China's 'social credit' system ranks citizens and punishes them with throttled internet speeds and flight bans if the Communist Party deems them untrustworthy

Alexandra Ma,Katie Canales
Fri, December 24, 2021

China's property sector is central to its economy.Getty Images


China has been rolling out a system that ranks its citizens based on their "social credit."


People can be punished if they drive badly, buy too many video games, or steal.


It's not a unified, nationwide system, but China plans on eventually making it mandatory for everyone.


The Chinese Communist Party has been constructing a moral ranking system for years that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population — and rank them all based on their "social credit."

The "social credit system," first announced in 2014, is "an important component part of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system" and aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful," according to a 2015 government document.

The rankings are decided by China's economics planning team, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the People's Bank of China, and the Chinese court system, according to the South China Morning Post.

The system can be used for individual people, but also for companies and government organizations. The private sector, including the burgeoning tech world in China, has their own non-governmental scoring systems that they implement, as Wired reported.

For example, Sesame Credit, which is owned by Jack Ma's Ant Group, uses its own unofficial scoring system for its employees, such as studying shopping habits, according to the think tank Merics.

The program has been piloted for millions across the country in recent years, as CNBC reported, and was expected to become fully operational and integrated by 2020.

But at the moment the system is piecemeal and voluntary, though the plan is for it to eventually be mandatory and unified across the nation, with each person given their own unique code used to measure their social credit score in real-time, per Wired.
Bad driving and debt could get you downgraded in the social ranking system

china beijing street crosswalk people
Beijing, China.Donat Sorokin\TASS via Getty Images


Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior.

The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, and posting fake news online, specifically about terrorist attacks or airport security.

Other potential punishable offenses include spending too long playing video games, wasting money on frivolous purchases, and posting on social media.
Punishments include travel bans and slow internet

China has already started punishing people by restricting their travel, including banning them from flights.

Authorities banned people from purchasing flights 17.5 million times by the end of 2018, according to the National Public Credit Information Centre, as the Guardian reported.

They can also clamp down on luxury options — many are barred from getting business-class train tickets, and some are kept out of the best hotels.

A train station in China.Yang Bo/China News Service via Getty Images

The eventual system will punish bad passengers specifically. Potential misdeeds include trying to ride with no ticket, loitering in front of boarding gates, or smoking in non-smoking areas.

According to Rachel Botsman, an author who published part of her book on tech security on Wired in 2017, the government will throttle your internet speeds as a punishment, though the exact mechanics still haven't been made clear.

According to Foreign Policy, credit systems monitor whether people pay bills on time, much like financial credit trackers — but also ascribe a moral dimension.

You or your kids could also miss out on the best jobs and schools — seventeen people who refused to carry out military service in 2017 were barred from enrolling in higher education, applying for high school, or continuing their studies, Beijing News reported.

And in July of 2018, a Chinese university denied an incoming student his spot because the student's father had a bad social credit score for failing to repay a loan.

You could also get your dog taken away. The eastern Chinese city of Jinan started enforcing a social credit system for dog owners in 2017, whereby pet owners get points deducted if the dog is walked without a leash or causes public disturbances.

A man with his dogs in Jinan in 2016.Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images

Those who lost all their points had their dogs confiscated and had to take a test on regulations required for pet ownership.

Naming and public shaming are other tactics. A 2016 government notice encourages companies to consult the blacklist before hiring people or giving them contracts.

People will be notified by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal against the decision within 10 days of receiving the notification.

Li Xiaolin, a lawyer who was deemed "untrustworthy" after not fulfilling a court order in 2015, was placed on the list and was unable to purchase plane tickets home while on a work trip, Human Rights Watch reported. He also couldn't apply for credit cards.

This video, posted by freelance journalist James O'Malley, includes an example of an announcement on a bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai warning people not to misbehave — or else their "behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system."




'Bad' citizens are punished, but the system also rewards 'good' citizens

People with good scores can speed up travel applications to places like Europe, Botsman said.

An unidentified woman in Beijing told the BBC in 2015 that she was able to book a hotel without having to pay a cash deposit because she had a good score.

The outlet also reported that Baihe, China's biggest dating site now owned by Jiayuan, is boosting the profiles of good citizens.

Citizens with good social credit can also get discounts on energy bills, rent things without deposits, and get better interest rates at banks.

These perks were available to people in Rongcheng, in Eastern China, where the city council rolled out a social credit system for its citizens featured in Foreign Policy in 2018.
The system has been likened to dystopian science fiction

China's social credit system incorporates a moral edge into the program, which is why many have compared it to some level of dystopian governance, such as in George Orwell's "1984" in which the state heavily controls every aspect of a citizen's life.

But despite that — Human Rights Watch called the system "chilling," while Botsman called it "a futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control" — some citizens say it's making them better people already.

A 32-year-old entrepreneur, who only gave his name as Chen, told Foreign Policy in 2018 that "I feel like in the past six months, people's behavior has gotten better and better. For example, when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks. If you don't stop, you will lose your points. At first, we just worried about losing points, but now we got used to it."

Covid is here for good, scientists say. The rest remains unpredictable.




Evan Bush
Thu, December 23, 2021

SEATTLE — Early in the pandemic, many people seized on the hope that Covid-19 could be stopped in its tracks and buried for good once vaccines rolled out.

But hope for a zero-Covid country fizzled for most scientists long ago.

“Everyone has stopped talking about getting rid of Covid,” Dr. Elizabeth Halloran, an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said of her fellow researchers. “It’s not going away, and that means it’s going to be endemic.”


Most scientists now expect the virus to circulate indefinitely with lower and more predictable case numbers — a status known as endemicity. That would make the coronavirus like many other viruses that humanity has learned to deal with, such as influenza. It remains unclear, however, whether the coronavirus will remain a greater health risk than other endemic respiratory viruses.

There are some indications that government and public health officials are already operating with that idea in mind. The latest wave of the omicron variant has served not only as a reminder that the coronavirus is still mutating in unexpected ways, but also as a signpost: Federal messaging and local government action, which once focused on stopping the virus’s spread and relied upon extreme measures like local lockdowns, is now centered on reducing risk and allowing the vaccinated and the boosted to go on with relatively normal lives with precautions.

With Covid expected to become a fixture — and considering how fast the omicron variant spreads — some infectious disease experts now think most everyone could be infected during their lifetimes.

“It seems to me it’s almost inevitable you’re going to become infected,” said Dr. Francis Riedo, an infectious disease physician at EvergreenHealth, a hospital system in Kirkland, Washington. “The real question is how severe that infection is going to be.”

Even if endemic Covid becomes inevitable, however, it doesn’t mean people should stop taking preventive measures, experts say. Instead, they are beginning to consider a future in which Covid precautions, such as masking and occasional encouragement to socially distance, could become somewhat common. Vaccinations would remain central, as would precautions for vulnerable people.

And in the near term, as the omicron variant rages, it remains critical that people — including the vaccinated — try to avoid becoming infected now, when the pandemic is spiking. The health care system could soon be under siege, hospital workers are exhausted, and there aren’t enough treatment tools, like monoclonal antibodies and antiviral pills.

“There’s definitely a responsibility to the community,” Riedo said. “If you look at the country, there are huge swaths unvaccinated and not infected yet but will be. And what can we do to help them?”

A virus becomes endemic as people grow overall immunity to a disease through vaccination or infection. Waning immunity keeps the virus from dying out completely.

For an endemic disease, every person who is infected transmits the virus to one additional person on average. But it’s a “dynamic equilibrium,” Halloran said, and the prevalence of the virus can wax and wane depending on factors like the season.

No model can predict how soon society could make the transition to endemicity, said Sergei Maslov, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research suggests that ever-changing social interactions prevent pathogens from dying out and pushes them toward becoming endemic.

“Mutations are pretty unpredictable at this point, and we don’t know what will happen after omicron,” he said.

It typically takes a few years for a new viral pathogen to move from pandemic to endemic, said Maslov’s research partner, Alexei Tkachenko, a scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York.

“Eventually, yes, there will be some sort of repeated pattern, an average level of prevalence of the epidemic,” Tkachenko said. “We cannot say it will be so low we don’t care.”

Pfizer executives said this week that they believe Covid will become endemic by 2024. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, wrote last week with colleagues that the virus is unlikely to be eradicated and that they expect “periodic outbreaks and endemics.” A survey in February in the journal Nature found that nearly 9 of 10 researchers working on the coronavirus thought Covid would become endemic.

Endemic diseases often settle into more predictable and stable patterns. Influenza, for example, spikes somewhat predictably during colder months. But researchers can’t say for sure how damaging an endemic level of Covid could become.

“The really open question for me — or maybe for public health or all of us — is when it becomes endemic and people become infected, how much severe disease and death does it cause?” Halloran said.

An endemic version of Covid could look somewhat similar to the flu, according to a projection by Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Bedford said he thinks endemic Covid could mean that most people would be infected about every three years, on average, with most cases quite mild.

Bedford’s back-of-the-napkin math — when the delta variant was the primary strain — suggested that 50,000 to 100,000 people could die in the U.S. every year from endemic Covid, according to a presentation he shared this fall. In the decade that preceded Covid, influenza caused 12,000 to 52,000 deaths a year, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Long Covid, a poorly understood disease that follows infection, could increase the social costs of the endemic Covid.

Riedo, an infectious disease physician, said the comparison to flu makes sense. Vaccination will be key to protecting vulnerable groups.

“With Covid, even if you’re vaccinated, some people are going to die, and the average age of those individuals is in their 80s,” Riedo said. “They have multiple comorbidities. They can’t tolerate a small perturbation in their physiology.”

Those who are unvaccinated and die of Covid tend to be younger by 10 to 15 years on average, with fewer health problems, Riedo said, adding that the same holds true for influenza.

Endemic Covid won’t affect everyone equally. Immunosuppressed people might not benefit as much from vaccinations and could need additional protection to reduce the risk of endemic Covid.

Riedo outlined a potential treatment plan for immunosuppressed people, who make up 4 percent to 5 percent of the U.S. population: “Every six months, you go in to get antibodies, and you have rapid tests available to them, and if you’re positive, you start them on new medications,” such as drugs that help inhibit viruses from reproducing.

If risks are more significant during spikes of endemic Covid, layers of protection, like masks and distancing, could still prevent infection and help manage risk, particularly for at-risk populations.

“Covid is not the first time they’ve had to think about double layers of protection or had to think about how to protect themselves during epidemics or environments that put them at risk,” said Erin Sorrell, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “Getting the common cold, the flu, measles, getting anything would be an issue for their health and safety.”

Not every virus becomes endemic or remains that way.

Strict control measures of the first SARS virus, which didn’t spread asymptomatically, allowed health officials to effectively eradicate it. The virus that causes smallpox was eradicated through worldwide vaccination efforts.

Some experts still believe eliminating the coronavirus country by country could be possible, although it would take huge investments and the costs might not outweigh the benefits.

Four other coronaviruses circulate in humans and cause common colds. Scientists suspect that they might have developed out of pandemics before they weakened in severity as people gained immunity.

But this is the first time researchers are measuring a coronavirus on a path toward becoming endemic. More surprises could be in store.

“Who would have thought of omicron?” Halloran said. “Is that in your crystal ball?”

Henry Ford’s Bizarre Social Program To Control The Personal Lives Of Workers


Elizabeth Puckett
Thu, December 23, 2021
⚡️ Read the full article on Motorious

This disgusting program allowed the Ford Motor Company a hand in everything from their employees' love lives to the cleanliness of their homes.

Henry Ford was a man whose personal life and general personality were fraught with more than a few flaws that would be considered borderline horrendous these days. If historical accounts of the man are to be believed, it would appear that he was a terrible racist, sexist, and had a particular distaste for immigrants. However, his father was an Irish immigrant. Of course, this is not to say that the Ford Motor Company wasn't a massive innovator within the automotive industry, but these extreme values even made their way into how Ford did business.

The Ford Sociological Program was a sector of the Ford Motor Company dedicated solely to ensuring their employees' moral and social righteousness. This came from Ford changing its pay rate from $2.34/day(about $65.08/day in 2021) to $5/day($138.97/day in 2021) to reduce their terrible turnover rate of around 370% in 1913. This was an effective policy as it led to the reduction of employees, leaving the company at just 16% in 1915. So what was so wrong with this new Company initiative if the numbers seemed to show positive results?

Apart from the fact that this raise was entirely unsustainable for Ford in the long term, which eventually led to the program's ending. It also came with many downsides in the form of constant monitoring of the employees' personal lives and personal value requirements. The staff within the sociological department consisted of 50 investigators, which would eventually grow to over 200, who would make regular visits to employee households to check up on their homes, children, and spouses. If you were below the age of 22, you needed to be married, and if you were a woman, you weren't eligible for the raise unless you were a single mother.

Patriotism is a beautiful thing, and you should always be proud of your country. However, Henry Ford took things a little too far as he set stringent guidelines around how his employees could act, talk, and believe. If you weren't what he described as a "good American," you would have been blocked from all of the promotion options that other workers could obtain provided they followed the strict values imposed upon by the company. This was after, of course, your pay was reduced to the previous $2.34/day. If your behavior didn't shape up within six months, you would be fired.

'Excluded, humiliated and degraded’: Case of Quebec teacher removed for wearing hijab is ‘disturbing’ for all Canadians


A person wearing a mask with a graphic protesting Quebecs Bill 21 records on their phone during a rally against that law, after a teacher was removed from her position because she wears a hijab, in Chelsea, Que., on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021. Bill 21 bans public sector workers who are considered to be in positions of authority, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols while working. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang


Sakeina Syed
·Contributor
Fri, December 24, 2021

After a teacher in Chelsea, Quebec was told she had to be removed from her role for wearing a hijab, Canadians are expressing concern and outrage.

Fatemeh Anvari was told she had to move to a position outside the elementary school classroom she had been working in due to Bill 21, a Quebec secularism law that bars some civil servants from wearing religious symbols — like Anvari’s hijab.

Since her removal, there has been increased outcry from citizens and politicians. Hundreds gathered in protest on Tuesday in Chelsea, expressing support for Anvari. Meanwhile, Members of Parliament, Senators, and city councillors have been expressing their condemnation of the law.

While members of the Canadian Muslim community are frustrated by the news, they are less surprised.

It’s shocking that Canadians are looking at this incident and are surprised by it. This is exactly what we’ve been saying since Bill 21 had been passed. We’ve been saying what the drastic effects of it could be, and sadly now we’re seeing them.Fatema Abdalla, Communications Coordinator for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM)

“Throughout the nation, Muslims across Canada are frustrated and disturbed by this bill, and are wanting to do more and take more action,” she said.

The NCCM is calling for the federal government to intervene in the legal challenge against Bill 21. Abdalla says they have yet to hear of this intervention.

In a recent press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that despite his opposition to the law, the government would not be stepping in. Trudeau said that he wished to avoid a fight over jurisdiction between Ottawa and Quebec, and would leave the matter of making the case to “Quebeckers themselves.”

Liberal MP Salma Zahid released a statement this week saying it was time for the federal government to step in: “To date, the challenge has come from civil society. But as the party that brought the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to Canada, as a government that champions human rights around the world, we cannot allow the weight of this fight to be carried by civil society alone.”
What does the law mean for Muslims and other religious groups?

The law, known as Bill 21, is officially titled “An Act respecting the laicity of the State,” and it bars certain civil servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols in an effort to impose state secularism.

Abdalla said the NCCM has been fighting Bill 21 “since the day it was passed,” and has been engaged in an ongoing legal challenge of the bill since 2019. In collaboration with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), they have been challenging the constitutionality of the bill.

Alongside this, the groups were pushing for a temporary suspension of the law until it was reviewed by the courts. However, this request was denied, and the appeals process is ongoing.

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, Director of the Equality program at the CCLA, spoke to Yahoo News Canada about the organization’s ongoing objection to the law.

“The harms that are happening are both to fundamental rights — the right to equality is being limited, the right to dignity, and of course to freedom of religion,” said Aviv. She added that the law violates “arguably a whole slew of other rights” on top of these: “People’s livelihoods and professions and career aspirations have been interfered with because of who they are and how they practice.”


Aviv said that when Bill 21 was “rushed through the National Assembly” in 2019, the CCLA filed their challenge within 24 hours.

“When we filed, it it was already clear to us that if people who wore religious symbols could not be hired into their professions or make a move within their professions, even those who were grandfathered in, that this was going to have a huge impact on Muslim women, and potentially also on some others, like religious Jewish men and women, Sikh men and women,” she said.

“Excluded and humiliated and degraded”

During the hearings late last year, Aviv says many people testified about the ways the law had already impacted their lives. These included financial impacts, jeopardized family stability, and emotional repercussions.

“One person talked about wanting to actually be a person who wears hijab — wanting to be her social, kind, caring self — and work with people who would understand that it could break down barriers. That people could see her and know her and understand.

Some of the moving testimony that was heard at the hearing was from women who talked about feeling like a second class citizen, about feeling excluded and humiliated and degraded.”

Masla Tahir is an activist in her final year of university, set to enter law school next year. She founded the organization My Hijab My Right as a response to laws restricting Muslim women’s clothing around the world, including in Belgium, France, and Canada.

Tahir told Yahoo News that hearing about Anvari’s removal from her position elicited a feeling of “helplessness.”

“Despite our activism work or our community engagement work, the bill is still in place. The power really lies within the federal government’s ability to intervene and make this stop, or it’s going to be dragged on in court,” she said.

Tahir said that while the ongoing legal challenges are occurring, it could take years: “In the meantime, it’s Muslim women who are going to be impacted negatively.” She cited the economic impacts that set the women, their families, and their livelihoods at a disadvantage.

She says that the recent events in Quebec, and the existence of the law, are particularly demoralizing in light of her own family’s perspective on coming to Canada.



My mom specifically chose Canada for us to move to because she wanted to raise her daughters in a country where there were equal rights for men and women, where women were given equal opportunity to flourish and follow their dreams.Masla Tahir, founder of My Hijab My Right

“Knowing that Bill 21 exists, and is stealing Muslim women’s dreams,” leaves her wordless.

Like Abdalla, Tahir is unsurprised that Bill 21 has impacted Anvari’s life and the lives of other Quebec women, an outcome she has been speaking out about. But seeing the concerns she’s been voicing be confirmed is no consolation.

“We knew that something like this would happen, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

Analysis-Chile miners brace as president elect signals environmental crackdown


Gabriel Boric



Mon, December 20, 2021
By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's mining sector is bracing for tighter environmental rules ahead after President-elect Gabriel Boric pledged to oppose a controversial $2.5 billion iron-copper mine that was approved in August after years of legal wrangling.

"To destroy the world is to destroy ourselves," Boric told a cheering crowd in his first speech after celebrating election victory on Sunday.

The 35-year-old leftist lawmaker singled out the planned Dominga mine, which critics say could devastate La Higuera, a coastal ecosystem rich in biodiversity with a large number of marine mammals and birds. The project's owner, privately held Andes Iron, has long rejected that assertion.

Boric, who takes office in March, campaigned on a pledge to overhaul Chile's market-oriented economic model, but details on his stance toward mining were thin. His comments on Sunday signaled that environmental regulation may be where he looks to make the biggest difference.

"We don't want more 'sacrifice zones' (areas of high pollution), we don't want projects that destroy our country, destroy communities and we exemplify a case that has been symbolic: No to Dominga," Boric said.

Shares of mining companies dropped sharply on Monday, including Chile-focused lithium miners Albemarle and SQM, amid a wider market retreat.

Prices for copper, Chile's major export, are at record highs, which has whetted the appetite of legislators around the region to push for a bigger share of profits to pay for economic recoveries after the coronavirus pandemic.

In neighboring Peru, the new leftist administration of President Pedro Castillo has given communities stronger backing in a spate of protests against mining firms, often over allegations they pollute local lands and water.

"If there is something that can have a real impact on the mining industry, in my opinion, we should start looking at the environmental issues," said Santiago-based Juan Carlos Guajardo, head of consultancy Plusmining.

Chile has the world's largest reserves of lithium, the ultra-light battery metal that is mined using brine from beneath pristine salt flats in the Atacama desert, where regulation around water use is already under scrutiny. Boric has criticized privatization in the sector and wants a state lithium firm.

The Andean nation is the world's top producer of copper and the No. 2 producer of lithium, a major ingredient of batteries used in electric vehicles. Both metals are seeing sharp price rises on soaring demand and a global rush to secure supply.

Chile is already debating higher taxes on mining firms - something Boric supports - as well as a stalled bill to protect glaciers in the mineral rich Andes. The industry says that measure, if unchanged, would risk current mines and obstruct new ones.

It could impact the Andina and El Teniente mines of state company Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, as well as Anglo American's Los Bronces, Los Pelambres of Antofagasta and Caserones, linked to JX Nippon Mining.

The National Mining Society (Sonami), representing companies in the sector, declined to comment on the president-elect's remarks on Sunday or about the outlook for Dominga.

"It is clear that the new wealth and environmental taxes are on the horizon, while the presidency will support plans to raise royalties on mining firms," said consulting Teneo in a report.

Boric, who has moderated his tone in recent weeks to win over centrist voters, did say environmental adjustments would have to be gradual.

"Not everything can be done at the same time and we will have to prioritize to make progress that allows us to improve, step by step, the lives of our people," he said.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and David Gregorio)

Las Bambas says temporary truce in Peru road does not allow sustainable restart of mine


Peru's Andean rural residents complain of negative effects of mining activity

Thu, December 23, 2021, 

LIMA (Reuters) - MMG Ltd's Las Bambas copper mine said on Thursday that a temporary truce to lift a month-long blockade affecting a key copper transport road in Peru does not guarantee conditions to restart operations in a sustainable way.

Residents of the Chumbivilcas province had been blocking the road since Nov. 20, forcing Las Bambas, which produces some 2% of global copper output, to suspend production.

The situation has created a major issue for the government of leftist President Pedro Castillo. Peru is the world's No. 2 copper producer.

While many Chumbivilcas residents agreed to lift the blockade on Wednesday, Giselle Huamani, a top government official focused on social conflicts, told Reuters that the last community to unblock the road had communicated its decision only on Thursday.

In addition, communities have only agreed to lift the blockade temporarily until Dec. 30 https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/exclusive-peru-protesters-clear-las-bambas-road-after-mining-shutdown-legal-2021-12-22, when Peruvian Prime Minister Mirtha Vasquez is set to visit the area. Residents have said that depending on the agreements reached that day they will lift the blockade permanently or restart it.

Las Bambas said in a statement it "calls on all parties to respect the rule of law and generate the conditions necessary to restart our operations in a sustainable way." The company added that the temporary truce did not meet those conditions.

The Las Bambas mine has been a flashpoint for protests since the mine started operations, with blockades hitting the road on and off for over 400 days since then.

Vasquez has strongly urged protesting communities to clear the road but was vague about the consequences of not doing so. She has not ruled out a state of emergency declaration but said she would rather engage in dialogue.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Chris Reese, Diane Craft and Sonya Hepinstall)

A CALF BY ANY OTHER NAME....
Baby cow escapes NY slaughterhouse, finds sanctuary in Sussex County

William Westhoven, Morristown Daily Record
Thu, December 23, 2021

A Christmas break is keeping a young cow from becoming a Christmas steak.

A 400-pound Hereford heifer that escaped a slaughterhouse last week in Queens has found refuge at Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue center in Sussex County.

New York Police said the cow, estimated to be nine months old, ran away from an area business last Friday and was corralled by rangers later that day in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

"She will now be spending the holiday season at her new home, a local rescue sanctuary," the NYPD Special Ops Department wrote in a Tweet.

"Only in New York!" they added.

The New York City Parks Department also went to social media to praise its staff who "managed to rescue the cow through quick thinking and action."


Looks like our Urban Park Rangers were in a sentimental Moo-d today," they wrote.

The NYPD dispatched its ESU Truck 10 to assist at the scene.

The next day, Skylands posted that "Stacy" was in temporary quarantine at their 230-acre facility in Wantage.

"Little Stacy is doing well, getting used to us as she awaits test results that will hopefully give her the OK to go in with some other kids," they wrote.

During the quarantine period, "She gets human visitors and can see and hear other cows," they explained. "She just can’t get up close with them."

Young Hereford cow that escaped a Queens, N.Y. slaughterhouse finds a new home at Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue Center in Wantage.

Once Stacy clears quarantine, she will join the approximately 450 other permanent residents at Skylands. The population there includes 93 other cows or bovine creatures, according to director Mike Stura.

The animals have permanent homes at the sanctuary after being rescued "from slaughterhouses, live markets, farms, extreme neglect, abuse, religious ceremonies, abandonment and are even found wandering streets."

"No matter where they are from or from what dire circumstances they escape, they are provided with proper veterinary care, the best foods, water, a safe place to live, eat and sleep as well as lots of love around the clock," Skylands states on its website. "Every animal requires room to run and live unencumbered by the threat of harm and each one gets exactly what they need here."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. 

This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Slaughterhouse-bound cow finds refuge at Skylands Sanctuary in Wantage

SHE IS RIGHT, THEY ARE NOT

Parents outraged after teacher mocks 'bigots,' 'evangelicals' in Dr. Seuss-style poem at school board meeting

Tyler O'Neil

FAUX NEWS
Fri, December 24, 2021

Parents in the Austin, Texas, area expressed outrage after a technology teacher read a Dr. Seuss-style poem mocking "evangelicals" and parents who have expressed concerns about books they call pornographic.

Krista Tyler, instructional technology specialist at Grisham Middle School in the Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) read the poem at the Leander ISD school board meeting Dec. 16.

"Everyone in Leander liked reading a lot/ but some evangelicals in Leader did not," Tyler begins. "These kooks hated reading, the whole reading season./ Please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason./ It could be perhaps critical thinking causes fright./ It could be their heads aren't screwed on just right./ But whatever the reason, their brains or their fright,/ they can't follow policy in plain black and white."

"These bigots don't get to choose for us, that's clear," Tyler's poem continues. "Then how, I am wondering, did we even get here./ They growl at our meetings, all hawing and humming,/ ‘We must stop this indoctrination from coming!’/ They've come for the books and the bonds and what for?/ Their kids don't even attend Leander schools anymore./ Bring back our books, maintain decorum, good grief./ Wouldn't it be nice to have a meeting in peace?"

Parents 

WHITE EVANGELICAL TRUMPETTES in Round Rock ISD and Leander ISD expressed outrage over Tyler's poem.

BLAH BLAH BLAH FOX OF COURSE GIVES THE NEXT 1000 WORDS TO PROTESTERS 

THE RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY OF WE PAY YOUR WAGES YOU GET NO SAY WE ARE THE BOSS OF YOU

Schools fear mass exodus of teachers: 'We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack'

Suzanne Perez
Fri, December 24, 2021

Kelly Kluthe, who has taught in public high schools in Kansas and Missouri, recently took a job at a private Catholic grade school, saying she has lost faith in public education.

WICHITA — Kelly Kluthe is one of those rock-star science teachers schools need.

She landed an innovative teaching grant at Olathe West High. She speaks at national conferences about ways to make science lessons fun. She mentored new teachers through the University of Kansas Center for STEM Learning and the UKanTeach program, where she got her start.

She’s been teaching for a decade. Loves science, kids, public education.

And she just quit.

“While I love and believe in education for every student despite their circumstances, public schools as a system don’t love their teachers back,” Kluthe posted on Twitter recently.

“The working conditions have always been challenging, but they became downright unsustainable since the start of the pandemic,” she tweeted. “We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.”

Kluthe is leaving Crossroads Preparatory Academy, a public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, for Notre Dame de Sion Grade School, a private Catholic school known for its small classes and college-prep trajectory.

That tweet about her mid-year departure drew thousands of responses from teachers across the country, many of whom say they’re burned out, depressed and disillusioned.

They point to struggles over teaching in-person and remote students simultaneously, filling in for peers during substitute shortages and feeling the pressure to make up for lost learning time. What’s more, they’re caught in the middle of controversial mask mandates, debates over critical race theory and challenges to books in school libraries.

Steve Case, a former teacher and professor who ran the University of Kansas’ now-defunct UKanTeach program, says schools should prepare for a mass exodus of teachers in coming months.

“I’m very, very afraid of a collapsing system here,” he said. “We will see a very large number of teachers who leave teaching altogether and don’t come back.”

Case, who taught Kluthe at KU, said mid-year resignations that were once rare are becoming more common. Generally, teachers will “gut it out for the kids” until the end of the year, he said. But a notably different tenor this fall has some Kansas teachers speaking out against what they say is a toxic environment.

During a recent meeting of the Blue Valley school board, veteran teacher Dianne O’Bryan urged communities to ease up on the negativity or risk losing more teachers.

“For those angry, highly critical, accusatory parents in our district, please know that you’re a major contributing factor to teachers leaving,” O’Bryan said. “You have a choice to be angry, but we also have a choice to leave.”

Kluthe, 31, said in an interview that she didn’t intend to resign mid-year, but the stresses of teaching started to affect her physical and mental health.

“I was getting anxiety almost every single work night, just dreading coming to work,” she said. “I was starting to resent the students for behavior issues … when I know a lot of those things are outside of their control. It was just not a healthy place for me to be.”

On Twitter, she wrote: “I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out. I have nothing left to give. I need to step away and take care of myself for a bit.”

Her private-school job comes with less pay but also less pressure, Kluthe said — about 10 students per class instead of 23 or more. She also pointed to more planning time, a tight-knit school community and the “freedom to be creative and follow my passions.” She’ll teach fourth- and fifth-grade science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, classes, mentor peers and write a new social justice curriculum.

“I want to retire (as) a teacher,” she said, “but I need a school that will love me as much as I love my work.”

Case, the retired professor, said Kluthe’s comments echo a growing frustration among teachers “who have not had a voice” in discussions around education.

“It’s like, yeah, we’re talking about it. We know all this stuff,” he said. “But nobody’s doing anything about it, and that’s where hope gets lost.”

Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Some experts think Kansas could soon see mass exodus of teachers

DEP: Texas oil company permit for exploratory well in Big Cypress may be denied

Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press
Thu, December 23, 2021, 

The state is encouraging Texas oil speculators to withdraw their plans until more information is provided on how seismic testing and oil drilling in the Big Cypress National Preserve will be remediated.

Burnett Oil has coveted lands in the preserves for years, filing applications with state and federal agencies to allow a 12,000-foot-deep exploration well.

The company conducted seismic testing over the past several years in the preserve, and critics say the company did not comply with mitigation plans for that part of the drilling process.

Betty Osceola leads a group of concerned citizens and Miccosukee and Seminole tribe members on a hike through Big Cypress National Preserve on Saturday, April 10, 2021. The group is unhappy about a proposed oil drilling site in the preserve.

Jaclyn Lopez, with the Center for Biologist Diversity, said she's concerned that Burnett will again violate the terms of the permit by failing to properly address environmental damages.

"We’re quite worried about that," Lopez wrote in an email to The News-Press. "It seems they aren’t able to get the seismic reclamation right after four years, which gives us little reason to believe they’ll get the oil drilling mitigation right."

More: More than 100 manatees died in Lee County waters this year. Advocates concerned about population

Lopez, along with several environmental groups, penned a letter earlier this month to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, expressing their concerns about whether the company will abide by regulations going forward.

Burnett Oil could not be reached for comment.

Others concerned about South Florida's dwindling environmental resources say they'd prefer to see the company give up on its plans in Big Cypress.

Houston Cypress is a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and is involved with several environmental groups.

More: Lake O water levels high, what does it mean for SWFL?

Cypress said he wants the company to stop operations in the Big Cypress, not that he's in favor of drilling elsewhere.

"Overall, I’m about leaving it in the ground, but my first instinct is to say the oil they would pull up anyway is poor quality," Cypress said. "They could get better elsewhere. I’m not saying drill elsewhere. It’s just my way to get rid of them. Overall, I’m against extraction."

He said the land in the Big Cypress is sacred to his people and that he wants the company to clean up previous damages and leave South Florida.

"We recently created a letter that was very critical of the Burnett oil exploration years ago," Cypress said. "They didn’t clean up their act good enough — ruts in the ground and other disturbances that weren’t mitigated or fixed."

DEP sent a letter to the company earlier this week, asking for more information before the permit gets denied.

More: For the birds: Wintering species making their way to Southwest Florida for the season

Burnett submitted changes to the initial permit application last month, and DEP permit reviewers said more information on remediation will be needed before the state can proceed with its review.

"The ongoing changes in project design and mitigation proposals presents a significant challenge to (DEP's) ability to review and assess the permitting criteria," wrote DEP attorney Megan Mills, who is over DEP's permitting program, in a Dec. 20 letter to Burnett. "If reasonable assurances that the permitting criteria have been adequately addressed to support the issuance of a permit are not provided in the next response, your application may be denied."

Burnett has until Feb. 22 to respond with more information, according to the DEP letter.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Oil drilling in Big Cypress National Preserve: DEP wants info from Burnett