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Showing posts with label Signs Of The Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Signs Of The Times. Show all posts
Woman stabbed at Art Basel Miami, gallery visitors confuse crime for modern art
Published time: 7 Dec, 2015 11:29
A
woman was stabbed at a Miami art gallery after accusing her attacker of
following her around and repeatedly bumping into her. But although the
victim was left bloody and fearing for her life, visitors didn't bat an
eyelid, assuming it was a performance.
The
victim, 33-year-old Shin Seo Young, said the Friday night altercation
at the Miami Beach Convention Center began after she accused her
attacker, 24-year-old college student Siyuan Zhao, of following her
around the Art Basel gallery and bumping into her numerous times.
Following
the short confrontation, Zhao stabbed Young in the shoulder and neck
with an X-Acto knife, according to The Miami Herald.
"I had to kill her and two more," and "I had to watch her bleed!" Zhao said, according to her arrest report. She also confessed to the stabbing during questioning, according to police.
Thomas
Smith said he was unaware that taking bottles and cans left in shopping
carts violated store policy as advocate argues race issues were behind
firing
Walmart: all your trash are belong to us. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Friday 20 November 2015 17.30 EST Last modified on Friday 20 November 2015 17.34 EST
An Albany-area Walmart
employee fired from his job for redeeming $2 worth of cans he collected
while gathering shopping carts in the store’s parking lot has drawn
widespread sympathy and support on social media.
Thomas Smith, 52, told the Albany Times Union
that he was fired in early November for redeeming a total of $5.10
worth of cans and bottles on two occasions, and said he was unaware that
doing so violated store policy.
Support for Smith grew after a story on his termination from the Albany Times Union. A GoFundMe drive for Smith set up by Dounya Hamdan, of Chicago, has nearly reached the $5,000 goal as of Friday afternoon.
A mysterious bright light in the sky has sent Californians into panic - only for it to be explained soon afterwards.
The light was spotted travelling quickly over Orange County and neighbouring areas late on Saturday, leading to fevered speculation online over its origin.
The Orange County sheriff said the light was from a naval test fire made off the California coastline.
Aviation officials had warned of possible US military activity.
Videos posted online show a bright flare rising high, before a wide, bright blue flash emerges in a cone shape. Many videos continue to track the light for several minutes.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said night-time flights to and from Los Angeles International (LAX) would avoid flying over the Pacific Ocean to the west of the airport, the second busiest in the US.
The FAA did not disclose the reason for the change, but indicated that military activity in the area would take place between Friday and Thursday.
Media in California confirmed that the light came from an unarmed Trident missile fired from the USS Kentucky navy submarine.
The platinum-selling singer Josh Groban was one of those who tweeted his shock at the light:
A Trident missile the Navy tested off Los Angeles Saturday night is shown from the Fourth Street bridge over 110 Freeway in Los Angeles. Photographer Preston Newman was on a photo shoot at the time. — Preston Newman Photography, on Instagram at @Newman_Photos
A mysterious light that streaked across San Diego’s night sky Saturday, visible as far away as Nevada and Arizona, was a Trident missile test-fired by the Navy.
Navy Strategic Systems Programs conducted the scheduled Trident II (D5) missile test flight at sea from the Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, in the Pacific Test Range off the coast of Southern California, a Navy spokesman said.
Mystery light over San Diego
Shot by Jim Boydston.
The test was part of a scheduled, on-going system evaluation test, said Cmdr. Ryan Perry with the Navy’s Third Fleet.
Perry said launches are conducted on a frequent, recurring basis to ensure the continued reliability of the system. “Each test activity provides valuable information about our systems, thus contributing to assurance in our capabilities,” he said in a statement.
The missile was not armed and Strategic Systems Programs does not routinely announce missile testing. Information regarding the test launch of such missiles is classified prior to the launch, Perry said.
The test range is a massive area northwest of Los Angeles. The Navy periodically uses the range to test fire Tomahawk and Standard cruise from surface ships and submarines.
Read More Here
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Thermonuclear missile launch near Los Angeles is final sign of World War III on the precipice... US, China and Russia all escalating covert attacks in run up to global war
Sunday, November 08, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) "A mysterious bright light in the sky has sent Californians into panic," reports the BBC. "Videos posted online show a bright flare rising high, before a wide, bright blue flash emerges in a cone shape. Many videos continue to track the light for several minutes."
Last night, Californians immediately leapt to social media to propose their theories of the phenomenon, ranging from a nuclear missile attack to meteors. "Law agencies and news media in San Diego were flooded with calls about 6 p.m. from people reporting everything from a flare to a comet to a nuclear bomb in the western sky," reports the San Diego Union Tribune.
Just a day earlier, the FAA had issued flight restrictions for the Los Angeles International Airport, denying aircraft access to one of the most frequent approach paths for international and domestic travel.
The official explanation is a lie
The "official" explanation of this event -- and remember that "official" explanations are almost always cover stories -- is that the U.S. Navy launched a test missile just because they "routinely" test missiles.
"Media in California confirmed that the light came from an unarmed Trident missile fired from the USS Kentucky navy submarine," reports the BBC. While they call the missile "unarmed," they fail to mention that the Trident missile normally carries a thermonuclear warhead. There's also no way for the media to know whether this missile was really unarmed or not, as the sole source on that question is the U.S. Navy itself.
Apparently the media thinks the public is so incredibly stupid that they'll believe the U.S. Navy has nowhere else to launch a test missile other than right next to Los Angeles. Somehow we're supposed to believe the entire Pacific Ocean won't work for such a test launch, so they have to launch it adjacent to the airport and thereby inconvenience commercial aviation traffic for an entire week.
Obviously, the official cover story is pure bunk. So what's the real story behind this? It all has to do with China and the covert war that's already underway between China, the US and Russia.
China's military submarines are a huge threat to U.S. national security
To get up to speed on what's really happening, read this report from the Congressional Research Service (PDF) found at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf
Authored by Ronald O'Rourke, Specialist in Naval Affairs, and just released on Sep. 21, 2015, the report is entitled, "China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities."
The report states:
China is building a modern and regionally powerful navy with a limited but growing capability for conducting operations beyond China’s near-seas region. Observers of Chinese and U.S. military forces view China’s improving naval capabilities as posing a potential challenge in the Western Pacific to the U.S. Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain control of blue-water ocean areas in wartime -- the first such challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War.
China’s naval modernization effort encompasses a broad array of platform and weapon acquisition programs, including anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), submarines, surface ships, aircraft, and supporting C4ISR (command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems.
The most important section of this report, in my assessment, is this description of China's ship-killing ballistic missiles:
China is fielding an ASBM, referred to as the DF-21D, that is a theater-range ballistic missile equipped with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) designed to hit moving ships at sea. DOD states that China continues to field an ASBM based on a variant of the CSS-5 (DF-21) MRBM that it began deploying in 2010. This missile provides the PLA the capability to attack aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. The CSS-5 Mod 5 has a range exceeding 1,500 km [about 810 nm] and is armed with a maneuverable warhead.
China, in other words, has weapons capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships. The 1,500 km range is key because it allows a very wide operational range.
Just recently in August, the Chinese and Russians held their largest naval joint exercise in history as a way to "counter U.S. influence in Asia." As reported by Collapse.news:
The Russian and Chinese navies are set to hold their largest joint exercises ever, featuring scores of warships, hundreds of troops and an amphibious landing, in what appears to be a deepening of ties meant to counter a rising U.S. military presence in Asia.
In September, Chinese warships were spotted operating near the coast of Alaska. This was reported across the mainstream media, including in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled, "Five Chinese Navy Ships Are Operating in Bering Sea off Alaska."
Fox News also covered the same story: "5 Chinese warships spotted off Alaska coast during President Obama's visit."
In response to that territorial provocation, the U.S. Navy sent the USS Lassen destroyer to within 12 nautical miles of China's newly-constructed military bases in the Spratly Islands.
China's communist government openly condemned the act as a provocation of war. From the Straits Times:
China claims most of the South China Sea and on Oct 9 its Foreign Ministry warned that Beijing would "never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight."
Secret space weapon attacks on China's industrial infrastructure
This is all on top of the Pentagon's secret space weapon attacks on China's industrial infrastructure.
As I wrote on August 17 of this year, Natural News was informed by mainland Chinese dissidents that they believe the string of mysterious industrial explosions such as the massive Tianjin explosion was caused by kinetic strikes from orbital platform weapons operated by the United States.
China then retaliated by covertly destroying a U.S. weapons depot in Tokyo, using old-school sabotage techniques. Two additional industrial explosions in China soon followed.
Taiwan surrenders to China with insane "One China" admission by President Ma
China's war of aggression is also in high gear on the geopolitical side, with China pressuring Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to publicly state yesterday that Taiwan is now part of China!
A massive cultural backlash in Taiwan is now surging, as most of the country's citizens do not want to be part of communist China. Taiwan's DPP party is rapidly rising to prominence on the platform of Taiwan as a sovereign nation, but China remains in an aggressive military stance, always threatening Taiwan with an armed invasion if Taiwan attempts to "secede" from China. (Taiwan's GMT party, which is a "pro-China" party, has been plagued by an endless stream of scandals and corruption.)
From Channel News Asia: "Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou emphasised the island must continue to uphold the 1992 Consensus with China’s Communist Party in order to promote cross-strait relations and development, as he marked the 22nd anniversary of the historic talks between Taipei and Beijing in Singapore."
Taiwan is a critical strategic island for U.S. influence over the Pacific naval theater of operations. Taiwan's airports and military basis provide key strategic locations for staging U.S. aircraft and even bombers if conflict breaks out with China.
As you ponder all this, keep in mind that Taiwan's media giants have all been infiltrated and taken over by communist China. The Taiwan media is now China's state-run media. Only small, independent websites can be trusted to report the truth.
The Trident missile launch near Los Angeles was a warning shot against China in a last-ditch effort to prevent all-out war
The upshot of all this is that the U.S. and China have been engaged in a covert war for quite some time, and that covert war has escalated month by month, even as the official state-run news organizations of both nations have denied any war is happening at all.
Last night's test launch of the Trident missile over Orange County was staged near a high population area for a tactical reason: To have as many witnesses (and videos) as possible, sending a very visible warning message to China that says, "We can destroy you if you don't back off."
The Trident missile, built by Lockheed Martin, is a thermonuclear missile system (Fleet Ballistic Missile) with a range of at least 4,000 nautical miles. See the Trident missile page on the U.S. Navy website. Just one Trident missile launched from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean could devastate China with a nuclear strike on Beijing.
The U.S. Navy's "showcasing" of the Trident missile near Los Angeles is a $31 million billboard that tells China, "Don't f--k with us."
Nobody in the mainstream media is report this; probably because, with a few exceptions, they are mostly clueless, brain-dead propagandists who know nothing about international geopolitics and the real state of conflict in our world. Also, they are ordered what to write by the U.S. government regime in exactly the same way China's "journalists" are ordered what to write by the Chinese regime.
Right now, the United States and China are in an undeclared state of war. China stands ready to strike the USA with nuclear warheads or high altitude EMP weapons that would destroy the U.S. power grid and cause 90% casualties across the unprepared population. Legendary American journalist Ted Koppel has even written a book about this entitled Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.
China and Russia preparing massive first strike against America
Many people believe that China and Russia are working together to prepare for a massive first strike against the United States that would cripple its defenses and economy. Following that first strike, a land invasion would commence using Russian troops.
Supporting this theory, Russian submarines have been spotted near undersea internet cables in an obvious effort to document their whereabouts so that the cables can be instantly severed, unleashing a devastating blow to the U.S. economy, Wall Street and even military communications. "Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of conflict," reports WND.com. " In times of tension or conflict, the ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent."
At the same time a new Russian "drone sub" has been created that can strike U.S. coastal cities and harbors with nuclear weapons. Writing on NationalSecurity.news, Jon Dougherty states, "According to officials, the developmental unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, when it is deployed, will be outfitted with megaton-class nuclear warheads that can destroy key ports used by U.S. nuclear-armed and powered submarines like Kings Bay, Georgia, and Puget Sound in Washington state."
The ultimate pre-emptive strike on America: EMP attack, cyber attack, currency wars and bandwidth blackouts
If you put the pieces of the puzzle together, what's really shaping up here is a massive, multi-layered pre-emptive strike against America, an empire seen by the rest of the world as an insane bully that meddles with everything on the international stage. This first strike, combining the forces and expertise of both China and Russia, may consist of:
• High-altitude EMP detonation over North America, destroying regional power grids.
• A devastating currency war initiated by China announcing its own gold-backed currency while dumping U.S. Treasury debt on the open market.
• A Russian-led severing of undersea fiber optic cables.
• Russian-launched nuclear missiles targeting U.S. coastal cities.
• China-led assault on U.S. Navy warships using anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).
• A cyber warfare attack on key U.S. infrastructure, including water delivery systems, nuclear power plants and the power grid.
As all this is going on, the Obama administration -- a treasonous regime of criminals who have seized control of the U.S. government in an effort to destroy America from within -- has been firing all the top military commanders who know how to survive such an assault. Instead of America's military focusing on how to win wars, troops are now subjected to sensitivity training and the politically correct push for female troops on the front lines.
This is not fiction. Even the U.S. White House is now openly preparing for a massive EMP attack launched by China.
Dave Hodges also reports in this article about World War III:
Congress has now heard testimony that the United States is not ready for World War III while Russia is chomping at the bit to “get it on”. Further Congress has learned that Obama has been once again been badly outmaneuvered by Putin, the master chess player... the Chinese and the Russians are going to kick America’s rear end in the upcoming war.
Very disturbingly, there is a growing awareness, among Congress, that the United States cannot win World War III. There was only discussion, in these congressional meetings, as to whether, or not, the U.S. could prevail in World War III, not win the conflict.
To stay up to speed on all these events and how you might survive them, I strongly urge you to pay attention to the following websites:
TalkNetwork.com - the new talk radio network where I will be discussing this Trident missile launch during tomorrow's show. It airs at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern.
NationalSecurity.newsBugout.newsAlternativeNews.comSpace.newsCyberwar.newsCollapse.newsTreason.newsFETCH.newsstevequayle.comallnewspipeline.comthecommonsenseshow.com
Listen to my 4-part broadcast series on this entire story:
The NaturalNews Network is a non-profit collection of public education websites covering topics that empower individuals to make positive changes in their health, environmental sensitivity, consumer choices and informed skepticism. The NaturalNews Network is owned and operated by Truth Publishing International, Ltd., a Taiwan corporation. It is not recognized as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the United States, but it operates without a profit incentive, and its key writer, Mike Adams, receives absolutely no payment for his time, articles or books other than reimbursement for items purchased in order to conduct product reviews.
The vast majority of our content is freely given away at no charge. We offer thousands of articles and dozens of downloadable reports and guides (like the Honest Food Guide) that are designed to educate and empower individuals, families and communities so that they may experience improved health, awareness and life fulfillment.
Darren
Paden was sentenced to 50 years in prison Friday after pleading guilty
in August to two counts of first-degree statutory sodomy
A child sex abuse victim says she’s been denied housing after accusing a “good man” of molesting her for years — and Missouri prosecutors are mystified that so many community members are supporting the admitted sex offender. Darren
Paden was sentenced to 50 year
s in prison Friday after pleading guilty
in August to two counts of first-degree statutory sodomy — but friends,
family members, church elders and community leaders begged a judge to go
easy on him.
Prosecutors said the 52-year-old Paden sexually
abused the girl up to 300 times over a decade, beginning before she was 5
years old. His 28-year-old son, Anthony Paden, was also charged with
sex abuse, although his case remains pending.
But community
members have turned their backs on the girl, who is now 18 years old and
testified against her abuser in court, and rallied around Paden.
“There
are certainly a few good people in this community who have offered
support to this young victim,” said Platte County Prosecuting Attorney
Eric Zahnd. “It is shocking, however, that many continue to support a
defendant whose guilt was never in doubt. If it takes a village to raise
a child, what is a child to do when the village turns its back and
supports a confessed child molester?”
All
passengers on the Russian flight from Egypt died when the plane crashed
in the Sinai peninsula Saturday, the Russian embassy said in a
statement
Egypt PM Sherif Ismail (R) at the site of the wreckage of a crashed Russian airliner in HassanaImage Credit: AFP
Emergency workers unload bodies of victims from the crash of a Russian aircraft from a police helicopter.Image Credit: AP
Relatives react at Pulkovo international airport outside Saint Petersburg after a Russian plane with 224 peoplImage Credit: AFP
Relatives react after a Russian airliner crashed, as people gather at an information desk in Russia.Image Credit: AP
Paris:
Air France and Lufthansa said Saturday they will stop flying over
Egypt's Sinai peninsula after a Russian passenger plane went down in the
area with the loss of all 224 people on board.
The airlines said they were taking the measure as a precaution while the cause of the Russian crash was investigated.
The
Daesh affiliate in Egypt has said it downed the plane, without saying
how, but Russia's transport minister said the claim "cannot be
considered accurate" and an Egyptian security official said the plane
did not crash because of an attack.
An Air France spokesperson
told AFP they would not fly over Sinai until further notice, "as a
precaution" while "clarification" was sought over why the Russian
charter plane crashed.
Lufthansa told the German newspaper Die Welt it was taking the same measure for the same reason.
Military
experts have told AFP that Daesh terrorists in Sinai do not have
weapons capable of hitting an aircraft at 30,000 feet (9,000 metres),
the altitude of the airliner when it lost contact.
But they have
not ruled out a bomb on board or the possibility that the plane was hit
by a rocket as it descended because of technical problems.
A
senior Egyptian air traffic control official said the pilot of the
Airbus A321 told him in their last communication that he had radio
trouble.
Moscow, Cairo refute Daesh claim on downing Russian plane
Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:43PM
Egypt's
Prime Minister Sherif Ismail looks at the remains of a Russian airliner
after it crashed in central Sinai near El Arish city, north Egypt,
October 31, 2015. (Reuters Photo)
Moscow and
Cairo have denied claims by the Daesh Takfiri group's Egyptian
affiliate to have downed a Russian aircraft that crashed in North Sinai
with more than 200 passengers on board.
“Now in various
media there is assorted information that the Russian passenger
(plane)... was supposedly shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, fired
by terrorists. This information can’t be considered accurate,” Russian
Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said on Saturday.
“We are in
close contact with our Egyptian colleagues and aviation authorities in
the country. At present, they have no information that would confirm
such insinuations,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mohamed Samir, Egypt’s
army spokesman, also refuted the claim by the Takfiri group, saying that
“the army sees no authenticity” to the terrorists claims or videos.
“They
can put out whatever statements they want but there is no proof at this
point that terrorists were responsible for this plane crash” he said.
“We
will know the true reasons when the civil aviation authority in
coordination with Russian authorities completes its investigation,” he
added.
An
Egyptian soldier and rescue crew transfer the body of a victim of a
plane crash, from a civil police helicopter to an ambulance at Kabrit
airport in Suez, east of Cairo, Egypt, October 31, 2015. (Photo by
Reuters)
Terrorists, non-state actors had no capacity to down Russian plane, security & aviation experts say
Published time: 1 Nov, 2015 01:34
84175
While
the investigation into the causes of the Russian passenger jet crash
over the Sinai Peninsula continues, civil aviation and security experts
agree that theories that the plane was downed by a militant group can be
ruled out, despite terrorists making such claims.
All
224 people on board the Kolavia airline’s flight from resort area Sharm
El-Sheikh to Russia’s St. Petersburg died after the aircraft crashed in
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Saturday. Experts are still decoding the
flight recorders, and the Russian Air Transport Agency has said that
there is no point in hypothesizing about the cause of the crash until
there is reliable data on the circumstances.
While
Islamic State jihadist group allegedly claimed responsibility for the
attack, saying it downed the Airbus A321 as retaliation for Russia’s
airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria, aviation and security
experts believe it to be highly unlikely.
“As far as it’s
known, Islamic State and its affiliate groups don’t have the capability
to bring down aircraft flying at the height that this aircraft
reportedly was, which is something around 10,000 meters,” security analyst and former UK counter-terrorism officer Charles Shoebridge told RT.
While cases of malnutrition doubled in the four years to 2014, there
has been a rise in diseases that were rife in the Victorian era such as
scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough Corbis
Cases
of malnutrition and other “Victorian” diseases are soaring in England,
in what campaigners said was a result of cuts to social services and
rising food poverty.
NHS statistics show that 7,366 people were
admitted to hospital with a primary or secondary diagnosis of
malnutrition between August 2014 and July this year, compared with 4,883
cases in the same period from 2010 to 2011 – a rise of more than 50 per
cent in just four years.
Cases of other diseases rife in the
Victorian era including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping
cough have also increased since 2010, although cases of TB, measles,
typhoid and rickets have fallen.
Chris Mould, chairman of the
Trussell Trust, which runs a nationwide network of foodbanks, said they
saw “tens of thousands of people who have been going hungry, missing
meals and cutting back on the quality of the food they buy”.
The shocking impact of recession and austerity on England’s poorest
people has come to light again in figures showing the number of
malnutrition cases treated at NHS hospitals has nearly doubled since the
economic downturn Rex
The
shocking impact of recession and austerity on England’s poorest people
has come to light again in figures showing the number of malnutrition
cases treated at NHS hospitals has nearly doubled since the economic
downturn.
Primary and secondary diagnoses of malnutrition – caused
by lack of food or very poor diet – rose from 3,161 in 2008/09 to 5,499
last year, according to figures released by the health minister Norman
Lamb.
While the data does not include information on the
circumstances of each diagnosis, the rise coincides with a dramatic
increase in the cost of living, and a spike in demand for charity food
hand-outs.
The figures, broken down by region, reveal the heaviest
burden of hunger is being felt in rural areas. Hospitals in Somerset
saw the most cases, with 215 diagnoses, followed by Cornwall and Scilly
Isles.
We
just learned America’s rental affordability crisis is as bad as it’s
ever been. Unfortunately, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
The American Community Survey for 2014,
released a few weeks ago, found that the number of renters paying 30
percent or more of their income on housing – the standard benchmark for
what’s considered affordable – reached a new record high of 20.7 million
households, up nearly a half-million from the year before. Despite the
improving economy, the increase was nearly five times bigger than last
year’s gain.
That means about half of all renters live in housing
considered unaffordable. And the latest increase comes on top of
substantial growth since 2000 that has seen this number climb by roughly
six million households over the period, an increase of about 41
percent.
About
a year ago, I was having lunch with a friend when I made a throwaway
comment: “Have you seen the rent in San Francisco? If I get a job in the
Bay Area, I’ll totally live in a van.”
As I
sit in darkness writing this, I’m trying to keep my typing quiet, lest a
real inhabitant of the neighborhood I’m parked in should walk by and
wonder about the sounds coming from the rusty bus loitering on their
block. Yes, you understood that correctly: Today, I work in a
multi-million dollar office complex, and I live in a van.
This
summer, after receiving a job offer in Silicon Valley, I went on
Craigslist and began sifting through housing listings: “verrrrrryyy
cheap bedroom ;),” “great deal on rent!” A single room with a shared
bathroom? Two thousand per month on the low-end. A small studio
apartment, you ask? If your startup wasn’t recently bought for seven
figures, forget about it.
I perked up after
finding a listing for $1,000 per month. Now this could work. Clicking
through to the details section however revealed the offer was for a
single bunk in a room with eight people, a set-up referred to as a
“hacker house” by an (evil) marketing genius.
Even
if I was to spend the huge majority of my salary on rent, I knew I
would likely still be in a grim living situation, resenting every penny I
handed over that could have gone towards paying back my student loans.
And as a software engineer, I’m one of the lucky ones! Imagine those who
aren’t lucky enough to be on the tech payroll.
Anyway,
three weeks ago I took the equivalent of three months’ rent and bought
an old red bus. It’s a 1969 VW camper van with a hole in the floor and a
family of spiders that has more of a right to be here than I do
(sleeping in your car on public land in California is illegal).
(Katharine Patterson/blog.thinkkappi.com)
But with the help of Ikea and an army of cleaning supplies I was able to get the bus into livable condition.
Boris
Franklin in a classroom at Rutgers. When he was in prison, he was a
student under the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in
Prisons Consortium (NJ-STEP), and he is now attending Rutgers under the
university’s Mountainview Program. (Michael Nigro)
The defeat of the Harvard University debate team by a team from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility
in the Catskills elucidates a truth known intimately by those of us who
teach in prisons: that the failure of the American educational system
to offer opportunities to the poor and the government’s abandonment of
families and children living in blighted communities condemn millions of
boys and girls, often of color, to a life of suffering, misery and
early death. The income inequality, the trillions of dollars we divert
to the war industry, the flight of manufacturing jobs overseas and the
refusal to invest in our infrastructure wrecks life after innocent life.
I
spent four years as a graduate student at Harvard University.
Privilege, and especially white privilege, I discovered, is the primary
prerequisite for attending an Ivy League university. I have also spent
several years teaching in prisons. In class after class in prison, there
is a core of students who could excel at Harvard. This is not
hyperbolic, as the defeat of the Harvard debate team illustrates.
But
poverty condemned my students before they ever entered school. And as
poverty expands,
inflicting on communities and families a host of
maladies including crime, addiction, rage, despair and hopelessness, the
few remaining institutions that might intervene to lift the poor up are
gutted or closed. Even when students in inner-city schools are not the
targets of racial insults, racism worms into their lives because the
institutions that should help them are nonexistent or deeply
dysfunctional.
I stood outside a prison gate in Newark, N.J., at 7
a.m. last April 24. I waited for the release of one of my students,
Boris Franklin, who had spent 11 years incarcerated. I had ridden to the
gate with his mother, who spent her time reading Bible verses out loud
in the car, and his sister. We watched him walk down the road toward us.
He was wearing the baggy gray sweatpants, oversize white T-shirt and
white Reeboks that prisoners purchase before their release. Franklin had
laid out $50 for his new clothes. A prisoner in New Jersey earns $28 a
month working in prison.
I’d
just read his book recently, as he’d sent us advanced copies. My better
half (also an author and holistic doctor) and I were just shocked when
we found out Mitch “killed himself” outside on his property. It didn’t
add up.
Many of his colleagues patients and close friends ,who wrote me daily, didn’t buy into his alleged suicide either.
The details are scarce on the passing of Dr. Marie Paas, but there are several posts about her death on her Facebook page and many who knew her are writing me saying that it was an alleged suicide.
Comments on her page would indicate this as well.
Her website appears to be down as well, though there is a basic front page, but this page has some telling info.
The
French animal rights group, Cause Animal Nord, has come under fire
after a video emerged of the activists taking away a puppy from a crying
homeless man in central Paris.
The
video shows the man fighting for his dog, but eventually losing out as
three members of the group, including the organization’s president,
seized the puppy and ran away. The homeless man was left in tears.
The
cruel act has been condemned by the media and internet users. A number
took to social networks to express their disgust, while others left
highly critical messages on the organization’s Facebook page.
David
Stojcevski, a 32-year-old resident of Roseville, Michigan, was arrested
for failing to pay a $772 fine stemming from careless driving. A court
ordered him to spend a month in the Macomb County jail.
Over the
next 17 days of his incarceration in a brightly lit cell—where he was
denied clothing—he lost 50 pounds, suffered convulsions, and eventually
began to hallucinate. He died in agony, from a combination of obvious,
untreated drug withdrawal and galling neglect.
Making matters
worse (if anything could be worse than that), the entirety of his demise
was captured on jail surveillance footage. Indeed, Stojcevski was under
self-harm watch—stemming for a profound misdiagnosis of his condition,
which was drug addiction, not mental instability—and jail officials were
supposed to be watching him constantly. Either their vigilance was
inadequate, or they watched and simply didn’t care.
WDIV's report on the story
is a must-see, though it’s highly disturbing: the video shows clips
from the jail footage while a medical expert offers commentary on the
inhumanity of Stojcevski’s treatment.
The "water lady" is a local hero in this area of the Navajo Nation.
Cameron KeadyAssociate Editor, Good News, The Huffington Post
Posted: 09/08/2015 11:08 AM EDT
The "water lady's" big yellow truck is a refreshing sight at the Navajo Nation.
Darlene Arviso, known as "the water lady," delivers water five days a week to communities without plumbing and clean water on the Navajo reservation surrounding Thoreau, New Mexico, Navajo Times reported. She totes over 3,000 gallons of water in her truck, traveling 75 miles and visiting about a dozen families every day.
“I enjoy my job,” Arviso told the news site. “I like what I’m doing because I’m helping my people.”
