30 Jun 2014
Congressman replaced with robot body double after secret Ukrainian execution, says opponent
A US congressman was replaced by a robot body double after he was secretly executed, and the results of a recent vote should be thrown out, his opponent has claimed. Timothy Ray Murray says on his website that incumbent Oklahoman congressman Frank Lucas is dead, and has been replaced by a body double. He says that a similar tactic was used in Kentucky in 2012.
Murray says that it is ‘widely known’ that his successful opponent is no longer alive and has been replaced by a look alike. His opponent was killed in Ukraine three years ago, Murray alleges. “Rep. Frank Lucas, and a few other Oklahoma and other States’ Congressional Members were depicted as being executed by The World Court on or about Jan. 11, 2011 in Southern Ukraine,” he writes. “We know that it is possible to use look alike artificial or manmade replacements, however Rep. Lucas was not eligible to serve as a Congressional Member after that time.”
Murray appears to claim that the killing has been covered up because the US Defense Department is part of the plot, and is using his DNA. He asks that all the votes that were received by Lucas should be given instead to Murray. The aspirant congressman has committed not to use such a body double at any time.
“I will NEVER use Artificial Intelligence look alike to voice what The Representative’s Office is doing nor own a robot look alike,” Murray says on his website. (Much of the rest of Murray’s policies are in line with Republican party policy, including opposing tighter restrictions on gun ownership and a reduction in the state’s role in citizen’s lives.)
Lucas has rejected the claims. Speaking to a local TV news station, he said that he was not a robot and has never been to Ukraine.
29 Jun 2014
28 Jun 2014
27 Jun 2014
Rohingyas Face Terrifying Persecution, And You May Have Never Heard About It
In the past two years, more than 100,000 Muslims in Myanmar have left their homes in fear of rancorous mobs and angry assailants. Some have been forced into isolated makeshift camps, while others have made the dangerous trek across the border to Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh in search of safety and a source of income. Hundreds have been killed and many more detained.
These Muslims are Rohingyas, members of an ethnic group that the United Nations considers one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. There are about 1.3 million Rohingyas in Myanmar, most of whom live in the country’s Rakhine State, also known under its colonial name Arakan. The group is named after the language it speaks.
Since the spring of 2012, Buddhist extremists have renewed a push to drive the Muslim group out of Myanmar, using ruthless tactics and brutal violence. Tomás Ojea Quintana, a former United Nations' special rapporteur on human rights for Myanmar, said recently that the systematic violence against the Royhingya may "amount to crimes against humanity."
Myanmar’s rulers have gained international praise in recent years for democratizing the country and releasing hundreds of political prisoners after five decades of authoritarian rule. While the elected government of President Thein Sein has denounced the violence against the Rohingya and promised to take action against those seeking conflict, he has also said they are not citizens of Myanmar and should be placed in U.N. refugee camps or move to countries that are willing to accept them.
26 Jun 2014
A line in the sand that caused the Middle East
The Sykes-Picot agreement was an initially informal deal between Britain and France, signed in 1916, which divided up the Middle East during World War One. This agreement has, in many ways, led to much of the trouble in the area today. A look at a line in the sand that threw a region into turmoil for decades
24 Jun 2014
Iran Arrests 3 Who Appeared In World Cup Video
Iranian police have arrested three people who appeared in an online video of young men and women singing and dancing in support of the country's World Cup football team, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.
Provincial police chief Col. Rahmatollah Taheri was quoted as saying the video clip, produced by the London-based Ajam Band, features scenes from outside and inside Iran, including the city of Shahroud, where two 23-year-olds appearing in the film and a 26-year-old photographer were arrested.
The video shows young people, including women not wearing the mandatory headscarf, singing and dancing in support of Iran's national team, interspersed with footage from matches. They are shown waving Iranian flags and dancing in cars, streets, homes and public parks.
Taheri called the video "vulgar" and urged the youth not to take part in such activities. The official said those arrested have been referred for possible prosecution.
Tens of thousands march in London against coalition's austerity measures
Tens of thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday afternoon in protest at austerity measures introduced by the coalition government. The demonstrators gathered before the Houses of Parliament, where they were addressed by speakers, including comedians Russell Brand and Mark Steel. An estimated 50,000 people marched from the BBC's New Broadcasting House in central London to Westminster.
"The people of this building [the House of Commons] generally speaking do not represent us, they represent their friends in big business. It's time for us to take back our power," said Brand. "This will be a peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution and I'm very grateful to be involved in the People's Assembly. Power isn't there, it is here, within us," he added. "The revolution that's required isn't a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have."
23 Jun 2014
Primark clothing label "Forced to work exhausting hours"
Primark is keen to investigate how a label bearing the hand-stitched words: "Forced to work exhausting hours" was found inside one of its dresses. Swansea shopper Rebecca Gallagher bought a floral dress at the budget retailer and was alarmed by what she found.
"I was amazed when I checked for the washing instructions and spotted this label," Gallagher told the South Wales Evening Post. "To be honest I've never really thought much about how the clothes are made. But this really made me think about how we get our cheap fashion. I dread to think that my summer top may be made by some exhausted person toiling away for hours in some sweatshop abroad."
The shopper, who says she called Primark but didn't receive a response after being placed on hold, sees the wording as a "cry for help - to let us people in Britain know what is going on", although the label's origin will be difficult to verify. While it could have been added once the garment arrived in Britain, the label may also have been sewn in by a factory employee - a mystery that Primark is attempting to unravel.
22 Jun 2014
20 Jun 2014
19 Jun 2014
Israel Using Teenager Kidnapping to Cripple Hamas
Israeli soldiers clashed with Palestinians during an arrest raid early Thursday in the most violent confrontation so far in the weeklong search for three missing Israeli teens believed to have been abducted in the West Bank.
Israel has blamed the Islamic militant group Hamas for the apparent abductions, without providing evidence. Israel has since launched a widespread crackdown on the militant Islamic group, arresting scores of members while conducting a feverish manhunt for the missing youths. Hamas has praised the abduction of the teenagers, but has not claimed responsibility for it.
The three — Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old with dual Israeli-American citizenship — disappeared late Thursday while hitchhiking home from Jewish seminaries in the West Bank.
The military said about 300 Palestinians took to the streets when the soldiers entered Jenin at about 2 a.m. Some opened fire at the troops, others threw explosive devices or rocks at the soldiers. It said soldiers retaliated with live fire.
More at Huff. Post
Killing the Count - Mediation and Assassination
After rescuing 30,000 concentration camp inmates in WWII, Count Folke Bernadotte was appointed the United Nation's first mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and was assassinated in September 1948 by Zionist extremists during an official visit to Jerusalem.
18 Jun 2014
15 Jun 2014
Iraq Isis Crisis: Mass Executions of Civilians and Soldiers in Mosul
The United Nations reports that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) fighters carried out summary executions of civilians and members of the Iraqi army in the northern city of Mosul.
A UN spokesman says the number of killings could run into the hundreds. Unconfirmed reports say 1,700 Shia soldiers have been executed. "We've also had reports suggesting that the government forces have also committed excesses, in particular the shelling of civilian areas on 6 and 8 June," said UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville.
"There are claims that up to 30 civilians may have been killed." A summary execution is a killing committed after a person is accused of a crime and slain without a full and fair trial. The methods of execution committed by the militants remain unclear. Unconfirmed reports have claimed beheadings and crucifixations are being used.
The group have continued their advance towards Baghdad after capturing Mosul and former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. The militants have now moved into two towns, Saadiyah and Jalawla, in the eastern province of Diyala.
13 Jun 2014
FIFA and the World Cup
John Oliver's excitement for the World Cup is tempered by knowing information about FIFA, the organization that produces it. John details the problems with the upcoming tournament and the staggering allegations of corruption against FIFA.
12 Jun 2014
God Loves Uganda
God Loves Uganda tell story about "A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America's Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting sexual immorality and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law."
Student in anti-government protest in Turkey faces 98 years in jail for wearing red scarf
Prosecutors in Turkey are demanding the maximum sentence for Ayse Deniz Karacagil, saying that her scarf represented socialism. The 20-year-old has spent the last four months in jail after being arrested for taking part in an anti-government protest.
Ayse was part of a group who took to the streets of Antalya, southern Turkey, last September to complain at the death of demonstrator Ahmet Atakan. The circumstances of his death have still not been explained.
Ayse was singled out when police moved to break up the demonstration and they managed to get a photograph of her wearing the red scarf.
Red, according to prosecutors, is the colour of socialism, and that meant that she knew by wearing the red scarf she was indicating her membership of the illegal MLKP, an underground Anti-Revisionist Marxist-Leninist and Hoxhaist communist party in Turkey. However Ayse says she wore it solely to protect herself when the tear gas was sprayed.
She is facing a sentence of between 24 and 98 years in jail over charges of being a member of a terrorist organisation, opposing Assembly Law and resisting against law enforcement officers. Four others face between 11 and 95 years in jail for being at the event.
11 Jun 2014
This Woman Gets No Applause...Why? They Are Too Creeped Out...
Think you aren't being fooled by advertising tricks? Take a look at this so-called expert revealing food marketing's secret weapon. No amount of marketing makes factory farming acceptable.
Amazon tribal chief’s SOS: the white man is destroying everything
The Brazilian tribal leader who enlisted Sting to help save the Amazon rainforest has accused the developed world of being intent on “destroying everything” and urged its citizens to fundamentally change the way they think.
Twenty-five years ago, Chief Raoni Metuktire, of the indigenous Kayapo population, shot to international prominence as his campaign against hydroelectric dams on the Xingu river galvanized The Police’s frontman. With the help of Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, Chief Raoni generated so much publicity he was able to defeat a series of proposed dams along the Xingu, a major tributary of the Amazon where this tribe lives, in the early 1990s. But the threat has resurfaced, and at a far greater magnitude, with proposals to build up to 60 hydroelectric dams now at various stages of development across the Amazon, including at least six on the Xingu.
“The white man seems to be destroying everything. Try to change the way you think and tell your children while they’re growing up that it’s very important to respect nature, to respect indigenous peoples, and not to destroy everything, not to finish everything. “All over the world indigenous people are having problems with the destruction of their land and forest. Everywhere I look there is occupation and destruction of the natural balance. “We should be finding a solution together to preserve the forest for the future of our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. What’s going to happen when it’s all gone, when it’s all destroyed and there’s nothing left?”
iTunes, Assad, and Right Said Fred
Right Said Fred (really!) appears on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to tell Syrian president Bashar al-Assad what a dick he is. It's going to be especially disappointing to Assad, as they are one of his favourite bands.
10 Jun 2014
9 Jun 2014
Belarus: 20 years under dictatorship and a revolution behind the rest of Europe
Tucked away behind the vast, charmless apartment blocks and broad thoroughfares so beloved of Soviet town planners, the Minsk History Museum boasts Belarus’s best exhibition of the summer. Back in the BSSR (the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, as it was then known) is a showcase of Soviet memorabilia and propaganda that takes visitors back a generation to a time when this was one of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics.
Or is it? Some would argue you don’t have to enter the exhibition to be Back in the BSSR. Streets in the capital are still named after Marx and Engels. A statue of Lenin dominates a city centre square. There’s even a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the original Soviet secret policeman and the first statue toppled in Moscow when the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991. A metro ride costs 20p. People smoke indoors. Almost no one has tattoos. This feels like a place that is at least one revolution behind the rest of us, maybe more.
And then there is the leader. This summer, Europe’s longest-serving ruler - the only post-Soviet president that Belarus has known - marks 20 years in office. Since Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994, parliament has been emasculated, political opponents driven into exile or disappeared, and the media have been silenced. This is a country where the KGB is still called the KGB. It is the last European country to use the death penalty – a bullet to the back of the prisoner’s head. Last month, Lukashenko announced he intended to bring back “serfdom” to “teach the peasants to work more efficiently”.
8 Jun 2014
Bilderberg Nazi Chairman Prince Bernhard, Master Of Spies
Was ex-SS Bilderberg chairman Prince Bernhard a Nazi spy in Whitehall? Interview with Dutch journalist Philip Droge author of 'Master of Spies'. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands' Nazi SS past and marriage to Princess Juliana of the Netherlands -- comes to London when Holland is invaded by the Nazis in 1940 and shadowed by Ian Fleming of MI6 'M' section, Desmond Morton, Mountbatten, OpJB and James Bond fame.
Prince Bernhard sends double agent Christiaan Lindemans, known as agent 'King Kong', into Holland in early September 1944 just before crucial Operation Market Garden but instead of going to prepare the Dutch resistance he reports straight to the German Abwehr (military intelligence). After the war Lindemans was arrested and interrogated by the British military intelligence and set to stand trial. But taken by the Dutch government to Germany where he died in mysterious circumstances days before the trial was due to commence. Bernhard reappears in 1954 in the Oosterbeek 'witches cauldron', where thousands of British paratroopers were massacred, as Chairman of the Bilderberg meetings for two decades. Then the Lockheed scandal of 1975 where he is disgraced, almost causing the death of the Dutch monarchy.
There is something squalid and rancid about being spied on
Writer and comedian Stephen Fry discusses the dangers of mass surveillance, calling for a campaign to urge governments around the world to curtail their monitoring of private data.
7 Jun 2014
South Sudan Pushed Toward Famine
The World Food Program warns fighting and lack of access to the displaced in South Sudan are pushing that country towards a hunger catastrophe. WFP says this humanitarian disaster still can be prevented, but time is running out.
Before fighting erupted in mid-December between the government and rebels, 140,000 people in South Sudan were suffering from severe food shortages. Now, World Food Program spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs says that number stands at 1.3 million.
“WFP is concerned about the food security situation and about the possibility of the food catastrophe or even famine developing over the coming year. But, we can prevent this if we act now…This disaster can be prevented. This is what I would like to point out. We can prevent, but it is absolutely critical to stop fighting," said Byrs.
But, that seems unlikely. A second truce enacted between the warring factions on May 9th broke down not long after it was signed.
6 Jun 2014
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied western Europe,
4 Jun 2014
Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers
In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam. Many of the women, after paying a penance of indentured servitude for their out-of-wedlock pregnancy, left the Home for work and lives in other parts of Ireland and beyond. Some of their children were not so fortunate.
More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.
“The bones are still there,” local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered the origins of the mass grave in a batch of never-before-released documents, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “The children who died in the Home, this was them.”
The grim findings, which are being investigated by police, provide a glimpse into a particularly dark time for unmarried pregnant women in Ireland, where societal and religious mores stigmatized them. Without means to support themselves, women by the hundreds wound up at the Home. “When daughters became pregnant, they were ostracized completely,” Corless said. “Families would be afraid of neighbours finding out, because to get pregnant out of marriage was the worst thing on Earth. It was the worst crime a woman could commit, even though a lot of the time it had been because of a rape.”
Mother Teresa: Hell's Angel
Christopher Hitchens investigates whether Mother Teresa of Calcutta deserves her saintly image. Probes her campaigns against contraception and abortion and her relationships with right-wing political leaders.
3 Jun 2014
Ahead of the World Cup
A report about the serious violations of Human Rights in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for the world cup football 2014 and the 2016 Olympics.
Based on economically feasibilities the FIFA and IOC nominated the city as host of the World Cup Football en the 2016 Olympics. Every time again the sport organizations pushing countries in development over the edge. The countries investing milliards of dollars in constructing stadiums and infrastructure meanwhile they are breathing human rights on a massive scale with impunity. The FIFA and IOC don't want to implement a human rights clause or look to the social feasibility, in advance.
An inconvenient harbinger about social cleansing of street children ahead of the World Cup and the lack of transparency.
May 1968 events in France
The May 1968 events in France were a volatile period of civil unrest punctuated by demonstrations and massive general strikes as well as the occupation of universities and factories across France. At the height of its fervor, it virtually brought the entire advanced capitalist economy of France to a dramatic halt. The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared civil war or revolution. As a matter of fact, the national government temporarily ceased to function after President de Gaulle secretly left France for a few hours. Although the events sometimes turned violent, they also had artistic and festive aspects with numerous quasi-improvised debates and assemblies, songs, imaginative graffitis, posters and slogans.
The unrest began with a series of student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism and traditional institutions, values and order. It then spread to factories with strikes involving 11,000,000 workers, more than 22% of the total population of France at the time, for two continuous weeks. The movement was characterized by its spontaneous and de-centralized wildcat disposition; this created contrast and sometimes even conflict between itself and the establishment, trade unions and workers' parties. It was the largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first ever nation-wide wildcat general strike.
2 Jun 2014
1 Jun 2014
140,000 year old U.F.O discovered in the Baltic Sea
“It is not an object which is man made in modern time. What ever it is it’s either from during the ice age or pre-ice age.” – Peter Lindberg, February 24, 2013 “The object is older than 140.000 yrs. Older than that… with straight angles/lines – rounded corners… much like a “dinner plate” and separate from the base below.” – Dennis Asberg, September 28, 2012
There are THREE objects of interest – 1) the main 60 meter circular anomaly, 2) a smaller secondary object lying approx. 200 meters from the 1st anomaly with an area shaped like two “Gothic church windows” and 3) a third anomaly – a 28 meters high and 275 meters wide rock outcrop with a crack running through it, lying some 1500 metres South of the circular object, direct on the other end of the “trail”. The team has stated Anomaly 2 might turn out to be the most interesting than the first, and they plan to dive on it this time around