Category Archives: Fail!

Puerto Rico Braces for Its Own Zika Epidemic – The New York Times

A quarter of the island’s 3.5 million people will probably get the Zika virus within a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and eventually 80 percent or more may be infected. “I’m very concerned,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview after a recent three-day visit to Puerto Rico. “There could be thousands of infections of pregnant women this year.” The epidemic is unfolding in one of the country’s most popular vacation destinations, where planes and cruise ships disembark thousands of tourists daily. Anyone could carry the virus back home, seeding a mosquito-borne outbreak or transmitting it sexually. Health officials here have begun intensive efforts to stop the virus, which has been linked to abnormally small heads and brain damage in babies born to infected mothers, and to paralysis in adults.

Source: Puerto Rico Braces for Its Own Zika Epidemic – The New York Times

David Morris: A Long (and Still Unfinished) Road to Democracy – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

In 1963, only 156 of 15,000 eligible black voters in Selma, Alabama, were registered to vote. Between 1963 and 1965 the federal government filed four lawsuits but the number of black registered voters only increased from 156 to 383 during that time. In 1964 the 24th Amendment prohibited poll taxes in federal elections. At the time, five Southern states still imposed that election requirement. One might accurately say that only in 1965, a century after the Civil War ended did blacks effectively gain the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act sent federal examiners to seven Southern states to help register black voters and required states with a history of voter discrimination to gain pre-approval from the federal government before changing any voting requirements.

Source: David Morris: A Long (and Still Unfinished) Road to Democracy – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

“People are afraid to speak,” says arrested Israeli Jewish activist | The Electronic Intifada

A Jerusalem court eventually ordered Butavia’s and Nawi’s unconditional release, stating that the police had provided no substantiation of the suspicions against them. But Butavia told The Electronic Intifada that the court did order them not to speak to each other for two to three months, as the police had requested, significantly hindering their work. In the video, Butavia says that he cannot discuss details of his interrogation but that torture methods were used against him and others: “Things with which you don’t imagine you’ll have to cope. It appeared that for them, the goal justified the means.” Butavia refers to experiencing “psychological warfare” as well as physical violence and allegations of pedophilia. He believes the attack on him and Nawi has succeeded in silencing others.

Source: “People are afraid to speak,” says arrested Israeli Jewish activist | The Electronic Intifada

Donald Trump Warns of ‘Riots’ if Party Blocks Him at Convention – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

Is he yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or just paraphrasing his heroes Stalin, Hitler and Il Duce?

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.” He added:” If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

Source: Donald Trump Warns of ‘Riots’ if Party Blocks Him at Convention – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local German Far-Right learning from American Far Right in Accusing those who oppose them as being racists!?!

After media reported that the Worker’s Welfare Institution (AWO) said it would not hire members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or similar groups, one branch of the hard right party took to Facebook to respond. AWO is a non-statutory welfare organization that assists, in particular, socially disadvantaged people with workers’ rights issues. AWO said that AfD’s ideas were not compatible with its own principles, according Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. According to the Rheinische Post, the Krefeld branch of the AfD in North-Rhine Westphalia wrote in a post that soon members of the party would have to wear “blue stars” – a reference to the yellow star of David that Jewish people were forced to wear to identify themselves under Nazi Germany. “And there continue to be more bans on AFD members working. Are you excited to already be wearing the blue star? We know: We will have to wear the star as a mark of honour! To the bitter end!”

Source: AfD party compares itself to Holocaust victims – The Local

Another Member of Berta Caceres’ Group Assassinated in Honduras | News | teleSUR English

According to local sources, 20 police officers, 20 soldiers and 20 anti-riot police arrived at 8 a.m. to begin evicting the group.“They said that they would be peaceful and they were not going to throw anyone out of their houses, but at midday they started to tear down the houses, they destroyed the maize, the banana trees and the yuca plantations,” said Tomas Gomez, a COPINH coordinator.“When they finished the eviction, our companion Nelson Garcia went to eat in his house, they were waiting in the zone that the commission of COPINH pass, but it was diverted. Garcia arrived first and they killed him,” he added.It was not immediately clear who was behind the killing.Garcia, the father of five children, was the leader of the community sitting in Rio Chiquito.

Source: Another Member of Berta Caceres’ Group Assassinated in Honduras | News | teleSUR English

The New Generation Gap by Joseph E. Stiglitz – Project Syndicate

These three realities – social injustice on an unprecedented scale, massive inequities, and a loss of trust in elites – define our political moment, and rightly so.More of the same is not an answer. That is why the center-left and center-right parties in Europe are losing. America is in a strange position: while the Republican presidential candidates compete on demagoguery, with ill-thought-through proposals that would make matters worse, both of the Democratic candidates are proposing changes which – if they could only get them through Congress – would make a real difference.Were the reforms put forward by Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders adopted, the financial system’s ability to prey on those already leading a precarious life would be curbed. And both have proposals for deep reforms that would change how America finances higher education.But more needs to be done to make home ownership possible not just for those with parents who can give them a down payment, and to make retirement security possible, given the vagaries of the stock market and the near-zero-interest world we have entered.

Source: The New Generation Gap by Joseph E. Stiglitz – Project Syndicate

WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » Report Alleges Deplorable Conditions, Misuse of Solitary Confinement, and Leadership Failure at LA County’s Juvenile Hall

OTHER FACILITIES MANAGE TO DO THINGS RIGHT In his report, Martinez made a point of praising some of the county’s other probation facilities for doing a consistently good job, including Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, located in Sylmar, and Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, located in Downey. “Los Padrinos” he wrote, “has a daily graffiti inspection for both living rooms and bathrooms, and [the] rooms are spotless.” Martinez also noted that not all the units at Central Juvenile Hall were in the same condition of filth and disrepair as those units that caused him such concern. Certain other units were clean and graffiti free. So why were the bad units allowed to get so bad? SOLITARY FOR 16 HOURS BECAUSE OF A FOOD TRADE Another distressing part of Martinez’ Valentine’s Day report pertained to a boy who was sent for 16 hours to juvenile hall’s Special Housing Unit (SHU), which means solitary confinement. The boy’s offense was trading a carton of milk with another boy for a carton of orange juice—or vice versa. Food trading with other kids is evidently against the rules. But, there are plenty of ways to appropriately sanction a boy who simply wants a little more of healthful beverage. Sixteen hours in solitary confinement is not one of them. Furthermore, it is against the department’s own rules—which are reportedly to send a kid to solitary for no more than a few hours as a time out, barring an exceptional situation. Martinez wrote that the juvenile hall director he spoke with about the matter admitted that he didn’t believe that the boy should have been sent to the SHU to begin with for such a trivial infraction. Yet, it appears that the boy might have been in isolation far longer than 16 hours, had Martinez not specifically asked for him to be sent back to his home unit. Common sense suggests that, in all likelihood, if an abuse of solitary confinement for kids occurred during Martinez’ recent visit, it has also occurred in other instances. How many other instances, we have no way of knowing. The truth is, any one of a number of mid and high level supervisors in the department could or should have walked through juvenile hall and seen these entirely unacceptable problems.

Source: WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » Report Alleges Deplorable Conditions, Misuse of Solitary Confinement, and Leadership Failure at LA County’s Juvenile Hall

Donald Trump: I love this country. We’re going to make our country great again.It’s payback time! It’s payback time! | 3CHICSPOLITICO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNelSuoHzlI

Donald Trump is a dangerous racist sob. How can he be allowed to continue his campaign? It’s payback time? Who is he going to pay back? And for what? The country electing a black Potus? This is scary. It will not end well.

Source: Donald Trump: I love this country. We’re going to make our country great again.It’s payback time! It’s payback time! | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Avian Flu Diary: FDA On Proposed Oxitec Mosquito Trials In The Florida Keys – Que  this is the end, my friends?

{Mosquitoes are not pests! They are one of nature’s vectors for passing on diseases whose purposes are to rebalance unbalanced ecologies or ecologies that have been dramatically disturbed. Most of the imbalances are caused by human expansion into new areas, deforestation, and industrialized monocultures of grains, fruits, vegetables. The really bad news? If we zap this vector rather than adjust how we disrupt the environment, another vector will take its place with perhaps a more deadly disease.}

Now, with the spread of Dengue, CHIKV and Zika in the Americas – along with the growing degree of insectacide resistance around the world – suddenly GM mosquitoes, Wolbachia, and other novel control methods are getting a lot of attention again.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: FDA On Proposed Oxitec Mosquito Trials In The Florida Keys