As I scrolled through my facebook feed on Monday, I saw a variety of responses to the situation in Baltimore. By and large, most seemed to condemn the 'rioting' which shocked and surprised me. Granted, no one likes a riot - they're dangerous for one, and damage the economic prospects of whatever area they hit for another. What I came to realize was that in America, we have a pervasive attitude of victim-blaming which is likely a trickle-down effect of psychopathic rulers and logic being blasted at us via the mainstream media.

The original event which sparked the protests was the arrest and murder of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who was arrested for running from the police. He suffered a shattered spine while in police custody and of course no one knows how that happened. I'll proffer a suggestion: the 6 cops involved beat him, they beat him so much that one of strongest bones in the human body was utterly destroyed.

Tuesday night, in a perfect example of blaming the victim, an anonymous source leaked a police document to the Washington Post that claimed the 2nd prisoner in the van, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall and couldn't see him, heard Gray "banging against the walls" of the vehicle and believed that he "was intentionally trying to injure himself." This same 2nd prisoner is denying that he ever said any such thing (the statements come from a search warrant application, not an affidavit written by the prisoner). He said he heard 'little banging' noises which he presumed was from his lifeless body rolling around untethered.

Initial reports seem to differ as well, stating the complete opposite:

BPD Comm Anthony Batts says 2nd prisoner in van with Freddie Gray reports no erratic driving by van driver and Gray mostly quiet
— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) April 24, 2015

We can all see where this is going: the narrative will be something like he wanted to claim police brutality and as such, injured himself. Perhaps he was just plain crazy. Whatever lie is most convenient toward putting the middle class to sleep will be flung across the mainstream and privileged white people will continue to have no idea what's really going on. I suggest the curious reader go through that piece, it'll give you a sense of just how out-of-touch most upper-middle-class people really are.

We now have official confirmation that the rioting in Baltimore on Monday was purposely allowed to spiral out of control. Up until now, there had been some unconfirmed reports that police in Baltimore had been ordered to "stand down" during the riots, but nobody had been willing to come forward and go on the record. Now that has all changed. Michael Lewis is the Sheriff of Wicomico County, Maryland and what he has to say is absolutely jaw dropping. When he saw what was happening in Baltimore, he gathered up some of his fellow officers and drove down to the city to help. But when he got there, he says that all of the police were being ordered not to take any action and to let the rioters destroy property. Lewis made this astounding claim during a discussion on a Baltimore radio station...

A Maryland sheriff who traveled to Baltimore to help law enforcement stop Monday's riots told 105.7 The Fan that he was stunned when officers alerted him of the orders to stand down.

Lewis says that he never heard the mayor give any particular orders, but he is very clear about the fact that the police were being instructed to "stand down" and to "let them destroy property"....

"I was sick to my stomach like everybody else. ... This was urban warfare, no question about it. They were coming in absolutely beaten down. The [city officers] got out of their vehicles, thanked us profusely for being there, apologized to us for having to be there. They said we could have handled this, we were very capable of handling this, but we were told to stand down, repeatedly told to stand down," he said. "I had never heard that order come from anyone — we went right out to our posts as soon as we got there, so I never heard the mayor say that. But repeatedly these guys, and there were many high-ranking officials from the Baltimore City Police Department ... and these guys told me they were essentially neutered from the start. They were spayed from the start. They were told to stand down, you will not take any action, let them destroy property. I couldn't believe it, I'm a 31-year veteran of law enforcement. ... I had never heard anything like this before in my life and these guys obviously aren't gonna speak out and the more I thought about this, ... I had to say a few things. I apologize if I've upset people, but I believe in saying it like it is."

British teachers concerned about the welfare of disadvantaged pupils have taken to washing their clothes, feeding them homemade lunches and even offering the youngsters haircuts as they warn of a resurgence of Victorian levels of poverty in the UK.

The crisis of growing poverty amid young school children in disadvantaged parts of Britain was laid bare in a damning study conducted by Britain's National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT).

As part of the research, a total of 2,000 leading teachers at schools across the UK were questioned. An overwhelming 84 percent said they were offering youngsters a higher degree of support than they were in 2010, when Britain's financial crisis was ongoing.

The report, published on Friday, revealed teachers regularly offer poor children sports kits for school, and tickets to attend school trips to ensure they don't miss out on formative activities early in life.

As British families struggle to make ends meet, many of these teachers delve directly into their own pockets and limited school budgets to help those in poverty, the study found.

A Detroit prosecutor suggested a violent solution to ending the protests in Baltimore over a black man's death while in police custody.

Teana Walsh, an assistant prosecutor in Wayne County, posted this week on her Facebook account that demonstrators who committed acts of violence or vandalism should be shot, reported WJBK-TV.

"So I am watching the news in Baltimore and see large swarms of people throwing bricks, etc at police who are fleeing from their assaults," Walsh posted.

"(Fifteen) in the hospital already," she continued. "Solution. Simple. Shoot em. Period. End of discussion. I don't care what causes the protestors to turn violent...what the 'they did it because' reason is...no way is this acceptable. Flipping disgusting."

The man who recorded video of Freddie Gray's arrest was arrested at gunpoint along with two activists, days after complaining of police "harassment and intimidation."

Kevin Moore and two members of CopWatch, an activist group that records police actions, were taken into custody Thursday night, reported PINAC News.

Moore filmed one of two videos showing police drag Gray screaming into a police van, where the 25-year-old suffered a fatal spine injury.

A woman who also filmed video of the fatal arrest has been reluctant to speak publicly, but Moore has talked with reporters about what he had seen.

He said Tuesday in a Facebook post that police had circulated his photo and announced that he was "wanted for questioning" - which Moore believes was an attempt to intimidate him into silence.

"OK y'all everyone by now know that I spoke up for Freddie and recorded all I could," Moore posted on social media. "But I would greatly appreciate if y'all could stop posting pics of me plz it's very uncomfortable knowing that the law is looking for me!! Thank y'all."

New statements from the Baltimore man who was imprisoned with Freddie Gray in a police van on the night of Gray's death contradict authorities' account of the night in question, a local television reporter told MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Thursday.

"The key thing to take away is, he did not see Mr. Gray, he couldn't have seen Mr. Gray," WBAL-TV's Jayne Miller said of Donta Allen, who was listed as a source in a police document indicating that Gray purposefully injured himself on the night in question. "I asked him, 'Did you hear [Gray] say anything?' He didn't hear him say anything."

An affadavit for a search warrant stated that, according to Allen, Gray was "banging against the walls" of the van on April 12. Gray died a week after being taken into custody.

Hayes broadcast the entirety of Miller's interview with Allen, during which he denies giving police any information, and accused authorities of using him as a scapegoat for their failure to provide Gray with medical assistance.

A man accused of public urination rode in a similar police van, suffered a spinal injury, and died.

Freddie Gray gave a cry of pain as the arresting officers hoisted him to his feet. Something seemed wrong with his legs as he was dragged in handcuffs to a police van.

"Look at his leg!" a witness can be heard shouting on a cellphone video. "That leg look broke! His leg look broke! You all dragging him like that!"

But the 25-year-old's legs do not seem to have been the source of the pain that caused Gray to cry out again. His head was hanging down, and he may have already suffered a spinal injury such as could have been exacerbated by a failure to immobilize his head and neck before moving him.

More likely, he suffered the devastating and ultimately fatal spinal trauma after he was placed in the van.

"Something happened in that van," Michael Davey, lawyer for the Baltimore police union, said at a press conference on Wednesday.

An FBI report shows that only a small percentage of terrorist attacks carried out on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 were perpetrated by Muslims.

Princeton University's Loon Watch compiled the following chart from the FBI's data (as explained below, this chart is over-simplified ... and somewhat inaccurate):

According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%). These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion. These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.

(The chart is misleading in several ways. For example, it labels "Extreme Left Wing Groups" and "Communists", but not "Extreme Right Wing Groups" or "Fascists". It should have either discarded all partisan labels, or included labels for both ends of the spectrum. In addition, "Latinos" is misleading, as Loonwatch is actually referring to Puerto Rican separatist groups, Cuban exile groups and the like. However, as shown below, many of the basic concepts are correct.)

Six Baltimore police officers will face criminal charges, including second-degree murder and manslaughter, in the death of a black man who was arrested and suffered a fatal neck injury while riding in a moving police van, the city's chief prosecutor said on Friday.

Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby said Freddie Gray, who died a week after his April 12 arrest, was in handcuffs but otherwise was not restrained inside the van. The officers failed to provide medical attention to Gray even though he asked for help on at least two occasions.

Gray's death has become the latest flashpoint in a national outcry over the treatment of African-Americans and other minority groups by U.S. law enforcement.

More than 50,000 families have been silently shipped out of London boroughs in the past three years, an investigation by The Independent can reveal.

Leaked documents obtained by this newspaper expose the true scale of the "social cleansing" taking place across the capital as a result of welfare cuts and soaring rents. The figures show an unprecedented number of families who cannot afford to find homes in their local area being uprooted from their neighbourhoods and dumped further and further away from the capital, cut off from their relatives and support networks.

The spike coincides with the Coalition's introduction of the benefit cap and "bedroom tax", both of which have made it significantly harder for poor people to afford housing in London. In 2010, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, vowed that the controversial welfare reforms would not lead to "Kosovo-style social cleansing", pledging: "You are not going to see thousands of families evicted from the place where they have been living."

But official figures - which the authorities have previously refused to publish - show the problem is much worse than campaigners feared. They show that councils are currently moving homeless mothers and children out of their boroughs at a rate of close to 500 families a week, with numbers continuing to rise.