AP: Migrant children may be adopted after parents are deported | TheHill
Holes in immigration laws are allowing state court judges to grant custody of migrant children to American families without notifying their deported parents, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The AP scoured hundreds of court documents and immigration records to reveal several cases of children being permanently, legally taken from their families after initial separations.
– “…In many ways, Lockerbie and Gaddafi were the dry run for what would later be 9/11 and Bin Laden – a major, terrible terrorist act of mass murder and an iconic caricature of a Big Bad Monster/Villain from the East. By the late 90s, the idea of Gaddafi as the great villainous threat to the West had run out of steam and the focus was shifted instead onto Saddam Hussein and then Osama bin Laden”
The LOCKERBIE Saga: 30 Years Later – Who Really Did Do It…?
The Lockerbie bombing in 1988 was perhaps the 9/11 of its time: and today marks 30 years since it happened.
While it didn’t result in the kind of phony Global ‘War on Terror’ that was conducted after 9/11, it did give the US and Britain the platform for beginning a targeted downfall of a particular nation and society…
No wonder the ruling elites love how easily we’re distracted and divided against ourselves: it’s so easy to dominate a distracted, divided, blinded-by-propaganda and negative emotions populace.
– “…The stateless super-rich of the New Left-Right Elite Alliance…can flee the country in an instant if they need to, taking with the large chunks of their wealth, which is now either offshore or mobile thanks to international banking…The Elite’s greatest fear is that left and right non-elites realize who their real enemies are”
The Ruling Elites Love How Easily We’re Distracted and Turned Against Each Other – By Charles Hugh Smith
No wonder the ruling elites love how easily we’re distracted and divided against ourselves: it’s so easy to dominate a distracted, divided, blinded-by-propaganda and negative emotions populace.
Let’s say you’re one of the ruling elites operating the nation for the benefit of the oligarchy. What’s the best way to distract the populace from your self-serving dominance in a blatantly neofeudal system?
1. Provide modern-day versions of Bread and Circuses to distract the commoners from what…
This is a fascinating documentary about an activist group that campaigned hard to bring two major Malaysian corruption scandals to international attention – including one involving former Prime Minister Najib Razak and 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
The story starts in the early nineties when Bruno Manser, a Swiss environmentalist, and Mutanga, a Penan tribesman in Sarawak, paired up to protest wholesale rainforest logging on the island of Borneo (Malaysia). After successfully blockading the logging trucks for more than nine months, the activists and their supporters were imprisoned and torture.
In 1992, they undertook a world tour to bring the plight of Borneo rainforests and the Penan. They visited 24 cities in 13 countries, including the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the UN. The response they received was underwhelming.
In 2000, Manser returned to Sarawak and was “disappeared” in the jungle. Fearing for his own life, Mutanga went into exile in Montreal.
Fifteen years after Manser’s death – – concerned about a controversial dam project that permanently displace an additional 50,000 indigenous Penan – Mutanga linked up with activists running Radio Free Sarawak shortwave station from London
Meanwhile the founder of the radio station Claire Rewcastle Brown partnered with the Bruno Manswer Foundation in Switzerland to research the $15 billion in private wealth the Malaysian forestrt minister Taib Mahmoud accrued for allowing foreign companies to illegally log Bornero’s pristine rain forests. It was an extremely complex scenario involving money laundering, off shore accounts and holding companies, as well as Goldman Sachs, UBS, HSBC and Deutsche Bank.
The went public with their findings at a Deutsche Bank shareholder meeting. Their presentation instantly focused international and social media attention on Malaysian corruption for the first time.
Taib was forced to resign, with the new forestry minister committing to ban both logging and new palm oil plantations.
Thrilled by the outcome, Brown subsequently undertook an investigation of the corrupt relationship between Malaysia’s prime minister and 1 MBD. In July 2015, she published a report revealing that personal bank accounts of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak held nearly $700 million tied to state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
The attention her report received led to a prolonged mass protests in Malaysia and the defeat of Razak in the 2018 general election.
The New York Times recently asked each of the Democratic primary candidates for President a series of identical questions. The last question on their list was, “Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?”
ABOVE: The Democrat party mob for 2020. Many are there simply to dilute Sanders, who needs no help in diluting himself. “Important questions about wealth inequality and its impact on the environment are not being asked to the Presidential Candidates“
The trivial framing of that question bypassed the grave urgency for asking it in the first place. In a variant form of the question the Times was essentially asking, “Isn’t it OK to be a billionaire if you played by the rules and worked hard to earn it?”
The wording of the question pre-supposes that the laws and social rules in place, by which a person may accumulate a billion-dollars, are fair and open to anyone. It ignores whether inherited wealth is also deserved. Most importantly, it treats wealth as if it is only a money count and not a measure of privilege and social power. By doing so, the question as it was posed ignored the essential problem that extreme private wealth is toxic to human society regardless of a person’s character or how they obtained it.
A more salient question would have been, “How many more billionaires can this human society sustain before it collapses?
In the 50,000-year history of human civilization, the concepts of private ownership and private wealth are recent developments. The full ramifications of these constructs on our social cohesion and collective welfare are still being revealed. The written history of civilizations offers no comfort. There are no examples of a happy, stable society where extremes of wealth inequality existed […]
“The quota system pushes you to really not work at a pace that’s normal, but at a pace where you’re almost running for the entire 10 hours.”
A woman sorts packages at the Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York City, on February 5, 2019.Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images
Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, say they package about four online orders every minute. If they stop for a few seconds outside of their designated breaks, it hurts their performance evaluations.
So they’re bending, twisting, running, and lifting boxes for 10 to 12 hours a day — just to get a package to a customer’s door within a day or two.
That’s what Amazon warehouse employees in Staten Island who were surveyed earlier this year by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health had to say. The workers’ advocacy group is concerned that employees are developing musculoskeletal disorders from the intense work pace.
Sixty-six percent of the 145 workers surveyed (a total of about 2,500 employees prepare orders at Amazon’s warehouse in Staten Island) said they experience physical pain while performing their regular work duties and 42 percent said they continue experiencing pain when they aren’t working.
When asked to map where they feel pain, more than a quarter pointed to their feet, and nearly as many also felt pain in their lower backs and knees. This graphic shows the potential impact of Amazon’s speed-obsessed culture — injuries that will likely get worse since the company has started offering free one-day shipping to its Prime customers.
The percentage of surveyed Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island who reported pain in highlighted areas.Source: New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health
The safety committee — made up of health experts, union leaders, and workers — said the pain workers described is likely a sign that they’re developing musculoskeletal disorders, which are injuries to the joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, and tendons from repetitive strain and exertion.
“I feel pain in my back, in my waist, because I do a lot of bending,” one worker told the committee, according to the report. “Even if you squat, you still feel the pain in your waist. It’s a full-body workout all day every day.”
A large number of workers also said that their work conditions are psychologically distressing.
Source: New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health
A spokesperson for Amazon called the report “biased” and “unreliable” and pointed out that only about 3 percent of the workforce in Staten Island was surveyed.
“It is an example of selective data skewed to support false statements by an organization that’s sole business objective is to misinform the public on Amazon’s safety record,” wrote Amazon spokesperson Rachael Lighty in a statement to Vox. “The fact is that Amazon provides a safe, quality working environment for the over 250,000 hourly employees across the US, including over 4,500 full-time employees supporting customers at our Staten Island fulfillment center.”
Yet safety complaints about Amazon aren’t unusual. In 2016, the US Occupational Safety & Hazards Administration fined Amazon $7,000 for not recording about two dozen worker injuries at a warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey.
“The company exposed employees to ergonomic risk factors including stress from repeated bending at the waist and repeated exertions, and standing during entire shifts up to 10 hours, four days a week and sometimes including mandatory overtime shifts,” the agency wrote in a 2016 brief.
In 2018, the advocacy group National Council for Occupational Safety and Health listed Amazon as one of the most dangerous places to work in the US, based on its warehouse conditions. Amazon was included because of higher-than-average injury rates, unnecessary risks, and an unwillingness to address workers’ concerns, according to the report. The group also noted that seven Amazon warehouse workers have died since 2013 (mostly from accidents involving heavy machinery) and that the company’s “relentless demand” to fulfill orders leads to harsh working conditions […]
The Japanese government has decided to send its own self-defence troops to the Strait of Hormuz area as an alternative to joining the US-coalition to protect commercial vessels passing through key Middle Eastern waterways, according to the Asahi newspaper.
Earlier, media reported that Japan would not join such a coalition due to its close economic ties with Iran, as an important oil producer.
The US announced the creation of a naval coalition in the wake of the detention of a British tanker by Iranian authorities over alleged violations of maritime laws and a series of “sabotage attacks” on commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf. These it blamed on Iran, claiming that the US goal will be to ensure the safety of navigation through a crucial oil-exporting lane – the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has strongly denied any involvement in the attacks.
Washington invited several countries from Europe and Asia to participate in this coalition, but so far few have responded. While the UK has shown interest in participating in the American mission, Germany opted for diplomatic efforts as a mean to reduce tensions in the Gulf and stated that its participation in America’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has been “ruled out”.
Iran has slammed the planned American maritime mission as endangering the international waterway and expressed scepticism about Washington’s chances of rallying allies for it […]
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65502594/GettyImages_1124819750.0.jpg)
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19299221/Screen_Shot_2019_10_18_at_8.50.11_AM.png)
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19299224/Screen_Shot_2019_10_18_at_10.47.49_AM.png)
Source: New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health