Second protester shot dead in Saudi Arabia

Saudi security forces shot one person dead and injured three others during what the country's state news agency described as "clashes" in the oil-producing Eastern Province. Activists and witnesses said Friday's casualties came when security forces opened fire on an anti-government demonstration in the Qatif district.

"While security men were following up on an illegal gathering in the town of Awwamiya in Qatif on Friday they were attacked by gunfire," a police statement on the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Friday. "They dealt with the situation by firing back, which resulted with the death of one." The SPA also said a protester was killed and three others were wounded in clashes on Thursday.

Activists and witnesses said that security forces opened fire when a Shia procession marking the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad - a celebration forbidden in ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia - turned into a demonstration for reform and the release of detainees.

Al Jazeera English

Kim Jong-Un Dead? That's The Rumor

In the past few hours, Twitter has exploded with unsubstantiated rumors that the new North Korean dictator died in Beijing today and that a coup is underway in North Korea. So far there is no indication at all that these rumors are true. The rumors originated on China’s twitter-like platform Weibo (fyi: here’s the fascinating Google translated page of original Weibo posts), and quickly got picked up by Gawker.com and retweeted in the U.S.

As the story goes, a couple assassins barged into Kim’s room in Beijing and shot him, before being shot and killed themselves by bodyguards. Twitter user @ChristianJMay posted that the rumor is “based on news that a host of blacked out cars have descended upon embassy in Beijing, where he was visiting.” Nevermind that as far as anyone can tell, Kim wasn’t even in Beijing.

Forbes – Huffington Post – Yahoo! News

UPDATE - Kim Jong-un assassination rumours sparked by Beijing embassy birthday party

Kim Jong-il’s 70th birthday is cause for celebration at the North Korean embassy in Beijing, so much so that building is now abuzz with activity for the multi-day festivities.

Now, along with the planned events, embassy staff can now mark worldwide social-media fuelled assassination rumours down as one of the many tributes for the late Dear Leader.

National Post

 

The Pope will die within a year: Vatican 'assassination fears' revealed

The sensational prediction was allegedly made by Cardinal Paolo Romeo, the archbishop of Palermo in Sicily, on a recent visit to China. Cardinal Romeo reportedly made the startling prediction of the Pope's death during a trip to China in November 2011.

He seemed so sure of the fact that the people he spoke with, including Italian businessmen and Chinese representatives of the Catholic Church, were convinced that he was talking about an assassination attempt. They were so alarmed by his remarks that they reported them back to the Vatican.

The extraordinary comments were written up in a top-secret report, dated Dec 30, 2011, and delivered to the Pope by a senior cardinal, Dario Castrillon Hoyos, a Colombian, in January. The Vatican has reportedly opened an investigation into the claims.

Telegraph

Icelandic Parliamentarians Nominate Bradley Manning for Nobel Peace Prize

The entire parliamentary group of The Movement of the Icelandic Parliament nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. Following is the reasoning we sent to the committee explaining why we felt compelled to nominate Private Bradley Manning for this important recognition of an individual effort to have an impact for peace in our world.

The letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

We have the great honor of nominating Private First Class Bradley Manning for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Manning is a soldier in the United States army who stands accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The leaked documents pointed to a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism by the United States government in international dealings. These revelations have fueled democratic uprising around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S.troops from the occupation in Iraq.

Bradley Manning has been incarcerated for well over a year by the U.S. government without a trial. He spent over ten months of that time period in solitary confinement, conditions which experts worldwide have criticized as torturous. Juan Mendez, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has repeatedly requested and been denied a private meeting with Manning to assess his conditions.

Bradley Manning Support Network

Expanding Earth

Expanding Earth or Growing Earth is a hypothesis asserting that the position and relative movement of continents is at least partially due to the volume of the Earth increasing. Conversely, geophysical global cooling was the hypothesis that various features could be explained by the earth contracting.

Wikipedia

One Step Beyond

Madness

Spanish court convicts judge Garzon

Spain's top court has convicted judge Baltasar Garzon in an illegal phone-tapping case and suspended him from the legal profession for 11 years, according to a court official.

Garzon, 56, who became internationally well known for his attempts to extradite Chile's former ruler, Augusto Pinochet, was found guilty of ordering illegal recordings of conversations between suspects in a corruption case and their lawyers.

Human rights groups and many Spanish supporters of Garzon view the accusations as attacks on Garzon for his investigation, launched in 2008, into alleged crimes against humanity committed by Spain’s nationalist government during the 1936-39 civil war.

The supreme court said in a statement on Thursday that Garzon had been suspended from the bench for 11 years, which, given his age, could effectively end his career. Garzon acted arbitrarily in ordering jailhouse phone tapping of conversations between detainees and their lawyers, the court said. It said his actions "these days are only found in totalitarian regimes". The Switzerland-based International Commission of Jurists condemned the supreme court verdict as "deplorable". It said Garzon had been prosecuted simply for doing his job.

Al Jazeera English

US Marine sniper unit photographed with 'Nazi SS' flag

A US Marine scout sniper unit in Afghanistan posed for a photo in front of a flag resembling the logo of the Nazi SS, the Marine Corps says.

The inspector general found there was no intent on the part of the Marines to identify themselves with the SS. An investigation found the symbol was meant to identify the Marines as scout snipers, but that it was still unacceptable, the Associated Press reported.

BBC News

Sacrilegious Saudi writer arrested in Malaysia

Malaysian authorities arrested a Saudi newspaper writer wanted by the Gulf kingdom for offending Islam and Prophet Mohammed and local reports said he could face death.

Hamza Kashgari was seized as he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday following his escape from Saudi Arabia on news that King Abdullah has ordered him arrested and prosecuted for religious insults in his articles on Twitter.

“The Malaysian authorities are coordinating with Saudi Arabia to hand Kashgari over,” the Saudi Arabic language daily 'Al Youm' said. In a separate report, newspapers quoted a statement by the kingdom’s Islamic Fatwa Committee calling for punishing Kashgari in line with Islamic law, which means he could be executed.

Emirates 24/7

And what did he do?

Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

The Daily Beast

Sheikh Nasser Al Omar pleads to the king that Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari gets executed for supposedly writings "shameful" comments about prophet Mohammed on Twitter.

iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy”. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

More on AlterNet

Protester sues police over surveillance database

An 86-year-old man is launching a landmark lawsuit against police chiefs who labelled him a "domestic extremist" and secretly recorded his political activities in minute detail.

Lawyers for John Catt are due to open the legal action at the high court on Thursday against a clandestine police unit that has been at the centre of controversy over its undercover infiltration of political groups. Catt, who has no criminal record, was "shocked and terrified" when he discovered that police had kept a detailed record of his presence at more than 55 demonstrations over a four-year period.

The police had detailed how the Brighton pensioner took out his sketchpad and made drawings of demonstrations he attended. Also logged were slogans on his clothes and details of his appearance, such as "clean-shaven".

His legal action threatens to deal another blow to the secretive National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which has been covertly monitoring protesters since 1999. The unit has recorded the activities of thousands of campaigners on a nationwide database. Defeat in the court case would put pressure on it to delete details of activists from the database.

Full story on The Guardian

Immigraniada

Gogol Bordello from the album 'Trans-Continental Hustle'.

'Woolly mammoth' spotted in Siberia

A beast lurches through icy waters in a sighting a paranormal investigator thinks could prove woolly mammoths are not extinct after all.

The mammoth – thought to have mostly died out roughly 4,000 years ago – was apparently filmed wading through a river in the freezing wilds of Siberia. The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed.

Video on The Sun

Journey to Plastic Beach

Gorillaz

Argentina To Complain To UN Over Falkland Islands 'Militarisation' By Britain

Argentina has vowed to formally complain to the United Nations about Britain sending one of its most modern warships to the Falkland Islands.

The country's President Cristina Fernandez announced plans to go to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly as tensions escalate. She declared: "We will present a complaint to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, as this militarisation poses a grave danger to international security." The sabre rattling between Britain and the Falklands is increasing ahead of the 30th anniversary of the war which broke out on April 2, 1982.

Sky News

I plan to be pregnant by a rich man so he’ll have to marry me and support my life of luxury

Wealthy men should watch out for the Piranha.

This ferocious type of woman charms her way into a rich man's bed just to get pregnant and live a pampered, lavish lifestyle funded by him. As divorce lawyer Diane Benussi revealed in The Sun yesterday, she has encountered women like this who have tricked men into having unprotected sex.

Whether the Piranha marries or drops their target, the result is the same — financial security.

The Sun, also RISE of single women who have children by rich men for long-term financial support

I FINK U FREEKY

Die Antwoord

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

An unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life ... and how it could probably end.

BLU website

Syria steps up assault on Homs

A Syrian military assault on Homs has killed dozens of people, as world powers scramble for a diplomatic strategy to end the violence in the country after the defeat of a UN Security Council resolution.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to press President Bashar al-Assad to implement democratic reforms after Russia and China vetoed any UN-backed measures against the Syrian government over its crackdown on the 11-month uprising.

Ahead of his visit, Lavrov said condemnation of Moscow's veto had verged on "hysteria". He said Moscow sought "the swiftest stabilisation of the situation in Syria on the basis of the swiftest implementation of democratic reforms whose time has come".

Al Jazeera English – Pro Assad Website

Should Have Known Better

Five Years Older

Christianity is a Egyptian Myth

Christianity is based on Egyptian Myths: Jesus Christ is Horus on ATS - The Pagan Origins Of Christian Mythology

Education For Death

Banned Disney Nazi Cartoon

Soviet War Paintings

Soviet War Paintings Part 1 – Part 2

The Latest Attacks Launched By Anonymous

Mox News

Colombia's Nuka Make tribe faces extinction

Only a decade ago, the Nuka Make, a Colombian indigenous community, lived a peaceful life disconnected from the modern world. Nomadic hunter-gatherers, they roamed a chunk of the Amazon three times the size of London, spending days trekking to one corner just to fish, then weeks to another to hunt.

Now driven out of their territory by the Farce left-wing guerrillas, the tribe occupies a shabby glade half the size of a football field on the outskirts of a frontier town, San José del Guaviare. "We fled day and night through the jungle," a young woman, Monica, says. "Finally we arrived in this place, no one is happy here."

The Nuka say their new home is poor for hunting and fishing. Local farmers get angry when they hunt in the forests. To make up for the loss of food, Acción Social, the government's aid organisation, delivers rations. However, the women say it is not sufficient. "They often forget to bring us the rations, and sometimes it is not enough," says Sandra, a young Nuka mother. "We do not like some of the things they give us, our bodies are not used to it."

The Guardian