Society's ChildS


Stormtrooper

Austin police gun down naked black teen for 'disobeying' — and then refuse to say if he was armed

police officer
© Shutterstock
Police in Austin, Texas have declined to say whether a naked black teen who was fatally shot by officers on Monday had been armed at the time.

The Austin Police Department confirmed on Monday that an 18-year-old man who was not wearing clothes was shot by officers, and then later died in a local hospital, the Austin Statesman reported.

Austin police Chief of Staff Brian Manley told reporters at a press conference that the incident occurred when officers were responding to reports of a suspicious black man. Manley said that an officer opened fire after the man disobeyed commands and then charged at him.

According to the department, the shooting occurred out of the view of the police cruiser's dashboard camera. There was no evidence that officers deployed Tasers before shooting the suspect, the department confirmed.

Manley refused to say whether the suspect was carrying a weapon when he was shot. The department also has not named the suspect or the officers involved in the shooting. However, he said that the officer who pulled the trigger had been placed on administrative leave, which is department protocol after officer involved shootings.

Attention

Largest electric company in US fined $6.6m for massive spill of toxic coal ash waste

Duke Energy
© Chris Keane / ReutersThe Duke Energy coal-fired power plant is seen from the Dan River in Eden, North Carolina.
Environmental regulators in North Carolina have fined Duke Energy $6.6 million for its massive spill of toxic coal ash waste into the Dan River in February 2014. The incident was one of the largest coal ash spills in US history.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality announced Tuesday that the fine only applies to violations that Duke Energy pleaded guilty to in federal criminal court in May 2015, which resulted in $102 million in federal fines pursuant to nine criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. The state regulatory body said it "reserves the right" to levy additional fines for "other violations associated with the spill."

Comment: See also: America's multi-billion ton toxic legacy: Coal ash


Stormtrooper

Evil chutzpah! Israel demolishes homes and tells Palestinian owners to pay the costs

MK Hanin Zoabi
File photo of Israeli MK Hanin Zoabi, who attempted to prevent the 66th destruction of the village in 2014
The Israeli occupation authorities have told the Palestinian owners of homes destroyed by security forces to pay the demolition costs, Safa news agency reported on Sunday. Israeli magistrates sat in a special session in Be'er Sheva on Sunday to consider the case filed by the Israeli authorities versus the Palestinians living in the village of Al-Araqeeb.

Comment: And Israelis wonder why there is so much animosity directed against them by Palestinians.

See also: Israel 1948: The Dawayima massacre and 'barbarism by an educated and cultured people'


Laptop

City councillor's smear campaign revealed after he accidentally emails his plans to his opponents

email mistake
Let's face it, we have all had those heart-stopping moments after hitting send when we realise we have made a mistake. *Personal disclosure, I once inquired about a new job and accidentally sent the email to my (then) current boss. Regardless of what our own internet or social media blunders have entailed, they pale into insignificance compared with a mighty indiscretion made recently by a U.K. Tory Councillor.

Conservative member of Portsmouth council, Scott Harris, wrote an email trying to persuade colleagues to join him in a smear campaign against local domestic violence services and women's rights campaigners. Unfortunately for him, the private correspondence was mistakenly sent out — in a chain to the targets of his venom.

Containing information on a number of political targets, the leaked email detailed a planned smear campaign against local sector workers and campaign groups after they criticised his proposals for £180,000 worth of cuts to domestic violence services.

Comment: Public service? Hardly. Politicians are only out to gratify their own aims. They care nothing for the public.


Attention

Fukushima redux? Indian Point nuclear plant is a disaster waiting to happen

Indian point nuclear plant
© Julie Jacobson/APThe Indian Point nuclear facility reported “alarming levels” of radioactivity in three water monitoring wells.
Indian Point Energy Center, which sits roughly 30 miles from the heart of Manhattan in New York City, has been plagued with safety breaches and leaks, and has even been the subject of a deliberate cover-up since it began operations in the 1970s. A statement from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Saturday revealing"radioactive tritium-contaminated water leaked into groundwater" near the nuclear facility is hardly a surprise — though no less indicative that it may be time to shut down the aging plant.

"The company reported alarming levels of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well's radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent," Cuomo's statement asserted.

Entergy, which operates the reactors known as Indian Point 2 and 3 at the Buchanan, New York, facility — Indian Point 1 ceased operations in 1974 after failing to meet expectations — claimed there was no immediate threat to public health because the contamination had not migrated off-site. Cuomo, however, wasn't convinced. He ordered Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos and Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and employ all necessary measures to conduct a thorough investigation and impact assessment to the environment — and of possible threats to public safety.

Comment: Once again, profits trump safety.


Padlock

New York: Nuisance abatement law allows cops to evict residents from their homes without filing charges

NYPD eviction
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has a reputation for finding novel ways to violate the rights of citizens. "Stop-and-frisk" became the defining characteristic of a police force more interested in meeting quotas for revenue collection than stopping actual crimes.

Clandestine spying on innocent Muslim Americans—based not on criminal suspicion but entirely on ethnicity—became an obsession for the NYPD after 9/11. And now, technology is allowing the largest police department in the U.S. to continuously track the vehicular whereabouts of everyone, all the time, with automated license plate readers. It is giving this data to a private company, Vigilant Solutions, for their commercial gain.

Now, an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Daily News sheds light on a little-known law called "nuisance abatement" that has mushroomed into an abuse of power on par with civil asset forfeiture.

Sheriff

Don't tase me, bro! New study shows police tasers cause short-term cognitive impairment similar to dementia

taser
© Dees Illustration
The first study to look at the effects of a Taser shock on the human brain has produced unsettling results that will have major implications for police encounters. People are often questioned and/or read their Miranda rights just after being Tased, but researchers found that receiving 50,000 volts of electricity can cause a state of short-term cognitive impairment comparable to dementia.

Tasers have become the tool of choice for law enforcement "less than lethal weapons," with two million citizens being subjected to the devices. They can indeed be lethal, however, as 47 Americans died after being Tased last year. Tasers do not seem to reduce the number of people shot to death by police either, and they are often deployed needlessly.

Calvon Reid, who was simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, was Tased to death by two cops at the same time while two other cops stood by. A witness said the cops could have easily manhandled Reid, but they were just "punishing him."

Comment: Police departments may start referring to tasing as electroshock therapy. Nothing to see here, folks.


Stock Up

Republicans: Obama's $4T budget DOA

obama
© AFP"It's just $4 trillion..."
US President Barack Obama will send his final annual budget to Congress as many Republican leaders have branded it dead on arrival.

The Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to pass the $4-trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year 2017, beginning on October 1, but the blueprint will give Obama the chance to outline spending priorities in the final year of his presidency. "That document ... will be President Obama's final vision of how he lays out the fiscal future for the country," said Joel Friedman, vice president for federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The budget proposal, to be sent to Congress on Tuesday, includes new ideas that the administration has reviewed in recent weeks, including a $1 billion task force to fight cancer, $1.8 billion in emergency funding to combat the Zika virus, and a $10-a-barrel oil tax for infrastructure and clean transportation projects. The budget blueprint also includes increased funding for military projects such $7.5 billion to ramp up the fight against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group. While some of these proposals are too much for fiscal conservatives, Congress can advance more agreeable elements of the budget without endorsing the entire package.

Breaking with a decades-old tradition, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees announced that they would not even give Obama's budget director, Shaun Donovan, the usual hearings in their panels.

Comment: Republican consensus is not surprisingly two thumbs down. Stubborn stagnation has been the trademark of this congress, which is why its ratings are around a net 8% public approval, verifying they do not work in the interests of the public-at-large. That said, neither does Obama.


Green Light

First train from China arrives in Russia as part of the New Silk Road

station
© sputniknews.comNew Silk Road open for business.
The very first freight train arrived to Russia's Kaluga Region from China as part of the Beijing-led New Silk Road infrastructural project, according to the official website of the Kaluga Region. The Chinese-led $900-billion New Silk Road infrastructural project is supposed to connect East Asia, the Middle East, Europe and even Africa.

Russia would also play a major part in the construction of the future major project. The train that arrived from China to the Kaluga Region is a test drive of a large scale trade volume of between the two countries. "On February 5, the first freight train arrived to the Kaluga Region under the framework of the international project New Silk Road," the official statement said. The cargo train was mostly fit with components for the Samsung company, based in the city of Kaluga.

Russian Deputy Transport Minister Alexei Tsydenov, Kaluga Region Governor Anatoly Artamonov and two top Chinese Samsung representatives were present during the official meeting ceremony.

Last year, China and Russia signed the "Joint Declaration on the Silk Road Economic Belt construction and the Eurasian Economic Union docking cooperation". The declaration confirmed that Russia supports the Silk Road Economic Belt project construction and is willing to cooperate closely with China to push the declaration.

Comment: Russian and Chinese partnering for infrastructure and commerce offers a way forward in the midst of dismal Western economic prospects. These two countries are not strangled by the dollar, nor are their economies dependent upon the US and its corrupt, self-serving financial hegemony. Worst case, they have created a means to cooperate and thrive while the rest of the world financially implodes.


Attention

Fatal head-on collision of two passenger trains in Germany; casualties reported

Train wreck collision Germany
© via Twitter @TimesNowRescue ops underway in Germany as 2 trains collide near Bad Aibling, killing 2 persons & injuring about 100 others
A head-on collision of two passenger trains occurred in southeastern Germany on Tuesday, with several people killed and at least 150 sustaining injuries, local police said.

The collision, which involved two Meridian passenger trains, occurred in Bavaria, the town of Bad Aibling, about 25 miles southeast of Munich, according to police spokesman Juergen Thal Meier, cited by the rosenheim24 news portal.

While the death toll is still unknown, local media report at least 150 people have been injured in the crash.