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Георгиевская ленточка

Local Syrians dub Putin "lion, defender, savior"


Fort Russ
Fri, 08 Jan 2016 23:45 UTC
putin assad

Meanwhile in Latakia.
The Syrians have proclaimed Putin "lion and defender" in the belief that he will bring peace to their country, said Russian Spring.

Zeinab is a town not far from Damascus. There, two years ago, fierce battles were fought. The Salafists fired on it until the government was able to conclude a truce with them. There is also the mausoleum of Seyyids Zeinab, revered among Shiites. ISIS terrorists have repeatedly fired on the mosque, named in honor of his holiness.

After years of shelling, the city is in complete ruin, but now it is gradually coming back. Locals speak of the Russian President with gratitude and hope that he will bring peace and calm to their land.

"You know, Vladimir Putin - he came here as our savior and protector! We call him Haydar, Lion - the nickname of our Imam Ali," say residents of Zeinab.

At the entrance to the city there is a poster depicting the Russian President, along with Shiite leaders - Syrian President Bashar Assad and the head of the "Hezbollah" movement, Hassan Nasrallah.

Comment: There's a reason Putin is so popular not just in Russia but around the world. He's not the lesser of many evils; he's the best that the world geopolitical system has to offer. And as long as he continues to act with real integrity, his popularity will probably just increase. Further reading: The Fear of Death and the Human Need for Heroes

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Nuke

Calls for Michigan Gov. Snyder's arrest in lead water poisoning scandal

Sarah Lazare
Common Dreams
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 20:47 UTC
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder
© Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder speaks at a press conference at the Detroit Institute of Arts June 9, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan.
Calls for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's ouster—and arrest—are growing after internal emails showed that his high-level staffers were aware of lead poisoning in Flint's public water supply six months before the administration declared a state of emergency.

According to the newly-released emails, which were obtained by NBC News, Snyder's chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, wrote to an unnamed high-level health department staffer: "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint."

"These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight)," Muchmore wrote in the email, according to journalists Stephanie Gosk, Kevin Monahan, Tim Sandler and Hannah Rappleye.

"I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt," wrote Muchmore. "Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving."

Comment: More information about the ongoing crisis in Michigan:

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Vader

Obama's crocodile tears

Patrick Martin
World Socialist Web Site
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
obama tears
During a White House press appearance Tuesday, President Obama shed tears over the death toll among US children due to mass shootings, a display of emotion that was given widespread publicity by the American media. The attention was in part due to the obvious contrast with the cold and indifferent demeanor normally maintained by the US chief executive.

More emotionalism is likely to be on display tonight, when Obama hosts a "town hall" meeting on gun violence in the United States at George Mason University in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. The hour-long event is to promote the executive actions restricting gun sales that Obama announced on Tuesday.

A few responses are in order. First and foremost is to note the utter hypocrisy of an American president, responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of children in the Middle East and other US-targeted countries, putting on a display of sorrow over the deaths of innocents.

President Obama, as has been well documented, personally selects the targets of US drone missile assassination strikes from a list supplied by the CIA and Pentagon. This takes place at meetings dubbed "Terror Tuesdays" by his staff. Thousands of civilians, and hundreds of children, have been massacred in these attacks, mainly in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and across North Africa.
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Heart - Black

School resource cop denigrates Tamir Rice and his mother on Facebook, gets paid leave

William N. Grigg
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 08 Jan 2016 18:55 UTC
tamir rice
Matt Cicero, a "mobile patrol officer" employed in the Cleveland school district where the late Tamir Rice was a student has been placed on paid vacation (officially called "administrative leave") after publishing a Facebook post in which he denigrated the victim of a police killing, insulted his grieving mother, imputed pecuniary motives to the family's decision to pursue a lawsuit — and, most seriously, expressed a clear intent to kill other children should he find himself in similar circumstances.

Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing in a park with a plastic pellet gun resembling an authentic handgun, was killed by Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann within two seconds of the officer's arrival on the scene. Loehmann and his partner responded to a 911 report of what appeared to be a gun-toting male of indeterminate age, although the caller specified that the apparent weapon was "probably" a toy. Loehmann, whose personnel record unambiguously described someone unqualified to be a police officer, was clearly primed to kill Rice — and the victim never had time to comply with an order to drop his toy. Nor did the shooter or his partner render medical aid to their victim.

Following the template used in the investigation of Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Cuyahoga County District Attorney Timothy McGinty referred the Tamir Rice shooting to a grand jury, but rather than seeking an indictment he conducted a mini-trial in which he acted as both prosecutor and defense attorney for Officer Loehmann. Thisrais yielded the entirely predictable — and, most likely, intended — result when the grand jury declined to indict Rice's killer.
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Alarm Clock

Unexpected demolition of China hospital buries six bodies in morgue; patients, staff, still inside


Times of Malta
Fri, 08 Jan 2016 18:57 UTC
China hospital
© AP
A doctor shows local press the aftermath of the bulldozing incident, including equipment torn off sockets and bricks strewn across the clinic.
Doctors, nurses and patients had to run for their lives after bulldozers moved in unexpectedly to demolish part of a hospital in central China in a local government row.

Six bodies being processed at an adjoining morgue at the hospital in Zhengzhou city, Henan province, were buried under rubble.

Hospital officials accused the local government of ordering demolition work after failing to get the hospital to agree to it for a road expansion project, said Xinhua News Agency.

But the Huiji District Government Information Office said they had asked the hospital in vain to demolish the CT room and morgue itself.

They denied claims that there were people inside the buildings when bulldozers started work and said there had been no casualties.

The No 4 Hospital of Zhengzhou University said the unexpected demolition work on Thursday buried six bodies stored in the morgue, caused nearly 20 million yuan worth of damage to medical equipment and injured several hospital staff, according to Xinhua.

"Burying the remains of patients is enormously disrespectful to the dead," the hospital's deputy propaganda chief, Zhang Yuan, said. "I never imagined anything like this would ever happen."
China hospital bulldozed
© AP
A photo from inside the hospital immediately after the bulldozers tore through the building, injuring staff members and crushing six bodies stored in the morgue.
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Sheriff

Illinois cop who beat pregnant woman now being sued for assaulting another pregnant woman

Jack Bouboushian
Courthouse News
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 18:18 UTC
police and pregnant woman
A police officer accused of past misconduct faces a new federal complaint accusing him of raping a pregnant woman and threatening to arrest her if she resisted.

Identifying herself only as Jane Doe, the woman filed the complaint on Wednesday against Richard Jones and the city of Harvey, a south suburb of Chicago.

Doe, who says she is 20, says Jones began harassing her in June 2015.

The Harvey police officer allegedly added his phone number to her cellphone without her consent, and began calling her repeatedly. Doe says she did not answer his calls or messages.

In August, when Doe was visibly pregnant, Jones saw her at a gas station and made comments to her such as "You know how good you look," "I've wanted you since the first day I saw you when you were wearing that dress," and, "There are so many things I would like to do to you," according to the lawsuit.

Comment: The depth of depravity of these psychopathic cops never ceases to amaze.

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Sheriff

Georgia prosecutor to seek murder indictment against police officer who shot and killed unarmed naked man

Jamiles Lartey and Ciara McCarthy
The Guardian
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 18:31 UTC
Anthony Hill
© David Goldman/AP
Brandon Marshall carries a photo of Anthony Hill as protesters march through the street demonstrating Hill’s shooting death in March 2015
A prosecutor in Georgia is to seek two indictments for murder against a police officer who shot and killed Anthony Hill, an unarmed black man who was naked when he died.

DeKalb district attorney Robert James said he would ask a grand jury to indict Officer Robert Olsen of the DeKalb County police department, accused of shooting Hill on 9 March last year while responding to a call of a man behaving erratically outside a suburban Atlanta apartment complex.

If Olsen is indicted, it will mark the first time an officer has been prosecuted in a fatal shooting in Georgia since 2010.

The announcement means that James's office will be recommending the charges against Olsen to a criminal grand jury to be convened later this month. In Georgia, a prosecutor cannot bring charges without a grand jury indictment.

In addition to the murder charges, James also recommended one count of aggravated assault, two counts of violation of oath of office by a public officer, and one count of making a false statement.
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Heart - Black

High school cancels basketball team's season after freshman player was raped with pool cue in team hazing incident


Guardian
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 18:17 UTC
handcuffed
© Shutterstock
A Tennessee school superintendent has canceled the remainder of the season for the Ooltewah high school boys' basketball team after a freshman player said he was raped by teammates in an apparent hazing incident.

Hamilton County superintendent Rick Smith said on Wednesday he took the unusual step "so that the criminal justice system can work the way we expect" after the school board met in response to the alleged 22 December assault that has rocked the suburban Chattanooga community.

Three juveniles face rape and aggravated assault charges in connection with injuries to a 15-year-old team-mate, who underwent surgery after being attacked during an overnight trip to the Smoky Mountain Basketball Tournament in Gatlinburg. The victim's grandmother told CNN that the boy was attacked with a pool cue, with multiple reports indicating he was hospitalized for more than a week with a ruptured colon and bladder.

Another relative told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that one of the assailants recorded the incident, which has left the victim with limited movement due to a colostomy bag and catheter.
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Info

Yet another study finds fracking chemicals pose risks to public health

Andrea Germanos
Common Dreams
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
fracking protest
© WildEarth Guardians/flickr/cc
A recent protest against fracking in Chaco, New Mexico.
Researchers had information on reproductive and developmental toxicity for only 24 percent of over 1,000 chemicals they looked at

Add this to the body of evidence suggesting that the unconventional oil and gas extraction technique known as fracking poses risks to public health.

In a study published Wednesday, researchers at the Yale School of Public Health looked at over 1,000 chemicals in hydraulic-fracturing fluids or wastewater, and found that over 150 of them were linked to potential reproductive or developmental harm.

Those chemicals include arsenic, benzene, lead, formaldehyde, and mercury.


Comment:

The study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental and Epidemiology, also underscores the many unknowns regarding the adverse effects of fracking.

The Yale team was able to obtain information on potential reproductive and developmental toxicity for a small portion 240 of the 1,021 chemicals; for the majority—76 percent—of the chemicals, no such information was available.

Comment: Does it really matter what aspect of fracking is 'specifically' harmful? The cocktail of chemicals contaminating the environment and ruining the health of millions, in addition to the evidence that it causes earthquakes provides more than enough evidence that fracking is evil.

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Cut

Porter Ranch methane leak may be result of lax safety regulations and industry cost cutting measures

Thom Hartmann
Alternet
Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
porter ranch methane
If you don't live on the West Coast of the United States, you might not have heard about the massive gas well leak that's been venting natural gas into the atmosphere at a rate of more than 100,000 pounds per hour for more than two months.

Infrared video that the Environmental Defense Fund captured in December shows that the natural gas is billowing like a volcano just above Burbank, California, on a hilltop in the Aliso Canyon area. That video was taken over a month after the leak started on October 23, after the well had already ejected an estimated 80,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere.

For perspective, 80,000 tons of methane is equal to about a quarter of what the entire state of California—which is the eighth largest economy in the entire world—emitted between October 23 and November 20, 2015. And methane, which is what's mostly in "natural gas," is actually a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 in the short term, during the first 20 years it's in the atmosphere it can be up to 80 times more potent than CO2.

Comment:

Catastrophe in California: Months-long methane gas leak pollutes the atmosphere north of L.A.

While appropriate safety mechanisms may have helped to prevent this disaster, there have been disturbingly frequent incidents of methane outgassing, both under the oceans and on land and it is possible that the leak could also be attributed to these natural forces: This phenomenon of methane and carbon dioxide being released in enormous quantities from below ground and water, and not 'man-made CO2', is the primary source of observed 'greenhouse gas' increases in both the atmosphere and oceans.

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