A judge threw a 17-year-old 11th grade honor student from Willis High School in jail after she missed school again.
Judge Lanny Moriarty said last month Diane Tran was in his Justice of the Peace court for truancy and he warned her then to stop missing school. But she recently missed classes again so Wednesday he issued a summons and had her arrested in open court when she appeared.
Tran said she works a full-time job, a part-time job and takes advanced placement and dual credit college level courses. She said she is often too exhausted to wake up in time for school. Sometimes she misses the entire day, she said. Sometimes she arrives after attendance has been taken.
The judge ordered Tran to spend 24 hours in jail and pay a $100 fine. Judge Moriarty admitted that he wants to make an example of Tran.
“If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em? Let them go too?” Judge Moriarty asked.
Tran said she is working so hard because she is helping to support an older brother who attends Texas A&M University and a baby sister who lives with relatives in Houston. Tran said her parents divorced “out of the blue” and both moved away, leaving her in Willis. Her mother lives in Georgia, she said.
“I always thought our family was happy,” the teen said tearfully.
Tran lives with the family of one of her employers. They own a wedding venue. She works at the Vineyard of Waverly Manor on weekends and at a dry cleaners full time.
“She goes from job to job, from school she stays up ‘til 7 o’clock in the morning,” said her friend, co-worker and classmate Devin Hill.
The judgment in WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange’s final appeal against extradition to Sweden will be published by the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday 30 May.
If Assange loses he will be sent to Sweden by force within 10 days. From Sweden, he could be sent immediately to the US where he faces prosecution for publishing information just like any other journalist. Even if he wins the appeal, the US will likely seek to extradite him from the UK or Australia.
Assange has been under house arrest in the UK for over 530 days, a situation which Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, has admitted is “extraordinary”. And Foreign Minister Carr has called aspects of the Swedish justice system “an outrage by Australian standards”. But they have done nothing to assist Assange.
Instead, our Prime Minister Julia Gillard labelled Assange a criminal and her government has been quietly passing legislation which will potentially make it easier for Assange to be extradited to the US, should he ever return to Australia. They have denied all knowledge of the sealed indictment against Assange and continue to block FOI requests for information relating to documents relating to potential US extradition, reportedly at the behest of the US government.
WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange remains the target of a US government criminal investigation and the subject of US-Australian intelligence exchanges, Australian diplomatic cables obtained by the Herald reveal.
Australian diplomats have closely monitored the US Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks over the past 18 months. The embassy in Washington reported ”a broad range of possible charges are under consideration, including espionage and conspiracy”.
The diplomats dismiss Mr Assange’s claims that the US investigation is politically motivated retribution for WikiLeaks’ publication of leaked US military and diplomatic reports. They instead highlight US prosecutors’ claims that the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning, dealt directly with Mr Assange and ”data-mined” secret US databases ”guided by WikiLeaks’ list of ‘most wanted’ leaks”.
Mr Assange will learn on Wednesday the British Supreme Court’s decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden to be questioned about sexual assault allegations. Mr Assange, who has not been charged with any offence, fears extradition to Stockholm will facilitate his ultimate extradition to the US.
Despite extensive redactions, the Australian diplomatic cables released under freedom of information show the US and Australian governments continued high-level exchanges on WikiLeaks last year.
The Australian embassy in Washington provided Canberra with regular updates, including reporting on Justice Department efforts aimed at ”casting the net beyond Assange to see if any intermediaries had been involved in communications between Assange and Manning”.
An embassy representative attended all seven days of Private Manning’s pre-court martial hearing for last December. Much of the embassy’s reporting has been redacted on grounds that its release would damage Australia’s diplomatic relations.
There have been continuing US-Australian intelligence exchanges on WikiLeaks. Two embassy cables were withheld from release as ”intelligence agency documents” that are exempt from FOI legislation. The chairman of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, Labor MP Anthony Byrne, also held discussions with senior US intelligence in January last year, covering a range of topics that included ”cyber security, particularly in light of the recent breaches of diplomatic cables from the US (WikiLeaks) and dissemination of sensitive information by the international media”.
Good.is and Column Five have put together a very detailed and creative infographic that reports the quest to plug WikiLeaks. Click the image to enlarge.
Green Berets and U.S. intelligence personnel have bolstered the manhunt in central Africa that is reportedly gaining ground on despot Joseph Kony’s rebel group, accused of abducting and conscripting children and killing more than 1,000 civilians since 2009.
Living among four African militaries in the bush, 100 U.S. special operations troops — mostly Special Forces A teams — are advising military leaders, sharing critical intelligence through “fusion centers” and coordinating combat operations to protect locals and target the Lord’s Resistance Army.
With U.S. backing, Ugandan forces captured one of Kony’s top commanders, a chief LRA strategist, Caesar Acellam, after a brief clash in Kampala on May 12. Army officials would not say whether U.S. intelligence led to the arrest. But the soldiers brought new capabilities — including enhanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — to the hunt for Kony.
The U.S. task force also supports armies from the Central African Republic, Republic of South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which have been ravaged by the LRA.
President Obama announced the U.S. would deploy special operations troops to Africa last October.
Congress has authorized $35 million for counter-LRA ops in central Africa. The LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act was signed into law in May 2010.
The U.S. forces were selected based on their regional knowledge, experience, judgment and competence, Maj. James Scott Rawlinson, a spokesman for Special Operations Command Africa, wrote in an email.
The downrange operators also coordinate with U.S. embassies to integrate operations into broader U.S. government efforts, Rawlinson said.
The troops are stationed in:
Obo, Central African Republic;
Dungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo;
Nzara, South Sudan;
Entebbe and Kampala, Uganda,
but can travel central Africa by air or ground “as the situation dictates,” he said.
Maurice Carney: A U.S.-based unit has been selected as the Army’s first “regionally aligned” brigade, and by next year its soldiers could begin conducting operations in Africa.
less stability, more violence for the democratic republic of congo – the world’s favorite slaughterhouse
The displacement of 20,000 Congolese people following violence between rebels and the army is ominously redolent of the 2008 conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Former fighters of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) mutinied in April, having been integrated into the army in March 2009. They have since moved from the old CNDP heartland of Masisi towards the borders with Rwanda and Uganda, driving a wave of terrified people ahead of them. Officials estimate that more than 40,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, with more than 8,000 heading for Rwanda.
“We’re fleeing fighting between the ex-CNDP militia and the army,” said Nzabandora, who did not give his last name, as he paused for a break on his walk
Congolese refugees from north Kivu arrive at Nkamira transit camp, Rubavu district, near the border town of Gisenyi in Rwanda. Photograph: Dai Kurokawa/EPA
from Kibumba to Goma last week. Kibumba was attacked by the rebels on 8 May; Nzabandora had pushed an improvised wooden bicycle, weighed down with his belongings, more than 10km. There was still another 15km to go. “We saw lots of [national] army soldiers and fled,” he said. “The soldiers were moving towards the positions of the ex-CNDP, so we left.”
Thousands of Kibumba residents made the same journey, not knowing where they would end up. “I don’t even have a destination,” said Nzabandora. “We will walk towards Goma, and hope to find somewhere to sleep. Maybe a church, or a school. We are simply fleeing for our lives – we have no hope for the future at the moment.”
There was little support waiting for the fleeing population at Goma. Juvenal Sabonepa headed with his wife and children to Goma, even though he has no family or friends there. He had hoped for aid, but found nothing. “No NGOs have come, there is no food, no drinking water, no healthcare,” he said. “We have to work together to look after ourselves, but we have nothing to give our children.”
In the absence of support from NGOs or agencies, the community in Goma has come to the aid of the displaced population. Sabonepa and his family were welcomed into the home of Alphonse Katabera, who lives on Goma’s outskirts. “This is my house, we welcomed these people in,” said Katabera. “As you can see, there is nowhere else for them to go. The communities look after each other, we support each other. I have shared my house, my food, my drinking water with them. We are happy to welcome them.”
The hunt for Kony burst into worldwide view in March after a half-hour video about his atrocities went viral
President Obama sent the soldiers last fall to advise Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan on efforts to disarm Kony and his brutal band.
After limiting the initial deployment to several months, the president later extended the troops’ tour of duty. “Our advisors will continue their efforts to bring this madman to justice, and to save lives,” Obama told an audience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in April.
Though Kony continues to evade international forces, the manhunt may be pressuring the rebel leader. In May, Ugandan troops, with American military support, captured Caesar Achellam, a top Kony lieutenant.
“The last 11 weeks have been the most intense period of global engagement in the history of the LRA conflict,” Invisible Children, the group behind the “Kony 2012″ video tweeted Thursday.
The American military response represents one of a series of measures to rid central Africa of Kony and his followers
Fighters in the country’s east hope a joint force would put up stiff resistance against government troops.
Armed fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo are considering joining forces to fight the government. They are soldiers who defected from the military.
Already, the army is battling a rebel group called M23.
Nazanine Moshiri has this exclusive report from Lubero district in North Kivu.
It’s March, and the Internet delivers 2012′s first globe-consuming meme: the unstoppable, Stop-Kony 2012 video, which has highlighted the plight of African child soldiering like never before. But is it really good? Is it really bad? Or is the world really more complex than ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’? Whatevers; one thing’s for sure, this is momentous: never had a 27-minute video devoid of both cats and boobs ever achieved such virality. Is this a demonstration of the internet’s ability to instantly inform and engage tens of millions; and a hopeful sign that there is a willingness among those millions, to engage passionately with something more meaningful? Or does Kony2012 just mark the dawn of a rapacious new era of viral humanitarian marketing? Join your charitable host Robert Foster – and our special guest, General Baxter, direct from AFRICOM – as we delve into the dark heart of the matter.
CBS4 has confirmed, along with news partner The Miami Herald, the identity of the man whose face was laid bare by the cannibal attack of Rudy Eugene on the MacArthur Causeway Saturday afternoon.
Even before he was apparently attacked by a cannibal as holiday weekend travelers whizzed by along the MacArthur Causeway; Ronald Poppo lived a hard-knock life among the homeless men who call the space under the causeway home.
Poppo has not been officially identified by police or by officials at Jackson Memorial Hospital, but his identity has been confirmed by a CBS4 source and by Miami Herald sources.
His past shows time in New York City, and back in the 80′s, in New Orleans; but a long record of arrests for mostly petty crimes places him in the Miami area, at least off and on, as far back as 1978 when he was charged with criminal mischief.
Over the years, he dipped in and out of the courts for the types of crimes that are common when you don’t have a place to live.
In 1983, he was charged with sleeping in public. In 1989, it was violating park hours. Disorderly conduct, assault, petty larceny, and burglary all brought him into court, and then, sent him back to the street.
The crime shocked South Florida and has drawn the attention of the world. A naked man is shot by Miami Police while eating another naked man’s face on the MacArthur Causeway.
As the story quickly went viral across the Internet, some have likened the attack to one by a zombie. Details of the unthinkable attack included police reporting that when they ordered the cannibal to stop, he looked up with blood on his face and growled at officers.
Click here for the original story about the cannibalistic attack.
The suspected cannibal has been identified by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s officer as 31-year-old Rudy Eugene. Eugene may have been homeless at the time of the attack, his last known address was in North Miami.
After taping John Stossel’s show on May 15 in New York, the Mrs. and I took the 10 a.m. Acela back to Washington. Once we had boarded the train, who should come waddling up the aisle but Bill Kristol.
The Weekly Standard editor seemed cheerful, and we chatted about the surge in Mitt Romney’s popularity and prospects.
I did not ask what he had been doing in New York, but thanks to the website Mondoweiss, I found out. Kristol was there for a May 15 “debate” with Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the pro-Israel organization, at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue on the Upper West Side.
After listening to Kristol, writes Phil Weiss, “I am still reeling.”
“Kristol was treated like royalty and came off as … a Republican Party warlord,” bragging “about how all the hostile elements to Israel inside the Republican Party were purged over the last 30 years — [and] no one [now] dared to question the power of the Israeli lobby.”
“The big story in the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and I’m very happy about this,” said Kristol, is the “eclipsing” of the George H.W. Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realists, “an Arabist old-fashioned Republican Party … very concerned about relations with Arab states that were not friendly with Israel….”
That Bush crowd is yesterday, said Kristol. And not only had the “Arabists” like President Bush been shoved aside by the neocons, the “Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type” of Republican has been purged.
“At B’nai Jeshurun,” writes Weiss, “Kristol admitted to playing a role in expelling members of the Republican Party he does not agree with.” These are Republicans you had to “repudiate,” said Kristol, people “of whom I disapprove so much that I won’t appear with them.”
“I’ve encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party. I’d be happy if Ron Paul left. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was allowed — really encouraged … by George Bush … to go off and run as a third-party candidate.”
Kristol’s point: Refuse to toe the neocon line on Israel, and you have no future in the Republican Party.
Ben-Ami seemed equally exultant: “We’ve won the war; we won the war,” he told the audience. Ninety-nine percent of Congress now votes almost 100% pro-Israel.
But Ben-Ami appeared nervous about how this unanimity in the Congress behind Israel had been achieved:
I very seriously and absolutely do believe that a significant percentage of American members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are intimidated on this issue (of Israel). … They worry about the ramifications of speaking out. … They are worried about the attacks that they will receive.
Ben-Ami said the 50 members who have criticized Israel are courageous, but “another 200 are scared to do it.” Haaretz.com reports Ben Ami as saying congressmen “live in fear” of the Israeli lobby.
Kristol laughed at this and dared Ben-Ami to name them.
When Ben-Ami brought up the destruction of Palestinian rights on the West Bank and said Hillary Clinton repeatedly raises this issue with Israel, writes Weiss, “Kristol sniggered.”
It’s a “myth,” said Kristol, that Arabs care about Palestinians. The Israeli occupation on the West Bank can last for 45 or 60 years more. Bill Kristol on Palestinian rights sounds like Bull Connor talking about Negro rights in Birmingham in 1965.
Another source says Kristol predicted that Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose voting record is closer to Socialist Bernie Sanders’ than to conservative Jim DeMint’s, will be secretary of state in the Romney administration.
A former head of the Israel lobby AIPAC describes Lieberman as “the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in the Congress.”
Joe led the cheers for our last three Middle East wars — and has pushed for two more, against Syria and Iran.
Italian Earthquake Kills at Least 15 in Emilia Romagna Region – more deaths likely as rescuers sift through rubble
Italy was struck by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 15 people in the northern region of Emilia Romagna, the second fatal temblor in the country this month.
The quake, which came after one of a similar magnitude that killed seven people on May 20, hit the province of Modena at 9 a.m., the Civil Protection Agency said on its website. Seven people are missing and about 200 were injured, Antonio Catricala, Italy’s Cabinet Undersecretary, told Parliament.
Sources: Sawyer et al, Journal of Geoscience Education, 2005; Chamot-Rooke et al, DOTMED/Mem. Soc. Geol. France, 2005; Google Earth; USGS Credits: Alyson Hurt and Kathleen Masterson / NPR
About 8,000 people were evacuated today, bringing the total to about 14,000 in the two earthquakes this month, Catricala said. The severest damage was reported near the epicenter surrounding towns including Cavezzo, Medolla and Mirandola, Emilia Romagna’s administration said in a statement.
The quake was felt throughout northern Italy, including the financial capital Milan, where some buildings and schools were evacuated, and as far south as Tuscany and Umbria. The Italian government “will do everything necessary to respond” to the emergency,” Prime Minister Mario Monti said in Rome. The Cabinet will review emergency funding at a meeting tomorrow.
“Emilia Romagna won’t be left alone,” said Vasco Errani, head of the regional government, who was meeting with Monti in Rome when today’s earthquake struck. June 4 has been declared a day of mourning for the victims, Catricala said.
Two of today’s victims were in San Felice sul Panaro, where three towers of the town’s 15th-century castle collapsed in the May 20 quake, Ansa reported. Two factories in the cities of Mirandola and Medolla were reduced to rubble, and rescuers are digging in the area, Ansa said.
anarchists claim railway sabotage in britain, against the “fuck bhopal” olympics
there is misinformation here – to be expected by the mass media – about the group of anarchists. the informal anarchist federation is just that – informal. anyone can claim the label. and anyone can join in on the fun!
An anarchist group has vowed to wage “low level warfare” against Britain, sabotaging financial institutions, transport, and the military in the lead up to the London Olympics.
The Informal Anarchist Federation has already claimed to be responsible for damaging railway signal systems which led to travel being disrupted around Bristol earlier this week.
They said their representatives had deliberately lifted concrete slabs beside the tracks to burn out signalling cables, on a route chosen to target Ministry of Defence employees.
The group, known as FAI, have now threatened to continue their “guerrilla attack” on the country, “disturbing the social peace” in a protest against the establishment.
Posting on anarchist website 325.nostate, the group said: “In the United Kingdom of clockwork control and domestication, we’re some of the ‘unpatriotic ones’ who find the 2012 Olympics, with the ensuing spectacle of wealth (when so many here struggle to feed themselves and their families), harmful developments and escalating police state, frankly offensive.
Anarchists have vowed to disrupt the Olympics Photo: REUTERS
“But no union or movement calls our shots, and we have no inhibition to use guerrilla activity to hurt the national image and paralyze the economy however we can.“Because simply, we don’t want rich tourists – we want civil war.”A spokesman for British Transport Police have confirmed a signal system was sabotaged at two places on the rail network in Bristol last Tuesday.The same anarchist group has previously claimed responsibility for a drive-by gun attack in Italy in which the chief executive of a nuclear power firm was shot in the kneecaps.The group now say they are deliberately targeting the Ministry of Defence and defence firms in Britain.
They added: “The purpose of guerrilla attack is to spread the struggle into different territories and facets of life.
“Finance, judicial, communications, military and transport infrastructure will continue to be targets of the new generation of urban low-intensity warfare.”
Vietnam joins the protest against Olympic sponsor Dow Chemical, accused of “green-washing” its Agent Orange sins.
The organizers of London’s 2012 Olympics call them the “Green Games” — a monument to best sustainable practice within the sports world.
The Vietnamese government says the organizers should tell that to the hundreds of thousands of children born with cleft palates, mental disabilities, hernias, lung, larynx and prostate cancer, missing limbs and extra fingers and toes.
Vietnam joined the growing chorus of protest against Olympic sponsors accused of “green-washing” their past sins earlier this month. In a letter obtained by GlobalPost, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism castigated the Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IOC) for green-lighting Dow Chemical as a major Olympic sponsor.
Dow produced about one-third of the 80 million liters of Agent Orange defoliants sprayed over southern Vietnam, during what the Vietnamese call “The American War.” The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that up to 3 million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 300,000 children born with birth defects.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates are much higher. It says 4.8 million people were exposed, resulting in 400,000 deaths and injuries and about 500,000 children born with defects, many of which are still being born to this day — some four generations later.
“Agent Orange … destroyed the environment, claimed the lives of millions of Vietnamese and left terrible effects on millions of others, who are now suffering from incurable diseases. Hundreds of thousands of fourth generation children have been born with severe congenital deformities,” wrote Hoang Tuan Anh, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism in a letter to the IOC.
“We took a bulldozer and dug pits to bury all the animals. Some people were picking up bodies and some animals. 50 – 60 drivers were all working that day (3rd December). We picked up the bodies with our own hands. Every time we picked one up it gave out gas. The bodies had all turned blue, and had froth oozing from their mouths.
“In some houses everyone had died so there was no one to break the locks. In one case a 6 month old girl had survived and everybody else (mother, father and siblings) was dead. I broke the locks to that house.
“At least 15 – 20,000 people died in those first few days. What they said in the papers was absolutely wrong. What could I have done? I was a government servant. What the government said was absolutely wrong but what could I do?
“Those who have survived are like the living dead. My lungs have become useless: till today I’m being looked after by Hamidia hospital. Ever since I got affected I get vertigo – I would have to stop my truck because I get vertigo if I drive. My hands and feet don’t work, I can’t see well. The last two to three years I’ve gotten much worse.”
Activists calling for Dow Chemical to be dropped as a sponsor of the 2012 Games have unfurled a giant protest banner in front of the Olympic stadium, whose wrapper is funded by the US-based company. Dow is the parent company of Union Carbide, whose pesticide plant leaked gas into the central city of Bhopal in 1984, killing tens of thousands of people
historic Minneapolis church known for supporting LGBT rights and other progressive causes burned to the ground on Sunday night.
According to the StarTribune, the Walker Community United Methodist Church caught fire around 8:20 p.m. Five of the firefighters who battled the blaze for hours were taken to the hospital, but their injuries were not life threatening.
“Some people at the scene Sunday night speculated lightning was the culprit, while close neighbors said they thought it could be arson,” the paper reported.
Walker Methodist Church is known within the Minneapolis progressive community as a meeting place for various activist groups. Communities United Against Police Brutality CUAPB, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and the Welfare Rights Committee all had offices in the building.
In June 2011, the church adopted a statement supporting LGBT rights and marriage equality.
“Walker Community United Methodist Church will welcome all people to use our facilities to have ceremonies of marriage or other appropriate union services as approved by the pastor,” the statement said. “Walker Community United Methodist Church recognizes that it stands outside the polity of the United Methodist church on this issue. It is our intention to expand and affirm the sanctity of marriage and to lead our denomination in the journey to welcome all people into the circle of our community.”
Members of the congregations were expected to hold a meeting at Living Spirit United Methodist Church on Monday morning to “to gather, grieve, console, and start the plan for our new realities together.”
A church history says that Walker Community United Methodist Church started in 1886 and construction began at the current location in 1909. The building was officially dedicated on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1910.
As three teams of U.S. Navy investigators prepared to board a nuclear submarine that caught fire at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard this week to assess the damage, senators from Maine and New Hampshire also traveled to the shipyard Friday to hear about the incident first-hand.
Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen toured the Kittery, Maine, facility Friday and spoke with officials from the shipyard and the Navy.
They also spoke with some of the more than 100 firefighters who fought the overnight blaze.
The cause of the 5-alarm fire, which broke out at approximately 5:41 p.m. Wednesday inside the USS Miami (SSN 755), a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, remains unknown.
Seven people suffered minor injuries during the fire, which spread through the middle and upper levels of the submarine’s forward area, continuing to burn for more than 10 hours before it was extinguished.
Emergency responders from around the Seacoast rotated in and out of the flaming submarine, equipped with oxygen tanks. They took turns descending two stories into the unlit, smoke-filled bowels of the ship to push back the flames.
Shipyard officials said most of the emergency responders from the 21 units that provided aid during the fire had no prior experience on board a submarine.
“I can’t imagine the courage it took to go into the confined spaces of this submarine,” Collins said Friday, speaking at a 9 a.m. news conference outside the shipyard’s main gate, where she was joined by Shaheen.
Although the extent of damage to the ship remains unknown, the Navy is “determined” to put the USS Miami back out to sea, according to Snowe, who also toured the facility later in the day.
Shaheen said shipyard commander Captain Bryant Fuller believes the repairs to USS Miami will be undertaken at PNSY, where the ship has been docked since March 1 undergoing a 20-month overhaul.
Collins said the submarine was at a stage in the overhaul where nearly all of the ship’s critical systems had already been removed from the Miami’s forward area before the fire broke out.
The illegal trade in kidneys has risen to such a level that an estimated 10,000 black market operations involving purchased human organs now take place annually, or more than one an hour, World Health Organisation experts have revealed.
Evidence collected by a worldwide network of doctors shows that traffickers are defying laws intended to curtail their activities and are cashing in on rising international demand for replacement kidneys driven by the increase in diabetes and other diseases.
Patients, many of whom will go to China, India or Pakistan for surgery, can pay up to $200,000 (nearly £128,000) for a kidney to gangs who harvest organs from vulnerable, desperate people, sometimes for as little as $5,000.
The vast sums to be made by both traffickers and surgeons have been underlined by the arrest by Israeli police last week of 10 people, including a doctor, suspected of belonging to an international organ trafficking ring and of committing extortion, tax fraud and grievous bodily harm. Other illicit organ trafficking rings have been uncovered in India and Pakistan.
The Guardian contacted an organ broker in China who advertised his services under the slogan, “Donate a kidney, buy the new iPad!” He offered £2,500 for a kidney and said the operation could be performed within 10 days.
By the time Hu Jie changed his mind about selling his kidney it was too late. The 25-year-old migrant worker had travelled to a distant province and had medical checks. A recipient had been matched. If he pulled out now, the web of doctors and agents brokering the illegal operation would lose a lot of yuan.
So the night before Hu’s operation in January 2011 an agent kept watch. “I saw the agent couldn’t stop rubbing his waist; he was suffering,” Hu says. “He told me he had sold his kidney two months ago.”
At that moment Hu considered the enormity of what he was about to do. “I tried to flee but didn’t succeed; there were agents and strangers surrounding me. The next morning my phone, ID card and bank card were confiscated. That afternoon I was taken to the local hospital – it was shabby, more like a township health centre. I protested, crying. I tried to run twice more but the agents were guarding the door.”
Hu was stripped and put under general anaesthetic. When he woke the next morning, trembling with cold, a 10cm scar arced his torso and his left kidney was gone.
in iran, the organ trade is legal, the streets near hospitals have been turned into a ‘kidney eBay’
Marzieh’s biggest challenge in life is to come up with money for her daughter’s wedding. In Persian custom, it is the parents’ duty to provide a dowry, known as jahizieh, and as a widow from north Iran, she feels it is important to fulfil her responsibility and protect the family’s honour.
To achieve this, she is ready to sell one of her kidneys. If she is successful, she will travel to one of Tehran’s kidney transplant centres and have it removed. She will have to cope with only one kidney from then on, but she will have performed her duties by her daughter.
“It is getting too late for my daughter to marry – her moment has already passed,” she said.
Iran is the only country where the selling and buying of kidneys is legal. As a result, there is no shortage of the organs – but for those trying to sell a kidney, there is a lot of competition.
In order to advertise her kidney, Marzieh has written her blood type and her phone number on pieces of paper and has posted them along the street close to several of Tehran’s major hospitals, home to the country’s major kidney transplant centres.
Others have done the same. Some have written in big letters or in bright colours to attract attention; some have sprayed their information on the walls of public or even private properties.
“Kidney for sale,” reads one ad, carrying the donor’s blood type, O+, and a mobile number, with a note emphasising “urgent”, insinuating that the donor is prepared to consider discounts. Another similar ad reads: “Attention, attention, a healthy kidney for sale, O+.” Many are handwritten, though some have typed the ads to make them look better. “24 years old, kidney for sale,” another reads. “Tested healthy.”
Competition means that some ads have been torn down. Some have added their information to ads by other donors. Others have placed their ads on people’s doors or simply written them in marker pen on trees where they think they will catch people’s attention.
At the heart of the capital, near the Charity Association for the Support of Kidney Patients (CASKP), the number of ads has made the streets of Tehran into a sort of kidney eBay. “My six-month-old baby was paralysed after falling from the hands of my wife,” said Ali, 28, from the northern city of Nur in the Iranian province of Mazandaran. “I have to find 20m rials [around £7,500] for my child’s operation.” He hopes he will get 12m rials for his kidney.
Yesterday AFP reported that ‘Police have detained a man suspected of murdering more than a dozen boys and young men, chopping up their bodies and selling the flesh to unsuspecting consumers’.
There had previously been a trickle of reports about teenagers that had disappeared in Yunnan. On May 8, the Global Times English edition ran a story titled ‘Yunnan town fears serial kidnapper‘. On May 24, the Chongqing Economic Times published a report titled ‘In Jinning County, Yunnan Province, 17 people have disappeared – there may be a serial killer’, naming Zhang Yongming as the suspect.
The earlier Global Times story speculated that the missing young men were possibly victims of a ‘serial kidnapper’ who may forced them to work in illegal brick kilns near Kunming. The brick kilns’ theory was actually thought up by the parents of one of the missing youths, Han Yao. His parents never suspected a serial killer; such evils barely exist in state media, while kidnappings of young men are not uncommon in the provinces. Most end up in coal mines or illegal brick kilns, but more educated kidnap victims sometimes even end up tricked into running white-collar scams like pyramid schemes.
Therefore the kilns theory was quite feasible: the Global Times report mentions one man name Lei Yusheng from Yunnan who says he escaped such a place after being grabbed off the street by ‘two strong men… armed with a sword [who] pulled him into a van. He was then taken to brick kiln where he was forced to work with 30 other men from 2 am to 12 noon every day.’
This sort of trafficking is now so ubiquitous the police barely bother to investigate and it lands on the parents to conduct their own searches. The Global Times report also mentioned another case:
One of the most disturbing cases involves Xie Junhai, a 16-year-old student who left home to collect his report card on January 27 and never returned.
‘I have searched more than 100 brick kilns. Some wouldn’t let me enter. I had to plead with the local villagers to take me in. I have not found any trace of my son,’ said Xie’s father.
The search was pointless because Xie’s son had been the victims of a prolific serial killer, a 56-year-old farmer named Zhang Yongming who lived in a shack near the cold storage unit where victim Han Yao was last glimpsed. Zhang Yongming should have been the police’s first suspect: In 1978, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder, after dismembering a victim. He was released in 1997 and lived within a two kilometer radius of all the victims. The local villagers certainly suspected something was up with Zhang: the Daily Telegraph reported on May 24 that ‘last December, [Zhang Yongming] was found trying to strangle Zhang Jianyuan, 17, with a belt outside his house’. Police arrived at the house of the convicted murderer but Zhang ‘laughed off the episode, saying that he was just fooling with the boy.’ The cops also seemed to have a good sense of humour, as they ‘simply told [villagers] he was mentally ill’.
As sadly undeveloped as China’s mental-health awareness is, this failure to detain Zhang for attempted murder probably resulted in the hideous deaths of up to seventeen boys.
Grisly details that have so far emerged include that police also found human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles, and human flesh hanging up to dry, (according to a now deleted article on Guangxi News. The AFP report says that ‘green plastic bags containing what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top were seen hanging from his home’. Zhang is now thought to have fed human flesh to his three dogs and sold portions on the market, telling people it was ‘ostrich meat,’ according to the Hong Kong Standard.
The official reaction has been predictable: censorship and the dismissal of two individual police officers. Weibo searches for ‘Jinning’, ‘Yunnan disappeared’ and ‘Yunnan murder’ (晋宁, 云南失踪 and 云南谋杀) are blocked. Jinning county police chief Da Qiming has been sacked, alongside the head of the Jincheng township police station, Zhao Huiyun. A special Public Security Bureau task force has been sent from Beijing to supervise the case: this is the Crime Investigation Bureau (CIB), the Chinese equivalent of the FBI. While the CIB employs expert staff, they are normally brought in to deal with cases that threaten public stability, and they serve ministerial ends. The victims’ parents will probably be largely ignored, the case declared exceptional and individual, and the public afforded little further protection.
For more on serial killers by Robert Foyle Hunwick, see Serial killers in China.
treatment to move beyond “preventative” remedies, in favor of “pre-emptive, final-solution” approach
The medical journal Cell has published a research paper on using an extremely dangerous psychotropic pharmaceutical to treat cancer; one that has traditionally been used to treat schizophrenia.
Scientists are claiming that according to their extensive research, which consisted of analyzing thousands of different drugs to determine if they possessed anti-cancer effects, it is Thiroridazine — a “last resort” drug for schizophrenics — that is now purported to kill cancer stem cells.
Thioridazine is expected to be used to select and eradicate cancer stem cells that are found in leukemia and several other cancers such as breast, blood, brain, prostate, ovarian, lung and gastrointestinal.
Scientists claim that this hazardous pharmaceutical can be administered in cancer therapies, without the health-threatening side effects of current drugs on the market. It is being advertised as an alternative to chemotherapy and radiation.
A robotic stem cell screening system was devised by the research team to siphon through large amounts of drugs and previously unpublished data and drugs that are available on the market today. Thousands of chemical compounds were screened for potential effects on specifically breast cancer and leukemia.
“We discovered the drug by creating a new way of looking at different chemicals,” said Mick Bhatia, the principal investigator for the study and scientific director of McMaster’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.
In order to do that, we have to put cancer stem cells in a dish, but also have normal stem cells to also test the compounds. We were able to do this with a robotic system, fully automated, that allowed us to go through 10 or 15 compounds [at first]. Now we can do this with thousands of compounds, eventually arriving at this drug that doesn’t do anything to normal stem cells, but kills cancer stem cells.
The unusual aspect of our finding is the way this human-ready drug actually kills cancer stem cells; by changing them into cells that are non-cancerous.
The praise Thioridazine is receiving omits the dangerous effects that this drug causes in humans.
Vomiting
Seizures
Ulcers
Urinary tract infections
Swelling
Slowed movements
Inability to produce facial expressions
Parkinson’s disease
Irregular heart beat
Sudden death
Thioridazine is classified as a conventional antipsychotic. Its prime function is to reduce the brain’s ability to process excitement; effectively rendering the patient docile and even-tempered.
There is a strong possibility of committing suicide while on this drug.
Bhatia’s study asserts that this discovery could inspire a new frontier in cancer therapies. He stated that there are an estimated 12 existing drugs that pose a “good potential for the same response.”
The researchers are not stopping with Thioridazine; they are moving onto other possible uses for already approved drugs.
Bhatia’s team is anxious to beginhuman trials with plans to use this pharmaceutical on leukemia patients. By studying patients whose cancer is in remission, the researchers hope to find that thioridazine will prevent a multitude of cancers.
Unethical human experimentation in the United States
There have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects.
Funding for many of the experiments was provided by United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency, United States military and federal or military corporations. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed.
Dozens of people were detained in Moscow on Sunday after Russian Orthodox church activists broke up two gay rights protests, throwing water and shouting prayers at demonstrators.
Some Orthodox activists attacked the protesters, throwing punches, grabbing their rainbow flags and trampling on them in front of television cameras.
Skirmishes occurred at the protests outside the city hall and parliament. Neither rally was sanctioned by Moscow authorities.
i dare you to determine who is the gay rights activist and who is the religious nutjob in this picture.
Almost all of the 30 gay rights protesters were detained, and many fewer of 50 or so Orthodox activists involved.
Nikolai Alexeyev, the leader of the gay rights protests, said he was detained for talking to journalists. “I am arrested at Moscow Pride City Hall protest,” he tweeted while in police custody. “I have no words.”
Police told the state-run news agency Itar-Tass that about 40 people had been detained at the protests.
“All of our rights are being trampled on here in Russia,” said Igor Yasin, another demonstrator. “Your rights aren’t safe and you’re not physically safe.”
Earlier this year Russian MPs introduced a bill to that would impose fines for “spreading gay propaganda” among minors.
While the proposed law ostensibly targets actions such as the distribution of gay pornography to children, critics say it could be used to ban gay rights demonstrations.
Such a law is in force in President Vladimir Putin’s home city St Petersburg where the US singer Madonna has said she will use her Russia tour this summer to speak out against the lawwhat she called a “ridiculous atrocity”.
Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but anti-gay prejudice runs deep and the gay community remains largely underground.
The Russian Orthodox church, whose influence has grown since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, speaks out against homosexuality. Gay rights rallies have often ended in clashes with militant anti-gay activists and arrests.
A Nato airstrike has killed eight members of the same family, including six children, Afghan officals have claimed.
The incident happened in the Paktia province, in the east of Afghanistan at around 8pm local time (5.30pm GMT), according to a spokesman for the area’s provincial governor.
It comes weeks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that civilian casualties could undermine a strategic partnership with the West.
The airstrike happened just a day after four Nato soldiers, including a British man from the 1st Battalion, were killed in separate bomb attacks, the same day Labour leader Ed Miliband visited Afghanistan.
Rohullah Samon, the spokesman for Patkia’s provincial governor, said civilian Mohammad Shafi was killed along with his wife and their six children in an airstrike in the village of Suri Khail in the Gurda Saria district.
An anonymous Nato official disputed the claim, saying there was no evidence of any casualties.
Police in Miami have shot dead a man who was chewing the face of another man.
Officers were called around 2pm local time on Saturday by drivers who saw two naked men fighting on a bike track next to the city’s MacArthur Causeway.
When they arrived at the scene they drew their weapons and ordered the man to stop biting at the other man’s face. He ignored them, prompting officers to open fire.
Even after being shot, the man continued and the officers fired again, killing him.
Police are still trying to work out what caused the confrontation that led to the shooting.
“During this confrontation an officer did discharge his weapon striking one of the individuals that individual has lost his life right now,” said Detective Willie Moreno, spokesperson for Miami police.
The police refused to give full details on the record but sources have given graphic accounts to CBS news channel in Miami.
With the attacker dead, lying nude on the pavement, officers and paramedics were able to get to his victim and rush him to Jackson Memorial hospital. Police sources say the man had virtually no face and was unrecognisable.
The surviving man is in serious condition.
Police have not released the identity of either men.
According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.
The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.
Miami police were on the scene, which was just south of The Miami Herald building on Biscayne Boulevard. The naked man who was killed lay face down on the pedestrian walkway just below the newspaper’s two-story parking garage. Police have requested The Herald’s video surveillance tapes.
The other man was transported to the hospital with critical injuries, according to police. Their identities were not released.
The incident, which came as crowds descended upon South Beach for the annual Urban Beach Week hip-hop festival, snarled traffic on the causeway for several hours.
Miami Police Shoot & a Kill Man For Eating Another Man’s Face (May 27, 2012)
Women With a Vision (WWAV), a New Orleans advocacy and service organization that provides health care and other support for poor women of color, was the victim of a break-in and arson late Thursday night. A small organization that has won a national reputation for their work, WWAV was founded in 1991 by a collective of Black women as a response to a lack of HIV prevention resources for those women who were the most at risk: poor women, sex workers, women with substance abuse issues, and transgender women.
WWAV has made national news for leading the fight against Louisiana’s Crime Against Nature Statute, which targeted poor women of color,transgender women, and anyone forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night. The law forced women to register as sex offenders in a state database and placed a “sex offender” label on their drivers license, among other requirements. With the grassroots leadership of WWAV, a national coalition that also included Center for Constitutional Rights, Loyola Law School, and police misconduct attorney Andrea Ritchie was able to get the law off the books and has won a series of further victories in the process of removing the sex offender registration requirements for those convicted in the past.
Arson Attack on Women’s Health Organization in New Orleans
The attack seemed political in its nature, directly targeting the crucial information, files, and materials needed for WWAV’s work. According to an email report from Bill Quigley, a social justice attorney and friend of the organization, “Major fire damage was done to a room which contained education and outreach materials. The arsonist seemed to have deliberately targeted this room. Destroyed were: three plastic and silicone breast models which were used to help people learn how to do self-examinations for breast cancer; a plastic pelvic model of a vagina; a two feet by one and a half foot plastic model of a woman’s reproductive system; boxes of male and female condoms; flip charts demonstrating the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV; several wooden penises which were used for condom demonstration; and boxes of educational materials. The fires in that room seem to have been set with some accelerant and scorched the walls, ceiling fan and ceiling and destroyed everything in the room….The offices were ransacked leaving drawers pulled out and papers and files on the floor. A TV and a laptop were taken but many valuables were left including computer monitors, office equipment, even some beer left over from a reception held earlier in the week. Several small fires were started inside the offices, in the bathroom, the hallway and in a sitting room.”
In a video released on Friday afternoon WWAV executive director Deon Haywood shows the damage and discusses the effects, concluding, “We are fighters, we are warriors here at Women With a Vision, and we continue our work.” For the official statement from WWAV, see this link.
