The Utterly Fashionable "Nyarl was RIGHT!" Thread

[Doctor X]

Ah Thanksgiving!

Time to thank Big Daddy for hunting Native Americans to extinction your Commodore Game Cube and having to listen to Uncle Earl blame "the Hip Hop" for the country's "lack of moral fiber!"

Nothing renews my faith in a Benevolent Universe quite like a pre-teen anti-gun violence advocate being killed . . . by gun violence!

"We are in a state of chaos. In the city in which I live, I hear and see examples of chaos almost every day. Little children are victims of senseless gun violence..."

Two years ago, 11-year-old Milwaukee schoolgirl Sandra Parks wrote these words in an award-winning essay about the murders in her city.

On Monday night, aged 13, she was shot by a stray bullet fired into her home.

Her frantic family called 911, but Sandra died at the scene.

The girl's mother, Bernice Parks, told police she had gone to bed early while her children watched TV. She woke to the sound of gunshots shortly before 20:00, and found her daughter bleeding on the floor.

"She said, 'Momma, I'm shot. Call the police,'" Ms Parks told TV station WITI. "I looked at her. She didn't cry. She wasn't hollering. She was just so peaceful... She didn't deserve to leave this world like that."

Bugger'd by Colonists

--J.D.

[Witness]

Tanzania to hunt down homosexuals, beginning this week

[snip]

https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/258 ... -this-week

Complement:

The Canadian missionary connection to Tanzania’s homophobia

Canadians should express their solidarity with Tanzanians facing politically inspired homophobia. But, we must also be suspicious of journalism that ignores Canadian complicity in the promotion of anti-gay ideology.
[…]
While raising the subject of “Canadian aid”, the Globe and CBC both ignored how this country’s “assistance” to the region has, in fact, fostered the social conservatism that the stories bemoan. For example, while the Stephen Harper Conservative government was in power international aid funding for religious NGOs increased substantially. In an MA thesis titled “Canadian Foreign Aid and the Christian Right: Stephen Harper, Abortion, and the Global Culture Wars in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2006-2015” Erin Jex details Ottawa’s support for socially conservative forces on the continent. In a high-profile example Crossroads Christian Communications, an Ontario group that listed “homosexuality” with pedophilia and bestiality as a “sin” and “perversion”, was granted more than half a million dollars for a project in Tanzania’s neighbour Uganda.

But Canada’s contribution to social conservatism in Tanzania goes back over a century. During the 100th anniversary of Tanzania’s St. Philip Theological College in 2014 Ontario Anglican Reverend Gary Badcock claimed homosexuality was a “first world” problem and that homosexuals would steal their children.

Lots of links on the page: https://yvesengler.com/2018/11/21/the-c ... omophobia/

[Pyrrho]

Perpetual Disappointments Calendar

https://design-milk.com/the-updated-per ... uragement/

[Doctor X]

Jury decision affirmed in favor of homeopathy sellers

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a jury verdict in a consumer class action deceptive advertising case in favor of Boiron Inc. and Boiron USA, Inc., the sellers of Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic product marketed for the relief of colds and flu-like symptoms. In the jury trial, the plaintiff argued that the product was essentially water resulting from homeopathic dilution sprayed on sugar, but the jury was persuaded by Boiron's anecdotes, clinical studies, and expert testimony that it is effective and therefore Boiron did not violate California's laws against deceptive advertising. The Appeals Court ruled that Boiron presented sufficient evidence from which the jury could have concluded that Oscillococcinum actually works and that a battle of plaintiff's versus defendants' experts could not be relitigated upon appeal. [Ninth Circuit affirms jury verdict in favor of homeopathic remedy for flu-like symptoms. The National Law Review. Nov 27, 2018] Boiron had previously settled two class-action lawsuits but new ones persuaded it to go to trial. [Consumer suits after trial led Boiron to go to trial. Bloomberg BNA, July 27, 2016] Ocillicoccinum is prepared by incubating small amounts of a freshly killed duck's liver and heart for 40 days. The resultant solution is then filtered, freeze-dried, rehydrated, repeatedly diluted, and impregnated into sugar granules. The dilution is so great that the finished product cannot contain its alleged "active ingredient," which means that no amount of research can prove that it is effective. [Barrett S. Homeopathy: The ultimate fake. Quackwatch, Aug 25, 2016] However, this point was apparently beyond the jury's understanding.

QuackWatch

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

Caveat emptor I guess.

(Although caveat emptor is not the principle used by the FDA to approve drugs.)

I don't know why homeopathy is exempt from FDA approval.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Caveat emptor I guess.

(Although caveat emptor is not the principle used by the FDA to approve drugs.)

I don't know why homeopathy is exempt from FDA approval.

Because plain water is generally recognized as safe.

However there are fraud statutes that should be applied.

[Doctor X]

A far-right extremist trained his toddler daughter to perform a Nazi salute for the camera, a court heard.

After filming the video, Darren Fletcher then told another member of neo-Nazi group National Action: "Finally got her to do it".

Fletcher is set to be jailed at Birmingham Crown Court after pleading guilty to membership of the group, which was banned by the home secretary.

He is one of six people being sentenced in a two-day hearing.

Bugger'd by Colonists

Though there is a "Happy" Ending which made it tempting to post a "Hitler's Parents Jailed" thread.

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

I posted about this back in April of last year, when things looked suspicious but there was still some question that it might be an accident. Nobody thinks it was an accident anymore.

Police ID remains of fifth child of adoptive mother who drove family off California cliff

Jennifer and Sarah Hart presented as the ultimate hippie moms, but in the weeks after their deaths, officials in Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, as well as people who knew them, said the homeschooling, organic food and music festivals were merely cover for their twisted philosophy on child rearing.

Among the allegations were that the Harts denied their kids food and forced them to lie on the floor for hours. Sometimes, punishment was meted out for behavior common among children, such as laughing at the dinner table.

[Doctor X]

I feel dirty upvoting these posts.

--J.D.

[Doctor X]

Requests to bring in child brides OK’d; legal under US laws

By COLLEEN LONG

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.

The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements for the person making the request or for that person’s spouse or fiancee. By contrast, to bring in a parent from overseas, a petitioner has to be at least 21 years old.

And in weighing petitions, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the spouse or fiancee’s home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.

The data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the U.S., and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report. The approval is the first of a two-step visa process, and USCIS said it has taken steps to better flag and vet the petitions.

Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.

“My sunshine was snatched from my life,” said Naila Amin, a dual citizen born in Pakistan who grew up in New York City.

She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and later applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the U.S. at the behest of her family. She was forced for a time to live in Pakistan with him, where, she said, she was sexually assaulted and beaten. She came back to the U.S., and he was to follow.

“People die to come to America,” she said. “I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.”

["Snip!"--Ed.]

There is a two-step process for obtaining U.S. immigration visas and green cards. Petitions are first considered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS. If granted, they must be approved by the State Department. Overall, there were 3.5 million petitions received from budget years 2007 through 2017.

Over that period, there were 5,556 approvals for those seeking to bring minor spouses or fiancees, and 2,926 approvals by minors seeking to bring in older spouses, according to the data. Additionally, there were 204 for minors by minors. Petitions can be filed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

“It indicates a problem. It indicates a loophole that we need to close,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told the AP.

In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship. In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50, the committee found. In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

Reiss, who says she was forced into an abusive marriage by her Orthodox Jewish family when she was 19, said that often cases of child marriage via parental consent involve coercion, with a girl forced to marry against her will.

“They are subjected to a lifetime of domestic servitude and rape,” she said. “And the government is not only complicit; they’re stamping this and saying: Go ahead.”

The data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and then-Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the committee’s top Democrat. Johnson said it took a year to get the information, showing there needs to be a better system to track and vet the petitions.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

The head of USCIS said in a letter to the committee that its request had raised questions and discussion within the agency on what it can do to prevent forced minor marriages. Awesome.

USCIS created a flagging system when a minor spouse or fiance is detected. After the initial flag, it is sent to a special unit that verifies the age and relationship are correct before the petition is accepted. Another flag requires verification of the birthdate whenever a minor is detected. Officials note an approval doesn’t mean the visa is immediately issued. Which does what exactly? Oh, right, fuck all!

“USCIS has taken steps to improve data integrity and has implemented a range of solutions that require the verification of a birthdate whenever a minor spouse or fiance is detected,” USCIS spokesman Michael Bars said. “Ultimately, it is up to Congress to bring more certainty and legal clarity to this process for both petitioners and USCIS officers.”

The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions.

Boston Sun

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

[Anaxagoras]

And the headline here pretty much tells you all you need to know, but it doesn't capture the full horror. Pregnant Lyft driver brutally stabbed to death by passenger, unborn child dies: cops

And she leaves behind two orphans, ages 2 and 4.

This cunt won't get what he truly deserves, such as being buried alive. But he is caught so this one should get the death penalty.

[Doctor X]

But, like, lethal injection is totally "cruel and unusual."

--J.D.

[Doctor X]

This could be the Fucking Asshole of the Month. There is a Small Ray of Sunshine though. As a background, this Cunt was quickly under investigation and then arrested for having his great niece suddenly die on him during a visit, no, wait, he did not call 911 immediately, oh and, like, she must have gotten into the fentanyl . . . you know how that is:

A Lawrence man accused of drugging and raping his 11-year-old great-niece was beaten by fellow inmates in the Essex County jail and is now being held in solitary confinement.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

The attack took place on the floor of the jail’s housing unit just hours after Rivera was arraigned on a new charge of rape of a child with force.

Rivera was already charged with permitting substantial bodily injury to a child and misleading a police investigation in the death of his great-niece Precious Wallaces, who died Dec. 17.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy and collected evidence that resulted in the rape charge but has not yet ruled on a cause and manner of death, the Essex District Attorney’s Office stated. The state crime lab reported it matched Rivera’s DNA to sperm cells found on the girl during the autopsy.

Wallaces had been staying at her uncle’s house the night of Dec. 15, when first responders were called to Jackson Street in Lawrence at about 3:30 the next morning for an unconscious child.

A witness told police that Rivera had given his great-niece a little red pill to sleep — something he did every time she stayed the night at his apartment. Rivera denied giving her one — saying she took some on her own — but later admitted to police that he flushed the remaining pills down the toilet before calling 911, the complaint states. He waited 13 minutes before calling police, the complaint states. This sophisticated alibi is what landed him in jail in the first place.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

Wallaces was taken to Lawrence General Hospital before being flown to Tufts Medical Center in December, dying after spending two days in a coma, as the Herald has previously reported. It was determined the girl had both fentanyl and amitriptyline — an antidepressant -— in her system when she arrived at Lawrence General Hospital, the criminal complaint states.

Boston Sun

--J.D.

[Doctor X]

I posted a link to this when I decimated Anax's Mom in a discussion on health care and why New York continues to suck [Citation needed.--Ed.]

Letting them die: parents refuse medical help for children in the name of Christ

The Followers of Christ is a religious sect that preaches faith healing in states such as Idaho, which offers a faith-based shield for felony crimes – despite alarming child mortality rates among these groups

Jason Wilson

Mariah Walton, who has pulmonary hypertension, at her home. ‘I would like to see my parents prosecuted,’ she says. Mariah Walton’s voice is quiet – her lungs have been wrecked by her illness, and her respirator doesn’t help. But her tone is resolute.

“Yes, I would like to see my parents prosecuted.”

Why?

“They deserve it.” She pauses. “And it might stop others.”

Mariah is 20 but she’s frail and permanently disabled. She has pulmonary hypertension and when she’s not bedridden, she has to carry an oxygen tank that allows her to breathe. At times, she has had screws in her bones to anchor her breathing device. She may soon have no option for a cure except a heart and lung transplant – an extremely risky procedure.

All this could have been prevented in her infancy by closing a small congenital hole in her heart. Indeed it could. It could even have been successfully treated in later years, before irreversible damage was done. But Mariah’s parents were fundamentalist Mormons who went off the grid in northern Idaho in the 1990s and refused to take their children to doctors, believing that illnesses could be healed through faith and the power of prayer.

As she grew sicker and sicker, Mariah’s parents would pray over her and use alternative medicine. Until she finally left home two years ago, she did not have a social security number or a birth certificate.

Had they been in neighboring Oregon, her parents could have been booked for medical neglect. In Mariah’s case, as in scores of others of instances of preventible [Sic--Ed.] death among children in Idaho since the 1970s, laws exempt dogmatic faith healers from prosecution, and she and her sister recently took part in a panel discussion with lawmakers at the state capitol about the issue. Idaho is one of only six states that offer a faith-based shield for felony crimes such as manslaughter.

Some of those enjoying legal protection are fringe Mormon families like Mariah’s, many of whom live in the state’s north. But a large number of children have died in southern Idaho, near Boise, in families belonging to a reclusive, Pentecostal faith-healing sect called the Followers of Christ.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

In Canyon County, just west of the capital, the sect’s Peaceful Valley cemetery is full of graves marking the deaths of children who lived a day, a week, a month. Last year, a taskforce set up by Idaho governor Butch Otter estimated that the child mortality rate for the Followers of Christ between 2002 and 2011 was 10 times that of Idaho as a whole.
Now this is interesting
The shield laws that prevent prosecutions in Idaho are an artifact of the Nixon administration. High-profile child abuse cases in the 1960s led pediatricians and activists to push for laws that combatted it. In order to help states fund such programs, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (Capta), which Richard Nixon signed in 1974.

But there was a fateful catch due to the influence of Nixon advisers John Ehrlichman and J R Haldeman, both lifelong Christian Scientists.

Boston College history professor Alan Rogers explains how the men – later jailed for their role in the Watergate scandal – were themselves members of a faith-healing sect, and acted to prevent their co-religionists being charged with crimes of neglect.

“Because Ehrlichman and Haldeman were Christian Scientists, they had inserted into the law a provision that said those who believe that prayer is the only way to cure illness are exempted from this law,” he said.

They also ensure that states had to pass similar exemptions in order to access Capta funds. The federal requirement was later relaxed, but the resultant state laws have had to be painstakingly repealed one by one.

Some states, such as Oregon, held on longer until high-profile deaths in the Followers of Christ church in Oregon City attracted the attention of local media; over time the state reversed course.

As a result, several Followers of Christ members in Oregon have been successfully prosecuted. In 2010, Jeffrey and Marci Beagley were convicted of criminally negligent homicide after the death of their toddler, Neal, who died from a congenital bladder blockage. In 2011 Do I need to describe how painful that is?, Timothy and Rebecca Wyland were convicted of criminal mistreatment and the court ordered that their daughter Aylana be medically treated for the growth that had been threatening to blind her. Later that year, Dale and Shannon Hickman were convicted of second-degree manslaughter two years after their newborn son died of a simple infection.

Next door, Idaho presents a polar opposition to Oregon. Republicans, who enjoy an effective permanent majority in the state house, are surprisingly reluctant to even consider reform. Might imply that Junior is impotent, Heavens to Betsy. Last year, the governor’s Task Force on Children at Risk recommended change: “Religious freedoms must be protected; but vulnerable children must also be appropriately protected from unnecessary harm and death.” Democratic legislator John Gannon proposed a repeal bill which he “never thought would really be that controversial”.

The chairman of the senate health and welfare committee, Lee Heider Coming to Fucking Asshole of the Week soon!, refused to even grant it a hearing, effectively killing it.

Hoyt is a fit 43, ["Snip!"--Ed.]

He lost his faith around the age of five, when a baby died in his arms in the course of a failed healing. While elders prayed, Hoyt was in charge of removing its mucus with a suction device. He was told that the child died because of his own lack of faith. Something snapped, and he remembers thinking: “How can this possibly be God’s work?” His apostasy set up lifelong conflicts with his parents and church elders.

In just one incident, when he was 12, Hoyt broke his ankle during a wrestling tryout. “I ended up shattering two bones in my foot,” he said. His parents approached the situation with the usual Followers remedies – rubbing the injury with “rancid olive oil” and having him swig on Kosher wine.

Intermittently, they would have him attempt to walk. Each time, “my body would just go into shock and I would pass out”.

“I would wake up to my step-dad, my uncles and the other elders of the church kicking me and beating me, calling me a fag, because I didn’t have enough faith to let God come in and heal me, while my mom and my aunts were sitting there watching. And that’s called faith healing.”

He had so much time off with the untreated fracture that his school demanded a medical certificate to cover the absence. Forced to take him to a doctor, his mother spent most of the consultation accusing the doctor of being a pedophile.

He was given a cast and medication but immediately upon returning home, the medication was flushed down the toilet, leaving him with no pain relief. His second walking cast was cut off by male relatives at home with a circular saw.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

So far, their testimonies of abuse have not convinced Idaho’s Republican legislators. Senator Heider, for one, describes the Followers of Christ as “very nice people”.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

“Republicans didn’t feel the need to change the laws. We believe in the first amendment to the constitution. I don’t think that states have a right to interfere in religions.”

When pressed on the fact that children are dying unnecessarily as a result of exemptions, Heider makes an odd comparison.

“Are we going to stop Methodists from reading the New Testament? Are we going to stop Catholics receiving the sacraments? That’s what these people believe in. They spoke to me and pointed to a tremendous number of examples where Christ healed people in the New Testament.”

Heider blamed outsiders for stirring the pot on this issue, even challenging the Guardian’s right to take an interest in the story, asking “what difference does it make to you?” and adding “is the United States coming in and trying to change Idaho’s laws?” He confirmed that he attended a Followers of Christ service last year – a rare privilege for an outsider from a group that refuses to speak to reporters.

But if we take Heider at his word concerning the reasons for his opposition, his view of the constitution is simply mistaken.

Alan Rogers, the Boston College history professor, points to a string of US supreme court decisions that distinguish between freedom of belief and freedom of practice Why I cannot sacrifice this virgin. Now I have to feed her and hose her down periodically., which affirm the former and limit the latter where it causes harm. These stretch back as far as Reynolds v United States in 1878, which forbade Mormon polygamy, and include Prince v Massachusetts, which affirmed the federal government’s ability to secure the welfare of children even when it conflicts with religious belief.

["Snip!"--Ed.]

According to coroners’ reports, in Canyon County alone just in the past decade at least 10 children in the Followers of Christ church have died. These include 15-year-old Arrian Granden, who died in 2012 after contracting food poisoning. She vomited so much that her esophagus ruptured. Untreated, she bled to death. No, that was not a pleasant nor peaceful demise. Here, have a kitty.

Campaigners such as Mariah Walton, Janet Heimlich, Linda Martin and Brian Hoyt are determined not to let this matter rest in the next legislative session.

A new “Let Them Live” campaign, involving a television ad campaign featuring Mariah, is being coordinated by Bruce Wingate at Protect Idaho Kids. Resources are limited, but all are confident that improved public awareness will build pressure on legislators.

Gannon, the Democratic legislator, says for his part that his bill will be back next year. “It’s not going to go away,” he says. “Dead children don’t care about the first amendment.” And the First Amendment does not protect the murder of children.

Read by the People Who Think They Should Run the Country

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

Jesus wept.

[sparks]

Jeebus weeping never mad a difference.

ed, with guns, does.

Let anarchy rule. (WTF?)

[Witness]

Vegan parents accused of nearly starving baby to death in the US

A vegan couple from Florida has been arrested for allegedly almost starving their 5-month-old son to death by switching from his doctor-prescribed formula to a mashed potato concoction they found on the internet.

Julia French, 20, and Robert Buskey, 31, have been charged with neglect after investigators found the infant weighed just under 4kg, after being recorded at birth at 3.5kg, according to WFTV news.
[…]
The couple are also said to follow "Nazarite Hebrew" religious principles and the woman considers herself to be the man's concubine.

A doctor reportedly prescribed infant formula that would fit within the family's vegan lifestyle but the couple instead fed the baby a potato-based meal they found online.

The parents could afford the formula the doctor prescribed and, when questioned by authorities, did not give a reason as to why they chose not to provide it.

Since Wednesday, the boy, who is now in foster care, has gained half a pound on fluids alone.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/a ... d=12204479

[Anaxagoras]

Is breastfeeding not vegan?

[sparks]

Nope. Contains the remains of animals.