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David Eckert was shopping at Wal-mart and upon leaving he rolled through a stop sign. He could have never imagined the living nightmare that he was about to experience.
When Eckert got out of his vehicle the police thought that he appeared to be "clenching his buttocks." What followed was nothing short of torture and rape.
This poor man was driven to the first hospital which refused to do the bidding of the police on grounds of ethics. But the second hospital did not.
According to the report Eckert was x-rayed and nothing was found. Then, doctors anally penetrated Mr. Eckert, nothing was found. For a second time, Mr. Eckert's anus was penetrated, all the while he is refusing to consent, again nothing was found. After the x-ray and the two penetrations, doctors proceeded to insert an enema into Mr. Eckert's anus, and he watched in horror and disbelief as doctors searched through his stool.
However, for these sickos, it was still not enough, Eckert was given a second enema, and then a third!! Still, nothing was found. He was then given a second X-ray, nothing was found. He was then prepped for surgery, yes surgery! Mr. Eckert was given a colonoscopy and his intestines were searched. Still, no drugs were found.
© AP Photo/Mark Graham
John Kreuger runs a roo processing business Chinese investors are eying. "We buy a tonne of testicles every month from roo meat processors and put them through my custom-made 'de-nutting' machine," Kreuger told the Sunday Mail.
"It squeezes out the balls and leaves behind the empty pouch." So far, Kreuger's business has relied more on selling lighters, keychains and bottle-openers fashioned from kangaroo scrota in places like Canada and California.
Australian businesses have been exporting kangaroo testicle products since at least 2011 (they're banned in Australia). A slew of manufacturers sell dDried and pulverized testicles, which can fetch up to $165 per bottle of 300 capsules (link in Chinese), on Taobao, a popular online marketplace in China.
© Agence France-PresseIndian villagers lie face-down in the paths of decorated cattle in a ritual to mark the Hindu New Year.
In the centuries-old ceremony performed in the town of Garbada in Gujarat state and in other parts of the country, men lay on the ground and allowed decorated cows, considered sacred in India, to walk on them.
The ceremony was carried out on the day after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights - one of the key events on the Hindu calendar.
While the ceremony can be painful, "there has never been a case where a person has been injured seriously or died", Bhadar Rathod, a tribal chief in Garbada, said.
The ceremony in Garbada, some 200 kilo metres from the state's main city of Ahmedabad, has become well known and is now something of a tourist attraction.
After offering prayers to the cattle, the animals are decorated with yellow, green, purple, pink and other coloured powder and embellished with peacock feathers while bells are tied to their legs.
The men then lie face down on the ground, holding their arms tightly against their bodies, and the cattle trample over them, prodded forward by other villagers, as others watch.
"It is believed that if a cow's feet touches a person, his problems will be reduced," a district official said.
Source: Agence France-Presse
Paul Anthony Ciancia was a newcomer to Los Angeles -- a 23-year-old Catholic school graduate and son of a popular Fraternal Order of Police member back in New Jersey.
According to a profile emerging of the suspected gunman, he also harbored anti-government views and fears of an ominous New World Order when he walked into Los Angeles International Airport on Friday.
Police say Ciancia pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and opened fire in the airport, killing Transportation Security Administration officer Gerardo Hernandez, 39, and wounding several others, including at least two other agents, in what appeared to be an orchestrated assault on members of the federal agency.
A Louisiana, Missouri father was prevented from saving his 3-year-old son from a house fire when cops tased him three times for attempting to enter the burning building. The fire started in a ground floor play room while the parents were asleep in the living room. The toddler was asleep upstairs in his bedroom. After waking up to the smell of fumes, the parents managed to get outside before calling 911. Stepfather Ryan Miller then kicked down the front door to the building as police and firefighters arrived.
The house was too hot for firefighters to enter, but when Miller attempted to rush in to try and save his stepson, he was restrained and then tased three times by a city police officer.
"He tried to get back in the house to get the baby," grandmother Lori Miller told KHQA. "They took my son to jail because he tried to save his son."
3-year-old Riley Miller was later found dead near the doorway to his bedroom and the house was completely destroyed.
"It's just heartless. How could they be so heartless?" said sister-in-law Emily Miller. "And while they all just stood around and waited for the fire department, what kind of police officer wouldn't try and save a three year old burning in a house?"
© Leigh Vogel/CorbisEffects of the $5bn in cuts (close to 2bn meals a year) will be 'close to catastrophic,' according to hunger relief charity Feeding America.
The automatic cut which is scheduled for Nov. 1, as a temporary boost from the 2009 stimulus bill expires, will reduce around $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending over the coming year.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently costs about $80 billion per year and provides food aid to 14 percent of all US households.
As of September 2012, 47.7 million Americans were receiving an average of $133 per month in food assistance. Food stamp recipients are mostly children, the elderly and disabled people.
The Washington Post reported that the number of Americans on food stamps could drop even further as Congress and various states consider further changes to the program.
Best of the Web: America's greatest shame: Child poverty rises and food stamps cut while billionaires boom
There are 16.4 million American children living in poverty. That's nearly one quarter (22.6%) of all of our children. More alarming is that the percentage of poor children has climbed by 4.5 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. And poor means poor. For a family of three with one child under 18, the poverty line is $18,400.
Meanwhile, the stock market is booming. Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms are making tens of billions of dollars again, while the luxury housing and goods markets are skyrocketing.
Most amazing of all is the fact that 95 percent of the so-called "recovery" has gone to the top 1 percent who have seen their incomes rise by 34%. For the 99 percent there's been an undeclared wage freeze: the average wage has climbed by only 0.4 percent.
To add to the misery, Washington has decided that the best way to tackle childhood poverty is to have poor kids eat less. Both parties already have agreed to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). Starting this November 1, payments are scheduled to drop from $668 a month to $632 for more than 47 million lower-income people -- 1 in 7 Americans, most of them children. (Three incredible graphs that visualize the issues in this story are at the bottom of this article.)
And more cuts are coming. The Tea Party House passed a bill to cut food stamps by $4 billion a year, while the Senate calls for $400 million in cuts. How humane! And since it will be part of the omnibus Farm Bill, President Obama will sign it. (I wonder how our former community organizer will explain this to the poor children he once tried to help in Chicago.)
But that's just the start. More austerity is coming in the form of cuts to Social Security as well as a host of other social programs. When times get tough, you've got to suck it up and take more from the poor.
© Miguel Riopa/AFP/Getty ImagesSuper Britney … able to repel a pirate with a single note.
The singer's top hits, like "Oops! I Did It Again" and "Baby One More Time," when blasted at approaching Somali raiders, have proved to be the most effective at deterring kidnap attacks, merchant navy officer Rachel Owens revealed, according to the U.K.'s Metro.
"Her songs were chosen by the security team because they thought the pirates would hate them most," said Second Officer Owens. "These guys can't stand Western culture or music, making Britney's hits perfect ... It's so effective the ship's security rarely needs to resort to firing guns."
"As soon as the pirates get a blast of Britney, they move on as quickly as they can," she added, the U.K.'s Mirror reported.
Here's why plutocrats control our politics: Corporate America knows both parties are up for sale.
"What is most striking about the present is not the virtues of moderation but of the potential power of conviction. One detects, behind all the anxiety about 'extremists,' 'radicals,' and 'militant minorities,' a degree of envy. On the Right there is a group with enough commitment to a shared project that is willing and able to disrupt the ordinary functioning of government. If only the Left had such wherewithal. We might, at the very least, get something more than than the economically stagnant, politicallyThis trenchant passage about liberals' reaction to the Tea Party summarizes a hugely significant yet little discussed truism: American politics has been inexorably lurching to the right not only because of the extremism of the Tea Party, but also because of a lack of Tea Party-like cohesion, organization and energy on the left. There are, of course, many factors that contribute to that sad reality including a successful war on the labor movement; a campaign finance system that makes conservative oligarchs even more powerful than they already are; and a mediasphere that ignores principles and tells liberals everything must be seen exclusively in partisan red-versus-blue terms. One factor, though, stands out for how it so destructively shapes the assumptions that define our political discourse. That factor can be called "liberal washing."
oppressive Mugwumpery of the Democratic Party." Jacobin's Alex Gourevitch
Similar to green washing or so-called "gay washing"/"rainbow washing," liberal washing is all about wrapping corporate America's agenda in the veneer of fight-for-the-little-guy progressivism, thus portraying plutocrats' radical rip-off schemes as ideologically moderate efforts to rescue the proles.
Liberal washing has always been around, of course. But it has really risen to prominence - and dominance - in modern times. Indeed, one of the most reliable political axioms of the last 30 years is this: If corporate America cooks up a scheme to rip off the middle class, Republicans will provide the bulk of the congressional votes for the scheme - but enough establishment-credentialed liberals inevitably will endorse the scheme to make it at least appear to be mainstream and bipartisan. Yes, it seems no matter how venal, underhanded or outright corrupt a heist may be, there always ends up being a group of icons with liberal billing ready to drive the getaway car.
© Raminder Pal Singh/EPA'Economic growth begins when seeds are genetically modified and patented, leading to farmers having to buy seeds every season'
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves.
The concept of growth was put forward as a measure to mobilise resources during the second world war. GDP is based on creating an artificial and fictitious boundary, assuming that if you produce what you consume, you do not produce. In effect , "growth" measures the conversion of nature into cash, and commons into commodities.
Thus nature's amazing cycles of renewal of water and nutrients are defined into nonproduction. The peasants of the world,who provide 72% of the food, do not produce; women who farm or do most of the housework do not fit this paradigm of growth either. A living forest does not contribute to growth, but when trees are cut down and sold as timber, we have growth. Healthy societies and communities do not contribute to growth, but disease creates growth through, for example, the sale of patented medicine.
Water available as a commons shared freely and protected by all provides for all. However, it does not create growth. But when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty - both for nature and local communities. Water extracted beyond nature's capacity to renew and recharge creates a water famine. Women are forced to walk longer distances looking for drinking water. In the village of Plachimada in Kerala, when the walk for water became 10 kms, local tribal woman Mayilamma said enough is enough. We cannot walk further; the Coca-Cola plant must shut down. The movement that the women started eventually led to the closure of the plant.
Comment: Yet another mind-controlled patsy?