Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

US: Heartless Sacramento police move to disperse homeless camp

Sacramento police evictions
© Manny CrisostomoSacramento police officers begin bagging up belongings as they clean up the area along the American River levee at North 10th Street where a tent city exists. Campers have until dark to leave the area, police said.
A showdown appears to be brewing as Sacramento police officers evict 150 homeless people from an illegal campground along the American River.

While most of the homeless appear to be complying with orders to pack up their tents and move somewhere else, some say they will stand their ground and face arrest because they have no place else to go.

The confrontation started about 8 a.m. Wednesday when around 40 police officers arrived at the site near the intersection of North 10th Street and the American River. The campers were warned earlier this month that eviction was imminent.

"They asked me what I'm going to do," said "Brother" Eli, a camp elder. "I said 'I don't have anywhere to go.' "

Pills

US: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills?

Mental health professionals say new diagnoses will lead to overmedication.

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© Unknown
Anyone who's ever tried to get reimbursed by a health insurance company after seeing a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, or taking a child or teenager to one, has no doubt noticed the incomprehensible numbers that appear on the clinician's statement, perhaps preceding some slightly less imponderable phrase.

Maybe you are a 296.22 (major depressive disorder, single episode, mild) or a 300.00 (anxiety disorder NOS - not otherwise specified). Hopefully, you are not a 301.83 (borderline personality disorder). Your kid might be a 313.81 (oppositional defiant disorder) or, more likely, a 314.01 (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type).

Newspaper

Wikileaks a "COGNITIVE INFILTRATION" Operation

Nihilists of The World Unite: Wikileaks Is The "Cognitive Infiltration" Operation Demanded by Cass Sunstein

Awareness is growing around the world that the Wikileaks-Julian Assange theater of the absurd is radically inauthentic - a psyop. Wikileaks and its impaired boss represent a classic form of limited hangout or self-exposure, a kind of lurid striptease in which the front organization releases doctored and pre-selected materials provided by the intelligence agency with the intent of harming, not the CIA, nor the UK, nor the Israelis, but rather such classic CIA enemies' list figures as Putin, Berlusconi, Karzai, Qaddafi, Rodriguez de Kirchner, etc. In Tunisia, derogatory material about ex-President Ben Ali leaked by Wikileaks has already brought a windfall for Langley in the form of the rare ouster of an entrenched Arab government.

At Foggy Bottom and Langley, a manic fit has been building since the flight of Ben Ali. US imperialist planners now believe they can re-launch their shopworn model of the color revolution, CIA people-power coup, or postmodern putsch against a whole series of countries in the Arab world and far beyond, including Italy. The color revolutions had been looking tarnished lately, as a result of the failure of the Twitter Revolution in Iran back in June 2009. Previously, the Cedars Revolution of 2005 had failed in Lebanon. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine had been rolled back with the ouster of NATO-IMF kleptocrats Yushchenko and Timoshenko. In Georgia, the Roses Revolution was increasingly discredited by the repressive and warmongering regime of fascist madman Saakashvili.

Stormtrooper

Restrained Man Pepper-Sprayed To Death By Florida Cops

No doubt you've heard the adage: a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture of 62-year-old Nick Christie could be worth thousands of dollars when a jury sees it.

The photo shows the Ohio man restrained inside the Lee County Jail with his body covered in pepper spray.

"This photo is a picture of a man who is strapped to a chair naked inside a jail for hours with a hood over his face. That evokes thoughts of being tortured," says Cleveland-based lawyer Nick DiCello who represents the Christie family.

The photo, which was obtained by FOX 13's investigative unit, was taken in the final hours of Christie's life.


House

UK taxpayers shoulder subsidised stagnation in housing sector

Britain's housebuilders are set for "subsidised stagnation" as the Government has failed to secure necessary action in exchange for supporting the sector, a think tank warned.
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© PAState intervention in the sector has so far blocked the “creative destruction” which would have released land, benefiting new entrants, the think tank said.

As with the banks, the state has backed developers without getting enough in return for its help, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) argued in a new report.

"The Government's new Housing Strategy does not make sufficient demands of the housebuilders," said Nick Pearce, its director. "Instead, it offers them public land, money and guarantees without a serious quid pro quo."

Companies have been able to prioritise trading land over building homes and, without change, housebuilding risks another "lost decade", even as the UK faces a housing crisis, the think tank claimed.

Attention

Egyptian Court Bans Virginity Tests on Female Detainees

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© The Associated Press/Ahmed AliAn Egyptian court has ordered the country's military rulers to stop the use of "virginity tests" on female detainees, a practice that has caused an uproar among activists and rights. Samira Ibrahim, 25, filed a lawsuit after being subjected to a forced 'test."
A court on Tuesday banned virginity tests on female detainees in Egypt's military-controlled prisons, buoying human rights groups, who said the civilian court's ruling was binding on the country's military leaders.

The ban came in response to a lawsuit filed by market manager Samira Ibrahim, one of seven women who said they were subjected to humiliating virginity checks after being detained by the military at a March sit-in.

At the time, the ruling generals denied that soldiers had conducted the tests and offered no apologies. A general was later quoted as saying that tests had been carried out but only to protect soldiers from accusations of rape. Last week, the military announced investigations of the incidents.

The generals' management of the country's political transition has drawn intense criticism from activists, but the reports of mistreatment of women at the hands of the military have incensed a broad swath of Egyptians. In recent crackdowns on protesters, soldiers were filmed dragging unarmed women by their hair, beating them, and in at least one case stripping off a woman's clothing and exposing her bra.

Laptop

US: SOPA Is the End of Us, Say Bloggers

hands at keyboard
© ReutersBloggers argue their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill is passed.
The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress's Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers aruging their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

"If either the U.S. Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist," wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

Some have asserted that the controversial measures would criminalize pages and blogs that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. In particular, this has concerned search engines like Google, which could face massive liability if some form of the bill passes, some say.

"Of course, restrictions of results provided by Internet search engines amount to just that: prior restraint of their free expression of future results. Google and others, under SOPA, are told what they can or can't publish before they publish it. Kill. The. Bill," conservative blogger Neil Stevens argued at RedState.

Liberals had their own spin on it, cheering on the fact that corporate support for SOPA was starting to subside.

No Entry

US: Sears to Close 100 to 120 Kmart, Sears Stores

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© The Associated Press/Charles Rex ArbogastIn this Feb. 28, 2008 file photo, a banner is seen on the exterior of the Sears department store in downtown Chicago.
Sears Holdings Corp. plans to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores after poor sales during the holidays, the most crucial time of year for retailers.

The closings are the latest and most visible in a long series of moves to try to fix a retailer that has struggled with falling sales and shabby stores.

In an internal memo Tuesday to employees, CEO and President Lou D'Ambrosio said that the retailer had not "generated the results we were seeking during the holiday."

Sears Holdings Corp. said it has yet to determine which stores will close but said it will post on http://www.searsmedia.com when a final list is compiled. Sears would not discuss how many, if any, jobs would be cut.

The company has more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Its stock dropped $8.67, or 18.9 percent, to $37.18 in morning trading. The shares dipped to their lowest point in more than three years at $36.51 during the first few minutes of trading.

The company's revenue at stores open at least a year fell 5.2 percent to date for the quarter at both Sears and Kmart, the company said Tuesday. That includes the critical holiday shopping period.

Family

Best of the Web: Half of America In Poverty? The Facts Say It's True

poverty in us
© n/a
Recent reports suggest that almost 50% of Americans are in poverty or at a "low income" level. The claim is based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that includes health care, transportation, and other essential living expenses in the poverty calculation.

The concept of "low income" is controversial. It has been defined as earnings between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, a claim which, if true, would place every American family making $50,000 or less at a near-poverty level.

Conservative organizations believe the whole 'poverty' issue is overblown. The Cato Institute blames LBJ and Obama for reversing a declining poverty rate. Forbes blames the calculations. The Heritage Foundation argues, "The average poor person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines...In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave." The case for a growing "consumption equality" is alternately defended and denied.

With emotions running high on both sides, we need to take a balanced look at the available data to determine how well the highest-earning family of the poorest 50% -- a family with a $50,000 income -- can survive. (The maximum individual income for the poorest 50% is about $30,000.)

Boat

Iran threatens to close key Gulf oil route over nuclear sanctions

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© MSNBC/Bing
Tehran - Iran threatened on Tuesday to stop the flow of oil shipments through the crucial Strait of Hormuz if foreign sanctions were imposed on its crude exports over its nuclear ambitions.

The move could trigger military conflict with economies dependent on Gulf oil. The threat alone sent oil prices rising.

Western tensions with Iran have increased since a Nov. 8 report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog saying Tehran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be pursuing research to that end. Iran strongly denies this and says it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Iran has defiantly expanded nuclear activity despite four rounds of U.N. sanctions meted out since 2006 over its refusal to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment and open up to United Nations nuclear inspectors and investigators.

Many diplomats and analysts believe only sanctions targeting Iran's lifeblood oil sector might be painful enough to make it change course, but Russia and China - big trade partners of Tehran - have blocked such a U.N. move.