According to Democracy Now!, last week amidst protests in Bahrain a 15-year-old boy died last week after he was shot in the face with a tear gas canister. This led to further demonstrations to protest his death on Wednesday, where Bahraini forces tear-gassed a crowd of peaceful protesters who had approached a line of police officers with their arms outstretched, indicating their peaceful intent. Video footage shows Bahraini forces unleashing large amounts of tear gas into the crowd; a second Bahraini protester died on Monday as a result of excessive tear gas inhalation.
Meanwhile in Texas:
A 15-year-old Texas teenager is being held in a Colombian detention center after being mistakenly deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Jakadrien Turner, an American citizen, ran away from home in November 2010 at the age of 14 following her parents’ divorce and the death of her grandfather.
In April, Turner was arrested by authorities in Houston for shoplifting and gave the authorities a fake name. The name happened to belong to an undocumented Colombian immigrant who had warrants for her arrest. Turner, who is African American and does not speak Spanish, was subsequently deported to Colombia despite having her fingerprints taken by ICE officials. Turner’s grandmother used Facebook and the help of Dallas police to track her down. Colombian officials reportedly took Turner into custody at the request of the U.S. embassy, but have so far refused to release her. Some reports have indicated she may be pregnant.
Also in Texas, a 15-year-old high school student was shot and killed by police on Wednesday after brandishing a pellet gun in the school’s hallway. Police say the victim, Jaime Gonzalez, pointed the weapon at police and ignored repeated commands to drop it. The weapon was found to be a pellet gun, not a handgun, only after the shooting.
Any thoughts on why 15-year-olds happen to be in the news today? Just coincidence or perhaps a news editor seeing a theme?
Fresh News to share and don’t know where to put it…so here it is:
From the Beeb:
The FBI has updated its definition of rape for the first time in 83 years, to include men and those who do not physically resist as victims.
The new definition will increase the number of people counted as rape victims in FBI statistics, but it will not change federal or state laws.
Lawmakers use those statistics to allocate resources for prevention and victim assistance.
Many US states have already adopted a wider definition of rape.
Previously, the FBI defined the crime of rape as “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will”.
The new definition removes the reference to females and says rape is “the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object” without the consent of the victim.
Also specified is “oral penetration by a sex organ of another person” without consent.
Vice-President Joe Biden, who raised the issue last July at a Cabinet meeting, called the change a victory for those “whose suffering has gone unaccounted for over 80 years”.
“We can’t solve it unless we know the full extent of it,” Mr Biden said.
One in five women and one in 71 men have been raped at some point in the lives, according to a 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control, which used a broader definition.
The US Congress approved $592m (£384m) this year to address violence against women.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16452014
Thank you Karen for adding that one about Kristy Bamu. Even though it happened last year, the “15 year old” reference stuck out for me too. Seems to be quite a pivotal age for so many of our young people. Here locally, we lost an honours student and successful athlete…she simply passed in her sleep. No report yet from the coroner, but it was a complete shock to the community….right before Christmas too. He peers are still struggling with the shock/news.
Blessed be to all the Souls who leave us before they’ve really gotten going.
I forgot to add this one, too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16434523
It’s all very sad…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-16446393
Patty! sorry–proof reading glitch–thanks for your comments! (((Patty)))
be: Thank you for an absolutely brilliant piece of astrological detective work.
Brendan: i agree with your observation – all children are now “at risk” in some way or another.
Patty: There have been centuries worth of change in just our lifetime. We should not be surprised if there are centuries worth of difference between generations. Regardless of the differences, we all got here the same way, we all leave the same way and we are all in the same lifeboat called Earth. That gives us something to build on.
andatty I hear ya! in both of your posts–frustration enhanced by Mars in Virgol.
be! LOVE your erudition and insigfht.Thank you Thank you!
Brendoan, you said it in plain English, Oh, yes and Amen and Awoman, (as Fe so aptly stated recently). And, Brendan, I give you every medal in the book for what you do day by day.
I’ll wade in and offer my thoughts. Kids are not kids anymore. Typical parents demand their kids grow up about 10 years too early, and through either active or benign neglect, their children take on adult roles, with adult-level knowledge way, way younger.
I had a 10 year boy in a class I spent ten weeks with two years ago, finishing out the school year with them when the teacher left half way through. He had three juvenile referrals, which are basically judicial notices to the parent(s) that their child has committed misdemeanor crimes but is too young to actually prosecute. If he got another, he was looking at going into the juvenile detention system for quite a spell, based on all of the offenses on record, not just the latest one. Think of them as deferred prosecution.
He’s 12 now, hopefully in 6th grade. I’ve seen him riding his bike around town, so he’s not inside, yet. His charges were for vandalizing property, drugs, and fighting & weapons (knives). His mother has a big substance abuse problem (meth), his father is in jail for drug offenses. He’s basically learned it all from his dad (when he was out), for whom this was natural behavior.
He’s just one kid – I know of plenty more that are pretty much in the same boat. We have failed them, as a society, and this is what we get. They learn about sex, drugs, and alcohol far, far younger than most of us did. And I mean “learn” as in use. Some of these kids are attempting sex in 2nd grade and having it. Condoms? What are those? They aren’t made small enough! It’s more like rape of course, since no one is really able to comprehend the actual meaning of the act. Some of it is boasting naturally, but sometimes you cannot discount the stories enough. Girls also learn that they can get ‘things’ from the boys in return, so a crude form of pay for play emerges.
Violence is widespread. I had high school kids in the past who would stage fights after school because they were bored. Not that they hated the other party or had an actual beef, they were simply bored. This was bare knuckle fighting too, blood everywhere (they took pictures and showed me). Drink some beer, smoke some weed, and fight: there’s a recipe for “good” behavior. The littler kids fight all the time
too. After all, that’s what the big kids do.
Hormones don’t help either. Fifteen year olds are usually full of them, and haven’t learned to even contemplate controlling those impulses.
We get what we pay for, and since no one wants to pay to keep the social services limping along – much less actually have enough to serve everyone that has needs – we suffer. Cutting education hurts as well, and teachers are swamped with all the usual folderol about even keeping their jobs each year, much less tend to the kids.
Not all kids are this way of course, but the numbers are not shrinking, and the kids aren’t going away. We can’t lock up entire generations either, but without palliative care and funding, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
For what it’s worth, murder by teen has decreased by over 200 over the last 10 years. I don’t know what the Detroit murder rate is these days, but that’s the stat everyon always turns to when discussing murder by gun. Wasn’t it 3000 a year, or something? More killed in Detroit than in the wars? My Aries mars has been on hair trigger lately. I notice it more when Mars is in Virgo, a frustration of wanting to get things done now, and being stopped by a nitpicking fault-finder (or a slow school bus).
wow bkoehler —
i was wondering about that kind of thing, but haven’t had time to research it today. thank you!
Yikes Patty, I guess I’ve avoided the news, local anyway, just because of things like this. There were mean teens when I was growing up, but nothing like now.
Astrologically, someone 15 years old would have been born in 1996. Much of that year Saturn was somewhere between 0 Aries and 7 Aries. Uranus recently went direct at 0 Aries. Pluto has again reached 7 Capricorn and has squared all the natal Saturns from 4 degrees to 7 degrees of Aries this year.
From January to early April in 1996, Saturn was in Pisces where Uranus was up until March of last year and probably, subconsciously was agitating those Saturns. Late last month Mars transited the degrees opposite those Saturns and will go retrograde in a couple of weeks and re-cover those same degrees through mid February.
People born in 1996 had Neptune in Capricorn somewhere between 24 and 27 degrees. Transiting Saturn in Libra has been square those degrees since mid November last year and will continue to do so through May 2012. After he turns direct he will again square those degrees from August through September.
Any one of the three examples could have been under the influence of Uranus transiting their Saturn, or Pluto squaring their Saturn, or Mars opposing their agitated Saturn, and/or Saturn squaring their Neptune. They all deal with rebelling against authority figures, and they all have a Neptunian theme (lying about name, tear gas, fake gun).
be
The bigger question is, why are teenagers so damn mean? FBI stats show over 600 murders/manslaughters committed by US teens under 18 years old last year. I didn’t look at the suicides, but my guess is the numbers are very high as well. Bullying…? Easy to want to do these days. I want to roll down my window when stuck behind a stopped schoolbus to yell at the lazy ass kids that can’t hustle out to the waiting bus. I swear it was at least a 3 minute wait today, and the kid is not 1 mile from school. I walked over a mile to school and back when I was 6 years old. There were no fat kids back then either, except maybe 1 or 2 and as I recall, the one in my room had parents that owned a small grocery, and he had twinkies in his lunch every day. It wasn’t dangerous to walk, because all the other kids were walking home too. Why are 15 year olds murdering their parents? There was the kid that hammered his parents to death last year.