Freddie Gray Intentionally Severed His Own Spine

On April 12, a 25-year-old African-American named Freddie Gray was arrested in Baltimore. No one knows exactly why he was arrested, other than the report that he ran after making eye contact with the police. Reportedly, Gray had a switchblade. He also had a record. During the arrest, though, Gray was seriously injured and ultimately, he died from spinal cord injuries.

Amid massive protests in Baltimore, the police have begun the public relations spin. Initially, rumors were making the social media rounds that Gray had a preexisting spinal injury from a car accident. That’s not true at all. On Wednesday, while official Baltimore police spokespeople are saying that they will not release information and they will instead take the case straight to the prosecutor (who, unless an outside prosecutor is appointed, is someone who works with the police every single day), the police office sprung a leak. They are now attempting to say that Gray injured his own spine – on purpose.

According to a police document obtained by the Washington Post, a prisoner shared the transport van with Gray and said that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the van. He also said that he believed that Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself.

More at addictinginfo.org

Baltimore Official Ruins A FOX Reporter’s Attempt to Smear Protesters

In this clip, a Fox News correspondent rudely badgers a Baltimore City Councilman for explanations for the riots that broke out on Monday evening, and gets shut down by the nuanced and impassioned arguments of Nick Mosby, 7th District.

Occupy Democrats

Also see: 11 Stunning Images Highlight the Double Standard of Reactions to Riots Like Baltimore on Mic.com

I Want To Be Straight

Ian Dury And The Blockheads (1980) – More here

Patents

For inventors, patents are an essential protection against theft. But when patent trolls abuse the system by stockpiling patents and threatening lawsuits, businesses are forced to shell out tons of money.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Why Are American Troops in Ukraine?

Vice News

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, [hɑˈjɔtsʰ tsʰɛʁɑspɑnuˈtʰjun]), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally among Armenians, as the Great Crime (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn]; English transliteration: Medz Yeghern [Medz/Great + Yeghern/Crime]) was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. It took place during and after World War I and was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. The Assyrians, the Greeks and other minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy.
It is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians, and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust. The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.
The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view.
More Info About The Armenian Genocide At Wikipedia

Psycho

Muse

Culture Vulture

The Skints recorded at Lion's Den stage - BoomTown Fair 2014

'Alien spaceship' being towed by trucks near secret Area 51 base

Astonishing footage has captured the moment a mysterious UFO is transported through the desert on the back of a truck.

Accompanied by a police escort, the truck is seen driving past a petrol station in Nevada with the strange disk-shaped object strapped to its trailer. And many viewers have already been speculating as to what the strange structure could be, with some believing it may be an alien spaceship.

Video and more at Mirror Online

Migrant boat disaster: Survivors of sinking that killed 1000 reach Italy

Survivors of the weekend’s Mediterranean boat disaster have reached the Italian port of Catania, as the United Nations confirmed that at least 800 1000 people died in the sinking off the coast of Libya. An Italian coastguard ship carrying 27 survivors arrived late on Monday night, with all the migrants on board disembarking by 01.45 local time. One man was seen to leave the boat in a wheelchair.

Officials for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that some of the dead were children between the ages of 10 and 12.

Police at the port also confirmed two men who were among the survivors had been taken into custody over suspicions they were part of a smuggling gang thought to have organised the fatal voyage. Prosecutor Giovanni Salvi told reporters: “Two people are currently held in custody following the testimony of survivors: the captain, of Tunisian origins, and a Syrian male national. “The remaining 25 migrants are free. They will be identified following immediate care and are expected to request asylum.”

Salvi said the boat that sank had three levels and the doomed migrants were locked in the hull and middle deck.

More at The Guardian

Dear Future Generations: Sorry

Prince Ea

List of Songs the CIA Used to Torture Muslim Prisoners

Just imagine for a second that you are alone in a small dark room while your head chained between your legs and you has been forced to listen same song again and again for numberof hours and days with headphones which you can’t take off. Music torture has been normal practice for the CIA after it started its “improved examination program” in the early 2000s.

The U.S. Psychological Operations team member Sgt. Mark Hadsell, said: “If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken. That’s when we come in and talk to them.”

Any torment technique is of easy to refute merit — music torment was, partially, mainstream on the grounds that it appeared to be more tasteful to the general population. Anyhow to find out about the knowledge of individuals who’ve been subjected to these tunes is to see exactly how frightful it is to have a darling tune betrayed you.

See the list of songs which CIA used to torture their prisoners at AnonHQ

What the British Royal Family Doesn't Want You To See!

Part 2

Islam is not a religion of peace

Rise

Antony and the Johnsons

Coral Rekindling Venus is major work for fulldome digital planetariums by acclaimed artist Lynette Wallworth.

It is an extraordinary journey into a mysterious realm of fluorescent coral reefs, bioluminescent sea creatures and rare marine life, revealing a complex community living in the oceans most threatened by climate change.

coralrekindlingvenus.com - coralrekindlingvenus.com/rise

What is a God?

melodysheep (feat. Jason Silva)

Dreader Than Dread

 L'Entourloop feat. The Architect & Skarra Mucci

Drowning for Freedom

Part 1 - Libya’s Migrant Jails. As Libya descends further into civil war and lawlessness, migrants from Africa and the Middle East continue to journey to the country’s coast in search of smugglers to take them across the Mediterranean Sea and into Europe.

VICE News

Ratatat

The Skints

Watch The Walls Melt Down

Matisyahu

The Cost Of Living Is Killing Me

The Skints

‘Stop feeding homeless’

A British homeless charity is being threatened with prosecution if it continues to serve hot food to homeless people. Hull City Council's environmental health officials have contacted Hull Homeless Outreach to say they are breaching food hygiene regulations by serving the food at St Mary's Church in Lowgate.

Without a working kitchen, the local authority insists there are concerns over the potential for food poisoning. Now, Hull Homeless Outreach can only serve tea, coffee and tinned soup, serving its last hot meal this week. Sarah Hemingway, of the charity, fears for the welfare of the city's homeless population. She said: "Environmental health called us out of the blue to tell us we couldn't serve hot food anymore because we don't meet the criteria. They told us they would prosecute if we carried on.

"We have been providing curries and sausage casseroles, which are cooked by our volunteers at home. "Now we are not even allowed to provide sandwiches made by volunteers. This has left us deeply frustrated, as about 50 people come to our soup kitchen on each of the two nights we are here. For some, this is the only chance of a hot meal they get each week. How can us serving this food be any worse than them having to rummage around bins for something to eat? This is a lifeline for our homeless population."

More at Hull Daily Mail

Erdogan's New Turkey: Goodbye Atatürk, Hello Atatürk

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's incumbent president and past prime minister, struggles to escape the shadow of modern Turkey's founder. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk looms large over his country's past, present and future. It is hard to dismantle the figure, the legacy and the lasting authority of Atatürk, very much to Erdoğan's dismay, especially as Erdoğan seeks to radically redefine the country -- from the place of religion in society to a reform of the constitution, including a shift to a presidential system.

For a short moment, a few months ago, it seemed as if Erdoğan had received help from an unlikely source: Adolf Hitler. Hitler and his national socialists were big fans of Atatürk and his "New Turkey" -- so much so that they instituted a minor cult around the Turkish leader in the Third Reich. Hitler's dictum that Atatürk and the Turkish nationalist movement had been his shining star in the darkness of the democratic Weimar Republic in the 1920s, became the official line of the Third Reich.

Reactions in Turkey were not only immediate but also quite positive, primarily newspapers close to the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- Erdoğan's party -- that seemed interested in discussing Nazi fandom of Atatürk as a means to discredit Atatürk and his project.

More by Stefan Ihrig at Huff. Post

Fire On Babylon

Sinéad O'Connor

Female Revolutionaries That You Probably Didn't Learn About In History class

Blanca Canales

Blanca Canales was a Puerto Rican Nationalist who helped organize the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She was one of the few women in history to have led a revolt against the United States, known as the Jayuya Uprising. In 1948, a severely restricting bill known as the Gag Bill, or Law 53, was introduced that made it a crime to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government. In response, the Nationalists starting planning armed revolution. On October 30, 1950, Blanca and others took up arms which she had stored in her home and marched into the town of Jayuya, taking over the police station, burning down the post office, cutting the telephone wires, and raising the Puerto Rican flag in defiance of the Gag Law. As a result, the US President declared martial law and ordered Army and Air Force attacks on the town. The Nationalists held on for awhile, but were arrested and sentenced to life in prison after 3 days. Much of Jayuya was destroyed, and the incident was not fairly covered by US media, with the US President even saying it was “an incident between Puerto Ricans.”

9 more Female Revolutionaries That You Probably Didn't Learn About at Films For Action