In the poorest countries, children are dying, at a rate too awful to think about. Basic illnesses claim 8 million young lives a year. It's in our power to stop this. No child is born to die.
30 Jun 2013
Saudi Arabian Women's Conference
An image of a conference in Saudi Arabia on the topic of “women in society” – with not a single female present - has gone viral. The picture features row upon row of men in traditional headscarves and white thobes. A single Westerner in a flannel shirt is the only person breaking up an otherwise uniform sea of what appear to be Arab men.
We traced the picture back to Beladalorb.com, which says it was published in Saudi newspaper Okaz last year. The conference was reportedly held at the University of Qassim and was apparently attended by representatives of 15 countries.
Much is being made of absurdity and hypocrisy of the image, but when you consider Saudi Arabia is a country where women are not permitted to drive, it seems less so. Religious police in the Gulf Kingdom which is governed by Sharia Law only recently lifted a ban on females riding motorbikes and bicycles – as long as they wear the full-length veil and are accompanied by a male relative.
29 Jun 2013
MouseGuard
In the world of MouseGuard, mice struggle to live safely and prosper amongst harsh conditions and a host of predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed: more than just soldiers, they are guides for common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one village to another. They see to their duty with fearless dedication so that they may not simply exist, but truly live.
Horrific video of beheading raises questions of arms supply to Syrian rebels
Another act of brutal violence reportedly by Syrian rebels has appeared on the web. Unverified video shows the beheading of 3 supposed government supporters. The title of the graphic footage suggests an orthodox Christian bishop was among the victims, although other reports claim he'd been shot dead in an assault on a monastery.
27 Jun 2013
26 Jun 2013
Nestlé Corporate Troll Spotting
Abby Martin features a video message by Nestlé, which the company made in direct response to a recent report Abby made about the company. She responds to points made in the video, and sets the record straight on the company's claims.
25 Jun 2013
In the US complaining about water Quality Could be considered 'Act of Terrorism'
A representative for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation told a group of concerned citizens that complaining about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism,” The Tennessean reports.
Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, made the claim during a meeting with residents of Maury County, Tennessee. Organized by State Rep. Sheila Butt, R-Columbia, the gathering sought to address complaints by residents that area water was making their children sick. In audio obtained by The Tennessean, Smith can be heard equating water quality complaints, an act of citizenry, with DHS-defined acts of terrorism:
We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously … But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.
Except Farmworkers
A day in the life of farmworkers in Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. - Except Farmworkers Website
Just for Hits
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins introduces the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase 2013 in Cannes and spreads his memes. But what the Hell Happens Five Minutes Into This Richard Dawkins Speech?
24 Jun 2013
Buddhist monk leads violent national campaign against Myanmar's Muslims
The Buddhist monk arrived wrapped in saffron-colored robes with an entourage of muscular, younger monks who guarded him and hung on his every word at the sprawling monastery he runs and where his divisive, anti-Muslim teaching is gaining a strong following. The monk, Ashin Wirathu, was unapologetic when asked about his role at the center of a rising tide of Buddhist extremism that has crested in a wave of anti-Muslim violence resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people and displacement of some 150,000 from their homes in recent months.
“Muslims are like the African carp. They breed quickly and they are very violent and they eat their own kind. Even though they are minorities here, we are suffering under the burden they bring us,” Wirathu, 48, said in a rare and wide-ranging interview with GlobalPost on Thursday. “Because the Burmese people and the Buddhists are devoured every day, the national religion needs to be protected,” he said, announcing that he would push for a ban on interfaith marriage before the next parliamentary session and vowing to continue the so-called “969” campaign that calls for Buddhists to only do business with other Buddhists and exclude Muslims who have a strong tradition as merchants in Myanmar.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is made of eight major ethnic groups, but 90 percent of the population is Buddhist. About 5 percent of the population is Muslim and the rest are a mix of Christian and Hindu. Muslims live throughout the country, as they were merchants along the trade routes between India and China. They have settled in waves of immigration from throughout the Muslim world and neighboring India since at least the 19th century. More recently, Muslims are coming across the border from Bangladesh in search of work and opportunity in Burma’s Rakhine State, where much of the recent violence has been centered.
US are Preparing for Massive Civil War
The US government has declared it can lock anyone up forever or kill them without any proof or due process. The Department of Homeland Security has placed an order for 450 million rounds of Hollow Point ammo. Obama can now declare martial law during peace time.
23 Jun 2013
Strange Fruit
Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa - The original Commodore single version by Billie Holiday. Recorded in New York. 20th April 1939.
PBS Documentary about the legacy of a song unique in the annals of American music. Best-known from Billie Holiday's haunting 1939 rendition, the song "Strange Fruit" is a harrowing portrayal of the lynching of a black man in the American South.
The film tells a dramatic story of America's past by using one of the most influential protest songs ever written as its epicenter. The saga brings us face-to-face with the terror of lynching as it spotlights the courage and heroism of those who fought for racial justice when to do so was to risk ostracism and livelihood if white - and death if black. It examines the history of lynching, and the interplay of race, labor, the Left and popular culture that would give rise to the civil rights movement.
Michael Hastings Sent Email About FBI Probe Hours Before Death
Hours before dying in a fiery car crash, award-winning journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to his colleagues, warning that federal authorities were interviewing his friends and that he needed to go "off the rada[r]" for a bit.
The email was sent around 1 p.m. on Monday, June 17. At 4:20 a.m. the following morning, Hastings died when his Mercedes, traveling at high speeds, smashed into a tree and caught on fire. He was 33.
Hastings sent the email to staff at BuzzFeed, where he was employed, but also blind-copied a friend, Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, on the message. Biggs, who Hastings met in 2008 when he was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan, forwarded the email to KTLA, who posted it online on Saturday.
Here's the email, with the recipients' names redacted.
Subject: FBI Investigation, re: NSA
Hey (redacted names) -- the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.
Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Michael
Rumors that the FBI was investigating Hastings began the day after his death, with a couple of mysterious WikiLeaks tweets. In a rare move, the FBI issued a statement denying that Hastings was under investigation.
22 Jun 2013
US Used a Secret Search Warrant to Get WikiLeaks Volunteer's Gmail
The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteer in Iceland, according to court records released to the volunteer this week.
The search warrant was issued under seal on October 14, 2011 by the Alexandria, Virginia federal judge overseeing the WikiLeaks grand jury investigation there. The warrant ordered Google to turn over “the contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, deleted e-mails [...] the source and destination addresses associated with each e-mail, the date and time at which each e-mail was sent, and the size and length of each e-mail.” The warrant also ordered Google not to disclose the search to anyone.
The target of the search was Herbert Snorrason, an Icelandic activist who helped manage WikiLeaks’ secure chat room in 2010. Snorrason was one of the WikiLeaks volunteers who resigned from the organization en masse in September 2010. But that evidently didn’t stop the government from grabbing Snorrason’s email a full year later.
The search is the first confirmed case of the government obtaining the contents of a WikiLeaks-connected e-mail account. The government won a public court battle in January 2012 to obtain non-content metadata from the Twitter accounts of three WikiLeaks associates: Seattle coder and activist Jacob Appelbaum; Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament; and Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp. The feds also got metadata on Appelbaum from Google and the ISP Sonic.net.
In those cases, the government got the records under 18 USC 2703(d), a 1994 amendment to the Stored Communications Act that allows law enforcement access to non-content internet records, such as transaction information, without demonstrating the “probable cause” needed for a search warrant.
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).
The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.
One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months. GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects. This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.
21 Jun 2013
Image of Police Attack Against Lone Woman Goes Viral
A more widely-cropped version of the now viral photograph shows just how isolated the woman was she was attacked by officers in Rio de Janiero, Brazil Monday evening. (Photo: Victor Caivano)
A captured instance of brazen police brutality against a civilian has, once again, captured the attention of the global community. The shocking photograph of a lone woman being pepper sprayed at close range by Brazilian police has gone viral, drawing criticism and attention to the ongoing mass demonstrations in Brazil—at which the attack took place—and the chronic undercurrent of police violence that so often follows peaceful citizen uprisings.
New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer spoke with the photographer behind the image, Victor Caivano, who said that the attack happened at around 11:20 PM Monday evening, long after “the protest was over, riots included.” The woman appeared to be a “normal, middle-class university student,” he said, adding that she was standing alone on a “deserted corner” after the police had cleared the area.
He continued:
Three riot officers approached the woman and told her to leave. When she objected — the woman either questioned the order or insisted that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, Caivano recalls — she was pepper-sprayed. “This policeman just didn’t think twice,” Caivano says. The woman stumbled backward, “screaming and cursing.” She was detained and taken to a police van. Caivano says local reporters are now trying to track her down.
Project Chess: Skype’s secret program aimed at making calls readily available to intelligence agencies
In yet another instance of a report indicating that tech giants worked directly with intelligence agencies to enable government surveillance, it is now being reported that Skype began a secret program called Project Chess to enable intelligence agencies and law enforcement to easily get a hold of calls.
This comes after it was revealed that Skype was part of the massive National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program known as PRISM.
The latest revelation about Skype’s secret program is quite interesting given the controversy surrounding the privacy and security of Skype. Indeed, the NSA leaks hinted that Microsoft may have lied about the security of Skype, though many suspicions were raised last year after they filed for a patent for “legal intercept” technology.
20 Jun 2013
British Atheist, 'Will Be Denied US Citizenship Unless She Joins A Church'
A 65-year-old atheist who has lived in the United States for 30 years may be denied her application for naturalised citizenship unless she joins a church by Friday. Margaret Doughty, who is originally from the UK, faces having her application refused because she declined to “take up arms to defend the United States.”
Naturalisation applicants are required to swear such an oath, but conscientious objectors can obtain an exemption, Raw Story reports. It adds the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Houston has responded to Doughty’s conscientious objector claim by stating only religious-based objections are valid and asking her to provide “official church stationery”, showing she is “a member of good standing” of a church that opposes the bearing of arms.
I am Bradley Manning
It's time to stop the war on whistle-blowers.
http://iam.bradleymanning.org | #iambradleymanning
19 Jun 2013
Momento Épico in Rio de Janeiro
In the middle of the protest, police man kneels in front of the fire, throws his weapon to burn and talks for the camera ! "To serve a State like this? I am ashamed. I am ashamed of everything we go through, every day!"
Michael Hastings, The Runaway General journalist, dies in car crash
The award-winning journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings – who wrote a Rolling Stone story that brought down a top US general – has died in a car accident in Los Angeles. Hastings won a Polk award for magazine reporting for his Rolling Stone cover report The Runaway General. The story was credited with ending General Stanley McChrystal's career after it revealed the military leader's candid criticisms of the Obama administration. Hastings also wrote for BuzzFeed. Rolling Stone ran a report late on Tuesday confirming Hastings had died in a car crash that morning and praising him as a "fearless journalist".
McChrystal was the top US general in Afghanistan when Hastings documented the general making remarks like: "Are you asking about Vice-President Biden? Who's that?" and, along with his aides, criticising the Obama administration's handling of the war and their civilian commanders in the White House. Barack Obama, announcing McChrystal's removal in light of the story, said: "The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be met by – set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system."
Brazil congressional panel approves controversial bill that would allow 'gay cure' treatments
A Brazilian congressional human rights committee on Thursday approved legislation that would allow psychologists to treat homosexuality as a disorder or pathology. The commission is led by evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano of the Social Christian Party, who has been accused of homophobia and enraged activists by calling AIDS a "gay cancer" in a tweet. His appointment as head the Commission for Human Rights and Minorities in the lower house of Brazil's Congress was fiercely opposed by gay and human rights groups. The measure approved Tuesday seeks to lift a prohibition on psychologists treating homosexuality that was established by the Federal Psychology Council. The ban has been in effect since 1999.
"In practice, (the initiative's) result would be that a person over 18 years of age, responsible for his actions, who is homosexual and wants to reorient his sexuality, can be attended by a psychologist," said lawmaker Joao Campos, a member of the evangelical bloc of Brazil's lower house. Feliciano had tried for weeks to put the "gay cure" initiative before the commission but had failed as opponents maneuvered to block a vote. The initiative was passed Tuesday amid a low turnout by commission members.
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