Society's ChildS


Pistol

New York's governor sued over NRA smear campaign

Breck Dumas
The Blaze
Fri, 11 May 2018 06:55 UTC
Cuomo
© KPTVNY Governor Andrew Cuomo
The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit on Friday against New York state officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, over what the group referred to as a "blacklisting campaign" staged against them by the defendants.

According to the NRA's complaint, New York's governor and Department of Financial Services actively worked to convince banks and insurers to cease doing business with the gun-rights organization in a "campaign of selective prosecution, background exhortations, and public threats." New York officials are accused of running a politically-motivated crusade that hinders the right of the NRA to "speak freely about gun-related issues and defend the Second Amendment" according to the suit.

Earlier this month, NYDFS imposed a $7 million fine on Lockton Cos., LLC, the insurance broker that administered NRA Carry Guard - which offers personal firearms liability policies.

On Wednesday, British insurer Lloyd's of London announced that it would end all coverage made available through the NRA, deeming the Carry Guard program an unlawful policy issued "to gun owners for acts of intentional wrongdoing."

Governor Cuomo also ordered a directive issued by the NYDFS which resulted in the regulatory agency sending a letter to state-chartered banks and other financiers, deterring them from doing business with the NRA.

Comment: Cuomo has initiated his own form of sanctions on the NRA. The statement: "The NRA's lawsuit is a futile and desperate attempt to advance its dangerous agenda to sell more guns," totally misses the point of the Second Amendment.

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Wedding Rings

Only one state in the US has outlawed grown men marrying little girls: Delaware

Rachel Blevins
The Free Thought Project
Sat, 12 May 2018 00:00 UTC
child marriage
© TheFreeThoughtProject.com
When Americans think of pedophiles, they may think of an adult stalking and assaulting a child in an isolated case. But a form of pedophilia of that is often ignored - even though it affects hundreds of thousands of children - was considered "legal" in every state in the United States up until this week.
Delaware became the first state in the country to officially ban child marriage by signing House Bill 337 into law, which prohibits marriage of individuals under 18 years of age. The law closes loopholes allowing children to enter into legal marriages with parental consent, or because they are pregnant. It also gives the court authority to annul marriages where one of the individuals involved was under the age of 18 at the time.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, child marriage is an ongoing problem across the county and "alarmingly, the number of children married away to fully mature adults could be much higher than the already-startling number. Ten states provide only fragmentary statistics or none at all."

An investigation from Frontline revealed disturbing statistics, which showed that between 2000 and 2015, at least 207,459 minors were married in the United States. While a percentage of those cases were 16- and 17-year-olds, an alarming number of states allowed children as young as 10 and 12 years old to marry, and in nearly 90 percent of the cases, young girls married adult men.

Comment: Delaware has set the example. See also:

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Attention

Puerto Rico: Lonely and listless, some older storm survivors consider suicide

Sarah Varney
KHN
Thu, 10 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Don Gregorio
© WRLNDon Gregorio, victim of Hurricane Maria
A social worker, Lisel Vargas, recently visited Don Gregorio at his storm-damaged home in the steep hillsides of Humacao, a city on Puerto Rico's eastern coast near where Category 4 Hurricane Maria first made landfall last September.

Gregorio, a 62-year-old former carpenter who lives alone, looked haggard. He said he had stopped taking his medication for depression more than a week earlier and hadn't slept in four days. He was feeling anxious and nervous, he said, rubbing his bald head and fidgeting with the silver watch on his wrist. His voice monotone and barely audible, he told Vargas he had had thoughts of suicide.

Indeed, the overall suicide rate in Puerto Rico increased 29 percent in 2017, with a significant jump after Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rico Department of Public Health reports, and that anguish is continuing.

Gregorio's descent from heartbroken but determined storm victim to this moment of despair is a path traveled by many older people here in Puerto Rico. Psychologists and social workers, like Vargas, say elderly people are especially vulnerable when their daily routines are disrupted for long periods. Those who were once active, she said, now stay home alone.
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Yoda

As Gaza sinks into desperation, Norman Finkelstein makes a devastating case against Israeli brutality

Charles Glass
The Intercept
Sun, 13 May 2018 19:25 UTC
March of return gaza protest
© Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesA Palestinian woman covers her face as smoke billows around her during clashes with Israeli forces along the border with the Gaza strip on May 11, 2018, as Palestinians demonstrate for the right to return to their historic homelands in what is now Israel.
Israel celebrates a double anniversary on May 15 this year, the founding of the state and the formal establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces, the name the state gave to its combined army, navy, and air force. Armed statehood fulfilled the political Zionists' dream of gathering Jews from the ancient Diaspora under their own government in what they declared to be their "promised land." During the battle over the land between 1947 and 1949, the IDF expelled three-quarters of the indigenous population. Of the 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who fled, 250,000 took shelter in Gaza, a tiny pocket of southwest Palestine then occupied by the Egyptian army. The destitute and traumatized refugees were three times more numerous than the 80,000 Gazans who took them in.

The United Nations passed but did not enforce annual resolutions calling for the refugees' return. Israel invaded the territory in 1956, withdrew under American pressure in 1957, and invaded again in 1967. As its population grew to nearly 2 million souls packed into a pocket five miles wide and 40 miles long, Gaza has become a byword for misery. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron, no advocate of the Palestinian cause, called it "an open-air prison."
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X

'No end in sight': Israeli forces will continue to 'massacre' Palestinians, professor tells RT


RT
Mon, 14 May 2018 19:00 UTC
Wounded man
© Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / ReutersA wounded Palestinian is evacuated during a protest against the US embassy move to Jerusalem.
The cycle in the Middle East will likely continue with no end in sight, as Palestinians peacefully protest and Israeli forces continue to "massacre" them, retired sociology professor James Petras told RT.

"I think the massacres by Israel will continue, the peaceful protests from Palestinians will continue. I don't see any resolution, unfortunately," said Petras, a retired professor at Binghamton University in New York. He added that he believes "murders by the Israelis are on the increase."

"I think this is a pattern which we will be witnessing in the next period with Trump's increasing bellicosity towards Iran. Who knows how it can end, if not a regional war."

Petras spoke to RT on the day of the US embassy's relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a move which he says is an "absolute violation of international law." He noted that such a stance is supported by the European Union and the major countries in the world.
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Arrow Down

'This is state terror': Foes & allies criticize Israel's heavy handed force in wake of embassy move


RT
Mon, 14 May 2018 18:03 UTC
Protest
© Reuters 28A pro-Palestinian protest in Istanbul on Monday.
Russia, France, and the UK have expressed consternation over the legality of the US Embassy moving to Jerusalem, and Israel's heavy-handed response to the clashes it has provoked, which have reportedly caused over 50 deaths.

"We have publicly criticized the move multiple times," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. "International resolutions declare that the status of Jerusalem - one of the most important issues of the entire peace process - must be resolved in direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also said that Donald Trump's decision, made last December, "violated international law,"but expressed particular alarm at IDF tactics.

"France calls on all actors to show responsibility to prevent a new escalation," Le Drian said in a statement. "France again calls on the Israeli authorities to exercise discernment and restraint in the use of force that must be strictly proportionate."
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Bomb

12 civilians killed, 25 injured in car bomb explosion in Idlib, Syria


Al Bawaba
Sun, 13 May 2018 20:24 UTC
Idlib bomb attack
At least 12 civilians were killed and another 25 injured in Syria's Idlib province from a bomb attack on Saturday, according to the White Helmets Civil Defense.

Mustafa Haj Youssef, director of the White Helmets in Idlib, said that a bomb-laden car exploded in front of a hospital in the city center.

The blast also damaged nearby houses and vehicles, Youssef added.
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Arrow Down

Canadian government sued for subjecting indigenous children to years of medical experimentation

Ashifa Kassa
The Guardian
Fri, 11 May 2018 20:01 UTC
Class-action suit filed on behalf of thousands of people allegedly subjected to medical tests without consent in the mid-20th century

Canadian indigenous medical experiments
© Alberta Provincial ArchivesA teacher with students during the 1960s at the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton, Alta., one of 29 facilities named in a class-action lawsuit.
A class action lawsuit has been filed in a Canadian court on behalf of the thousands of indigenous people alleged to have been unwittingly subjected to medical experiments without their consent.

Filed this month in a courtroom in the province of Saskatchewan, the lawsuit holds the federal government responsible for experiments allegedly carried out on reserves and in residential schools between the 1930s and 1950s.

The suit also accuses the Canadian government of a long history of "discriminatory and inadequate medical care" at Indian hospitals and sanatoriums - key components of a segregated healthcare system that operated across the country from 1945 into the early 1980s.

"This strikes me as so atrocious that there ought to be punitive and exemplary damages awarded, in addition to compensation," said Tony Merchant, whose Merchant Law Group filed the class action.

Comment: The vast scale of experimentation on unwitting populations throughout the world is shocking:

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Bad Guys

Russian Deputy FM: More than 4,000 Russian citizens fighting on side of terrorists in Syria


TASS
Thu, 10 May 2018 19:22 UTC
Terrorists
© Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS

Bringing terrorists to justice is a top priority, a diplomat stresses

More than 4,000 Russian citizens are fighting on the side of the terrorists in Syria and will be criminally prosecuted upon return to Russia, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov in his speech at a counter-terrorism conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

"Russia's law enforcement authorities are currently monitoring more than 4,000 Russian citizens who left the country to participate in armed gangs [in Syria,]" he said.
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Pirates

Israeli snipers shot Palestinian woman after winning Eurovision award for women's rights song

Robert Inlakesh
Al Masdar News
Sun, 13 May 2018 18:49 UTC
Palestinian demonstrators
A Palestinian woman has died in hospital after being shot by an Israeli Sniper near the Gaza border. The woman murdered today is the 53rd peaceful demonstrator to have been killed by Israeli forces since the 30th of March.

Alaa Asad Al Swafari, a 26 year old peaceful demonstrator, was shot by an Israeli Sniper in the East of Gaza today. Alaa was reportedly being treated in a Gaza hospitals intensive care unit before she was later declared dead by the Palestinian Health Ministry.

This murder comes a day after Israel claimed victory in a Eurovision competition, for a song that claimed to advocate for "women's rights".

Comment: See also: Propaganda: Israeli winner adds political jab to Eurovision Song Contest

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