Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

US Police Brutality: Lawyer - Seattle's top cop should resign after new video surfaces

A local man called the cops on Seattle officers when he felt a traffic stop was spinning out of control - and the entire incident was captured on a police video that shows the man being yanked from his car and thrown to the ground.


Now the man's lawyer wants Seattle Police Chief John Diaz to step down because, he says, the problems just keep piling up.

The video shows Seattle police pulling a car over for speeding, then one officer walking up to the driver who was pulled over.

Although the dashboard camera captured the incident, the officer did not wear his microphone - a violation of department policy.

Stormtrooper

US Police Brutality: Unarmed 54-Year-Old Hospitalized In Raid, Home Wrecked

Tomas Torres 1
© Newhaven Independent
A state police raid on a Winthrop Avenue apartment netted no drugs or arrests - but it left Tomas Torres hospitalized and his apartment in tatters.

Torres (pictured), who's 54, said state cops broke down the door of his first-floor Winthrop Avenue apartment Wednesday afternoon, punched him in the face, stomped on his head, and then laughed at him as they tossed his apartment looking for drugs.

Police said he tried to jump out the window, then resisted their efforts to detain and handcuff him.

They had the wrong guy, said Torres. The police found nothing in his apartment and released him to go to the hospital, where he said he was told he has a fractured arm, he said.

Stormtrooper

US Police Brutality: Video Shows Joe Arpaio's Officer Used Taser On Latino Vet Who Later Died

More than eight hours of video footage released Friday showed it was one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's officers who used a Taser on a Latino military veteran that later died. The video also showed the veteran was nearly lifeless when officers put him naked in a cell and left him alone for about 11 minutes.


Two agencies were involved in an altercation with Ernest "Marty" Atencio when they tried to book him into an Arizona jail on suspicion of assault last week. But until now, neither the Maricopa County Sheriff's office nor the Phoenix Police Department had admitted to using a Taser in the melee. That was despite the fact that an attorney for Atencio's family said doctors found obvious signs that some sort of stun gun had been used.

Now, video released Arpaio's office shows it was one of his men, not any of the Phoenix police officers, who used the Taser to try to subdue Atencio.

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.