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"Tableau of squalor and suffering": San Diego faces a severe homelessness crisis

homelessness san diego
© AlamySan Diego has seen a 104% increase in tents downtown since last year.
The southern California city has a reputation for beaches and beer. But amid a dramatic spike in homelessness, people are coming to terms with a new reality

A "tableau of squalor and suffering" isn't what comes to mind when people think of San Diego, a town with the motto "America's finest city" and a reputation for its craft-beer culture and miles of beautiful beaches. But that's how Dan McSwain, a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, described the city's homelessness crisis in a piece last year, the first in a series pillorying city leaders for not doing more to address the issue.

Since then the situation has, if anything, worsened.

A recent count found a dramatic 104% increase in "tents and hand-built structures" located downtown, for a total of 418, compared to 2016. Driving through East Village, a gentrifying neighborhood on the edge of downtown, it's tough to find a street that doesn't have a tarp or tent - or dozens. People with neither tent nor tarp fashion makeshift shelters out of shopping carts, storage bins and blankets.

Helming the city during this crisis - and also the focus of criticism for what some onlookers call a failure to address it effectively - is San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer. A moderate Republican in a predominantly Democratic city, he acknowledges that homelessness may be the defining issue of his term.

Comment: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." - Martin Luther King Jr.


Newspaper

7yo girl's tongue removed from Disney mug with hacksaw

7yo girl's tongue removed from Disney mug
© Natalie Donald 7yo girl's tongue removed from Disney mug with hacksaw. The mug has been recalled from stores.
Disney has removed a children's mug from its stores and destroyed current stocks of the product after a seven-year-old girl got her tongue trapped in its lid for more than four hours. Doctors used a hacksaw to free Megan Donald's mouth from the mug.

The mug in question, a Monsters Inc-branded screw-top, sucked in Megan's tongue through its spout while the child was attending school in Kirkintilloch, Glasgow on Wednesday.

Network

Second even bigger global cyber attack may already be underway

computer keyboard
© Silas Stein / DPA / Global Look Press
As the world reels from the WannaCry ransomware attack, it's now emerged that a second, potentially larger attack, is already under way. It seems the widespread proliferation of military-grade cyberweapons has ushered in a new era of digital crime.

Cyber bandits have again deployed both the EternalBlue and DoublePulsar exploits developed and used by the NSA which were released by the ShadowBrokers hackers back in April.

"Initial statistics suggest that this attack may be larger in scale than WannaCry, affecting hundreds of thousands of PCs and servers worldwide: because this attack shuts down SMB networking to prevent further infections with other malware (including the WannaCry worm) via that same vulnerability, it may have in fact limited the spread of last week's WannaCry infection," wrote a security researcher who goes by the alias Kafeine at cybersecurity company Proofpoint.

This latest attack uses the two exploits to install the cryptocurrency miner Adylkuzz over corporate Local Area and wireless networks but, rather curiously, may actually have helped slow the spread of WannaCry.

Heart

China: Dog rescues baby buried alive

newborn baby
The newborn baby boy may have been buried alive by parents who thought he was dead.
A dog has saved a newborn baby that was buried alive in a remote wood in China, media reported.

The owner of the dog, Yang Jiali, said she discovered the baby boy when the animal began frantically digging at a hole under a bush, reported Pear Video, which produces short news videos in China.

Ms Yang said the baby was wrapped in white cloth and his mouth was full of mud when the dog discovered him earlier this month in the town of Wutan, in China's south-western megacity of Chongqing.

Local doctors said the baby was about one month old, and they suspected he suffered from a serious illness and had been buried by his parents who may have thought he had died, Pear Video reported.

Bullseye

Student journalist fired after reporting on Muslim panelist's comments about Koranic law

free speech
© Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Student journalist Andy Ngo was fired from his job at the Vanguard, the student newspaper of Portland State University, after a video he posted on Twitter was included in a Breitbart News report.

Student journalist Andy Ngo, a graduate student at Portland State University, was fired from his job at the school's student newspaper after a video he tweeted of a campus interfaith panel was included in a report from Breitbart News.

The video, which went viral on social media, showed a Muslim student stating that non-believers, or apostates, would either be banished or killed in countries run under Islamic law.

Wolf

UK woman avoids jail after her American pit bull kills 3-year-old boy

Dexter Neal
© Essex Police/PAThree year old, Dexter Neal.
A woman whose American bulldog mauled to death a three-year-old boy has been spared jail.

Dexter Neal died in hospital after being bitten by Jade Dunne's dog Ruby at her home in Halstead, Essex, on the afternoon of August 18 last year.

Dunne, 29, pleaded guilty to being the owner of a dog dangerously out of control, resulting in death, at an earlier hearing. She was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday.

She was also disqualified from owning a dog for 10 years and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work. Judge Karim Khalil said: "Nothing I do or say hereafter can diminish the pain that must be felt by the Neal family for the loss of little Dexter aged just three years old."

Comment: See also:


Pistol

Cops shoot joy-riding teen in the chest and leave him to bleed out on the street

Jayson Negron
Jayson Negron
Sadly, America will add Jayson Negron's name to the list of more than 1,000 people killed by police each year. Negron, a 15-year-old Sophomore at Bunnell High School in Stratford, had gone on a joyride May 9th, in someone else's car. But Negron received the death penalty for his sins after encountering Bridgeport police officer James Boulay.

Police employ a number of ways to stop a fleeing automobile. Stop sticks often do the trick, immobilizing the tires by puncturing them. Then there's the box method whereby officers surround a suspect vehicle with two or three other cars, and squeeze in, causing the car to come to a stop.

But with Negron, the only reported method for stopping the fleeing driver was for Boulay to shoot him in the chest. And now his parents are saying police left him to die in the street, thereafter.

Boulay was reportedly sworn in as an officer in September, after returning from the military. He's reportedly devastated after the shooting, is on leave, and is expected to return to desk duty after the months-long state investigation is conducted.

Handcuffs

7 y.o. autistic boy detained for 6 days for acting out in class

kid arrested
The family of a 7-year-old boy with autism is demanding answers after their son was handcuffed and essentially disappeared for 6 days for acting out during class.

The boy's arrest was captured on camera and has drawn much-needed attention as it circulates around social media. Police claim they handcuffed the boy for his own protection. However, several images of the incident show the boy standing there — entirely compliant.

The incident happened last Tuesday at Gabe B. Allen Charter School in Dallas, Texas. The boy's mother received a call from school — like she has plenty of times in the past — notifying her to come pick up her son for acting out.

However, when she arrived at school last Tuesday, her son was not there.

X

Austria bans distribution of Koran and Muslim women from wearing full-face veils in public

woman in niqab
© Farid Alouache / Reuters
Austria's parliament has approved a package of measures that outlaws distributing the Koran and wearing traditional Islamic full-face veils in public. Starting in October, a €150 fine ($166) will be levied on women wearing burkas and niqabs.

The legislative package that was passed on Tuesday night also requires asylum seekers to take a one-year integration course, during which they must learn Austrian ethics and the German language, German newspaper Bild reported.

Under the new measures, migrants must also perform unpaid public work or face losing benefits or other consequences. The requirement is meant to better prepare refugees for the Austrian labor market, according to Bild.

The measure received the go-ahead from both ruling parties, the Social Democratic Party (the SPÖ) and center-right Austrian People's Party (the ÖVP), Austria's news outlet oe24.at reported.

Pirates

Islamist preacher under eye of police for anti-Semitic hate speech in Denmark - UPDATE

Copenhagen preacher
An Imam in Copenhagen has been reported to Danish authorities for violating hate speech laws following a sermon made in March that called for a jihad to free Muslims from 'the filth of the zionists.'

Mundhir Abdallah made the remarks at a mosque in Copenhagen as part of a sermon which included citations from the Hadith.

We have chosen to report imam Mundhir Abdallah to the police after his sermon at Masjid Al-Faruq mosque in Norrebro. We believe that it contains a thinly veiled incitement to commit murder of Jews," said Dan Rosenberg Asmussen Ritzau, chairman of the Jewish Society in Denmark, as cited by Danish TV2.

Comment: Interesting that it was MEMRI.org that released the video of Mundhir Abdallah's anti-Semitic hate speech. Also interesting that the most vehement of Islamic extremist groups in the world (ISIS) who are operating just a stone's throw away from Israel, never attack Israel - but apologize when ordinance gets lobbed accidentally into Israel's territory. What are we to make then of this Imam's little talk - that is all but guaranteed to cause a fuss? Maybe MEMRI does a little more than just report the news; the following would seem to suggest this:
And then there are toxic organizations, as you know. They have been very effective in distorting the Palestinian message in reality, like MEMRI. You know, M-E-M-R-I? You should be aware of this. This is a most toxic organization. It is run by Yigal Carmon, who used to be the adviser to the military governors, and he became the adviser to Shamir on terrorism and so on. And he used to interrogate me once in a while. But now, he has this organization with tremendous funds. He monitors everything and then he has access to Congress, particularly to many decision makers. He distorts Palestinian utterance and anything that is published. We can talk about this later. You have MEMRI, you have NGO Monitor that attempts to bad-mouth all Palestinian NGOs. You have the PM Watch [Palestinian Media Watch], which is also waiting for any Palestinian to open his or her mouth and they attack.
Update (May 16): Abdallah claims he's the victim of propaganda aimed at quashing his criticism of Israel:
"Politicians in the West and the media never stop attacking Islam and Muslims," imam Mundhir Abdallah told Kristeligt Dagblad in a Facebook interview.

"Their propaganda never stops. Muslims are the real victims, not others. Our women our being attacked, our mosques are being burned."

According to a translation of Mundhir Abdallah's speech, the imam quoted a Hadith (sacred text of the words and stories of the Prophet Mohammed) saying Judgement Day would not come "until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them."

"The Jews will hide behind rocks and the trees. But the rocks and the trees will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him," he said.

The translation came from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) TV Monitor Project, an-American based group headed by a former member of Israeli intelligence which provides translations of Arab and Muslim media.

The group has been accused of selectively choosing its translations to push an Israeli agenda and paint Muslims in a negative light.

The imam said he has received support after the scandal broke, although his speech invited condemnation from Danish politicians and Muslims.

"I've got wide and warm support from people from everywhere. Even many in Denmark. They know that my words have been manipulated, and they know that the motivation for this campaign is to prevent Muslims from criticizing Israel and Western governments that support the occupation [of Palestine]."

The imam lives in Lebanon but has family in Denmark. He said he isn't afraid of being put on Denmark's new list of banned hate preachers.

"See how your democracy works," he continued. "In punishing others because of their beliefs and political opinions, this legislation only proves the weakness of your democracy. People who are different, can not live in it," said Abdallah.

"So you have two options. Either you are totally integrated, or else you will be killed 'in prison or sent back to where you come from. And even there you are not safe," he added.
So was the translation accurate or not? MEMRI is problematic, to say the least. So is mixing anti-Zionism with religious fundamentalism. The imam says "Muslims are the real victims." Correction: Muslims are victims. So are non-Muslims. No group has a monopoly on victimhood. The same can be said for being pure evil. Whether Jew, Muslim, Christian or whatever other religious or cultural identity you want, the capacity for cognitive error and immorality is distributed fairly evenly among groups. Zionism and radical Islam are two sides of the same coin.