Jimmy Kimmel Live - This Week in Unnecessary Censorship
16 Aug 2012
Britain warns Ecuador it could enter embassy to get Assange
Britain on Wednesday warned Ecuador that it could raid its London embassy if Quito does not hand over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been taking refuge at the mission since mid-June. In Quito, the Ecuadorean government said that any such action would be considered a violation of its sovereignty a "hostile and intolerable act."
"Under British law we can give them a weeks' notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection," a Foreign Office spokesman said. "But that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution." In Quito, the government bristled at the threat and said it would announce its decision on Assange's asylum request on Thursday at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT).
"We want to be very clear, we're not a British colony. The colonial times are over," Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said in an angry statement after a meeting with President Rafael Correa. "The move announced in the official British statement, if it happens, would be interpreted by Ecuador as an unfriendly, hostile and intolerable act, as well as an attack on our sovereignty, which would force us to respond in the strongest diplomatic way," Patino told reporters.
15 Aug 2012
Thousands of UK Workers 'Blacklisted' Over Political Views
Corporations in the UK who used a secret "blacklisting" database to screen out ‘left wing trouble-makers’ and union sympathizers as potential job recruits are facing renewed scrutiny after the UK-activist group Liberty called for a fresh investigation Monday night.
A demonstration outside the Olympic site on March 1, 2011 was called in solidarity with the whistleblower who was fired for standing up for an illegally blacklisted workmate. The blacklist scandal first broke in 2008, when the UK media revealed that more than 40 leading employers had subscribed to the vetting service provided by The Consulting Association, which had surveillance files on more than 3,200 workers, including political activists, shop stewards and health and safety representatives.
Police seized the database three years ago and Ian Kerr, the founder of The Consulting Association, was fined only about $7,500. Invoices were discovered showing that 44 companies had paid to access the names on the list.
Julian Assange will be granted asylum in Ecuador
Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has agreed to grant Julian Assange asylum, officials within Ecuador's government have said. The WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at Ecuador's London embassy since 19 June, when he officially requested political asylum. "Ecuador will grant asylum to Julian Assange," said an official in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, who is familiar with the government discussions.
At the moment he faces arrest as soon as he leaves the embassy for breaching his bail conditions. "For Mr Assange to leave England, he should have a safe pass from the British [government]. Will that be possible? That's an issue we have to take into account," said Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño.
Government sources in Quito confirmed that despite the outstanding legal issues, Correa would grant Assange asylum – a move that would annoy Britain, the US and Sweden. They added that the offer was made to Assange several months ago, well before he sought refuge in the embassy, and following confidential negotiations with senior London embassy staff.
Militarized Police in America
When we hear terms like militarized police - this is what comes to mind. Officers decked out in full military gear as though they're about to be deployed to Afghanistan.
14 Aug 2012
Lebanese protest anal exams on suspected homosexuals
Dozens of people demonstrated outside the law courts in the Lebanese capital on Saturday to protest the use of anal "tests" on men suspected of homosexuality, which is a criminal offence in the Arab country. The rally followed a July 28 police raid on a gay venue in a working class district of Beirut when 36 men were taken into custody and forced to undergo the examinations, reportedly to determine their sexual orientation.
Lebanon-based HELEM, considered the Arab world's leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights group, called for the rally under the slogan: "Stand up against the tests of shame, vaginal or anal." It also voiced solidarity with women subjected to so-called "virginity tests."
"We’re here because we want a clear statement from the ministry of justice that these kind of tests should be completely abolished and punished by the law," said participant George Azzi. "The syndicate of doctors has declared these tests are irrelevant scientifically and it’s illegal for doctors to do these tests, but that doesn't mean police can't still request it," he said.
7 Scandals That Reveal the Real Mitt Romney
People who start new businesses are always hungry for investors. But as Huffington Post reporters Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler found in their report, “ Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads ,” there was no possible way that anybody in 1984 could "check out" these families and be convinced this money was clean, as Grim told Democracy Now.
“After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money,” Democracy Now’s report began. “Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s.”
6 other Scandals That Reveal the Real Mitt Romney on Alternet
Israel sniper to get 45 days over shooting women carrying a white flag
An Israeli soldier implicated in the killing of two Gaza women carrying a white flag faces a 45-day jail term under a plea bargain approved by a military court on Sunday, local media said. The sniper, identified by Israeli media as "staff sergeant S," was charged with manslaughter in 2010 over the fatal shooting of an unnamed individual, which Palestinian witnesses linked to the killing of 64-year-old Riyeh Abu Hajaj and her daughter Majda Abu Hajaj, 37, during Israel's "Cast Lead" Gaza offensive.
But the Israeli military said the charge had on Sunday been reduced from manslaughter to using a weapon illegally. "Following a mediation process and upon examination of the evidence with the recommendation of the military court, both sides have reached a plea bargain in which the indictment will be adjusted, and he will be convicted of using a weapon illegally," a military statement said. Under the deal, "S" would be jailed for 45 days, media reports said.
Trapwire: Big Brother Now Monitors Your Every Move
The latest Wikileaks data-dump reveals that the government now has the ability to grab video from far-flung surveillance cameras located in stores, casinos and other businesses around the country. It uses sophisticated facial recognition software to identify people of interest captured by the ubiquitous cameras numbering in the millions.
The software, Trapwire, is a significant breakthrough for the surveillance state. It was uncovered by security researcher Justin Ferguson. He delved into the massive pile of emails hacked from Stratfor – regarded as a shadow CIA – on Christmas of 2011. In response to Ferguson’s discovery and the Trapwire revelation, Wikileaks was recently hit with a large scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
“Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison,” writes David Seaman.
“Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence,” RT reported last week. “It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.”
TrapWire: The Truth Behind The Hype
New emails released by WikiLeaks indicate that TrapWire, a defense contractor owned and operated by ex-CIA operatives, plays a key and troubling role in coordinating government and corporate surveillance. Many activists have gotten carried away, however, vastly overstating the scope of TrapWire. More on storify.com
13 Aug 2012
12 Aug 2012
Israel vs Iran: An Israeli Media Report
Israeli media spike coverage of potential attack on Iran "in the coming 12 weeks". More at The Real News
Vladimir Putin: Russia Military To Get Hundreds Of New Warplanes and Helicopters
Russia's military will get 1,600 new warplanes and helicopters by 2020, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, as part of efforts to strengthen the country's armed forces.
Putin has worked hard to restore pride in the Cold War-era superpower's military since his first election in 2000.
The planned addition of 600 military planes and 1,000 helicopters is part of a 23 trillion rouble ($720 billion)programme to re-equip a military still weakened by spending cuts prompted by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
"We are talking primarily about providing our forces with state-of-the-art modern technology," Putin said at an air show on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the country's air force.
11 Aug 2012
Bradley Manning’s lawyer accuses U.S. Army of ‘flagrant violation’ of military code
The harsh conditions forced upon Bradley Manning in military detention have been laid out in detail as part of a court filing in which the US army is accused of a “flagrant violation” of his right not to be punished prior to trial.
The Article 13 motion, published Friday by Manning’s civilian lawyer David Coombs on his website, claims that Manning, who is accused of leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks, was held in a 6×8 ft cell for 23 to 24 hours a day. In addition, when not sleeping, Manning was banned from lying down, or even using a wall to support him.
The motion also claims that Manning was punished through “degradation and humiliation”, notably by forcing him to stand outside his cell naked during a morning inspection. This, his Coombs claims, was “retaliatory punishment” for speaking out over his treatment.
Manning, 24, is accused of being behind the biggest leak of state secrets in US history. Hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world, as well as war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, were published by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
10 Aug 2012
French Riot police smash camps and hundreds rounded up for deportation as Socialists take on gipsies
French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes.
One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless. The policy being pursued by France’s socialist government was formulated by former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was frequently accused of pandering to the far right.
US Drops Probe Into Goldman Sachs Mortgage Scam
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped an investigation into Goldman Sachs Group Inc's role in selling $1.3 billion worth of subprime mortgage securities, the investment bank said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
In February, Goldman received a so-called Wells notice from SEC staff related to disclosures in the deal's offering documents. Such notices typically indicate the agency plans to take some kind of enforcement action, and gives firms a chance to respond.
On Monday, the SEC notified Goldman that the investigation had been closed and that it did not intend to recommend any enforcement action against the bank related to the offering, Goldman said in its quarterly 10-Q filing with the SEC.
9 Aug 2012
Curiosity's mysterious Mars photo stirs speculation
A photo of Mars taken by Curiosity shows what might be the NASA rover's spacecraft crash-landing in the distance. If so, it 'would be an insane coincidence,' one engineer says.
Did Curiosity capture the galactic equivalent of the Zapruder film when it landed on Mars?
Seconds after the NASA robot's landing Sunday night, Curiosity managed to squeeze off a handful of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs. One, taken with a device on its rear known as a Hazcam, captured the pebble-strewn ground beneath the rover and one of its wheels — and a blotch, faint but distinctive, on the horizon.
The images were relayed by a passing satellite. Two hours later, the satellite passed overhead again. This time, Curiosity sent home a new batch of higher-resolution photos. They showed the same horizon. The blotch was gone.
Israel defence chief brings U.S. worries over Iran in line with Israel's
Israel's defence chief claimed Thursday that President Obama has new intelligence which changes the U.S. assessment of the imminent danger represented by Iran's clandestine nuclear work, bringing the White House's views closer to those held by the Jewish state.
An article published Thursday by the Haaretz newspaper said Defense Minister Ehud Barak had "confirmed" the paper's earlier report that Mr. Obama had received a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "which shares Israel's view that Iran has made surprising, significant progress toward military nuclear capability."
Speaking later to Israeli Radio, Barak confirmed that, as he understood it, a new U.S. intelligence report "being passed around senior offices" in Washington did make the American government's concerns more urgent. He did not explicitly say the new intelligence report was in the form of an official NIE provided to Mr. Obama.
US starts Agent Orange clean-up in Vietnam
The US has begun a project to help clean up Agent Orange contamination at one area in Vietnam - the first such move since the war ended in 1975. The work is taking place at the airport in the central city of Danang.
The US sprayed millions of gallons of the toxic defoliant over jungle areas to destroy enemy cover. Vietnam says several million people have been affected by Agent Orange, including 150,000 children born with severe birth defects.
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