Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Nobel laureate and Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn dies

David Henry
IrishTimes.com
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:16 UTC


Image
©(AFP/File/Joel Robine)
Russian writer and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, pictured in 1993.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the dissident Russian writer and Nobel laureate whose portrayals of Josef Stalins labour camps and political oppression helped undermine the Soviet grip on power, has died, his son said. He was 89.
Read More...
Heart - Black

Brazil suspect brags he put teen in bag

Marco Sibaja
Associated Press
Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:51 UTC
GOIANIA - A Brazilian man accused of killing and dismembering a British teenager and stuffing her torso in a suitcase bragged to his brother in a text message that she was "in the bag," state police said Saturday.

Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho Santos, whom police and his lawyer said has confessed to killing 17-year-old Cara Marie Burke, sent the message to his brother Bruce Lee, who lives with their mother in London, said a police investigator who declined to be identified in line with departmental rules.

The message, written in English and accompanied by a smiling face symbol, read: "the bitch is in the bag," the investigator said. It was found in Santos' cell phone, which he used to photograph Burke's severed head after he allegedly placed it on top of her torso along with a bloody butcher knife, the investigator added.

Shortly after his arrest last Thursday, the 20-year-old Santos tried to bribe police to let him go, offering officers 70,000 reals (about US$45,000) which he said he would get from his mother, inspector Jorge Moreira da Silva told reporters.

The attempted bribery was recorded by police and broadcast Friday night on national television.

"The biggest reward we could receive is to see a psychopath like yourself behind bars," a police officer is heard saying on the audio recording.
Read More...
Chess

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: A New Cold War Meets Chinese Lanterns Flying in the Wind of Change

SOTT Focus
Sott.net
Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:27 UTC


Image
©Gary Varvel

There is a well-known Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. Judging from the rapid unfoldment of "interesting" world events, it is clear that we ain't seen nothing yet and whatever providence has in store for us, it surely is going to become curiouser and curiouser.

So what went on this month, other than more bloodshed, cynical manipulation and overt war propaganda?
Read More...
Eye 2

Psychopath gets 422 years for 19-hour rape and torture of Columbia student

Barbara Ross and Bill Hutchinson
NY Daily News
Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:07 UTC
Calling the sex-torture of a Columbia student an "extraordinary evil," an angry judge Thursday sent the sadistic rapist to jail for 422 years - and said he deserved more.

Image
©Unknown
Robert Williams

"The defendant, by his own conduct, has forfeited his right to liberty or to the hope of liberty," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman said of sex monster Robert Williams.

Read More...
Stormtrooper

When Official Truth Collides With Cheap Digital Technology

Jim Dwyer
New York Times
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:30 UTC


Around 9:30 on Friday night, a bicyclist pedaling down Seventh Avenue veered to the left, trying to avoid hitting a police officer who was in the middle of the street.

But the officer, Patrick Pogan, took a few quick steps toward the biker, Christopher Long, braced himself and drove his upper body into Mr. Long.

Officer Pogan, an all-star football player in high school, hit Mr. Long as if he were a halfback running along the sidelines, and sent him flying.

As of Tuesday evening, a videotape of the encounter had been viewed about 400,000 times on YouTube. "I can't explain why it happened," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday. "I have no understanding as to why that would happen."


Comment: Hmm, a clue for Commissioner Kelly... Might it have something to do with psychopathic/authoritarian types attracted to the Police uniform as a way of exerting control over others? Who view anyone outside of their narrow world view of compliance and domination with hatred and disdain? Perhaps, maybe?

Read More...
Pharoah

Best of the Web: Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation, Part 8

Dave McGowan
Center for an Informed America
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:23 UTC
"No one here gets out alive"
Jim Morrison

Image
©Unknown
Dr. Strangelove

My apologies to readers for the long delay in getting this post up. These past several weeks have not been easy ones for your fearless host. Things started going south near the end of June, when our beloved family cat was taken ill and died upon arrival at the local vet's office. To many readers, this may seem a rather insignificant loss, but I have to say, in all honesty, that Thomas just may have been the coolest cat to ever prowl the streets of Los Angeles. His presence in our home is surely missed.


Comment: Continue to part IX

Read More...
Bell

Best of the Web: When the Truth takes off Her Clothes, the World Disappears

Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors
Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:53 UTC
Telling the truth is like performing a strip tease. It is because of this that many people are offended. Nudity offends people who believe that their body, the visible and the more esoteric portions, is something to hide. Another reason that some people find the truth to be offensive is because they make personal profit from lies. It stands to reason that many people believe that the truth is ugly, or inconvenient. Why go to such lengths to conceal it otherwise? It can also be said that the truth is hidden because it stands in contradiction to the thing that conceals it.
Read More...
X

Former foreign minister of Poland killed in car crash


Associated Press
Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:57 UTC
Image
Bronislaw Geremek
- who was a key figure in the Solidarity trade union that helped topple communism, and went on to become Poland's foreign minister - was killed in a car accident Sunday, police said. He was 76.

Geremek was driving a Mercedes that collided head-on with a van Sunday afternoon near the western Polish village of Miedzichowo, said Hanna Wachowiak, police spokeswoman for the Wielkopolski region.

The activist-turned-politician had been serving as a member of European Parliament since being elected in 2004. The soft-spoken, urbane Geremek was highly respected in Poland as a scholar, statesmen and key adviser in the Soviet bloc's first free trade union, Solidarity.

"Polish sciences and politics have lost a great man," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a statement.
Read More...
Pistol

SOTT Focus: No Taser Deaths In USA?

Grover
Sott.net
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:40 UTC


Image
This citizen was Tasered for refusing to lie down, and then Tasered again for refusing to get back up.
Long live the Taser!

I was asked to attend a Citizens Police School as part of our local police department's community outreach program. This program is held a couple times a year and lasts 12 weeks. Although this sort of thing wouldn't normally interest me, given the large amount of bad press the police are getting across the country I decided to sign up in order to learn more, in effect, to do some research. What I discovered left me with the strange urge to check if my passport was still valid.
Read More...
Chess

SOTT Focus: UPDATE: Connecting the Dots: The Axis of Evil in Motion Under Peculiar Cosmic Weather

SOTT Focus
Sott.net
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:45 UTC


Image


Update: Dry weather, fires, spontaneous combustion? As it turns out the Taurid meteor event was not a complete bust, more like a combustion:
1st of July 2008 - Witnesses across Southern California say they saw an object 'moving very fast across the northern sky' and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains. Officials have no firm answers on what it was.

From Hollywood Hills to the Nevada state line, people reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains this morning. But explanations of the mysterious object were scarce.

San Bernardino County Fire Dispatch reported receiving dozens of calls related to what was described as fireball moving at high speed and falling in northwest sky around 10:40 a.m.

"We got quite a few reports. It started with a gentlemen in the Lake Arrowhead reporting a fireball in the Meadow Bay area and then we started getting calls from all over," said San Bernardino County dispatch supervisor Tom Barnes. "Fire crews in Barstow and on I-15 near Stateline came up on the radio and reported an object in the sky moving very fast across the northern sky and described it as yellowish green in color with streaks of debris. It looked like it burned up before it hit the ground."
Now isn't it a "coincidence" that California became engulfed, at its peak, in 1,783 fires across the state, scorching over 527,000 acres, including one in the San Bernardino mountains. Firefighters are still battling over 300 fires. Yet, all the fires are being blamed on "unusual early-summer lightning storms".
Read More...