Society's ChildS


Star of David

Failure to meet African asylum seekers' basic needs in Israeli detention facilities


RT
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 16:59 UTC
detainee
© www.rt.comAn African migrant carries his luggage as he leaves Holot detention centre in Israel's southern Negev desert.
Israeli detention centers for African asylum seekers are overcrowded, prison-like facilities where residents suffer from a lack of basic needs including health and translation services, clothing, proper food and legal advice, a report from a human rights group reveals.

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization protecting the rights of refugees, released a report on Monday reviewing conditions in four Israeli migrant detention centers - Holot, Saharonim, Givon and Yahalom. The report is based on interviews with 72 people held there, as well as official reports and freedom of information requests. It uncovers major deficiencies in the treatment of migrants, who are mostly asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea.

The respondents complained about a drastic lack of health services, citing language barriers as an additional hindrance barring them from receiving adequate medical assistance. The report notes that in all facilities there is a substantial lack of translation services when detainees interact with the representatives of the prison services, the police, the Ministry of the Interior, doctors and the administrative tribunals.

"Detainees noted that oftentimes doctors are assisted by other prisoners who can translate to Hebrew or English, meaning patients have to share intimate medical details with other detainees," reads the press release on the group's official website. In the Saharonim center only three out of 26 migrants reported that a translator was present during a medical examination.

Comment: Israel is maintaining its in-humanitarian track record true to the pathological mecca of shame that is its trademark, and that we have numbly come to expect.

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Arrow Down

Secret service removes black students from Trump rally before event begins

Arturo Garcia
The Raw Story
Mon, 29 Feb 2016 21:23 UTC
Trump
© YoutubeDonald Trump gives a speech on Feb. 26, 2016
A group of 30 black Valdosta State University students was removed from a rally by Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Monday before the event even began, the Des Moines Register reported.

"We didn't plan to do anything," said one of the students, 19-year-old Tahjila Davis. "They said, 'This is Trump's property; it's a private event.' But I paid my tuition to be here."

Davis and the other students were reportedly asked to leave the event by a Secret Service agent, hours after footage circulating online showed another agent attacking a photojournalist at a separate Trump event in Radford, Virginia.

The Register noted that black students at that event were also kicked out of the event after they chanted, "No more hate! No more hate! Let's be equal, let's be great!"

Comment: Donald Trump seems to make a point of inciting racism and hatred. If more people don't begin to understand what he represents, we will soon re-visit a very dark time in history.

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Wolf

Donald Trump is winning because poorly-educated, white, male Americans have lost hope

Matt Ferner
The Huffington Post
Thu, 25 Feb 2016 13:47 UTC
trump white male voters
© GettyA supporter of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump wears a pin at a rally at Pennichuck Middle School on Dec. 28, 2015 in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Noam Chomsky says Trump's rise is partly due to deeply rooted -- and potentially fatal -- feelings of fear and anger.

What's killing white, middle-aged, poorly educated American men? Noam Chomsky suggests it's a sense of hopelessness that may be fueling Donald Trump's popularity.

Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is, in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of poorly educated whites.

"He's evidently appealing to deep feelings of anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among sectors like those that are seeing an increase in mortality, something unheard of apart from war and catastrophe," Chomsky told The Huffington Post in an interview on Thursday.

Trump's rise as the Republican presidential front-runner has been confounding for Americans across the political spectrum. The bombastic, billionaire demagogue has won three of the first four primary states and holds a lead in the polls, both nationwide and in upcoming primary contests. He now appears poised to take an insurmountable delegate lead over the next several weeks, based on a platform of hate and vitriol targeted at women, Latinos, Muslims and other minorities.
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Cell Phone

Ron Paul backs Apple in FBI battle


RT
Tue, 01 Mar 2016 12:26 UTC
Ron Paul
© Reuters; AFP Apple in not assisting the FBI.
Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has called on the public to support Apple in its battle against the US government to create a "backdoor" into iPhones for the FBI to bypass encryption.

The liberatarian-minded Republican slammed the need for the hack in a statement this week, saying, "The government spying on us has not prevented one terrorist attack."

Paul said that if Apple assists the FBI, it will be a "precedent-setting case" and the technology will be used again with a lower threshold: "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: See also: First the government came for the iPhones...

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Eye 1

Calais 'Jungle' evictees block motorway in chaotic night conflict with French police (Videos)


RT
Tue, 01 Mar 2016 07:33 UTC
Around 150 migrants, some armed with iron bars, have attempted to block or climb lorries traveling towards the Eurotunnel, as clashes with police continued into the night in chaotic scenes surrounding the Calais refugee 'Jungle' camp in France.

Police were called to the area after refugees, enraged by an earlier eviction, attacked trucks with stones, debris, and iron bars. Officers used flash grenades and tear gas to stop refugees from reaching the motorway and climbing onto the trucks.

The clashes came following a day of confrontations between police and migrants after authorities proceeded with the dismantling of parts of the camp and bulldozed them to the ground.

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

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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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