Grin at Dawn ***

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers

Situation is "Pathetic"! ***

Stolen Freddo: boy, 12, charged
FARAH FAROUQUENovember 16, 2009

AN ABORIGINAL boy, 12, will face a children's court today charged with receiving a stolen Freddo frog.
The chocolate frog, allegedly shoplifted by the child's friend from a Coles supermarket in regional Western Australia, usually sells for about 70 cents....

http://www.theage.com.au/national/stolen-freddo-boy-12-charged-20091115-igec.html

I have kept up with this and yes, it is pathetic when considering all aspects of the situation.

To think how some crimes here are worked off with community service. Is this child liable for a jail term possibly - certainly makes me wonder - the poor young boy.

Update ...Boy will go free
http://www.theage.com.au/national/freddo-charge-withdrawn-by-police-20091117-ikcd.html

Read and Be Alerted - Shocking Universal Situation - Facebook ***

 Reading the article (link ) regarding iPhones and young people, children (young as six) I got a bad feeling.. It is a very serious, harmful and easily dangerous situation. It is so serious. I felt others ought to become aware too;. so posting the complete article as the information needs to reach all who have any influence with a youngster or its parents. You can also access it with the link. Even pass it on to others if its helpful to them.
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/in-their-sites-20091115-igeu.html
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Labels

Facebook, internet, iPhone danger, morality issue, murder, parental guiding control, sex offender

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In their sites
JOHN SILVESTER
November 16, 2009

AN EXPERIENCED detective was furious when he spotted a criminal he had arrested years earlier loitering near his eastern suburban home. He grabbed the man and whispered, ''Before I take you to hospital after you seriously injure yourself, you'd better tell me how you found where I live.''
The stalker, who quickly lost interest in any revenge plans, said: ''Your daughters are on Facebook.''

Welcome to the cyber world, where privacy is as outdated as whalebone corsets.

One of Australia's biggest private detective agencies now employs staff in Melbourne and Sydney to troll through Facebook and MySpace sites to search for leads on people who have tried to disappear to avoid mounting debts.

And employers are exploring sites to check the profiles of prospective staff. One university student who has appeared regularly on a reality television program wisely removed a series of pictures showing a different side of his character.

Police are now dealing with the crime backwash generated from surfing the web, and many detectives believe the internet is eroding community standards. The new trends have forced police to set up a specific internet division within the sexual crimes squad.

The team uses undercover tactics to trap men who target teenage girls on chat sites. They have arrested and convicted cyber-stalkers as old as 40 who have tried to procure under-age girls by befriending them through the web.

Police and adolescent developmental experts have found teenage boys and girls are creating false and dangerous images of themselves through online profiles.

One experienced investigator describes it as the ''cult of the self-obsessed''. The detective says police are now starting to deal with teenagers who have grown up with mobile phone cameras and who have taken hundreds of pictures of themselves since they were six or seven years old.

They post online details of their lives, from the mundane to the intimate, with little concern or understanding of the possible consequences.

The investigator says police are routinely finding teenage girls posting provocative comments and photos of themselves on the web. ''We see comments and you wouldn't know if the writer was 13 or 30,'' he says. He says the girls can portray themselves as sexually experienced in a bid to establish an edgy image. ''It is all make-believe but it can create a false image that comes back to bite them.''

One counsellor says girls from an exclusive Melbourne girls school have taken pornographic photos of themselves and posted them to their boyfriends. The pictures have then been forwarded to an unknown number of teenage boys leaving the girls' reputations in tatters.

Detectives are becoming increasingly alarmed at the sexually threatening nature of postings by some teenage males. Police were forced to close down a Facebook site set up to support two young footballers charged with rape after a team trip to Phillip Island. Up to 700 people joined the site that offered support to the accused teenagers, even though the case is yet to be heard in court.

Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed a so-called ''pro-rape'' site, dominated by male students from the University of Sydney's St Paul's College, that had to be shut down.

Mainstream media now check Facebook and similar personal pages to provide information on suspects and victims in high-profile crimes. When Maria Korp was found slowly dying in the boot of a car near the Shrine of Remembrance in February 2005, the media soon exposed her private sex life after her and her husband Joe's profiles were found on a swingers' site.

As she lay in hospital for six months on life support, she was unaware her private sexual preferences had become very public property.

Joe Korp's mistress, Tania Herman, was sentenced to a minimum of nine years' jail for attempted murder. The two lovers had met through the internet.

Herman maintains Korp seduced her with a plan to manipulate her into killing his wife. Korp committed suicide in bizarre circumstances, hanging himself in the family garage after he completed a one-hour video autobiography that he wanted to sell to the media. Even the car his wife was concealed in after she was bashed and strangled was later put up for sale on the internet.

The managing director of one of Australia's largest private investigations firms, Mark Grover, says Facebook is now the major tool used to find people who dodge debts. His company now finds between 30 and 40 bad debtors a week through internet profile sites and social pages.
''It may be the person keeps their head down, but we can find them through their children or friends. They often leave a cyber trail though their social and family connections.''

Grover says there is also a trend for criminals and the mentally disturbed to use the internet to track people they want to stalk. ''If they are technologically savvy, they put all their energy into tracking the people they want to find.''

In one case under investigation, he says a Melbourne man used the internet to identify the home address of a high-profile singer, ''and is turning her life into a misery''.

According to Grover, young people post fantasy material about themselves on their sites unaware it could damage their reputations and harm their employment prospects.

''Most of our staff have nothing to do with these sites because they see the damage that can be done.'' One woman poured out her frustration and dislike for her boss on her Facebook page, having forgotten she had previously added him as a friend. ''She received a message to come in and collect her things after he read it,'' Grover says.

The head of the sexual crimes squad, Detective Inspector Glen Davies, says parents need to spend time discussing rights and responsibilities with their teenage children as the break-up party and schoolie season begins this month.

''Many of the victims and offenders we deal with are just young people who have been caught up in events that have tragic consequences for everyone. Young men should re-acquaint themselves with the concept of respect. Rape is an incredibly serious criminal offence. I cannot overstate this. We meticulously investigate all cases and will bring about charges against those who are found to be offending.''

In Victoria, rape carries a maximum penalty of 25 years. Assault with intent to rape has a penalty of up to 10 years.

Davies says that in some incidents young men fall into a pack mentality and appear to behave out of character or remain passive as they see events spin out of control. ''Young people, particularly men, need to consider their own behaviour and the way they treat women. Often these situations occur in group environments and young men need to take a strong moral stance and speak out to their mates and put a stop to their actions.

''What we are commonly seeing is young girls, who have often been drinking alcohol, being targeted by young men. Quite often these young women are incapable of giving consent and in some instances are being intimidated by large groups of men and taken advantage of because of their vulnerable state.''

He says male teenagers need to comprehend there can never be an excuse for sexual assault and they will be held responsible for their actions.

Melbourne adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg says there has been a substantial and worrying change in the behaviour of teenagers in recent years. ''There is no doubt that 13 and 14-year-olds are doing things that were not happening 10 or 20 years ago.''

He says many teenagers have unfettered access to the internet and their parents have no idea what their children are doing. ''There has been a fundamental failure in parental responsibility. There is neglect mixed with affluence. The parents have no idea their children are heading into so much trouble. And they are becoming younger and younger.''

He says many children are receiving unrealistic sex education through hard-core websites.
''We know that teenagers of 14 and 15 lack the capacity to predict the consequences of their actions and they fail to understand that what they are posting is not private.''

U-Nome party security expert and former policewoman Naomi Oakley says she routinely sees scantily clad and alcohol-affected girls as young as 14 leave parties without a pre-arranged lift home. ''Parents and these children have to understand the dangers.'' She says the party scene is becoming younger as 13 and 14-year-olds ''see it as the cool thing to do''.

Carr-Gregg says parents need to ''shoulder surf'' to see who their children contact on the web.
Last month, British police charged a convicted sex offender after he allegedly confessed to killing a 17-year-old girl he met through Facebook, where he masqueraded as a teenage boy. Peter Chapman, 32, was charged with the murder of trainee nanny Ashleigh Hall, whose body was found dumped in a ditch on farmland near Durham.

Her mother, Andrea, said, ''Tell your kids to be careful on the internet. Don't trust anybody and don't put your children on Facebook or other sites if they are under-age. We have learnt a terrible lesson. We don't want any other child to be a victim.''

We Can Do It ***

With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world.
Dalai Lama

Appropriate for Today - WWI English Veteran Honored In Death ***

This I saved last summer and happy I did for it is appropriate for today; telling of the death of the last veteran of WWI from England. The article was posted in Guardian.co.UK . It is long but I didn't want to cut any of it.

Veteran, gentleman and teenager twice, Henry Allingham laid to rest

Patrick Barkham at St Nicholas Church, Brighton guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 July 2009 22.33 BST Article history

A bugler sounded the last post, the coffin was draped in a union flag, and respectful crowds burst into spontaneous applause, but the funeral of Henry Allingham was far more than a military honour for the oldest survivor of the first world war.

Last Post, a work by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, commemorated the experiences of Allingham and his contemporaries in the trenches of France. But the family, friends, servicemen and women and ordinary people today gathered to celebrate all the things Allingham was in his 113 years: the world's oldest man, witness to three centuries, East Ender, founder member of the Royal Air Force, mechanic, last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, teenager twice over, Officier, Légion d'Honneur, gentleman, joker, "Grandpa England", and father.

For Betty Hankin, the service at St Nicholas church, Brighton, marked the end of 40 years of estrangement from her father and his family.

Allingham's eldest and only surviving daughter had so little communication with her father following the death of Allingham's wife, Dorothy, that Allingham told friends he assumed his daughter was dead. Members of Hankin's family did not know of the connection until after his death.

Hankin, 89, was visibly moved by the crowd of 1,000 people gathered outside, and Allingham's good friend Dennis Goodwin said Hankin was "a little bit overwhelmed" by the family reunion. Goodwin, founder of the First World War Veterans' Association, believed Allingham "knew all along" that his daughter was still alive. "His family have re-emerged and I think [the funeral] will probably strengthen the bond of Henry's family," he said.

As families sat on union flags like picnickers in the churchyard, Allingham's friend, Air Vice Marshal Peter Dye, gave a touching address to 200 mourners inside. He recalled Allingham aged 110 doing the conga around a dance floor in France in his wheelchair. "When his slippers flew off at a particularly tight corner I was struck – not literally – by how much he enjoyed living," he said. He remembered a trip to the House of Lords when the ever-gallant veteran surprised Black Rod's secretary by asking for her telephone number.

For eight decades after the first world war, Allingham would not discuss the horrors he witnessed as a mechanic during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, in which 6,000 British seamen lost their lives, and a year later at Passchendaele, which claimed 70,000 lives. Instead, he worked for Ford motor company and lived with Dorothy, Betty and Jean, his younger daughter who married a GI and moved to America.

After years living alone and unheralded in Eastbourne, Allingham was befriended by Goodwin and finally encouraged to share his experiences of war. He relished a final decade in which he laid memorial wreaths in France, had an emotional meeting with a 108-year-old German counterpart, and told school children of the sacrifices of his generation and the futility of war.

"He breathed life into our heritage and reminded us of those who had gone before," said Vice Admiral Sir Adrian Johns.

For his friends at St Dunstan's, the care home for blind ex-service personnel where he spent his final years and passed away on 18 July, the service was "so Henry".

"He was a very special man. He was a true gentleman, and he was a gentle man," said Lynn Allen, one of his carers.
 
Allingham's American grandson, David Gray, spoke of the generosity and modesty of "Grandpa England".

Gray recalled waiting for his grandpa to be brought in a wheelchair through Miami airport only to see him pushing a younger member of the airline staff. "That was classic Henry, always a twinkle in his eye and always ready to pull your leg."

"Henry was generous in so many ways. He constantly deflected discussion about himself to others," Gray remembered. And, as two church bells tolled 113 times and the crowd applauded again, Allingham's coffin was driven slowly away.

Another's View of Veterans day ***

This article caught my eye. I decided to post it also in its entirety for your perusal.

Remembering Veterans and the Dead - Blood on Their Hands
By Eamonn McCann

In the UK Remembrance Day is also called as Poppy Day, inaugurated to mark the end of the World War 1 in 1918.

November 11, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- November is the month when people remember the millions of lives lost in the battle of right against wrong."

So said the Belfast Newsletter in an editorial last week, concluding that we should all "wear our poppy with pride."

The editorial spelt out what it is we should be proud of.

"Our servicemen and women are still doing their duty in far-off lands around the world...Military personnel based in Northern Ireland have just returned from the war in Afghanistan, where the battle is being fought up close and personal. They know the cost of serving their country."

And so, too, in many cases, do distraught families left behind. The question is, should we contemplate this vista with pride? Should we concur in the implicit message of the poppy that it is sweet and fitting for young men or women from Ballymena or Ballymagroarty to bleed their last by the roadside in some dusty corner of a distant land?
Is what's happening in Helmand "a battle of right against wrong"? Was the relentless pressure for displays of the poppy in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday an expression of ethical idealism?

All the dead of the Afghan war should, of course, be remembered. And it should be remembered, too, that the vast majority of the fallen are Afghanis. But pride? Ought they not rather be remembered with anger? Just as we should recall the unnumbered dead of World War One not with reverence but with rage? Then, as now, young people fresh-faced from school were flung to their death like fistfuls of chaff for no cause that any working-class person had an interest in. The millions died so a tiny elite could rule the waves and rob the world.

The purpose of the poppy is to sentimentalize this slaughter, to conceal a crime against humanity under a cloak of soft emotion. It has become fashionable in the last 15 years to project World War One, and in particular the stomach-churning carnage at the Somme, as an event around which Irish Catholics and Protestants, Nationalists and Unionists, might come together in sombre unity. Did not Orange and Green stand and fight and die together? Can we not find a sense of oneness now in consecrating ourselves to that memory? Many leaders of Nationalism North and South seem increasingly to agree, and to prize their allocated places in the valedictory ensembles.

In fact, in World War One, Catholics and Protestants alike were treated like dirt and trampled into the mud. The only good reason regularly to recall these horrors is to stiffen our resolve that they must never happen again. There's a thought we could usefully unite around. But Remembrance Day and the poppy, as the Newsletter contentedly noted, is not about ending the insanity and suffering of useless war but about taking pride in past wars so as to prepare the way for the wars of the future.

The English comedian Jimmy Carr landed himself in bother last week with a joke about amputees returned from Afghanistan ensuring British success in future paralympics. Not in the best of taste, right enough. But nowhere near as insulting to the dead and maimed of Britain's imperial adventures as the splashes of crimson on the lapels of political bosses who have drunk deep on the red wine of the battlefield.

Thinking of the latest British deaths in Afghanistan, my mind turned to Peter Brierley, the Yorkshire man whose son, Shaun, died in southern Iraq in March 2003 and who, at the memorial service in St. Paul's last month, turned away from Tony Blair, telling him, "I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it". And to Lance Corporal Joe Glenton from Norwich, facing court martial for refusing to return to fight in Afghanistan. And to Siegfried Sassoon, poet, captain in the Royal Welch Fusilers and winner of the Military Cross, whose "A Soldier's Declaration" in July 1917 earned him the wrath of the war-mongers and the respect of all who love life:

"I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

"I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

"I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust."

Eamonn McCann can be reached at Eamonderry@aol.com

What Do Those Words Mean ***

Reading a bit of John Pilger just now, a phrase entered my head; "let the dead bury the dead". ..and of a sudden, its meaning was completely clear...but just for seconds it stayed with me. Ah, that old dementia...

Can someone of you reading this explain in detail what the words mean?

Oh, yes...and John Pilger is 'good'!

H1N1 Vaccine,etc Ingredients ***

Squalene MF-59 - what is this?

Something else I came upon:

Ingredients in the Swine Flu H1N1 Vaccine; Resources, Risks and Dangers

INGREDINTS LIST
In addition to the viral and bacterial RNA or DNA that is part of the vaccines, here are the fillers:
· aluminum hydroxide
· aluminum phosphate
· ammonium sulfate
· amphotericin B
· animal tissues: (pig blood, horse blood, rabbit brain, dog kidney, monkey kidney, chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg, calf (bovine) serum
· betapropiolactone
· fetal bovine serum
· formaldehyde (this used to preserve deceased bodies)
· formalin
· gelatin
· glycerol
· human diploid cells (originating from human aborted fetal tissue)
· hydrolyzed gelatin
· MSG (monosodium glutamate) (very harmful and in many food products)
· Neomycin
· Neomycin sulfate
· Phenol red indidcator /
· Phenoxyethanol (antifreeze) / (for cars, not bodies!)
· potassium diphosphate and monophosphate
· Polymyxin B
· Polysorbate 20 and 80
· Porcine (pig) pancreatic hydrolysate of casein
· Residual MRC5 proteins
· Sorbitol sucrose
· Thimerosal (mercury) (thought connected with Alzheimers and autism)
· tri(n)butylphospate VERO cells (a continuous line of monkey kidney cells washed sheep red blood cells)

Puzzle to Me ***

"Possible 61 year prison sentence reduced to 33 months" These are the latest headline words.

I don't understand this. Do you? Could I, as just a lowly "useless eater" or you, hope to receive this, being guilty and deserving of a possible 732 month/61 years sentence down to a possible 33 months/less than 3 years? This is a huge reduction. What did Kerik do? 'Bailout' is a word that comes to mind . . .

Ex-NY police chief Kerik in jail

This is truly a shock to me. Then again, I guess not. I and you have been exposed to some shocking news in our lives, especially over the past few years. Makes me think, humanity is fairly resilient; bouncing back for the next punch to our equilibrium.

After I read the biography (or was it an autobiography) of Bernard Kerik, I felt he was a true shining example of our legal system. His badge certainly shone of high polish! It has been a few years since reading the book but from the general gist of it that I have now, yes, he was a very good example of a truly devoted police officer to his station in life; a high station as a law officer.

He climbed higher before apparently falling. Seems that he now has a tarnished halo in the minds of those who so admired the man, Bernard Kerik.

The story of this man's fall is told everywhere now. It wasn't at the beginning - the first I read about it came from the news source, BBC.co.UK. Why and how is it that we here in the US do not know of things going on right under our nose but those in other countries hear it first? This makes me think, possibly, that our news media are being manipulated, tethered much. Could you believe this also?

Ha! What else do we "not know" today? And will I learn of what I don't know in a foreign newspaper? It's a puzzle to me.

Nevertheless, this is Kerik's business to deal with and having nothing positive to interject into my life (the book-his story did) I refuse to read anything else about it.

I read news, don't get me wrong. But there are times that I just have to back away from the blasts of it and go back into my hidey-hole here beside my gentle creek. Bad news does nothing good for my soul and life. Besides I, like you, have enough "bad news" in personal life and not needing to take on the worry of a once top-position guy.

Today his former shoes have been filled by another. I'm sad for Mr. Kerik but also realize: we create our life and its such a narrow path we tread. I, myself, have fallen off the path often.

Stan Ovshinsky, a Great American ***

His inventions made CDs and DVDs possible ... His batteries are found in every hybrid car ... He's moved solar panel technology into the 21st century... So why isn't he lauded by the US news media? Because in addition to being a successful businessman, he's been an outspoken advocate for social justice. Meet a great American that the rightwing press doesn't have the time to tell you about. Details:http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/554.html

I think you will enjoy listening and watching this.

Eye of the Beholder ***

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Poem for November ***

November
The mellow year is hasting to its close
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast-
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn’s hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows.
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of cozy brooks, which no deep banks define;
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with somber ivy twine.

Hartley Coleridge.

Ah, Grandchildren ***

~I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her crayon 'colors' yet, so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it was... She would tell me...and was always correct. It was fun for me, so I continued.... At long last, she headed for the door, saying, "Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these, yourself!"

~When my grandson Billy and I entered our vacation cabin, we kept the lights off until we were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects. Still, a few fireflies followed us in. Billy understood the 'game plan.' Noticing them before I did, Billy whispered, "It's no use Grandpa. Now the mosquitoes are coming after us with flashlights."

Doctora Rauni Kilde, Former Health Minister of Finland ***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgyakGAddM

This doctor speaks in English. Very forceful. This is a must watch.

Marriage? ***

There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage." James Holt McGavran

"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't." Patrick Murray

No Proof ***

Published on

11/1/09, 3:06 PM
Eastern Daylight Time

"To those who believe, no proof is necessary; to those who do not, none will suffice

"All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time ... " Mitch Albom