Child protection boss warns there is 'not enough land' to build all the prisons needed to lock up UK's paedophiles

    

The former Deputy Children's Commissioner for England has warned that child sex abuse in the UK is so widespread that there is 'not enough land' to build all the prisons needed to incarcerate offenders.

Sue Berelowitz, who has been under fire after she received a six-figure payoff and was then promptly rehired as a £1,000 a-day consultant, made the claim while speaking at the Hay Literary Festival yesterday.

Mrs Berelowitz, who is currently chairing the government's inquiry into child sex abuse said the public will be 'shocked by the sheer scale of the problem' when she releases her report in November.

    

She said that if the Crown Prosecution Service were to prosecute every paedophile there would not be enough land to build the prisons needed.

Speaking to Jon Snow with Camila Batmanghelidjh and Helena Kennedy during a talk on child sex abuse last night, she blamed the prevalence of pornography for the growth of an increasingly sexualised society.

Mrs Berelowitz said: 'We live in a highly sexualised world in which for the most part it is considered quite acceptable [for men] to do as they want with females, and too many females think that is something they must comply with because they think it is a part of growing up

'Child porn and the proliferation of indecent images of children, and all the stuff we are seeing on social media which is undoubtedly having an impact on young people growing up and their impressions of sex and sexuality.'

She added: 'If the CPS were to prosecute everyone we would need a rolling prison programme. I would say there probably isn't the land to build enough prisons,' reports.

Mrs Berelowitz, who failed to speak out about sexual abuse by British Pakistani gangs, took voluntary redundancy from her £99,333-a-year post on April 30, receiving a pay-off worth £134,000.

But the next day she was hired as a consultant leading an inquiry into child abuse in the family - which she had been in charge of in her old role since last July.

The 61-year-old is paid £960 a day, working up to nine days a month - so she earns almost as much as before, but for less work.

Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, where some of the grooming gangs operated, said the redundancy pay-off was 'disgraceful'.

Mrs Berelowitz's report, to be published in November, follows abuse scandals in areas including Rotherham, where it was reported that 1,400 children were abused between 1997 and 2013.

Speaking last night Mrs Berelowitz also claimed that the covering up of child sex abuse is still happening in local authorities and police stations across the country - but added that the bigger problem is taking place in children's homes.

Mrs Berelowitz is considered a controversial figure because her 2012 report in the wake of high-profile abuse cases in Rochdale and Rotherham denied there was a growing number of Asian grooming gangs.

Despite finding that more than a quarter of perpetrators known to the authorities were Asian, Mrs Berelowitz said there was no evidence to conclude that there was a particular issue with Asian gangs.

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John Kerry breaks leg in bicycle crash; bike and curb thought to be undamaged

Mr Kerry is known for his love of cycling

    

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry broke his leg in a bicycle crash Sunday after striking a curb, and scrapped the rest of a four-nation trip that included an international conference on combating the Islamic State group.

Kerry was in stable condition and in good spirits as he prepared to return to Boston for further treatment with the doctor who previously operated on his hip, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said. He said X-rays at a Swiss hospital confirmed that Kerry fractured his right femur.

''The secretary is stable and never lost consciousness, his injury is not life-threatening and he is expected to make a full recovery,'' Kirby said in a statement.

Kerry, 71, was taken by helicopter to Geneva's main medical center, HUG, after hitting a curb with his bike near Scionzier, France, about 40 kilometers southeast of the Swiss border.

Paramedics and a physician were on the scene with his motorcade at the time and provided him immediate attention. They quickly decided to order the 10-minute-long helicopter transport.

, a local newspaper, said Kerry fell near the beginning of his ride to the famed mountain pass called the Col de la Colombiere, which has been a route for the Tour de France more than a dozen times.

Right around the time of his fall, a Twitter feed about local driving conditions warned of the danger due to gravel along the pass. But U.S. officials said there was no gravel on the road where the accident occurred. According to the newspaper, some Haute Savoie officials were with Kerry at the time, including the head of the region.

Kerry's regular plane was returning to the United States carrying much of his staff and reporters who accompanied on the trip.

The secretary of state planned to fly back late Sunday aboard a plane with special medical equipment ''to ensure he remains comfortable and stable throughout the flight,'' Kirby said. ''Its use is nothing more than a prudent medical step on the advice of physicians.''

Kerry's cycling rides have become a regular occurrence on his trips. He often takes his bike with him on the plane and was riding that bicycle Sunday.

During discussions in late March and early April between world powers and Iran, Kerry took several bike trips during breaks. Those talks were in Lausanne, Switzerland, and led to a framework agreement.

Kerry had been in Geneva for six hours of meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday as the sides now work to seal a comprehensive accord by June 30.

The prospect of a lengthy rehabilitation could hamper the nuclear talks and other diplomatic endeavors. Even if Kerry does not need surgery, it was not immediately known when he could fly again after returning to the United States.

Kerry has been the lead negotiator in several marathon sessions with Iran going back to 2013. The injury could affect other potential trips, such as one to the Cuban capital to raise the flag at a restored U.S. Embassy.

As for the current trip, Kerry had planned to travel to Madrid on Sunday for meetings with Spain's king and prime minister, before spending two days in Paris for an international gathering to combat IS.

He will participate in the Paris conference remotely, Kirby said.

Kerry decided to seek treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital because the fracture is near the site of his earlier hip surgery, Kirby said.

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Syria's Permanent Representative to UN: "There is no 'moderate armed opposition' in Syria"

© Unknown
Bashar al-Jaafari: “There is no ‘moderate armed opposition’ in Syria”

    

Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari refuted beyond doubt the Western claims of the existence of a so-called "moderate armed opposition" in the Syrian territory.

This he told a Security Council session on "The Situation in the Middle East" on Thursday.

He stressed that the Western and other countries' attempts to justify supporting terrorism in Syria using the excuse of have been exposed and are now clear to everyone.

al-Jaafari wondered, referring to areas where the terrorist organizations of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are in control.

He categorically rejected the attempts of "laundering" the image of the terrorist Jabhat al-Nusra organization which the West is now trying to present as a group.

Speaking of the humanitarian situation in Syria, al-Jaafari said the humanitarian crisis in the country, whether the internal displacement or cross-border displacement, has the existence of the terrorist organizations and the support provided to them at its very roots.

Such crises have occurred only in the areas where the terrorists entered, killing civilians and driving the residents from their homes, he added.

This, he stressed, makes it a necessity to enforce the Security Council resolutions 2170, 2178 and 2199, in addition to resolution 1624 of 2005 which bans instigating terrorism.

Achieving that end, along with supporting efforts to reach an inter-Syrian political solution without external interference, would be Syria's UN Representative affirmed.

He made it clear that providing humanitarian assistance to Syria, while being necessary, is not going to solve the problem, criticizing in this regard the UN funding shortfalls where only tiny percentage of the humanitarian aid funds promised has been sent to Syria.

He dismissed the claims of many Security Council member states and senior UN officials who pretend to believe in the ineffectiveness of a military solution in Syria and be leaning toward a political one.

How could anyone take these claims seriously at the time when the foreign support to the terrorist organizations continues through a Turkish-Saudi-Qatari alliance? he wondered.

Commenting on the UN Secretary General's latest report on the implementation of resolutions 2139, 2165 and 2191 pertaining to the humanitarian situation in Syria, al-Jaafari said the report is full of "gaps and serious fallacies".

All the accusations made against the Syrian government in the report were based not on facts but on sources, which were even not acknowledged to tell if they are credible or not, he explained.

He found it odd that a UN report would grossly ignore the countless reports, letters, evidence and testimonies put forth by the Syrian government throughout the crisis, now in its fifth year.

    

He also referred to the absence of any mention of the Turkish government allowing thousands of trucks loaded with terrorists, weapons and dangerous substances to pass illegally into Syria through the very same routes used by the US humanitarian aid convoys.

These gaps, al-Jaafari warned, are "serious precedents" that could undermine the "remaining credibility" of the UN General Secretariat in dealing with the humanitarian file in Syria.

Al-Jaafari: "Many media outlets promote for terrorism"

Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari stressed that the unprecedented media machine campaign continues for the fifth year in a row of persevering efforts to provoke towards committing terrorism and violence, and spreading incitement and lies regarding the situation in Syria in a blatant violation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution No. 1624 for 2005 and of journalism ethics if any.

In an open session before the UNSC under the title "protecting civilians in armed conflicts ... protecting journalists" Wednesday, al-Jaafari pointed out the mobilization of many media outlets for promoting for terrorism and attracting foreign terrorist fighters from all over the world to come to Syria in a deliberate violation of UNSC resolutions related to counterterrorism amidst suspicious paralysis of UNSC and its sub-committees.

pointing out that 33 journalists and workers at media institutions were killed and dozens of others were injured or kidnapped by armed terrorist organizations that some UNSC states overtly brag of training them on the Turkish and Jordanian territories and others.

He pointed that the Syrian government worked on dealing with media openly and issued a new media law since the first few weeks of the crisis as a reform step that aims at boosting media work and achieve more transparency and freedom, clarifying that the Syrian government was committed to work with the former UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan and fulfilled his six- point plan including the fifth point on the journalists' entrance and work.

Al-Jaafari clarified that the Syrian commitment was manifested through granting licenses of the entrance and work of hundreds of Arab and foreign journalists, which was confirmed by Annan.

Syria's Permanent Representative noted that the Syrian government still welcomes and receives journalists who are willing to enter Syria legally through the official border crossings so that they could work freely.

Al-Jaafari said that the Syrian government paid attention to the safety of journalists and demanded them not to enter the country illegally and avoid the areas where terrorist groups including "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) spread, adding unfortunately some of the journalists were killed or kidnapped by terrorists as a result of not responding.

he continued to say.

Al-Jaafari noted that while he was talking before the UNSC, the Qatari al-Jazeera Channel was hosting the terrorists "Abu Mohammad al-Joulani" the leader of the so-called "Jabhat al-Nusra" terrorist organization, which is registered in the list of the UNSC Committee related to al-Qaeda, in an interview that promotes for terrorism and launches more threats to the Syrian government and people.

He affirmed that making such an interview is a flagrant violation of the UNSC resolutions related to counterterrorism, particularly Resolution No. 1624 on preventing provoking towards terrorism, pointing out that it is an obvious attempt of the Qatari regime to "laundering the profile of Jabhat al-Nusra".

The Syrian TV Channel, al-Mayadeen TV and other channels known for being close to the Resistance are undergoing attempts of jamming within the continuous media war campaign against Syria.

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Hundreds protest 'kidnapping' in Norway's Child Welfare System

© Ruptly video screenshot

    

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the Norwegian capital Oslo, to protest against the country's foster care system. They are angry at children being 'kidnapped' from their families, which the protesters say is a breach of family rights.

Driving rain in Oslo didn't put the several hundred protesters off from making their viewpoint heard, as they assembled by the city's Central Station, before marching towards the parliament building.

Banners were held aloft, with messages including: "Children are not business," and, "Bring back our children." They are angry at the Norwegian foster care system 'Barnevernet,' (Child Protection Service), which has seen families in the country lose their children for alleged abuses, such as accidentally dislodging a child's loose tooth.

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Eva Michalkova, who is originally from the Czech Republic, has felt the wrath of the Barnevernet, after she lost her two children.

"It's a mixture of feelings. It's sadness, frustration, it's a feeling you don't know what to expect and all you can say is used against you, all you can do is used against you. So it is very difficult," she told video agency.

Michalkova's case stems from an incident in 2011, when her two sons were taken into protective care, after one of her children told a nursery teacher that his father had "groped inside his pajamas," the Norwegian online newspaper reported.

No charges were ever brought over the incident, but the Barnevernet placed the children into two separate foster families. The children's parents have since divorced, but Eva is fighting a legal battle to regain custody of her kids.

The incident brought a furious response from the Czech President Milos Zeman, who in February compared the Barnevernet system to Nazi Germany's infamous 'Arian breeding program.'

"The boys are in a foster facility similar to Lebensborn. Their mother can meet them for 15 minutes twice a year. She must not talk in Czech to them. In other words, the kids are being estranged from their national identity," Zeman said, as cited by the Czech News Agency.

In October 2014, the Barnevernet snatched the young son of a Russian couple after the child told classmates that his mother had pulled out a loose tooth.

According to Natalya and Sergey Shianok, their son Oskar, who was five at the time, had told fellow kids at his school that his mother had accidentally yanked out one of his baby teeth. Natalya explained that she was helping him to pull a T-shirt over his head and knocked out a tooth that was already loose.

The Barnevernet said this was child abuse and that the mother had deliberately knocked the tooth out.

"For the moment Oskar remains in the care of a Norwegian foster family, and his mother has no idea where," says Igor Lapitsky, head of the Russian consulate in Norway, reports RadioVesti.ru.

In comparison, former US athlete and Olympic gold medal winner, Bryan Clay won praise from across the internet, when he tied a piece of dental floss to a javelin, which he then threw, to dislodge his daughter's loose tooth.

Marius Reikeras, a human rights activist is critical of the Norwegian government's spending on Barnevernet, saying that the money could be more effectively channeled elsewhere.

"We are putting a lot of money in the Child Welfare System. No country in the world puts more money per capita than the government when it comes to CPS. If we could help these families, if we could provide these families with the money we put into the CPS system instead, I am pretty much sure that we could help almost every family," he said.

Norway's Child Welfare Services says on their website that they are committed to providing help and support to children, adolescents and parents who are experiencing challenges or difficulties within the family.

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The service adds that parents are responsible for providing care and protection for their children. "The Child Welfare Services must base its actions on the best interests of the child. Sometimes the child's best interests conflict with those of the parents. The Child Welfare Services' first duty is to provide help and support to the parents, so they can take good care of their children," the service's website said.

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Almost June and more snow falls in Norway

© Jarle Vikane
Vidda in May

    

Riding through this stuff on a motorcycle must be awfully cold. - Robert

"It happened again yesterday on RV7," says reader.

Cars stuck in snow, another 10-15cm of snow.

Forecast for the next days: Storm with snow over 800m. Even the mainstream media thinks this is special!

I put up some clips on youtube from today's trip in the mountains. Today's road is in the same area as the Suleskardveien in the other video, it's the same area you can find the famous Pulpit Rock in the Lysefjord. Elevation is 800-950m on the highest sections.

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Today the weather forcast was quite nice, but when I arrived the temperature was only 2-3C with snowshowers, sleet and rain, even fresh snow along the road. I have never seen this much snow that close to June.

In just a couple of weeks, thousands of sheeps are released to graze on these wast areas normally, but this year they will have to wait, and this will force the farmers to let them eat of the grass in the lowlands, thats usually is stored for the next winter.

Map

Videos:

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Weatherforcast for RV7

Thank to 996bip for these links

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Electric Universe: Blue aurorae in Mars' sky visible to the naked eye

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and CSW/DB.
This is an artist interpretation of what aurorae may look like close to magnetic anomalies on Mars.

    

Visible Martian aurorae seemed possible after the SPICAM imaging instrument on-board the ESA satellite Mars Express spotted aurorae from space in 2005. Those observations were confirmed in March 2015 by the NASA-led MAVEN mission, which completed 1,000 orbits around the red planet on April 6th, 2015.

Through laboratory experiments and a physical numerical model developed at NASA and the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble (IPAG), the study shows that, on Mars, aurorae also occur in the visible range. The most intense colour is deep blue. As on Earth, green and red colours are also present. Several times during a solar cycle, after intense solar eruptions, these lights are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Aurorae occur when charged solar particles reach local magnetic field lines, where they enter the planetary atmosphere and excite its atoms and molecules. As they deactivate, the particles produce light emission. On Earth, aurorae are essentially green or red (excitation of atomic oxygen), but even blue-purple (excitation of ionised molecular nitrogen) can be seen.

At the beginning of Mars' existence and up until 3.5 billion years ago, the red planet hosted a global magnetic field. Although this global field somehow shut down, local spots of increased magnetic fields, called crustal magnetic anomalies, still remain in Mars' surface. These anomalies are concentrated in the southern hemisphere, where aurorae are predicted to occur.

It is predicted that an astronaut walking on the red soil of the planet could look up to see the southern night sky glow blue, with red and green hues.

Perhaps NASA astronauts who plan to make their way towards the Mars' surface by the 2030s aboard Orion will be the first to provide first-hand confirmation of the prediction. And to think, Mars' southern lights could eventually become as much of a draw to aurorae admirers as Earth's northern lights.

"Our planetary research gives us good insight on physics in the Martian atmosphere — how it evolved, why Mars' mass is different than Earth's," said Guillaume Gronoff, a research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center who helped to lead the study. "It helps us to better understand planetary atmosphere emissions, ultimately helping us to discover habitable planets."

The Planeterella

The Planeterella simulates aurorae using a magnetic field, charged particles and a sphere. For this study, they replaced the terrestrial atmospheric gas with CO₂, the major component of the Martian atmosphere, and then created a discharge in a vacuum similar to Mars' upper atmosphere. There are seventeen Planeterellas worldwide. One is located at NASA Langley's official Visitors Center — the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Va. — where Guillaume occasionally exhibits the simulation.

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Data Shows Calling the Cops in Domestic Disputes Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Informed readers already know that indiscriminate, heavy-handed police intervention ruins lives every day across the U.S. Some of the ways in which this happens are subtle but no less damaging.

Evidence is building that “mandatory arrest” in reports of domestic abuse could be causing harm and even death to the very people it is supposed to protect.  Mandatory arrest exists in 22 states.

“The law…says that police officers responding to a call for help would no longer need to determine whether one person was truly violent or out of control; every time someone reported abuse, the police would simply be required to make an arrest. But research suggests that the law may be intimidating victims from actually calling the police to report an instance of abuse.” – Peralta and Novisky, University of Akron

Survey responses of women in domestic violence shelters show that a woman may not report abuse because she fears retaliation after a mandatory arrest. Or the woman may believe she will be arrested as the aggressor. Data show that mandatory arrest laws result in higher arrest rates of victims, as in cases of “dual arrest” when the victim is unclear but the officer is required to make an arrest.

Domestic abuse is the only situation where mandatory arrest exists. Whatever logic and common sense the officer may be able to apply to the situation is overruled by a mandate to arrest someone. The officer must ignore context, circumstances and desires of the victims.

“After an incident of domestic violence, for example, a woman might wish to call the police and have them come to her home. She might reason that a police officer could diffuse an explosive situation or frighten her batterer into ceasing his abuse. She may engage in a careful cost-benefit analysis and determine that, while police presence would be useful, an arrest would not. A woman may be dependent on the income of her batterer, for example, or she may not want their children to witness their father’s arrest. Such a woman, if aware of a mandatory-arrest policy in her jurisdiction, would likely refrain from calling the police at all, and would thereby be deprived of a potentially useful tool in her struggle to end the violence in her life.” – Fedders, New York University

The mandatory arrest movement began after a 1981-82 study in Minneapolis found that mandatory arrest lowered future domestic abuse rates. However, the study was never able to be replicated, and studies in cities with large populations of poor minorities showed opposite results.

It turns out that the same author of the Minneapolis study has changed his view. Lawrence Sherman followed up on a Milwaukee study conducted 23 years ago and found that mandatory arrest can be downright deadly, especially in poor minority communities.

“…domestic violence victims whose partners were arrested on common assault charges – mostly without causing injury – were 64% more likely to have died early, compared to victims whose partners were warned but not removed by police.
Among African-American victims, arrest increased early mortality by a staggering 98%.”

Yet another study found that intimate partner homicides are 50% higher in states with mandatory arrest laws, compared to states without mandatory arrest laws. Again, this is most likely due to an unwillingness to report the initial abuse.

“…because of psychological, emotional and financial ties that often keep victims loyal to their abusers, the cost of arrest is easily transferred from abusers to victims. Victims want protection, but they do not always want to see their partners put behind bars.”

Domestic abuse is a very real problem, and victims should have no hesitation in calling for help. However, is mandatory arrest the answer? The unintended consequences of such non-discretionary, heavy-handed policing may be outweighing the intended benefits.

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