Society's ChildS


Red Flag

Head of German Leipzig police: Pogrom atmosphere spreading with intensity across country

european migrants
© Michaela Rehle / ReutersMigrants wait after they arrived in the first registration camp of Erding near Munich, Germany.
At least five reported attacks on asylum seekers' homes in Saxony, eastern Germany, over the weekend has prompted the head of local police to voice fears of a "pogrom atmosphere spreading with dangerous intensity" across the country.

"I am really very worried," Leipzig police commissioner Bernd Merbitz told the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily. "We are moving toward a situation in which violent mood-makers intentionally use people's fear to whip up hysteria against asylum policy and to justify violence against refugees," he added.

Two of the affected homes are located in Leipzig, Saxony's largest city, with another in Chemnitz, in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains.

One of the incidents reportedly took place in Holzhausen, in south-east Leipzig. An unknown person broke into a building housing asylum seekers and attempted to ignite flammable liquid, the investigators reported. The fire was extinguished before it spread across the building.

Stock Up

Tuning out: Legal marijuana industry blooms across US as sales grow 184%

marijuana dispensary
© David McNew / Reuters
The legal pot trade is reportedly one of the fastest growing markets in the US as sales of marijuana for casual use grew 184 percent in 2015 alone. Overall, cannabis commerce across the country soared to $5.4 billion, according to a new study.

"You won't find another industry growing at that kind of clip," said Troy Dayton, chief executive of the ArcView Group, which issued its fourth edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets.

According to the group's market estimate, both medical and adult consumer sales grew from $4.6 billion in 2014 to $5.4 last year, marking 17 percent increase year over year. Adult use sales grew to $998 million from $351 million in 2014, representing 184 percent growth.

Part of the reason for such growth lies in expanding pot legalization. In July 2015, Oregon allowed legal pot sales, joining Colorado and Washington, where cannabis commerce has been legal since 2014.

2 + 2 = 4

Darlington head teacher tells parents to 'wash and get dressed'

A primary school head teacher has written to parents asking them to wash in the morning and stop dropping their children off in their pyjamas.

Child in slippers
© PAParents are also being urged to dress appropriately for school meetings and assemblies.
Kate Chisholm, of Skerne Park Academy, Darlington, made the appeal after she noticed more and more adults wearing pyjamas at the school gates as well as at meetings and assemblies.

She said her aim was to help set a good example for pupils.

Parent Phil Naylor said wearing nightwear to school was "disgraceful".

Ms Chisholm said the final straw came when parents wore pyjamas to the Christmas show and to recent parents' evenings.

Red Flag

Sexualized children: School superintendent proposes giving middle school students condoms without parents' permission

condoms
© David Gray / Reuters
A proposal introduced by San Francisco Superintendent Richard Carranza would allow public school nurses and social workers to give condoms to middle school students without parents' permission.

As it currently stands, condoms have been distributed in city high schools since 1991, with a 1996 amendment allowing parents to opt their children out of the program, according to KTXL. However, the new proposal would prevent parents from having their children excluded, as well as expand the program to reach pre-teens.

SF Gate reports that according to a student survey, at least 5 percent of the students in sixth until eighth grade had had sexual intercourse, while more than 25 percent of high school students had had sex.

Comment: In today's Western world, children are surrounded by sexual imagery, from television to movies to the Internet. It seems almost intentional that our society is introducing sex to children at younger and younger ages. Does anyone think that a 12-year-old should have access to a condom? Something is seriously wrong with our society.


Padlock

Coventry, UK: Cops break into homes to highlight burglary risk

UK cop
Coventry police have come under fire on Twitter for an unconventional social media campaign in which patrolling officers tweeted pictures of themselves inside homes that had been left unlocked.

The force's #stoleninseconds campaign has seen Coventry police officers patrolling streets searching for open windows and unlocked doors to highlight the risk of burglary to residents.

Two photos, which have since been taken down, show a police officer standing inside a person's hallway, while another shows an officer entering a home through a side or back door. Other photos, which are still on the force's Twitter feed, show them standing by unlocked gates to communal areas and pointing out easily accessible open windows.

Comment: It seems the Coventry cops are taking a page from the playbook of their American counterparts.

It's for your own good: New Haven cops steal residents' belongings to protect them from being stolen


Megaphone

Queues from hell! Over 100,000 stranded outside China's Guangzhou station, delays caused from heavy snow

China Guangzhou station
© www.talkglobalnews.com
Guangzhou railway station in southern China has been swamped by over 100,000 people desperate to get home to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Heavy snow in northern and central provinces caused delays to dozens of trains, leaving passengers stranded.

People had a nightmare start to the Lunar New festival, which gets underway later in February. They were unable to board trains because of inclement weather, leading to massive queues developing outside Guangzhou railway station.

Some people were standing for more than 10 hours in the pouring rain, as 32 trains were delayed.

Comment: See also: Snow causes chaos in China as millions head home for Lunar New Year


Bandaid

Spate of random slashings in New York City sows fear

Tony-Award winning playwright David Henry
© AP/Jim CooperIn this 2007 file photo, Tony-Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang is shown at The Public Theater in New York. Wang was a victim of a random attach while carrying groceries to his home in Brooklyn, N.Y

Tony-award winning playwright David Henry Hwang was carrying groceries down a Brooklyn street when he felt like he got hit in the back of the head. He suddenly couldn't walk straight.

"I kept veering into a wall, then a parked car. And that's when I realized I was bleeding," Hwang, the author of "M. Butterfly," said this week.

Hwang had been slashed with a blade by someone who came out of nowhere. The wound was so deep it severed an artery leading to his brain.

He isn't the only victim of such an unusual crime. Since December, about a dozen such random, unprovoked slashings have been reported across the city, including three this week on subway trains. All were committed by strangers, police said. They used knives, razors and, in one instance, possibly a machete.

Light Saber

Surfing icon Kelly Slater: Vote nobody 2016, Stop Monsanto and Investigate 9-11

Kelly Slater
© Inertia Kelly Slater
Surfing legend Kelly Slater is interviewed by Luke Rudkowski from We Are Change, just days after being in the news for saving a woman and her baby from a huge wave in Hawaii that swept them away.

In this interview the surfing icon opens up about his views on various issues including politics, 9/11, the wars in the middle east, ISIS, Monsanto and GMOs.

Slater is now part of a growing number of celebrities speaking out about import issues facing our time.

Like many people, the 11-time world surfing champion began questioning things after 9/11 and is now someone actively seeking the truth. He stopped watching the mainstream media to follow the alternative media instead, to find out what is going on in the world.

His concerns on topics such as Monsanto and GMOs are close to home for the surfer who lives in Hawaii, a well known testing ground for Monsanto.

Comment: Great interview, it's awesome to see celebrities using their platforms to increase awareness of the issues that matter.


Hourglass

Delaware halts all capital punishment cases as Supreme Courts weighs legality

Death penalty
© Fred Thornhill / Reuters
Delaware has put all of its nearly 40 pending death penalties on hold as the state's Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of its capital punishment system. The move comes on the heels of a Florida case, during which the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has until April 14 to review and answer five questions from Superior Court judge regarding the roles of judges and juries in Delaware death penalty cases.

On Monday, Judge Jan Jurden ruled a temporary stay of the pending trials, penalty hearings, and applications related to the capital first-degree murder cases.

Comment: See also: Psychopathic Maine Governor wants to 'bring the guillotine back' and hold 'public executions' for drug offenders


Arrow Down

Snakes in suits: NGO aid-money laundering and embezzlement of disaster relief funds

haiti
It took the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti to expose the rot in the world's charities. Well-meaning people and their governments donated about $12 billion dollars of emergency aid, virtually none of which reached individual Haitians. The funds that were delivered went mostly to enrich the donor countries' government agencies, aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGO), and the vast majority of the pledged funds were never delivered at all. Some of this disappeared money was embezzled. Two criminal cases in 2015 give a glimpse into the use of NGOs by criminal networks to launder embezzled aid money.

Aid, Mediterranean style

Rafael Blasco, one of Spain's longest-lived and most indestructible politicians, became the first person to serve time for stealing Haitian reconstruction funds when he began a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence on June 15, 2015 for committing embezzlement of public funds, administrative prevarication, and forgery while he was the Director of the Aid Ministry in Valencia's regional government. Although the English-language press ignored this news, in Spain, the "Aid Case" was a major scandal that the media followed for three years, until the Spanish Supreme Court denied Blasco's final appeal for clemency in May 2015.

According to a Valencia High Court and the Spanish Supreme Court, Blasco received his sentence for running a criminal ring that had syphoned off all but 3 percent of a $2 million aid package that should have brought water and sustainable food to two poor rural areas of Nicaragua. This was only one part of the three-part Aid Case, which involved a total of $10 million and irregularities in 30 humanitarian projects in Central America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Another important part of the Aid Case was the planned construction of a hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake for $5.1 million, but it turned out that there was sufficient evidence in the Nicaragua part to convict Blasco.

Comment: