Tag: son

So, who is in charge of Mexico?

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❝ In a low voice, Mexico has been talking, for a long time, about the peculiar relationship of the Government of President López Obrador with the drug cartels, particularly with the one headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán (now imprisoned for life and convicted in the United States), the Sinaloa Cartel. The comments rose in tone after the serious incidents of last Thursday, when the city of Culiacán was held by the cartel for several hours and subtracted authority of the Mexican State…

❝ The city of Culiacán, Sinaloa was taken hostage by the Sinaloa Cartel, last Thursday, October 17, in order to achieve the release of the son of “El Chapo”, Ovidio Guzman, apparently arrested by the Mexican Government in an operation at his girlfriend’s house to complete an extradition request from the United States Government…

❝ In response, it only took the cartel 15 minutes to change to a small but fearfully armed army, surround the National Guard, control the city through blockades and threaten the housing unit where the families of soldiers from the military headquarters in the region live. In the end, after a few hours, López Obrador’s government had to hand over Ovidio Guzmán to them, to restore order in the city and cease the threats of the cartel.

In this manner, the Cartel demonstrated to his own and strangers that it can easily destabilize the Mexican Government, paralyze and kidnap any city in the country, attack the Army with impunity in their own homes and subject the population at will through terror and blackmail. In view of the ease and its results, it would not be uncommon to see other similar cases soon.

RTFA. Not exactly inspiring a lot of confidence here in a border state.

He gave his parents a present of genetic testing — and then a divorce

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I’m a stem cell and reproductive biologist. I fell in love with biology when I was in high school. It was the realization that every cell in my body has the same genome and DNA, but each cell is different. A stomach cell is not a brain cell is not a skin cell. But they’re reading from the same book of instructions. With 23andMe, you get your personal genome book, your story. Unless you have an identical twin somewhere, that genetic makeup is unique to you…

I had spent many years looking at the genes of other animals — particularly mice — but I never looked at my own. Because I was so excited about it, I got two 23andMe kits for my mom and dad as gifts. It’s a lot more fun when you can incorporate your family because you can trace not just the chromosomes but individual alleles on the chromosome so you don’t just see them, but where they came from. Also, I felt I had a good handle on my family’s medical history so I was very interested in confirming any susceptibility to cancers that I heard had run in my family, like colon cancer. I wanted to know if I had a genetic risk.

I found out I don’t have any genetic predisposition to any kind of cancer, which was a great relief to me. But I also discovered through the 23andMe close relative finder program that I have a half brother, Thomas.

…We figured out that at the very bottom of your profile, there’s a little box that says “check this box if you want to see close family members in this search program.”…Dad checked it, and Thomas’ name appeared in his list. 23andMe said dad was 50 percent related with Thomas and that he was a predicted son…

At first, I was thinking this is the coolest genetics story, my own personal genetics story. I wasn’t particularly upset about it initially, until the rest of the family found out. Their reaction was different. Years of repressed memories and emotions uncorked and resulted in tumultuous times that have torn my nuclear family apart. My parents divorced. No one is talking to my dad. We’re not anywhere close to being healed yet and I don’t know how long it will take to put the pieces back together.

Sometimes, the truth really can hurt.

RTFA, wander through the twists and turns of this very modern tale. It’s not all unhappy. The anonymous author’s half-brother, Thomas, was adopted and had searched years for either of his birth parents. He has a daughter of his own who wondered about her family’s medical history.

Still…

California man kidnaps his ex-wife to exorcise demons that made her divorce him

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A California woman was unharmed after allegedly being kidnapped by her ex-husband and forced to undergo an exorcism, authorities said.

Jose Magana-Farias, 47, and his son, Victor Farias, 20, were locked up Tuesday in Stockton on suspicion of kidnapping and false imprisonment after they allegedly drove off with the unidentified woman from a Walmart parking lot in Stockton Saturday.

San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Jones told KCRA-TV in Sacramento that Magana-Farias and his son said the woman had undergone some major and worrisome personality changes that led them to believe she had been possessed by demons.

The woman reportedly willingly got into the car driven by the two men, who then picked up two priests and drove to another location where a sacred oil was applied and a religious ritual was performed, the arrest report said.

Jones told KCRA the woman was not harmed during the ritual. The priests were not charged.

Hey, the priests are as looney as the ex-hubbie and his son. Shouldn’t they be charged, too.

Cache of art looted by the Nazis discovered in Munich

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Reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica” – homage to civilians killed in 1930’s deliberate air strikes

A collection of 1,500 artworks confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s has been found in the German city of Munich…

The trove is believed to include works by Matisse, Picasso and Chagall…

Some of the works were declared as degenerate by the Nazis, while others were stolen from or forcibly sold for a pittance by Jewish art collectors.

If confirmed, it would be one of the largest recoveries of looted art…Investigators put the value of the works at about one billion euros, Focus magazine said.

The magazine said the artworks were found by chance in early 2011, when the tax authorities investigated Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of an art dealer in Munich.

He was suspected of tax evasion, and investigators obtained a search warrant for his home in Munich…There, they found the cache of some 1,500 artworks which had vanished from sight during the Nazi era.

The younger Mr Gurlitt had kept the works in darkened rooms and sold the occasional painting when he needed money, Focus reports…

There are international warrants out for at least 200 of the works, Focus reports. The collection is being held in a secure warehouse in Munich for the time being.

Nazis considered most modern art as degenerate, especially if the artist was Jewish or anti-fascist. Not that the habit of destroying artwork, books or music has disappeared from the repertoire of the hate-filled and ignorant.

This creep apparently considered the cache of stolen art to be his own private trust fund.

Republican Senator Portman says he now backs gay marriage

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Senator Rob Portman became the most prominent Republican lawmaker to back gay rights when he reversed his opposition to same-sex marriage on Friday, two years after his son told him he was gay.

In a newspaper opinion piece on Friday, shortly before the Supreme Court is to hear arguments in two key cases on the issue, the Ohio senator said he now supports gay marriage.

“I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married,” Portman wrote in an op-ed piece in Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch.

“That isn’t how I’ve always felt. As a Congressman, and more recently as a Senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then, something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.”

Portman’s 21-year-old son, Will, told the senator and his wife in February 2011 that he was gay and had been “since he could remember.”

It was the latest show of public support for gay rights. President Barack Obama announced last year that he approved of gay marriage, and in his inaugural speech in January, he equated gay rights with civil rights.

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments later this month in two cases related to gay marriage. One challenges the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In a related case, the court will also hear arguments that question a California law, known as Proposition 8, banning gay marriage…

In his op-ed piece, Portman wrote of how he has “wrestled” with reconciling his Christian faith with the desire for his son to have the same opportunities as his siblings.

Which is why they’re called civil rights, folks.

It’s hard not to be critical of Portman waiting till he was personally affected by his son coming out – before examining all that he did afterwards. As someone in an elected position, someone charged with presenting informed leadership on issues affecting his constituents and the nation. OTOH, we can criticize damned near every one of the elected members of our government of paying overmuch heed to the needs of the lobbyists and check-writing punks that surround public office in this nation.

I’d say he’s different in that he did choose to get off his rusty-dusty and change a piece of his politics to match reality – instead of ideology. Not a common process in Congress even among the few folks I think worth supporting.

Massachusetts boy calls 911 on his mom

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Shamayne Rosario
Kid is lucky mom has a sense of humor

Ten-year-old Dan Davis had no interest in going to bed. So he called the police for help.

His mother, Shamayne Rosario, had just given him the news Wednesday night that it was time to head to his room, but the fourth-grader had other ideas on school vacation week.

“He’s like, ‘I’m gonna call the cops on you,’” said Rosario, 34, of Brockton, speaking on behalf of her son.

Shortly after 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dan was shuffling his way to the bedroom, but instead picked up the wall phone and dialed 911. He quickly hung up, but not before connecting.

“Then he just walked to his room and got under the covers,” said Rosario, a mother of six and a student at Massasoit Community College.

Brockton police, following protocol, returned the call. Rosario explained the situation, then asked her son to pitch in.

“Dan, would you like to talk to the police?” she is heard saying in the 911 call, “because you can’t be calling 911 when there is no emergency.”

Then she told the police, “He doesn’t want to come to the phone…”

Regardless of what a person says, the department has to confirm all 911 calls in person, because police never know if it’s a situation in which someone was coerced into lying.

“You can’t really take that chance,” Lt. Paul Bonanca said…

Brockton police sent an officer out to the Rosario house, near Keith Park in the city’s Campello section. Rosario asked the officer to talk to her son about the importance of using 911 for emergencies only. No charges were brought.

“This is a lot for him,” Rosario said, as a throng of television reporters gathered outside her home. “I believe he’s not going to do that again.”

For good measure, Dan will spend the next two weeks grounded.

His mom put it best when she said that children…“need to know that there’s boundaries and responsibilities they need to uphold, no matter how old they are.” Bravo, Ms. Rosario.

Dumb crook of the day tries to teach her 8-year-old to be a thief

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A respected American tradition – in some places

A New Orleans woman allegedly used her 8-year-old son in an unsuccessful attempt to break into an acquaintance’s house, police say.

Tajhma Deary, 32, was arrested last week, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported. In addition to burglary, she is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Investigators said the alleged victim recognized Deary from a security camera tape because she had dated his son.

Deary allegedly brought her son to the house and showed him how to stick his arm through the mail slot in an attempt to unlock the front door. When that failed, investigators said, she climbed a fence and tried to get in through a window.

Before she left, she sabotaged one surveillance camera, police said. But one she did not get allegedly shows her son at the front door, investigators said.

The tape shows the “minor place his right arm inside the mail slot to make several attempts at unlocking the locks on the door while the female stands nearby offering assistance to the minor,” the arrest warrant said.

Hey, mom – when the city tries to take your kid away – do him a favor and shut up!

Nutball son stole, froze dad’s body, prayed for reanimation

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Detroit police found the body of a 93-year-old man…stuffed inside a freezer in his son’s basement after investigators said the son stole the casket and remains from a Detroit cemetery…

The body found inside a home in the 4700 block of Eastlawn, Detroit Police Sgt. Eren Stephens said. It was in a new freezer in the basement, according to a Detroit Police source. The man was identified as Clarence Bright.

Bright’s 48-year-old son reportedly told family members on Monday that he stole his father’s body from Gethsemane Cemetery on the city’s east side Monday morning to resurrect him through prayer, a Detroit Police source said. The son was taken into custody Tuesday morning along with a 38-year-old man after officers found the men on the city’s east side in a white van containing the empty casket. Police didn’t identify the men.

Family reached at the duplex where Bright lived on Garland in Detroit said the issue was a family matter, that tensions were high and declined further comment.

Bright’s funeral was Saturday, but his body was being held in the cemetery’s mausoleum because the ground was too wet for burial, according to investigators.

Bright’s son made odd comments at the funeral, said Gwendolyn Coleman, a next-door neighbor of Bright’s son. She said she has known him for about five years, since he has lived alone at the home at 4647 Eastlawn St…

“At the funeral, he said, ‘Y’all might think I’m great, y’all might think I’m great’ — everybody heard that at the funeral,” said Coleman. “Then he said, ‘Watch what I’m going to do, watch what I’m going to do.’ Everybody heard that — the whole family, too. We didn’t think he was going to do nothing like that, though.”

True Believers are a trip, ain’t they? You’d think that if they were truly confident about this superstitious silliness, they’d also expect bodies would be repopulating households all over the world. Might even make the TV talking Heads take notice.

Texas nutball raises the bar on harming your kid for holy reasons

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A Texas man told authorities he carved a pentagram into the back of his 6-year-old son “because it is a holy day” in reference to the numerical date of 12-12-12…

Brent Troy Bartel, of the Fort Worth suburb of Richland Hills, is in jail…on a $500,000 bond, charged with aggravated assault of a family member with a deadly weapon.

Police officers responded to an emergency dispatch call shortly after midnight from a man who said, “I shed some innocent blood,” according to an audio recording of the emergency 911 call, released by police.

When questioned by the dispatcher, the man said, “I inscribed a pentagram on my son.”

When the dispatcher asked why, the man responded, “because it is a holy day,” according to the recording. He then hung up.

Moments later, police received a call from the boy’s mother at a neighbor’s house, said Officer Sheena Parsons, Richland Hills police spokeswoman. The mother could be heard on that recording crying and asking for help.

Police arrived at the Bartel home and found the boy shirtless and shivering, with a large pentagram carved on his back. Officers also found a box cutter at the house, which is believed to have been used in the attack…

Why must dimwits decide enforcing their particular superstition on others is so important, so critical to some level of salvation or other – that violence and harm is always justified.