I bet you didnt know that

Realt Dearg Sec

It's amazing to me that in a county board structure, where anyone can be voted out at any time by the clubs, and in a county where literally my whole life people have been saying that he is the biggest problem they have and that getting rid of him is vital for the future of cork gaa, that he has survived multiple players strikes, public protest marches, and PR campaigns for his removal. Cork folk seem, at times (at other times all is forgiven and forgotten) totally determined that he simply HAS to go. When you point out that he can be voted out any time, I've never heard a simple, clear explanation of why they don't just do it. Vague codswallop about knowing where the bodies are buried and knowing whose palm to grease is all you hear. So what's the craic? Is it that, really, deep down, the rebels WANT him, as long as he is seen to put it up to the boyos in croke park?

Baggly

He probably knows where the bodies are buried.

retalivity

The 335 years war was 'fought' between the netherlands and the isles of scilly.
It started in 1651, during the whole royalist/parliamentarian/cromwell carryon going on in england. The netherlands was involved, and suffered some naval losses at the isles of scilly of the cornwall coast. As all of england was at that point under parliamentarian control (who the dutch supported), war was declared on the royalist outpost of the isles of scilly instead. The remaining royalist fleet ultimately surrendered elsewhere, however the dutch never rescinded the declaration of war. Everyone moved on to the next war/battle/expedition/political upheaval etc.and forgot that the war was still going on until some cornish historian dug up documents in 1986. He invited the dutch ambassador to the isles of scilly to sign a peace treaty, who accepted and apologised to the residents for '335 years of living in fear of a dutch attack'.

Duckworth_Luas

M'asal Beag Dubh, My Little black Donkey in English, is a short story written by Galway man Pádraic Ó Conaire. It relates the story of how the author came to own a donkey.

During a fair in Kinvara he approaches a Traveler who happens to be the owner of the titular animal.

Ó Conaire inquires about the beast and is told fantastical tales of its abilities.

The writer offers £1 for the donkey but the Traveler refuses, after all it's faster than any horse in Ireland and has even saved his son from drowning, £2 or nothing.

Both then agree that he will pay £1 plus sixpence for every one of the Traveler’s children.

This clause in their contract proves a huge mistake as Traveler children now begin to appear from everywhere.

Ó Conaire was duped and had to pay an exorbitant fee for something that was vastly overrated.

Skip to 2008. Reports circulate of a 16 year old Moldavan soccer prodigy of amazing talent. Sports blogs and websites light up with tales of his ability.

The Times of London claimed that this player had "been strongly linked with a move to Arsenal, work permit permitting. And he’s been linked with plenty of other top clubs as well."

They also rated him as one of the top professional prospects in the world. Other popular papers, magazines and websites also got in on the act.

This player with such amazing abilities was called Masal Bugduv, an obvious play on M'asal beag Dubh. The initial blog posts hyping up the player referenced Diario Mo Thon (Diary of My Arse) as the Moldovan newspaper which originally reported on the future "superstar".

The whole thing was a hoax orchestrated by Irishman Declan Varley to highlight the absolute ridiculous nature of the soccer transfer market where agents demand exorbitant fees for overhyped and overrated players of mediocre ability.

The Times later issued an apology, the donkeys.

DEFTLEFTHAND

In Marine Parks like Seaworld Ocras were mixed for the first time. Pacific v Atlantic.

The both speak dialects of Orca, this is how intelligent these creatures are.


When put together they could not understand one another and were hostile.


They have to kept separately in captivity because of this. Tribal creatures.

EndaHonesty

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

In Marine Parks like Seaworld Ocras were mixed for the first time. Pacific v Atlantic.

The both speak dialects of Orca, this is how intelligent these creatures are.


When put together they could not understand one another and were hostile.


They have to kept separately in captivity because of this. Tribal creatures.

Different groups of wild apex predator Orca's were captured, taken out of their natural habitat where can literally roam the WHOLE PLANET,
and placed in tiny tanks for the entertainment of tourists...

These incredible creatures would not live quietly in these alien conditions and became aggressive to other animals in their cramped jail...

And the story peddled by their captor's was that the problem was that different Orca couldn't understand each other because they didn't speak
each others dialects?...

Riiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhht :rolleyes: :pac:

DEFTLEFTHAND

Like humans can move around the world and have different languages.

It's known that Pacific based Orca pods communicate differently to their Atlantic born counterparts.


They're not like Baleen whale species who roam, they tend to stick to an area like dolphins

EndaHonesty

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Like humans can move around the world and have different languages.

It's known that Pacific based Orca pods communicate differently to their Atlantic born counterparts.


They're not like Baleen whale species who roam, they tend to stick to an area like dolphins

All that is known for sure is that different groups of Orca have different sounds, and the groups don't seem to share the same sounds.

Going from there to; the different groups do "not understand one another and were hostile" to others because they didn't speak the "language" is quite a reach.

I don't believe current understanding of Orca communication actually is of that opinion.

Capt'n Midnight

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

They're not like Baleen whale species who roam, they tend to stick to an area like dolphins

Orcas are dolphins.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Orcas are dolphins.

The largest of the Dolphins and one of the most inappropriately named animals on the planet.

EndaHonesty

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

The largest of the Dolphins and one of the most inappropriately named animals on the planet.

Indeed and the all 4 human deaths attributed to Orca is when captive animals killed one of their captors.

Perhaps those were down to language problems too?... :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

one of the most inappropriately named animals on the planet.

Like the Mantis Shrimp ?


IIRC the entyomology was "Whale Killer" which is an apt name

Buford T. Justice XIX

https://twitter.com/LaurelCoons/status/1013989279981359105?s=19

the purple tin

The Sunday roast is a tradition that dates back to the first few centuries A.D. There were many different sects of Christianity which the catholic church viewed as heretical, including the gnostics who were devout vegans.
Inviting a suspect round to eat meat on the sabbath was a good way to catch them out.

One of the lesser known American atrocities was the California Genocide of the late 1800's in which hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were displaced, persecuted and tens of thousands of whom were murdered - often for cash but also for convenience. Estimates put the population of Californian NA's at about 300k in the late 1840's, and at less than 16k in 1900.

The State, Federal government, and some local authorities offered money for the scalps of murdered natives. One favored way of gathering enough victims to make some extra dough was to invite a starving tribe - starving having been displaced from their homes to inhospitable lands - to a sumptuous meal served outdoors where they were poisoned or otherwise slaughtered in their weakened state.

The Yahi tribe of Northern California were starved and murdered until only one person remained, a lone man who lived alone in the wilderness untouched by the influences of the settlers until he emerged from his isolation aged roughly fifty and came to the town of Orville in 1911, starving and desperate. He stole meat from a slaughterhouse and was jailed where, unable to communicate with him, his jailers publicized his situation until it came to the attention of anthropologists Thomas Talbot Waterman and Alfred Kroeber who brought him to and housed him in the California Institute of Anthropology where they studied what that called their 'very own wild Indian'.

They named him Ishi which is the Yana name for man, since the man himself couldn't tell them his name - in his culture its only uttered by a third party to introduce him to others, he couldn't introduce himself and so said 'I have no one to speak for me, I have no name'. As his command of English grew he referred to himself as Mr Ishi.

Kroeber and Waterman employed Ishi as a research assistant, and he impressed them with his gentle nature, his serenity, and his natural intelligence. Their position veered from the Wild Indian stereotype directly into Noble Savage territory, but at least it promoted a gentler consideration of the people pushed to extinction in wider society, as Ishi was at this stage rather famous having had his plight written about nationally which sparked a public interest in his welfare. Too little too late, but still.

He was able to give a very articulate first hand account of the persecution of his tribe, as well as insight into skills such as flint knapping and tracking, and the natural belief system of many tribes so uncannily - or unsurprisingly - similar to Traditional African Religion(s).

He died of TB in the Museum where he lived, only five years after his emergence from the wilderness, the last of his kind*.



Mr Ishi. I despise the text at the foot of that photo, as though he didn't exist until he was 'discovered' - much like the attitude of settlers to the Americas prior to their arrival.




*Some upstart disputed this relatively recently because his style of stonework is more like that of another tribes traditional work, and has posited the theory that he was of mixed tribal parentage. I don't like this theory since it makes the story a bit murkier and less romantic than poor old Mr Ishi being the last of his tribe.

the purple tin

Wibbs wrote: »

That's Empress Theodora, a 6th century ruler. Interesting woman. She had started her early life as a dancer and actress like her Ma(IIRC her Da was an animal trainer for the arena). In them days "actress" and "purveyor of the sexual arts", so to speak, were pretty much the same thing. She traveled widely in her youth, was the girlfriend of some minor official who she had a kid with. The story goes she converted to Christianity and dialled down the oul adultery and such.

By various routes she ends up meeting the emperor a chap by the name of Justinian. Who was about 20 years older than her. The cad. Because of her common birth and dodgy background and existing child born outside the marriage sheets they weren't allowed to get hitched. Feck this sez Justinian and promptly changes the laws. Cos he could. Actually he was big into laws and codified and revised all the Roman laws, which influence the legal world down to today.

Anyhoo they get hitched and Justinian accepts her kid as his own. All pretty radical stuff. While himself is off busy sorting out the law and expanding the empire to its zenith, she is busy as his advisor and brings in reforms of her own. Mostly in the area of women's rights. She made forced prostitution illegal. She also made pimping and living off the profits of prostitution an offence. Note not prostitution itself. Well ahead of her time. She passed laws against rape, increased property rights for women and more favourable divorce laws for them too.

Once when a political coup was at the palace doors and the emperor and his mates were all ready to leg it, not Theo. Basically she strongly suggested they all grow a bloody pair, that it was better to be a dead emperor than a live fugitive, so stay and fight back. Which they did.

She died quite young, in her mid 40's and Justinian was brokenhearted from it. He never really got over it. He died years later well into his 80's.



*aside*I always found it slightly odd that while Western European history(and its various ex colonies) has the hots for the Classical Worlds of Greece and Rome and we are exposed to those cultures quite a lot, Byzantium is rather a black hole for most. TV documentaries and dramas on Greece and Rome are two a penny, even China and the Muslim world gets a regular nod, but when was the last time you saw one on Byzantium?

Didn't she used to re-enact the Rape of Leda on stage in her actng days?

In Greek mythology Zeus disgused himself as a swan so he could rape Leda. I think Theodora used a goose instead, she would strip nude and place seeds in certain place so the goose would peck there. It used to cause a bit of a stir as you can imagine.

Wibbs

Candie wrote: »

*Some upstart disputed this relatively recently because his style of stonework is more like that of another tribes traditional work, and has posited the theory that he was of mixed tribal parentage. I don't like this theory since it makes the story a bit murkier and less romantic than poor old Mr Ishi being the last of his tribe.

I dunno C, in a way it makes it more poignant as his people and native Americans had sunk to such tiny numbers in that neck of the woods that they had a child with once enemy people.

His stonework itself is interesting. When Ishi came along he was the last true natural knapper of flint and because of him many of the techniques were saved for the future. Up to that point research into flint knapping of prehistoric peoples was pretty scarce. Some techniques were know from of all things firearms. Flintlocks needed a supply of shaped flint and it became quite the industry. Many of the workers died from inflation of flint dust and the industry became known for that.

After the flintlock had passed into history it was actually forgers of stone antiquities in Europe - where good ones could get a pretty penny and there were a lot of wealthy collectors - who were doing "research" into techniques as the collectors got increasingly more adept at spotting the obvious fakes. One chap in England made his living this way until he was caught. Some were so good at faking and artificial ageing that a fair number of "antiquities" ended up in museum displays and are likely still there today. Funny enough there are still fakes being made and sold out there, ironically mostly of Native American arrowheads. And they'd be using the techniques that Mr Ishi showed us.

To continue with the Native American theme, the term Sioux was first used by French settlers who learned it from the Chippewa tribe who used it to refer to the people with whom they were locked in mutual hostility and on occasion, bloody combat.

But the word Sioux wasn't the name of the people, it just means enemy, The enemies of the Chippewa were the Lakota people, so the Sioux don't actually exist per se, as it refers to the Lakota whose name really means home of the peaceful people - not enemy!

SimonTemplar

George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead from 1968 was originally called Night of the Flesh Eaters. When they changed the title, they forgot to also add the copyright notice to the new title in the film. At the time, copyright laws required a clear copyright notice in order for the work to be copyrighted. Therefore, Night of the Living Dead was never protected by copyright and immediately entered the public domain.

That is why there are loads of copies of the movie from different companies on Amazon and why the entire movie is available on Youtube.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Candie wrote: »

To continue with the Native American theme, the term Sioux was first used by French settlers who learned it from the Chippewa tribe who used it to refer to the people with whom they were locked in mutual hostility and on occasion, bloody combat.

But the word Sioux wasn't the name of the people, it just means enemy, The enemies of the Chippewa were the Lakota people, so the Sioux don't actually exist per se, as it refers to the Lakota whose name really means home of the peaceful people - not enemy!

A native American told me the name from a word meaning Little Snake or Adder.

Anders Shy Aircraft

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

A native American told me the name from a word meaning Little Snake or Adder.

It's a portmanteau slang word for a dangerous creature or enemy, a combination of snakes or serpents in Chippewa and the French plural oux. It has no direct translation because it's not a 'proper' Chippewa word.

Duckworth_Luas

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

A native American told me the name from a word meaning Little Snake or Adder.

I don't recall which book I read it in, maybe "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee", but the explaination given was that Sioux was they name given to them by a minor tribe.

The Lakota were originally from the Great Lakes area in Minnesota. Due to European expansion and war with the Iroquois Confederation they were forced west from their arboreal homeland to the Great Plains.

That small tribe had called them Sioux which means "small snake" while they called the Iroquois "large snake". Snake itself being pejorative

The Europeans of the time were friendlier with the smaller tribe and inherited their pejoritive word for the warlike Sioux.

Fourier

the purple tin wrote: »

Didn't she used to re-enact the Rape of Leda on stage in her actng days?

In Greek mythology Zeus disgused himself as a swan so he could rape Leda. I think Theodora used a goose instead, she would strip nude and place seeds in certain place so the goose would peck there. It used to cause a bit of a stir as you can imagine.

I know its disputed in Byzantine studies, the only source for this goose story is Procopius, often called the "Last Historian of the Ancient World".

It's unknown if the story is accurate, inaccurate in an attempt to discredit Justinian and Theodora out of disillusionment/hatred or inaccurate in attempt to give the appearance of hating them.

In the latter case he may have written these exaggerated stories in secret in advance, so that he could produce a "Hey I hated them all along" document if Justinian fell from power.

Wibbs

^^ Aye, there was a lot of that going around at the time and later for various pro/con political reasons. The easy route to tarnish a woman's legacy was to brand her a whore.

New Home

Copyright/Credit - The NY Times

U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials

By Andrew Jacobs - July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

The showdown over the issue was recounted by more than a dozen participants from several countries, many of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from the United States.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

The State Department declined to respond to questions, saying it could not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The Department of Health and Human Services, the lead agency in the effort to modify the resolution, explained the decision to contest the resolution’s wording but said H.H.S. was not involved in threatening Ecuador.

“The resolution as originally drafted placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children,” an H.H.S. spokesman said in an email. “We recognize not all women are able to breast-feed for a variety of reasons. These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” The spokesman asked to remain anonymous in order to speak more freely.

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Overall, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

During the deliberations, some American delegates even suggested the United States might cut its contribution the W.H.O., several negotiators said. Washington is the single largest contributor to the health organization, providing $845 million, or roughly 15 percent of its budget, last year.

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues.

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.

During the same Geneva meeting where the breast-feeding resolution was debated, the United States succeeded in removing statements supporting soda taxes from a document that advises countries grappling with soaring rates of obesity.

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

The delegation’s actions in Geneva are in keeping with the tactics of an administration that has been upending alliances and long-established practices across a range of multilateral organizations, from the Paris climate accord to the Iran nuclear deal to Nafta.

Ilona Kickbusch, director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said there was a growing fear that the Trump administration could cause lasting damage to international health institutions like the W.H.O. that have been vital in containing epidemics like Ebola and the rising death toll from diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the developing world.

“It’s making everyone very nervous, because if you can’t agree on health multilateralism, what kind of multilateralism can you agree on?” Ms. Kickbusch asked.

A Russian delegate said the decision to introduce the breast-feeding resolution was a matter of principle.

“We’re not trying to be a hero here, but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries, especially on an issue that is really important for the rest of the world,” said the delegate, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He said the United States did not directly pressure Moscow to back away from the measure. Nevertheless, the American delegation sought to wear down the other participants through procedural maneuvers in a series of meetings that stretched on for two days, an unexpectedly long period.

In the end, the United States was largely unsuccessful. The final resolution preserved most of the original wording, though American negotiators did get language removed that called on the W.H.O. to provide technical support to member states seeking to halt “inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children.”

The United States also insisted that the words “evidence-based” accompany references to long-established initiatives that promote breast-feeding, which critics described as a ploy that could be used to undermine programs that provide parents with feeding advice and support.

Elisabeth Sterken, director of the Infant Feeding Action Coalition in Canada, said four decades of research have established the importance of breast milk, which provides essential nutrients as well as hormones and antibodies that protect newborns against infectious disease.

A 2016 Lancet study found that universal breast-feeding would prevent 800,000 child deaths a year across the globe and yield $300 billion in savings from reduced health care costs and improved economic outcomes for those reared on breast milk.

Scientists are loath to carry out double-blind studies that would provide one group with breast milk and another with breast milk substitutes. “This kind of ‘evidence-based’ research would be ethically and morally unacceptable,” Ms. Sterken said.

Abbott Laboratories, the Chicago-based company that is one of the biggest players in the $70 billion baby food market, declined to comment.

Nestlé, the Switzerland-based food giant with significant operations in the United States, sought to distance itself from the threats against Ecuador and said the company would continue to support the international code on the marketing of breast milk substitutes, which calls on governments to regulate the inappropriate promotion of such products and to encourage breast-feeding.

In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador, a region wracked by violence spilling across the border from Colombia, according to an Ecuadorean government official who took part in the meeting.

The United States embassy in Quito declined to make Mr. Chapman available for an interview.

“We were shocked because we didn’t understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,” said the Ecuadorean official, who asked not to be identified because she was afraid of losing her job.

Wesley Tomaselli contributed reporting from Colombia.

Absolute madness, if you ask me. As if the Nestlé baby formula controversies and the related boycott hadn't taught us anything.

New Home

Wibbs wrote: »

^^ Aye, there was a lot of that going around at the time and later for various pro/con political reasons. The easy route to tarnish a woman's legacy was to brand her a whore.

Do you remember it from reading it at the time on the news tablets, Wibbs? :pac::D

New Home

Copyright/Credit - The NY Times

Records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.

​Trump Administration in Chaotic Scramble to Reunify Migrant Families

By Caitlin Dickerson July 5, 2018

Faced with a court-imposed deadline to reunite families separated at the southwest border, federal authorities are calling in volunteers to sort through records and resorting to DNA tests to match children with parents. And they acknowledged for the first time Thursday that of the nearly 3,000 children who are still in federal custody, about 100 are under the age of 5.

The family separations, part of an aggressive effort by the Trump administration to deter illegal immigration, have produced a chaotic scramble as officials now face political and judicial pressure to reunite families.

Records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.

The effort is complicated by the fact that two federal agencies are involved in detaining and sheltering migrants, and they did not initially share records with each other. On Friday, the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, which shelters the children and must now undertake reunifications, sent out a plea to federal public health workers for help with an exhaustive manual search of records.

The agency said it needed to read through original documents of all children in federal custody “to screen whether children in our facilities were separated from parents.” That involved scrubbing the documents of an estimated 12,000 children to determine which had been separated from their parents by the authorities, as opposed to arriving in the country without a parent or other relative.

“HHS is requesting volunteers over the weekend to review case records,” said one of the emails. “Everyone here is now participating in this process, including the Secretary who personally stayed until past midnight to assist.”

The rushed attempt to confirm identities, locations and connections makes clear what immigrant advocates said from the beginning were potential pitfalls in the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” border enforcement policy, introduced in May. The crackdown, critics said, was announced with little advance notice and, apparently, little planning for how to deal with its far-reaching impacts.

In interviews with federal employees, immigration lawyers and shelter operators, those closest to the process raised questions about the initial assertions that federal authorities could account for the locations of both parents and children after they were separated.

In fact, the Health and Human Services agency charged with overseeing the care of migrant children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, established such procedures, which included identification bracelets, the issuance of registration numbers and careful logs to keep the records of parents and children linked. But those precautions were undermined in some cases by the other federal agency that has initial custody of apprehended migrants in the first 72 hours after they cross the border — Customs and Border Protection. In hundreds of cases, Customs agents deleted the initial records in which parents and children were listed together as a family with a “family identification number,” according to two officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the process.

As a result, the parents and children appeared in federal computers to have no connection to one another.

“That was the big problem. We weren’t able to see that information,” said one of the officials, who is directly involved in the reunification process.

Officials cautioned that this was not a deliberate attempt to obfuscate, but a belief that it made more sense to track cases separately once a group of migrants was no longer in custody as a family unit, these sources said.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for DHS, disputed the description of events at the border and said that the agency had always provided clear information to HHS linking parents and children to one another.

“Not only is it categorically false that DHS destroyed records, but the opposite is true: DHS personnel has worked hand-in-hand with HHS personnel to share clear data in the most useful formats possible for HHS – which included names, dates of apprehension, and identifying alien numbers for both children and parents who were separated as a result of zero-tolerance,” she said in a statement.

Over the past week, the Health and Human Services Department has been forced to undertake a herculean effort, deploying hundreds of federal workers, to comply with an injunction of a federal judge in San Diego, who ordered that all families separated under the policy must be reunited by July 26. The deadline for children under the age of 5 was set for Tuesday.

“I think it’s mission impossible,” said José Xavier Orochena, a lawyer in New York representing about a dozen parents whose children were taken from them. Mr. Orochena said that he met this week with the president of a shelter in New York where some of the children are being held. Neither one of them could imagine how the vetting that is required to bring families back together could be completed by the court’s deadline.

“Unless they waive all these requirements,” Mr. Orochena said.

Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said on Thursday that the agency was dealing with nearly 3,000 children separated from families, about 100 of them under the age of 5, but would make the reunifications happen in time.

“HHS is executing on our mission even with the constraints handed down by the courts,” he said, calling the judge’s time limits “extreme.”

He echoed President Trump, who has repeatedly placed blame for the separations outside the executive branch — pointing to policies and court decisions from earlier years that prevent migrant families from being held in detention for extended periods of time.

“Any confusion is due to a broken immigration system and court orders. It’s not here,” Mr. Azar said.

The problem that arose with the missing family identification numbers became apparent as soon as children were shipped away to shelters, agency employees said. Many were dropped off thousands of miles away from their parents and some were too young or scared to speak.

That left hundreds of federal employees, including Mr. Azar himself, to manually review the documents of each individual child over the weekend to look for any references to separation, including anything the child may have told agency employees or shelter workers.

But young children are often unreliable narrators, Mr. Azar said on Thursday, and there has been some confusion. For example, he said, some children might have told shelter workers they had traveled with a parent at some point, but they may not have actually crossed the border together. In those cases, while parent and child may indeed be in separate custody, they are not part of the group forcibly separated by immigration authorities, and thus are not subject to the court-ordered deadline for reunification.

The secretary added that steps could not be skipped in order to meet the court’s deadline, pointing to some parents who had already been weeded out of eligibility for sponsorship of children in the vetting process, which turned up histories of child cruelty and rape, he said.

The announcement Thursday that DNA testing would be used to help confirm family units drew some opposition from immigrant advocates, who said that the records could be used to track undocumented immigrants indefinitely.

Administration officials previously had said about 2,300 children had been separated from their parents. But over the weekend, the agency came up with its final accounting that showed nearly 3,000 in total.

Many questions remained unanswered Thursday about how the process of reunifications would unfold.

The rough plan is for a patchwork series of moves of both parents and children, according to the two immigration officials who described the process. Some of the parents under the plan are to be consolidated in those immigration jails that have extra room and children would be routed to meet them. Other parents, such as those of children who are under 5, have already been moved to the immigration jails nearest to the shelters where their children are being held.

But no pathway was in place as of Thursday for what will happen after the reunifications, for families released from immigration custody on bond or other conditions. Some parents and children will presumably have been moved several states away from their extended families or support networks, the officials said. They may not have the money for transportation back to their families, or even food.

But Mr. Azar insisted Thursday that his agency would meet the court’s deadline. A follow up to the email asking for volunteers to help with the reunification effort began, “Wow!”

Thanks to their efforts, “the mission will be accomplished,” it said. “And everyone should feel satisfied that we are doing our part to reunify the children with their families.”

cdeb

I think a summary rather than a copy and paste dump would work much better in fairness!

RIGOLO

cdeb wrote: »

I think a summary rather than a copy and paste dump would work much better in fairness!

and to think it was a MOD that put up that . 
Back on topic and also topical for the WorldCup (might be urban myth,  stretch this one) 

PELE was named by an Irish priest who worked in the same shanty town that Pele lived in , and he would see him playing football, but giving he was a native Irish speaker the priest would say that fella is always  'ag imirt peile' (playing football), hence the nickname PELE , (giving that in olde Irish a  fada would have replaced the 'i') .

Quazzie

RIGOLO wrote: »

and to think it was a MOD that put up that . 
Back on topic and also topical for the WorldCup (might be urban myth,  stretch this one) 

PELE was named by an Irish priest who worked in the same shanty town that Pele lived in , and he would see him playing football, but giving he was a native Irish speaker the priest would say that fella is always  'ag imirt peile' (playing football), hence the nickname PELE , (giving that in olde Irish a  fada would have replaced the 'i') .

A story made up by Jimmy Magee unfortunately.

LINK

The truth is something a little less juvenile

It was the youngster’s mispronunciation of the word ” Bilé” to something resembling “Pilé that saw the name stick. When the family subsequently moved to Bauru, a class-mate began to tease the young Edson with the nickname becoming “Pelé”