Welcome to Sott.net
Thu, 04 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Info

Lebanon protests: Demands are justified, but reform must proceed carefully to avoid chaos

Elijah J. Magnier
ejmagnier.com
Sat, 26 Oct 2019 17:08 UTC
lebanon protests
After less than two weeks of generalized, impulsive and unorganised protests on the streets of Lebanon, a huge amount of money has been invested - by undeclared donors - in recent days to provide protestors with food, drinks and necessities so that they will stay in the street until "the fall of the political regime, the government and the rule of bankers - in particular the Central Bank".

Most Lebanese agree with the protestors' concerns about the corruption of the political-sectarian system which helps a handful of political leaders control the entire country. These figures have power over everything in Lebanon and can do anything without accountability or control. No wonder, because the judicial system is controlled by these same politicians who suspend any "unsuitable" judgement. Moreover, all top military and security officers - without exception - are appointed by the same political leaders who divide power amongst themselves. They spend their careers standing at the doors of the politicians they "belong" to (depending on their religion), asking for better and more senior positions within the security apparatus.

No one in Lebanon ever imagined this corrupt sectarian system could be shaken and that people would confront it on the streets. No political leader believed he would ever feel anxious about keeping his "throne", constructed over decades for the next family generation to take over when their fathers retire.
      Read More...
Attention

Not just San Francisco: Human waste from homeless people makes downtown Miami streets unpleasant, unsanitary

Linda Robertson
The Miami Herald
Sat, 19 Oct 2019 16:55 UTC
homeless man miami
© Al Diaz for The Miami Herald
A 24-hour bathroom would be wonderful,” said Kesia Hollins, who has been homeless for six years.
Homeless people living on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Miami are also relieving themselves on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Miami, turning the city's core into an outdoor toilet, merchants and residents say.

"The situation is the worst I've seen in my 25 years here," said business owner Jose Goyanes. "The stench is really bad, even after you hose it down. We see people urinating against buildings or pulling their pants down and squatting because they have nowhere else to go."

Deposits of human waste can be seen in planters, doorways, gutters — or right in the middle of the block. The pavement behind the old Macy's department store is soaked with urine. Feces ferment in front of vacant storefronts for days when there's no landlord to clean up. People who work and live downtown are calling in a Code Brown.
      Read More...
Red Flag

'Burning sensations in their eyes': Mysterious gas odor closes businesses, schools in Delaware County, Pennsylvania


CBS News - Philadelphia
Fri, 25 Oct 2019 17:45 UTC
Mysterious gas odor in PA
© CBS News
Delaware County's hazmat unit responded across the county following 25 separate reports of a gas odor, officials say. The reports began coming in around 10:30 a.m. Friday and were mostly in the western area of the county.

Some businesses closed early while Chester Charter Scholars Academy dismissed about 675 students after the school's principal said some students and staff began getting sick because of the smell.

"It seemed to be affecting some of our students and staff who have asthma more intensely and for other people, they had burning sensations in their eyes," Chester Charter Scholars Academy Head of School Akosua Watts said.

Corinne Canty rushed over to pick up her two sons, who are in the fourth and eighth grades.

"I smelled it when I came in. I smelled it when I was driving up here," Canty said.

      Read More...
Arrow Down

America's bridge infrastructure needs work due to climate change!

Karen Graham
Digital Journal
Fri, 25 Oct 2019 04:41 UTC
America has over 600,000 bridges. Steel girder bridges, among the most common, could face serious infrastructure problems thanks to man-made climate change.
Crumbling Bridge
© AJ Henderson (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The supports for the unfinished end of the Dunn Memorial Bridge, which connects Albany and Rensselaer, NY. give a good cross section of girder bridge construction
Infrastructure in America and other countries around the world is aging and deteriorating, as a result of an increase in demand due to population growth and limitation in resources required for proper inspection and maintenance, according to Colorado State University's Hussam Mahmoud, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Mahmoud is the co-author of a new study linking the potential impacts of climate change with the structural integrity of thousands of steel girder bridges transecting America's highways and towns. The study, "Impact of climate change on the integrity of the superstructure of deteriorated U.S. bridges," was published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLOS ONE on October 23, 3019.

These steel girder bridges frequently suffer from debris clogging their expansion joints. Expansion joints are what keeps the bridges steady as temperatures cause the steel to expand and contract as the air heats and cools. Because of this thermal expansion, debris removal from the expansion joints is an ongoing job.
      Read More...
Sheriff

UK police charge driver of truck in Essex migrant deaths, 5 arrested


RT
Sat, 26 Oct 2019 18:56 UTC
Essex migrants deaths
© Reuters/Peter Nicholls
UK police have charged the driver of a refrigerated truck in which dozens of bodies were found with 39 counts of manslaughter and other offences, including conspiracy to traffic people and money laundering.

The horrific find was made at a business park near London on Wednesday.

Driver Maurice 'Mo' Robinson, 25, from Armagh in Northern Ireland is thought to have been in possession of the container for about half an hour before the gruesome discovery was made. The authorities found the human remains after a call was put in to ambulance services, however the details on who made that call have not been revealed.


Comment: Here's a photo of him:
mo robinson

Tiocfaidh ar... No, wait... No surrender!
Note that the UK press is calling him 'Irish'. He doesn't see himself that way!


Five suspects

So far five people have been arrested, including Robinson. Two of those are a married couple, both aged 38, who are understood to own the truck, which is registered in Bulgaria. However, the pair, who are both Irish and run a haulage business in Warrington, England, told the Daily Mail that they sold the vehicle some 13 months ago and were stunned to hear of the tragedy.

Comment: Previously: 39 bodies, including one teenager, found in a lorry container in Essex

      Read More...
Star of David

British forensic researchers challenge IDF denial over shooting of child with live fire


International Solidarity Movement
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 23:40 UTC
IDF bullet weapon rubber bullet
© Forensic Architecture
Images from Forensic Architecture report show difference in soldiers firing live ammunition to rubber-coated metal bullets
Evidence is stacking up against the Israeli Army over the near-fatal shooting of a Palestinian child by a soldier in July, with the release of a damning report from a British research group.

Nine-year-old Abd el-Rahman Yasir Shatawi, was shot in the head on July 12 while sitting outside his friend's house during a protest in the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum. He sustained severe brain damage and remains hospitalized more than three months after the attack.

Since then Abd's parents have been left in the dark as to why their son, who was not even participating in the protest, was shot by Israeli soldiers from a hill opposite.

Comment: 100 bullet fragments in brain of Palestinian child shot by Israeli soldiers in northern West Bank

      Read More...
Star of David

Israel destroys record number of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem in 2019

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Sat, 26 Oct 2019 21:44 UTC
israel demolish house jerusalem demolition
© Activestills
Palestinian man watching his house being demolished by Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem on January 27, 2014.
Israel has demolished a record number of homes in occupied East Jerusalem in 2019, the most in the past 15 years, Israeli rights group B'Tselem reported on Thursday.

More than 140 Palestinian homes, were demolished resulting in the displacement of 238 Palestinians, 127 of them minors.

Of the homes that were destroyed, 39 were destroyed by the owners themselves after they received demolition orders from Israel, in order to avoid incurring the municipality's demolition fees.

This year's demolitions far surpassed the second highest number of demolitions, which occurred in 2016 when 92 homes were destroyed.
      Read More...
Attention

Freed gun activist's lawyer: Butina's case was 'prosecutorial overreach', 'harsh sentence' for nothing illegal


RT
Sat, 26 Oct 2019 00:36 UTC
Maria Butina
© File/Wikimedia Commons/Pavel Starikov
Maria Butina
Russian gun activist Maria Butina, who has spent over a year behind bars in the US on charges of being an unregistered Russian lobbyist, was essentially innocent but was caught up in anti-Russian witch hunts, her lawyer told RT.

Butina came to the US on a student visa in 2016 and was actively involved in pro-gun circles, namely the National Rifle Association (NRA) with a stated goal of expanding gun laws in Russia, which are quite restrictive. Yet, she was detained by the FBI in July 2018 on suspicion of conspiring to infiltrate the lobby group to promote Russian interests in the US.

The American media immediately snatched the opportunity to label her a spy and also reported that she allegedly traded sex for political favors. Both allegations later proved false. Now, her lawyer, Robert Driscoll, says she was in fact innocent but became a victim of anti-Russian hysteria and had to live in "totally inappropriate" conditions for some nine months.


Comment: Additional coverage from RT:

RT, 26/10/2019: "It was hard to bear. Everybody hated me there [in the US]."
One of the things that gave her strength, she recalled, was news of support that was brought by Russian diplomats. They were "a breath of fresh air amidst the horrors."

Butina release prison
RT, 26/10/2019: Butina speaks upon arrival in Moscow
'I did not give up because I simply could not do that, thanks to all who helped me.' She has arrived in Sheremetyevo airport after a long flight from Miami, Florida on Saturday. Not holding back emotions, Butina told reporters she feels "well" and is very happy to finally "return home."
Butina airport
© Reuters/Tatyana Makeyeva
Butina's arrival at Sheremetyevo Intl. Airport outside Moscow, Russia, Oct. 26, 2019.
Maria's father, Valery Butin, has flown from Siberia to meet her at the airport. He praised the diplomats, human rights groups, and "ordinary people" for supporting his daughter and not letting the story die down. He also thanked the US lawyers for their fight against the "Russophobic" charges against his daughter in court.
Maria/Dad
© Vitaly Belousov/Sputnik
Maria Butina hugs her father in Moscow airport.
On her way out of the airport, Butina revealed that receiving news of her "strong support" at home was "a breath of fresh air amidst the horrors" she experienced while being held in the US. "Absolutely everyone hated me there," she said.

It was especially frightening when I was sitting in prison and seeing how they chose the scariest photos of me to air on the news. And they made shows on TV about it. I couldn't even turn it off. I was forced to watch that. And the guards gathered and watched along. It was very hard to bear.


RT, 26, 10/2019: Terrifying solitary confinement
"Now that I have world recognition, I feel obligated, I feel responsible, to fight for those who are humiliated, who are unjustly accused, who are today forgotten, here in Russia and especially there in the United States."


See also: Russian gun activist Maria Butina released from prison, to return to Moscow

      Read More...
TV

The elite control what you watch to control what you think

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Thu, 24 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
woman in red
© The Matrix
The woman in red...
Why do you believe what you believe? Some people have a really solid answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much about deeper questions such as this. In fact, for most Americans it is simply easier to let others do their thinking for them. Today, most of us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen, and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite. And if you allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was The Matrix, and I think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our society today. In the film, nearly the entire human population was plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated reality into their minds that wasn't real at all. Later on, I eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to ourselves. Our personal interactions with one another are extremely limited, but we willingly "plug in" to the enormous matrix of news, information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many hours each day.

According to numbers that were released earlier this year, the average American spends more than three hours watching television and more than three hours on mobile devices every single day...
      Read More...
Yellow Vest

1.5 million people flood Santiago, Chile to protest against corrupt government


RT
Sat, 26 Oct 2019 05:35 UTC
Protesters/Lithium
© Reuters/Ivan Alvarado
Protesters in Santiago, Chile • Brine pools at SQM lithium mine
Indigenous activists in Chile have shut down lithium mining operations for some of the world's largest producers, as the country is gripped by protests over widespread perceptions of inequality.

Chile's capital saw its biggest rally yet on Friday, following seven straight days of demonstrations sparked by a hike in public transportation fees, in which at least 18 people have been killed, over 200 injured and thousands arrested. As things heated up in Santiago, however, protesters nearly 700 miles north locked down roadways in the Atacama salt flats, blocking access routes to some of the region's abundant lithium mines.

Chile is home to the world's largest lithium reserves, as well as one of the top producers of the lightweight metal - used in cell phone batteries and other electronics - the Chemical and Mining Society (SQM).

The effort to close the roads has been underway since Wednesday, Sergio Cubillos, president of the Atacama Indigenous Council, told Reuters, adding that SQM's operations were "completely shut down" by Friday. The roads are closed.

Comment: Truly extraordinary how this is happening in so many places at the same time. But then, govt is being extraordinarily corrupt in so many places at the same time...

See also:

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts