Society's ChildS


Megaphone

Anti-TPP protest begins in San Francisco outside US senator's office

Anti-TPP protester sign
© AFP 2016/ Saul Loeb
The US public should reach out to Congress and urge their representatives to block the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton said during a protest against the trade deal in San Francisco, California on Thursday.

Sutton, who rallied in front of the office of US Senator Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco, argued that the TPP agreement threatens Internet users, extends restrictive intellectual property laws, and rewrites rules on its enforcement, among its other controversial aspects.

"We have to preempt this legislation from getting introduced," Sutton stated. "Please call your representatives... call them every day."

Comment: This needs to be done all across the US to let the government know this free trade agreement will not help the people.


Family

UN censures France for children's rights abuse

2 boys
© www.unhcr.orgAsylum seekers braving the cold at the refugee camp in Calais.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has censured France for failing to stop the corporal punishment of children and ill-treatment of Roma and asylum-seeking minors. The CRC issued non-binding recommendations on Thursday, calling on the government in Paris to work more effectively to halt violence against children. "No violence against children is justifiable," said the CRC after a review of the state of child rights in France, urging the government in Paris "to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in all settings, including in the family, in schools, day cares and in alternative care."

The UN body also said it was "concerned by cases of ill-treatment of children with disabilities in institutions," specifically urging France to ban "packing," a technique in which children with autistic spectrum disorders are wrapped in cold, wet sheets. The CRC said packing amounted to "ill treatment."

The situation of asylum seeking minors was also of high concern for UN officials, with CRC member Hynd Ayoubi Idrissi particularly raising the plight of those living in squalor refugee camps in the northern port city of Calais. Idrissi said what was happening on the ground in the camps was far distant from the policies of the French Interior Ministry.

"More and more children are being placed in administrative waiting zones, in hotels which don't comply with the minimum child protection standards," she said in at a press conference, adding that those children "had difficulty in exercising their right to access health care services."

The CRC report came a day after French authorities evacuated 400 people from the Roma community from their camps on a disused railway line in northern Paris. The move prompted the Council of Europe to express concern over France's "mass expulsion policy."

Comment: The CRC's recommendations are non-binding, therefore able to be ignored or side-stepped until they are ratified. Recommendations or not, the health and welfare of minors should be on top of every country's list of rights and guarantees.


Handcuffs

Leaked Denver police manual reveals 'shadow teams' to target and arrest vocal protesters

Denver riot police
© AP Photo/Thomas PeipertRiot police amass at the Occupy Denver protest in front of the state Capitol building Friday, Oct. 14, 2011.
A leaked police manual reveals how Denver police respond to marches and other forms of protest, including their use of undercover "platoons" of officers to pick out leaders for later arrest.

On Jan. 19, Unicorn Riot, an independent media collective with several members in the state, published a heavily redacted version of the 2011 edition of the "Denver Police Department Crowd Management Manual" obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request. Days later, an anonymous source sent them an unredacted copy of the 2008 edition of the manual. The two editions appear to have few differences and the policies described in both versions match the behavior of police toward protests, according to activists and journalists interviewed by MintPress News.

"This manual has been a tremendous help to our reporting in terms of understanding the police apparatus that is deployed at protests," representatives of Unicorn Riot told MintPress by email.

Eye 2

Virginia Tech students arrested for murder of 13-year-old girl allegedly plotted crime to stop victim from revealing sexual relationship

Nicole Madison Lovell, David E. Eisenhauer, and Natalie Marie Keepers
Suspects on right: David E. Eisenhauer, 18, and Natalie Marie Keepers, 19, face charges in connection to the death of 13-year-old Nicole Madison Lovell (pictured left).
Two engineering majors at Virginia Tech university carefully planned the kidnapping and killing of a 13-year-old girl, buying cleaning supplies and a shovel at separate Wal-Mart stores, and then hiding her body in the trunk of a Lexus, a prosecutor alleged on Thursday.

Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Mary Pettitt described how authorities believe David Eisenhauer and Natalie Keepers plotted the stabbing death of 13-year-old Nicole Lovell, and argued that Keepers 'is in the same position as the person who carried out the murder.'

Pettitt did not suggest a possible motive, or describe the killing itself, but police sources have told CNN that Eisenhauer plotted to kill Lovell because she was 'planning to expose' their sexual relationship.

The police sources claim Eisenhauer had sexual contact with Lovell before she disappeared from her home on January 27, after meeting her on an anonymous messaging app called 'Kik'.

If true, 18-year-old Eisenhauer would have been breaking sexual consent laws in the state.

V

Mass protests block roads in New Zealand as TPP is signed into agreement

TPP protests New Zealand
© FivePoint Five / YouTube
A group of around 1,000 activists protesting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have blocked roads in Auckland, as the participant states' delegations gathered in New Zealand to formally sign the controversial free trade agreement.

The TPP agreement, hailed as the "biggest trade deal in a generation," was signed in a ceremony attended by ministers from the 12 Pacific Rim countries at Auckland's Sky City Casino, to the dislike of hundreds of protesters.

Ahead of the signing, activists gathered on Aotea Square and set out on a march through the streets to SkyCity Auckland, where they were met by dozens of police officers outside the venue. Others staged a sit in at the intersection of Federal and Victoria Street, blocking traffic, to protest a deal that will now take up to two more years to ratify.


USA

Why are Kindergartners being groomed for the military at school?

Militarization children
© Jared Rodriguez / TruthoutMilitary recruitment efforts, whether societal or sponsored directly by the US military, reach children as young as preschool, priming them to think of war and soldiering as cool and exciting, without any discussion of the trauma and death they bring.
When he got home from Iraq, Hart Viges began sorting through his boyhood toys, looking for some he could pass on to his new baby nephew. He found a stash of G.I. Joes - his old favorites - and the memories came flooding back.

"I thought about giving them to him," he said. But the pressures of a year in a war zone had strengthened Viges' Christian faith, and he told the Army that "if I loved my enemy I couldn't see killing them, for any reason." He left as a conscientious objector. As for the G.I. Joes, "I threw them away instead." Viges had grown up playing dress-up with his father's, grandfather's and uncles' old military uniforms. "What we tell small kids has such a huge effect," he told Truthout. "I didn't want to be the one telling him to dream about the military."

Beaker

Iran: Researchers request release of jailed chemist

Rafiee
© Fanood~enwiki/Wikimedia CommonsChemist Mohammad Hossein Rafiee
In early 2014, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's administration was in the middle of intense negotiations with the United States and other nations to limit Iran's nuclear aspirations. Rouhani, considered a moderate reformer, was under attack by his country's hardline conservatives, who opposed a potential deal. Rouhani challenged Iranian intellectuals to come out and publicly support his policies.

"Why is the university silent? Why are the professors silent?" Rouhani said. "What are you afraid of?"

One answer may be that they were afraid of being jailed, suggests Anna Maryam Rafiee, a cultural heritage specialist in Toronto, Canada. Her father, chemist Mohammad Hossein Rafiee, has been stuck in a cell in Iran's notorious Evin Prison since June 2015, after speaking out in favor of the nuclear deal that was announced a month after he was imprisoned.

Now, more than 300 scholars and scientists, including seven Nobel laureates, have signed an open letter calling on Iran to release Rafiee. "Restricting Dr. Rafiee's rights to freedom of expression through arrest and detention, the conditions of his prosecution, and his inhumane conditions in Evin Prison represent violations of both the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the Islamic Republic of Iran adheres," the 27 January letter says. Numerous organizations, including Amnesty International and the American Chemical Society, are also calling for the release of the chemist, and the U.S. government has said he is a political prisoner.

Bullseye

Germany joins the war on cash

euros
It was just two days ago that Bloomberg implored officials to "bring on a cashless future" in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins "dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive."

You probably never thought of your cash that way, but increasingly, authorities and the powers that be seem determined to lay the groundwork for the abolition of what Bloomberg calls "antiquated" physical money.

We've documented the cash ban calls on a number of occasions including, most recently, those that emanated from DNB, Norway's largest bank where executive Trond Bentestuen said that although "there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation, the Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use."

Comment: For more see:


Pistol

Study finds 80% of firearms deaths in developed world happen in US

guns
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by a gun compared to people living in other developed nations around the world. This is according to a new study highlighting the "US has an enormous firearm problem."

The alarming statistics were published in The American Journal of Medicine, as part of a study carried out by researchers from the University of Nevada-Reno and the Harvard School of Public Health. The report was aiming to put America's relationship with firearms into perspective.

However, one thing was immediately clear: "The United States has an enormous firearm problem compared with other high-income countries. Americans are 10 times more likely to die as a result of a firearm compared with residents of these other high-income countries," the study, under taken by Erin Grinshteyn and David Hemenway, stated.

The researchers took data, collected by the World Health Organization in 2010, to compare the US to equally developed countries around the world, such as the UK, Japan and France. The findings proved to be an eye-opener and showed that the US suffers much higher rates of deadly violence, attributable to the considerably higher rate of gun-related murders.

Heart - Black

Former NYPD officer arrested for moonlighting as a pimp

escort on street
© Jorge Dan / Reuters
A former NYPD officer, who was fired for smoking pot, has been arrested for running a prostitution ring. Eduardo Cornejo was under surveillance by the FBI and local police after an anonymous tip accused him of moonlighting as a pimp.

The New York Police Department opened the investigation into Cornejo in May, after they received an anonymous tip that the 11-year veteran of the force was using his personal car to sell at least one young women's sexual services after work, Courthouse News Service reported. The NYPD brought in the FBI in November "when they determined the nature and scope of the case, and that it involved interstate transport," Stephen P. Davis, the department's chief spokesman, told the New York Times.

Cornejo, 33, had at least ten prostitutes working for him, according to court documents. He would drive the prostitutes to motels on Long Island and Staten Island, as well as in New Jersey and the Bronx, often immediately after his shift.


"I believe this pattern of travel activity, which includes numerous afternoon and evening visits to hotels and motels, is consistent with transporting women to engage in prostitution," FBI Special Agent Rocky Van Warden wrote in an affidavit.