Society's ChildS


Fire

Haitian leaders accused of embezzling well over a billion dollars earmarked for social and development projects, fueling protests

Tania Karas and Amy Bracken
PRI.org
Mon, 29 Apr 2019 18:47 UTC
haiti protests
© Ivan Alvarado/ReutersA man holds a weapon next to burning barricades during anti-government protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Hundreds of Haitians took to the streets Friday to demand the release of a final audit report accusing Haiti's political class of embezzling or misusing well over a billion dollars received through Venezuela's discounted PetroCaribe oil alliance program.

"Mare yo!" they chanted in downtown Port-au-Prince - Haitian Creole for "handcuff them."

The resistance underway in Haiti started, as modern-day revolutions do, on Twitter. It was August 2018, and tensions were still high after the Haitian government announced - then retracted - a plan to raise the price of fuel by as much as 51%. Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a 35-year-old Haitian filmmaker and writer, tweeted a photo of himself blindfolded, holding a handwritten cardboard sign reading, "Kot Kòb Petwo Karibe a???" or "Where is the PetroCaribe money???"

"I felt betrayed," he said last month in Port-au-Prince. "People are literally dying in Haiti because they can't eat, and they're going and spending the money that was supposed to help us."

The blindfold was meant to evoke a kidnapping victim - a metaphor, Mirambeau said, for the people of Haiti being held hostage by their corrupt government - as well as the Greek goddess Themis, who raises the scales of justice with her eyes covered to ensure justice is meted out objectively.
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Network

Yanis Varoufakis defends Jeremy Corbyn against anti-Semitism 'slander'


RT
Thu, 02 May 2019 18:33 UTC
corbyn antisemitism
© Reuters / Hannah McKayVans with slogans aimed at Britain's Labour Party are driven around Parliament Square in London
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis offered a ringing defense of UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on social media, dismissing accusations of anti-Semitism as "slander."

"Anti-Corbyn plotters are getting desperate," Varoufakis wrote on Twitter. "To perpetuate their antisemitism slander they are lambasting Jeremy for writing, in a blurb to JA Hobson's Imperialism's new edition, that it was both 'brilliant' and 'very controversial at the time'. They need to try much, much harder."

Critics, including Jewish leaders and members of Labour, have slammed Corbyn for penning the book's foreword, arguing he endorsed anti-Semitic content.

Comment: The UK's Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey also came to Corbyn's defense over the criticism:
"He was writing in the context I think of Hobsobn being a political thinker of his time and other MPs have spoken about that same individual.

"He in no way sanctions any anti-Semitic comments that are made by any individual nevermind this particular individual.

"He was commenting in a wider political sense as I understand, I haven't read the foreword myself, or indeed the book.

"This individual was a political thinker of his time - whether you agreed with his opinion or not. Labour and Conservative colleagues have commented on him whether that's negatively or positively taking certain parts of his thinking into consideration."


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Heart - Black

Beehive arson kills over a half million honey bees in Texas

Christine Hauser
The New York Times
Wed, 01 May 2019 17:30 UTC
Destroyed beehives
Destroyed beehives in Brazoria County in Texas. “I don’t want to say it’s like losing a kid,” a local beekeeper said, “but you put all your hard work and pride in it, and somebody kicks the bucket from under you.”
Wanted: the bee killer of Brazoria County.

In the predawn darkness on Saturday, a sheriff's deputy on patrol in a rural area of southeast Texas noticed flames shooting up from a patch of uninhabited county land.

It was nearly 2 a.m. The deputy pulled up to the fenced area, which he knew enclosed local beekeepers' hives, and saw that they were on fire. He grabbed an extinguisher from his vehicle, scaled the chain-link fence and smothered the flames.

Then he surveyed the damage, according to an account on Wednesday by Lt. Varon Snelgrove, a spokesman for the county sheriff's office. Most of the 20 hives, once thriving with bees that had nurtured mature colonies, were incinerated, but some had been tossed into a pond or toppled over. About 600,000 bees were dead, according to the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association.
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Brick Wall

Controversial American pastor banned from Europe over extreme views on LGBT and Jewish communities


RT
Thu, 02 May 2019 17:24 UTC
Steven Anderson
American pastor Steven Anderson
A controversial American Baptist pastor has been banned from preaching in the Netherlands or from entering Europe's 26-state Schengen Zone, over his extreme views against the LGBT and Jewish communities.

Steven Anderson, who once praised the mass shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, was due to preach in Amsterdam on May 23 as part of his European tour, which also included public events in Sweden and Ireland. Concerned over the pastor's well-documented hate statements, gay rights advocates and a number of MPs urged the Dutch government to ban him from entering the Benelux country.
​
On Wednesday the government adopted "measures" barring the 37-year-old pastor from entering the Schengen Zone, a 26-country area of Europe where visa-free travel is allowed.

The government is "taking strong action against extremist speakers who, by spreading their beliefs, restrict the freedoms of others or even incite hatred or violence" State Secretary of Justice and Security Mark Harbers said, without providing further details.
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Red Flag

Report finds homelessness in NYC at record high

Luke Funk
Fox 5
Tue, 30 Apr 2019 17:21 UTC
homeless
© fox 5
A new report gives the city and state an "F" grade for handling the homeless crisis in New York City as the numbers of people in the street continues to reach record numbers.

The Coalition for the Homeless issued its State of the Homeless 2019 report on Tuesday.

If found that in February 2019, an average of 63,615 men, women, and children slept in New York City shelters each night, just shy of the all-time record set in January.

While the number of families decreased slightly, the number of homeless single adults continues to increase.
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Brick Wall

More than 1,000 fake families discovered at US border

Mary Margaret Olohan
The Daily Caller
Thu, 02 May 2019 16:37 UTC
migrants
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) discovered more than 1,000 fake families trying to sneak across the southwest U.S. border.

DHS officials said that since Oct. 1, 2018, authorities have discovered about five fake families a day sneaking across the border with children they have borrowed or abducted, The Washington Times reported Wednesday. Officials worry there may be more families, saying that the 1,000 fraudulent families discovered so far are merely the ones they have caught.

DHS officials have also noted a 315 percent increase in the number of fake family units between October 2017 and February 2018.

Homeland Security plans to start a program to check the DNA of the alleged families and ensure the safety of children who are being used in this way.
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NPC

'Global warming' not scary enough - alarmists rebrand to 'climate crisis'

Thomas D. Williams, PhD
Breitbart
Wed, 01 May 2019 17:06 UTC
climate change activists
© FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/Getty Images
Since the expressions "global warming" and "climate change" do not frighten people enough, activists are proposing a shift in language to "climate crisis" or "environmental collapse," with the help of advertising consultants.

Neuroscience research suggests that "global warming" and "climate change" do not produce a powerful enough reaction in people, whereas "climate crisis" got "a 60 percent greater emotional response from listeners" according to a recent study.

Environmental lobbying has reportedly yielded a 15-point increase in the share of Americans who believe that climate change is a serious problem, but activists are looking for ways to boost that number still further by using more explosive language.

Enter SPARK Neuro, an advertising consulting firm that measures physiological data such as brain activity and palm sweat to quantify people's emotional reactions to stimuli.
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Attention

UK scientists find cocaine in shrimp


The Gaurdian
Wed, 01 May 2019 20:42 UTC
shrimp
© GPSEN
Researchers have found cocaine in all samples of shrimp tested in a rural area of eastern England, with ketamine also widespread.

Scientists from King's College London, in collaboration with the University of Suffolk, made the "surprise" discovery after taking samples from 15 locations across the mostly rural county of Suffolk.

What happens to the excreted drugs you flush down the toilet?

"Whether the presence of cocaine in aquatic animals is an issue for Suffolk, or more widespread an occurrence in the UK and abroad, awaits further research," said Nic Bury from the University of Suffolk.
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Bomb

UK: Met police officer explains why they've lost control of the streets - 'austerity'


Guardian
Thu, 02 May 2019 13:39 UTC
Leyton stabbing
© Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty ImagesThe scene of a fatal stabbing in Leyton, east London, March 2019.
I'm a police officer in London. Here's why we've lost control of the streets - Anonymous.

I've faced the aftermath of knife crime and seen colleagues stabbed. Cuts mean we can't keep ourselves or the public safe.

There's a saying in the police. It's not sophisticated or clever, really, and it's been passed down from generation to generation of coppers; it's not new. "The job is fucked," they say. Only now, it doesn't feel as flippant as it used to.

I'm a police officer in the Metropolitan police, and have been since 2014. I have anxiety and PTSD. I am - and I cannot say this strongly enough - exhausted. I do not feel safe policing London's streets and, moreover, increasingly I do not feel that people in London are safe. Just last night, there was another double stabbing in east London, resulting in the death of a 15-year-old boy.

It's all well and good vaguely debating "cuts", but on the frontline of service, those things have real meaning. In the borough I am stationed in - much like other boroughs - where there is a population of about 250,000 people, there are on average 10 police officers for the entire area to respond to emergency calls per shift. Only two or three of them can drive on blue lights. Crucially, very few staff carry Tasers. With a big incident, such as a stabbing, it's not unusual to have all of those 10 officers at one crime scene, meaning there is no one else to attend further 999 calls.

Comment: 'Austerity' has led to a complete collapse in UK public services and the economy has been tanking for nigh on a decade, but this isn't isolated to the UK, this same deterioration in living standards is occurring throughout the western world:

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Stormtrooper

US customs can seize your laptop or phone without a warrant. Privacy advocates cry foul in court

Edward C. Baig
USA Today
Wed, 01 May 2019 11:01 UTC
Border agents
© David McNew, Getty ImagesBorder agents watch as protesters on the Mexico side of the border demonstrate against policies of President Donald Trump while U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tours a replacement border fence construction site on April 18, 2018 in Calexico, Calif.
U.S. border agents can seize your laptop or smartphone when you reenter the country after traveling abroad, and do so without a warrant. Privacy advocates think the practice violates your constitutional rights.

On Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a federal court to rule without trial that the Department of Homeland Security disregards the First and Fourth Amendments.

The groups filed documents and deposition testimony that they say reveals that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorize border officials to rifle through travelers' phones and laptops for general law enforcement purposes and consider requests from other government agencies when deciding whether to conduct such warrantless searches. These could include searches to enforce bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws, and for intelligence gathering or to advance pre-existing investigations.

The EFF and ACLU added that the agencies also assert the authority to search electronic devices when the subject of interest is someone other than the traveler -perhaps a journalist or scholar with foreign sources, or a traveler who does business with someone under investigation.

"The evidence we have presented the court shows that the scope of ICE and CBP border searches is unconstitutionally broad," said EFF senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz in a statement.

Comment: See also:

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