I Spy

Thirty-three-year-old Kezi Doughty has nine children, is pregnant with twins and is has been sentenced to five months in jail for abandoning five of her children.

The kids were found semi-nude and sleeping on a piece of sponge … except the baby, who was found lying alone on a chair.

They’ve been sent to a children’s home, where they will stay until they reach adulthood or until someone steps forward to take custody.

Now these kids clearly needed to be removed from their home, no question there, but I wonder what’s to be gained by imprisoning Kezi. It’s not as if she was living a life of luxury while the children were locked away in the basement. To have created such a life of squalor, something must be seriously off with her. Why not just sentence her to mandatory counselling? 

It turns out that National Security Minister Jack Warner contacting the Assistant CoP in charge of South at 5am on the morning of the demolition and requested a police presence. The Assistant CoP sent four officers “in the interest of keeping peace and maintaining order”.

Sgt Wayne Mystar says that Warner was well within his rights to make the request. 

Whether the TTPS should have complied is another matter altogether.

If you saw the post-cabinet media briefing yesterday, you’d also have heard Warner declare that he consulted neither the Attorney General nor the Prime Minister before taking action (although he said that the AG had previously advised him that this action was a legal one). The only person he did consult was the current Works and Infrastructure Minister, whom he called to ask if he wanted help with the whole situation.

Still no word from the Prime Minister, by the way.

Somehow I missed this one the first time around…

So, in April, a 22-year-old Japanese artist had his genitals removed and then served his penis, testicles and scrotal skin garnished with mushrooms and parsley to five people. These people paid $250 per plate for the chance to eat his genitals, by the way.

According to the Huffington Post, cannibalism isn’t actually illegal in Japan so, though the whole thing went viral, no charges were laid at the time. It turns out though, that the police are investigating, not because he fed his genitals to people, but because the mayor of the area where the … feast took place has said that it involved the display of obscene objects.

You got that? Cooking/eating a penis … not illegal. Displaying the cooked penis before eating it … illegal.

What a world.

Who knew you could be fired for going on maternity leave?

The exact sequence of events is a bit unclear, but it seems that Favianna Gajadhar submitted a written request for maternity leave and a medical certificate by mail, took the leave, had the baby and then was fired for doing so.

Though the judge said that she’d breached protocol (apparently, she was supposed to write to the Commissioner of Prisons), he also said that she should have been allowed a hearing instead of simply being dismissed.

Is it me, or does it seem strange that a woman should have to request maternity leave (can the request be denied?) rather than simply providing ample notice that she will need the time off? I mean, she’s going to have a baby … it might be best that she doesn’t do so in the middle of a prison, no?

Anyone else missing Verna St. Rose-Greaves? 

(image source)

While the Minister of National Security was dealing with the real criminals, the TTPS’ public information officer was admitting that, of the 199 murders so far this year, only 25 have resulted in charges and criminal proceedings. 

That’s a little more than 12% of this year’s murders that have been “solved”. (I say “solved” because the statistic doesn’t indicate how many of the 12% are convicted.)

But don’t you worry, because “there are still a number of investigations pending where there is the possibility of charges being laid once the proper evidence is gathered.”

Awesome.

After mentioning that the police are receiving more information from the public this year, Mystar was asked about issues with witnesses being threatened or killed. 

His response:

 ”No not really. You have to remember that we have the witness protection programmes put in place, so if someone comes forward with information and there is the possibility of their safety being compromised then we will make sure that they are placed in one of those programmes,”

 He clearly hasn’t been following the news.

I’ve been off the grid for much of today, so I’d only heard bits and pieces about this story:

Shortly before 6 a.m today, more than 20 soldiers based at the nearly Camp La Romaine, and more than a dozen police officers arrived at the camp site and found no more than five persons who had spent the night there. The soldiers ordered members out of the camp and began knocking it down. Warner arrived soon after and looked on as the debris was loaded onto trucks and carted away.

Kublalsingh arrived about an hour later, and rushed onto the site.

He was grabbed by soldiers, but was able to wriggle free and fell into a culvert as he was being led away. He was snatched a second time and handcuffed to a police officer.

It took three hours for the camp to be demolished. During that time, group member Elizabeth Rambharose and another activist sat at the centre of the demolition activity.

With images of the Hindu incarnations of God in hand, they prayed and sang until police officers and other group members convinced them to leave the site.

Kublalsingh was released without charge this afternoon, and is expected to meet with Highway Re-Route members tonight.

Looks like Jack Warner’s first official act as Minister of National Security wass to use the police and army to settle a score between himself and the Highway Re-Route Movement that began when he was Minister of Works and Infrastructure.

I realize that folks are hoping that The Hardest Working Minister in Show Business will turn the horrifying crime situation around, but if no one can see how this move took us to the very tip of an extremely slippery slope, then this country is worse off than I thought.

As an internet meme, Chuck Norris is dead to me:

Chuck Norris believes gay people have NO PLACE in the Boy Scouts of America … and claims plans to overturn the “century-old policy” to ban them is simply un-American. 

Chuck — an outspoken Republican political activist — just penned an article for AmmoLand.com … titled, “Is Obama Creating a Pro-Gay Boy Scouts of America?”

In the article, Norris attacks James Turley — a high ranking BSA official who recently announced his plan to “seek a change” to a Boy Scouts policy that bans gay Scouts and gay Scout leaders. 

72-year-old Norris suggests Turley is only championing the cause because he’s trying to curry favor with Obama’s “pro-gay” administration.

Norris talks about the Boy Scouts as epitomizing the best of America. The insinuation … that gays don’t. 

Ugh.

(Thanks Lesedi!)

An interesting story of how Twitter helped retrieve a stolen bicycle. Like the author, I don’t know exactly what it means (would it be too much to hope for the police to integrate Twitter into their crime-fighting arsenal?), but it’s an interesting read.

A man who was woken after 10 months in a coma when he heard his girlfriend’s voice over the phone from 7,000 miles away in Bali has spoken for the first time.

Mathew Taylor, 31, suffered devastating injuries in a motorcycle crash while staying on the Indonesian Island last July.

He had been lying in a hospital bed, unconscious and unresponsive, for months, until a phone call from fiancee Handayani Nurul, known as Anda, earlier this month. At the sound of her voice tears began trickling down his cheek.

Now he’s amazing his family and medical staff with his progress.

His mother Heather Taylor-Moore, said: ‘He is trying to speak. We sat him on the edge of the bed for physiotherapy and a sound came out of him.

‘It was a whisper and we couldn’t make out all of the sentence but he said something about his ‘left side’. I was in tears, the nurses were in tears.

‘He has been in hospital for quite a while now and is really improving. He is just amazing.’

Aww!

In more … unnerving news, this guy was arrested last Tuesday after being tased several times (once on the butt) and then refused to let the police take his photo (to prove that he was unharmed), opting instead to bash his face into the vehicle’s roof and spit blood at the officers. 

He’s been charged with DUI and resisting arrest.

In happier news, Brenna Martin might just have the best dad ever:

Brenna Martin’s dad evidently doesn’t like last-minute shopping. Bryan Martin purchased a gift for his daughter’s high school graduation — which happened earlier this month — thirteen years ago. He managed to keep it hidden this whole time, and his “moving, touching, nostalgic, and thoughtful” present (her words) brought Brenna to tears when dad finally gave it to her last week.

The gift — a copy of “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” — has a cash value of less than $20, but to Brenna, it was “truly priceless.” That’s because inside, threaded among the passages of Dr. Seuss’s well-known rhymes, were comments and compliments from every adult who has taught Brenna at school, starting with her kindergarten teachers.

Brenna’s reaction to the gift didn’t stop with graduation-day tears. She was so moved by the book that she posted the story online and added a link on Reddit, where the gift has attracted plenty of attention, not least from parents-to-be and parents of young kids who say they plan to follow Brenna’s dad’s example. One parent even posted about starting a similar project earlier this year.

Dad joined the Reddit conversation too, writing, “I cannot believe Brenna posted this… she has always been the light of my life. Doing this was just a small way of letting her know.”

If Brenna gets to work planning her own kids’ graduation gifts right now, she might just have a fighting chance at outdoing her dad.

(image source)

If, like me, you didn’t think this story could get more disturbing, look how wrong we were:

The family of a woman whose forced late-term abortion caused outrage in China have been attacked as “traitors” for discussing her plight with foreigners, while her husband has not been seen for two days, according to a a relative and a lawyer.

Authorities in Ankang, in Shaanxi province, last week apologised to the couple and said they had suspended three local officials after the publication of a photograph showing Feng Jianmei with the bloodied body of her seven-month-old foetus sparked outrage on microblogs.

Relatives say they have been followed for days, and Feng’s hospital was targeted this weekend by protesters carrying banners, one of which read: “Beat the traitors and expel them.”

Feng’s husband, Deng Jiyuan, has not been seen for two days. His sister Deng Jicai told the Guardian he rang on Tuesday afternoon to say that he was safe, but she did not know his whereabouts.

“The whole family feels very depressed and pressured,” she said. “The government have sent a team to investigate and don’t have a result yet, but right now we want freedom before the investigation results come out.

“Three or four guys are following me. I don’t know who they are.”

A Tampa rape victim can sue the Hillsborough County Sheriff for allowing a jail guard to refuse to give her a prescribed emergency contraception pill because it was against the guard’s religious beliefs, a federal judge ruled.

R.W., whose full name is not disclosed in court records, says she was raped on Jan. 27, 2007. After an examination at Tampa’s Rape Crisis Center, a doctor gave R.W. gave two anti-contraception pills, according to the complaint.

R.W. says she took one pill immediately and held the other to ingest 12 hours later, as directed.

While taking R.W.’s report of the crime, however, a Tampa police officer learned that there was an arrest warrant for R.W. for failure to pay restitution and failure to appear. At the Hillsborough County Jail, staff confiscated her second pill.

R.W. says she requested her second pill the next morning, but jail employee Michele Spinelli refused. “Spinelli told the Plaintiff that she would not give R.W. the pill because it was against Spinelli’s religious beliefs,” the first amended complaint states.

Although R.W. did not get pregnant, she sued Spinelli and Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee for gender discrimination and violations of the right to privacy and the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

I can’t speak to how R.W. intends to prove that she wasn’t allowed to take the pill if she didn’t get pregnant, but if this is true, it’s incredibly disturbing. Particularly because she was a rape victim.

I firmly believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but I do not understand why people think it’s ok to impose those beliefs on other people.

(image credit)

So says a joint select committee on parliamentary accommodation, anyway.

Cost: $205 million

Estimated costs of Red House renovation so far: $241 million

Estimated date of completion for either project: unknown

What recession?

Twenty-nine-year-old mother of four Kamla Ramcharan has been sentenced to three years for burning her daughter’s hand on hot tawah.

Ramcharan admitted to causing 3rd degree burns on her 8-year-old daughter’s hand because she had allegedly stolen money at school for a third time.

One day after another bystander lost her life when a car careened out of control and crushed her in her yard, the driver in the Caura accident gets $135,000 bail.

Ken Gomez is facing four charges of causing death by dangerous driving (police haven’t yet identified the fifth accident victim) and driving under the influence of alcohol.

The case has been adjourned to July 23rd.

The Hardest Working Minister in Show Business is on the job, ladies and gentlemen, and he knows exactly what is missing from the current fight against crime. (Never mind why, if he knew this all along, he sat quietly in Cabinet as the murder rate climbed)

Just a few of the things on the new National Security Minister’s mind:

Warner said the country was facing “urban warfare” and it had to be brought under control. “Urban warfare must be met frontally,” he said.

“We can’t run. We must take this country back, street by street, corner by corner. And you would see me on the block as you have never seen me before. If you thought you saw me digging roads and bridges (as Works Minister), you would see me (now) more often than that. And sooner rather than later,” he said. 

He said his general aim was to reduce crime and make police more visible on the roads—”to have police officers, army and fire officers if you have to, in the hot spots, almost round the clock, to have helicopters with lights to see where people are going”.

He promised to give the security forces the tools to perform.

“But by Christ, I would hold all of them accountable after that,” he said. 

As always, a man of action. Warner has also thrown down a gauntlet for COP Gibbs and his pet project, the 21st Century Policing Initiative:

Warner reiterated his “total opposition” to 21st Century Policing, a pet project of the current Commissioner of Police, Dwayne Gibbs, saying one had to first address 20th century policing.

Was he butting heads with the Commissioner? “Sometimes you have to crush grapes to get wine. If I have to butt the head of the Police Commissioner to solve crime or get things done, so be it. His would not be the first head I clashed with and it wouldn’t be the last,” he said.

However, Warner said he believed Gibbs was a reasonable man. Saying they had the same objective, the Minister said he was certain that they could sit, talk, exchange ideas, agree and disagree without being disagreeable.

“I have no intention to going in the media and mauvais langue, terrorise and badtalk the Commissioner of Police,” Warner emphasised.

Asked about his assessment of Gibbs performance, Warner said while he had reservations, he wanted to hold back any further comment because he wanted to go in and talk to Gibbs to find out why he has not performed better.

I’m intrigued to see how this will work out because my understanding is that the TTPS is supposed to be an independent body. Could Warner scrap the 21st Century Policing Initiative if he so chose? 

At any rate, he’s meeting with the security heads at 2pm today. I await the results with baited breath. 

(image source) 

We’ve got four new ministries: Environment and Water Resources, National Diversity and Social Integration, Science and Technology and Communications, one of which seems a bit nebulous and the other three which seem a bit like redundant offshoots of existing ministries. 

The headline of the Express article says “Size Does Not Matter”, in reference to the PM’s assertion that she’s not focused on size but on nation-building. In all honesty, I think it should read “Bigger is Better” because the strategy so far seems to be to just throw more money at a problem until it goes away.

This is what happens when policies (social and otherwise) are dictated by religion:

The Bush administration, those geniuses who brought us great ideas like a long, expensive war against a country that didn’t have weapons of mass destruction and flying over Hurricane Katrina en route home from a vacay, had another Brains Turned Up to 11 idea that it now seems didn’t work: a multimillion dollar federal program designed to encourage poor single mothers to get married, thus solving all of their financial (and moral) problems. But rather than cut funding to a wasteful, ineffective religious program designed around the assumption that what women need is a man, any ol’ man, the government continues to pour millions and millions of dollars into so-called “healthy marriage” initiatives. Where’s a giant Mission Accomplished banner when you need it?

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic and fiscally irresponsible.

After a Harvard-bound 21-year-old said police refused to help him when he was kicked out of a Raleigh, NC sports bar for being black, other spurned patrons came out of the woodwork to claim they had received the same racist treatment. Now their grassroots campaign to shut the bar down is gaining traction. Who needs the cops when you’ve got social media on your side?

Jonathan Wall’s story started attracting attention after North Carolina Central University Instructor Philip Christman posted Wall’s account of the incident on his blog yesterday. Christman said he calls Wall, a former student of his, “Mr. President” because “he’s one of the most intimidatingly accomplished and polished undergrads I’ve ever met.” Here’s how Wall says it went down:

Last Saturday, June 16th, Wall and two other friends arrived at Downtown Sports Bar and Grill around 12:30 AM. “You need a membership to come in tonight,” the bouncer told them. “I’ve never seen you here before.” The friends were confused, since the bar is better known for its all-you-can-eat wings and massive TVs than fancy private parties — and because the people in line before them walked right in after showing their ID…

The rest of the story is worth a read. It’s disturbing and familiar. My boyfriend had a similar experience here in T&T a few years ago. That time the bouncer’s reason for denying him entry was some nonsense about him having too many patterns on his shirt. I’m sorry I let it slide, but I haven’t been back since and I won’t ever forget it.

The Supreme Court has struck down most of the draconian Arizona immigration law, but they’ve left what’s arguably one of the most disturbing parts, the “papers please” section which requires police to stop people who look like they might be undocumented immigrants.

I ask you, what does an undocumented immigrant look like?

And what about the countless people who don’t have drivers licenses or other state-issued ID? 

This is going to get ugly.

This one’s a doozy:

So a 13-year-old girl and an 11-year-old girl were referred to juvenile court for cutting off the hair of a 3-year-old girl.

The judge, Scott Johansen, ordered that the 13-year-old serve 30 days in detention and perform 276 hours of community service… or he said that he’d be willing to take 150 hours of community service off the sentence if her mother, Valerie Bruno, would cut off her ponytail in his courtroom.

She did, cutting all the way up to the rubber band when the mother of the 3-year-old pointed out that she hadn’t snipped quite enough.

The 11-year-old was ordered to have her hair cut as short as the judge’s and had to go back to court to run it by the judge.

Momma Bruno (above) now regrets going along and  has since filed a formal complaint against the judge.

Well now, this is just a disaster flick waiting to happen:

The largest solar energy plant in the world could bring a surprising array of dangers to the Mojave Desert when constructed is completed, reports the LA Times. First off, it’s huge: 170,000 large mirrors will be installed at the Ivanpah plant, heating water in three 45-story towers to 1,000 degrees. Critics say no one can specify the dangers because no solar plant has been bulit on this scale—but it might vaporize birds, blind drivers miles away, flip small airplanes, or even attract Air Force heat-seeking missiles.

With a new airport for Las Vegas proposed just six miles away, heat plume interference from the solar plant could be a deadly threat. “If you hit a plume dead center, you have one wing in and one wing out of it. It would flip an airplane in a heartbeat,” says the operator of the nearby Blythe airport, who adds that his complaints have been ignored. “It was a joke.” Even if Ivanpah is safe, there are applications pending for 100 other solar plants in the Mojave. “It’s an experiment on a grand scale,” says one scientist.

A Phoenix teenager babysitting his siblings shot and critically wounded a home intruder, police said. The unidentified 14-year-old boy was in charge of his younger siblings, 8, 10, and 12 years old, when first a strange woman, then a man pounded on the door of the home. He raced upstairs to retrieve his father’s handgun when the man broke through the door and pointed a gun at the teen, who in turn shot the suspect in the chest, according to authorities. The boy then called his parents and ran to a neighbor’s house with the other children.

The suspect is expected to recover, and will be booked into jail when he’s released from the hospital, Officer James Holmes told KNXV-TV. Holmes praised the teen, saying he did “exactly what he should have done.” The boy’s neighbor called it a “good thing that he pulled the trigger, that his dad taught him what to do; I give him a lot of props for it.” Another neighbor advised parents: “Teach your children to protect themselves in the 2012 sort of world that we live in.”

I suppose it’s silly to ask whether he’ll be getting counselling for nearly killing a man who kicked down his door…

*sigh* Kids today…

During a class trip to the 9/11 memorial, New York City junior high students were on less-than-charming behavior, hurling trash and other items into its reflecting pools. “Kids were throwing baseballs in the pond thing,” one student tells the New York Daily News. The education department is investigating the incident, which followed one student’s attempt to bring several bullets into the monument, the Daily Intel notes. He was halted at the metal detector.

As for the littering, it was no big deal, one student insists: “No one was disrespecting. It wasn’t nothing like that,” the teen noted. “Everyone was kind of bored and it was just something to do.” But not all the kids were so blasé, notes the Daily News: “It’s terrible,” says one 13-year-old not on the trip. “You’re supposed to be there to remember the people.” There were no arrests, but the kids were kicked out.

Madonna is unnervingly concerned about her fans getting their hands on her DNA. To make sure that this doesn’t happen, the Material Girl employs a “sterilization team” which is responsible for wiping down her dressing room after every gig so that no stray hair, skin, or saliva remains.

Her team also builds her entire dressing area, using fake ceilings and walls, to ensure there are no hidden cameras.

No word yet on what Madonna’s camp thinks fans would do with her hair, skin or saliva if they did somehow manage to get their hands on some.

Not a good look for the Salvation Army:

A Salvation Army official, charged with, of all things, media relations, has ignited a firestorm over the charity’s stance on homosexuality: Appearing on an Australian radio show, Major Andrew Craibe was asked about a Salvation Army doctrine that decrees gays “deserve death.” Responded Craibe in a story picked up by the Atlantic, “Well, that’s a part of our belief system.”

When the hosts of the program, which addresses gay issues, asked if “we should die,” Craibe replied: “You know, we have an alignment to the Scriptures, but that’s our belief.” A “Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine” says that “those who practice (homosexual acts) deserve to die.” 

On the bright side, the Salvation Army is distancing themselves from the statement. On the not-so-bright side, their explanation isn’t much better:

… the charity itself is quickly backing away from Craibe’s remarks, saying the passage refers to a “spiritual death,” and that the Salvation Army does “not believe, and would never endorse, a view that homosexual activity should result in any form of physical punishment.”

Oh, spiritual death! Well, now. That’s fine then.

Facebook is at it again. You may not have noticed (I sure didn’t), but Facebook’s found a sneaky way to get you to adopt their new email platform. They’ve changed the default email displayed on your profile to an @facebook.com one.

See for yourself:

Just go to your Timeline, click “About” below contact info, scroll down to “Contact Info” and click “Edit.” For each email you want visible, change the crossed-out circle symbol to a full circle; vice versa for ones you don’t want listed.

thehouseoftychobrahe:

just-methinks:

Did you hear that 1984’s coming to the big screen? I don’t know what to make of the fact that Noah Oppenheim’s doing the adaptation, but I’m cautiously optimistic that he (and the still-to-be-chosen director) will do justice to one of my all-time-favorite books in the whole wide world.

I hear it’ll be out in 2014, leaving me plenty of time to obsess about it.

*crosses fingers*

Me likey. Especially in the season of dystopian young adult lit (If you think it started or ended with The Hunger Games, you’re missin’ out, friend), I think it’s incredibly useful to take people back to the point where fiction genuinely discussed politics and its people.
Who knows, maybe if it shows that one Emmanuel Goldstein quote on camera, people will understand why I don’t let George Bush off the hook for 9/11.

First: PLEASE RECOMMEND. I am in love with dystopian lit and post-apocalypse lit and all of its offshoots.

Second: I get your meaning and the same quote is why I refuse to let any of the local politicians off the hook either. An intentional ongoing state of civil war is even worse.