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Undercover NYPD cop kills bystander after shooting at suspect holding fake gun


RT
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 06:01 UTC
Image
© Uli Seit for The New York Times
Investigators were at the scene of a police shooting in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Friday night.
A weapons sting operation went terribly wrong when an undercover NYPD officer, who was threatened with a replica gun by a robber, shot and killed a 61-year-old passerby instead of disabling the 'gunman.'

The bystander, identified as Felix Kumi, died of two torso wounds on Saturday, police said. The gunman had attempted to rob the undercover officer just as he was about to buy a gun from a suspected illegal arms dealer in a vehicle as part of the Friday operation. The robber was reportedly hit three times as he was running away.

The number of hits, however, was a far cry from the total number of shots fired by the cop from NYPD's Firearms Investigations Unit. According to witness reports and police statements cited by the New York Daily News, the officer fired at the fleeing robber anywhere between 11 and 21 shots.

As it turned out, the gunman, Alvin Smothers, 37, had threatened the cop with an "imitation pistol." Smothers hopped into the back seat of his car, putting the fake gun to the officer's head and demanding money as the undercover cop was waiting to make his weapons purchase. Smothers escaped the scene with the whole sum - reportedly $2,400 - intended for the gun dealer, but was later arrested. He is now in hospital with serious injuries.

The innocent victim's family was in a state of shock following the shooting. Kumi was a deeply spiritual man who "touched everyone he met," according to family members quoted by NY Daily News. The man, described as a devout Jehovah's Witness, was walking along Beekman Ave to pick up his car from a repair shop when he was twice struck by police bullets.

Comment: You don't even have to call the police in New York to be murdered by them.

American Police State: Two bystanders shot and wounded by NYPD officers who opened fire onmentally disturbed suspect in crowded Times Square

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V

Palestinian women fight off, bite IDF soldier trying to arrest 12-year old boy


RT
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:28 UTC
Image
© Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
Palestinians scuffle with an Israeli soldier as they try to prevent him from detaining a boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah August 28, 2015.
An Israeli soldier attempting to put a suspected pre-teen stone-thrower in the West Bank in a headlock was beaten off by the collective efforts of his Palestinian family. IDF have called the incident a "violent provocation" by a family of celebrity activists.

A viral video has emerged of an unnamed Israeli soldier chasing down a boy whose arm is in a sling outside the village of Nabi Saleh, a frequent flashpoint for protests. As he pins the screaming 12-year-old Mohamed Tamimi down, the soldier is set upon by the boy's family, including his mother, aunt, and sister.


In the clip, the soldier attempts to wriggle out of the grasp of the choking and biting relatives before being rescued by another soldier, who pulls him out, pushing away a swarm of relatives and activists who arrive at the scene. As he is led away, the visibly flustered IDF private throws down a flash grenade.

The father of the 12-year-old, Bassem Tamimi, who observed the entire incident from behind the camera, said on Facebook that his son had to be taken to hospital, and accused the Israelis of shooting another 9-year-old son two days earlier.
Image
© Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah August 28, 2015.
Image
© Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
Palestinians scuffle with an Israeli soldier as they try to prevent him from detaining a boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah August 28, 2015.
"We protect our family and our land through the resistance," Tamimi said in another post. "People of the world, stand with Palestine. Stand with the human rights."

Israel Defense Forces characterized Friday's incident differently, calling it "a violent disturbance of the peace in Nabi Saleh, in which Palestinians threw stones at IDF forces that were in the place."
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Binoculars

The end of privacy: Drone finds sunbathing monk atop wind turbine in California


RT
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 12:24 UTC
Image
© News Time/You Tube
The lengths some people will go to enjoy a moment of peace and solitude can be quite extreme, but thanks to drone technology that peace and solitude can be disturbed in ways that never would have been possible before.

A drone pilot named Kevin Miller from San Diego, California became the unwitting agent of this, while filming some up-close footage of a wind turbine in Rhode Island during his vacation. Instead of simply capturing some great, rarely seen angles of the turbine, he discovered something entirely unexpected when his drone made it to the top: a bearded man stretched out and catching some rays.

"The guy must have been napping because he did not notice the drone for 5-10 seconds," Miller said to the Daily Mirror.

"At that point I decided to take a closer look by moving closer to say hi. Once I got closer I moved the drone side to side to say hello and he motioned back to the drone. It was a cool interaction between us," Miller said.

In the video, the man on top of the 200-foot turbine is seen resting peacefully on his back before finally noticing the drone watching him. He waves to the drone as it flies closer and lingers near him before zooming away as the video ends.

Miller said when the drone landed, the man leaned over and the two waved to each other.

The bearded man's identity was unknown at first, with some speculating that he might have been an engineer who had decided to take a short break after conducting some maintenance work.

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Che Guevara

The 'Fight for $15': It's not just about raising wages at McDonald's, it's about a living wage for everyone


The Guardian
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:59 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Minimum wage activists
The Fight for $15 is giving McDonald's a stark choice - either sit down and work together with us to find a way to lift up hundreds of thousands of low-wage McDonald's workers or face continued economic war.

That warning is not without heft. Already, as a result of the Fight for $15's prodding, Brazilian prosecutors are investigating alleged wage theft, child labor and unsafe conditions at McDonald's franchised operations, while the European Union is investigating it for more than $1bn in alleged tax evasion.

In New York, a panel appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo ruled that the state's 180,000 fast-food workers should be paid a minimum of $15 an hour, in response to protests and pressure for Fight for $15.

Comment: McDonald's, which made a net profit of over 5.5 billion in 2013, doesn't want to pay its workers a fair living wage. The sweat of the workers is the reason why McDonald's has such a huge profit margin. One has to wonder how much CEO Steve Easterbrook makes?

McDonald's, like many other psychopathic corporations, has been getting away with the exploitation of their workers for far too long. For more information on the hidden history of corporations, read this.

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Heart - Black

Blaming the victim: Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders says women should dress modestly or expect to 'entice a rapist'

John Bingham
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 10:35 UTC
Image
© Telegraph
In a new memoir Chrissie Hynde reveals she was sexually assaulted by a motorcycle gang in Ohio in the early 1970s .
Pretenders lead singer claims sexual assault in the 1970s was her own 'fault' because of the way she was dressed

Women who walk around drunk and provocatively dressed should expect to be sexually assaulted, Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of the Pretenders, has suggested.The former chart topper claimed in a Sunday newspaper interview that scantily clad women were likely to "entice a rapist" and that it is their "fault" if they are attacked.

She discloses in a new memoir how she was abducted and sexually assaulted by a motorcycle gang in Ohio in the early 1970s - but concludes it was "all my doing" because of the way she was dressed and the fact that she was under the influence of drugs.


Comment: No, it is never the victim's fault.


She also claimed that pop stars who call themselves feminists but use their sex appeal to sell records were effectively just "prostitutes".

Charities said her remarks highlighted how victims of sexual assault wrongly blame themselves for their ordeals.
Her comments came in an interview with The Sunday Times, which published extracts from her autobiography entitled "Reckless".

The book details an incident when she was 21 when she was picked up by a motorcycle gang who promised to take her to a party but instead took her to an empty house and sexually assaulted her.But she said: "If I'm walking around in my underwear and I'm drunk? Who else's fault can it be? - Er, the guy who attacks you?


Comment: Yes, it is the fault of the guy who attacks you.


Comment: This woman's view is a glimpse into the inner landscape of normal people living in a world that psychopaths create. It is typical for victims of rape to think they can prevent future rapes by changing this or that, but they are not responsible for stopping or preventing rape, not ever. Sadly, her entire attitude is degrading and hurtful to survivors of rape, including herself.

See: Rape Culture in America - How the system protects the rapists and fails the victims

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Heart - Black

Psychopath alert: Massachusetts teen encouraged boyfriend to kill himself


Huffington Post
Sun, 30 Aug 2015 14:10 UTC
Image

Michelle Carter
Newly released text messages appear to detail how a Massachusetts teen encouraged her online boyfriend to kill himself.

"Everyone will be sad for a while but they will get over it and move on," 18-year-old Michelle Carter texted boyfriend Conrad Roy III in reference to him dying by suicide.

Comment: Michelle Carter and her horrific actions in relation to the suicide of Conrad Roy give a clear insight into the mind of a classic psychopath. Carter is obviously a 'common or garden variety' psychopath, too consumed with their own pathological narcissism and pleasure in the suffering of others to realise she would be exposed. There are, however, more intelligent and 'ambitious' psychopaths who are careful to ensure that their inhuman predilections are covered up by a mask of sanity and humanity. Such types can most commonly be found in positions of power around the world.

Read Political Ponerology and Without Conscience: the disturbing world of psychopaths among us, for more on this most important of topics.

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Passport

Mexican government files amicus brief, Texas being sued for denying birth certificates to children of immigrants

Julián Aguilar
The Texas Tribune
Tue, 25 Aug 2015 00:27 UTC
us mexican border immigrants
© Josh Denmark
The denial of birth certificates to U.S. citizen children born to immigrant parents not only jeopardizes their dignity and well-being, but could threaten the unique relationship between Mexico and Texas, the Mexican government said in a brief tied to a lawsuit filed against the state.

The Mexican government filed its amicus brief late Monday in support of a coalition of undocumented parents who are suing the state of Texas after they were denied birth certificates for their children.

The brief says that "friendly nations" have a history of accepting foreign passports or government-issued IDs to facilitate the identification of a foreigner.

"Conversely, expressions of doubt about the integrity of documents issued by a friendly country introduce a troublesome and discordant element into binational or transnational relations," the 19-page court document states.

Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid filed the lawsuit against the Department of State Health Services on behalf of six U.S. citizen children and their parents who are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. The original complaint was filed in May and has been amended twice to include more than 30 families. La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, an immigrant rights group with about 7,000 members, has also joined the lawsuit.

At issue is the refusal by county registrars' offices to accept the parents' foreign passports as a valid form of identification without a valid U.S. visa or consular identification card. The families claim the state has violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by rejecting the documents, and is also violating the Supremacy Clause by enforcing federal immigration laws.

Comment: As with massive refugee flows around the world, this one is composed of desperate individuals trying to give their children a better life away from the chaos of their home countries. If the US would stop meddling in the affairs of Latin America, likely there wouldn't be so much of a problem.

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Light Saber

Minnesota Congresswoman demands accountability for Nakba Day killings in Palestine

Annie Robbins
Mondo Weiss
Fri, 28 Aug 2015 22:30 UTC
Image
© Orlanado Crowcroft for The National
A month before an Israeli border police officer is set to go on trial in Israel for the killing of Palestinian teenager Nadeen Nawara, Minnesota Congressperson Rep. Betty McCollum has requested the State Department to investigate whether the killings of Nawara and a second teen, Mohammad Mahmoud Odeh Abu Daher, both killed during a Nakba Day protest in the occupied West Bank in 2014, constitute a violation of the Leahy Law on aid to human rights violators.

McCollum's forthright letter on the two killings now known as the Nakba Day killings, asked that a U.S. State Department official be present at the trial "to observe the conduct ... to ensure appropriate standards of justice are achieved." The Leahy Law prohibits the U. S. from providing military assistance "to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights." The exception to this prohibition is if "the government of such country is taking effective steps to bring responsible members to justice."

McCollum, a St.Paul Democrat, references the "brutal system of occupation that devalues and dehumanizes Palestinian children" and characterized Nawara's death as appearing to be "a blatant example of unlawful killing." She requested the U.S. impress upon Israeli officials that our government expects a transparent and credible trial; "The person(s) responsible for the murder of this Palestinian youth must be held accountable."

The Israeli military and their colleagues in the Israeli government have operated in all forms of denial in the face of Palestinian and international outrage over the Nakba Day killings since the day they took place, May 15th, 2014. Although initial medical reports concluded the teens were killed by live fire, the Israeli military denied this, saying that military and border police could not be responsible since only non lethal rubber bullet ammunitions were used that day. When video emerged to confirm live fire, they spun the killings of Nawara and Daher to such an extraordinary extent as to suggest that Palestinians fired the shots, not Israeli soldiers, and claimed the video was "likely forged".


Comment: Once again, Israel is creating their own reality to fit their perception of the 'evil' Palestinians. Forever playing the victim.


Comment: See also: The virtue & necessity of deconstructing 'anti-semitism'

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Stormtrooper

Police almost kill teens for setting up telescope that cops thought 'looked like a rifle'


Counter Current News
Fri, 28 Aug 2015 14:11 UTC
telescope
© WDAY 6
Police in Fargo, North Dakota nearly killed two NDSU students, and it was all because officers thought their telescope was a rifle, and their sweater was a "tactical vest."

University students Levi Joraanstad and Colin Waldera were both setting up the large telescope that happened to look nothing like a rifle whatsoever. They said their intention was to take pictures of the moon behind their apartment garage.

Shortly after they started setting up the telescope, they were blinded by a bright light. They assumed it was local bullies harassing them, so at first they ignored them.

Then the voices of the bullies got louder and told them that they would be shot if they didn't stop moving.

At this point they no longer thought it was a joke, whoever it was who was harassing them.

Shortly after freezing in place, hoping not to be shot by the local bullies, they were informed that those armed bullies were in fact police officers.

Comment: Police now are clearly unable to comprehend any sort of normal behaviour.

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Snakes in Suits

Psychopathic Indian judge orders two young women be gang-raped, paraded naked as punishment for their brother's elopement


RT
Sat, 29 Aug 2015 06:19 UTC
Image
© amnesty.org.uk
Over 60,000 people signed an Amnesty International UK's petition demanding the government intervene in the case of two Indian sisters sentenced to rape and humiliation for their brother's deed by a local council dominated by a higher caste.

An unelected all-male council from a village in India's Baghpat district handed down the ruling on July 30, ordering Meenakshi Kumari, 23, and her sister, 15, to be raped as well as paraded naked with blackened faces.

The council deemed this an appropriate punishment for their brother's elopement with a married woman from the higher Jat caste. The brother, known as Ravi, is reportedly from the Dalit caste, which is India's lowest, formerly known as the "untouchables." He ran away with his beloved despite fears of retribution.

"Nothing could justify this abhorrent punishment. It's not fair. It's not right. And it's against the law. Demand that the local authorities intervene immediately," Amnesty International said, calling on people worldwide to sign their petition to persuade the Indian government to intervene.

Fearing for their safety, both sisters fled their village along with their family back in May. Their house was looted soon thereafter.

The Jat caste is very powerful in the village, Amnesty quoted Sumit Kumar, another of Meenaksh's brothers, as saying. "The Jat decision is final."

Amnesty UK's Urgent Action Coordinator, Rachel Alcock, told the Mirror that such "disgusting" punishments are common in the villages all over India. "These Khap courts routinely order vile sexually violent punishments against women. India's Supreme Court has rightly declared such orders illegal."

Comment: There is a psychological theory that can explain why this conscienceless judge thinks that rape as a form of punishment is appropriate. From Political Ponerology, p. 119:
Any human group affected by the process described herein is characterized by its increasing regression from natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories might consider it an instance of "turning into half-wits" or the development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. A ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the association by pathological factors present in certain individuals who have been allowed to participate in the group because the lack of good psychological knowledge has not mandated their exclusion.

Thus whenever we observe some group member being treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although they are based on characteristically different view of human matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion.

We shall treat this in accordance with the above described first criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the atrophy of natural critical facilities with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.

Such a state of affairs simultaneously consists as a liminal (watershed) situation, whereupon further damage to people's healthy common sense and critical moral faculties becomes even easier. Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements.
See also:

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