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In Russia defendants are placed in a cage in the court room. As long as they are not sentenced they don't have to wear a jail uniform.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
In Russia defendants are placed in a cage in the court room. Just wondering why the middle one is allowed (or forced) to wear a mask and a hood...
Mission/Trial Report 14
Date: 08-30-2325
Location: Council Chambers, Citadel
Defendants Present:
• Cian Lios
• Daisy MacKenzie
• Fazzy Constantine
• Noah Constantine
• Ryoma Halvern
• Tai Astrofengia
• T1NM4N
• Vahenir
• Scrap
• Zeth Ryder
BluShock Special Witness:
• Jaron
Prosecutor:
• Tobias Sidonis
It had been some time since the “former” BluShock crew’s last mission on Stackspire Colony, where C-Sec—led by the newly installed BluShock Commander Robert Kean—finally apprehended Fazzy Constantine and his crew. Now, dragged back to the very heart of galactic law, they were forced to stand before the Citadel Council and answer for their alleged crimes.
The list was long: Noveria. The Citadel bombings. The destruction of Stackspire. The accusations were heavy, the weight of the galaxy pressing down on them. The crew knew they had their evidence ready, their witnesses lined up, their innocence to prove. But Daisy reminded them at every turn that this was a stitch-up from the very beginning. The Council wasn’t looking for truth—they were looking for blood.
As the day began, the sound of sirens split the wards. The apartment doors blew open under the force of C-Sec. Fazzy and his crew’s old friend from Valtoria—now C-Sec agent Saeed Massani—entered with the unit. He wasn’t here as an ally. He was here as law. He was here to do his job. And so the crew was marched out.
The journey through the Wards was chaos incarnate. Barricades, shouting mobs, and angry citizens lined the streets. “Murderers!” “Terrorists!” “Traitors!” Some cursed their names. Some wept for lost loved ones in the bombings the crew had actually prevented. None of it mattered. The people had already been told the story. The truth had been written out of history.
The elevator doors opened to the Council Chambers. What awaited them was a scene of grandeur and judgment. Crimson-leaved trees, sculpted planters, pristine staircases ascending into the chamber of galactic justice itself. The Council was assembled: an Orc councillor, a Turian, an Asari, and a Salarian—the brother of the slain Administrator Calzen of Noveria. Prosecutor Tobias Sidonis presided over the case, his voice cold and sharp as he read the charges.
The crew were lined up, cuffed, made to climb the steps to the platform of judgment. Their witnesses were already there: Gavin Tarius and Darrek Solan of Noveria. Marco and Leo, the garage brothers of Stackspire. Private investigator Havid Gabour and Battle Ready Pizza Joint owner, A Krogan. Then the accusations came. Twenty counts. Smuggling. Murder. Bombings. Destruction. Fabricated evidence was hurled onto holoscreens for all to see: falsified images of Fazzy in a relationship with the Salarian Administrator; Tai Astrofengia handing over a suspicious package; the long-missing BluShock operative Chastian Necrosa setting the Citadel bomb timers. The lies were as grotesque as they were elaborate.
The crew spoke, one by one, defending themselves. Their innocence was unwavering. They reminded the chamber of their deeds: the evacuation of Stackspire, the halting of the Citadel bombings, the saving of billions from galactic annihilation—not once, but twice. But the Council’s faces remained stone.
The witnesses were called. The Stackspire trio spoke truth to power and confirmed the crew’s actions had been heroic. But betrayal was present as well—the Turian receptionist from Noveria, who once thanked BluShock for saving him, now lied under oath. He declared they were behind the massacres at Port Hanshan, his words dripping with falsity, his motives bought and paid for by unknown hands.
Then came Jaron. The dragon-being from Duneshade, Icaros. He had traveled far to stand in their defense. His evidence cut through the lies: recorded footage of the Stackspire president himself planting charges, abandoning the colony, and triggering the explosion that would later be pinned on Fazzy and his crew. His proof revealed the trap for what it was: a staged execution, an attempt to erase BluShock from the galaxy.
But even that was not enough.
The chamber quieted as the Council withdrew to deliberate. When they returned, the sentence was swift and merciless. Guilty. Guilty on all counts. Their heroism meant nothing. Their sacrifices meant nothing. The truth meant nothing.
Prosecutor Sidonis gave the order: Purgatory. The infamous space prison where convicts are sent to vanish into silence. A place so remote, so forgotten, that escape was not even a rumor. Fazzy, Daisy, Noah, and the rest would be cast into its abyss for an undefined sentence. Their ranks were stripped. Their honor burned. Their legacy erased.
Daisy spat words at the Orc councillor, a defiant curse about his manhood, her voice echoing as the crew was marched away. Saeed Massani, once a friend, once a comrade, carried out the Council’s will and led them to their doom.
Outside, celebrations broke across the galaxy. Illium News Network broadcast the verdict: “Justice has been served. Fazzy Constantine and the BluShock crew are incarcerated.” In the streets, there were cheers. In the Presidium, there was relief. For most, it was over.
But for Fazzy and his crew, stripped of everything, this was not the end. Somewhere, beyond the sirens and the cells, lay a future untold. Could they rise again? Could they ever return to the galaxy as its heroes?
That remains the unanswered question.
End of Report.
In Russia defendants are placed in a cage in the court room. As long as they are not sentenced they don't have to wear a jail uniform.
In Russia defendants are placed in a cage in the court room. As long as they are not sentenced they don't have to wear a jail uniform.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Mansfield Training School:
"It was active from 1863 to 1993; was initially founded to segregate clients who were mentally retarded, epileptic, or deemed mentally aberrant from the rest of the society.
Patients & staff were moved through a series of underground tunnels that connected building to building.
The Mansfield Training School was a merging of two institutions "to provide for the care, custody, education and employment of mental defective (feeble minded) and epileptic persons."
pre-1915.., name changed from: "Ct Colony for Epileptics" to "CT School for Imbeciles" to "Connecticut Training School for Feeble minded"
1917.. merged with the Connecticut Colony for Epileptics at Mansfield, renamed the Mansfield Training School and Hospital.
1959.. administratively, Mansfield is transferred to the new Office of Mental Retardation in the Dept. of Health
1975... administratively, Mansfield is transferred to the new Dept. of Mental Retardation
1993... Mansfield Training School closes."
The facilities were old and the quality of care was questioned by family members of residents in a 1978 lawsuit, CARC v. Thorne that would eventually result in the closing of the school in 1993.
In the early 1990s the defendants in the lawsuit inappropriately placed "Do Not Resuscitate Orders" in patients' files and withheld CPR.
One patient, Gladys Burr who was placed in this facility in the 1930s only to be found to have IQ scores that climbed, a high school diploma and completion of a short term business class. The doctors ignored all the signs she was placed there incorrectly, finally after 40 years, she was released from the hospital she was transferred to when Mansfield closed. Imagine 40 years .... what could have been.
Some buildings were so dilapidated by this time that they were knocked down, other buildings were transferred to the use of other institutions such as the University of Connecticut and still others were abandoned.
The CT State Library
In Russia defendants are placed in a cage in the court room. As long as they are not sentenced they don't have to wear a jail uniform.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
12 Defendants - One Movement - Warning Graphic Footage
VIDEO :
“We were one small boat and five bodies against 500 people on the beach and 50 boats pushing … but there’s no reason not to fight.”
On August 12, 61 pilot whales were slaughtered on the killing beach of Sandavágur in the Faroe Islands.
With the odds stacked against them, in the face of adversity, Sea Shepherd crews put themselves on the line to StandUp between the whales and the killers.
Five were arrested that day. 12 Sea Shepherd volunteers have now been arrested and 490 pilot whales have been killed this year alone.
We will continue to StandUp for the pilot whales. “We are much stronger than they are. As a movement, they’ve got no chance against us.”
Photo : Sea Shepherd
Fent pinya assolirem la República catalana.
Certament, amb els governs de Madrid no hi ha res a fer, i ara més que mai es quan hem de demostrar el que sabem fer, sortirnos-en de tot el procés amb resultats convincents y definitius de cara Europa i el món sencer.
Som a la recta final de culminar el procés, i el Constitucional es mou per impedir-ho "legalment".
La valentia dels nostres polítics, querellats, imputats y amenaçats i els més de dos milions creixents d'independentistes em fan ser bastant optimista i crec que també és evident arreu.
Això els fa por, i també la quantitat de catalans que recolzem el procés, perque fent pinya amb tot, arribarem, malgrat els impediments espanyols, a consolidar la República Catalana Independent.
(Lluís Vinuesa -"el Peródico"-)
Basílica de Santa Maria i Monument als castellers de Vilafranca del Penedès (CAT.)
------------------------------------
Making pineapple
Making pineapple achieve the Catalan Republic.
Certainly, with the governments of Madrid there is nothing to do, and now more than ever is when we show what we do, sortirnos-in the whole process with the definitive and convincing results in the face of Europe and the world.
We are in the final stretch to complete the process and constitutional moves to prevent it "legally."
The courage of our politicians, querellats, defendants and threatened more than two million and growing independence of make me be quite optimistic and I think that is also evident elsewhere.
This makes them fear, and the amount of Catalans support the process, for making pineapple yet come, despite the impediments Spanish Republic to consolidate the Catalan Independent.
(Louis Vinuesa -"el Periódico"-)
Basilica of Santa Maria and Monument towers of Villafranca del Penedès (CAT).
Dozmary Pool, which can be accessed via a minor road from Bolventor, is steeped in mystery. Many believe that it was here that King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, was thrown upon his death, only to be caught by the deathly hand of the 'Lady of the Lake'.
According to local folklore Dozmary Pool was also the setting for one of Jan Tregeagle's impossible tasks, designed to protect his soul from the devil. Jan Tregeagle was a magistrate in the early 17th century, and was known for being particularly harsh. Darker stories circulated as well, that he had murdered his wife or made a pact with the Devil. As a lawyer, he was a peculiarly evil agent, and very hard upon the tenants.
Many legends have grown up around him, and he has evolved into Cornwall's version of Faust, having bargained his soul for power, fame and success. One story goes that sometime after his death, a case was going through the courts in which the defendant had illegally obtained some land. The defendant, sure that the dead Tregeagle could not testify against him, cried, "If Tregeagle ever saw it, I wish to God he would come and declare it!" To the court's astonishment, Tregeagle materialised in the witness box and testified that he had forged some crucial document or other. Justice having been done, the court would not countenance sending him back to Hell, and so set him a series of impossible tasks to while away the time until Judgment Day. He was set the task of dipping the water out of Dozmary Pool with a limpet shell.
Formerly Winters National Bank
Northeast corner of the intersection of State Street (State Route 49) and E. Main Street.
Excerpt from a court document, concerning the robbery:
He was sentenced to a twelve year prison term. The robbery occurred on January 3, 1958, at the Winters National Bank and Trust Company, Phillipsburg, Ohio. Defendant, in support of his defense of alibi, claimed he was in Richmond, Indiana, at the time of the robbery. Nine individuals who were eye witnesses at the scene of the bank robbery identified defendant as the robber. Defendant's automobile was identified as the car in which the robber left the scene. Defendant testified in his own behalf.
Phillipsburg is a village that was platted in 1836, and named for Philip Studybaker, a member of the town company. A post office was established as Centre in 1848, the name was changed to Center in 1893, and changed again to Phillipsburg in 1903. Phillipsburg was incorporated as a village in 1899. The population was 498 in 2020.
DSCF7633-2
01 April 2018
Its into the 9th year since I shot this and the situation in the DTES has only deteriorated. Governments have worsened the situation by piling more social housing in the area adding to the “customers with no cash” syndrome. The area is named “Canada’s poorest postal code” by activists and the poverty pimps love the situation making the area one of “Canada’s richest postal codes”, the only differenence being the pimp money goes home at night. Helpful groups support too many by offering them food daily with zero obligation. Its become an impossible sitiuation to address given the current state of political governance.
I wish this was just a sick April Fools Day joke but unfortuantely not.
Sleeping on a sidewalk in the Downtown East Side (DTES) of Vancouver BC takes on a different sense of survival than is observed in many west side sleepers. A combination of mental issues, drug sale and use, area resident poverty and the resulting community of "Customers With No Cash" combine for a perfect locale to take advantage of people on the edge where living is not comparable to what most of us bring to mind in our own comfortable world. Prostitution and drugs are a large part of this community. One can not help feel sorry and remorseful this exists in self important Vancouver.
The irony of this photo is it was shot about 10 feet from the entrance of BC Housing's recently opened Orange Hall office (open 10 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday) 297 Hastings Street at Gore Ave. This situation has steadily gone downhill since the Federal Governemt cut back funding for social housing.
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH:
From BC Housing website:
October 3rd, 2014
VICTORIA – The B.C. government is strengthening the non-profit housing sector by transferring provincially-owned properties to non-profit housing providers.
The Province owns approximately 350 parcels of land throughout British Columbia that are currently leased long-term to non-profit housing providers who own and operate social housing buildings on these properties.
The non-profit housing sector has been asking for this step for many years. Having ownership of the land will improve a non-profit’s ability to support better long-term planning and selfsufficiency. Owning the lands they operate on will also help non-profits secure the financing they need to be sustainable.
In order to transfer title, the Province will end these leases, and then transfer ownership of the land to the societies. The properties will be transferred at fair market value. The Province will assist the societies to secure mortgages on the properties. The current operating agreement that BC Housing has with each non-profit society will remain in place. Approximately 115 properties will be transferred by March 31, 2015, and the rest will be transferred over the next three years.
In addition, the Province is looking to transfer ownership of two properties currently managed by BC Housing to non-profit societies. The Province will begin the process by posting Expressions of Interest for Nicholson Tower and Stamps Place in Vancouver shortly.
Tenants will not be impacted by these transfers, and the amount of affordable housing stock will remain stable. Non-profit societies have been providing social housing in B.C. for more than 60 years. Today more than 90% of social housing is managed by non-profit societies.
THE GLOBE & MAIL:
FRANCES BULA
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Oct. 13 2014
Vancouver won’t solve street homelessness until both the city and province focus on targeting the limited supply of expensive social housing to those who need it most, say experts.
That means help can’t go to anyone who passes through a shelter or an outdoor camp or even to someone who sleeps outside temporarily. In the vast majority of cases, people who become homeless experience it briefly and are able to avoid losing housing again.
But people working on eliminating homelessness do not always understand that the thousands of people who experience homelessness in a year don’t all need expensive subsidized housing. That should be reserved for the chronically homeless, who are not sufficiently helped by temporary assistance with rent or other social supports.
“For nearly 90 per cent of people counted as homeless, they’ll get themselves out of homelessness on their own,” says Tim Richter, who led Calgary’s 10-year plan to end homelessness and is now the president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. “It’s critical to set priorities. It shouldn’t be first-come, first-served.”
One of the region’s most experienced homelessness researchers, former Vancouver city-hall staffer Judy Graves, said the city is reaping the results of city and provincial staff not always setting the right priorities for the past six years. This past winter, Vancouver still had a count of 533 people sleeping outside (less than in 2008, but more than in 2011), even though the province and city have opened up thousands of new social-housing units rented at welfare-level rates.
It’s an issue that is returning to haunt Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who promised in 2008 to end street homelessness by 2015, during this fall’s civic-election campaign.
His administration, which has pushed the issue non-stop since he was first elected, has recently exceeded previous efforts by jumping last month into paying for all the costs of converting a downtown Quality Inn to transitional housing, as well as all the costs of a new shelter nearby. Usually the province covers the majority of costs for both of those kinds of housing.
But Ms. Graves said even that unusual effort, accompanied by several hundred other new provincial units about to open, isn’t going to solve the problem by January, 2015.
That’s because the province is only committed to using half of the incoming housing units for the chronically homeless. And city staff also don’t always correctly identify who is the most in need.
“Both the city and province have bought into housing by wait lists,” said Ms. Graves. “It just can’t work. You have to work as though you’re in a disaster zone.”
She said she had doubts that the majority of people who camped in Oppenheimer Park over the summer were homeless, but they got priority for the scarce number of rooms available.
As well, in the early stages of the province’s big social-housing construction push, which will see 14 towers completed with around 1,400 units by the end, non-profit operators were simply moving people from residential hotel rooms into the new buildings.
That meant the housing didn’t go to the chronically homeless and the most in need, but worse, it then allowed landlords in the residential hotels to do renovations, raise rents, or refuse new low-income tenants once the former tenants were relocated to social housing.
That then reduced the overall number of private, low-cost housing units in the city. Ms. Graves said the whole region is experiencing an acute shortage of those kinds of private units now. It has become a game of musical chairs for housing-outreach workers to get a low-cost unit for someone trying to get out of shelters or off the street, she said.
All cities are grappling with constant pressures that create more homelessness at the front end: low working-class incomes that can’t keep up with gentrification and rising rents key among them, said Ms. Graves. That has left cities trying to solve the problem at the back end, trying to house all the people made homeless as a result of many larger forces.
24 HRS VANCOUVER - 16 OCT 14
16 Oct 2014 24 Hours VancouverJANE DEACON Comment at vancouver.24hrs.c
Laura Dilley, PACE Society Action Week, PACE plans to draft housing recommendations for city council before the coming election.
“Oftentimes we will create housing models not including the voices of those we would be housing,” said Dilley.
Rising rent prices that force people out of SROs is a significant factor, as well as landlords who refuse to rent to sex workers out of legal concerns, said Dilley. Low- income housing conditions that require tenants stay in at night or guests to sign in are also significant barriers. She estimates between 10 to 15% of sex workers fall under the category of “survival” or street- based prostitution. For that vulnerable population, simply switching professions is often not an option, said Dilley.
“They’re really forced and entrenched to continuously do that work because they have no options out of it, because we have such stigma in our society that they can’t seek help, they can’t find affordable housing, so they’re really stuck in that situation,” she said.
17 April 2019:
B.C. drug users demand clean supply, but fear they won’t live to see it happen
By David P. BallStar Vancouver
Tues., April 16, 2019
VANCOUVER—Several hundred Vancouverites marked three years since the province declared a public health emergency over the thousands of people killed by overdoses.
But as they marched Tuesday from the safe-injection clinic Insite through downtown Vancouver, advocates say “contaminated” drugs have taken a toll on their own leaders.
For B.C. Association of People on Methadone member Garth Mullins, the losses are mounting, and it’s been destabilizing and “disorganizing” for the drug-reform movement.
“We’ve lost rank and file members and leaders in such high numbers over the last five years,” he said, wearing a distinctive black case of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone on his belt. “It’s hard to organize or think strategically when you’re always doing triage, planning a memorial.”
Just last month the president of his organization, Chereece Keewatin, died from a fentanyl overdose. Mullins knew Keewatin for at least six years, and invited her to join the editorial board of the podcast Crackdown, of which he is executive producer.
“Chereece was really little, but she had this tremendous capacity to lift people’s spirits,” he said in an interview. “You’d have meetings where we talk about really, really bleak subjects, but she had these funny asides to cut through the bleakness.
“She made people laugh. In that way, she took responsibility for the whole collective emotional state of the group.”
It’s not just the B.C. Association of People on Methadone that’s seen the direct “casualties” of what Mullins called “a war.” The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the national Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs have also lost high-ranking board members in recent years.
Since 2016, nearly 11,000 people have died across Canada from opioid overdoses, according to the most recent federal and provincial data. The majority of those deaths were from opioids such as fentanyl or its more deadly variants, but B.C. remains the epicentre for roughly a third of those deaths, 1,500 of them last year alone.
On average, four British Columbians died every day from overdoses last year, much higher than the national average and largely unchanged since the province’s April 2016 declaration of a public health emergency.
11 May 2020
.
A wall mural in the DTES poses a valid question, "how do we end the drug crisis"? A more basic question, how did we get here?
Vancouver, B.C. is consistently ranked at the top of the list for the world’s most liveable cities - but not for many in the DTES.
The city has a dirty little secret that it has been trying to suppress for decades. The historic four-block area near East Hastings and Main Street — the DTES — known as one of the “poorest postal codes” in Canada, has a combination of drug use, HIV, homelessness, prostitution, mental illness, and crime all making up this poor off neighbourhood.
To be successful as a drug lord you need a steady, reliable, cheap supply of product, a location where you can operate relatively free from prosecution and away you go. The prime location ingredients Vancouver offers is the DTES.
Over the decades continuing city administrations have built a community of “customers with no cash” by loading the DTES with blocks of not for profit social housing. Along with the myriad of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SRO's) the area is prime territory for the drug trade.
Social housing should be spread throughout the city to provide a society of different financial means for common support - IMO.
Administrations over the years have been loath to attempt social housing in the rich city enclaves due to onerous push back. It was and still is more expedient to keep adding more social housing in the DTES where there is minimal opposition.
***** Today there are at least 6 City of Vancouver development permit applications on file for more social housing in the DTES.
The process is welcomed by the myriad of DTES support service groups who like their clientele close at hand and the clientele are fine with it as services are nearby.
DTES government and service support groups along with poverty pimp lawyers who have a hissy fit if anyone tries to change the dial, while also making money off the situation, has resulted in the perfect condition for drug dealers to flourish.
Social housing residents, many older, Asian and often mentally challenged are living in a hell hole neighbourhood with little individual voice.
In recent years, the area is seeing an east creeping gentrification. This is causing the DTES street population to be squeezed into a smaller footprint resulting in more confrontation and the appearance of a worsening situation even though overall the numbers of street people remains fairly constant.
The amount of taxpayer dollars spent in the area is staggering with little to show for the investment.
Vancouver has always had a drug problem. The opioids of choice — and the increasingly staggering death toll — have changed over the years.
In 2017 Fentanyl killed so many Canadians it caused the average life expectancy in B.C. to drop for the first time in decades. But for crime kingpins, it became a source of such astonishing wealth it disrupted the Vancouver-area real estate market.
SOME BACKGROUND:
Excerpt from the Province Newspaper by reporter Randy Shore 18 March, 2017.
When members of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration came to Vancouver in 1901, they got an eyeful.
“There were whole rooms of Chinese lying stretched out on beds with the opium apparatus laid out before them — all unmindful that their attitudes and surrounding conditions are being taken note of to assist in keeping the remainder of their countrymen entirely out of Canada,” reported the Vancouver World newspaper.
The fringes of Vancouver’s Chinatown have always been the centre of Canada’s opiate trade. Ever more potent and easily smuggled versions emerged through the decades, culminating in the scourge of synthetic opiates — fentanyl and carfentanil — thousands of times more powerful and many times more deadly than opium.
Opium was a source of revenue for governments of the day. A federal duty imposed on importers fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars between 1874 and 1899. In B.C. ports, and cities charged hundreds of dollars to purveyors in the form of business licences.
Between 1923 and 1932, more than 700 Chinese men were deported for drug-related violations.
Under constant pressure from the police, opium users began to inject their hit, as the technique created no smoke or aroma and used smaller equipment, which could be easily hidden. In the 1920s and 1930s, white users tended to be young criminals, “racetrack hands, and circus and show people” who smoked opium or sniffed heroin.
By the mid-1930s, heroin was one of the most common drugs in circulation and white users were increasingly taking the drug intravenously, especially as prices rose due to scarcity brought about by vigorous law enforcement.
The outbreak of the Second World War put opiate addicts into a state of crisis, as opiate drugs were required in great quantities for the war wounded. The street price of a hit — whether heroin, morphine or codeine — shot up and crime along with it.
In the post-war period, right through to the mid-’60s, Vancouver was ground zero for Canada’s intravenous drug scene, made up mainly of petty criminals, troubled youths fed by drug lords.
Before the ’40s were over, highly refined white heroin had appeared and it was coming from overseas to satisfy a hungry market in Vancouver, home to half of the country’s drug users.
Heroin use remained a constant undercurrent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the ’70s and ’80s, even as alcohol was the neighbourhood’s real drug of choice.
But a flood of a new and even more potent “China White” heroin arriving into the city reignited public outrage in the early ’90s. A spate of 331 overdose deaths in 1993 spurred B.C. coroner Vince Cain to call for the decriminalization of heroin and addicts be prescribed the drug to legally maintain their habit.
It would be nearly 15 years before the Study to Assess Long-term Opioid Maintenance Effectiveness (SALOME) began in Vancouver, just about the time a new threat emerged.
Up to 80 times as powerful as heroin, fentanyl hit the streets and reduced the risk for traffickers as it was so concentrated, transportation was easier.
The carnage wrought by fentanyl has been without precedent.
Heroin seized in drug busts is routinely cut with fentanyl and in recent months the presence of carfentanil.
SUMMARY:
Where will this go next, who knows ?
The richest of societies should be especially judged by how they treat their least fortunate, and Vancouver has its challenge set out for the foreseeable future.
UPDATE 23 MAY 2020 - VANCOUVER SUN
John Mackie: The Downtown Eastside is a war zone disaster — stop ghettoizing it.
John Mackie, Vancouver Sun 23 May 2020
Twenty years ago local musician Kuba Oms was recording at the Miller Block, a now defunct Hastings Street recording studio near Save-On-Meats.
He jaywalked and was stopped by a cop, who handed him a ticket.
“I said ‘Are you kidding me?’” Oms recounts. “You know there’s a guy shooting up over there, and a crack dealer over there. And the cop said ‘That’s a health issue.’”
That story pretty much sums up the city’s attitude toward the Downtown Eastside over the past few decades.
In some ways the cop was right — it is a Vancouver health issue. But letting people openly do drugs in public and turn Hastings and the wider Downtown Eastside into a ghetto is political correctness gone mad.
Drive down Hastings Street between Abbott and Gore and you’ll see dozens, even hundreds of people hanging out on the street, in various states of sobriety. They are definitely not social distancing. It’s a miracle that COVID-19 hasn’t swept the entire area.
The height of this madness was the recent occupation of Oppenheimer Park. Vancouver has real issues of homelessness, but to some degree Oppenheimer was about a fringe group of politicos manipulating the homeless.
Many police resources were diverted to the park and there was a crime wave in nearby Chinatown — one business closed because they were being robbed a dozen times a day.
The province recently made hotel rooms available for the homeless people occupying Oppenheimer Park, so things have calmed down somewhat. But the big question is what happens in a few months? Is government going to find permanent homes for them?
Odds are if they do, it will be in highrises in the Downtown Eastside. For decades that’s where the city and province have been concentrating social housing, especially for the mentally ill and drug addicted.
Their argument is these residents feel comfortable there. But the reality is the more poverty is concentrated, the worse the area seems to become.
Maybe it’s time for the city of Vancouver to give its head a shake and realize that its much-ballyhooed Downtown Eastside Plan is actually part of the problem, not the solution.
Part of the plan decrees you can’t build condos on Hastings between Carrall Street in Gastown and Heatley Avenue in Strathcona, or in historic Japantown around Oppenheimer Park.
Development in those areas has to be rental only, with at least 60 per cent social housing. This pretty much ensures that no market housing is built in the poorest area of the city.
When the plan was unveiled in 2014, Vancouver’s former head planner Brian Jackson said the aim was to ensure that low-income people in the Downtown Eastside weren’t displaced.
“The plan is attempting to achieve balance,” he explained then.
In fact, the plan does the exact opposite. There is no balance in the Downtown Eastside: It’s been turned into a ghetto. A friend who’s worked there for two decades calls it a war zone.
The city desperately need some market housing, co-ops and development on Hastings and around Oppenheimer. The anti-poverty activists will scream blue murder that it’s gentrification, but it’s actually normalization. You don’t have to displace anybody, you just have add a different mix to make it safer.
I live in Strathcona, where about 6,500 people live in social housing and about 3,500 in market homes. It’s a close-knit neighbourhood that has the balance Brian Jackson was taking about — it’s diverse and features a variety of incomes.
Japantown and the Downtown Eastside could be a real neighbourhood again if the city retained its stock of handsome historic buildings but allowed some development of its many non-descript structures.
It could be like Strathcona, even the West End. But I fear it could get even worse, if the planners and politicians continue to concentrate all the Lower Mainland’s poverty and social ills in one small area.
jmackie@postmedia.com
John Mackie is a veteran Postmedia reporter who has written several stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Plan.
13 JULY, 2020
Vancouver can’t catch up to its housing crisis
ADRIENNE TANNER
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 13 JULY 2020
It is obvious now the cheers that erupted when Vancouver’s longest running tent city was dismantled were wildly premature. Fearing a COVID-19 outbreak would take hold in the overcrowded inner-city camp, the provincial government in April acquired emergency housing in hotels for homeless people living there and cleared the site.
Many camp residents embraced the offer of a clean room. Some refused and relocated outdoors. The camp shifted, first to some empty Port of Vancouver land, and when a court order quickly shut it down, finally landed in Strathcona Park. With each move, it grew.
Today there are about 150 tents Strathcona Park, roughly double the number there were in Oppenheimer Park. How many inhabitants are truly homeless is anyone’s guess. Some of the tents were erected by activists with homes. Others belong to people living in single room occupancy hotels, the worst of which are noisy, bug-infested and so hot that some residents prefer to spend summer outside.
There is already an air of permanence to the camp; the city has installed porta-potties, fresh drinking water and handwashing stations. Park rangers drop by a few times daily. The area is reasonably clean, but these are early days.
Strathcona residents are largely sympathetic to homeless people, but are understandably unhappy about losing a large chunk of park space. They fear the same violence and social disorder that cropped up at Oppenheimer is inevitable; there has already been a small fire and there appears to be a bike chop shop on site. There are cries for the city to sanction a permanent tent city location – elsewhere, of course.
So how exactly did the province’s efforts to shut down a tent city and house homeless people backfire so badly? The city and provincial officials have been out-manoeuvered and out-organized by anti-poverty activists who seized a COVID-19 opportunity when they saw it.
The pandemic raised fears the Oppenheimer tent city would turn into a reservoir of disease that could overwhelm the health system. The activists know that’s why the government cleared the camp and purchased hotels for social housing. They understand this is the moment to highlight society’s failure to solve homelessness, even if their end goals seem to differ. Some are calling for permanent housing – others prefer the idea of a permanent, free-wheeling tent city.
The sorry truth is, even with the addition of 600 units of temporary modular housing and, more recently, the purchase of three downtown hotels, there are still more homeless people than homes. Successions of governments at all levels have allowed this crisis to grow. They’ve failed to build enough social housing. Failed to provide adequate mental health services. Failed to fund enough drug rehabilitation programs for those who want to quit and provide a safe drug supply for those who can’t.
So, now here we are with the largest homeless camp the city has ever seen and another stressed-out neighbourhood. Legally, the new tent city may prove more difficult to dismantle – it’s a large park and the tents are well spaced so the pandemic may not wash as a valid reason. And unless housing is available for everyone who is homeless, it is unlikely the courts would grant an injunction.
Solving problems associated with homelessness is a huge challenge. We can start with housing, but that alone is not nearly enough. Many of the people living in the hotels and park are drug users. Many are mentally ill. Some are both. It takes money – and lots of it – to provide decent housing and supports for this segment of society.
But to cave to demands for a permanent tent city is an American-style admission of defeat. The park board seems resigned to tent cities in parks and is considering a bylaw seeking to control locations. City council has resisted sanctioning a permanent spot, instead offering up land for new social housing. The province has stepped up with money for temporary modular housing and purchases of hotels.
It will be tough to keep neighbourhoods onside if more parks are rendered unusable for recreation. There is only one palatable solution; the provincial government must stay the course and keep adding decent, affordable housing. It won’t be cheap or easy. Catchup never is.
01 APRIL 2022
More than 2,200 British Columbians lost to illicit drugs in 2021
The toxic illicit drug supply claimed the lives of at least 2,224 British Columbians in 2021, according to preliminary data released by the BC Coroners Service.
“Over the past seven years, our province has experienced a devastating loss of life due to a toxic illicit drug supply,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner. “This public health emergency has impacted families and communities across the province and shows no sign of abating. In 2021 alone, more than 2,200 families experienced the devastating loss of a loved one. In the past seven years, the rate of death due to illicit drug toxicity in our province has risen more than 400%. Drug toxicity is now second only to cancers in B.C. for potential years of life lost. We cannot simply hope that things will improve. It is long past time to end the chaos and devastation in our communities resulting from the flourishing illicit drug market, and to ensure, on an urgent basis, access across the province to a safe, reliable regulated drug supply.”
The last two months of 2021 saw the largest number of suspected illicit drug deaths ever recorded in the province, with 210 deaths in November and an additional 215 in December. The 2,224 total number of deaths is 26% more than the 1,767 illicit drug-related deaths investigated by the BC Coroners Service in 2020, and equates to an average of 6.1 lives lost every day.
The provincewide death rate in 2021 was 42.8 per 100,000 residents. Every health authority in B.C. experienced a record loss of lives.
Since the public health emergency into substance-related harms was first declared in April 2016, more than 8,800 British Columbians have been lost to toxic drugs.
Toxicological testing once again underscores the reality that the illicit drug supply continues to be unstable and increasingly toxic. Fentanyl was detected in 83% of samples tested in 2021. Carfentanil was present in 187 results, almost triple the number recorded in 2020 (66).
Additionally, 50% of samples in December tested positive for etizolam, more than three times the rate of detection in July 2020 (15%). Benzodiazepines create significant challenges for life-saving efforts as naloxone does not reverse its effects. As with previous reporting, almost all test results included the presence of multiple substances.
“We need decision-makers at all levels to recognize and respond to this public health emergency with the level of urgency it demands,” Lapointe said. “The reality is this: every day we wait to act, six more people will die. COVID-19 has shown what is possible when goverments act decisively to save lives. And in order to save lives in this public-heath emergency, we need to provide people with access to the substances they need, where and when they need them. Time has run out for research and discussion. It is time to take action.”
Additional key preliminary findings are below. Data is subject to change as additional toxicology results are received:
In 2021, 71% of those who died as a result of suspected drug toxicity were between 30 to 59, and 78% were male.
The townships that experienced the highest number of illicit drug toxicity deaths in 2021 were Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria.
By health authority, in 2021, the highest numbers of illicit drug toxicity deaths were in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health authorities (765 and 615 deaths, respectively), making up 62% of all such deaths during this period.
By health authority, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver Coastal Health (49 deaths per 100,000 individuals) and Northern Health (48 per 100,000).
By Health Service Delivery Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver, Thompson Cariboo, Northwest, Northern Interior and Fraser East.
By Local Health Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Upper Skeena, Merritt, Enderby, Lillooet and North Thompson.
Quotes:
Dr. Nel Wieman, deputy chief medical officer, First Nations Health Authority –
“The number of deaths due to toxic drug poisonings for 2021 translates to devastating losses of First Nations people: daughters and sons, aunties and uncles, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. These are people who loved and were loved. In every year since this public health emergency was declared, B.C. First Nations people have been over-represented in toxic drug-poisoning events and deaths. We must change our understanding of the root causes of substance use and addiction, and work together to address the stigmas surrounding toxic drug use and the people who use drugs. We must continue to invest in Indigenous-specific, culturally safe harm-reduction, treatment and recovery services that are accessible, timely and free from discrimination and racism.”
Guy Felicella, peer clinical adviser, Vancouver Coastal Health –
“I join the thousands of British Columbians who are heartbroken, frustrated and angry over this unfathomable loss. Every one of these deaths was preventable and represents a failure to act, a failure to learn from mistakes. Change nothing and nothing changes. That’s been the story now for years as the approach throughout this crisis has been to meet policies where they’re at, rather than meeting people who use drugs where they’re at. This approach is killing and continues to kill people. Who has the courage to step forward and make this stop?”
AUGUST 2023
Today’s release of the report on drug toxicity deaths for the month of July 2023 by the BC Coroners Service is a stark reminder that the ongoing toxic-drug crisis continues to have a devastating impact on communities across our province. We hold in our hearts the memories of the 198 people lost in July in British Columbia.
The coroners service said the 1,455 deaths from January to July are the most ever reported in the first seven months of the year since a public health emergency over drug poisoning deaths in the province was declared in 2016.
It puts the province on pace to potentially exceed the 2,383 deaths recorded in 2022. A total of 12,739 people in the province have died from drug overdoses in the seven years.
30 NOVEMBER, 2023
At least 2,039 British Columbians have died from toxic drugs so far this year, according to preliminary figures released by the B.C. Coroners Service on Thursday, 29 November, 2023.
Of those, 189 people died in October, which is about 6.1 deaths a day. Most of the dead were between 30 and 59 years of age, and more than three-quarters were men, according to the coroner.
While the largest number of deaths reported so far has been in urban centres, such as Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria, the health authority with the highest rate of death in 2023 is Northern Health, with 61 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the coroner.
As in previous months, fentanyl was found in most — 85 per cent — of the illicit drugs tested, often combined with other opioids or stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine.
Earlier this month, Interior Health issued a drug advisory warning for people who use drugs that some substances being advertised as hydromorphone on the black market contain isotonitazine, a drug the coroner says is as potent as fentanyl.
Unregulated drug toxicity is the leading cause of death in B.C. for people aged 10 to 59, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural disease combined, the coroner said.
Since a public health emergency was declared in 2016, more than 13,000 people have died.
JANUARY 2024:
Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, has released the following statement regarding the BC Coroners Service year-end report on illicit drug toxicity deaths:
“Today, as we reflect on the year behind us, our hearts are heavy with the loss of 2,511 people in British Columbia to toxic drugs. Each of these lives was precious and important, each with their own story, their own dreams and people who love them. They were part of our community, and their loss is felt deeply by us all.
So what is the game plane to stop it?
C. seeks to keep cash seized from Downtown Eastside gang
Courtesy Kim Bolan and the Vancouver Sun.
Kim Bolan is an experienced and award-winning journalist who has covered gangs in British Columbia for the past 40 years. Bolan also investigated the Air India bombing for 25 years until the publication in 2005 of her book, Loss of Faith.
The B.C. government has filed a lawsuit against a group of alleged Downtown Eastside drug traffickers, seeking the forfeiture of more than $150,000 seized from them.
The lawsuit, filed this week by the director of civil forfeiture, names four defendants that it alleges are part of a criminal organization investigated by the Vancouver Police Department.
While the group is not named in the statement of claim, details of the VPD probe outlined in the court document match an investigation into Zone 43 — a gang that originated in Montreal but has taken over the Downtown Eastside in recent years. Zone 43 has connections to B.C.’s notorious Wolfpack gang alliance.
In June, the VPD announced arrests of several Zone 43 gangsters, though they were released pending approval of charges.
The VPD said it had seized firearms, 24 kilos of drugs and $150,000 in cash during searches on May 14 in Vancouver and Burnaby.
The civil forfeiture lawsuit refers to three VPD searches done on the same date in the same cities and alleges Shayne Cozier-Flanagan, Evantee Jevontee Eustace Stoney, Tristin Johnson and Raimon Geday were “participating in the activities of a criminal organization.”
When police searched Stoney’s apartment on the 30th floor at 2388 Madison Ave. in Burnaby, they found $143,910.75 in Canadian currency and $607 in U.S. currency, the lawsuit said.
Officers seized another $5,800 at Cozier-Flanagan’s suite, also on the 30th floor, at 5665 Boundary Rd. in Vancouver, it said.
About $3,417 was seized from Johnson, who also lives in the Madison apartment, when he was arrested in the 300-block of East Hastings. Another $1,920 was found in Geday’s room in a supportive housing building on Kaslo Street, the lawsuit said.
The VPD also seized a 2017 Acura RDX, of which Stoney is the registered owner and which was used “to facilitate the trafficking of controlled substances,” the civil forfeiture director alleged.
The statement of claim notes that both Stoney and Geday have previous trafficking convictions and are banned from possessing firearms.
All four men named in the lawsuit “trafficked in controlled substances in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and the surrounding areas,” the lawsuit alleges.
In the Boundary apartment, police also found a money counter and business cards with the number to call to purchase drugs — known as a ‘dialer’ number.
In the Madison suite, the VPD also found dilaudid pills, oxycodone pills and “score sheets” documenting drug sales, collection and debts.
In Geday’s room, police found crack cocaine, powdered cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and another 275 dilaudid pills, as well as score sheets, bear spray and “miscellaneous drug packaging materials.”
The cash and car should be forfeited to the government because they are proceeds of or were used for unlawful activity, the lawsuit alleged.
The crimes committed include possession for the purpose of trafficking and trafficking, committing offences for the benefit of a criminal organization, conspiracy, money laundering and failure to declare taxable income, it alleged
No statements of defence have yet been filed on behalf of the four men.
Vancouver Police Insp. Phil Heard said at the June news conference that Zone 43 gangsters “pose a very significant risk to the public. They’re involved in a well-documented conflict ongoing in the province of Quebec with a rival group.”
Sources say the gang is still selling drugs in the Downtown Eastside.
AUGUST 2025:
The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair
Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.
Published Aug 03, 2025
In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.
Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.
Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.
In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.
And the cost to taxpayers?
Over $360 million annually.
That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.
Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.
And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.
And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.
In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:
1. Give us more money.
2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.
I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.
In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’
The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.
Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.
Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’
But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.
Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.
Funny thing about that.
Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.
I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.
But this is how I feel:
My patience is Exhausted.
I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.
Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.
It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.
How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.
They are the system.
Here I am preparing for my most recent encounter with Judge M. Raymond Boucher of the Nice Cour D’Assises. Judge Boucher is investigating the explosion of my late husband's private jet over the Cote D'Azur, while flying back from Marseilles to Monte Carlo.
I decided some time ago that persisting in my usual persona of a glamorous courtesan and high-class prostitute would emphasize to the authorities that I have nothing to hide. Whereas, a sudden metamorphosis into a traditional grieving widow might look like protesting a little too much!
Here is a transcript of part of the recent interview, for which I wore the very revealing red cocktail gown that you can partially see in the accompanying picture. I had also anointed myself heavily with Paco Rabanne “Million” – an exclusive perfume which retails at $60,000 per bottle.
***
Judge Boucher: Lady Rebecca – what is your relationship with Colonel Ezra Barrington, your late husband’s Head of Security?
Lady Rebecca: Colonel Barrington is one of my lovers.
Judge Boucher: As you have previously declared, you are woman who enjoys intimate relations with many lovers, and partcipates in many other unusual sexual activities. I understand that - for a woman such as you - sex can be a very casual business. But, perhaps – in this particular case – you may have had some special feelings for Colonel Barrington?
Lady Rebecca: No special feelings as such. I enjoy his mode and methods of lovemaking - but I enjoy sexual activity just as much with many other men – and women.
Judge Boucher: Lady Rebecca, you are an exceptionally promiscuous woman. Some might also say you are a corrupting and immoral influence on society. Should this case ever come to trial - with you as defendant, on a charge of homicide - the complacent way in which you describe your inveterate cuckolding of your late husband would make a very bad impression on members of a typical jury.
Lady Rebecca: I cannot help the views of individuals I have never met, M. Boucher. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I am a courtesan, a trophy wife, a madame, and a professional prostitute. I also from time to time perform for XXX adult websites These aspects of my life are widely known – I have never attempted to conceal them. But I do not see what any of this has to do with whether persons unknown concealed a bomb in my husband’s private aircraft… ?
Judge Boucher: Lady Rebecca - any jury would be entitled to have insight into your character and motivations. Your career in the world of professional vice clearly illustrates that you are a woman who uses her ability to attract rich and powerful men for her personal advancement. This would not sit well with a jury. Personally, I do not believe that you are guilty of any crime, but I do believe that you may be withholding important information about this case. It would be a great pity if – by shielding others who may be guilty – you ended up on trial yourself!
[To be continued]
Toodle Pip!
Love and Kisses to all my Friends and Fans!
xxxxxx
Lady Rebecca Lyndon
Duchesse de la Baleine D’or
When you look upon a tomb stone, all most people see is just that, an empty grave site. But if you can look closer perhaps another story can unfold. So was the case of a distant relative of mine.
************************
Arthur LeClair was Murdered Dec. 22, in 1907 in Neche, North Dakota and was a distant family member of mine. He was murdered by his best friend. It made headlines in the surrounding towns. A very interesting story to read with a "surprise ending".
***************************
The Pink Paper
Bathgate, Pembina Co, North Dakota
December 25, 1907
HORRIBLE MURDER
ARTHUR LECLAIR OF NECHE
KILLED WITH A HATCHET
Suspect arrested at Bathgate on Monday
Coroner’s inquest to be held today.
On Monday morning this city was greatly stirred up over a phone message to the effect that Arthur LeClair, well known to our young people, had been murdered the previous evening at Neche.
Inquiry at the chronotype office brought the following information. Arthur had been about town on Sunday evening until about 11:15 p.m. when he started home along.
That was the last seen as he did not go home, that night, his father became some what worried over his absence. He called the residence of Robert Faulker, a neighbor, and the two started to look for him. They thought he might have gone to the ice rink on the river near the Great Northern Railroad crossing and perhaps had fallen in some way and injured himself. When within a few hundred feet of the dam they came across a pool of blood but were not especially alarmed, thinking it, that of some animal. They followed the bloody trail and shortly came on a small axe or hatchet covered with blood and as they approached the dam they saw Arthur’s hat at the head of it. By this time they were fully aroused to the seriousness of the situation. There was blood down the apron of the dam and a small opening consequent on the flow of water but the body could not be seen. Mr. Faulker went to his residence near by and secured an axe and enlarged the opening a few feet when they saw the body of Arthur under the water and the remains were quickly recovered and taken to the residence of his parents. His face was not disfigured but there was a large gash in the back of his head through which his blood flowed.
The Lampman family and others of Neche people heard screams the previous evening about the hour Arthur must have started for home but thought it was probably some late roysters from across the line and paid no particular attention to it. At this hour of going to press nothing definite seems to have developed regarding the murderer or the cause of the crime.
As is usual in such cases the air is full of rumors, the most authentic of which connects the name of a Negro transient with the crime. The Negro is said to have been seen in Arthur’s company on Sunday and later in the day was evidently under the influence of liquor. He was in Neche until Monday morning when he left afoot in a southerly direction and stopped at the Vospers, Hicks, Messacres and other places and reach Bathgate shortly after noon. Marshall O’Harra received notice that the Negro was probably in this place and was wanted as a suspect. O’Harra soon rounded him up and he was taken back to Neche by officers. So far as we are able to learn the evidence against the suspect is purely circumstantial. The inquest will probably develop farther facts.
Arthur LeClair resided at Neche since his birth, with his parents and was 21 years of age. He has been engaged for some time past as fireman on the Neche and Walhalla branches of the Great Northern Railroad. He was at home to spend the holidays. The Neche people are aroused and will see that the matter is sifted to the bottom and the murderer brought to justice. It was evidently the most cold blooded and shocking murders ever committed in this county and no expense should be spared on the part of the county officials to make the investigation most thorough.
Coroner Bour of St. Thomas has been notified but not in time to get to the scene of the crime on Monday.
The Pink Paper
Bathgate, Pembina Co, North Dakota
January 1, 1907
The funeral of Arthur LeClair took place on Thursday. The body was taken from the LeClair home to the R. C. church, where a very brief and simple service was said by Rev Fr. Fobes. The casket was covered with floral tributes, and the hearse was followed by a large delegation of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman, of which Arthur was a member, with whom marched a number of other friends of the dead boy, forming quite a procession. Interment was made in the Catholic cemetery here.
The Pink Paper
****Jan. 1, 1907****
Mr. Eli Roy, father of Mrs. Fred LeClair, and Mrs. J. Roy, sister-in-law of same, of St. Jean, Manitoba, arrived on Tuesday, calied by the death of Arthur LeClair.
The Pink Paper
Jan. 8, 1908
NECHE MURDER
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WAS ONE OF THE MOST LAMENTABLE
CRIMES EVER COMMITTED IN
PEMBINA COUNTY
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James O’Brien, of Neche made a complete confession of the murder of Arthur LeClair, the Great Northern Fireman, Sunday. The 16 year old slayer gave up the details of his crime to J. C. Crawford a Pinkerton detective, who had been working on the case.The confession came after he had been confronted with his bloody clothing, hatchet with which the crime had been committed a bloody scarf and other evidences of his guilt. When the news was broken to the father of O’Brien, for years a resident of Neche and Customs Officer there, he broke down completely. Fred LeClair the father of the murdered boy called on him in an endeavor to console him.
Detective Crawford, 18 years in the business, had quite a time getting the murderer to confess. He worked various schemes and was finally successful, after picturing to the boy, the certainty of his conviction, and calling his attention to the great expense with which his father would be burdened, in case he fought the case in District Court.
The following is the complete confession of young O’Brien: To J.C. Crawford Pinkerton Detective.
On Sunday December 22, 1907, LeClair and I went to Gretna twice and drank each time. Coming back the second time both of us were quarreling as to who was the Best Man and LeClair said he could lick three O’Brien’s and I got mad. When we left Cook’s shop, I made an excuse to go out to the closet and I got a hatchet and we started for the rink. When we got down there he made some remarks about fighting me and he put one foot behind me and threw me over. I got up and he hit me and I hit him with a hatchet and after I saw what I had done, I hit him again and took his pocketbook and threw it in the river. I got the hatchet from behind the house where the ice is kept. I threw the body over the bank and followed the body down the bank, I think I had hold of him by the collar and dropped him right at the head of the dam, in the river. James O’Brien-
Witness (to Confession)
J.H. Anderson
J.C. Fielding
George Roadhouse
I James O’Brien, do voluntarily make a statement in my own handwriting and of my own free will before witness, J.C. Fielding and Geo. Roadhouse, that the contents and page no. 2 is a true statement of how I, James O’Brien, killed Arthur LeClair on Sunday, December 22, 1907. I have written this statement for the purpose of telling the truth on my part and have not shield anyone, as there was nobody implicated but myself.
_James O’Brien
Dated Sunday, December 22, 1907
Witness- Geo. Roadhouse
-J.C. Fielding
An effort was made yesterday to locate the money claimed by O’Brien to have been thrown in the Pembina River. Ice was broken but the money was not found. It is thought probable that O’Brien had not told the truth about the quarrel with LeClair and the disposition of the money. LeClair was not of a quarrelsome disposition and it is the general opinion, that he was killed in Cold Blood.
Although the above confession has been since shown by the boy murderer himself to have been in part a lie, it contains at least one horrible truth-James O’Brien foully murdered his friend. Whether he committed the crime as he relates it or whether he stepped behind LeClair and dealt the blow that felled him to the ground-interrupting perhaps a friendly conversation to do this deep most dark and damnable-will perhaps never be known except to him who has forever quitted god’s good sunshine for the light of a felon’s cell, who has forever breathed his last of the sweet air of liberty.
To return to the proceedings of the Saturday session of the coroner’s inquest. James O’Brien was the principal witness. He did not waver as he told states attorney Brynjolfson lie for lie; he did not change color when his gray haired father was forced to undergo the ordeal of accounting for his son’s movements the night of the murder; he did not blush for shame when his sorrow stricken mother was called upon to tell of the hatchet with which he had slain his chum; he did not even shudder when confronted with his own garments in which he knew was dried the blood of Arthur LeClair yet the meshes of the law were already about the boy, and he felt them tighten when he was place under arrest by sheriff Roadhouse Saturday evening. He must have realized that his guilt was known when he was taken to Pembina and place in a cell, in the county jail, but never, do we think, has he realized the enormity of his crime. He sang and whistled in his cell, and managing to lift the window, called to his acquaintances and held converse with them.
Pinkerton detective Crawford was admitted to O’Brien cell on Sunday afternoon, he told the boy that his guilt was known and that the proofs were positive He told him that one or two fates surely awaited him-hanging or life imprisonment. He told him that his crime was of a nature that merited hanging, and that the law had so inexorably provided. O’Brien still maintained his innocence. The detective told him that if the case came to trail and the prisoner entered a pea of not guilty, his guilt would surely be proven to the jury, and the Judge would undoubtedly be obligated, in view of the conclusive evidence submitted, to give him to the gallows. He told the boy that if he plead not guilty his father would, beggar himself in his defense, and all to no end-the result would be the same- a verdict of guilt. Still the boy protested that he had nothing to do with the murder of Arthur LeClair. Then the Pinkerton man told Jimmie that there were others suspected of complicity, and that a confession from him would not only cause sympathy as could be extended a murderer for himself, but would accelerate the ends of justice, while on the contrary if he, the prisoner, remained silent he could expect no mercy if found guilty, and a stigma of doubt would forever attach to the names of some perhaps innocent people. Already, the detective urges, the prisoner’s parents had suffered the pangs and pains of heartbreak, and by maintaining his innocence to the end, they would be further humiliated and their shame and sorrow held up to the gaze of all men, O’Brien was still obdurate. Then, after the detective had presented all these arguments in every light-and sympathy for the unfortunate boy perhaps made him eloquent-Jimmie at last burst into tears, and laying his head on Mr. Crawford knee’s confessed that he “did it alone.” Both the prisoner and the detective were now weeping. The confession followed which the boy-murderer has since himself proven to be a lie with the exception of the one all important fact-his hand, and his alone, dealt the blows that drove the life from the body of Arthur LeClair.
States-attorney Brynjolfson was called at once. O’Brien wrote with a lead pencil the confession which appears foregoing, in the presence of the witnesses whose names are there unto, subscribed. On Monday morning detective Crawford drove to Neche with the confession in his pocket, and proceeded to publish it to the townspeople. Everyone-even the family of the murderer-experience a feeling of great relief. Everyone had been morally certain-as certain as men can be before a trail by judge and jury-that James O’Brien had been the main actor in the hideous drama enacted on the night of December 22, but the demeanor of the murderer and the peculiar character of the trail made by dragging the body from the river bank to the hole below the dam-which indicated to those whose good judgment was recognized and respected that two had dragged the corpse, one at the head and one at the feet-led may to a belief that O’Brien had at least one accomplice. When it was learned that no one else had been in any way concerned in the commission of the crime everyone breathed freer, and to some the knowledge came as a relief from doubt and suspense.
*
*
After the inquest the prisoner made a request that he be allowed to see his parents before he was taken back to jail. The request was granted. In the intervening time, before his father could come to see him, he managed to communicate with one of the town boys to the effect that he would “find something, if he look under the rocks at the dam”. The officers were at once apprised of this statement, and a thorough search was made of the place mentions, which revealed nothing but three lead pencils found hidden under a stone. When the prisoner was allowed to see his father the latter on his knees begged his son to tell what had been done with the money. “I burned it,” was the reply. The search for the money by cutting ice below the dam was now discontinued. Shortly the prisoner left his parents, he told the detective that if he would allow, the place where the money was hidden would be revealed. The officer went with the boy to his father barn, and in the loft from under a handful of twine on a beam the boy took seventy dollars six five and four ten dollar bills. This O’Brien vowed was all the money he had taken from LeClair, the pocketbook he said he had burned in the kitchen stove. Sheriff Roadhouse took his prisoner back to Pembina Tuesday evening. Since then he has further amended his original confession by admitting that he had no quarrel with LeClair. This marks every vestige of the original confession as untruth, with the exception of the bare fact of the murder.
Detective Crawford on Wednesday secured a sworn affidavit from a seventeen year old boy who was a eye witness to the murder. The boy was
going home from Giadue’s rink that night about 11:15, and when coming up the road that runs along the river bank he saw figures ahead of him, and by their conversation recognized them as Arthur LeClair and James O’Brien. He was at this time standing about 60 feet from the spot where the murder occurred. As the boy relates it in his affidavit a conversation like this ensued between O’Brien; O’Brien-”Come on, Goose, let’s go down to the rink.” LeClair-”No, I'm sick; I’m going home and to bed.” O’Brien-”If you’re sick, lets walk to the woods-walk off your jag.” LeClair-”No, “I’m going home to bed.” O’Brien-”What you afraid of the wolves?” LeClair-Not afraid of anything, but I’m going home to bed.” The boy who had over heard this conversation saw the murder done. He ran home in terror, told his father what he had heard and seen, and begged him not to tell for fear “they might do something to him for it .” The affidavit was given on condition that the boy’s name would not be disclosed. It proves that there was nothing like a quarrel or a scuffle just before the murder. The thing was done in cold blood-a murder most foul.
O’Brien was given a preliminary hearing at Pembina Thursday. He plead guilty and was bound over to the session of the District court for sentence. It is believed he will receive a sentence of life imprisonment. The character of his crime would indicate that he can receive nothing less than this-If indeed, he escapes the hangman.
The Pink Paper
Jan. 15, 1908
CRIMINAL CALENDER
James O’Brien, aged 16 years, was sentenced at Pembina to life imprisonment for the murder of Arthur LeClair the Great Northern Fireman at Neche on Dec. 22th.
O’BRIEN PLEADED GUILTY
An appeal for clemency was made by John F. Conmy, attorney for the prisoner. Attorney Conmy pointed to the youth of the prisoner and the fact that he had become intoxicated as a result of saloons being kept open illegally at Gretna (Canada) on Sunday. As attorney Conmy pleaded for him O’Brien broke down and wept.
Judge W. J. Kneeshaw spoke for about 15 minutes to the prisoner and his remarks were intended as much for the great crowd assembled in the court room. He pictured O’Brien as one who had given away to his baser feelings and who was not about to pay the penalty. Bad habit, disregard for the law and the rights of others finally ended in the murder of a friend for a paltry sum of money.
A foul murder has been committed in Neche, by a boy of tender years, only sixteen years of age. He comes of a good family but had previous to
committing this crime built up an unsavory reputation. We do not know why. Whether improper administration of the parent is responsible for the acts of a boy so young can not always be determined. But waywardness and evil tendencies manifest themselves in a character at premature age and then is the time to apply or administer the remedy. Keep track of the boy and try and see that he does not frequent places of questionable demeanor that fill the atmosphere with the fumes of moral perversion. See to it that he selects
Good and Virtuous companions and guide him along the pathway of youth in
such manner that no one can point a finger of scorn at you for delinquency in parental duties. The church, the Sunday school, the home and the Public school have that boy in their care and his future is molded by the influences and environments of youth. “As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined”, if you deem yourself a good father or mother keep your eye on your boy.
O’Brien father was present in the court room with the boy. The old man is over come with sorrow and the disgrace the boy had brought upon him.
O’Brien was taken to the penitentiary Saturday evening.
Before passing sentence Judge Kneeshaw said;
“You are accused of murder in the first degree for the murder of Arthur LeClair, aforethought, with premeditated design to effect the death of Arthur LeClair; then and there assaulted and beat him with a hatchet from which he died. Have you any reason why the court should not sentence you?”
PLEA FOR O’BRIEN
J. P. Conmy, counsel for the defendant, in reply said:
“At this time, before sentence is pronounced, we wish to say a few words. We know just the position in which the court is placed in this case according to the law. However, we throw our self upon the mercy of the court and ask for clemency. Consider the character of the accused. He is not a hardened and unfeeling criminal. We do not mean that there should be no punishment for crime, on account of the tender age-but we do feel that in this case where a boy has confessed. In such a case, your honor, we believe that there is due clemency from this court. However, now that matters have been placed before you in their true light, that the accused stands before you readily, bear in mind the youthfulness of the lad-life is sweet to him-and the heartrending of his parents. Extend to him all the clemency in your power. This confession was not given to obtain the mercy of the court. It was given by James O’Brien with the purpose of removing the doubt, if there was any, from others and to prevent any further torture to his parents. On the circumstances surrounding the crime let me dwell. Let me introduce to you the surrounding which have assailed the life of the accused, the bars, and saloons of Grenta, the one necessary qualification being the price. How easy to pass from one station to the other. Think of the temptations which surrounded your life, of the temptations of any boy at the age of 16. How easy then it was to fall into temptations, which robbed him of his senses from unlawful administration of others. While we ask clemency we know the position in which the court is placed. His confession was made to free all others on whom the shadow of doubt might rest.”
COURT TO THE ACCUSED
Judge Kneeshaw said to James O’Brien:
“The law of this state when a defendant pleads guilty to a charge of murder provides that if he pleads guilty to murder in the second degree it then devolves into murder and the court may then examine witnesses in order to inquire into the enormity of the crime, or he may call in a jury to pass on the punishment, or he may refuse to pass on the plea and submit the case to a jury. In this case I have decided to receive the plea of guilty in the first degree and I will say that by so doing I have been placed in a very trying position. You, James O’Brien, I have known since you were a baby, and I have known your father and mother for 30 years. They are some of the old settlers in the county, and when I say old settlers of the Red River valley I mean they consist of the best people that ever lived. I have known your father when I was a young man, and learned to like him as a brother, and it is indeed, a trying thing for me to pass sentence upon you. I have no doubt that the bars of Gretna are largely responsible for the death of LeClair. No person can realize that a boy your age could ever commit a crime as been developed in this case. No more dastardly deed has ever been committed in this county.
JUDICIAL MURDER
“The penalty provided for such crime is death or imprisonment for life. In this case I will say and I feel proud to be able to say that I consciously do not believe that capital punishment is justifiable. Hanging is nothing but judicial murder. There is no excuse for a state to take a man out in cold blood and hang him by the neck. Most people of the present day believe hanging is a relic of barbarism. Now, Jimmie, you can see what whisky, and bad company have brought upon you. You can realize that in cold blood, you killed your chum and brought him before God and his maker. You can see what trouble rests upon your parents and all on account of whisky and bad company. I have noticed that during the proceedings you have shed many tears. I am glad of that. I believe that when a boy is able to shed tears and show that he is penitent that there is some hope that he may repent. This is indeed not only to you and boys of this country of the bad effects of whisky and I hope that everyone in my hearing will take this home with them. Now, Jimmie, I will have to sentence you. I hope that god’s holy spirit may be with you and help you and guide you in your future life. I think I have expressed to you all I can on this line.
“The sentence of the court is that you James O’Brien, shall be confined in the state penitentiary in the county of Burleigh, state of North Dakota, at hard labor for the rest of your natural life, commencing at 12 o’clock noon today.”
****************************
Epilogue:
When World War I broke out the army needed bodies and promised any one in prison who would serve in the army, and survived, would be offered a pardon when the war ended. As luck would have it O’Brien served throughout the war without a scratch. After the war he returned to Neche. However, the local people would have nothing to do with him and shunned him. After a short time he left and was never seen or heard from again.
********************
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Vienna - Museum Judenplatz - Exibition: Angst / Fear
Work by Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944), 1934/35
Encounter with State Authority
Friedl Dicker was a multi-talent. She trained at the Bauhaus in Weimar, and her work covered a variety of disciplines including design, architecture, painting, graphic art, sculpture, and art education. She is thought to have joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) in 1931 and was arrested in November of that year on charges of docu- ment and passport forgery. In the painting The Interrogation I, the young woman is sitting opposite a frightening examining judge. At the end of March 1932, Dicker and several Communist co-defendants were found guilty and sentenced. Dicker received three months' imprisonment, but she was released without fully completing the sentence. At the end of June 1933, a month after the KPÖ had been banned by Engelbert Dollfuss's Austro- fascist regime, she emigrated to Prague. In late 1942 she was deported with her husband Pavel Brandeis to Theresien- stadt, where she gave drawing lessons to children so as to make life in the camp more tolerable for them. She was murdered in Auschwitz in the morning of October 9, 1944.
The Hmong/Mong people (RPA: Hmoob/Moob, Nyiakeng Puachue: "", Pahawh Hmong: "" Hmong pronunciation: [ʰmɔ́ŋ]) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group living mainly in southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. They have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since 2007. In China they are classified as a subgroup of the Miao people.
During the first and Second Indochina Wars, France and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos to fight against forces from North and South Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao insurgents. This CIA operation is known as the Secret War.
HISTORY OF HMONG
The Hmong traditions and legends indicate that they originated near the Yellow River region of China. According to linguist Martha Ratliff, there is linguistic evidence to suggest that they have occupied some of the same areas of southern China for over 8,000 years. Evidence from mitochondrial DNA in Hmong–Mien–speaking populations supports the southern origins of maternal lineages even further back in time, although it has been shown that Hmong-speaking populations had comparatively more contact with northern East Asians than had the Mien.
The ancient town of Zhuolu is considered to be the birthplace of the widely proclaimed legendary Hmong king, Chi You. Today, a statue of Chi You has been erected in the town. The author of the Guoyu, authored in the 4th to 5th century, considered Chi You’s Jiu Li tribe to be related to the ancient ancestors of the Hmong, the San-Miao people.
In 2011, White Hmong DNA was sampled and found to contain 7.84% D-M15 and 6%N(Tat) DNA. The researchers posited a genetic relationship between Hmong-Mien peoples and Mon-Khmer people groups dating to the Last Glacial Maximum approximately 15-18,000 years ago.
Conflict between the Hmong of southern China and newly arrived Han settlers increased during the 18th century under repressive economic and cultural reforms imposed by the Qing dynasty. This led to armed conflict and large-scale migrations well into the late 19th century, the period during which many Hmong people emigrated to Southeast Asia. The migration process had begun as early as the late-17th century, however, before the time of major social unrest, when small groups went in search of better agricultural opportunities.
The Hmong people were subjected to persecution and genocide by the Qing dynasty government. Kim Lacy Rogers wrote: "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the Hmong lived in south-western China, their Manchu overlords had labeled them 'Miao' ('barbarian' or 'savage') and targeted them for genocide when they defied being humiliated, oppressed, and enslaved."
Since 1949, the Miao people (Chinese: 苗族; pinyin: miáo zú) has been an official term for one of the 55 official minority groups recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China. The Miao live mainly in southern China, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei. According to the 2000 censuses, the number of 'Miao' in China was estimated to be about 9.6 million. The Miao nationality includes Hmong people as well as other culturally and linguistically related ethnic groups who do not call themselves Hmong. These include the Hmu, Kho (Qho) Xiong, and A Hmao. The White Miao (Bai Miao) and Green Miao (Qing Miao) are Hmong groups.
HMONG CLANS OF HAN ORIGN
A number of Miao lineage clans are also believed to have been founded by Chinese men who had married Miao women. These distinct Chinese-descended clans practice Chinese burial customs instead of Hmong style burials. In Sichuan, they were known as "Chinese Hmong" ("Hmong Sua"). The Hmong were instructed in military tactics by fugitive Chinese rebels.
Chinese men who had married into Hmong clans have established several Hmong clans. Chinese "surname groups" are comparable to the Hmong clans which are patrilineal, and practice exogamy. Hmong women married Han Chinese men who pacified the Ah rebels who were fighting against the Ming dynasty, and founded the Wang clan among the Hmong in Gongxian county, of Sichuan's Yibin district. Hmong women who married Chinese men founded a Xem clan in a Hmong village among Northern Thailand's Hmong. Lauj clan in Northern Thailand is another example of a clan created through Han and Hmong intermarriage. A Han Chinese with the family name of Deng found another Hmong clan there as well.
Jiangxi Han Chinese have held a claim as the forefathers of the southeast Guizhou Miao. Children were born to the many Miao women who had married Han Chinese soldiers in Taijiang before the second half of the 19th century. The Hmong Tian clan in Sizhou began in the seventh century as a migrant Han Chinese clan.
Non-Han women such as the Miao became wives of Han soldiers. These soldiers fought against the Miao rebellions during the Qing and Ming dynasties and at that time Han women were not available. The origin of the Tunbao people can be traced to the Ming dynasty, when the Hongwu Emperor sent 300,000 Han Chinese male soldiers in 1381 to conquer Yunnan and the men married Yao and Miao women.
The presence of women presiding over weddings was a feature noted in "Southeast Asian" marriages, such as in 1667 when a Miao woman in Yunnan married a Chinese official. In Yunnan, a Miao chief's daughter married a scholar in the 1600s who wrote that she could read, write, and listen in Chinese and read Chinese classics.
The Sichuan Hmong village of Wangwu was visited by Nicholas Tapp who wrote that the "clan ancestral origin legend" of the Wang Hmong clan, had said that there were several intermarriages with Han Chinese and possibly one of these was their ancestor Wang Wu; there were two types of Hmong, "cooked", who sided with Chinese, and "raw", who rebelled against the Chinese. The Chinese were supported by the Wang Hmong clan. A Hmong woman was married by the non-Hmong Wang Wu according to The Story of the Ha Kings in Wangwu village.
CULTURE
Hmong people have their own terms for their subcultural divisions. Hmong Der (Hmoob Dawb), and Hmong Leng (Hmoob Leeg) are the terms for two of the largest groups in the United States and Southeast Asia. These subgroups are also known as the White Hmong, and Blue or Green Hmong, respectively. These names originate from the color and designs of women's dresses in each respective group, with the White Hmong distinguished by the white dresses women wear on special occasions, and the Blue/Green Hmong by the blue batiked dresses that the women wear. The name and pronunciation "Hmong" is exclusively used by the White Hmong to refer to themselves, and many dictionaries use only the White Hmong dialect.
In the Romanized Popular Alphabet, developed in the 1950s in Laos, these terms are written Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) and Hmoob Leeg (Green Hmong). The final consonants indicate with which of the eight lexical tones the word is pronounced.
White Hmong and Green Hmong speak mutually intelligible dialects of the Hmong language, with some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. One of the most characteristic differences is the use of the voiceless /m̥/ in White Hmong, indicated by a preceding "H" in Romanized Popular Alphabet. Voiceless nasals are not found in the Green Hmong dialect. Hmong groups are often named after the dominant colors or patterns of their traditional clothing, style of head-dress, or the provinces from which they come.
VIETNAM AND LAOS
The Hmong groups in Vietnam and Laos, from the 18th century to the present day, are known as Black Hmong (Hmoob Dub), Striped Hmong (Hmoob Txaij), White Hmong (Hmoob Dawb), Hmong Leng (Hmoob Leeg) and Green Hmong (Hmoob Ntsuab). In other places in Asia, groups are also known as Black Hmong (Hmoob Dub or Hmong Dou), Striped Hmong (Hmoob Txaij or Hmoob Quas Npab), Hmong Shi, Hmong Pe, Hmong Pua, and Hmong Xau, Hmong Xanh (Green Hmong), Hmong Do (Red Hmong), Na Mieo and various other subgroups. These include the Flower Hmong or the Variegated Hmong (Hmong Lenh or Hmong Hoa), so named because of their bright, colorful embroidery work (called pa ndau or paj ntaub, literally "flower cloth").
NOMENCLATURE
CHINA
Usage of the term "Miao" (苗) in Chinese documents dates back to the Shi Ji (1st century BC) and the Zhan Guo Ce (late Western Han Dynasty). During this time, it was generally applied to people of the southern regions thought to be descendants of the San Miao kingdom (dated to around the 3rd millennium BC.) The term does not appear again until the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), by which time it had taken on the connotation of "barbarian." Being a variation of Nanman, it was used to refer to one kind of indigenous people in the southern China who had not been assimilated into Han culture. During this time, references to Unfamiliar (生 Sheng) and Familiar (熟 Shu) Miao appear, referring to level of assimilation and political cooperation of the two groups. Not until the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) do more finely grained distinctions appear in writing. Even then, discerning which ethnic groups are included in various classifications can be problematic.
This inconsistent usage of "Miao" makes it difficult to say for sure if Hmong and Mong people are always included in these historical writings. Christian Culas and Jean Michaud note: "In all these early accounts, then, until roughly the middle of the 19th century, there is perpetual confusion about the exact identity of the population groups designated by the term Miao. We should, therefore, be cautious with respect to the historical value of any early associations."
Linguistic evidence, however, places Hmong and Mong people in the same regions of southern China that they inhabit today for at least the past 2,000 years. By the mid-18th century, classifications become specific enough that it is easier to identify references to Hmong and Mong people.
The term 'Miao' is used today by the Chinese government to denote a group of linguistically and culturally related people (including the Hmong, Hmu, Kho Xiong, and A Hmao). The Hmong and Miao of China today believe they are one people with cultural and linguistic affiliations that transcend oceans and national boundaries. The educated elites of the two groups maintain close transnational contacts with one another.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
In Southeast Asia, Hmong people are referred to by other names, including: Vietnamese: Mèo, Mông or H'Mông; Lao: ແມ້ວ (Maew) or ມົ້ງ (Mong); Thai: แม้ว (Maew) or ม้ง (Mong); Burmese: မုံလူမျိုး (mun lu-myo). The xenonym, "Mèo", and variants thereof, are considered highly derogatory by some Hmong people in the USA.
A recent DNA research in Thailand found that Hmong paternal lineage is quite different from those lu Mien and other Southeast Asian tribes. The Hmong-Mien (HM) and Sino-Tibetan (ST) speaking groups are known as hill tribes in Thailand; they were the subject of the first studies to show an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mitochondrial (mt) DNA vs. male-specific portion of the Y chromosome (MSY) variation. However, HM and ST groups have not been studied in as much detail as other Thai groups; here we report and analyze 234 partial MSY sequences (∼2.3 mB) and 416 complete mtDNA sequences from 14 populations that, when combined with our previous published data, provides the largest dataset yet for the hill tribes. We find a striking difference between Hmong and IuMien (Mien-speaking) groups: the Hmong are genetically different from both the IuMien and all other Thai groups, whereas the IuMien are genetically more similar to other linguistic groups than to the Hmong. In general, we find less of an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation than previous studies. However, there is a dramatic difference in the frequency of MSY and mtDNA lineages of Northeast Asian (NEA) origin vs. Southeast Asian (SEA) origin in HM vs. ST groups: HM groups have high frequencies of NEA MSY lineages but lower frequencies of NEA mtDNA lineages, while ST groups show the opposite. A potential explanation is that the ancestors of Thai HM groups were patrilocal, while the ancestors of Thai ST groups were matrilocal. Overall, these results attest to the impact of cultural practices on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation.
HMONG/MONG CONTROVERSY
When Western authors came in contact with Hmong people, beginning in the 18th century, they referred to them in writing by ethnonyms assigned by the Chinese (i.e., Miao, or variants). This practice continued into the 20th century. Even ethnographers studying the Hmong people in Southeast Asia often referred to them as Meo, a corruption of Miao applied by Thai and Lao people to the Hmong. Although "Meo" was an official term, it was often used as an insult against the Hmong people, and it is considered to be derogatory.
The issue came to a head during the passage of California State Assembly Bill (AB) 78, in the 2003–2004 season. Introduced by Doua Vu and Assembly Member Sarah Reyes, District 31 (Fresno), the bill encouraged changes in secondary education curriculum to include information about the Secret War and the role of Hmong people in the war. Furthermore, the bill called for the use of oral histories and first-hand accounts from Hmong people who had participated in the war and who were caught up in the aftermath. Originally, the language of the bill mentioned only "Hmong" people, intending to include the entire community. Several Mong Leng activists, led by Dr. Paoze Thao (Professor of Linguistics and Education at California State University, Monterey Bay), drew attention to the problems associated with omitting "Mong" from the language of the bill. They noted that despite nearly equal numbers of Hmong Der and Mong Leng in the United States, resources are disproportionately directed toward the Hmong Der community. This includes not only scholarly research but also the translation of materials, potentially including the curriculum proposed by the bill. Despite these arguments, "Mong" was not added to the bill. In the version that passed the assembly, "Hmong" was replaced by "Southeast Asians", a more broadly inclusive term.
Dr. Paoze Thao and some others feel strongly that "Hmong" can refer to only Hmong Der people and does not include "Mong" Leng people. He feels that the usage of "Hmong" about both groups perpetuates the marginalization of Mong Leng language and culture. Thus, he advocates the usage of both "Hmong" and "Mong" when referring to the entire ethnic group. Other scholars, including anthropologist Dr. Gary Yia Lee (a Hmong Der person), suggest that "Hmong" has been used for the past 30 years to refer to the entire community and that the inclusion of Mong Leng people is understood. Some argue that such distinctions create unnecessary divisions within the global community and will only confuse non-Hmong and Mong people trying to learn more about Hmong and Mong history and culture.
As a compromise alternative, multiple iterations of "Hmong" are proposed. A Hmong theologian, Rev. Dr. Paul Joseph T. Khamdy Yang has proposed the term “HMong” to encompass both the Hmong and Mong community by capitalizing the H and the M. The ethnologist Jacques Lemoine has also begun to use the term (H)mong when referring to the entirety of the Hmong and Mong community.
HMONG, MONG AND MIAO
Some non-Chinese Hmong advocate that the term Hmong be used not only for designating their dialect group but also for the other Miao groups living in China. They generally claim that the word "Miao" or "Meo" is a derogatory term, with connotations of barbarism, that probably should not be used at all. The term was later adopted by Tai-speaking groups in Southeast Asia where it took on especially insulting associations for Hmong people despite its official status.
In modern China, the term "Miao" does not carry these negative associations and people of the various sub-groups that constitute this officially recognized nationality freely identify themselves as Miao or Chinese, typically reserving more specific ethnonyms for intra-ethnic communication. During the struggle for political recognition after 1949, it was members of these ethnic minorities who campaigned for identification under the umbrella term "Miao"—taking advantage of its familiarity and associations of historical political oppression.
Contemporary transnational interactions between Hmong in the West and Miao groups in China, following the 1975 Hmong diaspora, have led to the development of a global Hmong identity that includes linguistically and culturally related minorities in China that previously had no ethnic affiliation. Scholarly and commercial exchanges, increasingly communicated via the Internet, have also resulted in an exchange of terminology, including Hmu and A Hmao people identifying as Hmong and, to a lesser extent, Hmong people accepting the designation "Miao," within the context of China. Such realignments of identity, while largely the concern of economically elite community leaders reflects a trend towards the interchangeability of the terms "Hmong" and "Miao.
DIASPORA
Roughly 95% of the Hmong live in Asia. Linguistic data show that the Hmong of the Peninsula stem from the Miao of southern China as one among a set of ethnic groups belonging to the Hmong–Mien language family. Linguistically and culturally speaking, the Hmong and the other sub-groups of the Miao have little in common.
Vietnam, where their presence is attested from the late 18th century onwards and characterized with both assimilation, cooperation and hostility, is likely to be the first Indochinese country into which the Hmong migrated. During the colonization of 'Tonkin' (north Vietnam) between 1883 and 1954, a number of Hmong decided to join the Vietnamese Nationalists and Communists, while many Christianized Hmong sided with the French. After the Viet Minh victory, numerous pro-French Hmong had to fall back to Laos and South Vietnam.
At the 2019 national census, there were 1,393,547 Hmong living in Vietnam, the vast majority of them in the north of the country. The traditional trade in coffin wood with China and the cultivation of the Opium Poppy – both prohibited only in 1993 in Vietnam – long guaranteed a regular cash income. Today, converting to cash cropping is the main economic activity. As in China and Laos, there is a certain degree of participation of Hmong in the local and regional administration. In the late 1990s, several thousands of Hmong started moving to the Central Highlands and some crossed the border into Cambodia, constituting the first attested presence of Hmong settlers in that country.
In 2015, the Hmong in Laos numbered 595,028. Hmong settlement there is nearly as ancient as in Vietnam. After decades of distant relations with the Lao kingdoms, closer relations between the French military and some Hmong on the Xieng Khouang plateau were set up after World War II. There, a particular rivalry between members of the Lo and Ly clans developed into open enmity, also affecting those connected with them by kinship. Clan leaders took opposite sides and as a consequence, several thousand Hmong participated in the fighting against the Pathet Lao Communists, while perhaps as many were enrolled in the People's Liberation Army. As in Vietnam, numerous Hmong in Laos also genuinely tried to avoid getting involved in the conflict in spite of the extremely difficult material conditions under which they lived during wartime.
After the 1975 Communist victory, thousands of Hmong from Laos had to seek refuge abroad (see Laos below). Approximately 30 percent of the Hmong left, although the only concrete figure we have is that of 116,000 Hmong from Laos and Vietnam together seeking refuge in Thailand up to 1990.
In 2002 the Hmong in Thailand numbered 151,080. The presence of Hmong settlements there is documented from the end of the 19th century. Initially, the Siamese paid little attention to them. But in the early 1950s, the state suddenly took a number of initiatives aimed at establishing links. Decolonization and nationalism were gaining momentum in the Peninsula and wars of independence were raging. Armed opposition to the state in northern Thailand, triggered by outside influence, started in 1967 while here again, much Hmong refused to take sides in the conflict. Communist guerrilla warfare stopped by 1982 as a result of an international concurrence of events that rendered it pointless. Priority is since given by the Thai state to sedentarizing the mountain population, introducing commercially viable agricultural techniques and national education, with the aim of integrating these non-Tai animists within the national identity.
Myanmar most likely includes a modest number of Hmong (perhaps around 2,500) but no reliable census has been conducted there recently.
As result of refugee movements in the wake of the Indochina Wars (1946–1975), in particular, in Laos, the largest Hmong community to settle outside Asia went to the United States where approximately 100,000 individuals had already arrived by 1990. By the same date, 10,000 Hmong had migrated to France, including 1,400 in French Guyana. Canada admitted 900 individuals, while another 360 went to Australia, 260 to China, and 250 to Argentina. Over the following years and until the definitive closure of the last refugee camps in Thailand in 1998, additional numbers of Hmong have left Asia, but the definitive figures are still to be produced.
In the rest of the world, where about 5% of the world Hmong population now lives, the United States is home to the largest Hmong population. The 2008 Census counted 171,316 people solely of Hmong ancestry, and 221,948 persons of at least partial Hmong ancestry. Other countries with significant populations include:
France: 15,000
Australia: 2,000
French Guiana: 1,500
Canada: 835
Argentina: 600
The Hmong population within the United States is centered in the Upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota) and California.
HMONG IN VIETNAM
Hmongs in Vietnam today are perceived very differently between various political organizations and changed throughout times. The Hmongs of Vietnam are a small minority and because of this, their loyalty toward the Vietnamese state has also been under question. Nonetheless, most Hmongs in Vietnam are fiercely loyal to the Vietnamese state, regardless of the current ideologies of the government with only those minorities supportive of Hmong resistance in Laos and Cambodia. These are mostly Christian Hmongs who have fallen under target and poverty strike by alienation of both three Indochinese governments, since there has been no Hmong armed separatism in the country. The Hmongs in Vietnam also receive cultural and political promotion from the government alike. This unique feature distanced Vietnamese Hmongs from Laotian Hmongs, as their Laotian cousins are strongly anti-Vietnamese.
LAOS
U.S. AND LAOTIAN CIVIL WAR
In the early 1960s, partially as a result of the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Special Activities Division began to recruit, train and lead the indigenous Hmong people in Laos to fight against North Vietnamese Army divisions invading Laos during the Vietnam War. This "Secret Army" was organized into various mobile regiments and divisions, including various Special Guerrilla Units, all of whom were led by General Vang Pao. An estimated sixty-percent (60%) of Hmong men in Laos joined up.
While Hmong soldiers were known to assist the North Vietnamese in many situations, Hmong soldiers were also recognized for serving in combat against the NVA and the Pathet Lao, helping block Hanoi's Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos and rescuing downed American pilots. Though their role was generally kept secret in the early stages of the conflict, they made great sacrifices to help the U.S.
Thousands of economic and political refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves. The first wave resettled in the late 1970s, mostly in the United States, after the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao takeovers of the pro-US governments in South Vietnam and Laos respectively. The Lao Veterans of America, and Lao Veterans of America Institute, helped to assist in the resettlement of many Laotian and Hmong refugees and asylum seekers in the United States, especially former Hmong veterans and their family members who served in the "U.S. Secret Army" in Laos during the Vietnam War.
HMONG LAO RESISTANCE
For many years, the Neo Hom resistance and political movement played a key role in resistance to the Vietnam People's Army in Laos following the U.S. withdrawal in 1975. Vang Pao played a significant role in this movement. Additionally, a spiritual leader Zong Zoua Her, as well as other Hmong leaders, including Pa Kao Her or Pa Khao Her, rallied some of their followers in an additional factionalized guerrilla resistance movement called ChaoFa (RPA: Cob Fab, Pahawh Hmong: ChaoFaPahawh.png). These events led to the yellow rain controversy when the United States accused the Soviet Union of supplying and using chemical weapons in this conflict.
Small groups of Hmong people, many of the second or third generation descendants of former CIA soldiers, remain internally displaced in remote parts of Laos, in fear of government reprisals. Faced with continuing military operations against them by the government and a scarcity of food, some groups have begun coming out of hiding, while others have sought asylum in Thailand and other countries. Hmongs in Laos, in particularly, develop a stronger and deeper anti-Vietnamese sentiment than its Vietnamese Hmong cousins, due to historic persecution perpetrated by the Vietnamese against them.
CONTROVERSY OVER REPATRIATION
In June 1991, after talks with the UNHCR and the Thai government, Laos agreed to the repatriation of over 60,000 Lao refugees living in Thailand, including tens of thousands of Hmong people. Very few of the Lao refugees, however, were willing to return voluntarily. Pressure to resettle the refugees grew as the Thai government worked to close its remaining refugee camps. While some Hmong people returned to Laos voluntarily, with development assistance from UNHCR, coercive measures and forced repatriation was used to send thousands of Hmong back to the communist regime they had fled. Of those Hmong who did return to Laos, some quickly escaped back to Thailand, describing discrimination and brutal treatment at the hands of Lao authorities.
In the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, The Center for Public Policy Analysis, a non-governmental public policy research organization, and its Executive Director, Philip Smith, played a key role in raising awareness in the U.S. Congress and policy making circles in Washington, D.C. about the plight of the Hmong and Laotian refugees in Thailand and Laos. The CPPA, backed by a bipartisan coalition of Members of the U.S. Congress as well as human rights organizations, conducted numerous research missions to the Hmong and Laotian refugee camps along the Mekong River in Thailand, as well as the Buddhist temple of Wat Tham Krabok.
Amnesty International, the Lao Veterans of America, Inc., the United League for Democracy in Laos, Inc., Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. (led by Dr. Pobzeb Vang Vang Pobzeb, and later Vaughn Vang) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights organizations joined the opposition to forced repatriation.
Although some accusations of forced repatriation were denied, thousands of Hmong people refused to return to Laos. In 1996, as the deadline for the closure of Thai refugee camps approached, and under mounting political pressure, the U.S. agreed to resettle Hmong refugees who passed a new screening process. Around 5,000 Hmong people who were not resettled at the time of the camp closures sought asylum at Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist monastery in central Thailand where more than 10,000 Hmong refugees were already living. The Thai government attempted to repatriate these refugees, but the Wat Tham Krabok Hmong refused to leave and the Lao government refused to accept them, claiming they were involved in the illegal drug trade and were of non-Lao origin.
In 2003, following threats of forcible removal by the Thai government, the U.S., in a significant victory for the Hmong, agreed to accept 15,000 of the refugees. Several thousand Hmong people, fearing forced repatriation to Laos if they were not accepted for resettlement in the U.S., fled the camp to live elsewhere within Thailand where a sizable Hmong population has been present since the 19th century.
In 2004 and 2005, thousands of Hmong fled from the jungles of Laos to a temporary refugee camp in the Thai province of Phetchabun.
The European Union, UNHCHR, and international groups have since spoken out about the forced repatriation.
ALLEGED PLOT TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERMENT OF LAOS
On 4 June 2007, as part of an investigation labeled "Operation Tarnished Eagle," warrants were issued by U.S. federal courts ordering the arrest of Vang Pao and nine others for plotting to overthrow the government of Laos in violation of the federal Neutrality Acts and for multiple weapons charges. The federal charges allege that members of the group inspected weapons, including AK-47s, smoke grenades, and Stinger missiles, with the intent of purchasing them and smuggling them into Thailand in June 2007 where they were intended to be used by Hmong resistance forces in Laos. The one non-Hmong person of the nine arrested, Harrison Jack, a 1968 West Point graduate and retired Army infantry officer, allegedly attempted to recruit Special Operations veterans to act as mercenaries.
In an effort to obtain the weapons, Jack allegedly met unknowingly with undercover U.S. federal agents posing as weapons dealers, which prompted the issuance of the warrants as part of a long-running investigation into the activities of the U.S.-based Hmong leadership and its supporters.
On 15 June, the defendants were indicted by a grand jury and a warrant was also issued for the arrest of an 11th man, allegedly involved in the plot. Simultaneous raids of the defendants' homes and work locations, involving over 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officials, were conducted in approximately 15 cities in Central and Southern California in the US.
Multiple protest rallies in support of the suspects, designed to raise awareness of the treatment of Hmong peoples in the jungles of Laos, took place in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alaska, and several of Vang Pao's high-level supporters in the U.S. criticized the California court that issued the arrest warrants, arguing that Vang is a historically important American ally and a valued leader of U.S. and foreign-based Hmong. However, calls for then Californian Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then President George W. Bush to pardon the defendants were not answered, presumably pending a conclusion of the large and then still-ongoing federal investigation.
On 18 September 2009, the US federal government dropped all charges against Vang Pao, announcing in a release that the federal government was permitted to consider "the probable sentence or other consequences if the person is convicted." On 10 January 2011, after Vang Pao's death, the federal government dropped all charges against the remaining defendants saying, "Based on the totality of the circumstances in the case, the government believes, as a discretionary matter, that continued prosecution of defendants is no longer warranted," according to court documents.
THAILAND
The Hmong presence in Thailand dates back, according to most authors, to the turn of the 20th century when families migrated from China through Laos and Burma. A relatively small population, they still settled dozens of villages and hamlets throughout the northern provinces. The Hmong were then registered by the state as the Meo hill tribe. Then, more Hmong migrated from Laos to Thailand following the victory of the Pathet Lao in 1975. While some ended up in refugee camps, others settled in mountainous areas among more ancient Hill Tribes.
AMERICAS
Many Hmong refugees resettled in the United States after the Vietnam War. Beginning in December 1975, the first Hmong refugees arrived in the U.S., mainly from refugee camps in Thailand; however, only 3,466 were granted asylum at that time under the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. In May 1976, another 11,000 were allowed to enter the United States, and by 1978 some 30,000 Hmong people had immigrated. This first wave was made up predominantly of men directly associated with General Vang Pao's secret army. It was not until the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 that families were able to enter the U.S., becoming the second wave of Hmong immigrants. Hmong families scattered across all 50 states but most found their way to each other, building large communities in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. As of the 2010 census, 260,073 Hmong people reside in the United States the majority of whom live in California (91,224), Minnesota (66,181), and Wisconsin (49,240), an increase from 186,310 in 2000. Of them, 247,595 or 95.2% are Hmong alone, and the remaining 12,478 are mixed Hmong with some other ethnicity or race. The vast majority of part-Hmong are under 10 years old.
The Hmong people, who are a distinct ethnic group with ancient roots and ancestry in China, began settling in Minnesota in 1975. The Hmong came to Minnesota as refugees from the destructive wars that had ravaged and taken place in their homelands in Laos. Today, there are 150,000 Hmong in the U.S. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California. More than 66,000 Hmong reside in Minnesota with the majority living in the St. Paul area. The Twin Cities metro is home to the largest concentration of Hmong in America. For decades, the Hmong have not only made a profound impact on their adopted home in Minnesota, but the Hmong culture has collaborated with the community to document this remarkable story by collecting images, artifacts, oral histories, sharing stories, and by publishing articles and books on the Hmong experience.
In terms of cities and towns, the largest Hmong-American community is in St. Paul (29,662), followed by Fresno (24,328), Sacramento (16,676), Milwaukee (10,245), and Minneapolis (7,512).
There are smaller Hmong communities scattered across the United States, including those in Minnesota (Rochester, Mankato, Duluth) Michigan (Detroit and Warren); Anchorage, Alaska; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Washington; North Carolina (Charlotte, Morganton); South Carolina (Spartanburg); Georgia (Auburn, Duluth, Monroe, Atlanta, and Winder); Florida (Tampa Bay); Wisconsin (Madison, Eau Claire, Appleton, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, La Crosse, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, and Wausau); Aurora, Illinois; Kansas City, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Missoula, Montana; Des Moines, Iowa; Springfield, Missouri; Arkansas, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island.
Canada's small Hmong population is mostly concentrated within the province of Ontario. Kitchener, Ontario has 515 residents of Hmong descent, and has a Hmong church.
There is also a small community of several thousand Hmong who migrated to French Guiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that can be mainly found in the Hmong villages of Javouhey (1200 individuals) and Cacao (950 individuals).
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
Some Laos- and Vietnam-based Hmong Animists and Christians, including Protestant and Catholic believers, have been subjected to military attacks, police arrest, imprisonment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture on anti-religious grounds.
The deportation of Zoua Yang and her 27 children from Thailand in December 19, 2005 after the group was arrested attending a Christian church in Ban Kho Noi, Phetchabun Province, Thailand, where upon arrival back in Laos, Ms. Yang and her children were detained, after which the whereabouts of much of the family are still unknown.
For example, in 2013, a Hmong Christian pastor, Vam Ngaij Vaj (Va Ngai Vang), was beaten to death by police and security forces. In February 2014, in Hanoi, Vietnamese government officials refused to allow medical treatment for a Hmong Christian leader, Duong Van Minh, who was suffering from a serious kidney illness. In 2011, Vietnam People's Army troops were used to crush a peaceful demonstration by Hmong Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Christian believers who gathered in Dien Bien Province and the Dien Bien Phu area of northwestern Vietnam, according to Philip Smith of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, independent journalists and others.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has documented official and ongoing religious persecution, religious freedom violations against the Laotian and Hmong people in both Laos and Vietnam by the governments. In April 2011, the Center for Public Policy Analysis also researched and documented cases of Hmong Christians being attacked and summarily executed, including four Lao Hmong Christians.
WIKIPEDIA
In the months following George Bush's dramatic arrest at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport three months ago the possility that a former US president maybe be tried and sentenced for war crimes has gripped the imagination of people from New York to New Delhi. Media representatives from every corner of the planet have turned the sleepy Dutch city of the Hague into a international news circus dwarfing the coverage given the O.J Simpson trial in the 90's. According to latests foreign ministry accounts 6,560 reporters have descended upon city to cover this week's preliminary hearings which are scheduled to conclude next week.
Bush's detention on route to the UN conference on North Atlantic Security and Safety in Zurich severely strained US – Dutch relations with some Republican members of Congress calling for the air strikes on military targets within the country if the former president was not released. In the days that followed hundreds of businesses and organisations with ties with the Netherlands were attacked throughout America with three Dutch citizens losing their lives in bomb attack on the country's Los Angeles consulate.
Not surprisingly, it has been the question of the sense and the legitimacy of the trials that is the center of attention for many eyewitnesses. Despite the lack of a legal precedent, most of them approve of the proceedings because, as U.S. writer Gore Vidal put it, "warmongers will no longer be able to live quietly in retirement." Some observers, however, have remained skeptical. Iraqi writer Salah Wali considered the indictment "bizarre" and American diplomats based in Europe have privately admitted that the Americans didn't "enter the war with clean hands. No nation could have done so."
The defendant, who await the world's judgment in varying postures of resentment, resignation, and revolt, is another focus for most members of the press. "While the counsel for the prosecution read US documents about the killing of Iraqis and Afghans," railed Polish reporter Pawel Osmanczyk, enraged by the prisoner's deliberate display of boredom, "Bush yawns, or just pretends to be asleep."
Fascination for and disappointment about the banality of the man who helped in the possible murder of thousands of people also appear in the accounts of the reporters witnessing the proceedings. "Involuntarily one desires to see a greater man," wrote Australian journalist John Pliger, "who have to stand trial for all the cruelties which are spread out before the court." Afghan opposition leader, Abdullah Abdullah remarked incredulously: "He is so insignificant that you ask yourself: Was it really this degenerate who laid my country to waste... ?"
Read more: www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,174037,00.html#ixz...
counsel for the defense, call your next witness.
the defense rests, your honor.
oh? are you sure you want to do that?
your honor, we believe that the evidence clearly establishes that the defendant could not have been in a corner of the room at the time the crime was committed.
not in a corner, you say?
just a feeling we have, your honor.
well, I don't know, but it's your funeral. or your client's, rather, if you're wrong.
thank you for that, your honor.
no problem.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Name: Lawrence Armstrong alias Hanby
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields Police Station
Arrested on: 30 September 1915
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-262-Lawrence Armstrong AKA Hanby
The Shields Daily News for 8 October 1915 reports:
“A SOLDIER COMMITTED FOR THEFT.
Today at North Shields, Laurence Armstrong (21) of the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers was charged with having stolen on Sept. 20th a box of cigarettes valued at 5s from the shop of Henry Nicholson, tobacconist, Saville Street. An assistant of the prosecutor’s said she was serving a customer on the above date, when accused entered the shop, picked up a box of cigarettes and went away.
Defendant was further charged with having stolen a dress ring, valued at £1, the property of Valone Harrison, conductress of a tramcar on Sept. 14th. The prosecutrix said the accused boarded a car on which she was following her employment. He asked to look at her ring. She took it off her finger and showed it to him. Witness then went to collect some fares and while she was thus engaged the accused got off the car.
Detective Mason said that when accused was arrested on the previous charge a pawn ticket relating to the ring was found in his possession. Accused pleaded guilty and said he was very sorry. He had been seven months at the front and had been gassed. He was committed to prison for 14 days on each charge”.
These images are taken from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 (TWAM ref. DX1388/1). This set is our selection of the best mugshots taken during the First World War. They have been chosen because of the sharpness and general quality of the images. The album doesn’t record the details of each prisoner’s crimes, just their names and dates of arrest.
In order to discover the stories behind the mugshots, staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums visited North Shields Local Studies Library where they carefully searched through microfilm copies of the ‘Shields Daily News’ looking for newspaper reports of the court cases. The newspaper reports have been transcribed and added below each mugshot.
Combining these two separate records gives us a fascinating insight into life on the Home Front during the First World War. These images document the lives of people of different ages and backgrounds, both civilians and soldiers. Our purpose here is not to judge them but simply to reflect the realities of their time.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Built in 1928, this courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is classified as Neoclassical Revival and is made of marble quarried locally. In 1986, when I was a journalist with a local paper, I spent about a week in an upstairs courtroom covering a trial over a New Year's Eve double murder of a convenience store owner and his wife. As was obvious to me upon hearing the testimony, the jury found the defendant innocent. Afterward, I queried the sheriff about any plans to pursue someone else for the crime. He indicated the department had no plans to continue the investigation since he was sure the defendant was guilty. As a bystander who heard the case from start to finish, I wasn't nearly so sure.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Lewiston, Maine, Olympus E-M5,M. Zuiko 45mm, f1.8 lens
Thank you for visiting. Your comments and faves are truly appreciated-
copyright: © 2014 Garry Velletri. All rights reserved. Please do not use this image, or any images from my photostream without my permission.
Mistaken identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defendant, when in fact the person seen by the witness was someone else. The defendant may question both the memory of the witness (suggesting, for example, that the identification is the result of a false memory), and the perception of the witness (suggesting, for example, that the witness had poor eyesight, or that the crime occurred in a poorly lit place).
Because the prosecution in a criminal case must prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant must convince the jury that there is reasonable doubt about whether the witness actually saw what the witness claims to have seen, or recalls having seen. Although scientific studies have shown that mistaken identity is a common phenomenon, jurors give very strong credence to eyewitness testimony, particularly where the eyewitness is resolute in believing that their identification of the defendant was correct.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Hostels provide budget oriented, sociable accommodation where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, in a dormitory and share a bathroom, lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex, although private rooms may also be available. Hostels may include a hot meal in the price.
Hostels are generally cheaper for both the operator and the occupants; many hostels have long-term residents whom they employ as desk clerks or housekeeping staff in exchange for free accommodation.
In a few countries, such as the UK, Ireland, Asia, and Australia, the word hostel usually refers to establishments providing longer-term accommodation (often to specific classes such as nurses, drug addicts, or court defendants on bail) where the hostels are sometimes run by Housing Associations and charities. In India and Pakistan, hostel also refers to boarding schools or student dormitories in resident colleges and universities. In the rest of the world, the word hostel refers only to properties offering shared accommodation to travellers or backpackers.
Within the 'traveller' category, another distinction can be drawn between hostels which are members of Hostelling International (HI), a UK-based, non-profit organization encouraging outdoor activities and cultural exchange for the young (formerly the IYHA), and independently operated hostels. Hostels for travellers are sometimes called backpackers' hostels, particularly in Australia and New Zealand (often abbreviated to just "backpackers").
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
He is on trial today for lying to Taxman-Cat about the profits he made while being self-employed as an Air-Traffic-Control-Cat who collected landing fees from various flying insects who wished to land on HIS coffee-table runway 25R.
No worries though - he has just appointed Brushtail Mousie LL.B QC as his defence counsel!
Judge sez:
"Oh hello there Brushtail - you again? Ah, I see that you're not here as a defendant today but rather as defence counsel for Siri - that's VERY unusual for a little mousie such as yourself to take on such a MASSIVE responsibility!"
Brushtail sez:
"That's no problem you Honnir. Since I is actually a hybrid Mousie/Fennec-Focksie i is considered to be VERY smart! 8-))"
Judge sez:
"OK now, let's hear your case in defence of your client then!"
Brushtail sez:
"Thanks Your Honnir.
Siri is being charged with lying about his profits - but I wouldn't describe his actions as REALLY lying. This is more a case of using a pallet of various techniques such as processing the facts of the case using a judicious combination of Back Propagation Neural Networks and manipulation of the accounting data using quasi-Linear Regression in order to efficiently achieve a favourable outcome in this use-case scenario. There are precedents here - see abstract of a research paper called "Feline Adaptive Cognisance" by Prof. Dr Jessie and Professor (Emeritus) Dr Zorro et al.
Judge sez:
"Well now, these are VERY big words coming from such a beautiful and working-class young mousie such as yourself. Siri is VERY lucky to have you acting as his defence counsel, so here is my judgement in this case. Sirius please stand!
I am indeed persuaded by your excellent little mousie defence-counsel that you aren't REALLY gilty of lying about your munny-profits. Even although I must confess that I didn't understand all of these big words mi'self, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and dismiss the case. Well done Brushtail! Had she not been such an effective advocate on your behalf, I would have had to have you locked up in the cat-klink for about 2 gazillion years!
Anyway, I'm sending you both straight home to your abode with gifts of catnip for Siri and a selection of the world's finest cheeses for Brushtail! By the way Brushtail, how much do you charge for your services? I myself could do with with some occasional help with complicated cases where I don't kwite understand all these big words"
Brushtail sez:
"I do ALL of my legal work Pro Bono for altruistic reasons and for the benefit of feline, rodent AND human society at large!"
Name: Peter Taylor
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields
Arrested on: 13 May 1915
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-260-Peter Taylor
The Shields Daily News for 21 May 1915 reports:
“STEALING AND RECEIVING. MAN AND WOMAN SENT TO PRISON AT NORTH SHIELDS.
At North Shields today, Peter Taylor, a coppersmith, of 26 Whickham Street, Sunderland, was charged with stealing, between February 15th and May 12th, from a foundry in Lawson Street, 28 brass flanges, 25 brass bosses and a quantity of copper pipe ends, valued at £11, the property of James Hogg and Sons and Caroline Allen of 99 Church Street, Monkwearmouth was summoned for feloniously receiving the same, well knowing the same to have been stolen.
Mr P.M. Dodds prosecuted and Mr L. Wolff, of Sunderland, defended the female defendant. Mr P.M. Dodds stated that Taylor had been employed by James Hogg and Sons for three months and during the last two months they had been missing brass and copper from the foundry in Lawson Street. Suspicion fell on Taylor and he was kept under observation.
Det. Mason said that he had drilled a hole in a partition to watch Taylor and at 12.20pm on the 15th inst. he saw him pick up three brass flanges. He put one in his pocket and two down his trousers. He intercepted defendant and when charged he replied “I don’t deny stealing it.” Defendant also said he sold the brass and copper to defendant Allen. He did not know how much he had stolen, but Allen said she would buy anything up to an anchor. Witness then went to Sunderland and charged Allen, and she said Taylor had been telling lies, as she did not know they were stolen. She admitted buying flanges etc. from Allen, about four times a week, and she sold them to a Gateshead store.
John Hearn, foreman for James Hogg and Sons, went to Gateshead with Det. Mason and identified some flanges and copper. Taylor pleaded guilty and Allen not guilty. Mr Wolff then submitted there was no case against Allen, on the ground that she had not a guilty knowledge.
The magistrates committed Taylor to prison for three months and Allen for one month in the second division. The Mayor (Counc. H. Gregg) said that if it was not for the likes of Allen, Taylor would not be in the position he was in.”
These images are taken from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 (TWAM ref. DX1388/1). This set is our selection of the best mugshots taken during the First World War. They have been chosen because of the sharpness and general quality of the images. The album doesn’t record the details of each prisoner’s crimes, just their names and dates of arrest.
In order to discover the stories behind the mugshots, staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums visited North Shields Local Studies Library where they carefully searched through microfilm copies of the ‘Shields Daily News’ looking for newspaper reports of the court cases. The newspaper reports have been transcribed and added below each mugshot.
Combining these two separate records gives us a fascinating insight into life on the Home Front during the First World War. These images document the lives of people of different ages and backgrounds, both civilians and soldiers. Our purpose here is not to judge them but simply to reflect the realities of their time.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
'I'm a magnifier who sees through your mind, I feel like being the detective Sherlock. Though I am a defendant in this case. Cold cold the air strangely, time goes so slow. The uncertainty I'm feeling~' Stellar - Sting
I had the awesome help from Mika to recreate a scene from one of my favorite music videos and it turned out so perfectly! Mika got the set almost spot on and I was so in shock! She's super talented when it comes to throwing together these sets for our shoots and it's always so much fun!
Mika is wearing the BOYS TO THE BONE graboid sandals @ kustom9 as the small lief piece from [Frou] Elven leaf -Silver-. Our sweaters are both from ISON. You can check out the picture on Mika's page if you'd like the full details of everything as well as simply asking me if you'd like to know about any items!
Oleg is one of seven Petersburgers accused of spreading "fakes" about the Russian army. For messages in the chat, the defendant faces up to 10 years in prison.
Name: Jane A. V. Duffy
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields Police Station
Arrested on: 9 December 1914
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-250-Jane A V Duffy
The Shields Daily News for 9 December 1914 reports:
“A YOUNG WOMAN IN TROUBLE.
Today at North Shields, Jane Agnes Duffy (19), 61 Westcott Road, South Shields, was charged with stealing a gold brooch, a gold ring, and a silk blouse value £1 12s 6d, the property of Barbara Cunningham, Trevor Terrace, on the 27th inst.
The prosecutrix said that at 18.15 pm on the 26th ult. she was in Bedford Street, when the accused was brought to her and she asked if witness could give her board and lodgings. She stated that she had just got work at a drapers and would pay her 15s a week for board and lodgings. Witness took her home. Next morning the defendant got up at 9 o’clock, and while witness was cleaning the step the defendant ran out by the back, and witness missed the articles mentioned.
Detective Sweeney of Wallsend said he arrested the accused on another charge on the 28th ult. and found the items mentioned in her possession. Detective-Sergt. Hall deposed to recovering the property from the last witness and receiving the accused into custody after she had been dealt with by the magistrates at Wallsend.
The mother of the girl told the magistrates that her daughter had no reason to steal, having a good home and having been well brought up, but she was rather weak in mind and had given her some trouble. The clerk enquired why the magistrates at Wallsend had bound her over for 12 months under probation. Detective Sweeney said that the mother and the solicitor representing her promised to put her into a home. Mrs Duffy said that Father Turner had promised to look after her and put her into a home for feeble-minded at Carlisle and an arrangement was made that she would go into the Harton Workhouse in the meanwhile. The girl, however, objected to going to the workhouse and wanted to go home. The case was remanded for a day.”
The Shields Daily News for 17 December 1914 reports:
“SOUTH SHIELDS GIRL BOUND OVER.
The remanded charge against Jane Agnes Duffy (19), Westcott Terrace, South Shields of stealing a gold brooch, a keeper ring and a blouse, valued in all at £1 12s 6d, the property of Barbara Cunningham, Trevor Terrace, North Shields, came up for hearing this morning.
The case has several times been adjourned in order that a place should be found for the girl in a home. The Bench on one occasion expressed their opinion that they did not think she had been properly looked after at home. This morning, the Bench, after due consideration of the case and circumstances, decided to bind the girl over for twelve months in the mother’s surety of 40s, to be of good behaviour.”
These images are taken from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 (TWAM ref. DX1388/1). This set is our selection of the best mugshots taken during the First World War. They have been chosen because of the sharpness and general quality of the images. The album doesn’t record the details of each prisoner’s crimes, just their names and dates of arrest.
In order to discover the stories behind the mugshots, staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums visited North Shields Local Studies Library where they carefully searched through microfilm copies of the ‘Shields Daily News’ looking for newspaper reports of the court cases. The newspaper reports have been transcribed and added below each mugshot.
Combining these two separate records gives us a fascinating insight into life on the Home Front during the First World War. These images document the lives of people of different ages and backgrounds, both civilians and soldiers. Our purpose here is not to judge them but simply to reflect the realities of their time.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
Name: James White
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields Police Station
Arrested on: 13 March 1915
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-258-James White
The Shields Daily News for 19 March 1915 reports:
“THEFTS FROM TYNE SAILORS’ HOME.
James White (21), a seaman, of Bishop Auckland, was charged at North Shields today with having stolen between March 5th and 6th, from a cubicle at the Tyne Sailors’ Home, a quantity of clothing, provisions and other goods, valued at 30s, the property of Albert Smith, a boarder at the home, and further with having stolen on the 11th inst., from another cubicle, a macintosh coat and other goods, valued at £1 8s, the property of Robert Jensen, a clerk at the home.
Chief Constable Huish said that defendant had been convicted at Bishop Auckland for larceny and false pretences. Defendant said he had been in the Wellesley Training Ship for six years and left three years ago. He pleaded guilty to each charge and had nothing further to say. The Bench committed him to prison for one month on each charge”.
These images are taken from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 (TWAM ref. DX1388/1). This set is our selection of the best mugshots taken during the First World War. They have been chosen because of the sharpness and general quality of the images. The album doesn’t record the details of each prisoner’s crimes, just their names and dates of arrest.
In order to discover the stories behind the mugshots, staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums visited North Shields Local Studies Library where they carefully searched through microfilm copies of the ‘Shields Daily News’ looking for newspaper reports of the court cases. The newspaper reports have been transcribed and added below each mugshot.
Combining these two separate records gives us a fascinating insight into life on the Home Front during the First World War. These images document the lives of people of different ages and backgrounds, both civilians and soldiers. Our purpose here is not to judge them but simply to reflect the realities of their time.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
NEW: I NOW CREATE MUSIC, JOIN ME ON SOUNDCLOUD!
SHOP: www.icanvas.com/canvas-art-prints/artist/ben-heine
Mad world... This is an older sketch I made in 2007
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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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Globalization of McDonalds
A person, group, or nation having great influence or control over others is defined as having power (dictionary.com). In the minds of most it is the political leaders and governments have power over the people. However, many institutions and business corporations we may not think of also hold a lot of the world’s power. Unfortunately, through globalization corporations such as McDonalds are attempting to Americanize the whole world. Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone service, email, computers, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, all these have made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials continually move across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level. Many politicians, academics, and journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and welcomed. But for billions of the world’s people, business-driven globalization means uprooting old ways of life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. The global social justice movement, itself a product of globalization, proposes an alternative path, more responsive to public needs. Intense political disputes will continue over globalization’s meaning and its future direction. (www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/index.htm)
The biggest multinational companies are very rich. Of the 100 biggest economies in the world, just over half are companies rather than whole countries. The 200 biggest companies control a quarter of all the world’s trade. These 200 companies have more than half the economic power over four billion people. Multinational companies, like all companies, want to make profits. Their profits will be affected by the level of taxes in a country, how well skilled the workforce is, how easy it is to find sites to build factories, and even how strong a country's currency is. This means governments will think carefully about their economic policies. For example, a multinational may decide to close a factory in one country because it is cheaper to make its products in another. This can mean hundreds or thousands of jobs will be lost. It can mean that countries have a tendency to weaken rules about working conditions in order to attract multinational investment. In less developed countries dependence on multinational companies for investment and jobs is proportionately even greater. In these countries employees often work harder, for less money and in poorer conditions. Because of the importance of the companies, governments in these countries may be less willing to press for better wages and working conditions for their workers.
In poor countries vast areas of land are used for cash crops or for cattle ranching, or to grow grain to feed animals to be eaten in the West. This is at the expense of local food needs. McDonald's continually promote meat products, encouraging people to eat meat more often, which waste more and more food resources. According to the London Green Peace Group some 'Third World' countries, where most children are undernourished, are actually exporting their staple crops as animal feed to fatten the cattle being into burgers in the 'First World'. Millions of acres of the best farmland in poor countries are being used for United State’s benefit by means of tea, coffee, and tobacco, while people there are starving. McDonald's is directly involved in this economic imperialism, which keeps 7 million tons of grain fed to livestock produces only 1 million tons of meat and by-products. On a plant-based diet and with land shared fairly, almost every region could be self-sufficient in food (www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php). McDonalds not only effects the economic position of people in foreign countries, but it also affects American ranches and McDonald’s employees economically.
McDonald's comes in, saying that the brand will bring many jobs. Beef producers, flourishing for years, now have McDonald's as their only market. In 1968, McDonald’s bought ground beef from 175 local suppliers. A few years later, seeking to achieve greater product uniformity as it expanded, McDonalds reduced the number of beef suppliers to five. In the United States many ranchers now argue that few large corporations have gained stranglehold on the market using unfair tactics to drive down the price of cattle (Schlosser, 134). The four major meatpacking companies now control about 20 percent of the live cattle in the US through “captive supplies” cattle that are either maintained in company owned feedlots or purchased in advance. When cattle prices start to rise, the large meatpackers can flood the market with their own captive supplies driving prices back down. The suicide rate among ranchers and farmers in the United States is now about three times higher than the national average. A 1996 USDA investigation of concentration in the beef industry found that many ranchers were afraid to testify against the large meatpacking companies, fearing retaliation and “economic ruin.” When Mike Callicrate, a cattleman from St. Francis Kansas, decided to speak out against corporate behavior before the USDA committee, the large meatpackers promptly stopped bidding on his cattle (Schlosser, 143)
Outside the United States, Jamaicans not allowed to use cancer-causing agents in their burgers. McDonald's imports the beef from a country or free zone where cancer can legally go into the food. Therefore Jamaican beef producers have no market, and cannot export so the business dies. People line up at McDonald's for cancer, driven by global advertising. No native farming, no native products, nothing left but McDonald's.
According to George Ritzer, “The fundamental problem with McDonaldisation is that it's other people in the system structuring our lives for us, rather than us structuring our lives for ourselves…You don't want a creative person at the counter - that's why they are scripted. You don't want a creative hamburger cook - you want somebody who simply follows routines or follows scripts. No, you take all creativity out of work and turn it into a series of routine procedures that are imposed by some external force. That's the reason why it's dehumanizing... it turns human beings into human robots"
Not surprisingly staff turnover at McDonald's is high, making it virtually impossible to unionize and fight for a better deal, which suits McDonald's who have always been opposed to Unions. A recent survey of workers in burger-restaurants found that 80% said they needed union help over pay and conditions. McDonald's have a policy of preventing unionization by getting rid of pro-union workers. So far this has succeeded everywhere in the world except Sweden, and in Dublin after a long struggle Green Pease Group). In February of 1997 workers at a McDonald’s in St Hubert, Canada, applied to join the Teamsters union. More than three quarter of the crewmembers signed union cards, hoping to create the only unionized McDonalds in North America. Tom and mike Cappelli closed the McDonalds just weeks before the union was certified. This was not the first time this happened, during the early 1970s workers in Lansing Michigan were organizing a union. All the crewmembers were fired and the restaurant was shut down, a new McDonalds was build down the block and the unionizing workers were not rehired (Schlosser, 77)
As a global and national economic power, McDonalds negatively affects the lives of people in foreign countries as well as people in the United States. Because multinational companies want trade across the world to be free from restrictions as much as possible they are likely to use their influence with the World Trade Organization to get restrictions on manufacturing and trade reduced to a minimum. Is McDonalds so powerful that nothing can restrain the terror it forces upon the world’s people?
Globalization is political in the sense that the dominant powers insist on the adoption of certain versions of their policies and values for example, the adoption of liberal democracy and opening up of economies. This meant national states increasingly restructuring their position and their responsibilities in relation to both the global capitalism and to the local economies and societies. This tendency towards homogenization of politics seeks to form a world government with singular security, army, and judiciary branches with most of its important institutions located in the west. Globalization in this sense is referred to as hegemonisation (www.sidamaconcern.com/articles/globalisation.html).
Behind the smiling face of Ronald McDonald lurks a self-important and singularly determined multi-national corporation that wields serious power over national governments. McDonalds doesn't only convert its influence into political clout. It uses its dollars and donations to target the most vulnerable people in society. Ronald McDonald has a proven policy of suing the ass off of you or your employer, if you, as they put it, "tell lies about the company". McDonalds has even threatened to sue perfectly credible media institutions such as the BBC and the Guardian. This indicates that they are trying to stop the expression of free speech, a civil liberty, at least insofar as it affects their commercial operations. The list of media organizations that have been suppressed or pulped is growing (www.i-resign.com/uk/workinglife/viewarticle_33.asp).
In 1986, the London Green Peace group published a leaflet titled, "What's wrong with McDonalds". When the leaflet came to their attention, McDonalds demanded they retract the leaflet and its allegations or face court with the obvious possibility of a huge costs, they were denied legal aid, incurred by facing some of the top legal players money can buy. Two individuals from the group, Dave Morris, a postman, and Helen Steel, a gardener, felt they had no choice but to face McDonalds in court. On the 28th June 1994 the libel trial began in London and ended up becoming the longest ever seen in a British court. It's now known as the "McLibel" trial. The defendant's legal costs of £35,000 were met by generous donations by members of the public. On the 19th June 1997 McDonalds were awarded damages of £90,000 for certain items in the leaflet concerning the health implications of eating at a McDonalds restaurant and its role in Third World starvation and environmental damage, which remained 'not proven'. The Judge agreed that "McDonalds advertisements, promotions and booklets have pretended to a positive nutritional benefit which McDonald's food did not match" and that the firm "paid its workers low wages, thereby helping to depress wages for workers in the catering trade".
The current government is happy to let McDonalds participate in the education of the country's schoolchildren. In 1998, David Blunkett and Steven Byers, Ministers of State for education and industry, permitted the corporation to be a partner in the North Somerset Education action zone. In 1999, the National Year of Reading Received support in the form of branded lunchboxes. During the McLibel trial Dave Morris, claimed in court that the firm sees schoolchildren as the next generation of cheap labor as well as consumers. In summing up, the judge agreed that McDonalds influence on the young was remarkable, commenting that the fast food chain targets "susceptible young children to bring in custom, both their own and that of their parents".
McDonalds is so politically powerful that it can sue anyone and get away with it even if the information that they are suing over is true. Just because the information in the London Green Peace Group leaflet wasn’t proven true doesn’t mean it couldn’t be proven true. But the little people can never be correct when going up against the huge capital of the McDonalds Corporation.
Globalization also impacts cultures. It tends to promote homogeneity towards western and American values and influences. In this sense, some see globalization as westernization or even Americanization. They cite, among others, instances of expansion of coca cola, McDonalds, and the rock-and-roll music relayed by adverts, radio, and global satellite television. Such expansion, they argue, happens at the expense of local cultures that are the sources of diversities.
George Ritzer say, “I think that McDonald's has a profound effect on the way people do a lot of things I mean it leads people to want everything fast, to have, you know, a limited attention span so that kind of thing spills over onto, let's say, television viewing or newspaper reading, and so you have a short attention span, you want everything fast, so you don't have patience to read the New York Times and so you read McPaper, you read USA today. You don't have patience to watch a lengthy newscast on a particular issue so you watch CNN News and their little news McNugget kinds of things so it creates a kind of mindset, which seeks the same kind of thing in one setting after another. I see it in education where you have, in a sense, a generation of students who've been raised in a McDonaldised society, they want things fast, they want idealic nuggets from Professors, they don't want sort of slow build up of ideas, you gotta keep them amused, you gotta come in with the Ronald McDonald costume and quip a series of brilliant theoretical points or else they're going to turn you off” (www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/ritzer_george.html).
According to George Ritzer in other countries when going into a McDonalds, it's not just that you are buying a product, but you are buying into a system. In the 1940s there was a big flap in France over what was called a Coca Colonization. The French were very upset about the coming of Coca Cola to France. They felt it threatened the French wine industry and French way of life. But that was just the influx of an American product. Now, with McDonalds, we have the influx of an American way of life, which is to trivialize eating, to make it something that is fast, make it something that's to get done and over with. But it's striking to me that the last time I was in Paris the Parisians appeared to have embraced this kind of fast food phenomenon. You have developments of fast food croissanteries where this model French way of life and the croissanterie has been reduced to fast food. French bread is more and more treated on a fast basis rather than lots of local bakeries baking their own distinctive kind, so if the French succumb to this in the realm of food there is little that is safe from the expansion of this process.
Within this world, however, McDonalds has sufficient influence to actually change established dietary practices across whole regions. For example, according to "Behind the Arches", a book authorized by McDonalds in 1987, McDonalds in Japan faced a fundamental challenge of establishing beef as a common food. Their president Den Fujita stated “the reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years, if we eat McDonalds hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blonde.” McDonalds also changed eating habits in Australia, Peter Ritchie, at the time McDonalds Australian president has stated he attributes “that change to the influence McDonalds has on children.” "Behind the Arches" concludes that rather than adapt to local tastes and preferences, “McDonalds’ foreign partners made major changes in marketing in order to sell the American system. Indeed, McDonalds is prepared to support such means as are necessary to sell the American system, the company supplies symbolic practical support and important ideological support to the military imperialism necessary for the onward march of mono-culture. For example, they provided food to US troops as a token of support for the genocide about to be perpetrated against the people of Iraq. (www.mwr.org.uk/justanother.htm)
McDonalds told Scottish sandwich bar owner, Mary Blair, that her shop in Fenny Stratford near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, can no longer go by the name McMunchies because McDonald's is the registered user of the 'Mc' prefix, it emerged yesterday. Mrs. Blair, a 36 year-old Scot, who does not sell burgers or chips, said she chose the name because she liked the word "munchies" and wanted to add a taste of Scotland. The sign bears a Scottish thistle and a St Andrew's flag. But in a statement to Mrs. Blair's solicitors, said if someone, "either deliberately or unintentionally," used their trademark, they were “in effect using something that does not belong to them." The company that has quietly set about taking over the world ensuring that there is not a high street which does not feature its red and white sign and its golden arches, also the property of McDonald's, now wants to take over Britain's heritage. Telling the Scots that they cannot use the prefix Mc is like someone registering the name Singh and then ban its use in India. Where do they think Mc originated, Illinois? McDonald's say that the "unauthorized" use of the 'Mc' prefix may confuse the public." (www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/ind_24sep96.html)
McDonald's also affects culture in promoting their food as 'nutritious', but the reality is that it is junk food. It is high in fat, sugar and salt, and low in fiber and vitamins. A diet of this type is linked with a greater risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. Their food also contains many chemical additives, some of which may cause ill health, and hyperactivity in children. Meat is also the cause of the majority of food poisoning incidents. In 1991 McDonald's were responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning in the UK, in which people suffered serious kidney failure. With modern intensive farming methods, other diseases, linked to chemical residues or unnatural practices have also become a danger to people too.
As a global power McDonalds has negatively affected the world’s people economically, politically, and culturally. Criticism of McDonald's has come from a huge number of people and organizations over a wide range of issues. In the mid-1980's, London Greenpeace drew together many of those strands of criticism and called for an annual World Day of Action against McDonald's. This takes place every year on 16th October, with pickets and demonstrations all over the world. McDonald's, who spend a fortune every year on advertising, are trying to silence worldwide criticism by threatening legal action against those who speak out. Many have been forced to back down because they lacked the money to fight a case. Protests against the $30 billion a year fast-food giant continue to grow. It's vital to stand up to intimidation and to defend free speech. (www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php) “Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest which is to stop buying it. They executives who run the fast food industry are not bad mean. They are business mean. They will sell free-range, organic, grass fed hamburgers is you demand it. They will sell whatever makes a profit” (Schlosser 269)
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References:
www.animalfrontline.nl/macdonalds-eng.php
www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/ind_24sep96.html
www.mwr.org.uk/justanother.htm
www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/ritzer_george.html
www.sidamaconcern.com/articles/globalisation.html
www.i-resign.com/uk/workinglife/viewarticle_33.asp
195.102.188.55/xsp/xsc.asp?uri=/home/zone/uk-guide/intern...
www.asianguy.com/activism.html
www.bigpicturesmallworld.com/Global Inc 2/pgs/repcorp/mcd/mcds.html
www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/define/index.htm
Schlosser, Eric. "Fast Food Nation". Haroer Collins Publishers, 2002.
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--> The above analysis appeared on honors.rit.edu/
Name: Frederick Ellwood
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields
Arrested on: 4 August 1914
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-254-Frederick Ellwood
The Shields Daily News for 7 August 1914 reports:
“BREAKING AND ENTERING INTO A NORTH SHIELDS STORE.
This morning at North Shields, Frederick Ellwood, fireman, Dublin and Francis Rice, labourer, North Shields, were charged with breaking and entering into the store of Messrs Harrison and Robinson, Clive Street, on the night of August 3rd and stealing therefrom a quantity of bacon, ham and other goods.
Robert Appleby, 74 Linskill Street, storekeeper, said he locked up the stores, 10 Clive Street, at 12.55 on the Monday night. On opening the place the next morning he found the back door had been forced open and on examining the stock he missed the goods to the amount stated.
PC Alexander stated that in company with PC Butler he saw Rice go up the stairs of the stores in a suspicious manner. Witness spoke to Ellwood who said Rice lived in the place. On going to the store, witness found the door had been forced open and he sent Butler for assistance.
Inspector McQueen deposed to coming to the assistance of the officers and on going up the stairs of the house next to the store, he knocked at the door of a room occupied by Rice. After a time he got in and found the stuff in the room. He arrested Rice and Ellwood and on charging them the former said “I took my part in it” and the latter “I stole the things”.
Defendants pleaded guilty and asked the bench to be lenient with them. Rice said he saw Ellwood was in very straightened circumstances and he got the things to help the family. Ellwood said he was out of work at the time. The bench ordered the defendants to pay 20s and costs or in default to go to prison for one month”.
These images are taken from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 (TWAM ref. DX1388/1). This set is our selection of the best mugshots taken during the First World War. They have been chosen because of the sharpness and general quality of the images. The album doesn’t record the details of each prisoner’s crimes, just their names and dates of arrest.
In order to discover the stories behind the mugshots, staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums visited North Shields Local Studies Library where they carefully searched through microfilm copies of the ‘Shields Daily News’ looking for newspaper reports of the court cases. The newspaper reports have been transcribed and added below each mugshot.
Combining these two separate records gives us a fascinating insight into life on the Home Front during the First World War. These images document the lives of people of different ages and backgrounds, both civilians and soldiers. Our purpose here is not to judge them but simply to reflect the realities of their time.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!
Gunman in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting found guilty in 2018 massacre
Robert G. Bowers faces potential death penalty in the killing 11 people in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
A Pennsylvania man was found guilty Friday on federal charges of fatally shooting 11 people and wounding seven others at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a verdict that makes him eligible for the death penalty for what authorities say was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
A 12-member jury in federal court in Pittsburgh convicted Robert G. Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, Pa., on multiple counts after two weeks of searing testimony from dozens of prosecution witnesses, according to the Associated Press. Among those who testified were survivors, including police officers, who had been shot during the attack.
Prosecutors also played haunting 911 emergency calls, during which victims could be heard screaming and struggling to breathe before dying amid rapid gunfire from Bowers, who used an AR-15 assault rifle and three handguns.
Five police officers were wounded as they attempted to apprehend Bowers during the attack on Oct. 27, 2018, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a longtime Jewish enclave. Bowers fatally shot six victims in the head and fired about 100 rounds of ammunition in all, prosecutors said.
“The defendant turned this sacred ground of worship into a hunting ground,” prosecutor Mary Hahn told the jurors in her closing arguments Thursday, according to local news accounts.
Bowers’ defense team, which did not call any witnesses and introduced no evidence, did not dispute that he carried out the massacre. In her opening statement, public defender Judy Clarke suggested that Bowers was motivated to violence not because of a hatred of Jews, but rather because he feared that congregants were aiding immigrants, whom he considered a threat to Americans.
“None of this is true,” another defense attorney, Elisa Long, said during her closing arguments Thursday. “But it is what Mr. Bowers believed to be true.”
Bowers sat next to his lawyers at the defense table during the trial, but he did not testify. Survivors and family members of the victims also attended the proceedings each day.
The first phase of the trial determined whether Bowers would be found guilty or not guilty of the charges. A second phase, now that a jury found him guilty, will determine whether he will face the death penalty or life in prison.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and the next phase of the trial could last up to six weeks, authorities said.
Defense lawyers have filed motions stating that Bowers suffers from schizophrenia and epilepsy, brain impairments that they could argue are mitigating factors against capital punishment. Prosecutors rejected a defense offer of a plea agreement that would have resulted in Bowers spending the rest of his life in prison. District Judge Robert Colville permitted prosecutors to conduct their own psychiatric analysis of Bowers in the days before the trial began in late May. The results remain confidential.
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If the jury does not find unanimously in favor of capital punishment, Bowers would automatically receive a sentence of life in prison, under federal sentencing guidelines.
During the first phase of the trial, prosecutors called an FBI specialist to read dozens of vile anti-Semitic messages and memes that Bowers posted on Gab, a social media website popular with far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis. Witnesses testified that Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue on a Saturday morning when members of three congregations — Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light — that shared the building were observing Shabbat prayer services.
Bowers killed members of each congregation, moving through the building from the chapel to the basement and stalking his victims in the pews, a kitchen and a supply closet.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers testified that he survived after hiding in a bathroom for more than 40 minutes, one hand clutching the door handle in case Bowers tried to burst in. Dan Leger, who was wounded, testified that he thought he was going to bleed to death from a gunshot to the abdomen in a synagogue stairway before being rescued by a police officer.
Bowers retreated to an empty children’s classroom on the third floor and engaged in a fierce shootout with SWAT team officers, during which he was shot and surrendered after running out of bullets.
Those killed were: Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; and Richard Gottfried, 65. Leger and Andrea Wedner, Mallinger’s daughter, were shot but survived.
On the final day of testimony Wednesday, Wedner, 66, testified that she and her mother tried to hide in the pews of the Pervin Chapel. Bowers found them after returning to the room and shot them both.
When police officers found her, she said she kissed her fingers and pressed them to her mother’s skin, calling out, “Mommy,” as they led her out.
After Wedner finished testifying and left the courtroom, prosecutors played the audio recording of her 911 emergency call. She could be heard saying, “Oh God, I can’t believe this is happening” amid screaming in the chapel.
After the recording ended, prosecutors rested their case.
David Nakamura covers the Justice Department with a focus on civil rights. He has previously covered the White House, sports, education, city government and foreign affairs.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
© 1996-2023 The Washington Post
The Central Criminal Court a.k.a. "The Old Bailey":-
The City of London Corporation owns and administers the building, as department headed by the Secondary and Under Sheriff. This handles security, maintenance and also deals with administration of the Shrievalty, which includes execution of writs and warrants.
Staff run the courts, headed by the Courts Administrator who administers all the London group of crown centres. The work includes the huge and complicated task of assigning cases to courts, ensuring that there are always cases ready and waiting to be heard, with witnesses, defendants and counsel available
Candide depuis quelques années avec des photos qui me semblent aujourd'hui si dérisoires, me sentant complètement incapable de traiter un tel sujet ... je vais essayer avec cette série de transcrire ce que j'aurais donc oser capter durant notre marche de rassemblement.sur Dieppe ce dimanche matin glacial mais si bien réchauffé par une foule si attachante, calme, debout et décidée à démontrer son refus à toutes pensées autoritaire, fanatique et meurtrière.
Entre une peine énorme et paradoxalement une joie indescriptible à être un homme parmi d'autres hommes défendant ce que nous avons de plus précieux : notre liberté de ... penser par soi même !
et notre soif d'autoriser toutes dérisions.
Même mes photos dérisoires !
...
Candide recent years with pictures that seem now so ridiculous, feeling completely unable to handle such a subject ... I'll try with this series to transcribe what I have so daring capture during our gathering on. Dieppe Sunday frosty morning but warmed by so many endearing, quiet, upright and determined to demonstrate his refusal to all authoritarian thoughts, fanatical and murderous.
Between a huge pain and paradoxically indescribable joy to be a man among other men defending what we most precious our freedom to think for yourself ...!
and our thirst to allow all derision.
Even my ridiculous pictures!