The Jewish Struggle to Understand Trump's Election —  Synagogues hosted prayer and healing services on Wednesday for congregants grappling with the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. PHILADELPHIA—On November 8, 1938, Nazi paramilitary soldiers and German civilians looted and vandalized thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Jews were murdered. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps. On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. The next day, a man discovered that someone had painted swastikas on an abandoned storefront in South Philly, placing the symbols next to Trump’s name and the words “Sieg Heil,” a salute used by Nazis during World War II. Maybe it was an anti-Trump protester. Maybe it was an anti-Semite. Either way, it underscored the ways in which Trump’s election has evoked the persistent Jewish nightmare: That America will become like Germany in 1938. Jews, who have a keen eye for the repetition of history, might be forgiven for worrying about the fragility of American democracy. This is the scale of fear, grief, and anger about Trump in some Jewish communities across America. In Philadelphia, at least three synagogues held prayer services on Wednesday; congregations in a number of other cities, including Durham, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., held similar events. “No matter who we voted for and how we are feeling this morning, we all know that we and our country are in desperate need of healing,” read the Facebook invite for an event at the Germantown Jewish Centre in north Philly. “We will sit together, sing together, pray together, and have a chance to share what is on our hearts with the support of the community.” A woman was crying when I walked into the cavernous sanctuary of GJC on Wednesday night. Roughly 100 people were gathered in a circle of chairs toward the front of the room; the cream ceiling and warmly brown furniture gave the space a living-room feel. In the center of the gathering, a single candle sat burning on a small round table. The space was still except for the occasional baby squeal or patter of toddler feet at the side of the room; people had brought their children because, as someone on Facebook observed, they need to heal, too. Trump’s daughter Ivanka came up—whether Jews would be safe because one of the president’s children is an Orthodox convert. The congregants were concerned about the racism and sexism revealed during the campaign, and discussed the stages of grief. They talked of making aliyah, or emigrating to Israel—not as a plausible possibility, but as a back-of-mind option in case things get really bad. And yes, people brought up Nazi Germany. Unlike Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, the disabled, and women, Jews have not been directly insulted by Donald Trump during this election. Anti-Semites have arguably been empowered by his campaign: Jewish journalists have been consistently threatened and harassed on Twitter since the election got underway, often by people who self-identify as Trump supporters. But the fear seems to be less that Trump will specifically persecute Jews than the sense that America under Trump will become an increasingly hostile space for Jews and other minority groups. Trump doesn’t have to be an anti-Semite to bear responsibility for anti-Semitism. While exit polls suggest that roughly 25 percent of American Jews voted for Trump—fewer than voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but more than voted for John McCain in 2008—the group as a whole is overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic. Adam Zeff, the rabbi at GJC, said in an interview that the synagogue’s neighborhood, Mt. Airy, is so left-wing that it’s almost “self-parody.” Most Jews live in cities or stay concentrated in “little enclaves,” as Zeff called them—he pointed out that on the map of the election results, there are tiny blue spots even deep in Trump country. “That’s where Jews live,” he said, along with other minority groups. It wasn’t Jews Trump promised to ban some 13 months ago. It was Muslims. This clustering creates a dual challenge for Jewish communities. People at GJC spoke about Trump’s election like they might about a death in the family—with a sense of real and personal loss, and a staggering alienation from their fellow Americans. “It is kind of shattering to people to feel like, wow, there’s such a difference,” said Zeff. “To think that racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and misogyny could be given a pass by so many people makes Jews feel like anti-Semitism could also be given a pass.” And yet the congregants also spoke about the need for understanding. “The people for whom this is a happy day—we have to think about them, too,” Zeff said during the prayer service. Mt. Airy is about a half hour drive from Bucks County, a swing area in Pennsylvania where nearly half of voters went for Trump this year. But even within such a short distance, it’s difficult to imagine how the liberal Jews of Philadelphia and the Trump supporters one county up would start to know one another or be in community. The other challenge for Jews who are scared is putting that fear into context. Other groups are hurting just as much as Jews are right now, and in some cases, their fears are more tangible. It wasn’t Jews Trump promised to ban from entering the country some 13 months ago—it was Muslims. It wasn’t Jewish neighborhoods Trump described in apocalyptic terms in the presidential debates—it was black neighborhoods. At times, Jews have struggled or declined to find solidarity with both of those groups, often over the issue of Israel. “When disaster strikes, the Jewish impulse is to look inward, to say, ‘What t’shuva,’” or repentance, “do I need to do?” Zeff said. If his community looked inward and asked what kind of allies they have been to African Americans, Latinos, and other groups in Philadelphia, Zeff said, “I know what [those groups’] answer is, which is: not very good ones.” For Jews, as for other groups who feel threatened by Trump, this new era has begun with a struggle of contradictions: to understand Trump supporters while maintaining their value commitments; to experience their particular and unique pain while finding solidarity with others. When Zeff sent out a note to his synagogue about the election, “I got a response back from a congregant that said, ‘This is very nice, rabbi, but you’re asking us to do two contradictory things: You’re asking us to reach out, and you’re asking us to stand up,’” Zeff told me. He wrote back, “‘Yes, and isn’t that the lot of the Jew?’”

This article is ridiculous.  I'm part Jewish and all of this is absurd.  Likening our country to Nazi Germany in any way is just embarrassing.  The idea that our democracy is under threat because we had a democratic election is too stupid for words.  I like Jews and am part Jewish, as I said, but I have no sympathy for this kind of nonsense.  Trump has supported Israel far more than any other President in recent memory.  Obama abandoned Israel and sided with Iran.  Is that what Jews want in a President?  They feel safe with that?  They feel threatened by a President who supports them and vows to defend them?  People are stupid, even Jews, some of the smartest people in the world.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 41 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 28000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 2.0 in openness, 2.5 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 2.0 in agreeableness, and 1.0 in stability.

I find all sorts of things wrong with this article and perspective.  Trump has been the greatest Presidential ally for Israel, possibly since its creation.  Obama abandoned Israel and buddied up to Iran--Israel's mortal enemy.  Is that the type of President Jews want?  Obviously that's a false dichotomy, and certainly Jews are allowed to dislike Trump for all sorts of reasons.  But to place this all on Trump is missing the point, in my opinion.  Trump is a symptom of any rise in anti-semitism, not the cause.  The 2016 push-back by whites and males was a long time coming, and was due to cultural changes that have absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  Trans, gays, women, minorities--all of that stuff being shoved in people's faces, aggressively, leads to push back.  Welcome to it.


Brothers Behind Bars —  “The only photograph I had of her, growing up, is from a scrapbook from a social worker,” Shelton McElroy says about his mother, “from a visitation that we had at a women’s prison called Pewee Valley.” Shelton and his two brothers grew up careening between one foster home to the next. Their mother had been sentenced to prison when Shelton was just 4 and his brothers were 6 and 8 years old. Neither Shelton nor his brothers were ever adopted, and he sees his and one of his brother’s subsequent prison sentences as extensions of the same state-ward system they grew up in. “We never came out of it,” he says. “From being a ward of the state from 4 to 12, in less than six months, I was a prison ward of the state.”   At first, the brothers were sent to two different foster homes in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. “My earliest memories are of being in this place called the Home of the Innocent,” Shelton says. “I was in a crib with other kids, because they had so many kids, each of us couldn’t have our own crib. It wasn’t with Mom. I do have vague recollections with Mom.” As the youngest of the group, Shelton was allowed to go to the same foster home as his oldest brother, William. Middle-child David went to another foster home alone. About every other week, Shelton would visit him. Later on, when Shelton was 6 years old, the three were assigned together to a foster home in Fort Knox, a military base outside the city. For a time, it seemed possible that the sergeant who’d taken them in might even adopt the three of them together. “We ended up messing that up,” Shelton says. It came down to a bike. While at a swimming pool on base, David, then 8, stole a bicycle. Shelton jumped on the back, and the two started pedaling away from the pool and toward the sergeant’s house. But the sergeant’s two biological sons jumped out from behind some bushes, catching the two boys with the contraband red-handed. According to Shelton, the sergeant was embarrassed, and he sent the brothers back to the foster-care system. “We had that happen a lot,” says Shelton. “We’d go somewhere with particular people being interested in us, maybe 10 times, and then we would get sent away.” As the boys got older, Shelton says, the possibility of being adopted began to fade: “You get to an age where three black boys are… there’s really a low probability of anybody taking us. That started to be really apparent to the social workers.” The fact that David had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and prescribed Ritalin likely did not help his case. William, on the other hand, exhibited no behavioral issues and instead showed musical aptitude and high intelligence. So administrators nominated him for a special foster-care program for promising children. “If you were in foster care, it was the one place in the whole state of Kentucky that everybody wanted to go,” Shelton says. But he wasn’t so lucky: “I ended up going to a group home for misbehavior.”   After just a few months, he was returned to the foster-care mill. That’s when, on Halloween, Shelton pointed a BB gun at a couple of young girls and demanded they give him their candy. “I was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment,” he says. That would be his first experience in a men’s jail; at the time, there were no separate facilities for juvenile arrestees in Kentucky. Because he was underage, Shelton had to be separated from the general population in the men’s jail until his trial. When he was finally sentenced, he was sent to another group home for a couple of years. Following his release, Shelton ran away from the foster-care system. He was homeless. Desperate and hungry, Shelton broke into the house of a friend who dealt weed—and who kept his stash at home. Shelton planned to steal the drugs and sell them. But he lingered too long, eating sandwiches and drinking beer. He was caught and charged with burglary. The mandatory sentence for that crime was between one and five years. The judge gave Shelton four. From 16 to 18, Shelton lived in Georgetown, Kentucky, a dry county with a handful of bootleg businesses. He got by with petty crime—stealing things and trading them for cash. At night, he slept in a bootlegging den. “Sitting down at a dinner table with my head on my arms for rest at night,” he says. By the time he turned 18, Shelton had not seen David for four years.   By his 19th birthday, Shelton was in prison again for a minor crime—but he broke out. “I climbed this 16-foot-high razor-wire fence and escaped,” Shelton says. “I was caught less than three or four hours later.” For that, a judge added three years to his sentence, for a new total of seven years. The maximum-security prison he was then sent to had two 16-foot-high razor-wire fences back to back and gun towers around the perimeter.   Shelton reimagines the scene in disbelief: “I come in a petty criminal, but now I’m incarcerated with people with every level and degree of charges.” He served at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex, known as the “Pink Palace” because of its paint job. Inside, the building was organized into two halves, each housing about 1,000 inmates. The two sets rarely mix, but they can see one another through thick glass partitions. On occasion, some of them might run into each other in the library or medical area. One day in the cafeteria, as he was pushing his tray down the food line, someone caught his eye. “Across from me, it’s the first time in almost five years that I’ve seen my biological brother David,” he says. “You can’t really put that in words, what that’s like, to look across and see your brother through glass.” Through improvised sign language, they arranged to meet. “My brother was in there for murder at 19 years old,” Shelton says. “He had murdered a man who had tried to steal his drugs from him. It was a drug deal gone bad. He fought his case completely himself.” As Shelton tells it, the judge wouldn’t allow David to represent himself alone and assigned him an attorney, but David took the lead and eventually got his charge reduced to manslaughter and a 10-year sentence. The two brothers were able to move into a cell together. “It was awkward and strained and still is to this day,” Shelton says of the adjustment to one another after such a long absence. Shelton says it felt more like being half-brothers, and they would often even refer to one another as “brothers from different fathers.”   Being brothers also had an unexpected consequence. “It actually increased the potential for violence, because were somebody to have a beef with me, now they understand that my brother was there,” Shelton says. “You have to know that you’re going to fight my brother and me. Then you need to go get a couple of people, and then that turns into maybe a gang.” But that kind of escalation also put the differences between the two brothers into sharp relief. David may have been in for the more violent and serious crime, but it was Shelton who was into “a bunch of inappropriate activity” in prison. By contrast, David was a “model prisoner” who did not fight, who converted to Islam, and changed his name from David to Dawud. “I was playing poker and gambling and being involved,” says Shelton. “If anybody smuggled in any kind of drugs, I wanted in on it—maybe not to use it as much as to sell it. [David] wasn’t. I kind of brought more drama his way than he would have anticipated.” David also ended up leaving prison before his younger brother, because Shelton compounded his sentence by constantly getting into trouble while in custody.   At 25, Shelton was finally released from prison. He headed home to Louisville.   The three brothers had become strangers to each other. After decades of personal limbo between foster homes, juvenile institutions, and bouts of incarcerations, the three lost touch. While Shelton and David struggled to create lives they could be proud of, William, who had gone to the special foster program for gifted children, found success. Shelton says that William was “older, wiser, more settled, not having behavior issues.” He got a job and a car. He visited his younger brothers when he could. Once William surprised Shelton by bringing a young girl along with him on a prison visit; she was their youngest sibling, a child their mother had had after being released from prison herself.     William tried to be there for his brothers. He hired an attorney for Shelton and paid the legal fees. But the circumstances would prove overwhelming, even for a committed older brother. “He really became very dismayed,” Shelton says. “He gave up, because he tried so hard.” But it’s hard to help someone when they won’t help themselves. “The pressure was always on Will to be some kind of father figure,” Shelton says. “He never could do it to the level that he put on himself and maybe even the level we put on him.” Shelton recalled his brother trying to offer support to David and himself while also attempting to get close to the new sister who had appeared in their lives. “It was just too much for him,” Shelton says. “He’s this guy trying to weave all of these things together.”   William ended up leaving the United States for a while. He lived in multiple places, including the Netherlands and London. “Him traveling internationally and getting away from it all was, for him, probably the best thing he could have done, because we were real selfish,” Shelton says. Even from across an ocean, William’s brothers still demanded much from him. “My letters to him were all about ‘I need money for this, I need money for that,’ with no idea what I was asking a young man to provide. I really wanted him to be my father. I wanted him to provide just as if a father or my mother would provide to me.”   Today, William is a music producer and entrepreneur with his own business. Both David and Shelton are fathers, but David struggles with addiction. Maybe the good behavior in prison and the conversion to Islam were not enough to fill the void that a troubled life had left him with. “Now the roles have changed,” Shelton says. “He actually tells relatives of mine that he’s younger than me. The role has turned into me being this older brother to him.” He worries about David constantly. “He’s stuck. He’s stuck. My brother will reference what happened in 1983 as if that’s justification for why he’s at the hospital witnessing the birth of his baby six months early and yet he’s asking me for $5 for gas money.” David seems to be “not healing, not overcoming, not being able to rewrite the narrative of his story, and really being stuck in his resentful, bitter state,” Shelton says. That wisdom has been hard to come by for Shelton. After cycling through the foster-care system from the time he was 4, and then rotating through the correctional system from age 18 to 27, Shelton was left with a fractured existence, knowing little about the world beyond those institutions. His experiences cemented his belief in the interconnectivity of the foster system and the penal system in the United States. “A lot of my concern is about how that system perpetuates and helps to contribute to the prison-industrial complex,” Shelton says. “How the foster-care system has done that in a really insidious way.”   “I’d been running away from foster homes and trying to get to Louisville my whole life,” he says, looking for a family that didn’t exist—not the way he needed it to. Usually when Shelton ran away as a teenager, he’d be found within three days and be sent back to foster care, back to the system. But during those furtive days of freedom he’d search for his extended family. “I would get a phone book and look up ‘McElroy,’” he says. “I would say, ‘Are you a McElroy?’” Nine times out of 10, he heard a stranger on the other end of the line say, “Nope, don’t know you.” But once in a while, he’d stumble on a cousin or older relative. When the topic turned to his mother, there was little variation to the answers: “We don’t know where your mom’s at.”   His mother’s drug addition and mental-health complications contributed to an untenable situation that led to the brothers’ removal. But it didn’t have to be an irrevocable severing. Through William, Shelton saw his mother again while she was raising his half-sister. His mother was receiving appropriate help and had become functional, even successful, and was leading her life instead of falling prey to it. What if they had reconnected earlier? “We don’t have a system that’s set up that helps people that struggle with mental health. The only way our system knows how to do it is to take their children and not even to look at familial alternatives,” Shelton says. “In Europe, they never terminate the parents’ rights, never. In the U.S., they terminate the rights.” As a result, he says, there’s a lot of unnecessary hurt, and “every foster child at 18 is looking for their biological family.” In his late 20s, Shelton recognized that to become a man, he’d have to go it alone. “I started this introspection, this external experience of rebuilding who I was without foster care as the dominating factor, without being a child who had no mother or father—becoming a man who didn’t have that as the catalyst of his life,” he says. “The only way you do that and you move forward is turning it into some way to help others heal. The pain is there, but as long as you’re healing others in that nexus, you don’t suffer from it. It becomes almost like gold in your hands when you walk toward another person who suffered any atrocity—molestation, incarceration. You just go to them in this genuine way, and you say, ‘Let me tell you just a snippet about me, so that you identify, and you know that I come from a very similar, horrific background.’”   At age 39, Shelton now has a master’s degree and is a trained counselor. Today, he works at an alcohol-counseling program for recently released inmates. He also does pro bono work with families who “have lost their children to the system” to help them navigate their cases until they are reunited with their kids. He has also worked in the foster-care system itself, helping children redefine the narratives of their lives. His own experiences, of course, are central to his work. “I can connect with you from my pain and also show you my change and make it so that you realize that it’s possible,” Shelton says. “That’s what my life has been about.”

I guess I feel bad whenever these stories involve the depiction of children struggling.  Putting kids into foster homes where they must feel so confused and alone and scared makes me feel for them.  On the other hand, there's a reality to these situations that can't be ignored.  The real germ of these childrens' problem was their mother going to jail.  That's the germ.  After that they have to be raised by someone.  And then the children compound their problem by being delinquents.  I knew a boy who'd been adopted after growing up in a very violent environment.  The damage had already been done.  He tore apart the adoptive family and ruined his own life.  He's in jail in China now, for 20 years.  These situations are horrendous, but the fault lies with the parents, not the state.


Tragedy as father and son die after falling off a cliff during hike on a California trail —  A father and son have died after falling off a cliff during a hike. The two plunged to their death while on a trail next to Shaver Lake in Fresno, California. Though deputies attempted to get to the hikers, there was a helicopter power failure during a refueling and they made an emergency landing, meaning they couldn't get to the pair, ABC 30 reported.  The report said a search-and-rescue crew is going out Sunday morning for the two victims' bodies.   The names of the father and son have not been publicly revealed.

I think this is sad, although there aren't many details to know what really happened.  I can't decide whether I think it was worse or better that they died together.  Sort of strange to think what might have happened that cost them both of their lives.  You wonder if one of them caused the death of the other.  That would be pretty awful.  But I guess it doesn't really matter now.  It also seems lonely that the rescue people couldn't even get to their bodies.  Even though they're dead bodies it seems lonely that they'd be there without getting taken back to civilization.


TRAGEDY: Tampa man lost wife, 2 children, in horrific crash that killed 5 —  TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The heartache of losing a loved one in a sudden, unexpected moment is devastating.   The shock is jarring and confusing. Families and friends are left with broken hearts and aching spirits. Losing one person is painful. But, for a Tampa husband, the grief is paralyzing and unbearable.   On Wednesday night, John Bernal lost his wife, his youngest daughter and his youngest son in a horrific car accident on MLK.   Mother Marianela Murillo and her two youngest children, John Bernal, Jr.  and Isabell Bernal, along with her teenager, Lina Bernal, were returning home from church when they were hit head-on in a fiery crash.   Their minivan burst into flames with the family trapped inside. The teenage daughter and her cousin visiting from Colombia, Luisa Louisa, were the only ones to survive in that van.   A relative began sobbing as she recalled the events while speaking to WFLA at Tampa General Hospital.   “My biggest thing is, I hope they didn’t suffer,” Gisela Martinez cried. “The car did catch on fire, and there were children in that car.”   While eyewitnesses claim it was street racing, the Florida Highway Patrol says there’s no evidence to prove it.   However, troopers say that the young man who caused the accident, 22-year-old Pablo Cortes III, was traveling at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his Volkswagen Golf. Both he and his passenger, Jolie Bartolome, were killed.   Family members are heartbroken and their hearts go out to the husband who lost his wife and two children.   “He’s suffering right now. He’s in pieces. I don’t wish this upon anybody at all. I mean, he is really in pieces,” said Mizrah Medina, a cousin.

It's a sad story for the father, for sure, but I also don't really care.  I don't know these people.  They're also foreigners, so I care even less.  But still, the thought of losing all your family like that is harsh.  And the people who killed them are dead.  I'm not sure if that's better or worse.  No place to direct your anger and despair.  Maybe that's a good thing.  Still, a devastating even to have to deal with and live with the rest of his life.  I'm sure the pain will never end.  I can't imagine dealing with that.


Civilians shot, bodies hung from poles in Mosul, Iraqi sources say —  As fighting continued in and around Mosul on Friday, civilians caught in crossfire have a stark choice: whether to flee or stay huddled inside their homes.   Many residents tell CNN the intensity of the fighting and the airstrikes in eastern parts of the city limited their options. Still, tens of thousands have chosen the escape route. More than 47,730 people have been displaced because of the ongoing military operations to retake Mosul from ISIS, according to the International Organization for Migration. Roughly 12,800 people have fled since Tuesday, the organization said. Other residents of Mosul have simply chosen to heed the Iraqi Security Forces instructions to stay in their homes if they feel safe enough inside. Still others are too scared to leave their homes, because of ISIS' campaign of terror against the civilians. Witnesses told CNN among the dozens executed this week, more than 30 people were shot in the head for having cell phones. Their bodies were left at various intersections across Mosul as a warning. The bodies are not being removed as residents fear reprisals from ISIS militants, witnesses said. Here are some of the latest developments in the battle for Mosul: The UN human rights office released a report Friday, confirming that at least 60 civilians have been killed in Mosul this week, and reported new details of alleged atrocities by ISIS fighters. On Wednesday evening, ISIS reportedly killed 20 civilians at the Ghabat military base in northern Mosul on charges of leaking information, the UN body said. "Their bodies were also hung at various intersections in Mosul, with notes stating: 'decision of execution' and 'used cell phones to leak information to the ISF.' " On Tuesday, ISIS shot and killed 40 civilians in Mosul after accusing them of "treason and collaboration" with Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. "The victims were dressed in orange clothes marked in red with the words: 'traitors and agents of the ISF.' Their bodies were then hung on electrical poles in several areas in Mosul city," the report said.   Local ISIS commanders have started fleeing in some neighborhoods, residents said, leaving behind trained teenage ISIS combatants to fight Iraqi forces. Mosul residents said they fear these young fighters as much, if not more, than other ISIS militants because they have been brainwashed, have no fear and have a great amount of zealotry after being indoctrinated and trained for two years. The UNHCR report said ISIS had "deployed what it calls the 'sons of the caliphate' in the alleys of the old town of Mosul, wearing explosive belts. We are concerned that these may be teenagers and young boys." ISIS posted video footage Wednesday, "showing four children, believed to be between 10 and 14 years old, shooting to death four people for spying for the ISF and the Peshmerga," the report said, referring to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein cited "heartbreaking images" of ISIS forcing children to carry out executions and reports of women being "redistributed" among ISIS fighters, as evidence of the "numbing and intolerable" suffering of civilians in Mosul and other ISIS-held areas. He called on Iraqi authorities to ensure the perpetrators of such abuses are dealt with according to the rule of law so as to limit revenge attacks and help communities rebuild. Senior ISIS leader killed In another development, Mahmoud Shukri al Nuaimi, a senior ISIS commander, has been killed in the battle for Mosul, the terror group's last major stronghold in Iraq, Iraqi military intelligence sources tell CNN. Al Nuaimi, also is known as Sheikh Faris, was killed Tuesday in an Iraqi-led coalition airstrike in western Mosul, the sources said. ISIS confirmed his death in a video montage, referring to him as "the martyr of the battle." The Iraqi sources told CNN that Nuaimi was formerly a high-ranking intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's intelligence services. In Mosul's east, residents said ISIS militants were forcing them from their homes, either to booby trap the houses or to take them over as fighting positions. Militants have reportedly left barrels of crude oil at major intersections, ready to be set afire to hamper Iraqi advances. ISIS has also used white flags to disguise suicide car bombs in Mosul, according to Saban Al Numan, an Iraqi counterterrorism official. The battle for Mosul is difficult, slow and complicated, Numan said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed victory last month at the start of the long-awaited offensive on Mosul, but he warned the effort could take time. ISIS, an agile enemy, has been preparing its defenses for two years. It takes advantage of the terrain, a network of tunnels and booby-trapped buildings, to great effect. US military officials estimate some 3,000 to 5,000 ISIS fighters are in Mosul. An additional 1,500 to 2,000 fighters may be waiting outside the city limits.

Part of me feels sympathy for these people and the terror they're experiencing.  And yet part of me thinks that it's a problem of their own making.  These people are sheep.  Like Russians and many others, they are passive citizens, accepting their awful fate handed down by the powerful and zealous in their midst who have the drive to influence their will on others.  When do these people fight back?  When do these people actively pursue something better, instead of just being victims to their fate?  Other countries have done it.  Many countries have fought civil wars and become something better and more civilized on the other side.  Why, thousands and thousands of years later, can these people still not create stable cultures?


Haze from Indonesian fires may have killed more than 100,000 people – study —  Harvard and Columbia universities estimate tens of thousands of premature deaths in areas closest to blazes clearing forest and peatland A smog outbreak in Southeast Asia last year may have caused over 100,000 premature deaths, according to a new study released Monday that triggered calls for action to tackle the “killer haze”. Researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities in the US estimated there were more than 90,000 early deaths in Indonesia in areas closest to haze-belching fires, and several thousand more in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia. The new estimate, reached using a complex analytical model, is far higher than the previous official death toll given by authorities of just 19 deaths in Indonesia. “If nothing changes, this killer haze will carry on taking a terrible toll, year after year,” said Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaign Yuyun Indradi. “Failure to act immediately to stem the loss of life would be a crime.” A spokesman for Indonesia’s environment ministry did not immediately have any comment. Indonesian authorities have previously insisted they are stepping up haze-fighting efforts, through such actions as banning the granting of new land for palm oil plantations and establishing an agency to restore devastated peatlands. The haze is an annual problem caused by fires set in forest and on carbon-rich peatland in Indonesia to quickly and cheaply clear land for palm oil and pulpwood plantations. The blazes occur mainly on Indonesia’s western Sumatra island and the Indonesian part of Borneo, with monsoon winds typically blowing the haze over Singapore and Malaysia. But last year’s fires were among the worst in memory and cloaked large parts of the region in choking smog for weeks, causing huge numbers to fall ill and sending diplomatic tensions soaring. The new study to be published in journal Environmental Research Letters, which combined satellite data with models of health impacts from smoke exposure and readings from pollution monitoring stations, estimated that 100,300 had died prematurely due to last year’s fires across the three countries. They estimated there were 91,600 deaths in Indonesia, 6,500 in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore. Greenpeace hailed a “groundbreaking” study they said for the first time gave a detailed breakdown of deaths from last year’s fires, but cautioned that the figure was a “conservative estimate”. It only looked at health impacts on adults and the effect of dangerous fine-particulate matter, known as PM 2.5. It did not examine the effect on youngsters or of the other toxins produced by the blazes. In reality, infants are some of the most at risk from the haze, said Nursyam Ibrahim, from the West Kalimantan province branch of the Indonesian Medical Association on Borneo. “We are the doctors who care for the vulnerable groups exposed to toxic smoke in every medical centre, and we know how awful it is to see the disease symptoms experienced by babies and children in our care,” said Ibrahim. The study found an increase in the number of fires in peatland and in timber concessions in 2015, compared to the last haze outbreak considered major, in 2006, and that the number of fires in palm oil plantations fell. Shannon Koplitz, a Harvard scientist who worked on the study, said she also hoped the model they had developed could help those involved with tackling the annual blazes make quick decisions “as extreme haze events are unfolding”. Last year’s haze outbreak was the worst since 1997 due to a strong El Nino weather system, which created tinder-dry conditions in Indonesia and made peatland and forests more vulnerable to going up in flames.       Article Title:Samoa hit by hail storm so rare residents thought it was a hoax   Article URL:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/19/samoa-hit-by-hail-storm-so-rare-residents-thought-it-was-a-hoax   Article author(s)Eleanor Ainge Roy   Article date:Monday 19 September 2016 00.11 EDT   News source: theguardian    Meteorologist forced to release satellite images of the storm to convince some locals that the hail wasn’t part of a practical joke Samoa has been hit by a hail storm so rare that it was believed to be a hoax by many of the island’s inhabitants. The tropical nation of Samoa lies in the Pacific Ocean, where the average temperature at this time of year is 29C. But on Friday evening an unexpected hail storm struck the eastern side of the island of Savai’i, accompanied by heavy rain and strong wind gusts. It was only the second time since records began that hail has fallen on Samoa, the first was in 2011. The storm lasted 10 to 15 minutes and produced hail stones roughly 2cm wide. “The ice was very small and there were no reports of damage,” said Luteru Tauvale, principal meteorologist for the Samoan Meteorology Service. “Because it was so unexpected a lot of people thought it had been invented. We had to release satellite images of the conditions that led to to the hail for people to believe it was real.” Samoans took to social media to share their photos of the hail, many voicing disbelief at the incident, and then saying it was the “first time” they had been convinced of the the phenomenon of climate change. “Climate change is here!” wrote one Samoan on Facebook. “More like we have just woken up to the fact it had been with us for a while but we refuse to accept/believe it.” Hailstorms form within a unusually unstable air mass in which the temperature falloff with height is much greater than normal.       Article Title:Dozens dead and missing after typhoon lashes eastern China     Article URL:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/18/dozens-dead-and-missing-after-typhoon-lashes-eastern-china   Article author(s)   Article date:Saturday 17 September 2016 22.40 EDT   News source: theguardian    Typhoon Meranti has damaged more than 18,300 houses and caused direct economic losses of more than 16.9bn yuan ($2.5bn)   The strongest typhoon to hit China this year has left 28 people dead and 15 others missing in the east of the country. Typhoon Meranti made landfall early Thursday in Fujian province after winds and rains associated with it pounded Taiwan, leaving one person dead and more than 50 injured. Authorities in Fujian said Saturday that the typhoon had left 18 people dead and 11 missing, damaged more than 18,300 houses and caused direct economic losses of more than 16.9 billion yuan ($2.5bn).   Authorities in neighboring Zhejiang province say that 10 people died and four remained unaccounted for following landslides and flash floods in rural areas. Taiwan saw wind and rain from a second typhoon, Malakas, that caused no apparent deaths.

I've never heard about this issue before.  It seems typical for the region, however.  Economy at all costs, especially when you have two trillion people living in these geographically small countries.  And you wonder why environmentalism is a losing battle.  The U.S. and other civilized countries can do all they want.  If a place like Indonesia is willing to burn down all their forests to manufacture palm oil, you're fighting a losing battle.  Again, I keep getting back to this idea: Why are we considered the barbarians in the world?  Most of the world are one step above apes.  They're heathens.  What Reagan said to Nixon was correct.  We treat these people as equals?  We leave our fate to people who don't even wear shoes?  Absurd.


Visitors bring trouble to Norway's polar bears —  Officials in Norway say an increasing number of visitors to their Arctic region have triggered an increase in the number of endangered polar bears killed. Diane Hodges reports on efforts to protect the bears. Video provided by Reuters

I find this story to be eye-rollingly typical of people.  I assume that the people who go up to the Arctic to see it like polar bears and don't want to see them extinct.  And yet there presence there is contributing to that exact thing.  Maybe they're hunting them.  I don't know.  I find that hard to believe but maybe.  I just think people are stupid.  They want plenty of things and spout off about them, but then they don't change their behavior to aid in the cause.  People get what they deserve, largely, though.  So if we make the polar bears extinct, we'll certainly deserve that.  And in some sense so will the polar bears who couldn't adapt to their environment.  Survival of the fittest.


Myanmar 'child slavery' outrage sparks investigation —  The Burmese president has ordered an investigation into the case of two girls who say they were kept prisoner and tortured for five years in a tailor shop. The teenagers were freed last week after a journalist helped them, but their families say that the police had on numerous occasions refused their pleas to get involved. This Wednesday, with the case now generating headlines, the police finally arrested the tailor and two family members. The two girls were aged just 11 and 12 when they were sent by their parents to the commercial capital Yangon. For poor Burmese families it's a painful but depressingly common decision. The United Nations estimates that at least a million Burmese children are forced to give up on education and go to work. These girls became maids in a tailor shop in the centre of Yangon. But what started as paid work allegedly turned into modern-day slavery. The girls say they were denied contact with their parents, were unable to leave and were no longer being paid. Then there was the abuse. Visited by the French news agency AFP in their village after their release, the girls had injuries and scars on their arms which they say were inflicted by their captors. "I have a scar from where an iron was stamped on my leg and a scar on my head as well," one of the girls, now 16, told AFP. "This was a wound from a knife, because my cooking was not OK," she said, showing a mark on her nose. The other girl, now 17, has burnt, twisted fingers - the consequence, she says, of them being broken deliberately by her captors as punishment. The allegations of mistreatment are shocking, but it's the authorities handling of the case that has really enraged the Burmese public. Many see it as further proof of a judicial system stacked against the poorest and most vulnerable. On several occasions over the last five years, the girls' families say they asked the Burmese police for help and were turned away. It was only when a journalist called Swe Win became involved that things started to move. He approached the police, who again refused to help, before taking the matter to the national human rights commission. To its credit, the commission did act, negotiating with the tailor for the girls' release and for a payment equivalent to about 4,000 dollars (£3060) to be made, effectively as back-pay. But there was public outcry when it emerged that no further measures were taken against the girls' alleged abusers. "We figured at the time that we could solve the case satisfactorily to all parties involved with a compensation settlement," U Zaw Win, a member of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission told an angry news conference in Yangon. With the girls' story now front page news and reverberating around social media, the Burmese police were finally spurred into action. On Wednesday evening the tailor was arrested, along with her two adult children. They all now face charges related to human trafficking. Questions are now being asked as to why it took so long for the authorities to get involved. In a rare public intervention, President Htin Kyaw released a statement. He said he had instructed the relevant ministries to assist and protect the girls, their families and the journalist Swe Win from possible reprisals. The president has also asked for a report on how the police handled the case and said he would be taking a close look at the work of the human rights commission. Swe Win is receiving a presidential award for his work on the case.

This story is bothersome on a number of levels.  Obviously people are going to be angry at the shop owner and the family, which they should.  And obviously the authorities, who do nothing and allow this to go on.  But what about the families who keep having children they feel obligated to send to work at age 11 and 12?  Stop having children you can't feed.  These countries are all grossly overpopulated but they keep having kids.  The parents feel bad that their kids got treated this way, but they're the ones who sent them there.


With Much Sadness We Report Baby Isibindi Has Passed —  Rhino Update From Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage: It is with many tears, a heavy heart and very mixed emotions that I write that little Isibindi passed away shortly before midnight after a very, very rough 56 hours. She went through such deep sadness in her short life. I was so hoping and fighting to give her a second chance at life. A part of me feels a deep relief – the last two days were very difficult and she had so much to cope with. Little Bindi left this earth lying in my arms (the orphanage had no power so I wrapped us both in a duvet to keep her warm) It never gets easier. RIP little Bindi – may your spirit fly free! To the team on the ground here – humbled and proud. I have been with Isibindi constantly since she arrived a few days ago with no water, no power, wet cold conditions and security issues, this young and amazing group have made sure that the other rhinos have been cared for. Thank you to: Axel Tarifa, Shannon Westphal- very special people and Steven and Nicole. May God Bless all of the orphaned babies who are fighting for their life! -WAN

I suppose this is about an orphaned rhino due to poaching.  I had a hard time really feeling that much for the rhino.  It's dead and I don't know exactly why it died, or what suffering it went through, although the writer suggested it was a lot.  But either way it's dead now so there's no more pain for it.  I guess I'd prefer that rhinos don't go extinct, but at the same time I don't pretend that it really matters.  They don't affect my life in any way, although they are cool creatures.  But it just seems so far away and is something I have no control over.  I would never kill a rhino, but obviously other people don't feel the same way.


Suicide: Russian girl's death prompts national debate —  It's a day like any other day in a provincial city in central Russia. A 12-year-old girl is getting ready to go to school. Suddenly her phone rings. The next minute she is out of the door, saying she's meeting a friend and they will go to school together. Later the same day, when her mother turns up at the school, there is no sign of her daughter. No-one has seen her. Then the mother's phone rings, and she can tell by the ring tone that it's her daughter's phone. "Where are you, darling?" she asks with relief. "It's not your daughter," a strange voice replies. "I'm a doctor from A&E. Your daughter is dead." She had taken her own life. Social network subculture In the weeks and months that followed, the mother discovered how her daughter had been immersed in an online subculture of suicide involving images of self-harming, alternative reality games and a cult surrounding a 16-year-old girl who had killed herself in a violent fashion. This is the tragic story at the heart of a long, front-page article called Groups of Death in independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on 16 May. Written by correspondent Galina Mursalieva, it alleges that Russia's most popular social network VKontakte (VK) has numerous groups used by Svengali-type figures to encourage vulnerable young people to kill themselves. These groups are regularly closed down, but others quickly spring up in their place. Emotional intensity The piece claims that a spate of at least 80 recent suicides can be linked to these online groups. Four of the deaths, including the one described above, occurred on the same day last December and in roughly the same manner. A note from Novaya Gazeta's editors at the top of the article urges every parent to read it to "save their children from a fateful step". Groups of Death has had an extraordinary impact. In little over a week, it has been viewed more than two million times and has sparked a stormy debate on social networks and beyond. One of the reasons it has gone viral is undoubtedly the emotional intensity of Galina Mursalieva's writing. But that has been singled out as one of its main shortcomings, too. Critics have accused her of treating a complex subject with tabloid sensationalism and allowing her personal involvement in the story to cloud her judgement. In particular, they question the emphasis that the writer and the bereaved parents have placed on the internet as a cause of juvenile suicide. A follow-up investigation by the Lenta.ru website presented a more nuanced, although no less disturbing, picture of internet subculture. It suggested that the people running the VK groups were not much older than their teenage members, and in many cases were exploiting suicide cults to boost their own egos or even earn money from online advertising. But Lenta.ru also admitted that at least some of the deaths mentioned by Novaya Gazeta could be linked to online grooming. ________________   Russia's high level of youth suicide Russia has world's third-highest number of suicides among adolescents Depression, anxiety and aggression are found in 20% of Russian teenagers; the Western average is no higher than 5% Suicidal thoughts come into the minds of 45% of Russian girls and 27% of young men Most suicides are linked to parents' alcoholism, family conflicts and abuse Statistics agency Rosstat says Russia's overall rate of suicide fell in 2015 to the lowest level for 50 years Source: Unicef 2011/Rosstat 2016 iWonder: How do we talk about teenage suicide? ________________   As well as appealing to parents, Novaya Gazeta also argued that it had wanted to goad the authorities into action. It said it had passed material to law enforcement agencies and informed media watchdog Roskomnadzor of its findings. Since publication, investigators in St Petersburg have launched a criminal case over groups on VK that allegedly promote suicide. But Novaya Gazeta has also been accused of colluding with the authorities, or at least giving them a useful pretext to further extend their control over the internet. It is an allegation emphatically denied by chief editor Dmitry Muratov. One of the ostensible aims of a controversial internet blacklist law that came into force in 2012 was to protect minors from material promoting suicide. Internet expert Anton Nosik believes that the Kremlin is now intent on getting to grips with online communities, having passed laws that have the potential to curb the activity of top bloggers and with key elections just around the corner. One thing that everyone appears to agree on is that adolescent suicide is a very serious problem in Russia. A 2011 Unicef report found that the country had the third-highest suicide rate in this age group in the world, more than three times the global average. As such, even some of Galina Mursalieva's critics concede that by getting people to talk about a subject that is too often ignored, she may have performed a useful public service. ________________   Are you affected by this? Samaritans The Samaritans helpline is available 24 hours a day for anyone in the UK struggling to cope. It provides a safe place to talk where calls are completely confidential. Phone for free: 116 123 Email: jo@samaritans.org Visit the Samaritans website Papyrus Papyrus offers support, practical advice and information to young people in the UK considering suicide and can also offer help and advice if you're concerned about someone you know. Phone: 0800 068 41 41 Telephone Doveriye (Telephone of Trust) In Russia, a confidential hotline for children is available on 8-800-2000-122

I find this kind of thing more pathetic and infuriating than really sad.  The thought of teenagers being that impressionable and losing themselves to much in the internet world, is pitiful.  Parents have to do a better job of making their children live in reality, and finding ways to make the responsible and resilient.  of course part of the problem in Russia is that the parents aren't good parents, as indicated by the drinking problem that leads to many of the youth suicides.  But I just don't relate to the idea of someone being so weak and vulnerable that they'd be convinced to commit suicide based on what someone wrote online.  I'm not a strong person.  At all.  But that thought remains completely foreign to me.


Wind turbines killing more than just local birds —  Wind turbines are known to kill large birds, such as golden eagles, that live nearby. Now there is evidence that birds from up to hundreds of miles away make up a significant portion of the raptors that are killed at these wind energy fields. Using DNA from tissue and stable isotopes from the feathers of golden eagle carcasses, researchers from Purdue University and the U.S. Geological Survey found that golden eagles killed at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area in northern California can come from hundreds of miles away. Golden eagles are a species of conservation concern, so understanding population-level differences and how individuals interact with turbines is key to meeting a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service target of no net loss to their populations. The APWRA is one of the oldest wind farms in the country and one of the largest in the world originally with around 5,000 turbines. Worldwide, such facilities have been responsible for the deaths of 140,000 to 328,000 birds and 500,000 to 1.6 million bats, raising questions about their effects on population sustainability. "Eagles tend to use that habitat around the turbines. It's windy there, so they can save energy and soar, and their preferred prey, California ground squirrels, is abundant there," said J. Andrew DeWoody, a Purdue professor of genetics in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. "As they soar, these eagles are often looking straight down, and they fail to see the rapidly moving turbine blades. They get hit by the blades, and carcasses are found on the ground under the turbines." Collaborator David Nelson, a stable isotope ecologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, tested the birds' feathers for stable hydrogen isotopes, which can be used to determine where the birds likely grew their feathers. The research team determined that about 75 percent of the 62 birds were from the local population. The remaining 25 percent likely migrated into the area before they were killed. Isotopes are atoms of an element that have different molecular weights. As precipitation moves inland, water with the heavier form of hydrogen falls out first, which creates predictable patterns of the stable isotopes ratios of precipitation across continents. "When a bird drinks water or eats animals in a particular place, the hydrogen isotope ratios of precipitation in that area get recorded in its tissues," Nelson said. "You can use these hydrogen ratios in the feathers to determine the approximate place that the bird grew its feathers." A genetic analysis revealed that golden eagles from the western U.S. have gene pools similar to those killed at the APWRA, which reflects the capacity of these birds to disperse widely. "The population models we built confirm that the age structure of the eagles killed at Altamont is difficult to replicate without substantial immigration," said co-author Todd Katzner, a wildlife biologist with the USGS. Katzner said these findings suggest that environmental assessments of alternative energy facilities like Altamont Pass should take into consideration that animal populations affected by wind turbines might not be just local. "If you only consider local birds in an environmental assessment, you're not really evaluating the effect that facility may have on the entire population," Katzner said. DeWoody said that wind energy generators can receive permits that allow a certain number of unintended bird deaths. But if that number is too large, the companies could be fined. And knowing that a large percentage of the birds killed are from neighboring states could muddy the management waters. "The golden eagle fatalities at this one site have demonstrated consequences that extend across much of the range of the species across North America," DeWoody said. The golden eagle population is a concern for several state and federal agencies, DeWoody added. He said future research could include looking at more bird species affected by turbines.

This story bothers me more for the ignorance of our actions than for the actual results to the birds.  I guess I'd prefer that golden eagles not get killed, and some other birds as well, but I really don't care that much.  And I don't care about the lives of the individual birds.  These are abstractions to me; they don't exist in any real way.  However, I'm concerned about humans once again barging into something without fully understanding its repercussions.  It was the same with coal and oil, wasn't it?  How is this any different, except maybe in scope or scale or something.  I also always wonder what the weather effects are of wind turbine farms.  Do we understand that?  Is that contributing to torandoes and more severe storms?  I'm sure no one understands that either.


Paris attacks: A year of grief, anger and change —  Lanterns, candles and calls for peace illuminated the City of Light on Sunday as Paris mourned 130 people killed one year ago in attacks throughout the city.   November 13, 2015, was like any other day for Georges Salines: Work, a lunchtime swim with his daughter Lola, watching the news on TV, and an early night. He had no idea, until the phone rang, jolting him from his sleep, that his world was about to change forever. "I went to bed ... without knowing what was going on in the streets of Paris," he recalls. "I was woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, from my eldest son, who knew that his sister was at the Bataclan." Salines' 29-year-old daughter, Lola, had gone to a concert at the Bataclan by US rock band the Eagles of Death Metal. Midway through the show, ISIS-linked gunmen opened fire on the audience and detonated suicide vests; 90 people were killed in the raid, one of a series of coordinated attacks across Paris. Unable to reach her, the family spent hours trying to find out what had happened to Lola, calling emergency help lines and hospitals, even the morgue, but nobody could tell them if she was alive. Then the worst news, delivered in the worst way: They discovered via social media that she had been killed. "I hope she didn't suffer or see her death coming," her father says. French President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques at attack sites in the city -- at the Stade de France, outside the Petit Cambodge restaurant, in the Boulevard Voltaire, and at the Bonne Biere and Belle Equipe cafes. At the Bataclan, the President tore down a French flag to reveal the memorial, as the names of all 90 who perished there were read aloud in solemn ceremony. It followed an emotional performance on Saturday night by musician Sting, a fundraiser for victim support charities at the newly opened Bataclan. He began with the words: "We shall not forget them." The much-loved venue has been renovated to remove all traces of the massacre that took place there. On Sunday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a state of emergency, first imposed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, will likely be extended. With the country's presidential elections coming in April-May, the prime minister said the government needs to retain the extra powers delegated by emergency laws "to protect our democracy."   Denys Plaud was also at the Bataclan on the night of the attacks. He credits his survival to the fact that, when the attackers burst in, he was up on the balcony where there was more room to move to the music. "I love to dance, and that saved my life," he told CNN days after his escape from the Bataclan. "It meant I was not in the direct line of fire from the terrorists' machine guns." Plaud hid in a tiny room at the venue with 15 others; they waited as the gunmen got closer and closer, even shooting at the partition that sheltered them: "I thought, 'Oh my God, I hope that wall will stand.'" "For three hours, we had to listen to the shooting," he remembers. "That was terrible. Every time we thought it would end, it was just time for the terrorists to get their weapons reloaded, and then they would shoot again." Eventually, the police arrived and led them to safety across what Plaud calls "the bloody battlefield," urging them not to look at the bodies of their fellow music fans. "But ... it was not a direct path, I had to look where I was putting my feet. ... There was no way but to look at death." A year on, he says, the memories are "very fresh ... it's just like it was yesterday." By late morning Sunday, the first flowers to remember victims were placed among the autumn leaves at the Place de la République, which became the center of the city's mourning and expressions of national unity after the attacks. For many Parisians, it is an opportunity to begin getting on with life. The year since the attacks has been filled with shock, grief and mourning -- for the relatives of the dead, for those who survived, and for France as a whole: The nation was left traumatized. Extra police and troops have been on the streets of France since January 2015, when terrorists attacked the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people: Armed officers now patrol outside tourist hot spots, schools, government and religious buildings. Operation Sentinel has seen the mobilization of 10,000 soldiers to monitor and protect more than 11,000 locations across the country -- 3,000 of them religious sites, the rest a mixture of key infrastructure, industrial plants and "symbolic" places around the country. And despite all the extra security on the streets, what happened in January and November 2015 -- and other incidents that followed in 2016, in Nice, Rouen and Magnanville -- have impacted the country's morale. Plaud says Paris itself was left "in shock." Anger at these events has been linked to a steep rise in xenophobia; according to the National Commission on Human Rights, or CCNDH, there were 429 reports of attacks on, and threats against, Muslims in France in 2015 -- a rise of 223% on the previous year. This "wave of aggression against Muslims" ranged from assaults on women wearing the hijab to graffiti on places of worship and halal butcher shops. In one incident, the door handle of a mosque was wrapped in bacon. The CCNDH says the majority happened in January and November. The attacks have also damaged France's prized tourism industry: Almost 2 million fewer visitors have come to the country over the past year -- international arrivals are down 8.1% so far in 2016. But Plaud says the country has seen troubled times before, and is sure to bounce back: "I am confident; in Parisian history there have been a lot of events like that -- war, civil war. But Paris has always been able to recover." #ParisResiste Balloons were released into the skies over Paris, and as darkness fell, thousands of lanterns were floated on the waters of the Canal St. Martin, close to the scene of several of the attacks. A social media campaign, #ParisResiste called on people to display lighted candles in the windows of their homes on Sunday evening, to "light up the city" and "brighten the future." Salines concedes the day will be a difficult one for many: "Some families have chosen to take a vacation and go abroad even, because there will be a lot of media attention and there will be a lot of archive footage of last year -- I'm sure it will be painful to see these images again." Plaud suffered flashbacks in the months after the attack that forced him to give up his job as a math and physics tutor, but says he is gradually recovering. This week he returned to the Bataclan for the first time. "I want[ed] to come back to pay my last homage to the victims and people who died there," he says. "It is important even if it is very strong, emotionally, to be here." Both Plaud and Salines say putting pen to paper has helped them through the past 12 months. "I wanted to write in order not to forget," Salines says. "The writing helped me, because it was the only way in the first days that I could think about what had happened ... not without pain, but being able to stay calm and to keep some distance between the pain and my thinking." The idea for his book, "The unspeakable, from A to Z" came, he says, from "the messages I received from friends and family -- lots of them started with the words, 'this is unspeakable,' 'we don't know what to say,' 'there are no words.' They had no words but I had lots! I started to make a list of words and ... little by little it grew and it grew into a book." He says the dictionary-like form his writings took helped reflect the rapidly changing emotions he experienced in the weeks and months after Lola's death. "It was very close to what I was experiencing in terms of the shift between very different moods, even happening all at the same time, within a few minutes, from crying to laughing. When you read you go from one word to another, from emotional feelings ... to very funny." The first entry in the book: A is for absurd. "Because Lola, and I am sure all the other young people who lost their lives that day, were total strangers to the situation, the fight that the terrorists have and it is profoundly unjust." For Plaud, revisiting his experiences to write about them "was very difficult [but] it was therapeutic." "It was a way to exorcise the demons and all the horror I saw that night. It was dangerous because sometimes I had to go deep inside my memories of death." 'Grieving never ends' "The grieving never ends," says Salines. "I am at a stage now where I know that things are relatively stable -- the pain will probably last for the rest of my life but I don't break down in tears three times a day as I was doing at the beginning." Salines is sustained by his work as chairman of one of the support groups for those affected by the events of November 13, and by his memories of Lola. "Her life was maybe short, but it was a full life, full of happiness," he says. A publisher of children's and young adult books, Lola loved to travel and had a passion for roller derby. "She had incredible energy. We didn't know how she could do so many things in a day." "She did a lot of good things in her life, she had a great deal of pleasure, she was very enthusiastic," he says. "She had a good life. Writing about it was maybe a way of convincing myself, but I feel pretty confident that my daughter's life was a good life." Plaud says for him, the time has come to move on. "It's been one year now and I feel like it's the end of my mourning." "It is a good thing that life has come back again," he says. "We have to keep the memory, but you also [must] not be stuck in that horror, [you must] keep on living."

This one sort of gets to me.  The article humanizes the tragedy very clearly, focusing on the one man who lost his daughter, or the individual people who experienced the attacks.  I think it's ironic that the U.S. gets this reputation as a racist country and all that stuff, but the French response was just the same as ours.  The government took extra power to increase safety.  People attacked Muslims because they were pissed off.  The nation grieved.  Sounds a lot like America after 9/11.  We then went after the source of the problem (and beyond).  The French aren't quite as bold.  The one thing I thought of in this story is the band that were playing.  how awful to think that you wanted people to come see you and as a result they got killed at your show.  Awful to live with.


‘She was my constant companion’: No charges in fatal dog shooting on Virginia park trail —  Susan R. Smith lost her best companion this week — a black Labrador mix — after a man shot and killed her in a park. Smith said she was walking her 10-month-old dog, Macie, on Tuesday afternoon along with a friend and the friend’s dog at Algonkian Regional Park, near her home in Loudoun County. Smith, of Sterling, said she had Macie off her leash, which she acknowledges is in violation of county rules. They came upon a couple walking toward them on a path, and when her dog began to jump behind the man, he shot and killed it, Smith said. The man was not charged and Loudoun County Animal Services officials said their investigation found that the man acted in self-defense after the two dogs were “behaving aggressively.” The man had a license to carry a concealed weapon in Virginia, authorities said. He could not be reached to comment. Smith recalled the events that left her holding Macie as she died in her arms. Smith said her dog approached the couple and jumped in the air. She said the dog was leaping behind the man but was not barking at the time. At that point, the man yelled out, “Call your dog,” Smith said. “He said it once, maybe twice.” Smith said she and her friend then started running toward the dogs, who were about 20 yards away. “We called for our dogs,” Smith said. Then she said she saw the man’s arm “go to his side” and across his body. “He sees us coming,” she said. The man pulled out a gun and fired it at the dog. When the gun went off, Smith said she asked the man if it was a cap gun. “He said, ‘No it is a real gun.’ ” Hysterical, she said, she called 911. A wounded Macie slowly came to Smith, then lay on the path, taking her last breaths in Smith’s arms. Smith said the couple waited in their car for police and animal control authorities to arrive. [Arlington National Cemetery bans pets on grounds] As the couple walked past her, she said, one of them apologized for her loss. Smith said she wishes the man would have used other methods to scare her dog away, such as firing a warning shot, kicking her or swinging a stick. She said she misses Macie jumping on her bed each morning to wake her. “She was my constant companion,” she said. “She doesn’t even bark at a doorbell,” Smith said. “It was unnecessary to shoot her. It was poor judgment.” Animal services officials said in a statement that “two large-breed dogs” had been walking off their leashes and were “behaving aggressively towards a man who was walking in the park.” Animal services investigators found that Macie “circled and jumped up on the walker and that the dogs’ owner failed to secure them despite the walker’s repeated requests.” Officials said the man was “legally carrying a firearm when he discharged it in an act of self-defense, fatally shooting the dog.” Authorities said no charges would be filed in the case. “I could be ugly and call him up,” Smith said of the man who fired the shot. “But he was within his rights. It is not going to bring my dog back.”

I have mixed feelings about this story, for sure.  On the one hand, I feel sad for the woman who lost her dog.  I had a black lab mix when I was younger and she's gone now and I still miss her.  Dogs are members of the family, so when they go it's very difficult.  This is tantamount to having someone you loved murdered.  However, and it's a big however, I find it completely unacceptable for people to have to be afraid of uncontrolled dogs.  I know people who've been bit in the face by dogs.  People are killed by dogs.  Dogs are weapons, too.  No one should have to walk in a park--especially one that doesn't allow pets off leashes--and worry about being attacked. Do I think the guy overreacted by killing the dog?  Yes.  But the woman shouldn't have done what she was doing either.


Female Lawyer Accuses Justice Clarence Thomas Of Groping Her In 1999 —  She was 23 at the time. He was a Supreme Court justice. Years after his Senate confirmation hearings were roiled by accusations that he sexually harassed Anita Hill, another woman has come forward to accuse Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of groping her. Moira Smith, vice president and general counsel at Enstar Natural Gas Co., told the National Law Journal that the justice grabbed her without her consent in 1999, when she met him at a Truman Foundation dinner. Veteran Supreme Court reporter Marcia Coyle writes that Smith described the encounter ― which allegedly took place when she was a 23-year-old Truman scholar ― on Facebook earlier this month. She has since deactivated her Facebook page. “He groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should sit ‘right next to him,’” Smith wrote, according to the NLJ. Smith told the NLJ that Thomas “cupped his hand around my butt and pulled me pretty close to him” and later “squeezed” her behind during a June 1999 dinner for Truman scholars at the home of Louis Blair, then head of the Truman Foundation. The NLJ spoke with several of Smith’s former roommates and fellow Truman scholars who said they remembered her describing the incident at the time. Through a Supreme Court spokeswoman, Thomas denied Smith’s allegations. “This claim is preposterous and it never happened,” he said in the statement. During Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, Hill, a law professor, testified that Thomas had harassed her a decade earlier, when he was her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  Earlier this month, Hill wrote a Boston Globe op-ed about her experience, sparked by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recorded boasts about grabbing women “by the pussy” and kissing women without their consent. “What I learned in 1991 is no less true today and no less important for people to understand: responses to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence must start with a belief that women matter as much as the powerful men they encounter at work or at school, whether those men are bosses or professors, colleagues or fellow students,” Hill wrote. Read more at the National Law Journal. Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

This is such a messy issue.  While I believe sexual harassment is wrong, I also think we've gone past the point where allegations can be trusted.  I also think we've overblown the seriousness of many of these encounters.  No, I don't think a man should grab a woman's toilet parts or breasts without some implication of consent (it doesn't have to be explicit--that's idiotic).  But the idea that one aggressive move by a guy towards a girl should ruin people's lives is stupid.  Are women not stronger than that?  Are women so fragile that one guy who catcalls at them or hugs them when they don't want it should be tarred and feathered and she has to go into perpetual mourning?  Men go after women and always will.  There are repercussions for women wanting it all.  Sorry.


http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/europe/paris-attacks-one-year-on/index.html —  Lanterns, candles and calls for peace illuminated the City of Light on Sunday as Paris mourned 130 people killed one year ago in attacks throughout the city.   November 13, 2015, was like any other day for Georges Salines: Work, a lunchtime swim with his daughter Lola, watching the news on TV, and an early night. He had no idea, until the phone rang, jolting him from his sleep, that his world was about to change forever. "I went to bed ... without knowing what was going on in the streets of Paris," he recalls. "I was woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, from my eldest son, who knew that his sister was at the Bataclan." Salines' 29-year-old daughter, Lola, had gone to a concert at the Bataclan by US rock band the Eagles of Death Metal. Midway through the show, ISIS-linked gunmen opened fire on the audience and detonated suicide vests; 90 people were killed in the raid, one of a series of coordinated attacks across Paris. Unable to reach her, the family spent hours trying to find out what had happened to Lola, calling emergency help lines and hospitals, even the morgue, but nobody could tell them if she was alive. Then the worst news, delivered in the worst way: They discovered via social media that she had been killed. "I hope she didn't suffer or see her death coming," her father says. French President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques at attack sites in the city -- at the Stade de France, outside the Petit Cambodge restaurant, in the Boulevard Voltaire, and at the Bonne Biere and Belle Equipe cafes. At the Bataclan, the President tore down a French flag to reveal the memorial, as the names of all 90 who perished there were read aloud in solemn ceremony. It followed an emotional performance on Saturday night by musician Sting, a fundraiser for victim support charities at the newly opened Bataclan. He began with the words: "We shall not forget them." The much-loved venue has been renovated to remove all traces of the massacre that took place there. On Sunday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a state of emergency, first imposed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, will likely be extended. With the country's presidential elections coming in April-May, the prime minister said the government needs to retain the extra powers delegated by emergency laws "to protect our democracy." 'Bloody battlefield' Denys Plaud was also at the Bataclan on the night of the attacks. He credits his survival to the fact that, when the attackers burst in, he was up on the balcony where there was more room to move to the music. "I love to dance, and that saved my life," he told CNN days after his escape from the Bataclan. "It meant I was not in the direct line of fire from the terrorists' machine guns." Plaud hid in a tiny room at the venue with 15 others; they waited as the gunmen got closer and closer, even shooting at the partition that sheltered them: "I thought, 'Oh my God, I hope that wall will stand.'" "For three hours, we had to listen to the shooting," he remembers. "That was terrible. Every time we thought it would end, it was just time for the terrorists to get their weapons reloaded, and then they would shoot again." Eventually, the police arrived and led them to safety across what Plaud calls "the bloody battlefield," urging them not to look at the bodies of their fellow music fans. "But ... it was not a direct path, I had to look where I was putting my feet. ... There was no way but to look at death." A year on, he says, the memories are "very fresh ... it's just like it was yesterday." Artist turns Paris attacks ordeal into graphic novel A nation traumatized By late morning Sunday, the first flowers to remember victims were placed among the autumn leaves at the Place de la République, which became the center of the city's mourning and expressions of national unity after the attacks. For many Parisians, it is an opportunity to begin getting on with life. The year since the attacks has been filled with shock, grief and mourning -- for the relatives of the dead, for those who survived, and for France as a whole: The nation was left traumatized. Extra police and troops have been on the streets of France since January 2015, when terrorists attacked the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people: Armed officers now patrol outside tourist hot spots, schools, government and religious buildings. Operation Sentinel has seen the mobilization of 10,000 soldiers to monitor and protect more than 11,000 locations across the country -- 3,000 of them religious sites, the rest a mixture of key infrastructure, industrial plants and "symbolic" places around the country. And despite all the extra security on the streets, what happened in January and November 2015 -- and other incidents that followed in 2016, in Nice, Rouen and Magnanville -- have impacted the country's morale. Plaud says Paris itself was left "in shock." Anger at these events has been linked to a steep rise in xenophobia; according to the National Commission on Human Rights, or CCNDH, there were 429 reports of attacks on, and threats against, Muslims in France in 2015 -- a rise of 223% on the previous year. This "wave of aggression against Muslims" ranged from assaults on women wearing the hijab to graffiti on places of worship and halal butcher shops. In one incident, the door handle of a mosque was wrapped in bacon. The CCNDH says the majority happened in January and November. The attacks have also damaged France's prized tourism industry: Almost 2 million fewer visitors have come to the country over the past year -- international arrivals are down 8.1% so far in 2016. But Plaud says the country has seen troubled times before, and is sure to bounce back: "I am confident; in Parisian history there have been a lot of events like that -- war, civil war. But Paris has always been able to recover." #ParisResiste Balloons were released into the skies over Paris, and as darkness fell, thousands of lanterns were floated on the waters of the Canal St. Martin, close to the scene of several of the attacks. A social media campaign, #ParisResiste called on people to display lighted candles in the windows of their homes on Sunday evening, to "light up the city" and "brighten the future." Salines concedes the day will be a difficult one for many: "Some families have chosen to take a vacation and go abroad even, because there will be a lot of media attention and there will be a lot of archive footage of last year -- I'm sure it will be painful to see these images again." Plaud suffered flashbacks in the months after the attack that forced him to give up his job as a math and physics tutor, but says he is gradually recovering. This week he returned to the Bataclan for the first time. "I want[ed] to come back to pay my last homage to the victims and people who died there," he says. "It is important even if it is very strong, emotionally, to be here." Both Plaud and Salines say putting pen to paper has helped them through the past 12 months. "I wanted to write in order not to forget," Salines says. "The writing helped me, because it was the only way in the first days that I could think about what had happened ... not without pain, but being able to stay calm and to keep some distance between the pain and my thinking." The idea for his book, "The unspeakable, from A to Z" came, he says, from "the messages I received from friends and family -- lots of them started with the words, 'this is unspeakable,' 'we don't know what to say,' 'there are no words.' They had no words but I had lots! I started to make a list of words and ... little by little it grew and it grew into a book." He says the dictionary-like form his writings took helped reflect the rapidly changing emotions he experienced in the weeks and months after Lola's death. "It was very close to what I was experiencing in terms of the shift between very different moods, even happening all at the same time, within a few minutes, from crying to laughing. When you read you go from one word to another, from emotional feelings ... to very funny." The first entry in the book: A is for absurd. "Because Lola, and I am sure all the other young people who lost their lives that day, were total strangers to the situation, the fight that the terrorists have and it is profoundly unjust." For Plaud, revisiting his experiences to write about them "was very difficult [but] it was therapeutic." "It was a way to exorcise the demons and all the horror I saw that night. It was dangerous because sometimes I had to go deep inside my memories of death." 'Grieving never ends' "The grieving never ends," says Salines. "I am at a stage now where I know that things are relatively stable -- the pain will probably last for the rest of my life but I don't break down in tears three times a day as I was doing at the beginning." Salines is sustained by his work as chairman of one of the support groups for those affected by the events of November 13, and by his memories of Lola. "Her life was maybe short, but it was a full life, full of happiness," he says. A publisher of children's and young adult books, Lola loved to travel and had a passion for roller derby. "She had incredible energy. We didn't know how she could do so many things in a day." "She did a lot of good things in her life, she had a great deal of pleasure, she was very enthusiastic," he says. "She had a good life. Writing about it was maybe a way of convincing myself, but I feel pretty confident that my daughter's life was a good life." Plaud says for him, the time has come to move on. "It's been one year now and I feel like it's the end of my mourning." "It is a good thing that life has come back again," he says. "We have to keep the memory, but you also [must] not be stuck in that horror, [you must] keep on living."

This article was sad for me.  It definitely humanized the event and focused on the father, whom I felt sympathetic towards.  I also laughed a lot at the sentence about someone wrapping bacon around the door handle of a mosque.  But I thought the portrayal of the father was very real and relatable.  I thought his quotes were also interesting and very self-reflective, recognizing what he was probably doing in his writing and why.  But the article overall was pretty vivid in allowing you to experience all aspects of the event.  People there, trying to survive.  People afterwards finding out loved ones were dead.  People angry.  People trying to keep the public safe.  All angles were shown.


Islamic State militants are kidnapping thousands of people to use as human shields —  TULUL AL-NASIR, Iraq — Islamic State militants have rounded up thousands of villagers at gunpoint to use as human shields as they retreat toward their stronghold of Mosul, the latest brutal war tactic inflicted on civilians in areas the group controls. Military officials and some who escaped said that the vast majority of people in more than half a dozen villages were forced to walk north toward the city as the army advanced from the south, and that those who refused were shot. Some villagers said they ran and hid in the desert to avoid being captured, sleeping out in the open for days. Others said they were taken but later managed to flee. Villagers also described mass executions of former policemen and army officers as the militants become increasingly paranoid about spies and collaborators. The kidnappings and killings compound fears about the plight of civilians as Iraqi forces advance toward the northern city of Mosul, a prize the militants don’t appear ready to give up without a hard fight. Humanitarian organizations have said they have grave concerns that civilians are at risk of being caught in crossfire, trapped between fighting or used as human shields. Holding civilian populations hostage is among the tactics the militants use to waylay advancing forces and complicate the U.S.-led airstrikes that support them. They also have set fire to oil wells and a sulfur plant south of the city, sending noxious fumes over hundreds of miles. Before launching the offensive for Mosul last week, Iraqi officials estimated that as many as 1.8 million residents were still in the city, with expectations of an exodus as forces advanced. But residents of Tulul al-Nasir, a gray, cinder-block settlement about 25 miles south of the city, said they were forced to flee the other way. [Signs of panic in the heart of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate] “They told us on the loudspeakers that whoever stays will be killed,” said Mohammed Ali, 45. They were ordered by the militants to walk about 15 miles north to Hamam al-Ali, a larger village that is still under Islamic State control. As he spoke, men crowded around him to list their family members who are missing. Some said dozens had been taken, with families divided in the confusion. More than 90 percent of the village’s 5,000 residents were kidnapped, said Iraqi army Col. Faisal Ali Abdellatif. “When they retreat from every village, they take the civilians with them to use as human shields,” he said. At her house in Tulul al-Nasir, Bushra Hussein recalled how two armed militants came by one recent day. “They said we had to gather on the road and that if they came back in 30 minutes and found us here, they’d kill us,” she said. With thousands of her neighbors, she was marched north, pushing her disabled 26-year-old son in his wheelchair, which broke after several days. Unable to move him, she was allowed to stay by the side of the road with him, where she remained until security forces advanced. Her husband, three other sons, three daughters and grandchildren were all forced to move on with the militants, she said. They called her briefly two days earlier to say they were in Mosul. “Thousands of families have been taken,” she said. “No one wanted to go.” [Sunnis fleeing Islamic State rule in Mosul brace for revenge] For those who refused to leave, the punishment was swift. On the outskirts of the village, Moyad Atallah, 40, was attending a funeral for his three brothers, who were shot after protesting. Eight Islamic State fighters in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns had arrived at their house at sundown to round them up, he said. One brother refused. “They shot him just there,” said Atallah, pointing at the dust outside his home. When his two other brothers then fought back, they were also killed, he said. The militants took their money and the family car, then kidnapped another brother and said they would return. The rest of the family fled and hid in an abandoned house nearby, including 11 now-orphaned children. The Islamic State’s utter disregard for the safety of civilians and its apparently deliberate use of human shields is putting people trapped in areas of active conflict at even greater risk as Iraqi forces advance, said Lynn Maalouf, a Beirut-based researcher for Amnesty International. Iraqi security forces have slowly won back villages and towns outside Mosul, but the militants have shown little sign that they will give up ground easily, and Iraqi and U.S. military officials say they expect the fight to get tougher as they near the city’s outskirts. As the militants are gradually squeezed, they have stepped up their savagery against local populations, residents have said. Abdulrahim al-Shammiri, the chairman of the human rights committee in the Iraqi parliament, said that 190 civilians were executed in Hamam al-Ali on Wednesday after being “kidnapped” from surrounding areas. Those who escaped said that former police or army officers were separated from their families and executed. “They killed 20 people in front of me,” said one 19-year-old from the village of Safina, who was held for three days in Hamam al-Ali before his family escaped at night, walking for days before reaching the Iraqi security forces. The family members were separated during their escape, and militants on motorbikes recaptured some of them while others watched from a ditch. Those who escaped were shot at as they fled; one woman was hit in the abdomen and is receiving treatment in Irbil. The family members declined to give their names because of concerns about the security of 30 relatives who are still missing. “All of us were against them, but they dragged us with them, all the village,” said his aunt, whose husband, four sons and three daughters are missing. Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.

This is all disgusting and makes me wonder how anyone could have sympathy or pause for battling militant Islam head-on.  These people are savages and should be dealt with with no sympathy or quarter.  That we pulled out of the region cowardly is disgraceful.  However, I also feel that the people of the region are complicit in their own suffering.  If you allow this type of disease to build, you suffer the consequences.  They can say that it's a function of U.S. interference, but it's not.  It's existed for eons and they've allowed it to grow, and now they either have to fight back or suffer under it.  Other nations fought their oppressors, internal or external, and weren't just passive.  These Arabs and Persians are just so passive and impotent with their overlords.


BREAKING NEWS: Angry Villagers Attack Anti-Poaching Unit Rangers In Mozambique —  Three anti-poaching rangers, two South Africans and a Mozambican, were hospitalized after being beaten by villagers after they apprehended a a poacher.   Sean van Niekerk, of Limpopo, and two colleagues were whipped, stabbed and pelted with rocks by a mob in a small Mozambican town near South Africa’s Komatipoort border.   Van Niekerk, 25, was discharged from Nelspruit Medi-Clinic on Thursday, where he was treated for a minor skull fracture, stab wounds and injuries to his face and back. He said it would not stop him returning to the field to help save wildlife. Van Niekerk said they were called last weekend to assist a ranger who had caught a poacher near Sabi river.   “My colleagues and I, with four Mozambican police officers, were transporting the poacher to the station, which was about 30km away, when he escaped from the vehicle. I chased after the poacher and caught him. I handed him back to the police officer. Suddenly, a mob from the community started moving towards us,” said Van Niekerk. The police officers who were with them ran away.   “We, the rangers, were the targets. I called for help. We were boxed in. We had no weapons so we had to fight back to stay alive until the helicopter arrived. We were hit by about 10 people, who were armed with blunt machetes. I was stabbed with a bottle, stoned and whipped,” he said.   He said it was only when the helicopter arrived that the mob backed off.   Would you please kindly share this and make it go viral, so the incompetent, corrupt police officers are exposed. Thank you.

I feel really bad for the rangers, who were just doing their job and were treated unmercifully by the villagers.  And unfortunately they didn't get any help from the police officers, who ran away.  What a horribly frightening experience that must have been.  On the other hand, the article is also confusing for me.  Why were the villagers so upset?  Do they earn their livings from poaching? Were they confused about what was going on?  Also, who called for the helicopter?  And how did the rangers survive if they were really confronted by all those villagers with weapons.  If the story is real then it's frightening and disturbing.  But there seems to be a lot of missing information.