Clench Your Fist, it’s Time to Play: “Knockout the Jew!”

Have you heard of the “Knockout” game lately happening in Brooklyn and Hoboken and Syracuse and St. Louis?

If you’re Jewish, or old and feeble — or female! — prepare yourself for a face-meeting-sidewalk event you’ll never forget, if you live to tell about it, as young strangers on the street punch you in the face without warning.

This horrible street game is called “Knockout” because the whole idea behind the crime is to see if you can be knocked unconscious, and left “lights out” on the pavement, with a single punch to the face.

The “knockout game” that outraged the Syracuse area earlier this year when two teenagers playing it attacked and killed Michael Daniels on West Brighton Avenue is getting renewed attention as reports spread about Jews being targeted in Brooklyn and the death of a homeless man in Hoboken, N.J.

The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Unit is investigating reports that a group of men is playing “Knock Out the Jew” in Brooklyn. A 64-year-old man told CBS New York in a report posted Tuesday that he and his 12-year-old son were attacked. Video in the report also shows a 19-year-old Jewish man being sucker punched.

Continue reading → Clench Your Fist, it’s Time to Play: “Knockout the Jew!”

Blue Hair Suspensions and Mixed Priorities

There are many problems that have been facing our school systems for years. I would like to mention a few of them and then bring up a completely non-issue that has been made into an issue unnecessarily. The issues are teen pregnancy, drug addiction, and gang membership. The non issue is blue hair. You can re-read that if you would like as it is still there — blue hair. It is a non issue that was made into one by a young woman being suspended because her hair was dyed with Kool-Aid.

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From Playground to Prison Yard

The Dallas Morning News explains how the yearning for belonging moves from the playground the prison yard:

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Gangland Holiday: Happy Pinching Day!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Will you be drinking into drunkenness today?

Are you wearing green right now?

Will you be pinching those who aren’t wearing green?

Do you even participate in this non-holiday celebration?

Is Saint Patty’s day about honoring the immigrant in parades across the country?

Or is this day more of a mainstream religious reminder how dangerous it is to let foreigners step foot on our sacred land — land originally founded by Native Americans
— to only create sub-cultures in a group core and foment niche gangs that create economic stratification and propel black market futures?

Continue reading → Gangland Holiday: Happy Pinching Day!

One in 99: Number One as the Prison Nation

The United States is now the number one nation of the incarcerated in the world. The Pew Center on the States released a new report that one in 99 Americans is a prisoner in the nation’s overcrowded jail and prison system.

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Freeing Dark Impulses: The Danger in Arresting Psychotropic Drugs

It is our responsibility as cogent human beings to ban all handguns. We’ve felt the massacre at Virginia Tech. We know the horror of the gangland killings in Newark. We live with the regret of eight dead in Omaha. We’re still freshly frozen from the  aftermath of last week’s multiple Northern Illinois University assassinations:

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Measuring the Commodity of Human Breathing

In our discussion yesterday concerning waterboarding, I began to reflect upon the greater — and immeasurable — value of human breathing and its punishments both invoked and self-sustained.

Continue reading → Measuring the Commodity of Human Breathing