Society's ChildS


Dominoes

Macedonia will shut off Balkan route if Austria reaches refugee limit


RT
Tue, 01 Mar 2016 10:44 UTC
border fense
© Alexandros Avramidis / ReutersStranded refugees and migrants attempt to bring down the border fence at the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni, Greece.
The Balkan refugee route may soon be closed, if Austria reaches its limit of 37,500 asylum seekers entries in 2016, Macedonia's president said, adding that "in times of crisis, every country must find its own solutions. We need a political decision now. Soon it will be too late... The Austrian ceiling of 37,000 will be reached," Gjorge Ivanov told Spiegel Online in an interview.

Asked when exactly the refugee route may be shut down, the president replied that "perhaps right at this moment. We can't wait until Brussels makes a decision. We have made our own decisions. In times of crisis, every country must find its own solutions," he said. According to Ivanov, if Macedonia "had waited for EU guidelines," it "would have been flooded with refugees."

Macedonian police are currently allowing in Syrian and Iraqi refugees, but sending back asylum seekers from Afghanistan, he added. "Such decisions are made between police authorities along the Balkans route. Whenever a country to the north closes its borders, we follow suit...You must understand that the situation changes not just by the day, but by the hour."

"No one wants to stay in Greece, Macedonia and Serbia," he said. "The goal of the refugees is Germany. They will find a path there. A dangerous path." His statement comes following a confrontation between Macedonian police and refugees on Monday. The officers used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of asylum seekers who attempted to storm the fence on the border with Greece. The confrontation in Idomeni, a small border community in Greece, happened after asylum seekers rushed toward the border when a rumor spread that the Macedonian authorities had opened the border for several hours.

Comment: For those who are seeking asylum, those whose countries are ravaged by war, there are fewer and fewer options available. Hosting nations have to make hard choices balancing humanitarian action with capability. Europe is forecasting a country-by-country lock-out chain reaction. What then?

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Eye 2

French police use tear gas, water cannon as Calais 'Jungle' camp migrants fight eviction


RT
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 19:40 UTC
French gestapo
© Pascal Rossingnol/ReutersFrench riot police secure the area as a migrant sits on his makeshift shelter during the partial dismantlement of the camp for migrants called the "jungle", in Calais, northern France, February 29, 2016.
French riot police deployed tear gas against migrants at the Calais 'Jungle' camp, as they met resistance to a planned relocation to a purpose-built facility. Charities say many of the evictees, including children, will fail to find replacement accommodation.

Officers arrived at dawn, accompanying demolition crews, targeting tents in the southern part of the camp, which according to NGOs, has been inhabited by more than 1,000 migrants, and possibly as many as 3,000. The charity Doctors without Borders, said that between 500 and 1,000 people would disappear, rather than take up places at a recently constructed nearby camp, or facilities elsewhere in France.


"Our concerns particularly remain with the 305 unaccompanied children who will be evicted from their living quarters without proper assessment, safeguarding or suitable alternative provisions," said the group Help Refugees.

As police gave a one hour warning to the inhabitants, 150 to 200 of them began to throw rocks and set fire to tents.

Armored police fired back with rubber bullets, and arrested a female activist from the anarchist group No Borders, who, they say, encouraged the migrants to riot. A water cannon was also turned against the protesters.

After tensions dissipated, council staff in orange jumpsuits proceeded to dissemble the shacks, which had been in place for a year.


Comment: See also:

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Chart Bar

India's holy men enter the world of big business

Rama Lakshmi
Washington Post
Sat, 27 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
Guru Inc.
© J.J. Alcantara; TWP; iStock
For more than a decade, the orange-robed guru Baba Ramdev hosted a popular TV show, showing millions of Indians how to breathe correctly, eat herbs and knot themselves into impossible yoga postures.

Ramdev, 50, always augmented his talks with a diatribe about the dominance of foreign companies in India.

Today, the guru of good health is a business magnate himself. His ashram manufactures hundreds of herbal and organic products including soap, shampoo, cleaners, juice and honey. The company, called Patanjali, is worth more than $600 million, Ramdev says.

Some call it Guru Inc. — the rise of businesses run by gurus and holy men.Buoyed by the popularity of religious television programming in the past decade, many spiritual leaders in India are starting their own product lines, tapping into the renewed faith in the country's ancient knowledge systems such as yoga and ayurveda.
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Attention

Fears about water supply grip village that made Teflon products

Jesse McKinley
The New York Times
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 16:57 UTC
Hoosick1
© Nathaniel Brooks / The New York TimesDowntown Hoosick Falls, N.Y., a village of 3,500 people about 30 miles northeast of the Albany.
One resident called 911 asking whether the village's water would burn his skin off. Families have lined up to have their blood drawn and their wells tested. Banks stopped giving out mortgages, and some local residents stopped washing their dishes, their clothes and themselves. Erin Brockovich has been to town.

Such are the unpleasant contours of a public health emergency that is playing out in Hoosick Falls, a quiet river-bend village near the New York-Vermont border that has been upended by disclosures that the public water supply was tainted with high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a toxic chemical linked in some studies to an increased risk for cancer, thyroid disease and serious complications during pregnancy.

Last week, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed against Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics and Honeywell International, the current and former owners of the plant that, according to the state, was the source of the PFOA contamination. The toxic chemical is associated with the making of Teflon, which was used in products manufactured at the plant.

After the revelation of lead contamination in Flint, Mich., where Gov. Rick Snyder's response was widely criticized, the situation in Hoosick Falls has provoked both deep concern about water quality and a heightened scrutiny of how public officials have responded.

In New York, elements of the state's response have been repeatedly questioned. Nearly a year and a half passed, for instance, from the time the chemical was discovered in the water — by a concerned resident — to the warning from state health officials that residents avoid drinking it.

In the interim, state and local officials assured the public on several occasions that the water was safe — most recently in December, even after the federal Environmental Protection Agency had recommended to the village's mayor that residents avoid using Hoosick's well water. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other officials have defended their response, saying they have acted as aggressively as possible with the information they have — noting shifting federal standards on the contaminant, which is as yet unregulated.

Comment: Erin Brockovich says:

"Every time you drink a glass of water...

Through Teflon's use in hundreds of household products - carpets, clothing, food wrappers and many more - PFOA and closely related chemicals have spread to the remote corners of Earth, contaminating the blood of virtually all Americans and even passing through the umbilical cord to unborn babies in the womb.

PFOA has been linked to kidney and testicular cancers, birth defects, damage to the immune system, heart and thyroid disease, complications during pregnancy and other serious illnesses and conditions. It is hazardous at tiny doses: EPA's health advisory level for drinking water is 0.4 parts per billion.

Not only have you and your family been exposed to this toxic chemical... now you will have to bare the burden of paying for its clean up when it is detected in your community water system or your private well.

Please contact me if you suspect you have been damaged by this toxic DuPont Chemical. Email me at erin@brockovich.com"

Another article about DuPont's poisoning of the planet:

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V

Real guts! Protester confronts Hillary Clinton about her calling inner city black youth "super predators"

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Fri, 26 Feb 2016 02:16 UTC
Protester at Hillary fundraiser
NBC News reported the following:
A Black Lives Matter activist disrupted a fundraiser for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last night in South Carolina, calling into question the candidate's rhetoric on race and criminal justice.

Ashley Williams began her demonstration at the $500 a plate event, revealing a sign to guests that read, "we have to bring them to heel." The quote is from the speech Hillary Clinton delivered in New Hampshire in January 1996 when she told an audience at Keene State College that, "these are not just gangs of kids anymore, they are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way but first we have to bring them to heel."
Now watch the video in all it's glory:

Comment: Bravo! Hillary Clinton should be approached this way wherever she goes for all the numerous stupid things she's said and criminal acts she has committed over the years.

Though the following compilation contains a misguided endorsement of Bernie Sanders, and some other flaws, it serves well to put the above demonstration in context, as Hillary now seeks the support of Afro-American voters.



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Syringe

Average cost of prescription drugs doubled in 7 years - AARP


RT
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:47 UTC
Prescriptions
© Brian Snyder / Reuters
The cost of a year's worth of prescription drugs, on average, doubled from 2006 to 2013, according to a new report by AARP. The price hikes are hitting senior citizens the hardest because Social Security benefits aren't keeping up.

The average annual cost of prescription drugs widely used by the elderly increased from $5,571 in 2006 to $11,341 in 2013, according to the latest study on drug price trends conducted by AARP, a powerful lobbying group for older Americans. That accounts for about three-quarters of average Social Security payments, and 48 percent of the median income of people who receive Medicare benefits, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Network

Apple hires developer behind Edward Snowden's favorite secure chat app Signal

Jon Russell
Tech Crunch
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 02:33 UTC
Apple Store
Apple hires plenty of interns all year round, but one particular addition revealed this week caught the eye given the company's current position opposing a controversial order to enable the FBI to access the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

Frederic Jacobs, a Switzerland-based developer who worked to develop secure messaging app Signal — the communications app of choice for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — announced today that he is joining the Cupertino-based company this summer to work on its CoreOS security team. Jacobs spent two-and-a-half years with Whisper Systems, the company behind Signal, before leaving earlier this year.
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Snakes in Suits

First the government came for the iPhones...

Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 02:22 UTC
Apple iPhone 01
© TrendMicro/Apple
The FBI tells us that its demand for a back door into the iPhone is all about fighting terrorism, and that it is essential to break in just this one time to find out more about the San Bernardino attack last December. But the truth is they had long sought a way to break Apple's iPhone encryption and, like 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, a mass murder provided just the pretext needed. After all, they say, if we are going to be protected from terrorism we have to give up a little of our privacy and liberty. Never mind that government spying on us has not prevented one terrorist attack.

Apple has so far stood up to a federal government's demand that it force its employees to write a computer program to break into its own product. No doubt Apple CEO Tim Cook understands the damage it would do to his company for the world to know that the US government has a key to supposedly secure iPhones. But the principles at stake are even higher. We have a fundamental right to privacy. We have a fundamental right to go about our daily life without the threat of government surveillance of our activities. We are not East Germany.

Comment: Looks like a New York judge just set a court precedent by not allowing the government to force Apple to unlock an iPhone.

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Bizarro Earth

U.S. presidential elections and the graveyard of the privileged

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Sun, 28 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
Trump

Power elites, blinded by hubris, intoxicated by absolute power, unable to set limits on their exploitation of the underclass, propelled to expand empire beyond its capacity to sustain itself, addicted to hedonism, spectacle and wealth, surrounded by half-witted courtiers—Alan Greenspan, Thomas Friedman, David Brooks and others—who tell them what they want to hear, and enveloped by a false sense of security because of their ability to employ massive state violence, are the last to know their privileged world is imploding.

"History," the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto wrote, "is the graveyard of aristocracies."

The carnival of the presidential election is a public display of the deep morbidity and artifice that have gripped American society. Political discourse has been reduced by design to trite patriotic and religious clichés, sentimentality, sanctimonious paeans to the American character, a sacralization of militarism, and acerbic, adolescent taunts. Reality has been left behind.

Politicians are little more than brands. They sell skillfully manufactured personalities. These artificial personalities are used to humanize corporate oppression. They cannot—and do not intend to—end the futile and ceaseless wars, dismantle the security and surveillance state, halt the fossil fuel industry's ecocide, curb the predatory class of bankers and international financiers, lift Americans out of poverty or restore democracy. They practice anti-politics, or what Benjamin DeMott called "junk politics." DeMott defined the term in his book "Junk Politics: The Trashing of the American Mind":

Comment: As Hedges suggests, there will be a time soon in the U.S. when all but "the most obtuse" will wake up from dream America, perceive reality much closer to how things are - and all hell will break loose. After that, the devastated who remain will be left to think about these times in much the same way that Germans did after WWII. "How the hell did we allow it to get so bad?" they will ask.

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Cell Phone

New York judge says Apple can't be forced to unlock iPhone

Alex Heath
Tech Insider
Tue, 01 Mar 2016 02:17 UTC
Tim Cook
© Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla
Apple just won a huge victory in New York court that could have direct implications on its high profile case with the FBI in San Bernardino, California.

Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled on Monday that the government could not force Apple to help it unlock an iPhone belonging to Jun Feng, a suspected drug dealer. Although the ruling has no direct legal impact on whether Apple will be forced to help the FBI create a back door into the iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Farook, the ruling does set a precedent in Apple's favor.

Orenstein ruled that the government is not able to compel Apple to cooperate under the All Writs Act, a law first drafted in 1789 that is also cited by the FBI in the San Bernardino case.
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