Society's Child
Instead of saying that the State will have no role in marriage, instead of recognizing any agreement between consenting adults related to marriage, the State has mandated that it will back away just enough to allow clergy and clergy alone to conduct marriages. It will recognize marriage conducted only by officially recognized members of religious clergy.
So you can be gay or straight... as long as you go to church... or temple, or a mosque. Get the picture?
That means if you aren't particularly religious, the State of Oklahoma will not recognize any marital contract formed between consenting partners, whether heterosexual or homosexual.
House Bill 1125 was approved by a Republican majority, and now goes to the state Senate for consideration. Many glossed over this important detail about the State's refusal to recognize marriage rights if the marital contract was not conducted via a religious ceremony and clergy. Instead, initial reactions from many who wanted to see the state removed from policing marriages, was one of gratefulness.
But the State was never saying it would back off of marriage. The State still ultimately decides what marriages it will or won't recognize. Far from making marriages more free of State imposition, the Oklahoma just forced everyone who wants state-recognition of their marriage to undergo a religious ceremony.
Rep. Dennis Johnson, a Republican, said "Marriage was not instituted by government. It was instituted by God. There is no reason for Oklahoma or any state to be involved in marriage."
Retail sales have fallen three months in a row. The last time this happened was at the beginning of the 2008 financial collapse. Do retail sales fall three months in a row when the economy is booming, or does it do that when we are in a recession? And these haven't been miniscule drops: December -0.9%, January -0.8%, February -0.6%. If we dig into the numbers we can assess the truth of our current situation:
War crimes of the armed forces and security forces of Ukraine: torture and inhumane treatment. Second report
Yana, victim's wife on SBU officials:
They have beaten him to death simply. When they came — they took him away to torture him. When they brought his body back — the heels were blue, the feet were blue. He's got some traces of punctures on his hands... I don't know... what they did to him, punctured him or drove the needles under his nails — there were holes on his hands. Each bone has a hole in it. They tortured him like... when there was a real war no one has tortured people the way they tortured him.The data that has been accumulated since the first report by the Foundation for Democracy Studies provides ground to conclude that torture and inhumane treatment inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), by the Ukrainian armed forces, the National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as Right Sector, have not only continued but are gaining in scale and are becoming systematic.
On March 7, 2015, the state-wide drill, entitled Operation Vigilant Guard, took place under the pretext of preparation for the inevitable destruction a hurricane would bring to South Carolina. According to reports in the local media, the drills were based on the premise of the landfall of a Category 4 hurricane and "how they'd respond to get citizens help" in such an event.
The training involved the South Carolina National Guard as well as National Guard units from Georgia in addition to participants from local and state law enforcement agencies as well as local and state "officials."
Comment: Responsible preparation, or is it paranoia to think that something big might be in the works?

Barack Obama, master of propaganda, co-opting a civil rights event in Selma Alabama and building bridges to nowhere.
"To cleanse history in the name of a false patriotism that celebrates a new illiteracy as a way of loving the United States is a discourse of anti-memory, a willful attempt at forgetting the past in the manufactured fog of historical amnesia."I tried! In my capacity as a member of the Center for Constitutional Rights' Board of Directors (CCR), I traveled to Selma on Friday to attend the induction of Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler, two of the founding lawyers of CCR, into the Selma National Voting Rights Museum. And even though I knew that I would have to endure Obama's presence in Selma on Saturday, my plan was to stay in Selma until Sunday to catch up with friends and participate in the peoples' crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
— Henry Giroux
But I never saw the sun come up in Selma. Before Air Force One ever entered Alabama airspace, Obama's presence overshadowed the commemoration. In conversations on Friday, I heard over and over again about how Obama was coming to town to symbolically "close the circle" on the struggle for voting rights. And though it shouldn't have, I could not shake the deep sadness that I felt every time I heard this and similar comments from so many of my people who still had so much invested in this cheap pro-imperialist hustler that after the induction on Friday I found myself on Highway 80 heading out of Selma toward Montgomery.
I made the right decision.
Comment: So, in addition to being the new boss (same as the old boss), the oh so cynical and clever power-meisters chose Obama to the throne of the U.S. presidency precisely because they knew he would have the "talent" to hoodwink a certain percentage of blacks. Institutionalized racism and corporeal punishment towards blacks has reached a new plateau in Amerika. As the author of the article notes, extrajudicial killings by a psychopathic and militarized police force, the abominable numbers of blacks unfairly incarcerated and subsumed by the prison-industrial-complex, and an economy that is designed to keep the black working class and poor stuck in their place, all contribute to making blacks prisoners of a system with no way out. And brand Obama is the one of their wardens.
Nykerion Nealon, 17, was being held without bond on a murder charge in last week's death of Ahmed Al-Jumaili, who in February moved to Dallas to escape violence in his homeland.
"We don't believe he knew Mr. Al-Jumaili. We don't believe he knew Mr. Al-Jumaili's ethnicity," police Maj. Jeff Cotner told a news conference Friday. Cotner had earlier said police do not believe the killing was a hate crime.
Al-Jumaili was outside his apartment complex taking snapshots of snow on the night of March 4 when he was shot.
"Mr. Al-Jumaili was enjoying the snowfall with his wife and brother when he was shot, then he ran toward his apartment and collapsed in the breezeway," Cotner said.
Comment: This is just tragic. And there's a cruel irony that he left war-torn Iraq (courtesy of the U.S.), only to be killed in the U.S. American society is sick to the core.
The incident happened as cops were driving around in a neighborhood Friday night looking for otherwise completely innocent people to purchase their drugs, so they could arrest them. Prior to setting up and killing Anthony Andrew Williams of Hawthorne, police arrested 10 people in this entrapment scheme.
However, after Williams voluntarily bought a substance for his own personal consumption from deputies, he realized their scheme and tried to run.
According to police, Williams then took off in an SUV and swerved to avoid hitting deputies which sent him crashing into a nearby tree.
Police then claim that Williams, who just crashed because he tried to avoid hitting deputies, tried to hit the deputies. At this point, four officers began to unload their pistols at the man.
During their ridiculously violent display, these trigger happy deputies shot one of their fellow cops. Deputy Robert Nelson is currently recovering from a gunshot wound he received from his "highly trained" co-workers.
The man whose tree was damaged during this debacle, Gilbert Randall, expressed his disappointment with police to WJAX News.
"They set the scene for this to happen, and he lost his life. I'm saddened," Randall said.
Comment: Day in day out the stories pile up of police violence against basically nonviolent citizens. In this case, the cops set up and killed a black man who was minding his own business.
Organized by Unite the Union, UNISON and GMB, leaders say austerity measures will likely result in up to 20,000 job losses over the next few years.
Picket lines and demonstrations are taking place across the region as workers confronted public sector cuts. Northern Ireland is more dependent on central government than any other part of the UK.
Ahead of the strike Michael Mulholland, GMB regional organizer, said: "On Friday 13th March in Northern Ireland we will see one of the largest trade union organized protests in many years."
Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said in a statement: "Without standing up to this, we can expect another four years of even more punishing austerity budgets."
Huge support for public sector workers opposing Government cuts. Rally at Belfast City Hall! #M13 #M13StopTheCuts pic.twitter.com/JPQaLzZo23
— North Down Greens (@NorthDownGreens) March 13, 2015The discussion continues from the previous week's interview with Tom Stevenson about his book on Julius Caesar.
Following this, we discussed some current events: the latest ISIS revelations, Venezuela as a 'national security' threat and then the pedophile scandals in both the US and UK.
Running Time: 01:48:00
Download: MP3
Louisville, Kentucky - Louisville Metro Police Officer Jonathan Hardin, 31, has been arrested for assaulting a child at the school where he was working as a resource officer.
Surveillance video released after it was played during a probable cause hearing on Thursday shows Hardin choking out a 13-year-old student back in January. This was only five days after the officer allegedly assaulted another 13-year-old student in an unrelated incident.
Hardin was also named in a civil suit with two other officers who have been accused of verbally and physically abusing children during a summer program.
Surveillance cameras at the middle school also caught the first incident that took place in the cafeteria on January 22. The footage reportedly shows the officer punch a student in the face so hard that he is knocked to the ground, after accusing him of cutting in line.
The boy was subsequently charged with menacing and resisting arrest following the officer's assault. However, WLKY reports that court records show that the officer made the arrest based on facts that he knew were false.
Instead of being fired, suspended, or moved to a position away from children, the officer remained on duty and January 27th he was caught on camera assaulting a child once again.














Comment: The US economy is in shambles and is being propped up by smoke and mirrors.
The massive lie behind the U.S. unemployment numbers