said Remi Braden, director of public affairs for the New Orleans Police Department.

She said there were no fatalities and "most of the wounds are not life-threatening.''

The shots were fired around 2 p.m. in the area of North Villere and Frenchmen Streets during what is locally referred to as "a second-line parade,'' Braden said.

The Times-Picayune newspaper said there were about 200 people at the event when gunfire erupted. Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas told reporters at the scene that at least 12 people were shot, Associated Press reported. Braden said later that "we believe 17 people were wounded,'' either while participating or observing the parade.

Braden said three or four people were in surgery, but he didn't have their conditions.
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Question

Disembodied statue has library scratching its head

Taylor K. Vecsey
East Hampton Patch
Tue, 07 May 2013 16:56 UTC
Statue
© Dennis Fabiszak
A mysterious statue was left at the East Hampton Library construction site. Do you know why?
Do you know anything about this statue head?

Granted, this is not the kind of question you normally hear, but the statue head that was left at the East Hampton Library this weekend begs the question.

Dennis Fabiszak, the library director, tells Patch that some time between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning a statue of the head of a woman, attached to a piece of slate, was left inside the library construction site on top of an old fountain. The back of the statue has a piece broken out of it, where it appears birds made a nest inside of it at some point. Weighing about 50 pounds, it looks like it was made out of a thick red or orange clay that was then painted black. There's an inscription on the back (see photo below).

Where did this statue come from? Who left it at the library? Why was it left at the library? Who is the woman depicted in the statue?
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Bizarro Earth

Man goes on bulldozer rampage


ITN/agencies
Sat, 11 May 2013 06:35 UTC
A man in a bulldozer-like vehicle has gone on a rampage in the US state of Washington, damaging homes and cutting off electricity to thousands.


Barry Alan Swegle, 51, used a bulldozer-like vehicle to damage property and an electricity pole in a dispute with neighbours.

Four homes in Washington's Olympic Peninsula were badly damaged and one home was knocked off its foundations.

An electricity pole was also pushed down by the International Harvester TD-25 machine, cutting off electricity for thousands in the area.

A neighbour in the area told the Peninsula Daily News that the driver "just went nuts".

Mr Swegle was arrested and held over malicious mischief. No one was injured in the incident.
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Bizarro Earth

Italian doctor arrested over alleged sale of a baby for €25,000

Michael Day
Independent.co.uk
Thu, 09 May 2013 21:34 UTC
Student persuaded not to have an abortion by gynaecologist who was paid by childless couple

Image

Dr Andrea Cozzolino did not tell the mother about the money.
An Italian gynaecologist persuaded a young woman not to have an abortion so that he could sell her baby and pocket €25,000 (£21,000), according to police in Naples.

The doctor, Andrea Cozzolino, 57, was arrested this week on suspicion of corruption and abuse of office, after evidence emerged that two years ago he persuaded a 17-year-old student to carry her child to term, telling her that he would pass the baby on to a childless couple.

However, it is alleged that he didn't tell the mother that the couple he had found would pay him €25,000 to deliver the child to them.

The young woman, who became pregnant by her student boyfriend, was delayed in seeking a legal abortion (paid for by Italy's health service) because of her age and her refusal to allow her parents to be contacted, according to Alessandro Tocco, Caserta's deputy police chief.
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Pistol

71 Children killed by guns in U.S. since Newtown massacre: Exceeds some countries' yearly rates of total gun deaths

Michael Allen
Opposing Views
Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00 UTC
Image

During the debate over the Senate background checks bill last month, one consistent pro-gun talking point was that expanded background checks would not have prevented the Newtown massacre.

However, the parents of the Newtown victims often said the proposed bill wasn't for their slain children, but rather future children who may be killed by guns.

Since the Newtown mass shooting in December 2012, at least 71 children (age 12 or under) have been killed in the U.S. by guns, reports Mother Jones.

That rate, for just five months, actually exceeds some countries' yearly rates of total gun murder deaths. Japan had only seven in 2011, per the Associated Press.
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Chalkboard

Hysteria! Elementary school boys suspended for pointing pencils and making machine gun noises


RT.com
Fri, 10 May 2013 10:16 UTC
Image
Two 7-year-old Virginia boys were suspended from elementary school for playing a game of make-believe in which they pointed pencils at each other, pretending that they were machine guns.

Christopher Marshall, a second grader at Driver Elementary School in Suffolk, Virginia, was sent home and suspended for two days for making machine gun noises while pointing a pencil at his classmate, who was also suspended. A teacher noticed the two boys making the noises, and proceeded to pull them out of the classroom and take them to the principal's office on May 3.

"I got a call from Christopher's school at 12:30 on Friday," one boy's mother, 34-year-old Wendy Marshall, told Yahoo! Shine. "His teacher told me that Christopher and his friend were playing with pencils, making machine gun and 'bang bang' noises. I asked if they were pointing the pencils at anyone else, if they were angry or hostile, disrupting class, or refused to stop when asked -- and the teacher said no."

Paul Marshall, the boy's father, told Fox 43 that his son was simply pretending to be a Marine, like he was for many years. Both parents believe the school overreacted in suspending their child for two days, and refused to punish him for it.
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Black Cat

Rampaging logging contractor flattens neighbour's house

Peter Foster
The Telegraph
Sat, 11 May 2013 11:14 UTC
Image
© AP
A logging contractor from Seattle took neighbourly score-settling to a new level when he jumped into his bulldozer and demolished two houses, flattened a pickup truck and snapped an electricity pole, causing power-cuts for a 20 mile radius.

Neighbours in Port Angeles, a small town of 19,000 people situated on the coast 80 miles northwest of Seattle said that a long-running boundary dispute was behind the rampage.

Local police said that Barry Swegle, 51, was being held on suspicion of "malicious mischief in the first degree" after allegedly firing up his luminous-orange International Harvester TD-25 bulldozer with 'skidder' attachment and setting to work.

Aerial pictures showed that one property had been ripped clean off its foundations and shunted several hundred feet into a neighbouring plot. Remarkably, police said no one was injured in the wrecking spree.
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