Newark, NJ to Lay Off 14% of Police Force!

I lived in East Orange next to Newark and traveled through “Brick City” for many years. Even during the good times Newark was a hell hole of unimaginable depravity. I was shot at in Newark, witnessed countless crimes and say crack addicts on every corner. It was like the ghetto you see in movies, without the good times.

It’s about to get much, much worse:

NEWARK, N.J. (CBS 2/1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – There is concern and worry in New Jersey’s largest city.

Newark residents were wondering Tuesday if their streets were safe after 14 percent of the city’s police officers were laid off, CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman reports.

The mayor of Newark and his police director said even with 167 officers laid off, people will not notice a difference on the street.

“Newark residents should know that tonight. We will have virtually the same amount of people, on patrol. As we had last night. And the night before,” Mayor Cory Booker said.

But that answer was not giving the citizens comfort.

[…]

One man said things in Newark are so bad, he did not want to give his last name.

“Taking out those cops has made Newark a difficult place to live. Even we have them, and we’re having problems,” “Thomas” told Guzman.

The Guardian Angels said they would patrol Tuesday night to take up the slack. Booker said that was news to him, but Police Director Garry McCarthy welcomed the help.

Why is Newark about to lose so many cops? Ask their union:

While police officers weren’t allowed to comment, the union was asked to accept a one-time salary deferral, overtime cap or unpaid leave days, something the union saw as a violation of their contract.

Fraternal Order of Police President Derrick Hatcher said there is a contract that should protect cops from being laid off. He wants Booker to admit that when the mayor signed it, Booker knew the money would run out — and he would have to lay people off.

“The mayor should put on his big boy pants and say hey, you know it was an error made by this administration. I’m willing to take it on the chin,” Hatcher said.

But the mayor said the budget gap would have been closed if the union agreed to what amounted to $1,500 in concessions per officer. According to the mayor, the layoffs were necessary to save $9.5 million and help close an $83 million budget gap, CBS 2′s Magee Hickey reported.

“These layoffs were entirely avoidable. These layoffs could’ve been stopped at any moment by the union leadership. We could’ve cut the layoffs in half or a fraction if the union leadership was willing to do something in partnership with the city,” Booker said.

“Today is a very frustrating day for me,” Booker said. “They were unwilling to fulfill any of that gap!”

The cops can blame Mayor Booker all they want but it’s their belief that they shouldn’t have to make sacrifices in this situation that’s to blame. Newark is out of money and the cops all wanted to play chicken with the Mayor. Now the people of Newark will suffer.

Stay out of Newark, especially at night.

Surprise! U.N. Actually Did Bring Cholera into Haiti

The accidental introduction of a South Asian strain of cholera into Haiti was an entirely foreseeable consequence of the United Nations using “peacekeepers” from third world backwaters to run rescue operations.

From News4Jax:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It began as a rumor that farmers saw waste from a U.N. peacekeeping base flow into a river. Within days of the talk, hundreds downstream had died from cholera.

The mounting circumstantial evidence that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti was largely dismissed by U.N. officials. Haitians who asked about it were called political or paranoid. Foreigners were accused of playing “the blame game.” The World Health Organization said the question was simply “not a priority.”

But this week, after anti-U.N. riots and inquiries from health experts, the top U.N. representative in Haiti said he is taking the allegations very seriously.

“It is very important to know if it came from (the Nepalese base) or not, and someday I hope we will find out,” U.N. envoy Edmond Mulet told The Associated Press.

Someday as in never, I’m sure. The Haitian people were much maligned for rioting over this issue but it is clear that not only were they in the right, but that the U.N. wouldn’t listen to their concerns and ended up killing hundreds of people. They imported barbarians who were shitting in the Haitians drinking water and then claimed that it was Haitian ignorance that drove the riots:

Before last month, there had never been a confirmed case of cholera in Haiti.

In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said cholera was “extremely unlikely to occur” in Haiti. There were no cholera bacteria there. Most foreigners were relief workers with good sanitation who come from countries where cholera is not an issue.

Then it did happen. There are now more than 1,100 dead; experts say hundreds of thousands will fall ill as the disease haunts Haiti for years.

Even more surprisingly, it did not first appear in a major port, an earthquake tent camp or an area where foreigners are concentrated, but instead along the rural Artibonite River.

Speculation keeps returning to that river and a base home to 454 U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal. They are perched on a babbling waterway called the Boukan Kanni, part of the Meille River that feeds into the Artibonite.

People living nearby have long complained about the stink in the back of the base and sewage in the river. Before the outbreak began they had stopped drinking from that section of the river, depending instead on a source farther up the mountain.

The latest Nepalese deployment came in October, after a summer of cholera outbreaks in Nepal. The changeover at the base, which guards the area south of the central plateau town of Mirebalais, was done in three shifts on Oct. 9, 12 and 16.

The U.N. says none of the peacekeepers showed symptoms of the disease. But 75 percent of people infected with cholera never show symptoms but can still pass on the disease for two weeks – especially in countries like Nepal where people have developed immunity.

The CDC has said the strain of cholera in Haiti matches one found most prevalently in South Asia.

There’s the smoking gun. And what is the United Nations going to do about it? Nothing:

The peacekeepers have saved lives in floods and defeated kidnapping gangs. They have also killed people in protests and accidents and had an entire unit dismissed for paying for sex, many with underage Haitian girls.

Earlier this month, Dr. Paul Farmer, who founded the medical aid group Partners in Health and is U.N. deputy special envoy for Haiti, called for an aggressive investigation into the source of the cholera, saying the refusal to look into the matter publicly was “politics to me, not science.”

The CDC acknowledges politics played a role in how the investigation unfolded.

“We’re going to be really cautious about the Nepal thing because it’s a politically sensitive issue for our partners in Haiti,” said CDC commander Dr. Scott Dowell.

The CDC agrees that the movement of pathogens from one part of the world to another is an important public health issue. Its scientists are working on samples of bacteria from 13 infected Haitians to sequence the cholera strain’s genome, the results of which will be posted on a public database.

But the U.S. government agency has several caveats. First, it has not taken environmental samples or tested the Nepalese soldiers. Second, it will not go public with its analysis until all its studies are complete. And third, it may not get enough information to say exactly how cholera got into the country.

“The bottom line is we may never know,” Dowell said.

The WHO has repeatedly said the same.

“At some time we will do further investigation, but it’s not a priority right now,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said this week.

But Mulet now says Farmer was right all along, and that he is consulting with experts, including a French epidemiologist who met with him this week to discuss how to investigate the Nepalese base.

“We agree with him there has to be a thorough investigation of how it came, how it happened and how it spread. … There’s no differences there with Dr. Paul Farmer at all.”

As recently as Nov. 10, the mission’s spokesman told Haitian reporters that the U.N. was not undertaking any other investigations because the concerns were not “well-founded.” The head of the mission said that is not the case today.

By the way, just how disgusting are the Nepalese barbarians that the U.N. inflicted on the already suffering Haiti?

This disgusting:

Sanitation at the base is handled by a private company, Sanco Enterprises SA, which won the contract over the summer by underbidding a rival. The U.N. said the septic tanks were to be emptied once a week.

But when the AP visited on Oct. 27, a tank was clearly overflowing. The back of the base smelled like a toilet had exploded. Reeking, dark liquid flowed out of a broken pipe, toward the river, from next to what the soldiers said were latrines. U.N. military police were taking samples in clear jars with sky-blue U.N. lids, clearly horrified.

At the shovel-dug waste pits across the street sat yellow-brown pools of feces where ducks and pigs swam in the overflow. The path to the river ran straight downhill.

The U.N. acknowledged the black fluid was overflow from the base, but said it contained kitchen and shower waste, not excrement.

The U.N. said it is up to the private contractor and local mayor to ensure its dump sites are safe. Sanco Vice President Marguerite Jean-Louis said it is up to the mayor and the U.N. Mirebalais Mayor Laguerre Lochard, who is running for Senate on Sunday, said he complained several times to the U.N. that the site was not safe but never received a response.

Jean-Louis said her company emptied the septic tanks on Oct. 11, after the first shift of Nepalese troops arrived, and did not return again until after the outbreak began. At some point in mid-October, neighbors said a new Sanco driver they did not recognize came one day and dumped outside of the usual pits.

Sanco returned to the base after the AP had been there for hours. There was more waste than usual, Jean-Louis said, possibly because the soldiers overlapped during their rotations.

Following protests at the base days later, the U.N. opened the compound to the AP. The Nepalese soldiers acknowledged, after repeated questions and revised statements, that the base had undergone an extensive clean-up and that they had replaced the broken pipe. Aboveground pipes from uphill latrines ran over a drainage canal to the river. The U.N. spokesman acknowledged what looked like human waste at the bottom.

Why would the U.N. import cholera ridden savages who think nothing of dumping human waste in the drinking water of Haitians?

Rossi Ranch Hand Now Available

Want!

The Firearm Blog is reporting that the Rossi Ranch Hand is now available.  The mare’s leg style lever action pistol has already been much maligned by armchair gun fighters and mall ninjas who claim that anything that isn’t a Glock is a useless hunk of junk, but a ATF approved short barreled rifle is a handy woodsrunnung gun for we who like to travel light.

Now the Ranch Hand has avoided running afoul of the ATF’s arcane rules is technical mumbo-jumbo you probably won’t ever need to know. The point is that the 12″ barrel and short “stock” (which doesn’t count as a stock because it’s part of the reciver?) makes it easier (if not comfortable) to shoot long distances and the lever action is as reliable an action that has ever been invented. The Ranch Hand can fit inside a bag or be lashed to a pack andbe out of the way until you need it. Easy to cache and easy to maintain, the new Rossi is also selling for under $500 which makes it a good deal. I’m currently putting calls into the local guns stores to get one now.

Hong Kong Confirms Human Bird Flu Case, Florida Hit with Cholera and Dengue Fever

Just what we all need. According to Time a woman has been confirmed to have H5N1, the first case in seven years:

(HONG KONG) — Hong Kong has confirmed its first case of human bird flu in seven years.

Health Secretary York Chow said late Wednesday that a 59-year-old woman had tested positive for H5N1 bird flu after returning to Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland, and is in serious condition in a local hospital.

With the announcement, the government raised the bird flu alert to “serious,” meaning there is a risk of contracting the disease within the territory.

Chow said Hong Kong officials were meeting Thursday and would determine whether additional measures are needed to safeguard local residents.

The bird flu virus first struck Hong Kong in 1997. Six people died in that outbreak and all chickens in the territory were culled.

Time to stock up on masks again? Maybe. New diseases are not the only problems we have as illnesses once thought extinct in the civilized world make a comeback. Florida is now reporting a Cholera infection as well as an outbreak of Dengue Fever both of which have not been seen in the area in decades:

TAMPA, Florida — State health workers say it’s official: Florida is now witnessing incidents of two diseases we haven’t experienced in years, if not decades.

“It’s of course important for Floridians in all parts of the state, but especially South Florida,” says Dr. Carina Blackmore with the state’s health department.

The diseases being discussed are cholera and dengue fever. Cholera is spread by unsanitary conditions. Dengue fever, by mosquitoes.

[…]

The other disease being watched closely is dengue fever, which is transmitted through mosquitoes. Dengue fever can cause severe headaches, muscle pain – and in some cases, even death.

Miami-Dade confirmed its first locally-acquired case of dengue fever this week. That means the disease did not come from a foreign source into the U.S., but rather it originated here.

The state of Florida has seen six times as many cases of dengue fever this year as in 2009. So far, 120 cases.

Seven of those cases were in Hillsborough County. All seven, say officials, were people bringing the disease from another country. In each case, the person was identified and spraying in that person’s neighborhood was intensified to kill mosquitoes.

Only about one percent of the mosquito population is the type of mosquito capable of carrying the disease. But officials warn, that still is enough for them to be concerned.

I bet. Aside from the usual precautions studies have shown that green tea aids in antibiotics in combating resistant infections and light therapy has shown promise. Dengue and H5N1 are viruses so their treatment is different , but because both can require hospitalization it is likely that we will sufferers pick up secondary infections of “superbugs” like MSRA if these outbreaks get large enough.