Society's ChildS


Heart - Black

Saudis expel 100,000 Ethiopians

Ethiopian deportation
© Agence France-PresseEthiopians have held protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Addis Ababa against the crackdown
Up to 50,000 more citizens to be repatriated after crackdown on migrant workers in the Gulf kingdom.

Ethiopia has repatriated more than 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia following a violent crackdown on migrant workers, Addis Ababa's foreign ministry has said.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said on Thursday that up to 50,000 more citizens were still expected to return.

"Last night arrivals from Saudi reached 100,620," Tedros said in a written statement.

"All citizens that were detained in Riyadh deportation camps are back."

Syringe

70% of Calfornia's doctors expected to boycott Obamacare

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An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange and won't participate, the head of the state's largest medical association said.

"It doesn't surprise me that there's a high rate of nonparticipation," said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association.

Thorp has been a primary care doctor for 38 years in a small town 90 miles north of Sacramento. The CMA represents 38,000 of the roughly 104,000 doctors in California.

"We need some recognition that we're doing a service to the community. But we can't do it for free. And we can't do it at a loss. No other business would do that," he said.

California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country -- 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.

Arrow Up

Food price hikes: Prices for 'essentials' up 11% in UK

Prices are up by 5.6 per cent, with the cost of essential items such as milk and vegetables rising at an even higher rate just weeks before Christmas.
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© zerohedge.com
Food prices are ­rising at more than twice the rate of inflation in a fresh blow to ­struggling households.

The cost of feeding the ­family soared at eight times the rate of the average pay rise - ­meaning ­millions face a bigger battle than ever to put food on the table. Prices at the checkout are up 5.6 per cent, while inflation based on the Consumer Prices Index was at 2.2 per cent in October. The most worrying rise is in essentials such as milk, up by 11 per cent, and vegetables, up 9.4 per cent.

James Foord, of price the comparison website ­mySupermarket tracked the cost of more than 100,000 items at Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Aldi and online retailer Ocado.

He said: "The squeeze on family budgets shows no sign of ending just weeks before Christmas."

And the festive spirit could fall a little flat as a poll by our sister paper The Sunday Mirror also shows the price of popular ­Christmas drinks is up.

Cow

Steak to become 'luxury item' as UK food prices predicted to soar in 2014

beef restaurant
© Getty ImagesPrestige claim that some restaurants are already switching beef for pork to save money and keep a lid on the prices they charge customers
New report forecasts that food prices will rise above inflation next year and for the rest of the decade as growing global demand and climate change hit the industry

Food prices will rise faster than inflation next year and for the rest of the decade, forcing restaurant chains and caterers to cut back on serving "luxuries" such as fillet steak and prawns, it was claimed last night.

Some big name chains are already switching to cheaper cuts of meat - such as pork shoulder - and serving up smaller portions of salmon to keep a lid on cost, according to a report by consultants Prestige Purchasing.

David Read, Prestige chief executive, told the Daily Telegraph that food prices could rise by as much as 6 per cent next year, but at the very least were likely to jump by another 3.8 per cent.

He said Britain was in a new era where food prices would continue to soar because of growing global demand and the effects of climate change on harvest and higher commodity costs.

Comment: Steaks becoming 'luxury items' is not as crazy as it might once have sounded. If we keep seeing the weather extremes we've been seeing around the world of late, and if the climate continues to go haywire in the same manner the geological record shows it has done prior to the rapid onset of ice ages, you can be pretty sure that grocery store shelves will empty in a matter of weeks and massive food shortages will result.

Heck, forget environmental catastrophe. Steaks became non-existent for most Russians when the oligarchs in Wall Street and Russia plundered the country in the early 90s, so global economic collapse would bring about the same result.


Cult

62-year-old Boston Monsignor Arthur Coyle caught in flagrante delicto behind church cemetery with prostitute he paid $40 for oral sex

Monsignor Arthur Coyle
Monsignor Arthur Coyle
Takes sudden leave of absence after prostitution charge

Boston Archdiocese Monsignor Arthur Coyle has taken a leave of absence after being caught with a prostitute - who has a history of narcotic offenses - behind the Holy Trinity Polish Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts.

According to The Boston Herald, Coyle was arrested after offering to pay the sex worker $40 for oral sex.
Coyle, 62, of Lowell was arraigned yesterday in Lowell District Court where his bail was set at $500. He is scheduled to return to court on September 16 for a pretrial conference, Middlesex district attorney spokeswoman Stephanie Guyotte told the press.

A tersely worded statement from the archdiocese yesterday confirmed that Coyle had volunteered to take a leave of absence from his high profile post as episcopal vicar for the Merrimack Region, a post he has held since 2008.

Comment: 'Prayers' just aint gonna cut it. This man is in the high-risk category for being a sexual predator and needs to be kept away from vulnerable people, not providing them with spiritual guidance.


Arrow Up

Biggest-ever exhumation from Peru's long, brutal conflict exposes horrors 3 decades later

Valentin Casa can't shake the recurring nightmares. And this day certainly isn't helping.

The 36-year-old farmer looks on as forensic investigators unearth a pair of finger bones and two copper rings from a mass grave in the village of Huallhua on the eastern steppes of Peru's Andes. The grave contains the long-buried remains of two women and 13 children, and Casa believes the bones and rings belonged to his mother.

As a boy 27 years ago, Casa watched from behind trees as soldiers and their paramilitary allies dismembered and killed his mother and other women and children left behind by fleeing Shining Path rebels. Civilians suspected of backing the rebels were hunted down and killed. Two weeks later, troops and their civilian confederates caught and killed men from Casa's village, including his father, whose throat they slit.

Three decades later, this isolated corner of Peru is witnessing the biggest exhumation to date of victims of the nation's 1980-2000 internal conflict. The worst of its carnage occurred on these hills between the Andes ridge and Amazon jungle.

"Everybody here is traumatized," Casa says as he watches the work underway. "Whoever says he isn't is lying."

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© AP Photo/Rodrigo AbdIn this Nov. 13, 2013 photo, villager Julio Orihuela, 37, points to the mass grave in the village of Huallhua where his mother and sister were buried as forensic anthropologist Joel Tejada unearths their skeletal remains. The exhumation in the district of Chungui, Peru, bringing back traumatic memories for survivors of 1986-87, when soldiers and their paramilitary allies dismembered and killed women and children left behind by fleeing Shining Path rebels.

Comment: Notice how beautifully excised this narrative is of any disturbing truths about the US government's role in blocking any kind of progressive government from coming to power in Peru through CIA-trained paramilitary death squads and massive shipments of arms to the Peruvian military.


V

Fidel Castro's speech the day after the JFK assassination - insightful analysis of U.S. propaganda

Castro
© Associated PressFidel Castro
"The following is the text of a speech/commentary delivered by Fidel Castro on Cuban radio and Tv, Saturday evening, November 23, 1963, one day after the assassination of President Kennedy. The speech gives the reader insight into the immediate analysis of the assassination which a political expert such as Castro was able to make.

This English translation of the speech was released by the Cuban delegation to the United Nations in 1963. It is here reproduced with minor editing of grammar and punctuation."

Excerpted from History Will Not Absolve Us (1996) by Martin Schotz

Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F. Kennedy

November 23rd, 1963

by Fidel Castro

Always, when something very important has happened, national or international, we have thought it desirable to speak
to the people, to express our opinions. And in every such case to express the orientation of the Government, the orientation of our Party, so that each one of us all know the attitude we should adopt in each one of these situations.

It is true that we are somewhat accustomed to various types of unexpected events, important, serious events, because since the victory of the Revolution our country has had to face a series of problems, a series of situations that have prepared the people to carry forward their victorious revolution.

Therefore, because of the events of yesterday in the United States in which the President was murdered, because of the
repercussion these events can have, because of the role that the United States plays in the problems of international policy, because of this, we believe that we should make a specially objective and calm analysis of these events and of their possible consequences.

The government of the United States, the former administration of Eisenhower and the Kennedy administration, did not practice precisely a policy of friendship toward us. The policy of both administrations was characterized by its aggressive, hostile, and implacable spirit toward our country.

Our country was the victim of economic aggressions intended to cause the ruin of our economy and the starvation of our
people; it was the victim of all kinds of attacks that caused bloodshed; hundreds of our compatriots have lost their lives,
defending themselves from attacks of U.S. imperialism, and not only this. The hostility and the aggressiveness of U.S. imperialism toward our country took us to the brink of war which was fortunately avoided, took the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.

And even when we were not facing a situation like the crisis of October, and the time of the invasion of Giron [Bay of Pigs], we were all perfectly aware that if the plots they were planning against our country had been carried through, that is to say, if imperialism had been able to establish a beachhead on our shores, that struggle would have cost our people tens of thousands, and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of lives.

We have been victims of the constant hostility of the United States. And among the rulers and the leading men of the United States, there falls on Kennedy an important responsibility in these events.

Nevertheless, the news of the murder of the President of the United States is serious news and bad news. We should analyze it thoroughly in order to understand it; above all, analyze it serenely and dispassionately, as revolutionaries should analyze these things.

I say it is bad news, leaving aside the human question, in that the sensitivity of man, any man, is affected by an act of this
nature, by a crime, by a murder. I say that leaving these questions aside, I always react and I am sure that this is the
reaction of the immense majority of human beings - we always react with repulsion toward murder and toward crime.

We cannot consider this to be a correct weapon of struggle - no, we cannot consider that. Above all under the conditions in which it happened, because - like all these things - it is always necessary to consider the atmosphere, the things, the
circumstances.

In other settings, under other circumstances, whatever they may be in a normal situation, in a peaceful situation, a deed of this nature is never justifiable. Especially in the middle of a crowd, in the presence of women, all these things, which above all - I say - are the circumstances that lead us to take a condemnatory attitude toward something, even though some deeds of a political nature, some crimes of a political nature, may or may not be justified.

In the circumstances that surrounded the assassination of President Kennedy, we believe it has no justification.

But analyzing the question from the political, objective point of view, I also said it was serious news, bad news.

Che Guevara

Mandela, the man once branded a 'terrorist' by the US

Nelson Mandela
© Getty Images
In 2008 just before his 90th birthday, the United States gave Nelson Mandela a special present, striking him from a decades-old terror watch list and ending what US officials called "a rather embarrassing matter."

By then the anti-apartheid icon had long left behind the jail cells where he was incarcerated for 27 years, and was already enjoying retirement and his status as one of the most revered statesmen of the 20th century after becoming South Africa's first black president.

In past years, US officials have beaten a path to his door in his family village hoping some of his almost saint-like aura would rub off on them.

On Thursday, when Mandela died at age 95, President Barack Obama hailed him as belonging "to the ages" and ordered that flags on US government buildings be flown at half-mast -- a rare tribute to a foreign leader.

Yet decades ago many in America did not share in the adulation of Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC), which had been billed a terrorist organization by both South Africa and the United States. His severest right-wing critics painted him as an unrepentant terrorist and a communist sympathizer.

It was even reported that the CIA had helped engineer Mandela's 1962 arrest when an agent inside the ANC supplied South African security officials with a tip-off to track him down.

Arrow Down

German boy in coma needs faithful dog friend beside him


A 10-year-old German boy has been in a coma since birth and for years has had a trusty and loyal American Staffordshire terrier by his side, guarding over him and giving him love. Now authorities want to take her away from him.

While the boy, Dylan, sometimes opens his eyes, doctors say that he is only partially conscious. He has been in a persistent vegetative state since birth, but that is no problem for the loyal Tascha, she stays right there by his side.

The bad news is that authorities, using the excuse of breed specific legislation, now want to take the dog away from Dylan. They say that she is dangerous. The family is seeking support to keep her and apparently around 213,000 people have signed up for a campaign to keep the dog right where she is.

In the video above you can see images of six-year-old Tascha licking Dylan's hand, resting her head on his arm. But still authorities try to say that she is dangerous.

"When Tascha lies by him, the boy becomes much calmer and his pulse and breathing relax," said his father Eckhard Gerzmehle.

Whistle

24 hours of looting and civil unrest in Córdoba, Argentina

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In the last 24 hours, the province of Córdoba spiraled out of control, with the very fabric of society being torn apart after a sudden absence of law and order sent a portion of the population into a looting frenzy and residents and store owners boarded up windows and doors, grabbed their shotguns and climbed to their roofs, waiting for the inevitable encounter with the enemy.

No, I am not exaggerating. This is what was happening until a few hours ago in an otherwise idyllic province known for its sun, its mountains and fun-loving population. Córdoba was immersed in pervasive social unrest that has left at least two people dead, dozens injured and landed many others in jail. So if you're having trouble understanding why, here's an explanation.