Society's ChildS


Bad Guys

Native Canadian women sold on U.S. ships, researcher says


Report says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., trafficked in sex trade in Minnesota

An American researcher says First Nations women from Thunder Bay, Ont., have been sold on ships in the harbour at Duluth, Minn.

Christine Stark said the port at Duluth is notorious among First Nations people as a site for trafficking women.

The masters student at the University of Minnesota Duluth said she has anecdotal reports of women, teenage girls and boys, as well as babies being sold on ships for sex.

"The women and children - and I've even had women talk about a couple of babies brought onto the ships and sold to the men on ships - are being sold or are exchanging sex for alcohol, a place to stay, drugs, money and so forth.," Stark said. "It's quite shocking."

Stark said the sex trade on ships has been going on for generations, and includes Indigenous women from Canada.
Strong link between Thunder Bay, Duluth

"I have spoken with a woman who was brought down from Thunder Bay on the ships and talks about an excessive amount of trafficking between Canada and the Duluth-Superior harbor," Stark said. "There is a very strong link between Thunder Bay and Duluth."

Her current research is an offshoot of a 2007 report on prostitution in Minnesota, in conjunction with the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition. That report included interviews with 105 indigenous women in Minnesota who have been trafficked in the sex trade.

Stark said the stories that "women get brought out onto the boats and never come back" that she heard as part of that study begged further exploration. She's currently conducting interviews with 15 people to learn more about what happens on the ships.

The Ontario Native Women's Association (ONWA) said it also has anecdotal reports of women being trafficked across borders,or provincial boundaries, into the sex trade.

"We know that it's happening between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, and there have been reports of it happening in southern Ontario across the U.S. border," said Kezia Picard, the director of policy and research with ONWA.
Poverty, lack of housing make women vulnerable

But Picard said more funding is needed for more formal research into how women are being spirited away.

Sheriff

US suspends assistance to St Lucia Police Force

The United States has withdrawn all assistance to St. Lucia's police force over concerns about allegations of unlawful killings, the leader of the small Caribbean country announced.

St. Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said the matter focuses on 12 people fatally shot by police in 2010 and 2011 while another administration was in power. Relatives of the victims and other critics insist the men were murdered and police had a "hit list" of people deemed to be criminals.

The killings occurred during a security initiative called "Operation Restore Confidence" as the tourism-dependent island grappled with a worrying rise in violent crime. Five of the men were killed in a single police operation in the southern town of Vieux Fort.

Washington already had blocked St. Lucia officers from participating in U.S.-financed training programs and recently prevented the top commissioner from attending a law enforcement conference, Anthony said.

On Wednesday, a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said St. Lucia was informed about the decision Aug. 16.

In an address to the country of some 162,000 people late Tuesday, Anthony said the action was based on a U.S. law that requires the State Department to stop assistance to a foreign security force if there is credible information that a gross violation of human rights has occurred.

In its recent annual report on the island, the State Department complained of the slow pace of investigations into the deadly police shootings.

Comment: The US is concerned with "unlawful killings" by police in Jamaica? Pot, meet kettle.


Star of David

How school privatization hawks Teach For America to promote Israel

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© sierraromeo/FlickrDozens of schools have been closed and approximately 850 teachers and staffers have lost their jobs in Chicago, a boon to Teach For America.
Teach For America (TFA) is best known for dispatching hundreds of idealistic college graduates to work in inner cities across the United States each year, but it also sends selected members on free, religious-themed tours of Israel.

Called The Reality Israel Experience, the TFA-sponsored trips bring idealistic young American teachers into contact with Israeli politicians and military personnel while "introducing [TFA] corps members to Israel's education and social justice systems."

According to testimonies featured on Reality Israel's official website, participants are at times led by a "military tour guide," visit with Israeli military educators at an army base "near Jerusalem" (in the occupied West Bank?), and enjoy "ATV off-roading all over the Golan Heights," an Israeli-occupied region of Syria.

The Reality Israel Experience is largely a project of Lynn Schusterman, the wealthy widow of the oil and gas tycoon Charles Schusterman. Since taking control of her husband's fortune, she has established a reputation as one of America's most aggressive backers of pro-Israel campus advocacy, funding campus-oriented ventures like Birthright Israel and The David Project.

As publicly-funded, privately-operated charter schools expand their reach and their wealthy advocates gain increasing influence over public education, boundaries between religion and state have blurred. This has opened avenues for ideologues like Schusterman to advance their political and religious agenda among a population of needy and impressionable children.

With an eye on promoting Israel advocacy in public schools, Schusterman has begun injecting millions into TFA, the advance guard of the education privatization movement.

Backed by billionaires

Since its birth in 1990, TFA has become a Wall Street-backed behemoth at the forefront of a movement that is rapidly placing large sectors of America's public education into private hands.

With at least $350 million in assets, including substantial support from billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the heirs to the Walmart fortune, TFA has taken advantage of education reforms introduced under President George W. Bush and accelerated under the administration of Barack Obama. Thousands of its corps members are being moved into cities where certified, union-affiliated teachers are being laid off by the thousands.

Unlike certified teachers, TFA members must only complete a five-week summer training program before they enter the classroom. They work for lower salaries than certified teachers and must accept weaker health and pension benefits, a prime arrangement for libertarian-minded governors and mayors seeking to hollow out the public sector.

Heart - Black

Serial killer Naso guilty of 4 slayings

Naso was found guilty of first-degree murder
© Robert Tong, Associated PressAccused serial killer Joseph Naso rubs his eyes as the prosecution makes its opening statement in Marin Superior Court on Monday, June 17, 2013. On Tuesday, Naso was found guilty of first-degree murder in the slayings of four Northern California women in the 1970s and 1990s.
Former San Francisco resident Joseph Naso faces a possible death sentence after a Marin County jury on Tuesday found him guilty of murdering four Northern California women - prostitutes who were raped, strangled and dumped along rural roads in the late 1970s and early 1990s.

The verdict in a San Rafael courtroom followed two months of often lurid testimony in which prosecutors recounted how the discovery of a "rape journal" and other obsessive writings by Naso cracked the cold cases.

Naso, acting as his own lawyer, countered that he wasn't the "monster" authorities described.

The jury spent less than a day deliberating before finding Naso, 79, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, along with the special circumstance of committing multiple killings. The same jury will convene for a death penalty hearing starting Sept. 4, after which they must decide whether Naso should be executed or sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Marin County prosecutors will be asking a jury to impose the death penalty for the first time since 1990. If executed, Naso would be the oldest person ever put to death in California.

Authorities believe Naso may have committed other killings, but they charged him with leaving four bodies along roads in Marin, Contra Costa and Yuba counties. The onetime photographer acknowledged that he hired prostitutes and photographed them in sexual positions, and admitted that he wrote in journals that he raped women. But he said he did not kill anyone.

Music

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters calls on all musicians to boycott Israel

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Long-expected letter from Pink Floyd front man to the 'family of Rock and Roll' blasts Israel for 'apartheid' and 'ethnic cleansing'


British rocker Roger Waters has published an open letter calling on fellow musicians to join a boycott of Israel.

The letter, which condemns Israel for apartheid and ethnic cleansing, has been expected for several months, according to the Electronic Intifada, which first reported on its existence.

"I write to you now, my brothers and sisters in the family of Rock and Roll, to ask you to join with me, and thousands of other artists around the world, to declare a cultural boycott on Israel," Waters wrote in the letter dated Aug. 18. The letter was drafted in July.

The former Pink Floyd front man said he was inspired to release the letter after British violinist Nigel Kennedy called Israel an apartheid state at a recent promenade concert at the Albert Hall in London. The BBC said it would remove his remarks in rebroadcasts of the concert.

Comment: Rock on!

It's time to turn away from Israel and shun it completely.




Stormtrooper

Police taser man to get him off a roof, choke & drag him face-down across a staircase, killing him


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© ABC 15Michael Angel Ruiz acting strangely on his rooftop.

A 44-year-old man climbed onto the roof of his apartment and began acting strangely. Police arrived to help him down, but instead ended up killing him with a series of offensive maneuvers including tasing him while in a choke-hold, and finally dragging his lifeless body down a staircase, with his skull banging against every step.

Michael Angel Ruiz is the son of a retired LAPD detective and had a history of drug addiction. On July 28, for reasons unknown, he climbed onto the roof of his apartment. Witnesses called the police to protect his safety. This turned out to have been a fatal decision.

People

Russians say people, authorities changed since Soviet times

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© RIA Novosti. Mikhail FomichevRussians Say People, Authorities Changed Since Soviet Times
Modern Russian residents have largely changed compared to Soviet people, independent pollster Levada Center has said, citing a recent poll.

Asked whether the residents of today's Russia are different from people who lived in the Soviet Union, 74 percent of respondents said they are completely or in many respects different.

Fourteen percent said Russian nationals today have changed little or have remained the same, and 12 percent said they did not know.

Of those who said Russian residents are different, 58 percent said people have become more calculating and colder toward one another, 35 percent said people have grown intolerant, 30 percent said people are poorer and 29 percent called modern Russians freer.

Arrow Down

Malaysia Bus Accident Claims 37 Lives

Bus accident in Malaysia
© APAug. 21, 2013: Malaysian emergency services personnel rescue a passenger by a crane after a passenger bus carrying tourists and local residents fell into a ravine near the Genting Highlands, about an hour's drive from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Malaysian rescuers recovered 37 bodies after a tourist bus plunged into a ravine near a resort outside Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, killing many of the passengers in one of the worst road accidents in many years.

"Rescue operation is still on. We think there were 53 passengers on board, but we are not sure," said Che Shaari Abdullah, an assistant director at Kuala Lumpur's Fire and Rescue Department. The cause of the accident is still being probed, he added.

Malaysian emergency services personnel work to rescue passengers after a bus carrying tourists and local residents fell into a ravine near the Genting Highlands, about an hour's drive from Kuala Lumpur.

Fire Department spokesman Christopher Chong said that the bus was likely overloaded as it was meant to carry only 44 passengers.

The bus was coming back from the Genting Highlands - a patch of hillocks 55 kilometers (34 miles) from Kuala Lumpur and home to Malaysia's only casino - when it skidded off the road Wednesday afternoon.

Sixteen passengers were rescued - some with serious injuries - and are being treated in hospitals in Kuala Lumpur and its suburbs, the official said.

Heart - Black

Christopher Lane murder: Teens charged in shooting death of Australian baseball player

Christopher Lane
© AP Photo/East Central University Communications & Marketing, Gina SmithThis photo provided by East Central University shows Christopher Lane, an Australian who was on a baseball scholarship at East Central University in Ada, Okla. Lane was in Duncan, Okla., visiting his girlfriend, when he was shot and killed Friday, Aug. 16, 2013.
Duncan, Oklahoma. -- With a motive that's both chilling and simple - to break up the boredom of an Oklahoma summer - three teenagers randomly targeted an Australian collegiate baseball player who was attending school in the U.S. and killed him for fun, prosecutors said Tuesday as they charged two of the boys with murder.

Prosecutor Jason Hicks called the boys "thugs" as he described how Christopher Lane, 22, of Melbourne, was shot once in the back and died along a tree-lined road on Duncan's well-to-do north side. He said the three teens, from the grittier part of town, chose Lane at random and that one of the boys "thinks it's all a joke."

Hicks charged Chancey Allen Luna, 16, and James Francis Edwards Jr., 15, of Duncan, with first-degree murder. Under Oklahoma law they will be tried as adults. Michael Dewayne Jones, 17, of Duncan, was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He is considered a youthful offender but will be tried in adult court.

Jones wept in the courtroom after he tried to speak about the incident but was cut off by the judge who said it wasn't the time to sort out the facts of the case. Jones faces anywhere from two years to life in prison if convicted on the counts he faces.

The two younger teens face life in prison without parole if convicted on the murder charge.

"I'm appalled," Hicks said after the hearing. "This is not supposed to happen in this community."

Bomb

8 injured in explosion at Navy Station in New Jersey

An explosion at a Navy base in New Jersey on Tuesday left at least eight people hurt, one of them seriously, the authorities said.

The Navy said the blast occurred around 9 a.m. in a marine boat repair shop at the Naval Weapons Station Earle, in Monmouth County. Workers were doing routine maintenance at the time of the explosion.

Naval officials said that the cause was still under investigation and that the damage was contained in the boathouse area.

Seven of those injured were treated at area hospitals - most for smoke inhalation - and had been released by Tuesday afternoon, the Navy said. One person, who suffered a broken arm and underwent surgery, remained hospitalized.