Society's ChildS


Health

900 Gazans still need care for injuries sustained in 2014 war


Ma'an News Agency
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 08:52 UTC
woman child
© www.popularresistance.orgCare needed, little available.
Some 900 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to require medical attention as a result of permanent disabilities they sustained during Israel's devastating 51-day assault on the small territory that began on July 8, 2014, according to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

On the second anniversary of the war, the Gaza Strip's Shifa hospital had 3,839 registered patients waiting for scheduled operations, more than half of which were classified as major surgeries, according to a statement published Monday by UNRWA, adding that surgical appointments were being scheduled for as far away as 2018. "Some patients are still suffering two years after their injury and need ongoing care. Many others are still waiting for prosthetic limbs. The state of prosthetics in Gaza is still very precarious," Dr. Mahmoud Matar, an orthopedic surgeon at Gaza's Shifa hospital told UNRWA. UNRWA stressed in their statement that "The long waiting lists have left many frustrated, sometimes in unnecessary pain and facing health risks associated with delayed care."

Meanwhile, a significant part of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure remains severely damaged, which according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) had already been near collapse prior to the start of the hostilities. Al-Wafa hospital in Gaza City and three primary healthcare clinics were completely destroyed in the war, in addition to 18 hospitals and 60 clinics that sustained damages. "To date, all of these facilities have been or are in the process of being repaired/reconstructed, with the exception of the al-Wafa hospital which requires major funding to proceed with reconstruction," UNRWA said.

A total of 11,200 Palestinians -- including 3,800 children -- were wounded in the war, according to UN documentation. Meanwhile, some 360,000 Palestinians -- 20 percent of the Gaza Strip's population -- are estimated to require mental health support as a result of the war, according to the WHO. UNRWA said the backlog in treatment was mainly due to the lack of skilled personnel in the Gaza Strip's crumbling healthcare system.

Comment: This is one of many ways Israel insures the defeat and demise of Palestinians. It is no less than criminal neglect and more than a slow moving atrocity. It is murder by attrition.

Read More...
Ambulance

Severely malnourished child on strict vegan diet removed from parents care after hospitalization requiring surgery


The Local
Fri, 08 Jul 2016 15:23 UTC
vegan infant
The severely malnourished one-year-old weighed as much as an average three-month-old,
A one-year-old boy in Milan, allegedly being raised on a strict vegan diet, has been taken away from his parents after being hospitalized weighing just five kilograms.

The boy was taken to Milan's Fatebenefratelli hospital by his grandparents on July 2nd, but doctors were shocked to discover the one-year-old weighed as much as an average three-month-old, Corriere reported.

Blood tests revealed the child was severely malnourished, having a level of calcium, which doctors described as "the minimum needed to survive".

The malnourished child was also suffering from a heart condition which left him needing emergency surgery. While the condition was not caused by diet, the child's chronic lack of calcium is thought to have aggravated the problem as low calcium levels cause irregularities with the cardiac rhythm.

The child survived the surgery and is recovering well, but concerned medical staff reported the incident to social services after the parents allegedly refused to change the diet they were feeding their child.

A Milan court has ruled the child will remain in the custody of the Policlinico San Donato hospital, where he underwent the lifesaving surgery, pending further investigation.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Pistol

2 court bailiffs shot, killed by inmate in Michigan; shooter dead

Andrew Krietz
WZZM
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 22:13 UTC
Michigan courthouse shooting
© Brian Dorman, ABC 57

Berrien Co. Sheriff's Deputies, Michigan State Police are on the scene of shots fired at the courthouse
Michigan State Police, county officers and other police agencies responded to the shooting around 2:30 p.m., Monday, July 11.

Two court court bailiffs were shot and killed by an inmate at the Berrien County Courthouse before police returned fire on the suspect, killing them.

"Brave officers" took down the shooter, said Sheriff Paul Bailey during a news conference Monday, July 11.

A county deputy and a civilian also were shot but injured, according to a news release. Those injured were taken to Lakeland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph for treatment.

Michigan State Police, county officers and other police agencies responded to the shooting around 2:30 p.m.

A Berrien County Commissioner told WZZM's ABC affiliate WBND reporter Vahid Sadrzadeh on scene that a man who was on his way to jail took a gun off a deputy and started opening fire.
Read More...
Alarm Clock

Over 50 young sharks killed, left on shore in Mobile Bay, Alabama


AL.com
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 21:42 UTC
Black tip sharks
© WKRG
Alabama's Marine Resources Division and Dauphin Island Sea Lab are investigating the deaths of dozens of sharks found Saturday morning along the shore of Mobile Bay, WKRG television news is reporting.

The director of the Alabama Marine Resources Division said the number of sharks an officer found was 57.

The sharks, identified mostly as bull sharks, were discovered by residents and visitors on the beach on Belleair Boulevard, near Dauphin Island Parkway, the television station reported. One woman, who is on vacation with her family, reported finding a net with close to 40 sharks inside, the television station reports.

"It definitely caught our attention because I know that that is illegal and you shouldn't be doing that. We just didn't know what to do about it," Sabrina Rios told WKRG. Rios reported she and others tried to bury as many of the sharks as they could because of the smell.

Read More...
Question

Fire officials searching for source of mysterious boom in Kentucky

Gayle Deaton
The State Journal
Sun, 10 Jul 2016 09:32 UTC
Downtown Frankfort, Kentucky
© Wikimedia CommonsDowntown Frankford, Kentucky.
A report of a low-flying aircraft and a large explosion or boom followed by white smoke last night off Harvieland Road in Bald Knob led emergency responders to conduct an intense search of the area.

This morning, the source of the boom remains a mystery.

The first reports of a loud boom or explosion off O'Nan's Bend in Bald Knob came in at about 40 minutes before sunset Saturday night, according to Franklin County Fire Chief Kevin Hutcherson.

Franklin County firefighters responded to the call and started a search of the area, Hutcherson said, but did not find anything. Another call came in from an off-duty city police officer who reported that the boom sounded like much more than just fireworks, Hutcherson said, so emergency responders stepped up the search effort to include a helicopter from the Lexington Police Department, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office and Emergency Management.

Hutcherson said the helicopter flew a wide radius over the area twice before the search was terminated after about four and a half hours.

Hutcherson also noted that one of the callers said they saw white smoke in the area of the boom, and he said black smoke is typically what witnesses would see if the explosion involves a petroleum byproduct.
Read More...
Eye 1

Best of the Web: The US has legalized murder against its own citizens and created state terror to deal with those fighting back against oppression

Chris Hedges
Truth Dig
Sun, 10 Jul 2016 20:32 UTC
police protester
© Max Becherer / APA protester yells in front of police headquarters after officers arrived in riot gear to clear protesters from the street in Baton Rouge, La., on Saturday
Police officers carry out random acts of legalized murder against poor people of color not because they are racist, although they may be, or even because they are rogue cops, but because impoverished urban communities have evolved into miniature police states.

Police can stop citizens at will, question and arrest them without probable cause, kick down doors in the middle of the night on the basis of warrants for nonviolent offenses, carry out wholesale surveillance, confiscate property and money and hold people—some of them innocent—in county jails for years before forcing them to accept plea agreements that send them to prison for decades. They can also, largely with impunity, murder them.

Those who live in these police states, or internal colonies, especially young men of color, endure constant fear and often terror. Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," calls those trapped in these enclaves members of a criminal "caste system." This caste system dominates the lives of not only the 2.3 million who are incarcerated in the United States but also the 4.8 million on probation or parole. Millions more are forced into "permanent second-class citizenship" by their criminal records, which make employment, higher education and public assistance, including housing, difficult and usually impossible to obtain. This is by design.

The rhetoric of compassion, even outrage, by the political class over the police murders in Baton Rouge, La., and near St. Paul, Minn., will not be translated into change until the poor are granted full constitutional rights and police are accountable to the law. The corporate state, however, which is expanding the numbers of poor through austerity and deindustrialization, has no intention of instituting anything more than cosmetic reform.
Read More...
Snakes in Suits

Politicizing sport: All Russian track and field athletes barred from competing in Rio Olympics


RT
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 20:14 UTC
Yelena Isinbayeva
© Sergei Karpukhin / ReutersYelena Isinbayeva
The IAAF has rejected all applications from Russian track and field athletes to compete in this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the Russian Olympic Committee has said, with the exception of long jumper Darya Klishina.

The decision made by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) means that athletes such as the pole vault world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva won't be allowed to compete when the games get underway in Brazil in August, her trainer Evgeny Trofimov told R-Sport.

"Everyone received a refusal, including Yelena. As a result of this refusal, we will file a lawsuit to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in order to defend the rights of the sportsmen and women. They knew that if there were refusals that we would file lawsuits and our lawyers are ready to do this," Trofimov said.

Isinbayeva, who has been outspoken at the stance taken by the IAAF, once again hit out at the organization.

"The fact that they threw this out shows their weakness and their helplessness," Isinbayeva told TASS, referring to the IAAF. "The presumption of innocence before guilt does not exist and they cannot show who is clean in Russia and who isn't. They just show their ineffectiveness."

Comment: It should be clear to anyone paying attention that this isn't about doping, it's about the West's continued witch-hunt against Russia and their desperate efforts to eliminate any positive impressions Russian athletes will give to the viewing audience. The depths with which the West will sink apparently knows no bounds.

Read More...
Handcuffs

Police State America: Cops use Nazi tactics to bust up peaceful protest on private property

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 16:14 UTC
Baton rouge arrests
© Shannon Stapleton/ReutersPolice officers scuffling with a demonstrator while trying to apprehend him during a rally in Baton Rouge on Sunday.
Peaceful but emotional protests over the seemingly ceaseless violence by police and the murders of five officers in Dallas continue unabated in cities nationwide. In Baton Rouge, police shoved people into the street — and then arrested them for being in the street.

"No justice, no peace!" protesters chanted as they gathered downtown following a rally at a Methodist church to condemn the killing by police of Alton Sterling.

Though the seemingly spontaneous gathering of around 500 at the intersection of France and East didn't resort to violence or mayhem, around 100 riot gear-clad cops showed up to police the event. One homeowner, the Daily Beast reported, offered refuge on her front lawn precisely to prevent the arrests of demonstrators for occupying the street.

But after an hour and a half, without provocation, the militarized cops decided they'd had enough and charged the crowd, causing exactly the chaos their presence ostensibly sought to prevent as protesters fled down a side street — where they were arrested for obstructing a highway.
Read More...
Brick Wall

The Age of Disposability: State terrorism & racist violence

Henry A. Giroux
Truth-out
Sun, 10 Jul 2016 15:16 UTC
State terrorism
© Christopher Lee / The New York TimesDemonstrators record a crowd of police officers on hand in New York's Times Square, where a large crowd protested after fatal police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, July 7, 2016.
Note from Henry Giroux on July 10, 2016: The racist killing machine is in full bloom in the age of domestic terrorism. Once again, Americans and the rest of the world are witness to a brutal killing machine, a form of domestic terrorism that is responsible for the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

Castile and Sterling were both shot point-blank by white police officers who follow the script of a racist policy of disposability that suggests that Black lives not only do not matter, but that Black people can be killed with impunity since the police in the United States are rarely held accountable for such crimes. What we are witnessing is not simply the overt face of a militarized police culture, the lack of community policing, or the toxic consequences of a culture of violence that saturates everyday life. We are in a new historical era, one that is marked by extreme violence and a policy of disposability fueled in part by a culture of fear, a deeply overt racist culture that is unapologetic in its racism, and a culture of cruelty that is the modus operandi of neoliberal capitalism. This culture of cruelty is a cage culture, a culture of combat, a hyper masculine culture that views killing those most vulnerable as sport, entertainment and policy.

We are witnessing not simply the breakdown of democracy but the legitimization of a society in the grips of what might be called a politics of domestic terrorism. The US is deep into the entrails of fascism, and until that is recognized, the violence will escalate, people of color will be killed, whites will claim they are the real victims and the discourse of racial objectification will continue to be a visible if not embraced signpost of our politics at every level. The face of white supremacy -- with its long legacy of slavery, lynchings and brutality -- has become normalized, if not supported by one major political party.

Today, I am sharing one of my reflections on this racist culture that appeared previously in Truthout because it is even more relevant today than when it was first posted at the beginning of 2015.

Comment: Read more of Henry Giroux's essays:

Read More...
War Whore

A black ex-cop tells the real truth about race and policing

Redditt Hudson
Vox
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 03:27 UTC
Police brutality protest
© Ricky Rhodes/Getty Images A protest in Cleveland, Ohio, after police officer Michael Brelo was acquitted for the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.
On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.

It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.

Comment: A scathing indictment of the law enforcement system as it stands today. Unfortunately, the top-to-bottom reformation of such a corrupt system can't be done overnight. Those who enjoy the power to abuse and terrify won't give up that power so easily.

Read More...