The Neglected: A Film About the Street Children of Ukraine by David Gillanders

Photographer David Gillanders of Scotland made this film from his work photographing the homeless children of Ukraine. It was produced by Britain’s Channel 4. The drug addiction and desperate living conditions make for a very upsetting experience. It is difficult to imagine how children can be allowed to slip below the streets to live in sewers. It is an unforgivable sin in any civilization to allow this to happen to its children. Most of these kids are now dead.

It seems to me a worthy form of journalism that straightforwardly documents suffering that is being experienced by the most helpless members of a population.

Thank you to Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds.

Police in Fullerton, California Commit Organized Brutal Murder of Homeless Man

A group of at least six Fullerton, California police officers brutally beat an ill homeless man to death on July 5th, according to witnesses and news reports. The story is exploding across the national news media because of some video that shows witnesses at the scene of the beating talking about what they saw moments before. They describe a group of officers stomping and beating a helpless Kelly Thomas to death as he screamed for help.  Here is an extremely graphic close up picture of what these police did to the head of their victim.  This was an extremely brutal and extended crime in which a human being was beaten into a pulp by sociopathic murderers.

When a small police force in a small Southern California city can put six murderous cops on scene at one time you know you have a real statistical problem. In other words, you can bet your life that you have a police department that is a very clear and present threat to the lives of the citizens.

The FBI has now joined the investigation and will probably extend its inquiries deep inside the Fullerton department.  What they will find there one can already guess at.

The story has reached the national news. I saw Brian Williams do a story on it tonight. In that story, the mayor of Fullerton says he thinks people should calm down because things are reaching almost ‘lynch mob’ proportions. Oh yuh think? Really? And how does the mayor of Fullerton think people should react to a group of brutal thug cops murdering a helpless man? Does he think they should allow a Fullerton court to handle the situation? Cops murder people and nothing happens. It’s common. Courts have serious problems handling cops who murder. They simply can’t deal with the problem.

In Syria, government forces – cops and soldiers – are shooting and beating people to death every day. We have no problem when the Syrian people pick up guns and shoot those cops. Why should we object to the citizens of Fullerton fighting back against an armed force of violent murderers? There’s absolutely no reason to trust a cop in Fullerton. The city is just a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, right off an exit on the Five freeway. You certainly don’t want to get pulled over by these guys. I’d approach a Fullerton cop with extreme caution and preferably with a gun in my hand (I obviously mean that as a general attitude and not as an actual course of action!).

Shooting cops who are murdering someone is legal, by the way. Another cop can do it. A citizen can do it. It may be a very risky proposition and I would certainly not recommend it, but it is just as legal as shooting a regular citizen if one sees that a murder is imminent. Quite simply, it is always legal to prevent a murder through any means necessary.  It would have been perfectly legal for someone to have walked up and done something to those Fullerton cops while they were committing murder.  Remember that.  It’s actually a prediction.

For now, we have citizens using the power of the cell phone camera to shoot cops who are committing crimes and atrocities. Those cameras in the hands of people everywhere need to roll every time someone sees a cop beating or killing someone. But beyond that, there is a serious argument to be made for armed confrontation against a police force that is fielding dangerous killers. After all, you cannot deny the numbers. If multiple squad cars in Fullerton pull up to a scene and the accumulated force of cops on hand decide to beat a man to death, then you can safely assume that those cops represent the fundamental picture of that police force. At that point, the Fullerton police force becomes an armed group occupying a city. They can and should be resisted by every means available, legal and physical. People will start killing killer cops. It’s inevitable in a world where a cop can shoot a bullet through the back of an unarmed man on a subway platform in Oakland and get off in court with a relatively minor conviction. Cops carry guns. They are dangerous people. Their training is suspect. Their histories are often suspect. They become cops for reasons other than wanting to protect people. They should not be viewed with the respect generally afforded to them. They should be viewed with suspicion. They should be treated as potential threats.

Cops who kill are actually pretty easy to identify and find. They are also easy to destroy financially. The cops on scene at the killing on July 5th should spend the rest of their lives in jail and should lose their homes, their finances and everything else they may hold dear. Pro bono legal services to such ends should be provided to the family of the dead man by major law firms. One way or another, killer cops must be destroyed.

So, pigs of Fullerton, squeal for the camera!

America, One Quarter of Your Children Are In Poverty

Look at these kids. Look at how bright and good they are. Sixty Minutes went and found some of the millions of recently homeless families living in cheap motel rooms around this country as they try to maintain some semblance of normalcy in a rapidly collapsing world of foreclosures and endless joblessness.

An entire generation of kids is going to grow up with a very different attitude about life and country than we baby boomers have had. These kids are the shock to the American system. They experience an America of grinding poverty and large corporations that heartlessly protect only the top earners in their structures. But these kids have a sharp awareness and a reflective quality that bodes ill for the status quo.

Republican policies would strip poor families of affordable access to health care and birth control services. Republican policies favor the very wealthy and corporate profits at the expense of everyone else. This is very strange since many supporters of Republican policies are themselves poor. Democrats are not much better. They tend to have a more realistic view of poverty and its causes, but they do not show the strength required to stand up and be great in the face of despair. Obama is a decent and dull failure. I am pessimistic about his chances at a second term because he has not behaved as if he did not want or need a second term. All presidential mediocrities temper their politics toward winning a second election. A great president only wants a single term in office.

America finds itself in strange waters during a time when it is supposed to be commanding a bright future. It bogs itself down in budget busting wars that are meant to spread democracy in countries that do not value democracy. America spills its blood and money into the earth, but will end up with nothing. The people it fights for will not build free societies. They will wallow in filth and slip back into the hands of despots or religious tyrants. Some people on earth have no possibilities. It is that simple. One must eventually leave those people to their own particular demise.  To believe otherwise is to engage a fantasy.

But not these people in this video. These are sharp and strong Americans who will recognize what’s been done wrong in this country and they will stand up and decide to fix things when they are just a little bit older.

I found this via Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds.

5-Year Old Collects Cans, Feeds 18,000 People

A 5-year-old girl named Phoebe decided she wanted to collect cans in order to raise money from the 5-cent per can deposits.  With the help of her day care center in San Francisco, she raised $3,736.30 from cans and cash donations.  That translated into 17,800 people being fed via local food banks.  If a 5-year-old can do that, imagine what wealthy Americans and corporations could do.

Film Crew Turns Homeless Man Invisible

In Düsseldorf, Germany, a film crew equipped a homeless street vendor with a camera and projector outfit that made him nearly invisible to the passers by.  It’s a really nice little film and the effect is much more effective than I thought it would be.

Public Service: Help the Food Banks

Food Banks Need Help: Donate To One Near You

The economic recession has caused the loss of of millions of jobs over the past year. This means that many families across the country no longer have enough money to pay for their homes, medical costs, or their food.  There are ‘tent cities’ springing up in many parts of the country where people who have lost their homes go and try to make do with the bare necessities.  These people must have places to go for food.

Feeding America is the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity. They operate a network of 206 food banks. These food banks are very important in providing hunger relief for those who need it. They supply local soup kitchens and various programs that feed undernourished kids.

The food banks cannot keep up with increasing need as job losses get worse in every part of the country. You can help by donating to the food bank closest to you. When you contact the food bank they will tell you how you can help them serve the local community.