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Activists celebrate the closure of Israeli settlement builder's Madison Ave. store, connection to Kushner

Nora Barrows-Friedman
The Electronic Intifada
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Lev Leviev
© Forbes/LLD
A Madison Avenue diamond store owned by Israeli billionaire and settlement profiteer Lev Leviev shut its doors late last year. The closure is being celebrated by activists who held creative, holiday-themed protests against Leviev's companies for years.

A former Leviev employee, who was at the epicenter of a recent, high-level New York City bribery scandal, revealed in court testimony that employees of Leviev's diamond store had bribed the city's police department in an attempt to repress the protests. Leviev himself had told the assistant that the protesters were "a big headache" for him.

"Every holiday season since 2007 we sang, 'He put a store here in New York, and we will shut him down.' So we're proud to have contributed to the store's closing," said Mindy Gershon, an activist with Adalah-NY, a group that organized protests and boycott campaigns against Leviev's businesses. "Principled civil society campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions work, and they won't be stopped by state repression," Gershon added.


Comment: While BDS activists can't repair the damage done by companies and businesspersons who flagrantly profit from catering to illegal settlements, their message gathers attention and traction to effect changes in consumer thinking and habits. Leviev is just one example of an unethical enterprise, brought to public awareness, that will not be doing business as usual.

See also:

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Fire

Blazing transformer sparks Newark Airport evacuation, long delays


RT
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 20:19 UTC
Airport
© Port Authority PBA‏ / Twitter
Newark Airport has been partially evacuated after an underground transformer explosion caused a manhole to shoot flames, causing chaos for passengers.

A dramatic photo shared by Port Authority police shows giganting flames shooting up from the ground. Terminal C-1 wing was evacuated while the rest of the terminal and the airport's other terminals operated normally.

The blaze started in a manhole below a section of Terminal C at around 11.10pm local time, according to a tweet from the airport. It confirmed there were no injuries and fire crews quickly extinguished the flames.

Power was temporarily cut by utility company PSE&G as they worked to fix the problem, however backup generators supplied power during their repair efforts.
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Health

Anonymous donor gives $100M to largest mental health hospital in Canada


CBC News
Thu, 11 Jan 2018 20:11 UTC
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto
© CBC News
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto
Canada's largest mental health hospital has been given $100 million by an anonymous donor, with the goal of developing cures for psychiatric conditions that affect almost seven million Canadians.

The gift to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto will create the Discovery Fund to support next-generation scientists conducting research aimed at directly transforming care. CAMH says it is the largest donation made toward mental health research in Canadian history.

CAMH president and CEO Dr. Catherine Zahn said the money will be invested in fundamental research and clinical innovation to improve the mental health of individuals in Canada and around the world.
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Megaphone

Protestors shout down Bulgaria's new EU presidency


EURACTIV
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 01:31 UTC
protest Bulgaria
© Broslav Toshev/EPA/EFE
Protesters demonstrate in front of the European Parliament building during protest rally 'In support of Pirin National Park' in Sofia, Bulgaria, 11 January 2017.
Bulgaria's six-month EU presidency stint yesterday (11 January) got off to a noisy start as anti-corruption protesters blocked streets in heavily-guarded capital Sofia.

More than 1,500 people shouted "Mafia!", "Resign!", "Save Pirin" and "We want nature, not concrete" to slam plans for the country's Pirin national park they say would open to construction almost half of the UNESCO world heritage site.

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Attention

Seventeen dead, 24 missing and 300 trapped as California mudslide rescue continues

Jennifer Smithand Kelly Mclaughlin
The Daily Mail
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 19:21 UTC
california mudslide deaths
© The Daily Mail
The victims' homes are split across the mandatory and voluntary evacuation zone. Most of the missing were swept away in the mandatory evacuation zone
Oprah's $50m estate is among the homes swallowed by 'river of mud' in upmarket neighborhood where many ignored warnings because of wildfire 'evacuation fatigue'

Seventeen people are dead, 24 are missing and at least 300 are trapped in mudslides which have torn the wealthy town of Montecito apart.

The death toll climbed on Wednesday as emergency workers pulled bodies from a river of knee-deep mud and boulders which rained down on homes after a torrent of rain earlier in the week. The debris was able to rush down on to the community because the hillside vegetation which would have ordinarily impeded it was stripped during the catastrophic wildfires last month.

Many residents put themselves in danger by not heeding mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders issued while there was still time to escape. Emergency services attributed the decision to 'evacuation fatigue' after last month's wildfires which drove hundreds of thousands from their homes.

As more unthinkable damage rocked the area, celebrities were among those who found themselves caught up in the chaos.
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Briefcase

Landmark legal action as Facebook gives payout to 14yo girl, who had naked 'revenge porn' photos posted on social media


RT
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 13:06 UTC
Facebook lawsuit
© Arman Zhenikeyev/ Getty
Facebook has paid compensation to a 14-year-old girl after naked revenge porn photographs of her were posted on social media. The case is believed to be the first of its kind.

The social media giant settled the landmark legal action and awarded unspecified damages to the teenager, from Northern Ireland, after she sued it for negligence, breach of the Britain's Data Protection Act and for misuse of private information.

It is understood the picture had been obtained through blackmail.

Facebook had initially fought to get the case dismissed, arguing it always takes indecent pictures down, once reported. But it eventually agreed to pay the damages, as well as the legal costs incurred by the claimant.

Lawyer Pearse MacDermott, representing the girl, said: "Had these images been put in a newspaper or on the TV there would be serious repercussions and those same repercussions should also apply to whatever platform is used in the social media world.

Comment: Aside from Facebook's use as a Big Brother tool, many are beginning to seriously question the social media site's value and impact on society: the latest assessments are not looking good:

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Oscar

Think Oprah's Golden Globe speech was amazing? Think again

Brian Lenney
Townhall
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 19:20 UTC
Oprah 1
You've already heard about it.

Oprah's speech at the Golden Globes.

The way the lemmings talk about it was as if Jesus himself entered Oprah's body and enabled her to speak a better, feminist, and a more progressive sermon on the mount.

The crowd of enabler Hollywood elitists stood, cried, and lauded their Philosopher King.

It was (and is) religious for the Left.

As Milo Yiannopoulos said:
"She spoke to a room full of women who were Perpetrators masquerading as victims and she blessed them and absolved them..."
And now, because of *one speech*...

...they (the leftist Hollywood Perps) want her to run for President in 2020!

Comment: This person wasn't too impressed by Oprah's speech either: Four problems with Oprah's much-ballyhooed speech on #MeToo

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Water

Kentucky cop chokes innocent man for asking why the town's water was cut off

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 19:00 UTC
Gary Hunt
A Kentucky man learned the hard way this week that speaking your mind to those in a position of power can and will get you assaulted by police. A Martin County resident wanted to know why he was paying for water and not getting it, so a police officer grabbed him by the throat to keep him in his place.

The residents of Martin County held a public meeting this week to address the fact that they are paying for water and it's not going into their homes. Although tempers were high, no one got violent and people only seemed to want answers as to when the Martin County Water District would turn the water back on.

According to LEX18, the water company explained what they were doing to attempt to remedy the outages which started during cold temperatures last week. They were faced with two options, they said. The first would be cutting off water to the entire county while they attempted to fill the tank reservoir. The other would be to strategically cut water to different areas of the county. Unfortunately, even after doing the latter, the company admitted that they were still having difficulty.
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Arrow Down

Only 21% of Trump supporters see the media as unbiased in its reporting


RT
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 18:51 UTC
trump supporters
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Contrary to the popular maxim that the party in power tends to be more satisfied with the media, just 21 percent of Trump supporters subscribe to that view. Conversely, non-Republicans hold the media in much higher esteem.

The comprehensive study reveals a vast disparity in how Americans on both sides of the political aisle view the way their media is performing.

For Trump supporters, an unmistakable negative attitude among respondents prevails. According to the Pew Research Center, that is an uncharacteristic attitude among backers of the ruling party because "in most cases, those who identify with the party in charge tend to be more sanguine about the news media."

The survey revealed that just 21 percent of pro-Trump Americans believe the media is unbiased in its handling of news reporting. However, it also found that just 55 percent of Americans who are not Trump supporters also say the American media is not fairly covering US politics.
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Brain

American Psychiatric Association advises against diagnosing 'public figures' without examining them

Sarah Taylor
The Blaze
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 21:02 UTC
Trump anthem
© Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The American Psychiatric Association warns its members against diagnosing public figures with disorders before actually examining them. In a memo, the APA reminded its members of "The Goldwater Rule," which says it's unethical for psychiatrists to give professional opinions on public figures who haven't been examined first-hand.
The American Psychiatric Association sent a memo to its members advising them not to diagnose "public figures" with illnesses or certain dispositions without first actually examining them.

What did the memo say?

Reaffirming its stance against long-distance diagnosis, the American Psychiatric Association said that "public figures whom they have not examined" should not receive a diagnosis, nor should members of the American Psychiatric Association be making off-the-cuff diagnoses without having the information to back their determination.

"We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professional opinions in the media about public figures whom they have not examined, whether it be on cable news appearances, books, or in social media," a portion of the statement read.

"Arm-chair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical," the statement continued.

Comment: See also:

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