Category: The Fifth Column

Students from a high school in Oakland are asked to write about the police in their community. Here are the responses: It’s Not Just Getting Beaten Up by Kamyiah In Oakland, California, why do our protectors abuse us for no reason? Police brutality is a controversial topic. Everyone here, and I bet even everyone outside of here, knows about at least one Oakland police brutality case. For example, we can bring up the shooting of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale Bart Station or the Tupac situation in the 1990’s. Police brutality…

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(FPIF) – In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, four former U.S. diplomats provided remarkably candid commentary on recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East, revealing a number of the most closely guarded secrets of U.S. diplomacy. The four former diplomats emphasized the importance of the region’s oil, spoke critically about the weaknesses of U.S. strategy, made a number of crude comments about U.S. partners, displayed little concern about ongoing violence, and called for more “discipline” throughout the region. One of the former diplomats, James Jeffrey, criticized the…

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BURN INJURIES Whether caused by a raging wildfire or due to an accident while preparing food, burns are a major challenge both on and off the grid. Injuries from burns that require medical help top one million each year in the United States, with thousands of deaths reported. These numbers are alarming, given the fact that, in modern times, few are us are exposed to fire as often or directly as our ancestors were. Despite this, only a small percentage of families have formulated and practiced an escape plan for…

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(Sputnik) – Patrick Meehan, a 62-year-old Republican from Pennsylvania, has claimed that it was his much-younger aide who prompted his intimate communications with the woman, according to the New York Times. “That I would find later that that was not something that she was comfortable with, really hurts me. This was a person who specifically invited communication with me so that she would be able to have the ability to be there for me,” the newspaper quoted Meehan as saying. His remarks came shortly after the US House Ethics Committee began an investigation into Meehan allegedly misusing official resources…

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In order to promote environment awareness, the government of Palau now requires visitors to sign an eco-pledge on their passports before being granted a visa upon arrival. The program, known as “Palau Pledge”, is reportedly the first immigration-related reform in the world that is intended to protect the environment. Palau is a small archipelago located in the western side of the Pacific. It has a population of about 20,000, but more than 160,000 tourists visit the island nation each year. On December 6, 2017, Palau President Tommy Remengesau issued a…

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(Doom And Bloom) – The primary necessity for survival is the availability of air. Once you have air to breathe, water, food, and shelter become the next requirements for your continued existence on the planet; that is, clean water and properly prepared food. Even in normal times, there are many instances where an outbreak of infectious disease occurs due to water of poor quality. Ingesting food that was incompletely cooked caused the deaths of medieval kings in medieval times and may even have sparked the Ebola epidemic in 2014. Epidemics…

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Is Marijuana a medicine?  Twenty-eight states say that marijuana is a medicine, but the Utah lawmakers insist that it shouldn’t be legal, except for cases of severe epilepsy.  Some say the use of marijuana can help treat chronic pain, while other push that the legalization will help further research on dosage, effectiveness, and driver impairment. In Into the weed: What Can Utah Expect If Medical Marijuana Is Legalized?, Jennifer Graham argues that marijuana “is simply a plant, a God-given remedy not so different from aloe or witch-hazel. Like opium derived…

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Proper education on the statues and names of confederates on buildings or monuments is needed to teach future generations from the immoral standpoint we have had for ages.  But putting meaning into a piece of metal, or on a name of a confederate building or monument is stopping us because people put too much emphasis on an inanimate object, instead of the injustice by the actual people. In an article I read, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stated that “these monuments could be used as places to mourn our past…

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(HRW) – The US government has announced it will cut its expected January contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) by half – a move that could undermine efforts to educate children, provide health care to mothers, and feed babies. The US gives this money voluntarily, but, since it’s the agency’s largest donor, this sudden and unexpected decision to withhold US$65 million could have an immediate impact on the Palestinian refugees who rely on UN operations. US President Donald Trump hasn’t been shy about…

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