March 29, 2017
ART: 'Fearless Girl' Of Wall Street Bronze Statue That Was Placed In Front Of The Large Bronze Charging Bull Statue Faces Uncertain Future.
I hope they keep her in place. ๐#Inspirational ๐ RT @TIME 'Fearless Girl' of Wall Street faces uncertain future https://t.co/48h7IDpJSs— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) March 26, 2017
.@TIME maybe even add a young boy to encourage children in general to be brave, to have courage in the face of such strength, power.— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) March 26, 2017
I see her, and if possible a young boy standing next to her, both saying to a bull market, "Bring it on." ๐
Time Magazine
Time Magazine
written by Verena Dobnik, AP
Sunday March 26, 2017
NEW YORK — Should the "Fearless Girl" stand up to Wall Street's charging bull forever?
That's the question New York City officials are facing after a statue of a ponytailed girl in a windblown dress went up in front of the bronze bull early this month and immediately became a tourist draw and internet sensation.
What was intended as a temporary display to encourage corporations to put more women on their boards is now getting a second look in light of its popularity, which has spawned an online petition seeking to keep it.
But does keeping the girl past her scheduled April 2 deadline forever alter the meaning of the bull? After all, the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull has been hugely popular in its own right; it was placed in a lower Manhattan traffic median in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans' financial resilience and can-do spirit.
Some fans of the bronze girl already see the bull much differently.
"The bull represents men and power," says Cristina Pogorevici, 18, a student from Bucharest, Romania, who visited the statues this past week. "So she is a message of women's power and things that are changing in the world right now."
Holli Sargeant, 20, a visitor from Queensland, Australia, says the 4-foot-tall, 250-pound bronze girl "is standing up against something and we see her as powerful image. She represents all the young women in the world that want to make a difference."
Such shifting perceptions of the bull — from American hero to villain of sorts — outrage bull sculptor Arturo De Modica, who wants the girl gone.
He dismissed Kristen Visbal's statue as nothing more than an "an advertising trick," noting the bronze was a marketing effort on the eve of the March 8 International Women's Day by Boston-based State Street Global Advisors and its New York advertising firm, McCann.
As for his bull, "I put it there for art," the Italian-born sculptor told MarketWatch, which first reported his anger. "My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength."
The girl's sculptor has no hostile feelings toward the bull.
"I love Charging Bull!" Visbal told The Associated Press on Sunday, speaking from her home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. "But women are here, and we're here to stay."
She was commissioned to create a 36-inch-tall girl with hands on hips and chin up. "Then we thought, this is a really big bull and we should increase the height to 50 inches," she said. "But I made sure to keep her features soft; she's not defiant, she's brave, proud and strong, not belligerent."
The sculptor based her work on two Delaware children — a friend's daughter she said had "great style and a great stance, and I told her to pretend she was facing a bull." The second was a "beautiful Latina girl, so everyone could relate to the Fearless Girl."
Visbal, who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, while her American father was in the foreign service, is to be honored Monday along with State Street on the steps of New York's City Hall by a group of prominent bipartisan women who are asking that the statue be made permanent.
A spokesman for New York City, which controls public art in the area, did not say when a decision would be made. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said only that he would try to prolong the girl's presence.
David Levi Strauss of Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, known for his writings about the impact of art on society and politics, says he is excited by the dynamics the girl statue has brought to the space and agrees the overall meaning has shifted.
"The girl has changed the meaning of the bull forever," he says. "With public art like this, you never know what's going to happen; it's a Rorschach test onto which people are projecting their own opinions and feelings."
A similar point-counterpoint was played out at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, erected in 1982 in Washington, with three soldiers in bronze added two years later, seemingly interacting with the stark marble wall bearing the names of the dead. The result prompted debate; some said the soldiers infused life onto the wall, while protesters blasted the statue as a tasteless intrusion.When it comes to the girl facing the bull, Strauss said, "the bull's stature diminishes. She's the individual standing up to the beast of power. ... She's frozen in a sort of dream of winning, and that's what appeals to people. She's irresistible."
SCIENCE: NASA Picks 10 Smallsat Missions To Explore The Solar System.
RT @engadget NASA picks 10 smallsat missions to explore the Solar System https://t.co/jCexQ138rZ— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) March 26, 2017
President #DonaldTrump displays a #NASA jacket after he signed a bill increasing funding for NASA at the White House. pic.twitter.com/tLAHjITOgv— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 21, 2017
Endgadget
written by Mariella Moon, @mariella_moon
Sunday March 26, 2017
Bigger isn't always better when it comes to space exploration.
Some missions don't require big spacecraft to accomplish. Take for example, these 10 projects under NASA's Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) program. The agency picked 10 projects from PSDS3 to develop mission concepts that use small satellites to study different celestial bodies in the Solar System. NASA awarded the projects a total of $3.6 million to get their concept planning started, but it'll take some time before they're ready for take off. Small satellites are spacecraft that weigh less than 400 pounds, and could be as big as a fridge or as small as a single CubeSat unit that measures 4 cubic inches.
Two of the projects focus on Venus. One team plans to build a 66-pound probe to measure noble gases and their isotopes, while the other wants to use a 12-unit CubeSat to measure its atmosphere's ultraviolet absorption and nightglow emissions. A team from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory wants to send a 12-unit CubeSat to map the elemental composition of the moon. Another group from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center plans to launch a 12-unit CubeSat of their own to investigate the lunar hydrogen cycle.
A team from Johns Hopkins University wants to send a small satellite with deployable seismometer to rendezvous with an asteroid and explore both its surface and interior structure. Meanwhile, a team from Lockheed Martin wants to put together a constellation of 6-unit CubeSats to assess asteroids' physical structure.
Purdue University plans to build a 12-unit CubeSat that can take high-resolution photos and study the surface material composition of Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. Anthony Colaprete from NASA Ames wants to send a 24-unit CubeSat to the red planet in order to understand its daily climate variability. Hampton University's team aims to send a probe to Uranus to study its atmosphere. Finally, a group from Southwest Research Institute wants to use a small satellite to explore Jupiter's magnetosphere.
These smallsats could provide preliminary data needed for much bigger projects in the future. They're also not as expensive to launch, since they're typically loaded as auxiliary payloads. Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, explains:
"These small but mighty satellites have the potential to enable transformational science. They will provide valuable information to assist in planning future Announcements of Opportunity, and to guide NASA's development of small spacecraft technologies for deep space science investigation."
SCIENCE: Researchers Say Dogs Can Detect Breast Cancer With 100% Accuracy By Smelling A Bandage. Wow :o That's So Cool. :)
RT @MailOnline Researchers say dogs can detect breast cancer with 100% accuracy by smelling a bandage https://t.co/fC3sAlKkDg— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) March 27, 2017
Daily Mail, UK
written by AFP staff
Friday March 24, 2017
With just six months of training, a pair of German Shepherds became 100-percent accurate in their new role as breast cancer spotters, the team said.
The technique is simple, non-invasive and cheap, and may revolutionise cancer detection in countries where mammograms are hard to come by.
'In these countries, there are oncologists, there are surgeons, but in rural areas often there is limited access to diagnostics,' Isabelle Fromantin, who leads project Kdog, told journalists in Paris.
This means that 'people arrive too late,' to receive life-saving treatment, she added.
'If this works, we can roll it out rapidly.'
Working on the assumption that breast cancer cells have a distinguishing smell which sensitive dog noses will pick up, the team collected samples from 31 cancer patients.
These were pieces of bandage that patients had held against their affected breast.
With the help of canine specialist Jacky Experton, the team trained German Shepherds Thor and Nykios to recognise cancerous rags from non-cancerous ones.
'It is all based on game-playing' and reward, he explained.
After six months, the dogs were put to the test over several days in January and February this year.
This time, the researchers used 31 bandages from different cancer patients than those the dogs had been trained on.
One bandage was used per experiment, along with three samples from women with no cancer.
Each bandage was placed in a box with a large cone which the dogs could stick their noses into, sniffing at each in turn—four boxes per test.
The exercise was repeated once with each sample, meaning there were 62 individual responses from the dogs in all.
In the first round, the dogs detected 28 out of the 31 cancerous bandages—a 90-percent pass rate, the researchers announced.
On the second try, they scored 100 percent—sitting down in front of the box containing the cancerous sample with their muzzle pressed deep into the cone.
'There is technology that works very well, but sometimes simpler things, more obvious things, can also help,' said Amaury Martin of the Curie Institute, citing the many untested stories of dogs having detected cancer in their owners.
'Our aim was see if we can move from conventional wisdom to... real science, with all the clinical and research validation that this entails.'
This was the proof-of-concept phase of Kdog.
The next step will be a clinical trial with more patients and another two dogs, but the team is still in need of project funding.
The team believes that one day dogs may be replaced by 'sniffing' machines, possibly armies of electronic diagnosticians dedicated to analysing samples that people far from clinics would send them by the post.
In the meantime, Experton said there is little danger of the trained dogs using their new-found skills to accost cancer sufferers outside the lab.
'These tests happen within a very specific work environment,' he explained. 'In a different context, these dogs are unlikely to simply pounce on random people in the street.'
The team says it is the only one to work with breast cancer detection from skin-touch samples.
Other research projects are testing canines' ability to smell different types of cancer in samples of the skin itself, blood or urine, even the air people exhale.
In France, the chances of surviving ten years after a breast cancer diagnosis is about 85 percent, compared to around 50 percent in poorer countries.
SOUTH KOREA: Charity Rescues 55 Animals From Dog Meat Farm In South Korea. Also North Korea Is Promoting Dog Meat As A 'Superfood'.
RT @Independent Over 50 dogs rescued from dog meat farm in South Korea https://t.co/r5nATx3Lab— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) March 27, 2017
The Independent, UK
written by Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Monday March 27, 2017
Over 50 dogs have been rescued from a dog meat farm in South Korea, where the animals were kept in conditions akin to a “dungeon”, a charity has said.
The Humane Society International rescued 55 dogs from the South Korean farm, flying them to America where they have been sent to emergency shelters, 46 of which have been sent to New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
The charity, which is funded through private donations, said the dogs had been kept in near darkness at the farm in Goyang, outside Seoul, and were given barely enough food to live on.
Kelly O’Meara, who oversees the organisation’s companion animal-related international projects, said the farm “was more like a dungeon, where there’s very little light, little to no ventilation, so the stench of ammonia would bring tears to your eyes when you walk though.
“You’d see eyes peering at you, but it was hard to actually see the dogs themselves in the dark,” she added.
The charity’s director of animal protection and crisis response, Adam Parascandola, expressed shock at the state of the dog farm despite his years of working on the campaign.
“Most [of the dogs] appear to have had little human contact and many of them are understandably very frightened of people, cowering as we approach and trying to hide in corners,” he said. “But we know from experience that once we take them to a safe place and they feel secure and loved, they’ll learn to trust.”
The dogs will now have their behaviour assessed and their medical needs met as they are evaluated for adoption.
The organisation has shut down seven farms since 2015, rescuing more than 800 dogs in the process. Its work sees the charity engage with dog farm owners to help them to financially transition into other work as they close down the dog meat farms.
It is estimated there are still an estimated 17,000 such farms operating across South Korea alone, rearing more than 2.5 million dogs for human consumption.
***************
The Independent, UK
written by Samuel Osborne
August 15, 2016
North Korea is promoting the consumption of dog meat by suggesting it has more vitamins than chicken, beef, pork or duck.
Stories across the country's state media in recent months describe dishes including dog meat as traditional "stamina food", while extolling their health benefits.
North Korean propaganda channel DPRK Today suggested the meat was good for the intestines and stomach and contained more vitamins than other meat.
It also claimed the dog should be beaten to death and its fur removed before being scorched to improve its taste, according to the Korea Times.
Dog meat is referred to as "dangogi" in North Korea, which translates to "sweet meat". Radio broadcaster Tongil Voice described dog stew as the "finest medicine".
"There's an old saying that even a slice of dangogi can be good medicine during the dog days," it said.
"It shows our people's love for dangogi and that dangogi is the finest of all medicines, especially during the dog days when the weather is scorching."
The Korean Central Television (KCTV) network also produced a report saying a reopened dog meat restaurant in the capital of Pyongyang was proving "successful in making dog meat more unique".
NORWAY: Norway’s Whaling Season Begins In April. The Quota For 2017 Has Been Set At 999, Up From The Norwegian Government’s 2016 Quota Of 880.
Norway's Whaling Comes Under Fire - Norway’s whaling season begins in April. The quota for 2017 has been set at... https://t.co/PXro1IZBgn— Maritime Executive (@Mar_Ex) March 23, 2017
The Maritime Executive News
written by Wendy Laursen
Wednesday March 22, 2017
Norway’s whaling season begins in April. The quota for 2017 has been set at 999 animals, up from the Norwegian government’s 2016 quota of 880.
Norway is one of only two nations globally that officially practice commercial whaling, the other being Iceland. Norway officially objected to the moratorium on commercial whaling (which came into force in 1986) and does not respect it. The nation resumed commercial whaling in 1993 season after a few years pause.
Norwegian whaling only targets minke whales, operates only in Norwegian waters and is undertaken by relatively small boats that target fish at other times of the year. The number of vessels engaged in the hunt changes from year to year but is on average about 20, compared to about 5,000 active fishing vessels.
The animals are taken from a population of around 103,000 and 107,000 animals (Source https://iwc.int/status). North Atlantic minke whales are not classified as endangered.
Frida Bengtsson, senior oceans campaigner with Greenpeace Nordic says Norway should stop its commercial whaling. “It is in violation of international law (although Norway filed an objection). It is cruel and unnecessary, and it provides less than 100 jobs,” she says.
“Whales face a number of threats, not least of which is climate change and marine litter as we could see from the stranded whale in Norway and whose stomach contained over 30 plastic bags. It starved to death. We should concentrate on those, not on finding ways to hunt whales.”
Greenpeace has protested whaling globally and in Norway for decades both at sea and through lobby efforts. It’s estimated the threat from hunting represents less than one percent of the threats facing whales today. “We will not rest until that number is zero,” says Bengtsson. “Now pollution, climate change, mining and overfishing are the main threats, and we are campaigning ceaselessly to reduce their impact.”
A film on whaling was recently released by the Norwegian Broadcast Agency (NRK), Slaget om kvalen or Battle of Agony in English. The film, partially funded by the Norwegian Fisheries, highlights the fact that approximately 90 percent of the whales killed by Norway are female, most of them pregnant.
The 2017 quota is inconsistent with and undermines the effectiveness of the International Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial whaling, says Kate O'Connell, Marine Wildlife Consultant at the Animal Welfare Institute. “Norway is now the leading commercial whale killing nation in the world, and in the past two years killed more whales than Iceland and Japan combined.”
Norwegian exports of whale meat and blubber have been transiting regularly through E.U. ports en route to Japan for the past several years, says O’Connell. “The most recent shipment of 2,948 kg of whale products was shipped from ร
lesund, Norway to Hamburg, Germany in early October by a cargo vessel called the Berta. At Hamburg, the shipment was loaded on board the MOL Beacon, stopping at Le Havre and Malta for eventual offloading in Kobe, Japan, in November.
“Given that the E.U. is opposed to commercial whaling and the trade in whale products, a number of organizations, including the Animal Welfare Institute, Oceancare and ProWildlife have called for changes to be made to E.U. regulations to so that the transit of whale products through E.U. ports is made illegal and enforcement authorities can act against these activities.”
An Avaaz petition against the whaling has been started and now has over 500,000 signatures.
An Animal Welfare Institute report, Frozen in Time: How Modern Norway Clings to Its Whaling Past, is available here.
March 28, 2017
New Moon In Aries On March 27th and 28th; Love and Romance with a Twist by Tania Gabrielle. :)
Love and Romance with a Twist
written by Tania Gabrielle
subscribe to Tania Gabrielle YouTube channel
contact her at www.TaniaGabrielle.com
[source: CrystalWind.ca]
[source: CrystalWind.ca]
On Tuesday, March 28 (3:57 am in London) and Monday, March 27 (10:57 pm am EDT, 7:57 pm Pacific) we will be blessed by the New Moon at 7° in ARIES.
Every New Moon represents the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new 28-day cycle.
And this one carries a special significance: it is the FIRST New Moon after the Spring Equinox – giving an additional boost to the start of a New Astrological Year.
At the time of the new moon, 5 Planets will be in ARIES – Sun, Moon, Venus, Mercury and Uranus… creating a super strong invitation for you to start fresh, begin a new chapter and birth a new reality. Aries fires up passionate energy and inspires you to move forward with confidence.
Here are some of the other highlights:
- New Moon is conjunct Venus Retrograde. Focus on Love, beauty and expanding Financials. However, since Venus is in retrograde – make all decisions with care, choose your options carefully – do not rush! Otherwise, after the retrograde is over, they can backfire.
- Mars in Taurus (ruled by Venus) is exactly sextile Neptune – very romantic and sensual! Favors meeting spiritual, soul-centered partners and forges a strong connection to Truth and high vibrations.
- Jupiter in Libra (ruled by Venus) square Pluto – activates a desire for success, favors abundance – however, guard against controlling or manipulating for power.
Have a beautiful New Moon!
Love and Blessings,
Tania Gabrielle
NORWAY: Norwegian Police Deported Record Number Of Refugees, Migrants By Force In 2016; The Government Didn’t Quite Reach Its Goal Of Deporting 9,000 Before The 2017 New Year.
Published on January 21, 2016: In the midst of thousands of rapes by (Islamist) Syrian and (Islamist) African refugees, Norway has decided to deport them and has restricted welfare as well.
The Local, Sweden
written by Staff
December 30, 2016
Although a record number of people were sent out of Norway by force this year, the government didn’t quite reach its goal of deporting 9,000 before the New Year.
Through the end of November, Norwegian police deported a total of 7,312 people who were living illegally in Norway, according to figures released on Friday by the National Police Immigration Service Norway (Politiets Utlendingsenhet).
That’s the highest number ever, at around five percent more than last year.
“This is a figure that shows that there have been many who do not have a legitimate claim to asylum who have stayed here and failed to leave the country, and that’s why it is necessary for the police to do the work they have done throughout the year,” State Secretary Fabian Stang told broadcaster NRK.
“It's always brutal when one is forced to use the police to get people to do what they are required to,” added Stang, who is secretary for Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug.
More than a fourth of those who were forced to leave the country were also slapped with criminal charges. Most of those were from Romania, Poland and Lithuania. Nationals from those three countries accounted for 43 percent of the 2,041 convicted criminals who were deported.
Although there were a record number of deportations, the government had hoped for even more. A national goal of 9,000 deportation was set at the beginning of the year. According to NRK, the police were planning to make extra efforts over the years’ final two days to add to the figure.
BBC News documentary published on Jun 7, 2016: (Islamist) Migrants in Norway are being given classes which educate (Islamist) asylum seekers in Norwegian 'cultural codes' when it comes to relationships with women, personal boundaries, sexual assault and what constitutes rape. We spoke to some of the men taking the class, as well as the organisers and instructors. But the classes, which other European countries may also introduce, have been criticised for stigmatising migrant men. James Longman reports.
Please subscribe HERE: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
The Daily Caller
written by Jonah Bennett
April 6, 2016
Leftist Norway politician Karsten Nordal Hauken was brutally raped by a Somali [Islamist male refugee (emphasis mine)] and felt so incredibly guilty in the aftermath he subsequently questioned whether authorities should even deport the man.
Hauken has finally come out to tell the public his story of his rape and forgiveness, Norway’s public broadcasting channel NRK reports.
Immediately after the rape first occurred, Hauken was taken to the hospital in Oslo where nurses collected samples for DNA evidence. About six months after the rape, police completed their investigation. They secured the DNA and fingerprint evidence necessary to move the case forward.
In court, the Somali claimed the interaction was consensual, but Norwegian authorities begged to differ. The Somali went to prison for four and a half years.
The story doesn’t end there. Shortly before the sentence was over, Hauken learned the man was about to be deported from Norway and sent back to Somalia.
“I got a strong feeling of guilt and responsibility,” Hauken wrote. “I was the reason he wouldn’t be in Norway, and instead be sent to an unknown future in Somalia. He had already done his time in prison. Would he get punished again, and this time much harder?”
Hauken fell into a deep depression. He started drinking heavily and lost years doing little else but smoking marijuana to dodge feelings of self-loathing.
He’s since apparently turned his life around and has come to some important realizations, which may strike other observers as completely bizarre.
As Hauken noted in the interview, it’s important not to stay silent about personal struggles and mental illness. Rape happens, and not just to women. But perhaps the most notable lesson Hauken says he learned is that “rapists are from a world so different from ours.”
“In his culture, sexual abuse is about power, not lust,” Hauken said. “And it’s not considered a gay action to be the one who engages in power and violence.”
“I don’t feel anger against my rapist, because I look at him as a product of an unjust world. A product of an upbringing full of war,” Hauken said.
What this all means, according to Hauken, is that refugees need our help more than ever.
BULGARIA: Bulgaria's Socialist Leader Concedes Defeat In Elections. Borisov's Pro-EU Party Beats Socialists In Bulgaria's Snap Election.
AFP news agency published on Mar 23, 2017: Ten years after Bulgaria joined the European Union as its poorest member its economy works at two speeds, deepening the income gap between poor low-skilled workers and a handful of well-off top professionals.
Daily Sabah, Turkey
written by AP staff
Sunday March 26, 2017
The leader of Bulgaria's Socialist party has conceded defeat after exit polls showed that her party placed second in the parliamentary election held Sunday.
Socialist party leader Kornelia Ninova congratulated former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov's GERB party for winning the election.
The Socialists, who campaigned on a platform of forging closer relations with Russia, ruled out any option of serving in a coalition government with the center-right GERB party.
Ninova says that if "GERB fails to form a government, we will try to do so."
Official returns are expected Monday.
The Guardian, UK
written by AFP staff in Sofia
Sunday March 26, 2017
Veteran politician ahead of BSP in polls seen as test of Russian influence in country but stable coalition may prove elusive.
Boiko Borisov, the comeback specialist of Bulgarian politics, looked to have done it again as exit polls from a snap election put his pro-EU centre-right party in first place.
Borisov’s European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party won about 32%, the exit polls on Sunday showed, ahead of the Socialist party (BSP) on about 28%.
Observers had suggested victory for the BSP might see Bulgaria, a Nato member, tilt more towards Russia. Moscow, which has long had close cultural and economic ties with Bulgaria, has been accused of seeking to expand its influence in other Balkan countries in recent months.
Borisov said after the exit poll that he was “obliged” by the vote to form a government but whether the burly former firefighter and mayor of Sofia, 57, can form a stable coalition remains to be seen.
The European Union’s poorest country, where the average monthly salary is just €500 (£430) and corruption is rife, has been unstable for years. The election was the third in four years.
Borisov, once a bodyguard for Bulgaria’s last Communist leader, has long dominated national politics, serving as prime minister from 2009 to 2013 and again from 2014 to 2017.
In between, the BSP was in power for barely a year. Both times Borisov quit early, first in 2013 after mass protests and then last November after his candidate for the presidency was beaten by a former air force chief backed by the BSP.
Forming a coalition this time will be tough. The nationalist United Patriots looked to have come third with about 8%, although the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MDL) party, representing Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, may have beaten them.
Advertisement
The performance of the BSP, the successors to the Communist party, was worse than expected after its new leader, Kornelia Ninova, appeared to have energised the party.
Ninova had said she was not content with Bulgaria being a “second-class member” of the EU and that she would veto an extension of sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow.
But Borisov also said during the campaign that he wanted more “pragmatic” ties with Russia, while Ninova, 48, insisted that she remained committed to the EU. “We are the party that ushered Bulgaria into the European Union and Nato and we stand by [our obligations in] these organisations,” she told AFP recently.
The campaign also saw a spat erupt between Bulgaria and its neighbour Turkey. Bulgaria is home to a 700,000-strong Muslim minority, most of them ethnic Turks, while at least 200,000 ethnic Turks with Bulgarian passports live in Turkey.
Ankara’s support for a new party, Dost, which unlike the main MDL party, fervently backs the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoฤan, has irked Sofia.
The MDL’s leader, Mustafa Karadaya, has said that Erdoฤan had “abandoned” the values of Mustafa Kemal Atatรผrk, the founder of modern Turkey.
The dispute boosted the United Patriots, who blocked the border on Friday to stop voters coming in from Turkey, before being dispersed by police.
Published on Mar 26, 2017: Bulgarian riot police clashed with around 2,000 refugees in the country's largest migrant camp in the town of Harmanli. The facility houses around 3,000, mostly young, male and Afghan migrants. The riot was caused by a quarantine, with the camp having been sealed off following reports of skin disease outbreaks among its residents. Some men carry dangerous diseases that were previously thought to be extinct in Europe. The inhabitants protested against the temporary restrictions on leaving the center due to the risk of spreading the infection.
The refugees threw rocks at the police, set mattresses and furniture on fire and damaged structures within their own camp. 250 police officers, firefighters and gendarmerie were deployed. Riot police fought off the angry crowd with water cannons.
Officials placed the facility under quarantine after locals from the nearby town staged a protest following reports that people from the camp carried communicable skin diseases. The head of the Bulgarian Refugee Agency, which runs the camp, later said reports of the infection were false and "artificially created tension."
Meanwhile, the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), Korneliya Ninova said the recent clashes were the result of the government's policy towards refugees.
"We have been alarming about the problems – including health and routine issues there for such a long time. When they [officials] are neglecting the problem and only boast how much work they have done, this is the outcome we should expect," the politician told the media, as cited by FOCUS News Agency.
Bulgaria, the EU's poorest member state, has toughened its border controls to decrease the flows of illegal migrants. A security fence was built on its border with Turkey, while some 17,000 migrants have been detained since the start of the year, according to Reuters. Yet, Bulgarian nationalists have staged a number of protests recently, saying the country cannot support migrants even in lower numbers.
READ MORE HERE Nov. 24, 2016: 2,000 migrants clash with police, set Bulgaria's largest refugee center on fire (VIDEO)
Reffo news published on Jan 18, 2017: A Belgian court has criticized the Bulgarian state for taking in refugees even when it's against the rules.
********************
The Express, UK
written by Nick Gutteridge
Saturday November 26, 2016
BULGARIA'S furious prime minister ordered officials to begin the mass deportation of hundreds of migrants who went on the rampage and wrecked their camp.
Fuming Boiko Borisov vowed all migrants involved in the violent disturbance will be "brought to justice" with many being deported back to their home countries.
Riot police had to storm the camp yesterday using water cannon and rubber bullets to restore order at the camp on the border with Turkey, with 24 officers being injured in the operation.
Shocking photographs of the burning rubble of the camp showed gangs of young men milling around in hoodies. Most are from Afghanistan, according to officials.
Witnesses said the scene "looked like a war zone" after rampaging refugees smashed windows, overturned rubbish containers and set fires.
Those who are not sent back to the Middle East will be dispersed to migrant camps across the country in a bid to prevent them from organising another violent uprising.
Mr Borisov raged: "I am very worried. You see there is no window left unbroken. The people who committed these acts of vandalism will be brought to justice.
"Based on an agreement between the European Union and Afghanistan we have asked for a plane to start extraditing people there in early December. As for the rest, all who have acted brutally and violated public order will be moved to closed camps."
More than 400 asylum seekers had been confined in a part of the camp after rumours rippled through a nearby town that many of them had a serious and highly contagious skin condition. It is home to around 3,000 migrants overall, making it the largest in Bulgaria.
Officials put the site on lockdown whilst detailed medical examinations were carried out, although doctors later said the level of sickness in the camp had been exaggerated.
However, residents in nearby Harmanli have upped their calls for the camp to be permanently closed, claiming that migrants regularly venture into the town and steal from them.
Local Rusi Stoev said: "This camp should be closed. You should see what it's like here at weekends. They go around in big groups and take fruit and vegetables at the market without paying."
Almost all of the migrants in the camp want to travel onwards to rich western European countries like Germany and Scandinavia, where they hope to start new lives.
Representatives for the asylum seekers have been demanding that they be allowed free passage into neighbouring Serbia, which is the next step on the Balkans route to the promised lands. However, the country's interior ministry has refused that request and has instead beefed up security by deploying more border guards.
Bulgaria has been one of the main transit points for the more than a million migrants who have entered Europe from the Middle East and North Africa in the last year.
The country has built a fence along its land border with Turkey and has beefed up border controls to deter asylum seekers from attempting the crossing.
Officials say some 17,000 people were detained in the first 10 months of the year, down by more than a third from the same period in 2015.
Despite the decreasing numbers, Bulgarian nationalists have staged protests in recent months calling for the immediate closure of all refugee centres and for migrants to be returned to Turkey or to their country of origin.
Published on Feb 20, 2016: 11 people were arrested yesterday following a riot involving (Islamist male) Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis which broke out over a dispute involving a Syrian non-Muslim woman refusing to wear a headscarf, a hijab required by Islamic sharia law.
RT news
written by Staff
February 23, 2016
About 100 refugees from various countries clashed with each other in a massive fight in a refugee shelter in Belgium that left seven people injured. The brawl occurred amid a dispute over a woman refusing to wear a headscarf.
The riot occurred in the town of Leopoldsburg, Belgium, and involved Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees fighting with each other, Belgian media report. The refugees split up into two groups, with Syrians and Iraqis clashing with Afghans.
In a video of the fight published on YouTube, the refugees can be seen pulling no punches, bringing to bear plastic chairs, broomsticks and rubbish bins. The scuffle then spilled over into clashes with police, who were immediately deployed to the scene.
As a result, seven people sustained injuries and one of them was hospitalized. Eleven refugees were detained for deliberate assault and destruction of property. Most were later released.
“The four that [started the fight] have been transferred to a detention center. The seven others are individually housed and distributed in other reception centers in Flanders,” An Luyten, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Leopoldsburg, told Belgian HLN News.
The brawl was caused by a dispute over a Syrian woman refusing to wear a headscarf, for which she was bullied by several Afghan refugees.
“Two or three Afghans had been targeting a young girl from Syria for a couple of days because she was not covering her head… which is weird, because several other girls were also not wearing a headscarf. It is not clear why they were after this girl in particular,” Luyten told Flanders News, commenting on the incident.
The dispute divided the camp, eventually growing into a fight between Syrians and Iraqis defended the woman, and Afghans expressed their outrage.
Theo Francken, the Belgian minister for asylum and migration, condemned the incident and denounced it as “unacceptable.”
“I find it totally unacceptable that some young Afghans find it necessary to tell Syrian girls to wear a headscarf and that they should not dress like Western girls,” he said, as quoted by HLN News.
“They come here, they are guests here. We are not theirs. They have to adapt to our rules,” he added.
Wouter Beke, the mayor of Leopoldsburg, even suggested to separate people of different nationalities living in the shelter as well as to separate single men from families. However, these proposals were rejected by Francken, who said such measure could send a wrong signal and “encourage segregation rather than integration.”
TURKEY: The Business of Refugee, Migrant Smuggling, and Sex Trafficking, Human Trafficking.
Gatestone Institute
written by Uzay Bulut
Uzay Bulut born and raised a Muslim is a Turkish journalist from the Middle East.
Sunday April 3, 2016
- Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a "bride price" -- an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family.
- "Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon." — From a report on Turkey, by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).
- Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.
- Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, wealthy Arab states do not take in refugees. The people in this area know too well that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. For many Muslim men such as wealthy, aging Saudis, it is easier to buy Syrian children from Turkey, Syria or Jordan as cheap sex slaves.
On International Women's Day, March 8, Turkish news outlets covered the tragic life and early death of a Syrian child bride.
Last August, in Aleppo, Mafe Zafur, 15, married her cousin Ibrahim Zafur in an Islamic marriage. The couple moved to Turkey, but the marriage ended after six months, when her husband abruptly threw out of their home. With nowhere to sleep, Mafe found shelter with her brother, 19, and another cousin, 14, in an abandoned truck.
On 8 March, Mafe killed herself, reportedly with a shotgun. Her only possession, found in her pocket, was her handwritten marriage certificate.
Mafe Zafur is only one of many young Syrians who have been victims of child marriage. Human rights groups report even greater abuse that gangs are perpetrating against the approximately three million Syrians who have fled to Turkey.
A detailed report on Syrian women refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in Turkey, issued as far back as 2014 by the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed (known in Turkish as Mazlumder), tells of early and forced marriages, polygamy, sexual harassment, human trafficking, prostitution, and rape that criminals inflicted upon Syrians in Turkey.
According to the Mazlumder report, Syrians are sexually exploited by those who take advantage of their destitution. Children, especially girls, suffer most.
Evidence, both witnessed and forensic, indicates that in every city where Syrian refugees have settled, prostitution has drastically increased. Young women between the ages of 15 and 20 are most commonly prostituted, but girls as young as thirteen are also exploited.
Secil Erpolat, a lawyer with the Women's Rights Commission of the Bar Association in the Turkish province of Batman, said that many young Syrian girls are offered between 20 and 50 Turkish liras ($7-$18). Sometimes their clients pay them with food or other goods for which they are desperate.
Women who have crossed the border illegally and arrive with no passport are at high risk of being kidnapped and sold as prostitutes or sex slaves. Criminal gangs bring refugees to towns along the border or into the local bus terminals where "refugee smuggling" has become a major source of income.
Professional criminals convince parents that their daughters are going to a better life in Turkey. The parents are given 2000-5000 Turkish liras ($700-$1700) as a "bride price" -- an enormous sum for a poor Syrian family -- to smuggle their daughters across the border.
"Many men in Turkey practice polygamy with Syrian girls or women, even though polygamy is illegal in Turkey," the lawyer Abdulhalim Yilmaz, head of Mazlumder's Refugee Commission, told Gatestone Institute. "Some men in Turkey take second or third Syrian wives without even officially registering them. These girls therefore have no legal status in Turkey. Economic deprivation is a major factor in this suffering, but it is also a religious and cultural phenomenon, as early marriage is allowed in the religion."
Syrian women and children in Turkey also experience sexual harassment at work. Those who are able to get jobs earn little -- perhaps enough to eat, but they work long and hard for that little. They are also subjected to whatever others choose to do to them as they work those long hours.
A 16-year old Syrian girl, who lives with her sister in Izmir, told Mazlumder that "because we are Syrians who have come here to flee the war, they think of us as second-class people. My sister was in law school back in Syria, but the war forced her to leave school. Now unemployed men with children ask her to 'marry' them. They try to take advantage of our situation."
If they are Kurds, they are discriminated against twice, first as refugees, then as Kurds. "The relief agencies here help only the Arab refugees; when they hear that we are Kurds, they either walk away from us, or they give very little, and then they do not return."
The organization End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) has produced a detailed report on the "Status of action against commercial sexual exploitation of children: Turkey." ECPAT's report cites, from the 2014 Global Slavery Index, estimates that the incidence of slavery in Turkey is the highest in Europe, due in no small measure to the prevalence of trafficking for sexual exploitation and early marriage.
The ECPAT report quotes a U.S. State Department study from 2013: "Turkey is a destination, transit, and source country for children subjected to sex trafficking."
The ECPAT report continues,
"There is a risk of young asylum seekers disappearing from accommodation centres and becoming vulnerable to traffickers."It is feared that reports from the UN-run Zaatari refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan are equally true for camps in Turkey: aging men from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states take advantage of the Syrian crisis in order to purchase cheap teenage brides."Evidence indicates that child trafficking is also happening between Syria and Turkey by established 'matchmakers' who traffic non-refugee girls from Syria who have been pre-ordered by age. Girls between the ages of twelve and sixteen are referred to as pistachios, those between seventeen and twenty are called cherries, twenty to twenty-two are apples, and anyone older is a watermelon."
Apparently, 85% of Syrian refugees live outside refugee camps, and therefore cannot even be monitored by an international agency.
Many refugee women in Turkey, according to the lawyer and vice-president of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD), Eren Keskin, are forced to engage in prostitution outside, and even in, refugee camps built by the Turkish Prime Minister's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).
"There are markets of prostitution in Antep. Those are all state-controlled places. Hundreds of refugees -- women and children -- are sold to men much older than they are," said Keskin. "We found that women are forced into prostitution because they want to buy bread for their children."
Keskin said that they have received many complaints of rape, sexual assault and physical violence from refugees in the camps in the provinces of Hatay and Antep. "Despite all our attempts to enter those camps, the officials have not allowed us to."
Officials at AFAD, however, have strongly denied the allegations. "We provide refugees with education and health care. It is sad that after all the devoted work that AFAD has done to take care of refugees for the last five years, such baseless and unjust accusations are directed at us," a representative of AFAD told Gatestone.
"The number of refugees in Turkey has reached to 2.8 million. Turkey has twenty-six accommodation centers in which about three hundred thousand refugees live. Those centers are regularly monitored by the UN; some UN officials are based in them."
"Many refugees could have been provided with jobs suited to their training or skills," Cansu Turan, a social worker with the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), told Gatestone.
"But none of them was asked about former jobs or educational background when they Turkish officials registered them. Therefore, they can work only informally and under the hardest conditions just to survive. This also paves the way for their sexual exploitation."The most important question is why the refugee camps are not open to civil monitoring. Entry to refugee camps is not allowed. The camps are not transparent. There are many allegations as to what is happening in them. We are therefore worried about what they are hiding from us."
"At our public centers where we provide support for refugees," Sema Genel Karaosmanoglu, the Executive Director of the Support to Life organization, told Gatestone.
"We have encountered persons who have been victims of trafficking, sexual, and gender-based violence."There is still no entry to the camps, and there is no transparency as entry is only possible after getting permission from relevant government institutions. But we have been able to gain access to those camps administered by municipalities in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Batman, and Suruc, Urfa."
A representative at AFAD, however, told Gatestone that "the accommodation centers are transparent. If organizations would like to enter those places, they apply to us and we evaluate their applications. Thousands of media outlets have so far entered the accommodation centers to film and explore the life in them."
"The number of current refugees is already too high," said the lawyer Abdulhalim Yilmaz, head Mazlumder's Refugee Commission. "But many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have not taken in a single Syrian refugee so far. And there are tens of thousands of refugees waiting at the borders of Turkey."
If these women and children knew what was possibly awaiting them in Turkey, they would never set foot in the country.
This is the inevitable outcome when a certain culture -- the Islamic culture -- does not have the least regard for women's rights. Instead, it is a culture of rape, slavery, abuse and discrimination that often exploits even the most vulnerable.
The horror is that Turkey is the country that the EU is entrusting to "solve" the serious problem of refugees and migrants.
The international community needs to protect Syrians, to cordon off parts of the country so that more people will not want to leave their homes to become refugees or asylum seekers in other countries. Perhaps many Syrians would even return to their homes.
The West has always opened its arms to many beleaguered individuals from Muslim countries -- such as 25-year-old Afghan student and journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, who was beaten, taken to prison, and sentenced to death in 2007 for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet and for questioning Islam.
It was Sweden and Norway that helped Kambaksh to flee Afghanistan in 2009 by helping him get access to a Swedish government plane. Kambaksh is now understood to be in the United States.
Several European countries, however, have become the victims of the rapes, murders and other crimes committed by the very people who have entered the continent as refugees, asylum seekers or migrants.
Europe is going through a security problem, as seen in the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Many Muslims have difficulty with, or even an aversion to, assimilating into the Western culture. Many seem to have the aim of importing to Europe the culture of intimidation, rape and abuse from which they fled.
It would be more just and realistic if Muslim countries that share the same linguistic and religious background as Syrian refugees -- and that are preferably more civilized and humanitarian than Turkey -- could take at least some responsibility for their Muslim brothers and sisters. Although the desperate victims are their Muslim sisters and brothers, wealthy Arab states do not take in refugees. We have not seen any demonstrations with signs that read "Refugees Welcome!" People know that asylum seekers would bring with them problems, both social and economic. For many Muslim men such as wealthy, aging Saudis, it is easier to buy Syrian children from Turkey, Syria or Jordan as cheap sex slaves.
Women and girls are not, to many, human beings who deserve to be treated humanely. They are only sex objects whose lives and dignity have no value. Syrians are there to be abused and exploited. The only way they can think of helping women is to "marry" them.
GREECE: Tensions Flare As Greece Tells Turkey It Is Ready To Answer Any Provocation.
I highly recommend watching these videos chock-full of good information.
TV Amsterdam published on Dec 17, 2016: Olivier Jansen in a conversation with Ingeborg Beugel, who as a correspondent for the Groene Amsterdammer this summer has written four articles about the Greek refugee crisis. The articles are from June 22, July 13, August 10 and oktober 26 2016 (www.groene.nl)
Watch also “Because We Carry” about volunteers working on island of Lesbos, Greece.
The Guardian, UK
written by Helena Smith
Monday March 27, 2017
Fears of tensions mounting in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Seas reignited after the Turkish president raised the prospect of a referendum on accession talks with the EU and the Greek defence minister said the country was ready for any provocation.
Relations between Ankara and European capitals have worsened before the highly charged vote on 16 April on expanding the powers of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoฤan.
Western allies have argued that a vote endorsing the proposed constitutional change would invest the Turkish leader with unparalleled authority and limit checks and balances at a time when they fear he is exhibiting worrying signs of authoritarianism. Erdoฤan has been enraged by recent bans on visiting Turkish officials rallying “yes” supporters in Germany and the Netherlands.
Highlighting growing friction between Ankara and the bloc, he raised the spectre of a public vote on EU membership at the weekend.
“We have a referendum on 16 April. After that we may hold a Brexit-like referendum on the [EU] negotiations,” Erdoฤan told a Turkish-UK forum attended by the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson. “No matter what our nation decides we will obey it. It should be known that our patience, tested in the face of attitudes displayed by some European countries, has limits.”
The animus – reinforced last week when the leader said he would continue labelling European politicians “Nazis” if they continued calling him a dictator – has also animated tensions between Greece and Turkey, and Erdoฤan’s comments came hours after the Greek defence minister said armed forces were ready to respond in the event of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity being threatened.
“The Greek armed forces are ready to answer any provocation,” Panos Kammenos declared at a military parade marking the 196th anniversary of Greece’s war of liberation against Ottoman Turkish rule. “We are ready because that is how we defend peace.”
Although Nato allies, the two neighbours clashed over Cyprus in 1974 and almost came to war over an uninhabited Aegean isle in 1996. Hostility has been rising in both areas, with the Greek Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, recently voicing fears of Turkey sparking a “hot incident” in the run-up to the referendum.
“I fear the period from now until the referendum in Turkey, as well as the effort to create a climate of fanaticism within Turkish society,” he told CNN Greece.
Turkey’s EU negotiations have long been hindered by Cyprus, and talks aimed at reuniting its estranged Greek and Turkish communities are at a critical juncture but have stalled and are unlikely to move until after the referendum.
But it is in the Aegean where tensions, matched by an increasingly ugly war of words, have been at their worst. After a tense standoff over eight military officers who escaped to Greece after the abortive coup against Erdoฤan last July – an impasse exacerbated when the Greek supreme court rejected a request for their extradition – hostility has been measured in almost daily dogfights between armed jets and naval incursions of Greek waters by Turkish research vessels.
Both have prompted diplomats and defence experts to express fears of an accident at a time when experienced staff officers and pilots have been sidelined in the purges that have taken place since the attempted coup. The shaky migration deal signed between the EU and Turkey to thwart the flow of refugees into the continent has only added to the pressure.
“The concern on the Greek side is not so much of an intentional incident but of an accident that then spirals out of control,” Dr Thanos Dokos, director of the Eliamep thinktank, told the Guardian. “The whole nationalist mood in Turkey would make such a situation difficult to defuse.”
Mindful of the nationalist vote that he will need to win the referendum, Erdoฤan has questioned the validity of the Lausanne treaty delineating the two countries’ borders after the catastrophic defeat by Turkish forces of the invading Greek army in 1922.
The Turkish nationalist opposition leader, Devlet Bahรงeli, has gone even further, claiming that several Greek islands are under occupation and reacting furiously when Kammenos visited the far-flung isle of Oinousses.
“Someone must explain to this spoiled brat not to try our patience,” he railed. “If they [the Greeks] want to fall into the sea again, if they want to be hunted down, they are welcome, the Turkish army is ready. Someone must explain to the Greek government what happened in 1922. If there is no one to explain it to them, we can come like a bullet across the Aegean and teach them history all over again.”
With the rhetoric at such heights, Greek officials worry that any further distancing of Turkey from Europe will spell disaster if a crisis were to occur. Donald Trump’s announcement that he “loved the Greeks” at a ceremony marking Greek Independence Day has done little to deflect fears that in the confusion and chaos besetting his administration Athens could depend on Washington.
“Greece has expressed its concerns to the US,” said Dokos. “But when we don’t have a fully functional national security apparatus in Washington which is usually the firefighter in such situations, when Nato’s influence is limited and the EU’s even less, the big question really is who could or would manage such a crisis if it were to happen.”
EGYPT: An Egyptian Court Sentences 56 Over Migrant Boat Disaster.
written by Staff and agencies
Monday March 27, 2017
An Egyptian court has handed 56 defendants prison sentences over the deaths of more than 200 migrants, who died after their boat capsized last September in the Mediterranean en route to Europe.
The rulings were issued by a court in the coastal city of Rosetta, close to where 202 people drowned in September. The vessel capsized in the Mediterranean Sea on September 21 when it was on a journey to Italy.
The court sentenced the 56 defendants to jail terms ranging from two to 13 years in prison on charges of manslaughter and fraud, a report from the court said. One of the accused was acquitted.
The Europe-bound boat was carrying between 400 and 600 people. Eritrean, Somali, Syrian and Sudanese citizens as well as Egyptian nationals were reported to have been passengers aboard the boat.
In October Egypt's parliament passed an anti-migration law stipulating heavy penalties, including fines and prison terms, for those convicted of smuggling or conspiring to smuggle migrants.
Egyptian authorities subsequently arrested the owner of the boat and other suspects including crew members and migration mediators. In recent years, Egypt has seen an increase in migrants trying to travel across the Mediterranean to Europe.
The International Organization for Migration estimated the number of migrants who died or disappeared while attempting to reach Europe via the Mediterranean in 2016 to be more than 5,000.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
