Saturday, November 9, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

News Clips For The Day



Grand Jury Indicts 11 Bikers in NYC Highway Brawl
An undercover NYC detective is among the 11 bikers indicted by a grand jury – NBC
A grand jury has indicted 11 bikers, including an undercover New York City police detective, on various charges related to a motorcyclist-SUV highway melee.
The indictment Friday says undercover detective Wojciech Braszczok was charged with gang assault, criminal mischief, riot and other counts.
Undercover NYPD Cop Will Not Testify in Biker Gang Assault
Prosecutors have said Braszczok participated in the Sept. 29 attack by shattering the SUV's back window. He was off duty at the time. Attorney John Arlia didn't immediately return a message seeking comment, but previously told NBC 4 New York that unreleased video shows Braszczok did not participate in the assault. 
Police say that after the SUV driver bumped a bike that had slowed in front of the vehicle, motorcyclists converged on the vehicle. Police say the driver, while trying to get away, ran over a biker then motorcyclists caught up with the driver and beat him. The driver hasn't been charged.


Progress has been made on this case. I now look forward to the trials to see what kind of charges and penalties will result. I have no sympathy with, to use an old-fashioned word, “ruffians.” I consider them to be spoiled brats, no matter what their age, and lacking in conscience. Most people find excitement appealing, but it shouldn't be carried this far to the point that people are hurt.




Hunt for a ghost ship: NBC News spots abandoned US vessel in Nigerian creek – NBC

By Ronke Phillips and Sohel Uddin, NBC News

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria — It was an eerie sight: an American oil supply ship abandoned in one of the danger-filled creeks that snake through the south of Nigeria, stars and stripes fluttering from its mast, but no sign of life on board.
A crew from NBC News tracked the C-Retriever to the outskirts of the Port of Onne two weeks after pirates boarded it and took hostage the two U.S. citizens on board  — the captain and the chief engineer.
The incident has been cloaked in mystery, with no information on the fate of the two men or where they are being held and the Nigerian Navy refusing to say what became of the vessel after the Oct. 23 attack in the Gulf of Guinea.

Finding the ship was a complicated and potentially perilous operation through waters that have become increasingly popular with pirates and sea-robbers who take cover in the inlets while they stalk victims.
Piracy is surging in Nigeria, with Capt. Richard Phillips declaring it "worse even than Somalia," where he was taken hostage in 2009 and then rescued by Navy SEALS, a high-seas drama chronicled in a current Tom Hanks movie.
When we tried to hire two speed boats at a jetty known as Borokri, the locals were reluctant, deeming it too risky to travel with a crew that included a white cameraman and an Asian producer.
One boat owner eventually agreed, but only if we hired armed security.
“There is no way he will not be noticed," he said, referring to our cameraman. "He is bound to attract attention and could put us all in danger.”

We finally set off with two armed guards in our boat and a four-man security detail following behind.  Everyone was on edge, with the guards constantly telling the cameraman to duck down out of sight.
The constant flow of massive cargo ships in the Gulf of Guinea has become a fertile hunting ground for pirates. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
The trip took us past hundreds of creeks — there is no smooth coastline in the Niger Delta region — and it rained heavily as we made our way in the choppy waters.
Every mile or so, an oil tanker would pass, but there was no sign of the C-Retriever, owned by the Lousiana-based Edison Chouest Offshore.
After about a half-hour, we reached the outskirts of Onne, where dozens of ships of varying sizes were lined up along the dock. 
We edged closer, but didn't see the C-Retriever. And then, as we were about to give up, there it was — undamaged and apparently unoccupied.
We filmed the 222-foot vessel from a distance without incident, and then as we contemplated pulling alongside to take a closer look, one of our crew spotted a naval ship heading toward us and we ended the mission.
Later, the man who rented us the boats told us piracy was such a problem in the area he did not want be filmed or named for fear of reprisals.
“Expatriates we take to the rigs are always escorted by armed guards. We would never allow then to travel in this area unaccompanied. It’s just too dangerous," he told us.
"Boats carrying local people to other parts of Port Harcourt are also attacked and the passengers robbed of their jewelery, cash and phones.  Sometimes they even take the boats, dumping their human cargo in the mango swamps.”

Usually, sailors kidnapped in Nigerian waters are released after a ransom is paid. It remains to be seen if that's how the C-Retriever crew's ordeal will end.


I want to see that Tom Hanks movie about Captain Phillips. Ships crews can't really be mentally prepared to be taken captive. It must be a shock to be confronted by armed marauders. We don't usually think of being on a modern ship's crew as being dangerous, but in some parts of the world where the national and local governments have broken down it apparently is. The local populations must be living in constant stress in addition to a life of probable poverty. There is probably little hope of fostering democracy in that kind of situation. It's no wonder that al Qaeda has taken root in some of those places. They represent the only order that is available.





Typhoon Haiyan: Red Cross estimates 1,200 dead as winds slam Philippines – NBC

By Eric Baculinao and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
MANILA – The death toll from one of the strongest typhoons ever to make landfall could top 1,200, the Red Cross said Saturday after winds slammed the Philippines.
Early reports suggest 1,000 people have died in the coastal city of Tacloban and at least 200 more in the Samar province, according to Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross.
Pang said the numbers came from preliminary reports by Red Cross teams on the ground.
So far, government officials have only confirmed 138 deaths. At least 118 of the deaths were on hardest-hit Leyte Island, where Tacloban is located, national disaster agency spokesman Maj. Reynaldo Balido told The Associated Press.

But after arriving in Tacloban on Saturday, Interior Secretary Max Roxas said it was too early to know how many people had died.
The death toll is expected to rise sharply as rescue workers reach areas cut off by the fast-moving storm, whose circumference eclipsed the whole country and which late on Saturday was heading for Vietnam. 
The weather system nearly 200-mph winds as it rampaged through the Philippines on Friday. It was downgraded overnight from a "super typhoon," equivalent to a category 4 or 5 hurricane, to a typhoon.
Along the way, it cut off many of the country's lines of communication, making it hard to establish the extent of its damage.
Pang stressed that the death toll estimates reports were being checked, and that a more exact number would emerge after more precise counting of bodies in each area.
Hundreds of homes were flattened and almost 800,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters as Haiyan triggered mudslides, flash flooding and a storm surge with waves of up to 30 feet Friday.
Because the Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands — more than 2,000 of them inhabited, with their own local authorities and infrastructures — it typically takes two to three days for full reports to reach rescue agencies.
The Weather Channel's Jim Edds, in Tacloban, said there was a desperate need for drinking water for survivors. "We need it now, we needed it 12 hours ago,"he said.
Edds added that there was a massive wall of water when the storm hit, and described the current situation as chaotic. "Relief is needed here. Now."


The Red Cross will be needing contributions. When Katrina hit New Orleans and some other such events have happened I have simply looked up the Red Cross telephone number and called in a gift. They can use small as well as large donations, so no amount is too little. When so many people are concentrated on the coastlines in population centers the damage must be worse, plus I have heard that Pacific typhoons can be stronger than our Atlantic hurricanes. Of course there have been some – Andrew for instance – with winds as high as 200 mph and huge storm surges. I will send in a small donation – I can only afford small amounts now that I am living on social security. Perhaps you can afford to send some, too.





China's Communist Party promises 'unprecedented' reform - but will it deliver? – NBC

By Li Le, Eric Baculinao, and Alexander Smith, NBC News
BEIJING -- China's ruling Communist Party embarked on its historic and secretive Third Plenum meeting Saturday, promising to bring "unprecedented" economic reforms and raising the hopes of domestic businesses and foreign investors.
But many Chinese people and international analysts are skeptical of what the four-day event will actually accomplish. Some believe the country could be too mired in its state-led ways to bring the real change necessary for a new economic era.
"I do not think it's going to happen," said Wang Jinshi, the 38-year-old owner of a high-end shoe boutique in Beijing. Like so many small business owners in China, he desperately needs loans in order to grow – but they simply aren't available as banks exist largely to serve state-led businesses.
"The only way I can make my dreams come true is to take step by step very slowly," he said.
Others, like Li Qiang, a partner in the Shanghai office of the prestigious international law firm O'Melveny & Myers, are yet to be convinced of the party's bold talk and hold faint expectations.
"What we hope will happen is there will be more clarity on the general direction of the country… Right now it is all very vague," he said.
During the Third Plenum – the third time the new government has met since it formed last November – the party's new head, General Secretary Xi Jinping, will put his own stamp on the regime as lawmakers set out a political agenda.
The pledges have been grand, with senior leader Yu Zhengsheng promising "unprecedented" changes and Premier Li Keqiang talking of "comprehensively deepening reform."
Xi has even suggested that the reforms will be as deep as the Third Plenum of 1978, when former leader Deng Xiaoping moved away from strict communism and adopted the open-door policy for foreign investments, or in 1993 when the country joined the World Trade Organization (WTO).
"It is not usual for these meetings to have the same level of rhetoric as this one, so it does heighten expectations," said Tim Summers, a Hong Kong-based senior consulting fellow at British think tank Chatham House. "It is something the leadership says is an important catalyst for policy change."
At a speech to the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC), Xi insisted that despite a recent dip in the country's economic growth (from an average of 10 percent per year to 7.8 percent in the past quarter), rates are sustainable. But he acknowledged the need to move away from China's state-investment-led model and toward one based on consumer spending, like the U.S.
"There seems to be a growing realization that the model they have been running for a while has run its course," said Fraiser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism, a book on China's economy, and Singapore director of the brokerage firm Newedge Financial.

Or as Xi more cryptically put it at the APEC meeting: "Draining a pond to catch fish is no formula for sustainable development."
Experts agree that the plenum will produce plenty of sweeping mission statements, but say they will be short on detail and numbers. According to Howie, the reality will be far more moderate than the ambitious talk suggests.
"In China there are lots of stresses which mean the willingness to actually carry out these sweeping changes is going to be limited," Howie said. "This could make the outcome more of a 'let's muddle along, steady-as-she-goes' approach."
He said these stresses included the state's financial reliance on polluting businesses and the high costs which would come with moving state-owned land into private hands.
"You see the Chinese taking to the streets to protest, and theoretically dissatisfaction could spur on reform. But this is China, a place where dissent is not tolerated, or tolerated only to an extent," Howie said.
"There is a fear – of any protest – that it will pick up into something more. They do not want the protests on the streets, but at the same time clamping down on the pollution will impact state-owned industries."
Michael Pettis, an American finance professor at Beijing's Peking University, said he was optimistic the Chinese government could achieve its goal but warned that attempts to reduce the big debt from state-led investments could be mismanaged.
"They have done the easy part, rapid growth, but now the hard part is re-balancing the economy," he said.
There is also the underlying issue that China is a country moving toward a market economy while still upholding a one-party state.
"What we are not going towards is an open, pluralistic, multi-party model, by any means," Howie said. "What the leadership wants is a strong China with the Communist Party at the center of it, and where economic inequality is less extreme."
The Communist Party rejected any suggestion of Western political reforms with a full-page article on Friday in the state newspaper The People's Daily.
It said the party would not stand for foreign criticisms of its system and continue on its path of "socialism with Chinese characteristics."

For many Chinese, however, the bottom line is the same as it would be for anyone trying to make a better living.
As Beijing taxi driver Wu Weijian put it: "I don't really know what the party plenum is all about, but what I care most is that the leaders will take measures to increase our income."


There are several quotes from Chinese citizens here, so apparently their people aren't terribly afraid to speak their mind – though there are probably lots of things that they wouldn't dare to say. I hope China will continue to evolve toward a freer society and a better financial picture for the average citizen, as they have been in the last few decades.

I'm very much interested in China, due to its long stellar history of cultural advancements, from much earlier times than in the West. Some reports I have read about concerning racial differences in IQ have put the Asian people on top. Of course “racial differences,” especially in IQ, are being downplayed by anthropologists as being unreliable on an individual level. The young Asian student entering one of our US schools may not do much better than their white and black peers.

There is a greater amount of cultural stress which is placed on the students among Asians to do well in school, as compared to American families, though. Sometimes American parents just let their kids grow up “catch as catch can” without enough social, emotional and educational guidance; maybe it takes more pressure to make them try harder to do well, or maybe just higher parental expectations and pride. Parents who read as adults are more likely to have children who do well in school. For whatever reason, the US is behind most developed countries in scholarly achievement. Too many of our students drop out of school as soon as they can and are not interested in their studies while they are there, contributing to their delinquency.

We need to fund our schools better, see to it that our teachers themselves have a high level of knowledge in their subjects, and increase the level of scholarly development in our curricula in most high schools. A college prep school tends to turn out students who score higher on the College Board tests upon their graduation. It isn't just that we let too many of our kids fail completely and give up, but we could be teaching more in our basic high school courses.

A citizen of the US shouldn't have to go to college to be literate enough to follow the news, vote and successfully go to a library to research a subject of interest, not to mention having enough knowledge to succeed in math and science. Enough said – this is one of my areas of greatest concern about the American society, so I tend to end up talking about it. When I read a few years ago about one “conservative” Southern senator saying that he would like to see the American public school system “die on the vine,” I was surprised and horrified that anybody could possibly say that. That's just one more reason to vote for Democrats.





Indians and Europeans share 'light-skin' genetic coding – NBC
Tia Ghose LiveScience

Indians share a gene with Europeans that plays a significant role in coding for lighter skin, new research suggests.
The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics, also revealed that the gene, which is responsible for 27 percent of skin color variation in Indians, was positively selected for in North, but not South Indian populations. When something is "selected for," that means it provides some advantage and so gets passed down to offspring, becoming more prevalent in a population over time.
Many shades
The Indian subcontinent has an enormous variation in skin color.
"We have dark brown (tones), yellow tones and whitish-pinkish tones," said study lead author Chandana Basu Mallick, a biologist at the University of Tartu in Estonia. "We have quite a range and diversity in the biological spectrum of skin color." [10 Things That Make Humans Special]
But because South Asian gene studies are relatively rare, it wasn't clear which genes contributed to this variation. Past research has found at least 126 genes that code for pigmentation in general, Basu Mallick said.
Genetic mosaic
To find out, Basu Mallick and her colleagues took skin color measurements for about 1,228 individuals in Southern India. The researchers then conducted a genetic analysis and found that about 27 percent of the skin color variation was due to a variation in a skin pigmentation gene. Called SLC24A5, this gene codes for lighter skin and is present in almost 100 percent of Europeans.
The team also examined the gene in 95 people around the subcontinent and found that both South Asian and European populations inherited this particular variant from a common ancestor who lived between 22,000 and 28,000 years ago.
"We don't know the origin of this mutation. We just know that they have a common ancestor," Basu Mallick told LiveScience, referring to both South Asians and Europeans.
The team then looked for the gene in more than 2,000 people from 54 ethnic groups around the subcontinent. Some groups, such as populations in Tibet and Burma, didn't have the gene variant at all, whereas the Northwestern tip of the subcontinent had a nearly 90 percent prevalence of the gene.
Lighter skin has less melanin, a pigment that blocks the sun's UV rays; the body uses these rays to make vitamin D. The SLC24A5 gene is linked to less melanin production, so the gene may have become more common in Europe because it allowed people's skin to make more vitamin D in the continent's low-light conditions.
But in India, the prevalence of the gene in different populations didn't correlate with latitude, but instead seemed strongly linked to language, geography and demographic history. The study also showed that the gene was positively selected for in North, but not South India (though both light- and dark-skinned people live in both regions).
It's not clear exactly what caused the gene to be favored in certain regions, but it probably wasn't the production of vitamin D alone, the study suggests.
"The demographic history of the population and their ancestry also contribute in this variation," Basu Mallick said.


Since, according to this article, there are at least 126 genes for lighter skin colors, therefore probably producing lighter skinned people as far back as 22,000 to 28,000 years ago according to genetic dating, it seems to me that those genes may have been selected directly by the mating choices of people, thus causing them to become dominant with some peoples.

Two articles among several that I came across recently when researching the very interesting question of whether the author Jane Austen may have had African blood, have claimed that white people came from albinos. It was said that albinism is more prevalent among African black populations than among “white” people and that those albinos were cast out of African societies and bred together to develop what those (Afrocentric) scholars call “pink” skin.

Those two articles called white people “the Albinos,” and stated that Albinos were liars, recreating history in their own image. Those articles put the incursion of white people into Europe back about 15,000 years ago, with the migration of tribes who spoke the Indo-European languages from the area around Finland. If this news article is correct, however, the white people most likely came from Asian people who were lighter skinned, but not albinos, and with genes set to produce lighter and lighter skin. The location of several animals in the Arctic tends to produce a white coloration, presumably because it blends in better with a snowy background and helps them avoid predators, so for white to emerge from an otherwise dominant black or dark color is not unique in nature.

With modern human beings, I tend to think that they are more likely to have selected consciously for lighter skin, hair and eyes for esthetic reasons in choosing their mates, and therefore gradually produced the change. A study on lions was done several years ago in which female lions were found to select males with big black manes over lighter or sparse manes, so even among animals, selection is done for esthetic reasons. Seemingly, darker manes make a male lion more likely to be able to protect his pride from outsiders – darker means stronger.





­
Survey Finds Anti-Semitism 'On The Rise' In Europe
By Scott Neuman
­ Two-thirds of Jews surveyed in a European Union study believe that anti-Semitism is "a problem" where they live and three-quarters said they believed that anti-Jewish attitudes had increased in recent years.
The EU's Fundamental Rights Agency sampled opinion from 5,847 Jewish people in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom — which collectively are home to 90 percent of Europe's Jews.
Sixty-six percent of those surveyed said anti-Semitism is a problem and 76 percent believed anti-Semitism had increased over the past five years.
Nearly half (48 percent) of those surveyed in Hungary, 46 percent in France and 40 percent in Belgium said they had considered emigrating over safety concerns.
One in five said he had personally experienced an anti-Semitic verbal insult and/or physical attack.
The BBC reports:
"Perpetrators of the most serious incidents were described as 'being perceived as someone with Muslim extremist views, 27%, left-wing political views, 22%, or with right-wing views, 19%'.
"Respondents said the most frequent comments made by non-Jewish people in the UK were: 'Israelis behave 'like Nazis' towards the Palestinians' and 'Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes' (both 35%).
"In France 52% of the Jewish people surveyed described anti-Semitism as a 'very big problem' in their country, in Hungary the figure was 49%, while in the UK it was much less - 11%.
"The survey showed significant differences between Western and Eastern European countries.
"In Latvia, only 8% said the Israeli-Arab conflict had had a large impact on how safe they felt, but the figure rose to 28% for Germany and was as high as 73% in France."

One of the problems not stated in the article above, of course, is that the nation of Israel does take very hard stances toward the Palestinians. The Palestinians are also strongly opposed to the Israelis, with the result that the whole area is drawn into the struggle, and Jewish people worldwide are widely assumed to agree with Israel's national postures.

Still the hatred against the Jews in Europe is more about religious differences and the fact that Jewish people have tended to hold themselves apart from outsiders. Thus all sorts of bad characteristics are deemed to be present among the Jewish population, from dishonesty and greed to “racial” inferiority.

The same thing happens with American blacks – they usually prefer their own company and follow their own norms. Only individualistic and basically friendly blacks meet whites with a hopeful and free expectation of friendship. There are reasons for that in the widespread discrimination against them by some whites, even to the point of lynchings and an increased incidence of police harassment or worse. Until the 1960s, even the laws of the country were against the blacks.

One can only hope that pogroms such as those that occurred during the 1930s and into World War II will not be repeated, though they could be. The same people are living in Europe today, and the near annihilation of the Jews couldn't have occurred without the cooperation of local citizens, I don't think. That particular thing occurred because there was already rampant suspicion and hatred toward the Jews in the countries which were conquered by Hitler. He was just the preacher to a willing congregation of European citizens. There are Neo-Nazis in the US today – we won the war with Hitler, but we didn't conquer his belief system.

We, as would-be good citizens, have to root out the prejudices from our inner minds and allow ourselves to be convinced of a fair approach to people, no matter their religious or cultural views and give everybody a place at the table of life. As long as Christians chant “the Jews killed Jesus,” there will be a problem against the Jews. They do, after all, believe in the same God. They accept Jesus as a prophet and teacher, but not as a God. They are, however, good citizens and enlightened people as a whole. With so many different people and ways of thinking, we have to learn to tolerate and accept differences, or there will never be any peace.