SURVENT

According to an article on CNN, Muslims are upset and protesting the hit television show '24' on Fox because this season is portraying Muslims as the terrorists who are trying to detonate nuclear bombs in the United States.

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season's premiere. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."

I am not trying to be insensitive to the concerns of certain groups in this country, but at some point people need to understand that mankind is not made up of complete idiots and that fiction is simply fiction. Story telling has been around forever and is healthy. I saw the movies Hannibal and Silence of the Lambs, but that does not mean that I worry that some guy in the grocery store next to me is going to kidnap me and eat my brain.

And the writers of '24' are at least being fair about making sure every race has a season where they are the bad guys.

In a written statement issued late Wednesday night, the network said it has not singled out any ethnic or religious group for blame in creating its characters.

"24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism," the statement read. "After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical.

"Over the past several seasons, the villains have included shadowy Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the (Anglo-American) president of the United States," the network said. "The show has made a concerted effort to show ethnic, religious and political groups as multidimensional, and political issues are debated from multiple viewpoints."

Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post September 11, 2001, dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter.

"I was shocked," he said. "Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV."

Posted by Lucent at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am sure that by now you have heard of the ridiculous ban that has been implemented at Willett elementary school in Massachussetts. If not, you can find the story on CNN here.

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

It’s ironic that as a society there is a huge push to get kids out of the house and away from sitting in front of the TV, computer and video games to play outside instead and be active, only to then be told that they cannot run and play like we want them to. Do not be pissed off or wonder why it has happened oh brilliant school officials and ban supporting parents when your kids are overweight, into drugs or come to school with guns because they are pissed off and depressed. If people are that concerned about kids getting hurt while playing running games, pass a bill to buy protective wear or provide supervision during recess. We had supervisors for recess when I was in elementary school. What gives people?

At lease one parent gets the point that kids are getting the short stick here:

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

Posted by Lucent at 01:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Crazy. Kids continue to amaze me with the things they are doing and they are getting more and more violent/dangerous. Take this story I caught in the news yesterday:

A 14-year-old boy was arrested after his 3-year-old sister was found passed out drunk from hard liquor at home, police said.

The girl was unconscious when she was taken to a hospital after her sister called police Monday night, police spokesman Lt. Greg Reinhardt said. "The child could have easily died," he said.

Continue reading "Kids These Days" »

Posted by Lucent at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So back in July Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the drowning deaths of her five children five years ago. Here is one of the many artices written on her verdict. The verdict I thought they should have reached was guilty. She should have been committed to a state mental hospital for the rest of her life. From what I have read about this case, she knew what she was doing was wrong, she planned it and she feels guilty about having done it. She was not insane. The jury was insane for reaching a not guilty verdict. Where is the justice for the five dead children? There is none. Yates will most likely be out and about in society in the near future and will not be watched all the time by the corrections system once she is released to society. This is scary to me.

It was at that time that I concluded that this world is getting too crazy and unsafe, for children and everyone else in general. It was at this point that I decided I needed to take a break from writing about this stuff. While I have not been writing this blog for all that long, I have come to the conclusion that we as a global people are getting more and more desensitized to crimes in general as we see them in the news all the time, especially related to chidren. People are focused on fighting for things just to fight for things. People are suing people because they can and they want to get rich quick. There is a sense of everyone having an entitlement complex where they are entitled to everything they want whether they have earned it or not. People seem to think that they are better than everyone else and deserve special treatment. We are becoming ever so much more a self indulgent society, especially here in the USA, and failing to focus on what matters - children, family, humanity, enjoyment of life, etc.

Do not get me wrong, I know that all of the people in the world are like this. There are still many more good people than bad I am sure of that. The bad people seem to be gaining in numbers, though. The crimes are more blatant and seemingly more violent. Perhaps it is because the news focuses on crime and does not highlight the good in the world and that is why things seems to be getting worse. Crime has always been here, but this much? I am more likely to believe that the constant coverage of crime and its glorification so to speak is actually breeding more crime. People see this stuff in the news and begin to become desensitized by it. People who may not have ever committed a crime may see an Andrea Yates and think, "Hey, if she got away with her crime I could too," and then you have more people killing their children. The fact that the economy is having some hard times now does not help crime. And even if an area is not feeling the slowdown of the economy, the separation of social classes will only add fuel to the fire as people feel slighted by not having what the others have.

My goal of this blog was to watch things going on in the world with main focus on the USA or things related to it. I hate crimes against children more than anything and wanted to point them out so people could see how many crimes happen against children and get people thinking about the situation. I needed to see it for myself to try to understand what can be done to help children. I would love to find a way to reduce these crimes and get people paying more attention to the children of this world.

People are hurting, killing, abusing, and mistreating kids all the time. While this goes on, people don't seem to punish these perpetraitors harshly enough to deter others from doing the same acts. And the media continues to use children to tug at the hearts of people when they want to create a stir about an issue. Children are being used as pawns by the media to gain support for or against things such as war and terrorism, i.e this article. Instead of getting to the bottom of issues or bolstering support against a war (not just the US being in the Middle East but even Lebanon's fighting with Jerusalem, etc.) or even trying to understand why a war is going on, people use children to build anti-war support. No one likes war and there will be casualties in war - including children. Constant coverage of children's shoes and backpacks near bombed buildings or showing dead chidlren on television does not help the situation. This causes people to get emotional and emotions never solve issues - rational thinking solves issues.

I am going to move on to Phase 2 of my project and will be covering more of the issues about things going on in the world mainly related to security - personal, national and global. I will still be covering some cases of crimes against children but there are so many and it is so depressing that I need to reduce my coverage of them. Not to mention that my coverage is not reaching enough people to do anything get people talking nor is it solving the underlying issues. What I do realize is two things: 1) there may well be no way to stop people from committing these acts as the problem truly lies in the minds of the people who commit these crimes against children - there is no way to regulate or manage this; 2) that the best way to reduce these crimes is to provide people with ways to protect themselves and their children and keep people informed about things going on that have an impact on them that can be controlled.

Let's see how this next phase goes. I hope that people will begin to think more rationally about things going on in the world. It would be great to see the media stop pulling on people's emotions to get things to happen as it does not help in the long run. While emotional reactions are easy to provoke and probably more intense than reactions to rational thought, like I said before, acting on emotions does not usually solve things but only makes things more difficult.

Please help me think things through rationally as I cover topics. Add your comments and suggestions. Also, let's not forget about the children of the world and the help they need. I am still pondering the best way to help them. I know there are many charities and other institutions in place to help them, but we need to do more. Let's put our heads together and see what else we can do.

Thanks for reading and please come again.

Posted by Lucent at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just crazy. I cannot believe that something like this happened, oh wait, it was in LA? Well, anything can happen there - but this is still ridiculous!

Excerpt from the full story:

A teenage girl reunited with her father last year after a decade in foster care is suing Los Angeles County for taking so long to bring them together.

Smith's whereabouts were listed as unknown in court documents on the case, although records show that Melinda's caseworker knew Smith was paying child support and his address was on file with the agency that collected the payments.

Father and daughter were reunited in July 2005 after Melinda got help from a social worker assigned to find permanent placement for teens in foster care.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the county, the social workers who handled the case and a private agency that provides attorneys for children in foster care.

Posted by Lucent at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to an article on CNN yesterday, Dr. Park Dietz returned to the witness stand for Andrea Yates retrial for his testimonial late last week and continuing on Monday. It was Dietz testimony that caused the mistrial last time due to his testimony about an episode of "Law and Order" where a woman who drowned her children was acquitted by reason of insanity. The issue was that the episode did not exist, so the judge then ruled a mistrial. Dietz is a consultant to the "Law and Order" television series, as well as a psychiatrist.

I am guessing that there was no mention by him of that episode this time around. The prosecution must really be hurting for proof against Yates though if they had to bring him back to help their case. I really hope they find her guilty and not innocent due to insanity.

**UPDATE - 2/21/2007**

I noticed today that the link to CNN's article above is no longer valid. Here is a short bit from the article that I was referring to dated July 15, 2006:

Although Yates tried to commit suicide twice and was diagnosed with five mental illnesses, she never acted "grossly psychotic" until she drowned her five children, [Dietz] testified.

Dietz said it is unclear whether Yates' depression in 1999 was postpartum because her suicide attempts came four and five months after Luke was born. After she was released from the mental hospital, she did not take her medication, and she and her husband ignored another psychiatrist's advice not to have more children, Dietz said.

Dietz said a larger contributor to Yates' mental problems was losing her identity after marrying Rusty Yates, who picked out all of their children's names and made her convert from Catholicism to another religion. Yates also quit a nursing career when she married and had a miscarriage among the five births.

Posted by Lucent at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came across this story over the weekend too and it made me ill. It appears that a couple in Lyman, South Carolina had adopted three boys but did not want to feed them for whatever reason. Per the article:

A couple has been jailed on felony charges after police discovered their three adopted sons were severely malnourished, including a 5-year-old boy who weighed less than 20 pounds.

An 8-year-old brother weighed less than 40 pounds and a 7-year-old brother weighed about 32 pounds when police found them Thursday. The boys also were treated for bruises, scratches, burns and head lice.

Two of the boys told officers they were tied up to be kept from food in the mobile home.

Dennis McCurry, 30, and Molly McCurry, 29, were each charged with three counts of intentional infliction of great bodily injury upon a child. If convicted of the felony, each faces a minimum 20-year sentence.

A fourth child, Molly McCurry's 10-year-old biological daughter, was found to have head lice but was not malnourished, police said.

Posted by Lucent at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Monday there was an article that CNN wrote about the Yates trial and an explanation she gave, during a videotaped jail interview, as to why she drowned her 5 children. Per CNN:

"In their innocence, I thought they would go to heaven," Yates told Dr. Lucy Puryear about five weeks after the June 20, 2001, drownings. "I just -- since they were so young," she stammered before trailing off and starting to cry.

On Friday, Dr. George Ringholz, a neuropsychologist who evaluated Yates about six months after the children were drowned, told jurors that Yates was suffering from a delusion and thought killing the children was right.

Posted by Lucent at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I guess some people will do anything for a buck. I cannot fathom harming anyone intentionally in an attempt to scam someone for money, let alone a child or even worse, my own child. William Allen Cunningham from Atlanta, Georgia did just that however.

A father accused of poisoning his children's soup in a scheme to sue the Campbell Soup Co. was indicted on tampering and fraud charges, authorities said.

The children, a 3-year-old boy and his 18-month-old sister, were taken to hospital emergency rooms three times in January.

According to investigators, their father fed them tainted soup each time. On the third occasion, authorities said, he used the prescription drugs Prozac and Amitriptyline -- both used to treat depression -- making his young daughter so ill she was flow by helicopter to an Atlanta hospital.

U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said Cunningham wanted to get money from the manufacturer by claiming its soup caused his children's illnesses. [CNN]

The article stated that if convicted on all the charges brought against him, Cunningham faces up to 75 years in prison. Make it life with no parole and I would be in support of that. I also say they need to serve him tainted soup every now and then so he knows how the kids felt.

Posted by Lucent at 01:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I remember when wearing embossed leather jackets or Air Jordan's were getting kids beaten up and killed. The jackets are no longer "cool" and the Air Jordan's are in plentiful supply. What is there nowadays that a kid could have that would get them killed? That's right, an iPod.

A teenager who was part of a gang that fatally stabbed a 15-year-old boy over an iPod was convicted Tuesday of murder.

Brooklyn prosecutor Charles Hynes said a jury deliberated for three hours before convicting Darren Samuel, 17, of robbery and second-degree murder in the July attack. He faces as many as 25 years in prison.

The victim, Christopher Rose, was stabbed in the chest when he and friends resisted a group that accosted them in the street and demanded they give up an iPod one of them was carrying.

A 17 year old has been charged with the murder, even though he says he was not the one who stabbed the kid. Yeah, I am sure people will believe that while you sit up there with your gang tatoos. Anyway, my mother always warned me about guilt by association. If this 17 year old was that opposed to the killing, maybe he should have done something to avoid the stabbing.

I say, show no mercy to the idiots who stabbed this kid or had a part in the killing. Your thoughts?

Posted by Lucent at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was in the news Monday that Andrea Yates retrial of her 2001 murder case would begin this week with jury selection scheduled to have started yesterday. According to the news article:

Andrea Yates often struggles with deep depression or hallucinations in the weeks around June 20, the date when she drowned her five children in their bathtub in 2001. During that period this year, Yates will be in court for her second murder trial.

I also have an issue with the following excerpt