Children in Care of Irish Government Ended Up Working in Brothels
June 5th, 2011Via: Irish Independent:
Children have been going missing from State care and ending up working as sex slaves in brothels for at least three years, leaked US embassy cables reveal.
Health Service Executive (HSE) officials made the shocking admission during a private briefing of diplomats from the American Embassy in Dublin.
Details of the disclosure were contained in cables obtained by the Irish Independent through the whistle-blowing organisation WikiLeaks.
Cables reveal how foreign-born children who went missing from HSE care had been ending up in the sex trade as far back as 2008.
The disclosure was made to US diplomats conducting research for an annual report on people trafficking in Ireland.
According to one cable, the HSE said some foreign children who went missing from care had been retraced to brothels, restaurants and private households where they may have been used as domestic slaves.
The missing minors were found in various towns throughout the country.
Disturbingly, the unnamed HSE officials admitted statistics on the number of these children were not being maintained.
A February 2009 cable, detailing a HSE briefing, said gardai had located two minors – both missing from HSE care – in the sex industry during the previous year.
The cable, which gave a detailed assessment of Irish efforts to combat people trafficking, was forwarded to the office of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
U.S. House Price Collapse Worse Than During Great Depression
June 5th, 2011Via: Independent:
The ailing US housing market passed a grim milestone in the first quarter of this year, posting a further deterioration that means the fall in house prices is now greater than that suffered during the Great Depression.
The brief recovery in prices in 2009, spurred by government aid to first-time buyers, has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33 per cent less than it did at the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. The peak-to-trough fall in house prices in the 1930s Depression was 31 per cent – and prices took 19 years to recover after that downturn.
The latest Case-Shiller house price index was just one of a slew of disappointing economic data from the US yesterday, which suggested ebbing confidence in the recovery of the world’s largest economy. The Chicago PMI manufacturing index showed a sharp slowdown in the pace of expansion in May, missing Wall Street forecasts and sending the index to its lowest since November 2009.
Florida: Deputies and Movers Show Up at Bank to Seize Property for Homeowner
June 4th, 2011Via: WINK News:
The couple took their case to court and after a year and a half nightmare the foreclosure was dropped. A Collier County judge said Bank of America has to pay the couple’s $2,534 legal fees for the error. After more than five months the bank still hadn’t paid up. So, the homeowners’ attorney did just what the bank would do to get their money, legally seize their assets.
“I instructed the deputy to go in and take desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets, including cash in the drawers,” Attorney Todd Allen told WINK News.
Outside the Bank of America on Davis Boulevard, several deputies stood by with movers ready to start hauling out the bank’s office supplies and furniture.
Inside, the homeowners’ attorney was locked out of the bank manager’s office by deputies while the bank manger tried to figure out what to do.
Allen says the manager was visibly shaken, “Having two Sheriff’s deputies sitting across your desk, and a lawyer standing behind them, demanding whatever assets are in the bank can be intimidating. But, so is having your home foreclosed on when it wasn’t right.”
After about an hour the bank finally cut a check to satisfy the debt, and no furniture was taken. A representative for Bank of America issued a statement saying they are sorry for the delay in issuing funds. They claim the original request went to an outside attorney who is no longer in business.
Miami Police Smashed Mobile Phones Belonging to People Who Witnessed Shooting; One Witness Hid His Phone’s Memory Card in His Mouth
June 4th, 2011Update: Narces Benoit’s Video
—End Update—
This is a pretty timely development, coming just a day after the news about Apple’s iCensor technology.
Via: Miami Herald:
On Thursday, The Miami Herald spoke to the couple that saw the end of the 4 a.m. police chase on Collins Avenue, then watched and filmed from just a few feet away as a dozen officers fired their guns repeatedly into Raymond Herisse’s blue Hyundai. They say the only reason they were able to show the video to a reporter is because they hid a SIM card after police allegedly pointed guns at their heads, threw them to the ground and smashed the cell phone that took the video.
The three-minute video captured on Narces Benoit’s HTC EVO phone begins as officers crowd around the east side of Herisse’s car with guns drawn. Roughly 15 seconds into the video, officers open fire.
Benoit filmed the incident from the sidewalk on the northeast corner of 13th Street and Collins Avenue, close enough to see some officers’ faces and individual muzzle flashes.
Shortly after the gunfire ends, an officer points at Benoit and police can be heard yelling for him to turn off the camera. The voices are muffled at times. The 35-year-old car stereo technician drops his hand with the camera and hurries back to his Ford Expedition parked further east on 13th Street.
The video shows Benoit get into the car, where his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, sat in the driver’s seat. He raises his camera and an officer is seen appearing on the driver’s side with his gun drawn, pointed at them.
The video ends as more officers are heard yelling expletives, telling the couple to turn the video off and get out of the car.
“They put guns to our heads and threw us on the ground,” Davis said.
Benoit said a Miami Beach officer grabbed his cell phone, said “You want to be [expletive] Paparazzi?” and stomped on his phone before placing him in handcuffs and shoving the crunched phone in Benoit’s back pocket. He said the couple joined other witnesses already in cuffs and being watched by officers, who were on the lookout for two passengers who, police believe at the time, had bailed out of Herisse’s car. It is still not known whether any passengers were in the car.
Four bystanders were shot in the gunfire and three officers suffered minor injuries.
Benoit and Davis said officers smashed several other cell phones in the ensuing chaos.
Benoit said the officers eventually uncuffed him after gunshots rang out elsewhere and he discreetly removed the SIM card and placed it in his mouth.
Officers again took his phone, demanding his video. He said they took him to a nearby mobile command center, snapped a picture of him, then took him to police headquarters and conducted a recorded interview while he kept the SIM card in his mouth. He insisted his phone was broken.
Related: Miami Shootout
Japan: Green Tea Exports Banned Due to High Radiation Levels
June 4th, 2011Via: Telecom:
The Japanese government has banned shipments of green tea leaves in four regions after high levels of radioactive caesium were found.
A swathe of Japan’s tea making regions including parts of Tochigi, Chiba and Kanagawa prefecture as well as the whole of Ibaraki were included within the ban, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
Green tea plantations were first highlighted as suffering from potential radiation contamination last month following the results of sample tests in Kanagawa prefecture.
The authorities discovered around 570 becquerels of caesium per kilogram in leaves grown in the city of Minamiashigara – compared to the legal limit of 500 – and started a recall of tea products.
Tea leaves are the latest agricultural products in Japan to be affected by problems surrounding the still-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Is This Simply Metal Theft, or Something Else?
June 4th, 2011This seems like a lot of effort to go through for $135 worth of metal that can’t even be sold at scrapyards. The theory is that the thieves will melt the iron down and then resell it. How much will it cost, in terms of fuel, to melt it down? I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that this crew would be lucky to wind up with enough change to afford Big Macs at the end of the day.
Is the drug-addled-zombie explanation believable?
I hope we’re not going to be looking at headlines about how al qaeda is causing trains to derail, and how this was some kind of dry run.
Via: Taunton Daily Gazette:
A CSX railroad engine en route to a delivery in Taunton’s Myles Standish Industrial Park derailed Wednesday afternoon after thieves cut away two 8-foot sections of solid steel track, authorities said.
No one was injured as a result of the incident, which observers on scene said ranks as the most audacious example of metal theft in recent memory.
…
Smith said he had never come across a similar incident during his 18 years as a railroad professional.
CSX “wreck master” Mark Achorn said much the same.
Achorn, 59, said he has worked in the railroad industry for 37 years and that he’s accustomed to the occasional call about weather-related rail damage, but never one due to outright theft.
…
De Angelis, 56, said what turned out to be an extreme inconvenience in other circumstances could have been “a major disaster.”
He noted that an engine becoming derailed can hit telephone poles and power lines. He also said he dreads to imagine the repercussions a similar act of sabotage could have on a “main line” rail service, such as Amtrak or the MBTA.
More Americans Think Economy Will Never Recover
June 4th, 2011Recover to what? Happy motoring on Chinese credit?
Via: CNBC:
Americans are growing increasingly doubtful about direction of the US economy, according to the latest survey from business-advisory firm AlixPartners.
In fact, an increasing number, some 61 percent, say they don’t expect to return to their respective pre-recession lifestyles until the spring of 2014, if ever.
What’s worse, a full 10 percent said they expect they will never return to pre-recession spending.
That’s a more pessimistic view than last year, when those surveyed expected that they could be back to pre-recession spending levels by the middle of 2013.
“Americans continue to push their expectations for return to a pre-recession ‘normal’ further and further into the future—close enough for comfort, but far enough away to seem realistic,” said Fred Crawford, CEO of AlixPartners. “But as that happens, more and more it seems normal is actually where we are right now.”
Canada: Brigette DePape Protests Harper Government on Senate Floor
June 4th, 2011I’m no fan of sign waving, but this was pretty good. Brigette DePape’s protest was different from the run-of-the-mill pink tutu and bozo wig nonsense that has no chance of ever causing the corporate state to change course. Seeing her in her official uniform, standing there in defiance in front of the Queen’s goon squad, should inspire anyone who is working directly for the enemy. Who knows what you might get up to, publicly or not?!
The article below states, “A stunned room full of dignitaries and invited guests stared in mute astonishment.”
HAHA, that’s beautiful. It sounds like there were some soiled union suits in there.
Brigette DePape
Brigette DePape
Everyone in that room will go to sleep wondering which other people inside the regime are sleepers.
Questions, questions…
Now, is this Resistance? I never put sign waving in Resistance. In this case, however, I think it is. She demonstrated how someone in the regime at a very low level can find themselves with access to something or someone that they would not otherwise ever have. While she didn’t use this access to cause grave harm to the regime, it is possible that her action may cause other government employees to resist in both overt and covert ways.
Via: The Canadian Press:
Paging all protesters!
A 21-year-old Senate page put her job on the line Friday in a silent call for Canadians to give some sober second thought to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority Conservative government.
Brigette DePape staged an unprecedented protest on the floor of the Senate chamber, walking out into the red-carpeted centre aisle carrying a red “Stop Harper” sign that she’d pulled from beneath her skirt as Gov. Gen. David Johnston read the new government’s speech from the throne.
The University of Ottawa graduate stood silently holding her hand-painted sign for at least 20 seconds — while the vice-regal made a barely perceptible hitch in his address and a stunned room full of dignitaries and invited guests stared in mute astonishment.
With Harper, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott and Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk — among others — looking on, the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons finally escorted DePape out of the Senate.
Six seated justices of the Supreme Court of Canada sat in their ermine robes with their backs to DePape, seemingly oblivious to the drama unfolding three paces behind them.
DePape was nearing the end of her year-long job as a page, and the Senate communications staff said her employment has been terminated.
The stunt was well planned, with a news release popping up in the emails of Parliament Hill reporters minutes after the event.
“Contrary to Harper’s rhetoric, Conservative values are not in fact Canadian values,” DePape, calling herself Brigette Marcelle, said in the release.
“How could they be when three out of four eligible voters didn’t even give their support to the Conservatives? But we will only be able to stop Harper’s agenda if people of all ages and from all walks of life engage in creative actions and civil disobedience.”
In an interview later, DePape said she was “extremely nervous.”
“But, I don’t know, there was something inside of me that said, ‘You have to do this.'”
Introducing iCensor: Apple Is Patenting Technology That Will Cripple Its Devices When They Are In the Proximity of ‘A Concert or a Classified Facility’
June 3rd, 2011Forget Apple’s sycophantic entertainment industry boot licking for a moment. Will agents of the state have a kill switch on recording devices as well? Apparently so.
The patent itself, U.S. Patent #20110128384 uses the phrase, “classified facility” as an example of a venue where the devices would be crippled.
(Can you hear that sickening sound? That’s Cheney squealing with joy over this as he rolls in his own slop.)
Don’t ask me how this crippleware will get installed on non Apple digital cameras and other devices, but it will probably involve suitcases of cash and hookers and a number of senators. Hmm. And maybe an appeal to public safety???
Obomb-ya can get up in front of his teleprompters and talk about how we need to innovate and partner with industry to foil the attempts by al Qaeda to conduct surveillance on government buildings, etc. etc.
It’ll be grand. And once Obomb-ya finishes up, why not go for a quick Cinnabon before Dancing with the Stars comes on?
Via: U.S. Patent #20110128384 :
In some embodiments, infrared data can be received and an electronic device can modify a device operation based on the infrared data. For example, an electronic device can disable a function of the device based on received infrared data. In some embodiments, a transmitter can be located in areas where capturing pictures and videos is prohibited (e.g., a concert or a classified facility) and the transmitters can generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands temporarily disabling recording functions. Accordingly, devices near the transmitter may be able to detect images to receive the infrared signals and the commands encoded in the signal but those devices may be unable to capture pictures or videos because of the commands.
Related:
Apple Working On a Sophisticated Infrared System for iOS Cameras
Copenhagen Suborbitals HEAT-1X Launched
June 3rd, 2011Via: Copenhagen Suborbitals:
