It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, January 10, 2022
CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M Pakistan’s Investigation Agency Contacts Binance About $100M Scam Amitoj Singh Mon, January 10, 2022
Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said it wants to talk to Binance as part of an investigation into a suspected scam it said has cost several thousand investors more than $100 million.
The FIA’s Cyber Crime unit sent a notice to Binance Holdings Ltd. in the Cayman Islands and Binance.US and issued an order of attendance to Humza Khan, the general manager/growth analyst at Binance Pakistan, “to explain his position on the linkage of fraudulent online investment mobile applications with Binance,” the unit’s head, Imran Riaz, tweeted on Jan 7.
The suspected scam involved 11 mobile applications, 26 wallets and several thousand investors. On Dec. 20, 2021, “people from all over Pakistan” contacted the agency that the apps had “stopped working over a period of time,” defrauding “Pakistani people of billions of rupees,” according to a statement posted by Riaz.
“We are working with the Federal Investigation Agency to resolve these issues,” Binance said in tweet.
Investors had been asked to register on Binance and then transfer money from their accounts to the mobile applications. At the same time, a Telegram group was set up where “so-called expert betting signals, on the rise and fall of Bitcoin, were given by the anonymous owner of the application and admins of the Telegram group. Once considerable capital was created the apps crashed and thousands lost their money.”
The reported range of investment was $100 to $80,000, with an estimated average of $2,000 per person, taking the total amount of the suspected scam to nearly $100 million. The apps were identified as MCX, HFC, HTFOX, FXCOPY, OKIMINI, BB001, AVG86C, BX66, UG, TASKTOK and 91fp.
All bank accounts linked to the apps have been blocked, Telegram has been contacted, influencers who promoted these apps are being served legal notices and Binance has been asked to give details of the 26 wallets.
Nearly 8,000 detained in Kazakhstan over violent protests 1 / 9 People walk past a shop with windows broken during clashes in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Kazakhstan's health ministry says over 150 people have been killed in protests that have rocked the country over the past week. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's office said Sunday that order has stabilized in the country and that authorities have regained control of administrative buildings that were occupied by protesters, some of which were set on fire.
(Vladimir Tretyakov/NUR.KZ via AP)More
DASHA LITVINOVA Mon, January 10, 2022,
MOSCOW (AP) — Nearly 8,000 people in Kazakhstan were detained by police during protests that descended into violence last week and marked the worst unrest the former Soviet nation has faced since gaining independence 30 years ago, authorities said Monday.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Monday described the unrest that followed initially peaceful protests against rising energy prices as a “terrorist aggression" against the mineral-rich Central Asian nation of 19 million and dismissed reports that authorities targeted peaceful demonstrators as “disinformation.”
Kazakhstan's Interior Ministry reported that 7,939 people have been detained across the country. The National Security Committee, Kazakhstan’s counterintelligence and anti-terrorism agency, said Monday the situation has “stabilized and is under control.”
Monday was declared a day of mourning for the victims of the violent unrest, which the health ministry says killed 164 people, including three children.
The demonstrations began on Jan. 2 over a near-doubling of prices for vehicle fuel and quickly spread across the country, with political slogans reflecting wider discontent with Kazakhstan's authoritarian government.
In a concession, the government announced a 180-day price cap on vehicle fuel and a moratorium on utility rate increases. As the unrest mounted, the ministerial cabinet resigned and the president replaced Nursultan Nazarbayev, former longtime leader of Kazakhstan, as head of the National Security Council.
One of the main slogans of the past week's protests, “Old man out,” was a reference to Nazarbayev, who served as president from Kazakhstan’s independence until he resigned in 2019 and anointed Tokayev as his successor. Nazarbayev had retained substantial power at the helm of the National Security Council.
Despite the concessions, the protests turned extremely violent for several days. In Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, the protesters set the city hall on fire and stormed and briefly seized the airport. For several days, sporadic gunfire was reported in the city streets.
The authorities declared a state of emergency over the unrest, and Tokayev requested help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states. The group has authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.
Tokayev has said the demonstrations were instigated by “terrorists” with foreign backing, although the protests have shown no obvious leaders or organization. On Friday, he said he ordered police and the military to shoot to kill “terrorists” involved in the violence.
In a statement Monday, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said the peaceful protests “were hijacked by terrorist, extremist and criminal groups,” including radical Islamist fighters with combat experience.
Speaking Monday at an extraordinary virtual summit of CSTO, Tokayev promised to reveal to the world “additional evidence" of a “terrorist aggression” against Kazakhstan. He stressed that the demands of peaceful protesters have been “heard and met by the state,” and the unrest that followed involved “groups of armed militants” whose goal was to overthrow the government.
Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed that sentiment, calling the unrest “an act of aggression" masterminded from abroad.
“The events in Kazakhstan are not the first and not the last attempt at interfering in the internal affairs of our states from the outside,” Putin said at the summit.
The Kazakh president added that “constitutional order” has been restored and the “large-scale anti-terrorist operation" in the country will soon wrap up, along with the CSTO mission.
The foreign militants involved, Tokayev charged later Monday, came from “mostly Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan,” and some from Mideast nations.
Kazakhstan's National Security Committee said Monday that “hot spots of terrorist threats” in the country have been “neutralized.” The committee also told Russia's Interfax news agency that authorities released well-known Kyrgyz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov, whose arrest over his alleged participation in the unrest sparked outrage in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.
Ruzakhunov was shown in a video on Kazakh television saying he had flown to the country to take part in protests and was promised $200. In the video, apparently taken in police custody, Ruzakhunov’s face was bruised and he had a large cut on his forehead.
Kyrygzstan's Foreign Ministry had demanded Ruzakhunov's release, and the country's authorities on Monday sought to open a probe on charges of torture.
On Monday evening, Ruzakhunov returned to Kyrgyzstan. He told a local TV channel that he came to Almaty on Jan. 2 to visit a friend, but several days later, as the protests turned violent, decided to travel back to Kyrgyzstan and was detained.
In jail, Ruzakhnunov heard from cellmates that confessing to going to Almaty with the purpose of taking part in the protests and being offered money for it was the quickest way to get deported home, so that's what he decided to do.
“It was a path (home), so I decided to implicate myself, even though I didn't do it,” Ruzakhunov said.
China offers Kazakhstan security support, opposes 'external forces'
THE ONLY EXTERNAL FORCES ARE CHINA AND RUSSIA
Municipal workers clean the streets near the main square of Almaty
Mon, January 10, 2022
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is willing to increase "law enforcement and security" cooperation with neighbouring Kazakhstan and help oppose interference by "external forces", China's foreign minister said on Monday, after violent protests in the Central Asian country.
Wang Yi, who is also a state councillor, made the comments in a call to Kazakhstan's foreign minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
"Recent turmoil in Kazakhstan shows that the situation in Central Asia is still facing severe challenges, and it once again proves that some external forces do not want peace and tranquillity in our region," the ministry quoted Wang telling Tileuberdi.
Government buildings in Kazakhstan were briefly captured or torched in several cities last week as initially peaceful protests against fuel price increases turned violent. Troops were ordered to shoot to kill to put down a countrywide uprising.
Authorities have blamed the violence on "extremists", including foreign-trained Islamist militants, for the violence.
Authorities also asked a Russian-led military bloc to send in troops, who the government says have been deployed to guard strategic sites, a move questioned by United States.
Experts say China worries instability in its neighbour could threaten energy imports and Belt-and-Road projects there, and security in its western Xinjiang region, which shares a 1,770-km (1,110-mile) border with Kazakhstan.
China was willing to "jointly oppose the interference and infiltration of any external forces", said Wang.
China's President Xi Jinping on Friday told Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev that China resolutely opposed any foreign force that destabilises Kazakhstan and engineers a "colour revolution", Chinese state television said.
China and Russia believe "colour revolutions" are uprisings instigated by the United States and other Western powers to achieve regime change.
"China does not want to see an expansion of U.S. influence in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a result of this unrest," said Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
"If a colour revolution in a nearby country leads to political democratisation, it could encourage the liberal-leaning intellectual elite in China to try something similar," he said.
Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, China traditionally does not send troops to other countries, citing its policy of non-interference, except under the United Nations Peacekeeping banner.
Last month it sent six police officers to the Solomon Islands to help train the police force and quell the riots sparked by the country's 2019 switch of diplomatic relations to Beijing from Taiwan.
(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Yew Lun Tian; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Spike in coal use helped push U.S. greenhouse gas emissions higher in 2021
In 2021, greenhouse gas emissions rose by 6.2 percent over the previous year thanks in part to a dramatic surge in coal-fired electricity, according to preliminary data released Monday.
The report, issued by the Rhodium Group, found that as the U.S. economy rebounded from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the price of natural gas spiked, electricity generated by burning coal rose 17 percent nationwide.
“Emissions grew even faster than the economic recovery, and that was largely the rebound in coal generation,” Kate Larsen, co-author of the Rhodium Group report, told CNN.
In addition to an uptick in coal generation, the American transportation sector, “which accounts for 31% of net US emissions,” according to the report, also rebounded from pandemic lows, resulting in an increase in the use of diesel fuel to power trucks.
Coal, which the Rhodium Group said accounts for 28 percent of net U.S. emissions, has long been targeted by experts as the low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change. More than 40 nations agreed in November at U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to phase out coal, by far the dirtiest fossil fuel, as an energy source over the next two decades. The U.S., however, was not one of them.
While coal consumption rose in relation to the price of natural gas in 2021, its future as an energy source remains tenuous, and the rise in coal consumption last year was the first seen since 2014, according to the report. Most climate experts agree that ditching coal is essential to achieve global pledges on greenhouse gas emissions. This would include President Biden’s vow to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.
PacifiCorp's Hunter coal-fired power plant in Castle Dale, Utah. (George Frey/AFP via Getty Images)
"Consigning coal to history is a process, not solvable in an instant," Pauline Heinrichs, policy adviser at EG3, a European climate change think tank, said in a statement following the deal signed in Glasgow to phase out coal. "The progress this week has seen major coal-burning countries commit to a coal exit, along with the creation of the tools, partnerships and money needed to help them do this."
Despite the year-over-year rise in greenhouse gas emissions, the amount of atmospheric pollution by the U.S. remains below a record level set in 2005. But Biden's Build Back Better spending bill is stalled in the Senate, and the chances of cutting the country's emissions in half by 2050 are viewed as all but impossible without its passage.
The biggest roadblock for Democrats is Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the second-largest coal-producing state in the nation. Yet the powerful coal miners’ union, the United Mine Workers of America, has come out in favor of passing Build Back Better and is pressuring Manchin to support it.
“We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities,” Cecil Roberts, UMWA president, said in a December statement.
While the overall aim of the Biden administration is to transition away from coal so as to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets, backsliding on coal generation poses a further challenge to achieving those goals.
“The uptick in GHG emissions in 2021 moves the country even further from meeting its Paris Agreement climate target of reducing emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030,” the Rhodium Group report stated.
Coal emissions increased for the first time in 7 years, pushing the US even further from meeting its 2030 climate goals: analysis dbwalker@insider.com (DeArbea Walker)
Less is more, when it comes to coal and insurance.
Coal emissions increased for the first time in seven years in 2021, according to a new analysis.
Overall emissions rose from 2020 to 2021 faster than the overall growth of the economy. The rebound in emissions makes the US even less likely to hit its climate change goals as part of the Paris accords.
The US is even further from hitting its 2030 climate goals as coal emissions increased for the first time in 7 years in 2021, a new preliminary analysis found.
According to a report from researchers at Rhodium Group, greenhouse emissions increased more than 6% from 2020 to 2021, in part due to a 17% increase in coal-fired power.
Coal emissions had been dropping since 2014, but rebounded as the economy shook off a slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The research also suggests emissions spiked because of rising prices for power alternative natural gas, making coal-fired electricity more appealing.
Emissions in 2021 climbed at a faster rate than the overall growth of the economy, a concerning statistic, researchers said.
"We expected a rebound, but it's dismaying that emissions came back even faster than the overall economy," Kate Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, told the Guardian. "We aren't just reducing the carbon intensity of the economy; we are increasing it. We are doing exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing."
The sector with the largest increase in emissions year-over-year was the transportation sector, fueled by diesel consumption, according to the report.
Overall, greenhouse emissions in 2021 were still 5% lower than 2019 levels.
But the US greenhouse gas emissions were only 17% below 2005 levels in 2021, putting the US further behind its targets as part of the Paris Agreement Climate Agreement.
The US had agreed to reduce emissions to 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030.
The Rhodium researchers said Congress, the federal government, and individual states "all must act quickly" to get the US back on track.
The Build Back Better package — which stalled in the US Senate — was expected to cut US emissions to between 45-51% of 2005 levels, according to a separate Rhodium Group report.
President Joe Biden said his goal is to cut emissions to net-zero by 2050, which climate scientists said will require closing all coal-fired power stations across the country by 2025.
"It means that by 2025 we will have to have closed down all coal-fired power stations across the planet," Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research director John Schellnhuber told The Guardian. "And by 2030, you will have to get rid of the combustion engine entirely. That decarbonization will not guarantee a rise of no more than 1.5 Celsius, but it will give us a chance. But even that is a tremendous task."
Sulli Deals: Police arrest man for making app to auction Muslim women
"Sulli" is a derogatory Hindi slang term right-wing Hindu trolls use for Muslim women, and "bulli" is also pejorative.
Mon, January 10, 2022 Aumkareshwar Thakur was arrested in Madhya Pradesh state
Police in India have arrested a man suspected of creating an app that put up photos of more than 80 Muslim women for "sale" online last year.
The open source app - Sulli Deals - had been hosted on web platform GitHub in July 2021.
The 25-year-old was arrested days after a similar app - Bulli Bai - uploaded photos of more than 100 Muslim women.
Four students, including a 21-year-old student who allegedly created the second app, were arrested.
In both cases, there was no actual sale, but the purpose was to degrade and humiliate Muslim women, many of whom have been outspoken about the rising tide of Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"Sulli" is a derogatory Hindi slang term right-wing Hindu trolls use for Muslim women, and "bulli" is also pejorative.
After the Bulli Bai app generated outrage online, one of the women who had filed a police complaint in July alleged that police in the capital Delhi had not taken any action yet.
On Sunday, police arrested Aumkareshwar Thakur from Indore city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.
Police told BBC Marathi that Mr Thakur's name came up while Neeraj Bishnoi, the alleged creator of the Bulli Bai app, was being questioned.
Mr Thakur's devices are being analysed, KPS Malhotra, the deputy commissioner of Delhi Police's cyber crime team, told the BBC.
The Sulli Deals app had taken publicly available pictures of women and created profiles, describing the women as "deals of the day".
Those featured on the app were all vocal Muslims, including journalists, activists, artists or researchers.
One of the women, a commercial pilot, told the BBC in July that she felt "chills" go down her spine when she heard about the app.
The Bulli Bai app also generated similar reactions from the women whose photos were uploaded without their permission - this included several journalists, a Bollywood actor and the 65-year-old mother of a disappeared Indian student.
A 2018 Amnesty International report on online harassment in India showed that the more vocal a woman was, the more likely she was to be targeted - the scale of this increased for women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes.
Critics say trolling against Muslim women has worsened in recent years in India's polarised political climate.
USA
Trauma lingers for FCPS students who experienced repeated seclusion and restraint
IS TORTURE
Jillian Atelsek, The Frederick News-Post, Md. Sat, January 8, 2022, Jan. 8—It was the first day of third grade, and James had been in school for 19 minutes.
By 9:20 a.m., the 8-year-old was locked in a padded, closet-sized room. He'd remain there, alone, for nearly three hours.
Though Maryland law is clear that no child may be kept in seclusion for more than 30 minutes, Frederick County Public Schools seemed to have found a loophole. In their logbook, staff recorded James' seclusion time that day in half-hour chunks, according to discipline records provided by his mother and examined by The Frederick News-Post: 9:20 to 9:50. Then 9:51 to 10:21. Then 10:22 to 10:52. On and on until 12:08 p.m.
"From what he explained, sometimes they would pull him out and then shove him back in," said James' mom, Beth. "Sometimes they would open the door and then just close it again."
The News-Post is identifying James and Beth by pseudonyms and omitting the name of the school James attended to protect the child's privacy.
James has a learning disability and a nervous system disorder that can cause him to act out in class. Beth acknowledged he could be a handful — talking during lessons, kicking his feet into his aide's. By that first day of third grade, he was no stranger to seclusion. He'd return there on the second day. And the third. And the fourth.
By the time Beth pulled him from the school just a few weeks later, James had been secluded more than 80 times — all between April of his second-grade year and October of his third. Often, the incidents lasted far more than 30 minutes.
James was traumatized, Beth said. Since his first seclusion, he'd become violent and prone to meltdowns in a way she'd never seen. And the wounds were lasting: Years later, James still struggles to make it through a school day without a flashback or a meltdown. As it came time for him to start middle school — new teachers, new classrooms, new rules — he was terrified of all the unknowns.
"I can remember sitting with him as he's rocking back and forth screaming," Beth said. "And he said, 'How do I know they're not going to hurt me?'"
----
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice informed FCPS it was investigating the district's use of seclusion and restraint. The practices — during which staff physically immobilize students and lock them into empty rooms — are legal when they're used to protect against "imminent, serious physical harm."
But FCPS regularly turned to seclusion and restraint in non-emergency situations, particularly when it came to students with disabilities, the DOJ found. State data shows FCPS led the state by a wide margin in its use of seclusion and restraint between 2017 and 2019.
In the weeks since the DOJ investigation was announced Dec. 1, the News-Post spoke to more than a dozen people about the potentially devastating impact of these practices, including parents, students, staff members, advocates and experts.
Across Frederick County, kids who have experienced repeated restraints and seclusions are unquestionably changed, their parents said: They're angrier, sadder and more afraid.
James' was one of four specific situations the DOJ examined as part of its review, said Beth's attorney, Ashley VanCleef. What happened to him wasn't a one-off incident, she said.
VanCleef, who runs a Frederick-based practice representing families in special education lawsuits, has worked with a "large number" of other Frederick County parents who have levied complaints regarding the use of restraint and seclusion against their children in recent years, she said. Typically, she'd end up in mediation sessions between the family and the district. Sometimes, she'd file claims with the state education department.
As a former special education teacher who has worked for the Texas and Oklahoma state education departments, VanCleef is familiar with the difficult position educators can find themselves in when a child is out of control. But in Frederick County, she believes the laws governing seclusion and restraint were too often bent or outright broken. Children were subjected to the practices for more than the legally allowable time, she said, and for behaviors that didn't meet the necessary threshold.
"We're using it in times where a kid is throwing their shoe or throwing their crayons," she said. "That's not a risk of serious bodily injury."
Across these most severe cases, VanCleef said, the common thread is lasting psychological damage.
Under the terms of a settlement with the DOJ, FCPS must offer three months of weekly therapy sessions to every student it secluded or restrained between the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2021.
"I can tell you right now," VanCleef said, "it's not going to be enough."
'A terrible nightmare'
Before 2018, Zeke Boddicker's eyes would be bright in the mornings. He'd eat his breakfast happily. Waiting for the bus, he'd make singsong noises.
But after he started sixth grade, his mom, Kristi Kimmel, said something changed. Zeke, who is autistic and nonverbal, started to self-abuse — a behavior he'd never shown before. He'd pinch his own arms, bite his hands and punch his sides and legs until they were painted with bruises.
His distress began as the school bus pulled up, Kimmel recalled, and resumed when he arrived home in the afternoons.
"Anytime we would even get his backpack," Kimmel said, "he would start hitting himself."
That year, Zeke was newly enrolled in Rock Creek School, FCPS's school for students with severe disabilities. When Kimmel toured the building, staff told her they hadn't used the seclusion room in two years, she recalled.
On Dec. 29, 2021, FCPS sent Kimmel the final tally. Her son was secluded 206 times and restrained 71 times in less than one school year.
Like Beth, Kimmel was interviewed by DOJ investigators. When she saw the government's findings, she felt validated in her belief that Zeke's self-abuse was a stress response related to his seclusions — not a result of the transition to a new school or a struggle with puberty, as some staff had suggested.
Seclusion and restraint can hurt children, said Ross Greene, a clinical child psychologist who taught at Harvard Medical School for more than 20 years and wrote four books on behavioral challenges in kids.
The practices are especially harmful because they happen at the hands of adults whom children have been taught to trust. Some students will lose trust in authority figures altogether, Greene said, or lose their desire to attend school. Others experience residual anguish long after the ordeal ends.
"The kids I've worked with who were most affected by it are still affected by it, even though no one's laid hands on them three or four years later," said Greene, who now runs a nonprofit called Lives in the Balance and travels to schools, psychiatry units and detention facilities around the world to promote alternative disciplinary approaches. "A lot of people would say that meets the diagnostic criteria for post traumatic stress disorder."
And the methods rarely improve behavior, Greene said. Sometimes, they make it worse.
Cole Longstaff, who was in the Pyramid program at Lewistown Elementary, recalled that staff would restrain or seclude a student in his class nearly every day. You could get locked away for arguing with a classmate or refusing to come in from recess, he said. The seclusion room wasn't far from the classroom, and he could hear secluded students' screams from his desk.
Lewistown is one of two elementary schools in the county that hosts the Pyramid program, which serves students with significant social and emotional needs.
The students hated seclusion, Cole said. The threat of it would immediately set them off.
"It would just make us angrier," he said.
In a letter sent to FCPS on the day they announced the settlement, DOJ officials wrote the district's use of restraint and seclusion "escalated students' behaviors and often heightened their distress."
For Sophia Warfield, whose son Shadin Goodin is autistic, that rang true. During one semester of his second-grade year at Lewistown Elementary School, Shadin was restrained 42 times and secluded six times, Warfield said.
Shadin's grandparents were the first to raise the alarm about the effects it was having on the little boy, Warfield said. "Something's not right," they'd tell her. Choking up at the memory, Warfield said she'd watch Shadin withdraw in the mornings as it came time to board the bus. Then, she'd watch him fall apart when he got home.
"It was just a terrible nightmare," Warfield said. "You'd say, 'Well, how was school today?' And he would just curl himself up in a ball and just cry."
Queen Wheeler saw similar changes in her son, Sulaiman. He began experiencing restraint around 2014, she said. He was a kindergartener at Spring Ridge Elementary then.
After a while, Wheeler could tell that her son's confidence was shot.
"He would have meltdowns at home a lot. He would ask me if he was ugly. He would ask me if he was dumb," Wheeler remembered. "Whenever I would try to compliment him, or tell him that I loved him, that he was sweet, that he was handsome, he would cry."
Shadin and Sulaiman checked a series of boxes that put them at risk for repeated seclusions and restraints: Black, autistic boys in elementary school experience those practices at a rate much higher than their peers. The trend is borne out in FCPS data and nationwide.
The DOJ found FCPS performed 7,253 seclusions and restraints on 125 students during the two and a half school years it examined the school system. Eighty-nine percent of the reported seclusions and restraints took place at three schools: Rock Creek, Lewistown and Spring Ridge.
Spring Ridge and Lewistown were the only elementary schools in FCPS to host the Pyramid program at the time.
Parents of kids like Zeke, James and others recognize the challenges their children pose to educators. Zeke, unable to speak, would pinch his aides' arms as a way to get their attention. It could be painful, Kimmel said.
James could be disrespectful, rambunctious, off-task. In incident reports, his teachers wrote that he would hit and kick them — but his mother is adamant that he was never violent before the pattern of seclusion began.
"I'm not going to pretend that he was the easiest kid in the world to educate," Beth, his mom, said. "I'm not going to pretend like, 'Oh, he was a model perfect student.' But he wasn't aggressive."
James was repeatedly kept in the seclusion room long after teachers recorded on their incident forms that he was entirely calm. He grew accustomed to eating lunch there, Beth said. That was documented on the forms, too. If he was regulated enough to sit in the corner and eat his cheeseburger, Beth wondered, why on Earth wouldn't they let him out?
When the issues started piling up, several parents told the News-Post, many felt intimidated by the complexities of a large school system. They didn't know where to start or who to turn to. And when they did find an avenue through which they could share their concerns, many said, they were made to feel that their children were just too difficult.
"They fought me. They made me feel like I didn't know what I was talking about," Wheeler said. "They were the professionals, and I was just his mother."
'All about training'
In January 2019, Kimmel approached her son's teachers. She was troubled by the steady stream of notes she had been receiving from the school saying Zeke was restrained or secluded.
FCPS officials said they'd send a behavioral specialist to observe Zeke for a day at Rock Creek. The specialist would make suggestions. They would find ways Zeke could do better.
After the visit, in an email to Zeke's teachers obtained by the News-Post, the specialist wrote: "It wasn't clear to me why he was brought [to seclusion] each time or how it was decided he was calm."
While seclusion and restraint are, on paper, governed by strict rules, experts say school staff often fall into a pattern of knee-jerk reactions and arbitrary decision-making — not out of incompetence or ill will toward their students, but out of a lack adequate training and resources.
That can lead to an overreliance on the heavy-handed tactics and can harm children and teachers alike.
Teachers want students to feel safe in the classrooms, said Missy Dirks, president of the Frederick County Teachers Association. They don't relish using seclusion or restraint. But special education staffers deserve to feel safe too, she said, which can be a challenge. Dirks hears about teachers being injured on the job "pretty consistently," she said.
Wendy Campbell, who recently retired after 25 years as a special education teacher for FCPS, recalled being hit, kicked, bitten and even urinated on. Sometimes, she said, she could tell that restraint or seclusion in these instances only further escalated a student's behavior. She wasn't sure what other options there were, and she felt her kids could have benefited from mental health support that she wasn't equipped to provide.
"It's emotionally draining, because you want to help the child," Campbell said. "It's very stressful."
As for the DOJ settlement, there's one thing Beth thought was missing: Therapy for teachers like Campbell.
"I don't think it comes from a place of malice," Greene said of seclusion and restraint. "I think this is all about mindset, and this is all about training."
While the challenges and dangers facing special education workers are real, the DOJ found FCPS used seclusion and restraint to address "noncompliant behavior that it should have anticipated and managed as part of educating students with emotional and behavioral disabilities."
Former superintendent Terry Alban, who led the district for more than a decade, left her position shortly after the investigation was announced. Board of Education members declined to provide a reason for the separation.
Speaking publicly about the issue for the first time Thursday, FCPS interim superintendent Mike Markoe acknowledged that teachers may have misunderstood the definition of "imminent serious physical harm" — the legal threshold a behavior must meet to warrant seclusion or restraint. It's not synonymous with a safety concern.
"Some interpretation may be a student's spitting, kicking, punching," Markoe said. "But by the pure definition of it, it means a life or death situation."
VanCleef, Beth's lawyer, said she frequently met with Frederick County parents whose kids were restrained or secluded for behaviors like those Markoe described.
Sometimes, her efforts would lead to some form of relief — a change in an Individualized Education Plan here, a voucher for counseling sessions there. But VanCleef didn't have the power to force what she felt was needed most: a paradigm shift in the district's approach to discipline.
"I feel like I empty the ocean a teaspoon at a time," VanCleef said. "It's very difficult to bring about that systemic change."
Brad Young, president of the Frederick County Board of Education, said the district's biggest hurdle in bringing about any sort of major change is funding.
According to an FCPS analysis, the district had the second-lowest per-pupil expenditures of any system in Maryland for the 2017-18 school year. In 2018-19, it ranked last, despite having a median income well above the state average. The district far surpassed all other counties for its number of restraint and seclusion incidents in both of those years.
"There's an absolute connection," Young said.
Funding formulas are complex, Young acknowledged, and there isn't a quick or simple answer for the district's problems. One factor, he said, was the residual effect of years of bare-minimum contributions from the previous county government. He's still trying to dig the system out of that hole. Every year, almost all of FCPS' new money goes toward staff salaries, Young said, and its staff are still among the lowest-paid in the state.
Being strapped for cash means the district is limited in the new initiatives it can pursue, Young added. He can't fund the amount of new mental health and counseling positions he'd like to see. Budgetary restrictions forced the board to cut central office positions that may have kept a closer eye on things like seclusion and restraint, he said.
In the wake of the DOJ report, Young said, teachers are "demoralized." He defended them resolutely: They were doing their jobs, he said, and now, "people think they're child abusers."
"When you are trying to get by on limited resources," Young said, "it's going to have consequences."
Moving forward
One week after news of the DOJ investigation broke, Angie Pisano sat weeping in the back of a school board meeting.
A few days before, Pisano's son, Thomas, had texted the couple a link to the News-Post story about FCPS's settlement with the DOJ. They knew the high school junior was trying to tell them something, and at their probing questions, he opened up.
During his time in the Pyramid program at Lewistown Elementary beginning in 2014, Pisano learned, her son was restrained and secluded repeatedly. She doesn't know how many times — she said the school never notified her — and Thomas can't say, either.
"I thought it was only for emergencies," Pisano said, looking at her son, who is now 16, on a recent afternoon. "But you said it felt like abuse."
Thomas nodded. His mother's eyes swam with tears.
Now that the DOJ's review is over and its findings have been widely publicized, schools are beginning the messy work of change, figuring out how to institute the myriad changes required by the settlement.
But as the district moves forward, some families, like the Pisanos, are just starting to understand the impact of what happened years ago.
Thomas and his family are beginning the messy work of healing.
Pisano is wracked with guilt, replaying the same painful thoughts on a loop in her mind. She wonders how she didn't know. She tells herself she should have.
She reflects now on the day when Thomas' teachers at Brunswick Elementary School called the police on him. That was in first grade, not long after he'd received his autism diagnosis.
She remembers the many times, before and after that, when she was called to the school to find his teachers at a loss, unsure what to do with the little boy who was crying and shouting and hiding under a table. She couldn't hold a job that year because she had to be on call for him. She thought the Pyramid program and the staff at Lewistown would make things better.
Now, she thinks about other kids, Pyramid classmates of Thomas' who transferred somewhere along the way. She wonders if they could communicate more clearly than her son could. Did they tell their parents what was happening? Is that why they changed schools?
"I'm supposed to protect him," Pisano said, her shoulders shaking. "That's my job."
"Do you feel angry?" she asked Thomas shortly after. "Or do you just feel hurt?"
"Both," he replied.
Thomas has a therapist at school now, someone his mom describes as "wonderful." It helps to talk about the seclusions and restraints with her and with his family, he said. The kids didn't really talk about it back then, even though — to the best of his recollection — someone was locked away almost every day.
Cole, the other former Lewistown student, remembered it the same way. Reading the word "seclusion" in recent news reports unlocked memories he'd buried. Even back when it was happening to him and to his peers, he tried not to think about it.
"It was just not really spoken about," he said. "It was just a thing that existed."
Thomas and Cole are both still enrolled in FCPS schools. Zeke, Shadin and Sulaiman have all left the district, either for private schools or at-home instruction. They're all doing much better, their mothers told the News-Post. Zeke's self-abuse has stopped. The boys no longer cry when it's time to get ready for school.
James is still struggling. He's still plagued by flashbacks, though they're not as frequent. His aggression has largely subsided. But to him, the classroom is still a terrifying place. He rides a bus for an hour each way to get to his new school.
While he excelled during the pandemic when he was able to avoid a physical school building, that's over now. And three years out from his last seclusion, each day he walks through the doors marks the beginning of a battle.
James' teachers celebrated a milestone moment for him on a recent afternoon. The occasion? He was able to stomach 25 whole minutes in his classroom.
Beth smiles when you ask about her son. She tells you things about him that have nothing to do with the dozens of hours he spent locked in a seclusion room as an 8-year-old — confused and alone and screaming to be let out — or with the resulting wounds he's still trying to heal.
He's brilliant, she says proudly. He's hilarious. He's a fiercely loyal friend, a lover of animals and a dedicated member of local science clubs. In his free time, the 12-year-old peruses college biology textbooks.
Stories flow out of Beth in waves, punctuated with laughter. James is always asking questions, she said, his curiosity remaining steadfast despite his fear of the classroom.
"So," he piped up once during a car ride with his mom, "how much of ancient Egyptian culture do you think medieval Europeans were aware of?"
This is the boy Beth wishes the school district had seen more clearly. Maybe then, she says, things would have been different.
"Frederick County has done a really good job of dehumanizing our children," Beth said. Her voice broke with emotion, and she paused. "Our children are valid and important.
"They're people."
Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek
I WEAR A PENTAGRAM
Christian nurse harassed by hospital for years over cross necklace wins lawsuit
Jon Brown Sun, January 9, 2022
The Employment Tribunal in the United Kingdom ruled in favor last week of a Christian nurse who said she was forced into resigning from her job at a London hospital after being harassed over her cross necklace for years.
Mary Onuoha took legal action against Croydon Health Services NHS Trust after resigning in June 2020 following years of being targeted for wearing a small cross necklace that she was told posed "a health and safety risk."
After she refused to stop wearing her necklace, NHS management offered her a compromise by which she could wear it on a longer chain to keep the cross out of sight, which she also refused.
Onuoha, who grew up in Nigeria and worked for Croydon University Hospital for nearly 20 years after immigrating to the U.K. in 1988, said in a statement that the controversy over her necklace "has always been an attack on my faith."
"My cross has been with me for 40 years. It is part of me, and my faith, and it has never caused anyone any harm. Patients often say to me: ‘I really like your cross’, they always respond to it in a positive way and that gives me joy and makes me feel happy. I am proud to wear it as I know God loves me so much and went through this pain for me," she continued.
"From a young age I naturally always wanted to care for people – it was in my blood. All I have ever wanted is to be a nurse and to be true to my faith. I am a strong woman, but I have been treated like a criminal. I love my job, but I am not prepared to compromise my faith for it, and neither should other Christian NHS staff in this country," she also said.
In its ruling last Wednesday, the tribunal dismissed the hospital's claim about the health risk and mentioned how other employees are allowed to wear hijabs and jewelry.
"There is no evidence to show that the infection risk they posed was lower than the Cross-Necklace," the tribunal said. "There is no cogent explanation as to why these items are permitted but a fine necklace with a small pendant of religious devotional significance is not."
Onuoha was represented by the Christian Legal Centre, which praised the ruling in a statement.
"We are delighted that the Tribunal have ruled in Mary’s favor and delivered justice in this case," said Andrea Williams, who is chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre.
"From the beginning this case has been about the high-handed attack from the NHS bureaucracy on the right of a devoted and industrious nurse to wear a cross — the worldwide, recognized and cherished symbol of the Christian faith. It is very uplifting to see the Tribunal acknowledge this truth."
Onuoha's financial compensation will be decided at a later hearing.
Lithuania pays U.S. terror suspect $113,000 for enduring CIA agents' torture
By UPI Staff It's been reported that some of the torture techniques the CIA used against Zubaydah included waterboarding, being confined in a box, being kept awake and having his head banged against a wall. He eventually lost an eye while in U.S. custody.
Photo by Michael R. Holzworth/U.S. Air Force/UPI | License Photo
Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The government in Lithuania has paid more than $100,000 in compensation to a Saudi terror suspect who officials say was held and tortured by the CIA in the Baltic country without ever facing formal charges.
The suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was first arrested by U.S. authorities a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and was ultimately held at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than 20 years without being charged. He remains imprisoned at the U.S. facility in Cuba.
During some of his incarceration, officials say Zubaydah was held and tortured at a secret site outside the Lithuanian capital Vilnius -- code-named "Violet" -- in 2005 and 2006. A demonstrator is seen at a rally against torture and unlawful detentions at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. File Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI
Monday, the Lithuanian government authorized the payment of $113,000 to Zubaydah for the torture sessions at the Violet site.
Three years ago, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Lithuania violated the European Convention on Human Rights by allowing the CIA to torture Zubaydah.
It's been reported that some of the torture techniques the CIA used against Zubaydah included waterboarding, being confined in a box, being kept awake and having his head banged against a wall. He eventually lost an eye while in U.S. custody.
Zubaydah, however, will not have access to the money -- as he's still being held at Guantanamo Bay and his assets have been frozen by the U.S. government.
U.S. officials initially accused Zubaydah of being involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist plot, but no evidence has ever been produced supporting that charge, or that he was ever a member of al Qaida. He is often referred to as the "forever prisoner."
Can science cheat death?
Achieving immortality or finding the veritable elixir of life can seem like something out of a fantasy novel. While medical research is prolonging health and lifespans, some billionaires in Silicon Valley are looking to wage a war against death itself. From predictive medicine to cell rejuvenation and cryogenics, can science cheat death?
FRANCE 24's Julia Sieger tells us more.
Weather disaster deaths hit 10-year high in mainland US
Nearly 700 people died due to natural disasters in the contiguous United States in 2021 -- the most since 2011, said a federal weather agency in a report released Monday.
The year "was marked by extremes across the US, including exceptional warmth, devastating severe weather and the second-highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters on record," said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The death toll for weather-related disasters in the 48 mainland states plus the District of Columbia totaled 688, more than twice 2020's tally of 262, the agency said.
Human activity has caused life-threatening climate change resulting in more severe weather events across the globe.
Twenty separate weather incidents cost the country $1 billion or more, the second-most billion-dollar events recorded in a calendar year behind 2020, which saw 22, the agency said.
The costly disasters included four hurricanes, three tornados, two floods, a cold wave, and western wildfires, droughts, and heat waves.
Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the statistics "sobering."
"The devastating toll and trauma imposed by extreme weather and climate disasters have, and continue to, hit some people harder than others with communities of color, low-income communities, and communities that have endured multiple disasters often bearing the brunt of its impacts," she said.
A bitter cold snap left millions of Americans without electricity in February, when a deadly winter storm system held its grip across huge swathes of the United States, even pushing as far south as Mexico.
Record-low temperatures wracked places ill-prepared for such conditions, overwhelming local utility companies and infuriating residents left to huddle under coats and blankets and fend for themselves. More than 20 storm-related deaths were registered.
Hurricane Ida struck the US Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane in late August, bringing major flooding and knocking out power to large parts of the heavily populated region.
The final blast of the storm killed at least 47 people in the US Northeast as it turned streets into raging rivers, inundated basements and shut down the New York subway.
NOAA reported that 2021 ranked as the fourth-warmest year in a 127-year period of record, with average temperatures of 54.5 degrees Fahrenheit (12.5 degrees Celsius) in the contiguous US.
December 2021 was the warmest on record -- 6.7F above average.
The 2021 average temperature was 2.5F higher than the 20th century average.
US northeastern states Maine and New Hampshire had their second-warmest year on record, and 19 more experienced a top-five warmest year.
Alaska, however, saw a 0.4 degree drop in average yearly temperature and its coldest year since 2012.
cs/ia
2022-01-04
3:06 Risks of socio-economic disorganization due to Omicron variant -
