In a video segment on ABC News, they say they were “thrilled” when their son — who has Asperger’s and other disabilities and struggled to make friends — appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“Daniel,” however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department who ” hounded” the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied — not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

versatilequeen:

rgr-pop:

1. steal their bike, they probably stole it from a poor person anyway
2. steal their bike and donate it
3. steal their bike and sell it for scrap because you need the money more than they do
4. steal their rare bike and undersell it on craigslist just to spite them
5. …

versatilequeen:

zuky:

thefemaletyrant:

youngbadmanbrown:

iamonebeing:

New Database Allows Britons To See If Ancestors Owned Slaves

LONDON — A new database launched Wednesday lets Britons uncover uncomfortable information:whether their ancestors owned slaves.

Researchers at University College London spent three years compiling a searchable listing of thousands of people who received compensation for loss of their “possessions” when slave ownership was outlawed by Britain in 1833.

Some 46,000 people were paid a total of 20 million pounds – the equivalent of 40 percent of all annual government spending at the time – after the freeing of slaves in British colonies in the Caribbean, Mauritius, and southern Africa.

Their descendants include writers Graham Greene and George Orwell. Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair, and the trustees of his great-grandfather, Charles Blair, were paid 4,442 pounds for 218 slaves on a plantation in Jamaica.

Research associate Keith McClelland said the project would help show how the legacy of slavery still affects Britain.

He says 10 percent of wealthy 19th-century Britons were directly connected to the slave trade, and proceeds helped build railways, businesses, buildings, and art collections that still exist today.

“You are talking about a very important component of the British economy from the 17th century onwards,” McClelland said.

Britain’s Parliament abolished the slave trade in 1807, but slavery itself was not outlawed in its colonies until 26 years later. The United States followed in 1865 and Brazil in 1888.

In 2006, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed “deep sorrow” for Britain’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, though some felt that fell short of a full apology. The next year he said: “I have said we’re sorry and I say it again now.”

well, well, well, white folks

you know what this post was missing?

A link the database

Excellent

Yeah, nice one there reporting the existence of the database without linking to it. Thanks for the link, youngbadmanbrown.

I also like how Tony Blair, instead of directly apologizing on behalf of Great Britain, “expressed deep sorrow” for slavery, then a year later says “I already apologized sheesh!” This is typical of how white men “apologize”, isn’t it? We all know this ridiculous game where they don’t actually apologize but then say they did and play victim for being asked to over-apologize.

Perhaps most relevantly, I guarantee you that this report vastly understates the relevance of slavery, both in the 19th century economy and to today’s economy, culture, institutions, laws, and societal infrastructure in general. Ten percent of the economy? Psshhh. Yeah right. Slavery lay at the economic and moral heart of empire, sucking up bloodwealth from the enslaved and the colonized, pumping it through the far-flung imperial ecosystem of oppression and hoarding it in concentrated palatial stockpiles of bloodmoney which is still propping up white supremacism and the wealth of the Western world.

Go to the website. It is visceral to see people on a list as possessions.