Society's ChildS


Biohazard

What exactly is the Skripals' situation at Salisbury hospital?


The Off Guardian
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 15:02 UTC
salisbury hospital skripals
Salisbury NHS Trust hospital
The UK has publicly said it is looking for "transparency" in the Skripal investigation. Currently this seems no more true than any other part of the UK's narrative. In fact the opposite would seem to be the case. The situation with the Skripals in regard to Salisbury NHS Trust hopsital is particularly opaque as things stand.

Just to quickly recap.
1. The March 22 High Court judgment by Mr Justice Williams makes it clear the UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or even deny the existence of the Skripals' Russian relatives, claiming there was very little evidence there even were any such relatives, even after Sergey's niece Viktoria had been interviewed by UK media outlets, and using this fabricated "lack of evidence" as a reason for not contacting the relatives or involving them in considerations of Yulia Skripals' welfare.

2. The Russian embassy has repeatedly said it is being illegally denied access to the Skripals, and there is evidence the pair have been denied due process.

Comment:

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Pistol

Police, who were warned San Bruno shooter would 'go after YouTube', found her prior to the shooting

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Nasim Aghdam YouTube shooter
The father of the San Bruno shooter, who opened fire in the YouTube headquarters Tuesday, reportedly warned police -- who talked to his daughter that morning -- that she "hated" the company and may go after them.

Chaos erupted in California on Tuesday as a woman, now identified as 39-year-old San Diego resident Nasim Aghdam, walked into YouTube's headquarters and began shooting people with a handgun. Aghdam wounded three YouTube employees in her rampage before reportedly turning the gun on herself and ending her life.

According to a spokesman for the San Francisco General Hospital, a 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman was in fair condition.

During the shooting, multiple employees inside the building were updating their family members in real-time using social media. One of those employees, Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi, a company product manager, posted on Facebook that he was OK before giving his eyewitness account.

Comment: Why weren't the family's warnings taken more seriously by the police who located the daughter prior to the shooting?

See also:

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Bad Guys

The Bayer-Monsanto merger - more bad news for the planet

Ellen Brown
Truthdig.com
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 14:14 UTC
merger
© Common Dreams
Two new studies from Europe show that the number of birds in agricultural areas of France has crashed by a third in just 15 years, with some species being almost eradicated. The collapse in the bird population mirrors the discovery last October that more than three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have vanished in just three decades. Insects are the staple food source of birds, the pollinators of fruits and the aerators of the soil.

The chief suspect in this mass extinction is the aggressive use of neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly imidacloprid and clothianidin, both made by the Germany-based chemical giant Bayer. These pesticides, along with toxic glyphosate herbicides such as Roundup, have delivered a one-two punch to monarch butterflies, honeybees and birds. But rather than banning these toxic chemicals, on March 21 the EU approved the $66 billion merger of Bayer and Monsanto, the U.S. agribusiness giant that produces Roundup and the genetically modified (GMO) seeds that have reduced seed diversity globally. The merger will make the Bayer-Monsanto conglomerate the largest seed and pesticide company in the world, giving it enormous power to control farm practices, putting private profits over the public interest.
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2 + 2 = 4

The consilience crisis in academia

Phil Theofanos
Quillette
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 13:49 UTC
Dr. E.O. Wilson
The term 'consilience' has the enigmatic ring of some arcane secret quarantined in Ivory Towers, accessible only to the ghosts of wizened sages haunting cloistered halls. This is true in some sense - it was first conceptualized by the now-quite-dead William Whewell, a 19th-century natural philosopher, linguistic sorcerer, and polymath also credited with coining terms such as scientist and physicist, among other esoterica. Whewell made contributions to many budding fields of inquiry, a fact key to appreciating the definition of 'consilience' offered by gold-star biologist E. O. Wilson in hi 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge:
...literally a "jumping together" of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation.
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Light Sabers

No one pays attention to the violence in Gaza today

Geoffrey Aronson
The American Conservative
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 15:50 UTC
Israeli tank
© Ran Zisovitch/ShutterstockIsraeli tank on the Gaza border.
More than 1,400 have been wounded in clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli military. The media has barely noticed.

Gaza is back in the headlines, grabbing, if only for a moment, the fickle international spotlight. The two million Palestinians living in the 141-square-mile spit that hugs the Mediterranean have no such luxury. They cannot escape the misery, manufactured by powers greater than themselves, that has been Gaza's fate for much of the last generation.

Gaza today is a prison, bound to its north by Israel and its south and east by Egypt, both of which for their own reasons are conspiring to continue its penury and isolation. To the west lies the Mediterranean, deceptively open but just as impenetrable. In a faraway time Gaza was once an entrepot-a thriving seaport on the Mediterranean linking the west with the Arab heartland to the east. Its location along the hotly contested Mediterranean coast, where an abundance of natural gas has recently been discovered, is a cruel reminder of what Gaza - which the World Bank warns will be uninhabitable by 2020 if current policies continue - could be.

In recent days 17 Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli forces positioned along the 32-mile fortified border separating Israel from the impoverished enclave. An extraordinary 1,416 have been wounded in clashes between Palestinian protesters and the military, including 750 injured by live fire.

Comment: Is it the case that the international community is 'exhausted and bored with the conflict?' Throughout the occupation, the media has been either silent, or twisted the facts to paint Israel in a good light. And governments were slow to admonish the Jewish state (if at all). Were they 'exhausted' then? Or is it more to do with their control of the media and perception management?

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Archaeology

Strange bubbling crater found to be caused by broken gas pipeline


Sputnik
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 02:41 UTC
Colorado crater
© CDB Denver
Anadarko Petroleum revealed on Thursday that one of its gas pipelines was the culprit behind a mysterious crater that turned up on a Colorado rancher's farm.

Speaking to local Denver station CBS 4, landowner Joanna Meston told the outlet that she had only noticed the bubbling crater after one of her bulls kept wandering by a nearby creek that runs through her estate.

"We gathered up our cattle a few weeks ago to sort them and sell some of them and one of the bulls was missing," she said. With the bull staying away from the herd for several days at a time, Meston became concerned and decided to check out the the creek to figure out what was keeping his attention.
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Handcuffs

Former top Vatican diplomat to US arrested on child pornography charges


RT
Sat, 07 Apr 2018 02:27 UTC
Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.
© Reuters
Vatican police have arrested a clergyman and diplomat who has reportedly been identified as a suspect in a child pornography case.

Monsignor Carlo Alberto Capella was detained by Holy See security officials on Saturday, the Vatican said. The suspect formerly worked as a Vatican City diplomat to the US, reported La Republica, but was suddenly recalled from his position in Washington last year.

The US State Department identified Capella as having possibly violated child pornography laws. It's alleged the monsignor downloaded and disseminated child pornography during a visit to Canada.
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Fire

1 dead, 4 injured as 120+ firefighters battle blaze at Trump Tower in New York


RT
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 00:38 UTC
Firetrucks
© Andrew Kelly / ReutersFDNY crew respond after a fire broke out at Trump Tower in Manhattan. January 8, 2018.
The New York fire department has dispatched dozens of units and over 120 firefighters to tackle a four-alarm blaze that erupted on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan.

One person has died after suffering serious injuries in the blaze, while four firefighters received non-life-threatening injuries, the New York City fire department said. FDNY crews were called to the 50th floor of the building on Fifth Avenue shortly before 6pm Saturday.

Thirty-six units and 126 firefighters responded to the four-alarm fire. People have been evacuated from the building.

The extent and the severity of the fire was not immediately clear. "Smoke and debris," one eyewitness wrote next to his video post of the fire, which shows smoke rising above Manhattan.
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Blue Planet

Russian lawmaker wants 'vice squad' to target prostitution during 2018 World Cup


RT
Sat, 07 Apr 2018 23:23 UTC
A sign with the logo of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia is on display near the Kremlin before the events, dedicated to the upcoming World Cup Final Draw, in central Moscow
© Sergei Karpukhin / ReutersA sign with the logo of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia is on display near the Kremlin before the events, dedicated to the upcoming World Cup Final Draw, in central Moscow
A Russian pro-Christian MP says ahead of the 2018 World Cup the police should launch special units manned by "true patriots" and deploy them in cities to fight "asocial persons" including prostitutes and pimps.

Vitaly Milonov, widely known as the key sponsor of the Russian law that bans the promotion of "non-traditional" sexual relations to minors (also known as the Russian gay propaganda ban), detailed his proposal in an open letter to Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev.
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Pistol

Vote for me or else: South Carolina lawmaker draws loaded gun at speech


Sputnik
Sat, 07 Apr 2018 22:35 UTC
Ralph Norman
© AP Photo/ Chuck Burton
On Friday, a South Carolina state congressman pulled out a loaded 38-caliber handgun during a meeting with constituents, apparently to make a point about freewheeling gun ownership laws in the US.

"I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords," said representative Ralph Norman - referring to a former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in 2011 outside a grocery store during a public appearance - displaying the loaded weapon during a Coffee with Constituents meeting in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
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