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Heart - Black

School forces students to undergo strip-search

Jason Wheeler
WFAA
Wed, 28 Jan 2015 17:25 UTC
Image
© WFAA
Eliza Medina, 11, said she was one of the Gustine ISD students forced to pull down her pants for an inspection.
In Gustine, population 457, what happens at the schoolhouse affects nearly everyone. And something happened Monday that is causing a big controversy in this small town.

"I felt uncomfortable, and I didn't want to do it," said 11-year-old Eliza Medina. "I felt like they violated my privacy."

She was one of about two dozen elementary students who were rounded up in the small town 90 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Eliza's mother, Maria Medina, said boys were taken to one room, girls to another, and they were ordered "to pull down their pants to check them to see if they could find anything."

Eliza's mom explained that educators "have been finding poop on the gym floor." She can imagine the frustration, but said even for feces on the floor you don't partially strip search a group of students to find the culprit.

Comment: The parents have every right to be furious. The school should be sued for invading the privacy of the students. They do not consent to strip-searches just by attending school. The school went way beyond its rights as a center of education. This is the behavior of a prison, not a school.

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Eye 1

The murder of cops surges in Venezuela

Andrew Cawthorne and Diego Ore
Reuters
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 15:51 UTC
Venezuelan flag
© AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
After finishing a routine overnight shift, Venezuelan policeman Edgar Perez was walking home from the bus stop when two armed men pulled up on a motorbike.

Perez, 41, had time to draw his gun and injure one of the attackers in the shootout near his modest home in the town of Ocumare del Tuy outside Caracas, but the other shot him in the head and took his weapon.

The officer died shortly afterwards in a nearby clinic, leaving a widow and three children.

Comment: As Oliver Stone has pointed out, the US plays a large part in destabilizing Venezuela:
They have seen this movie before. In 2002, the Bush administration "provided training, institution building, and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the military coup" that briefly overthrew then-President Hugo Chávez, according to the State Department. After the coup failed, Washington stepped up funding to opposition groups, which has continued to this day.

These leaders respect Maduro and have every reason to believe him when he says he is trying to prevent violence. The government has arrested at least 21 security officers so far. Despite crimes committed by individual security officers, there is no evidence that Maduro's administration has intended to use violence to repress dissent. Since the protests began, most of the deaths associated with them have been at the hands of protesters, not security forces.
Also see:

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Arrow Down

French culture and its manufactured unrest

Alan Chin
Reuters
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 15:59 UTC
French police
© Reuters / Pascal Rossignol
French riot policemen fire rubber bullets behind a burning car during clashes one day after two youths died in a motorbike accident with a police car in Villiers le Bel in the northern suburb of Paris, Nov. 26, 2007.
Since 9/11, every time there is a major terrorist attack abroad, many Americans might think or say to themselves, understandably if not graciously, "Thank God it's not us." From Bali to Madrid to London and or Paris, extreme Islamist violence has struck peaceful cities with sudden gunfire or explosions and the killing of innocents. Not that the United States is immune - the Fort Hood shootings and the Boston Marathon bombing are notable domestic incidents that involved assailants identifying with al Qaeda in one way or another. But after each attack, the same questions get asked. A few weeks ago, the question was, "Why France? Why not the United States?"


Comment: Because France wasn't towing the Zionist line:

As authorities in France continue to piece together events that led up to the Charlie Hebdo attack and to hunt for other Islamic extremists, it's important to note that there are significant differences between American and French society. The horrific and tragic assault on the satirical newspaper and a supermarket serving the Jewish community occurred in a specifically French context of racial and religious tensions.

From a certain perspective, France and the other Western European countries are marvels of successful social democracy in ways that American liberals can only dream about: excellent schools, public transportation and infrastructure; universal healthcare that has been a fact for generations; even troubled economies are buttressed by still resilient welfare states. There's little of the street crime that plagues many American cities.

Comment: Also see:

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X

Could whatever Israeli soldiers witnessed be damaging for the soul? IDF suicides double


RT
Mon, 26 Jan 2015 11:30 UTC
IDF arrest palestine boy
The Israeli army is worried over an increase in the number of soldiers taking their own lives. The number doubled last year. Our Middle East correspondent Paula Slier examines why.

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Family

The drama of the gifted child whose mother was Alice Miller: The loop of intergenerational abuse

Caroline Fetcher
Screams from Childhood
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00 UTC
Outwardly, Alice Miller stood for the empathetic and non-violent education of children, thereby becoming a star of pedagogy. Her own son came to know a very different woman. The book, which he now has written at the age of 63, is not an accusation. But rather the attempt to understand deeply ingrained traumas.
Alice Miller
© Courtesy of the Miller family
Alice Miller, in the late 1970s.
Zurich, April 1950. A child, who just has come into the world, won't breastfeed. The newborn had "refused" her breast, the mother later complains, she had felt rejected, her feelings had been hurt by her own child. Shortly after his birth, the parents gave their son away. For two weeks, he lived with a female acquaintance, who was skilled at child care. Finally, an aunt takes pity on him and accommodates him for half a year.

When the son is six, a daughter is born, a child with down syndrome. The horrified mother accuses the father of having concealed genetic risks in the family.

The son, the troublesome bed-wetter, is taken to an asylum for children. There, on the peninsula Au by Lake Zurich, hardly 30 kilometers away from home, his parents do not visit him a single time. Even on his first day of school, the mother stays away. Back in his parents' house, the eight year old feels like a stranger because his parents talk Polish among themselves, which he does not understand. The son is beaten by his father and coerced into compulsive washing rituals, which he perceives as sexual assaults. In every nanny, whom the son comes to trust, the mother scents a rival and dismisses her. When he is seventeen, the adolescent pushes through that he can go to a boarding school. Although things are regimented and catholic there, it is for him a recovery from the parental madhouse.

Comment: You can read Barbara Roger's review of Martin Miller's book here.

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Arrow Down

Over 1 in 5 US children on food stamps & living in poverty


RT.com
Thu, 29 Jan 2015 03:48 UTC
Poor Children
© Reuters/Shannon Stapleton
Over 20 percent of US children ‒ an estimated 16 million youths ‒ are on food stamps, according to the latest government figures. That number has almost doubled since the Great Recession began in 2007. Nearly a quarter are living below the poverty line.

More than one in five of the country's 73.7 million children now receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits ‒ better known as food stamps ‒ the US Census Bureau announced Wednesday in its annual Families and Living Arrangements table package. Before the economic downturn in December 2007, only one in eight kids ‒ 9 million ‒ were on food stamps.

The US child poverty rate ‒ the percent of children living in households with incomes below 50 percent of the national median income ‒ is 23.1 percent. Only Romania is higher, at 23.6 percent, according to a 2013 UNICEF report.
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Question

Police state stupidity: New Jersey cops shut down teens' snow shoveling business

Shepard Ambellas
Intellihub
Wed, 28 Jan 2015 21:08 UTC
snow pile
© Lisa Jacobs/Flickr
Apparently the world isn't like it was when I was a kid, no more Kool-Aid stands, no more doing yard work for cash, no more shoveling snow, as the government now has their hands in everything, regulating all aspects of our lives.

When I was a kid I remember passing out fliers to do yard work which would earn me in the range of $15-$20 a yard, raking leaves or mowing.

I also remember setting up a Kool-Aid stand on the street corner at the age of 8, garnering the attention from neighbors willing to pay a dollar for each glass.

However those days are over.

During the recent snow storm school was closed and a few high school seniors were eager to make some extra cash by helping out their neighbors. But moments into their venture they were shutdown by local cops.

Comment: The Madness Continues in the US Police State: Cops Shut Down Lemonade Stands, Girl Scout Cookie Stands and Amish Farmers Selling Milk

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Sheriff

Missouri police officer known to drug, rape women keeps his license

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Tue, 27 Jan 2015 18:00 UTC
Image
© KMOV
Steven Blakeney
A Pine Lawn cop with nearly a decade of complaints, police reports, warrant filings, and testimonies against him, isn't facing any charges and gets to maintain his license as a police officer.

Steven Blakeney was the commander of the entire Pine Lawn department up until November of last year when he was placed on suspension and finally fired in December. It took complaints from a myriad of women, claiming that they had been beaten, drugged and forcibly raped, before the department finally fired him.

However, he was only fired, Blakeney is not facing any charges and he could be hired on at another department tomorrow.

Blakeney's sordid history dates back to his time as a bar manager in 2006. FOX 2 News obtained copies of police reports which exposed the many allegations of Blakeney drugging and raping women.

According to FOX 2,
Several women wrote police statements. One described waking up and feeling like she'd been sexually assaulted. She told police she "saw Blakeney in bed on top of (her friend) who believed that Blakeney had drugged (her friend) and had sex with (her) while (she) was passed out."

Blakeney's old boss at Hrabosky's told police, "It is well known in the bar industry that Blakeney had drugged and raped many other girls."

The report says "Blakeney did not deny sexual misconduct" and towards the end of the police interview, Blakeney admitted he lied about several things saying "I just think the cards are stacked against me." The report also quotes him saying "I'm not going to own up to this. I'll spend five years in jail."
Despite the overwhelming amount of information painting Blakeney as sadist who drugged and raped "many girls," the St. Charles County Prosecutor back then, Jack Banas, did not press charges.

Comment: According to Anna Salter, Ph.D., an expert in sexual predation and of author of the best-selling book, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders, Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children, vulturous, exploitive human beings seek positions of power in society where they can operate undetected for years. The positions of authority they seek make it easy for them to find their victims. Listen to the SOTT editors interview with Dr. Salter below. Knowledge protects!

SOTT Talk Radio: Predators Among Us - Interview With Dr. Anna Salter

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Heart - Black

Parents who fatally drugged children and then themselves feared Apocalypse

Eric M. Johnson
Reuters
Tue, 27 Jan 2015 17:41 UTC
Image
The parents of a Utah family found dead in a locked bedroom at their home last year often discussed religiously-held notions of the apocalypse and orchestrated a multi-drug familicide using methadone and over-the-counter cold medication, police said on Tuesday.

The bodies of Benjamin and Kristi Strack and three of their children aged 11 to 14 were discovered by the Stracks' lone surviving child and his grandmother on Sept. 27 in Springville, about 45 miles south of Salt Lake City.

"It was a fairly common theme for the parents to talk about, the apocalypse, the end of days, final judgment," said Springville Police Department detective Greg Turnbow, the lead officer on the case.

"Their surviving son, when he was interviewed, indicated that his mother had made comments that if things got bad enough she would much rather take herself and her family out in a comfortable way, rather than a painful way."
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Life Preserver

One in three people on disability have a mental disorder; 42.9% in Washington D.C.

Ali Meyer
CNS News
Tue, 27 Jan 2015 09:54 UTC
One in three, or 35.2 percent, of people getting federal disability insurance benefits have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the latest data from the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Image
Washington, D.C., the seat of the federal government, ranked in the top-ten list of states where disabled beneficiaries were diagnosed with mental problems.

In 2013, the latest data from SSA show there were 10,228,364 disabled beneficiaries, up 139,625 from 2012 when there were 10,088,739 disabled beneficiaries.

Disabled beneficiaries have increased 49.7 percent from a decade ago in 2003 when there were 6,830,714 beneficiaries; and the number is up 14.3 percent from the 8,945,376 beneficiaries in 2009, the year President Obama took office.
The largest "diagnostic group" for disabled beneficiaries was a mental disorder. Of the 10,228,364 disabled people receiving federal disability benefits in December 2013, according to the report, 3,599,417, or 35.2 percent, were diagnosed with a mental disorder.

"Musculoskeletal system and connective tissue" problems accounted for the second largest group of disabled beneficiaries. Of the 10,228,364 disabled people receiving federal disability benefits in December 2013, 2,829,808, or 27.7 percent, had been diagnosed with a musculoskeletal problem.

In Washington, D.C., according to the report, 42.9 percent of disabled beneficiaries as of December 2013 had been diagnosed with a mental disorder. Massachusetts and New Hampshire led the nation in this metric with 49.9 percent of disabled beneficiaries diagnosed with a mental disorder.

Comment: Mainstream psychiatry and psychology are guilty of 'pathologizing' normal behavior. These people might just be having a normal reaction to living in our sick society.

See:

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