Society's ChildS


Eye 1

Wrongful violent arrest of James Blake by NYPD blamed on Instagram snafu


RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:10 UTC
Image
© NYPD / Reuters
An Instagram photo of an Australian sunglasses designer was given to New York police following a credit card fraud incident. Strangely enough, that photo was the identification used in the recent violent body-slam arrest of pro-tennis star James Blake.

The whole sequence of events began when a delivery company, GoButler, was ripped off by a group that purchased $18,000 worth of items with fraudulent credit cards. GoButler officials gave the NYPD the Instagram photo of Sean Satha, who looks like Blake, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce.

"If you look at the photo ... it's a reasonable likeness to Mr. Blake," Chief Boyce told ABC News. "They look like twins."


Comment: A 'reasonable likeness' does not give police the right to physically assault somebody. And why do police feel the need to use violence to apprehend a suspect in a case involving fraudulent credit cards? The only thing that makes sense is the police are taught to use violence no matter if the situation warrants it or not.


Satha, however, was in Australia the entire time of the Blake incident, but his similarity to Blake was apparently what prompted an undercover police officer to body slam the tennis star in a controversial arrest.

Comment: See: Retired tennis pro James Blake tackled and handcuffed by abusive NYPD cop

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Gold Seal

REM singer Michael Stipe to Donald Trump: "Go f**k yourself" for using band's song in 'moronic charade of a campaign'

Heather Saul
The Independent
Thu, 10 Sep 2015 17:04 UTC
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© Joel Ryan / PAMichael Stipe proved REM are back at the top of their game
The lead singer of R.E.M has a message for Donald Trump and other politicians using his music during campaign trails: "Go f**k yourself.

The band's 1987 song, "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" was used to rouse the crowd at a Tea Party rally at the US Capitol on Wednesday as Trump emerged. After a slew of horrified tweets from fans, lead singer Michael Stipe reacted with fury that their music had been used via R.E.M bassist Mike Mill's Twitter feed.

Mills was more reluctant to blast Trump publicly for fear of giving him even more of a platform. "Personally, I think the Orange Clown will do anything for attention," he wrote in a separate tweet. "I hate giving it to him."

Comment: The singer was probably echoing the feelings of lots of people.

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Colosseum

UNESCO chief: ISIS trafficking of Syrian artifacts requires urgent countermeasures


RT
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:07 UTC
Palmyra
© forbes.net.uaThe monumental arch in the eastern section of Palmyra's colonnade, in danger of destruction by ISIS.
UNESCO's head says something should be done after satellite photos emerged showing illegal archeological digs in Syria where proceeds from precious finds go into the pockets of Islamic State extremists.

Syria's excavation sites are looted on an industrial scale and it's time to do something about it, said Irina Bokova during a press conference this Wednesday.

"Limiting the trafficking in cultural property is a top priority because it finances the actions of the extremists."Bokova said it would help if the European Union strengthened its legislation in relation to the importation of cultural property.

Temple of Bel
© www.dailymail.co.uk2000 year old Temple of BEL, reported blown up by ISIS according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
However after the conference was over, she mentioned to journalists that artworks from Syria not only head to Europe and the United States, but are trafficked globally.

According to the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology (APSA), more than 900 monuments and archaeological sites have been looted, damaged or destroyed.

"The world expects from us to undertake decisive and uncompromising actions... to stop this source of funding for the extremists," warned Bokova.

Comment: Syrians are emptying their museums and national treasuries in order to transport artifacts to more secure havens as pre-emptive measures for their safety. What ISIS can't find, it can't destroy or use. At least that is the theory. However, it seems ISIS has its own conduit of intel and financial security... And, the other countries housing these valuable artifacts (Europe and the US), well, hmmm...was that always the plan?

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Hearts

MIT surprises Ahmed Mohamed on live TV, offers him guided tour through school

Serina Sandhu
The Independent
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 15:58 UTC
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© Ben Torres/Getty ImagesAhmed Mohamed has been invited to go on a tour of MIT
The young boy who was arrested for taking a homemade clock into school was surprised during a live interview with an offer to tour Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, from Texas, was questioned by police after teachers thought the digital clock he had made looked like a bomb. His principal at MacArthur High School in Irving also suspended him.

Ahmed said he had only taken the clock into school to show his teachers.

His story has since garnered support from people around the world, with many impressed at his invention and engineering capability.

During a live interview on the All In with Chris Hayes show on MSNBC on Wednesday night, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysics professor at MIT, surprised the 14-year-old by inviting him to go on a tour of MIT and Harvard Univeristy.


Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school

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Snakes in Suits

Clueless mayor defends school and police who arrested teen that brought homemade clock to school

Matt Ferner
Huffington Post
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:48 UTC
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© AP
Irving, Texas Mayor Beth Van Duyne is defending law enforcement and school officials who were involved in the arrest and suspension of Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old ninth-grader who brought a homemade clock to school that teachers mistook for a bomb.

"I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat," Van Duyne wrote in a statement posted to her Facebook page Wednesday.

Van Duyne said school and law enforcement officials were simply following school protocols when a "possible threat" or "criminal act" is discovered.

"To the best of my knowledge, they followed protocol for investigating whether this was an attempt to bring a Hoax Bomb to a school campus," Van Duyne wrote. "I hope this incident does not serve as a deterrent against our police and school personnel from maintaining the safety and security of our schools."

Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school

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Handcuffs

Police State: OWS lawsuit aims to stop NYPD from targeting peaceful protesters

Christopher Robbins
Gothamist
Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:40 UTC
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© Jessica Lehrman / GothamistA protester is arrested on September 16, 2012
A new lawsuit filed in federal court last week aims to challenge a reality evident to anyone who has attended a large political gathering in Lower Manhattan over the past decade: lawful behavior is no safeguard against being arrested.

The lawsuit centers on more than 200 arrests made around the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September 2012, when the NYPD "should have known that members of its police force would encounter individuals engaged in expressive speech activity."

Instead, the NYPD continued to arrest and harass protesters for seemingly no reason other than that they were protesting.

The lawsuit asserts that this is part of a "pattern, policy, and practice of the NYPD misapplying the disorderly conduct statute to peaceful protesters in New York City."

"The City of New York has continually failed to appropriately police the many non-violent and lawful expressions of speech, resulting in the continual breach of individual rights, the waste of judicial and civic resources, and the need for appropriate training policies, methodologies, and systems to address individuals conducting peaceful and legal expressive speech as protected under the First Amendment," the suit states.
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Magnify

Meet the 7 kids not named Mohamed who brought homemade clocks to school and didn't get arrested

Andy Cush
Gawker
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:40 UTC
Image
© h080/Flickr
Hoping to impress the teachers at his new school, an Irving, Texas, high school freshman named Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade clock with him to MacArthur High Monday morning, which he'd assembled before bed the night before. When he showed it to those teachers, though, they were something other than impressed, and by Monday afternoon, Mohamed was being led out of school in handcuffs. Ahmed's English teacher believed the device was a bomb.

Why? Could it have something to do with Ahmed Mohamed's name, or the color of his skin? His father thinks so. "He just wants to invent good things for mankind," Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News. "But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated."

Mohamed's father might be right. Below are seven students, not named Mohamed, who got off scot-free for the heinous crime of DIY timekeeping, plus a bonus kid who brought an actual inert bomb to school and wasn't suspended. (Mohamed got three days.)

Comment: See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school

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Black Magic

Muslim exorcist murdered at 'voodoo' healing center, East London


RT
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:55 UTC
eery london
A Muslim exorcist was stabbed to death at a voodoo therapy center where he worked in East London on Monday. Although police and paramedics rushed to save him, his injuries were so serious he died at the scene. Zakariyya Islam, 46, was discovered with multiple stab wounds at the Ruqyah Therapy Centre in Greatorex Street on Monday evening. Police found a knife close to the scene of the murder.

A 43-year-old man was arrested shortly after the attack and police are not searching for any other suspects. The suspect had injuries to his hand for which he received hospital treatment and is now in custody.

Friends of Islam have suggested he may have been killed by a psychologically-disturbed patient who thought he or she was possessed by demonic spirits. Islam often dealt with those who believed they were possessed by evil spirits or 'Jinns' by reading passages of the Koran.

Comment: Update: Ashfav Choudry, age 43, of Watford was charged with the murder of Zakariyya Islam, father of three.

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Health

Dr. Deborah Asnis, infectious disease specialist from New York, dies at 59

Sam Roberts
The New York Times
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:08 UTC
Image
Dr. Deborah Asnis reported puzzling symptoms in 1999.
Dr. Deborah Asnis, whose suspicions about two Queens hospital patients suffering from sudden paralysis led to the discovery of the first outbreak of West Nile virus in the Western Hemisphere, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 59.

The cause was breast cancer, her son, Joshua, said.

On Aug. 23, 1999, a Monday, Dr. Asnis, an infectious disease specialist, contacted Marcelle Layton, the chief epidemiologist at the New York City health department, reporting that two of her patients at Flushing Hospital Medical Center were displaying similar puzzling symptoms.

"Asnis did something other doctors might not have bothered to do," Elinor Levy and Mark Fischetti wrote in the 2003 book "The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Germs Threatens Us All."

Comment: More info: Beneficial tobacco: Monoclonal antibodies derived from tobacco thwart West Nile virus

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Alarm Clock

Small bastion of sanity: Millions tweet support for 9th grader detained for bringing homemade clock to school


RT
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 10:09 UTC
CAIR clocks
© CAIR-Chicago / TwitterThe Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic relations stands with Ahmed Mohamed by holding clocks
#IStandWithAhmed became the number one trending hashtag worldwide on Twitter after 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was handcuffed and arrested for taking a homemade clock to his Texas high school.

Ahmed, a ninth grader from Irving, Texas, was eager to impress his teachers with his newest creation - a clock that he invented in just 20 minutes, consisting of a circuit board and a power supply wired to a digital display. The clock and its wirings were all strapped inside a case.

However, his excitement turned to fear when he was pulled out of class by the principal and arrested after the clock's alarm went off during his English period.

"It looks like a bomb," his teacher told him. The boy was taken to a juvenile detention center and questioned by police before being released to his parents.

It was not until the next day that police announced they would not charge the teen for creating a "hoax bomb." Instead, they dropped the case.

Between Ahmed's arrest and the announcement that he would not face charges, social media exploded with tweets ranging from funny to supportive. All used the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag.

Many people took photos of themselves with clocks at work.


Comment: Some people can obviously see the utterly ridiculous nature of this hysterical reaction on the part of school officials and law enforcement. Why does it seem like the crazies are always the ones in these positions of power and influence? Probably because psychopaths and authoritarian followers tend to seek out and occupy such positions. Unfortunately that never leads to good results.

See also: Hysterical police state USA: 14-year-old Muslim schoolboy arrested for taking homemade clock to school

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