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70 year old man shot by police for grabbing his cane during a traffic stop


Free Thought Project
Fri, 09 May 2014 00:00 UTC
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An innocent 70 year old man is in critical condition after being shot at several times by a York County Sheriff's Deputy.

Bobby Canipe went to reach for his cane during a traffic stop. Deputy Terrence Knox thought he was reaching for a rifle, apparently couldn't verbally warn the man, or fire a warning shot, and out of fear for his life fired several shots at the man and hitting him.

Apparently shooting a 70 year old man, reaching for a cane in the back of a pickup truck, is appropriate use of force as Knox felt an imminent threat to his life.

Knox is on paid vacation pending an investigation.

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Stormtrooper

Parents, NEVER let your kids talk to the police

William Norman Grigg
LewRockwell.com
Wed, 07 May 2014 02:30 UTC
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Don Joughin comforts his eleven-month-old son after the infant was doused in pepper spray by one of Portland’s “Finest.”
"When they put the handcuffs on I thought, 'Wait a minute, this has got to be a joke,'" recalled Latoya Harris, describing the arrest of her 9-year-old daughter last May. "The look on my daughter's face went from humiliation and fear, to a look of sheer panic."

At the time, the girl was wearing a bathing suit and a towel, still damp from running through a neighborhood sprinkler. She was taken away in handcuffs by officers David McCarthy and Matthew Huspek, fingerprinted, photographed, but never charged with a crime. She was held at police headquarters for an hour before her frantic mother - who didn't have a car - could retrieve the girl from her captors.

The stated purpose of the visit was to investigate a playground fight that had taken place a few days earlier. The actual purpose of the arrest was probably to serve some depraved impulse on the part of the officers to assert their supposed authority over an intimidated but uncooperative child.
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Cut

Brazillian vigilantes hack off man's penis after suspecting him of raping three-year-old girl

Chris Richards
Mirror Online
Thu, 08 May 2014 02:13 UTC
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Vigilantes hacked off a man's penis after suspecting him of raping a three-year-old girl.

Francisco de Souza de Castro, 66, was targeted in a brutal revenge attack in Severinia, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Three of his fingers were also sliced off.

Castro was rushed to Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital, in nearby Barretos, where doctors unsuccessfully tried to re-attach his phallus.

They also failed to re-graft his digits onto his hand.

Estadao reports that Castro allegedly raped the infant, on the rural ranch where he worked.

Her mother reportedly spotted signs of the alleged attack when her daughter returned home later that night.
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Life Preserver

The rate of maternal deaths rising in the U.S. more than most countries in the world

Tara Culp-Ressler
ThinkProgress
Tue, 06 May 2014 10:21 UTC
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© Unknown
Deaths related to pregnancy and childbearing have increased in the United States over the past decade, putting maternal mortality at nearly its highest rate in a quarter century, according to a new study published in the Lancet. The U.S. is one of just eight countries where maternal deaths increased between 2003 and 2013; the other nations in this dubious category include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Belize, and South Sudan.

According to the researchers, for every 100,000 births in the U.S. last year, about 18.5 women died. That doesn't stack up very well with the mortality rates in other nations. A woman giving birth in America is more than twice as likely to die as a woman in Saudi Arabia or China, and three times as likely to die as a woman in the United Kingdom.

It's also evidence that this issue is getting worse. Back in 1990, the United States' maternal mortality rate was 12.4 women per 100,000 births. In 2003, it was 17.6.
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Eye 1

Teenager killed after unidentified plainclothes officers restrain, pepper-spray him, and shove sharp object down his throat


Opposing Views
Wed, 07 May 2014 18:13 UTC
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The mother of a 17-year-old boy has filed a federal lawsuit against the Huntsville Police Department claiming that officers killed the boy by tackling him to the ground, breaking his ribs, pepper-spraying him, and shoving a sharp object down his throat.

In March, the boy's mother, Nancy Smith, filed the claim for assault and battery, wrongful death and excessive force.

The young man, whose first name is not mentioned in the lawsuit, was allegedly set up in a drug bust. When plainclothes officers - who did not identify themselves as officers - approached Smith, he fled.

An officer caught Smith and threw him to the ground, where he was cuffed, forcibly restrained and pepper-sprayed.

As described in the lawsuit, police were under the impression that the teenager had swallowed a bag of drugs. An officer who had no medical training proceeded to shove a "sharp oblong object" down Smith's throat to locate the bag.
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Heart - Black

San Francisco: Homeless people forced awake and moved at 4am to avoid being doused with cold water in "street cleaning" scheme

David Krause
Truthout
Wed, 07 May 2014 23:00 UTC
homeless woman
© Franco Folini / Flickr
A homeless woman in San Francisco
San Francisco upgraded its power washing of Market Street sidewalks from twice a month to 20 times per month, a rate increasingly hard on the street's homeless population.

What's worse than waking up at 4 am every morning? Waking up at 4 am every morning and watching someone soak your bed with cold water. Unfortunately, if you're homeless and you sleep on Market Street, this recurring nightmare is your reality.

Each morning Tuesday through Saturday, two crews that are made up of employees from the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) clean the sidewalks of Market Street with trash buckets and pressurized water. To start the cleaning, SFPD officers walk down Market Street, wake up sleeping homeless persons, help move them to a water-free area, then signal DPW cleaning trucks to start.
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Arrow Down

Criminal millionaires are gunning for parliament seats in three huge Indian states

Annalisa Merelli and Nikhil Sonnad
Quartz.com
Thu, 08 May 2014 15:38 UTC
Money
© Reuters/Jayanta Dey
How much influence will this buy me?

Three of India's four largest states - representing nearly one-third of India's 1.2 billion people - are voting this week on whether to elect well-heeled criminals to parliament.

The population of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, which together is more than the United States, can count 19 wealthy parliamentary candidates charged with sometimes horrific crimes among their choices.

A recent report published by the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR), a public-interest group based in New Delhi, shows that 28% of the candidates running in the three states are crorepatis, individuals worth over Rs 10 million (about $167,000), a huge amount of money when the median annual income is $616.

And 19 of the crorepati candidates are also facing criminal charges, 16 of them serious criminal cases, like murder. For some, like Dhananjay Singh, who is worth Rs 27.7 million (about $462,000), murder is just the beginning.
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Attention

"Growing your own food is like printing your own money."


againstcronycapitalism.org
Wed, 07 May 2014 14:21 UTC
Grown Food
© againstcronycapitalism.org
This guy gets it. Plant a garden this spring, even a tiny one. It really is a revolutionary act.

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Snakes in Suits

EPA employee downloaded 7,000 files of porn, watched 2 to 6 hours daily and is still on government payroll

Igor Bobic
Huffington Post
Wed, 07 May 2014 15:25 UTC
computer work
© MICHAEL LOFENFELD via Getty Images
An employee at the Environmental Protection Agency allegedly downloaded over 7,000 files of pornography on a government computer and watched them two to six hours per day, the agency's investigative unit revealed Wednesday.

"When an OIG special agent arrived at this employee's work space to conduct an interview, the special agent witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his government-issued computer," Allan Williams, deputy assistant inspector general for investigations at the EPA, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Subsequently, the employee confessed to spending, on average, between two and six hours per day viewing pornography while at work," he added.
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Arrow Down

So much for corporate tax breaks - U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they're being created

Christopher Ingraham
Wonkblog
Mon, 05 May 2014 11:26 UTC
The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011.
business creation
© Washington Post
The authors don't mince words about the stakes here: If the decline persists, "it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future." This lack of economic dynamism, particularly the steep drop since 2006, may be one reason why our current recovery has felt like much less than a recovery. As Matt O'Brien noted on Wonkblog last week, annual job growth rates have stubbornly refused to budge above 2 percent for the duration of the recovery.

Comment: This is really a no-brainer. When the majority of profits from economic activity are being funneled up to the 1% oligarchy, there's not going to be a lot left over for new entrepreneurs. How can a new business grow when potential customers are being paid poverty-level wages by that same oligarchy? It means little new competition and that's just how they like it.

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