Bonjour Planet Earth

Sunday, May 19, 2013

'Google is cheating British taxpayers out of millions... what they are doing is just immoral'

A former Google executive turned whistleblower says he has 100,000 emails that expose the 'immoral' tax avoidance scheme used by his former employer.

Barney Jones, who worked for Google from 2002 until 2006, said the company has 'pulled the wool over the eyes of HMRC and the British population'.

He claims Google has a system in place which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven and accused the company of 'cheating' the British taxpayer.

The internet giant has been under increasing pressure about allegations of tax avoidance.

Prime Minister David Cameron will lead efforts at next month's G8 summit of world leaders to find ways of preventing multinational firms from exploiting tax loopholes. Full story...

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Little welcome for strangers in Germany's neo-Nazi village...

Next to a mural showing an idealised Aryan family, Gothic script declares that the village in eastern Germany is "free, social, national." The signpost next to it once pointed the way to Hitler's birthplace, 530 miles away in Austria, until a court order forced villagers to take it down.

The echoes of the Third Reich are quite deliberate. In Jamel, a tiny collection of red brick farmhouses fringed by forest, dozens of villagers describe themselves as Nazis and a majority turns out to vote for the far Right.

This is a place with little welcome for strangers. Rottweilers bark incessantly. A shaven-headed man shouts his own warning while a woman shrieks an obscenity from her window.

Jamel is for some the tip of the iceberg; an indication of how the far Right in Germany is open and active, especially in areas of former East Germany where jobs are scarce. Full story...

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Church trial highlights slew of scandals in Singapore...

Dressed in a faded black leather jacket, matching skinny jeans and sky-high stilettos, Sun Ho made her way past a waiting crowd of supporters, reporters and photographers, as bodyguards briskly ushered her from the car.

Her appearance would not have looked out of place at one of her pop concerts, but Sun was on her way to attending arguably the biggest and most anticipated corruption trial in Singapore this year.

After more than a year of intense speculation and probes, on Wednesday Singapore opened the corruption trial of six leaders of City Harvest Church, accused of siphoning off more than $50m of the congregation's money to support Sun Ho's singing career.

Ho's husband, Kong Hee, runs City Harvest Church. With more than 30,000 members, it's one of the biggest and richest mega-churches in Singapore. The church is famous for holding large-scale and elaborate services held in air-conditioned expo halls, resembling pop concerts. Full story...

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Tiger Temple, China's defiant blogger and citizen journalist...

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Lebanese man rapes his sister, makes her pregnant, kills her for "honour"

A man has killed his pregnant teenage sister in south Lebanon in what was seen as an honor crime - the murder of a woman accused of shaming her family.

Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5) said Friday that the body of Baghdad Khaled al-Issa, 18, was found with stab wounds in her head and sides in the area of al-Wazzani.

Investigators discovered that her brother Jihad, 21, had killed her in what is described as an honor crime, VDL said.

It added that the victim was seven months pregnant.

Later on Friday, LBCI television reported that the investigation with Jihad revealed that he had raped his sister, which lead to her pregnancy.

"He confessed to raping his sister,” LBCI said, adding that Jihad claimed he was drunk when the incident happened. Full story...

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Death penalty for family members in India 'honour killing'

Nearly 1,000 Pakistan women ‘killed for honour’ in 2011...

Father and brothers in India shoot teen dead for falling in love...

Man in Pakistan kills 6 daughters for "honour..."

Sham elections in Swaziland...

South Africa's policy of constructive engagement with Swaziland hit the buffers this week when the kingdom began voter registration for an election charade after scorning advice from the African National Congress to introduce democratic change.

The regime of absolute monarch Mswati III expects 600,000 voters to register out of a total population of 1.1 million.

But it is impossible to call the exercise planned for October democracy since, under the system known as Tinkhundla, only approved candidates can stand.

Approval is dependent on regional chiefs appointed and paid by the monarchy. Full story...

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Swaziland's super-rich king has no money for Aids orphans...

Malaysia's rigged electoral system...

A win for the opposition is nearly impossible

As the smoke clears after the Malaysian election battle it has become clear that under the current electoral system defeat of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) was never quite on the cards, even without the electoral roll and election day cheating and vote buying claimed by the opposition.

Indeed all other factors being equal it would probably take another 4 percent swing against the BN for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition to win the majority of seats.

As it was this was a remarkable victory for the PR which won 51.7 percent of the popular vote and 53 percent in under-represented peninsula Malaysia. Yet it took only 89 seats compared to the BN's 133 seats. Those numbers tell the tale of just how rigged the system has become.

Each BN seat cost an average of 39,400 votes while each PR one cost 63,200. Those figures show the success of years of outrageous BN gerrymandering which has made nonsense of democratic, one-man one-vote principles. The extent of this has gone almost unnoticed by the foreign media - and foreign government reaction, treating the result as though it were the outcome of a relatively normal democratic process. Gerrymandering on Malaysia's epic scale is just as undemocratic as the ballot-counting frauds which President Ferdinand Marcos used to turn defeat into claimed victory during his years as president of the Philippines. Full story...

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OpGTMO: Anonymous launches global anti-Guantanmo action...

The hacktivist collective Anonymous kicked off ‘Operation Guantanamo’ to mark 100 days of the Gitmo hunger strike with a series of “twitterstorms, email bombs and fax bombs.” Protests have been held outside the White House demanding the camp’s closure.

What was characterized as a large group of protesters took part in an demonstration outside of the White House on Friday, with activists donning orange jumpsuits and black hoods to bring attention to the plight of the detainees. Several arrests were reportedly made after protesters ignored police orders to disperse, though the exact number of those detained remains unknown.

The three day campaign, which got underway on Friday, is intended to “Raise Awareness in social media of the human rights violations going on at Guantanamo, the indefinite detention of prisoners, many of whom have been cleared for release years ago.”

In a statement released earlier this month, Anonymous expressed their solidarity with the hunger strikers, vowing they would “shut down Guantanamo.” Full story...

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Female cop slams cuffed woman face down...

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"Mom, they did bad things to me" - insider at OKC airport shares shocking info on alleged TSA abuses...

(...)

“A woman in her late 30’s or early 40’s approached me and asked if I could help her,” Stacy recalls. “She told me that ‘those people in the blue uniforms took my daughter in that back room and she’s been gone for a long time.’”

Stacy confirmed to the worried mother that that “room” was where “special handling” and “interrogations” and “strip searches” take place.

Stacy said the mother was getting frantic. They were going to miss their flight. She said they were traveling out of state from southeastern Oklahoma and that her daughter was in a beauty pageant.

“I’d say she was about 14, maybe even 16,” Stacy said. “She eventually came out of the interrogation room and was shaking and appeared as if she had been crying. She was very attractive and looked young. She came up to her mother and said, ‘Mom, they did bad things to me.’ The mother, shocked, held her hand over her mouth and said, ‘Oh, my God!’”

Asked what the mother and daughter did next, Stacy, aware that a crime had taken place in the name of “security,” said that she was not supposed to really even be in that area of the airport at that time and so simply told them to file a complaint with TSA. There was nothing more Stacy could do.

The mother, Stacy noted, was clearly in a state of shock over what had taken place with her daughter. Full story...

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Aussie government tries to block two sites, takes down 1,200...

Australia's government is under fire after it appears to have introduced web censorship without warning and expanded already controversial powers to block access to child pornography into a wider web filtering system.

The reluctance of the government to release information about who has requested sites be blocked, and lists of those sites, has also alarmed many Australians. Two convenors from Melbourne Free University (MFU), whose site was blocked without warning or explanation on 4 April, have described it as a "glimpse [of] the everyday reality of living under a totalitarian government."

For a country that perhaps has a reputation for taking it easy, Australia's governments have been particularly keen on web censorship. In 2008 a web filter was proposed that would have potentially blocked as many as 10,000 sites by placing them on a blacklist. Years of criticism from industry, political and public groups—including Anonymous "declaring war" on it, and Wikileaks publishing the confidential blacklist to show it included some sites that were only, contrary to government assurances, subjectively offensive—led to the idea being dropped in November 2012.

That might have been the end of it, but instead of going through legislative channels, it looks like web censorship is back and taking advantage of a legal loophole. On April 4 more than 1,200 sites were suddenly unavailable to Australian web users Full story...

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Google reports record spike in government requests to remove content...

Censorship is alive and well in Canada – just ask government scientists...

India's face-off with internet freedom...

Internet censorship is bad in China; is it any better in the "free" world?

Governments pose greatest threat to internet, says Google's Eric Schmidt...

Chinese tourists’ bad manners harming country’s reputation, says senior official...

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang has criticized the “uncivilized behavior” of his countrymen when they travel abroad, which he says has harmed the nation’s image. He blamed the “poor quality and breeding” of the Chinese tourists.

According to Shangaiist, Wang made the remarks during a meeting to discuss the country’s new tourism law. He said that some particularly bad manners — talking loudly in public places, crossing the streets on red lights, public spitting — are giving a bad name to China.

Spitting is common in some parts of China, and many older Chinese do not consider it rude or impolite, says the BBC’s Raymond Li. Ahead the Olympic Games in 2008, Beijing tried to get its citizens to improve their manners in public, including by reducing spitting and littering. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who introduced anti-spitting rules in the 1980s, himself was known to keep a spittoon by his side, even during high-level diplomatic meetings.

Among the many things the new tourism law aims to accomplish is “promote a healthy and civilized way to travel, to improve the level of civilization of tourists.” It stresses that establishing a good image of Chinese tourists is the common responsibility of the government. Full story...

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The world's worst tourists? Americans, Chinese and the French...

High-rollers from China make Singapore casinos see red...

'I love Paris' may soon be passe for Chinese tourists...

Chinese boom in Swiss ski resorts...

Why Saudi Arabia hates tourists...

Is tourism the most destructive enterprise?

Friday, May 17, 2013

Angelina Jolie part of a clever corporate scheme to protect billions in BRCA gene patents, influence Supreme Court decision...

Angelina Jolie's announcement of undergoing a double mastectomy (surgically removing both breasts) even though she had no breast cancer is not the innocent, spontaneous, "heroic choice" that has been portrayed in the mainstream media. Natural News has learned it all coincides with a well-timed for-profit corporate P.R. campaign that has been planned for months and just happens to coincide with the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the viability of the BRCA1 patent.

This is the investigation the mainstream media refuses to touch. Here, I explain the corporate financial ties, investors, mergers, human gene patents, lawsuits, medical fear mongering and the trillions of dollars that are at stake here. If you pull back the curtain on this one, you find far more than an innocent looking woman exercising a "choice." This is about protecting trillions in profits through the deployment of carefully-crafted public relations campaigns designed to manipulate the public opinion of women.

The signs were all there from the beginning of the scheme: Angelina Jolie's highly polished and obviously corporate-written op-ed piece at the New York Times, the carefully-crafted talking points invoking "choice" as a politically-charged keyword, and the obvious coaching of even her husband Brad Pitt who carefully describes the entire experience using words like "stronger" and "pride" and "family."

But the smoking gun is the fact that Angelina Jolie's seemingly spontaneous announcement magically appeared on the cover of People Magazine this week -- a magazine that is usually finalized for publication three weeks before it appears on newsstands. That cover, not surprisingly, uses the same language found in the NYT op-ed piece: "HER BRAVE CHOICE" and "This was the right thing to do." The flowery, pro-choice language is not a coincidence. Full story...

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Angelina Jolie: wolf in sheep's clothing?

Kesha: Dancing with the devil...

Lady Gaga and the New World Order...

Malawi president attacks Madonna for 'bullying' and 'blackmailing' trip...

100 days of Guantanamo hunger strike...

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The Oxford sex ring and the preachers who teach young Muslim men that white girls are cheap...

The terrible story of the Oxford child sex ring has brought shame not only on the city of dreaming spires, but also on the local Muslim community.

It is a sense of repulsion and outrage that I feel particularly strongly, working as a Muslim leader and Imam in this neighbourhood and trying to promote genuine cultural integration.

There is no doubt that the evil deeds of these men have badly set back the cause of cross-community harmony.

In its harrowing details, this grim saga of exploitation, misogyny, perversion and cruelty fills me not only with desperate sorrow for those girls and their families, but also with dread and despair.

If I were the judge in this case, I would hand out the harshest possible jail sentences to these monstrous predators, both to see that justice is done for their victims and to send out a message to other exploiters. Full story...

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YouTube censors video exposing Angelina Jolie gene patent link...

(...)

Following Jolie’s announcement, Myriad’s stock rose to a three-year high of $34.70 during trading on the NASDAQ before closing at $34.10. The trading volume, with 2.6 million shares exchanged, was more than double the three-month daily average of 1.1 million shares. Thus, Jolie is directly responsible for feeding into the profits of the trillion dollar genetic patenting industry.

In his video, Adams called for Angelina Jolie in her position as a public figure now intimately associated with breast cancer research to denounce such corporate ownership over human genes.

Adams also encouraged viewers to go to Jolie’s Facebook pages and post messages asking her to publicly denounce “genetic enslavement”.

Within an hour of it going live on Infowars, the video was quickly taken down by YouTube. Viewers now clicking on the play button are presented with a static filled screen informing them that the video “has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy against spam, scams and commercially deceptive content.” Full story...

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UN Propaganda asset Angelina Jolie visits Syrian refugee camp...

Angelina Jolie: wolf in sheep's clothing?

Kesha: Dancing with the devil...

Lady Gaga and the New World Order...

Malawi president attacks Madonna for 'bullying' and 'blackmailing' trip...

Heroic theatregoer smashes cell-phone, gets thrown out...

We can't count the number of times we've wanted to enact vengeance on some inconsiderate audience member whose cell phone goes off during a performance. But, like most people, we just bottle that fury up deep down inside and take it out on the break room vending machine later. Not Kevin Williamson. Last night the National Review writer was in attendance at the marvelous new musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 when one theatergoer's incessant cell phone use finally drove him over the edge... into vigilantism.

The stellar production—a swinging cabaret-type musical adaptation loosely adapted from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace—takes place inside a luxuriant carnival tent nestled next to the Standard High Line. The audience is closely clustered at small tables throughout the room, and while there is food and beverage service before the show and during intermission, the performance itself takes place with zero table service interruptions, and the atmosphere is as quiet and attentive as any other conventional stage play. At least it's supposed to be.

Although each table is explicitly told that photography and cell phone use is strictly prohibited during the performance, the people seated around Williamson were, he says, unbearable. "They were carrying on a steady conversation throughout entire show," Williamson, who also writes a theater column for New Criterion, tells us. "They had been quite loud and obnoxious the entire time. There were two groups, one to the left and one to the right who were being loud and disruptive." Full story...

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Judge fines himself for smartphone use!!!

LA restaurant offers 5% discount to diners who check in their cell-phones...

Indian village bans use of cellphones by girls! WTF!!!

The “electrosensitive” are moving to a cellphone-free town...

Google Maps leads abducted Chinese boy home to family 23 years later...

A Sichuan man, abducted and taken to Fujian province at the age of five, has finally found his way home after spending years trying to work out where he came from. And he says he could not have done it without the help of Google Maps, Fujian’s news portal nhaidu.com reports.

Luo Gang, who was born in a small town in Guangan city, southwestern Sichuan province, disappeared on his way to kindergarten 23 years ago, said his parents. Heartbroken, they did everything they could to find their son, but to no avail. They eventually gave up and later adopted a daughter.

What they didn't know was that their son had been taken to a city in southeastern Fujian province, some 1500 kilometres from Sichuan.

Although Luo’s adopted parents loved him and treated him like their own son, he said the desire to find his birth parents had always haunted him. Full story...

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Kidnapping ordeal of three Ohio women went undetected for decade...

Punjab: they killed her and stole her organs...

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Indian cricket fan willing to swap kidney for World Cup ticket!!!

Australian gets 45 years for Indian student’s rape and murder...

An Australian man who raped and strangled his Indian student neighbour and threw her body into a canal in a suitcase was jailed Friday for 45 years for the ‘horrifying’ murder.

Daniel Stani-Reginald, 21, had plotted to rape and murder a woman for years before choosing Tosha Thakkar, a 24-year-old accounting student who lived in an adjoining room at his Sydney boarding house, the Supreme Court heard.

He read thousands of Internet articles on serial killers and sex attackers before assaulting Thakkar in March 2011 and throttling her with a cable in a crime described by judge Derek Price as ‘extraordinarily cruel’.

‘The last minutes of her life must have been horrifying. This was a terrible way for the deceased to die,’ Price told the court. Full story...

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Indian attacked and set on fire in Melbourne...

What happened to the $700 billion bailout given to the banks?

(...)

So... where did the $700 billion go? Did that fix the magneto trouble?

"I wondered the same thing," he said (from memory). "It was amazing to me that no one knew. We gave it to the banks. But no one knew what they did with it. I proposed to Tim Geithner that we find out. He was outraged. He cursed me out, using the F-word. He said it would bring the whole banking system down, if I asked.

"I went ahead and sent out a letter. I didn't really have the authority or the staff to insist. But all of the big banks wrote back. And most of them gave me dodgy responses or gave me the brush-off.

"What did they do with the money? They were supposed to increase lending to help bring about a recovery. None of them did that. Instead, they used it to repay each other's loans. In other words, they used it to reduce the amount of credit available... not increase it. And they bought US agency bonds... just as you'd expect. And they paid out their bonuses.

"In other words, they looked out for themselves... just as you'd expect. I didn't know this information was going to bring down the banking system... Full story...

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How the bank bailouts screwed the American taxpayer...

Wall Street bankers to pocket record-breaking $144 BILLION in pay and bonuses...

Top bailed-out banks to pay $30 billion in bonuses...

Barclays announces £38.5m bonuses on budget day...

Goldman Sachs to pay its bankers a whopping $16billion in bonuses!!!

Google "knows when you're home".

Google has devised yet another ingenious way of convincing people to hand over their real-time location data, by offering location specific “reminders” as part of its Google Now feature.

During the company’s Google I/O conference for developers in San Francisco yesterday, it was announced that Google Now, the voice-recognizing search product, will soon be available on desktop computers and will network seamlessly with mobile devices.

Google Now enables users to perform Internet searches by speaking to their computers, but it also allows Google to provide both time and location specific reminders that function via GPS technology.

“For example, you can, from your desktop at work, tell Google Now: “Remind me to take out the garbage when I get home,” and when it senses through your smartphone that you are back at home, Google Now will send you a reminder,” reports Business Insider. Full story...

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Delhi student sodomised, had dogs set upon him for befriending a girl...

A Delhi University student was allegedly sodomised and had dogs set upon him for his friendship with a girl whose father allegedly got his henchmen to torture him, police said today.

The incident came to light yesterday, said a police official in Ghaziabad, neighbouring the national capital.

According to police the victim - Robin Kasana, a student of Delhi University - was friends with a co-student who lived in the same neighbourhood. When the father of the girl - Rajesh Mavi - learnt of their friendship, he allegedly sent four men to abduct Robin.

The student was then taken to Rajesh's farmhouse in the Tila-Shahbazpur area where one of the men allegedly sodomised the student and unleashed dogs on him, police said. They also uploaded images of the student on Facebook by creating a fake ID. Full story...

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Hindu youth in Bangalore attacked for befriending Muslim girl...

Congo soldiers sodomised pygmies to get "supernatural powers..."

Cops taser 3 kids, threaten one with sodomy...

Cops in Bahrain beat up schoolgirls and threaten them with rape...

Cops in Pakistan rape and murder Christian man, threaten victim's father...

75 years in prison for videotaping police...

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The first amendment and the smartphone journalist...

It's not an offence to film the police...

Even the tech elites are leaving their gadgets behind...

If you were to meet 32-year-old Robin Sloan of San Francisco, you might think him a Luddite unable to get his head around new technologies. He owns an old Nokia phone with one main application: making phone calls. He takes notes using a pen and paper notepad. And he reads books printed on paper.

But Mr. Sloan is far from a Luddite. He used to work at Twitter as a media manager, teaching news outlets to use the hottest social media tools. Before that he was with Current TV as an online strategist, inventing the future of digital journalism.

Yet last year, as he set out to write his first book, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” he found his iPhone and other technologies were getting in the way of his productivity, so he simply got rid of them. “I found it was more important and more productive for me to be daydreaming and jotting down notes,” he said. “I needed my idle minutes to contribute to the story I was doing, not checking my e-mail, or checking tweets.”

Even in Silicon Valley, Mr. Sloan has company. Full story...

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Facebook and the disintegration of the human...

Cafes ban Google glasses to protect customers' privacy...

Technology turning the French on to virtual sex...

Judge fines himself for smartphone use!!!

This is the Modem World: The dark side of Google Glass...

Re-thinking Facebook...

How could so many years of horrendous abuse go unnoticed?

The details of the Oxfordshire child sex ring – convicted on Tuesday – make such wholly disturbing reading one would be forgiven for blocking it out entirely. Turn your face the other way, you certainly won’t be the first. Here we have a gang of men in jocund, leafy Oxfordshire – seven were found guilty – who have groomed and sexually abused numerous vulnerable children. Eleven-year-olds, 12-year-olds, many of the girls were in children’s homes.

In a story abundant with echoes of Savile, the men were known by the staff to drive to these “places of care” and pick the girls up. The offences that the seven men have been convicted of included child-rape, conspiracy to rape, arranging child prostitution, internal sex-trafficking, and sexual activity with children. It’s one long horror story of men targeting young girls, helped along by vast police and social services errors, and large ladles of dismal apathy.

The children were romanced and wooed by older men. One of the gang was a security guard in Tesco. Some men worked for Domino’s pizza. The girls were raped, gang-raped, put to work as prostitutes, rented out for sadistic torture sessions. The girls were harmed with knives, cleavers and baseball bats. They were given illegal amateur abortions. The children would lie, drugged and drunk, in squalid guesthouses and filthy flats as queues of local paedophiles and opportunistic punters queued up to have sex with them. Full story...

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Police review of Jimmy Savile dismissed as a ‘whitewash’

Top cop removed from paedophile sex abuse probe after naming politicians as...

The "suiciding' of paedophile investigators...

Metropolitan police covered-up VIP paedophile ring...

Gang of 11 in Manchester plied schoolgirls with drink and drugs and passed...

How does the State get away with grooming 13-year-old girls for illegal underage sex?

Father of 4 beaten to death by 9 cops...

A Bakersfield father of four died this week after struggling with nearly nine police officers outside of a medical facility. Witnesses say that the thirty-three year old pled for his life.

Reports say he died early Wednesday morning after being struck by nine officers an unreported number of times. He was believed to be intoxicated.

Some witnesses evidently filmed the incident on their cellphones. However, deputies were quick to confiscate the phones.Individuals who claim they saw the event in addition to Silva’s relatives recounted a scene where officers were beating a powerless man to death. Witnesses were outraged at video evidence being confiscated by deputies.

John Tello, a criminal law attorney, is representing two witnesses who took video footage and five other witnesses to the incident. He said his clients are still shaken by what they saw. Full story...

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US seizes top Bitcoin exchange as crackdown begins...

The US Department of Homeland Security seized a payment processing account Tuesday belonging to Mt. Gox, the largest international Bitcoin trader, claiming the monetary exchange service falsified financial documents.

The American government has previously made it clear that officials are watching Bitcoin, a decentralized economic currency that international regulators have not yet been able to control. Many of those who favor Bitcoin use Dwolla, an Iowa-based startup that allows customers to transfer their dollars into Bitcoins.

Unfortunately for those consumers, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant Tuesday effectively shutting down Dwolla’s ability to process Bitcoin payments, as reported by CNET. Whether because of the DHS’ charge of operating an “unlicensed money transmitting business,” the sudden timing of the allegations, or another reason, Dwolla and Mt. Gox officials have been reluctant to comment. Full story...

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

11 soldiers executed in Syria (Graphic)

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US denies German homeschoolers asylum...

An American appeals court has denied a fundamentalist Christian family from Germany the right to asylum in the US. The family claimed they were being persecuted for not being allowed to homeschool their children.

In its Tuesday ruling, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, said there was a difference between the persecution of a group and prosecution of violators of a law that is applied across the board - in this case, Germany's rule on mandatory schooling.

News agency AP reported that the family is planning to fight the decision.

"Regrettably for the Romeikes they have not shown that Germany’s enforcement of its general school attendance law amounts to persecution against them, whether on grounds of religion or membership in a recognised social group," the judge's opinion read. Full story...

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State threatens to use force on German homeschooling family...

Swedish home-schooling family "broken to pieces" after State abducts 7-year-old...

Why more US black families are turning to home schooling...

Thousands of parents in Australia illegally home schooling their children...

Unhappy diners 'beat top Japanese chef to death'

Top Japanese chef Miki Nozawa has died after apparently being attacked by two German men who were unhappy with the fried noodles from his restaurant on the North Sea island of Sylt.

The men, aged 36 and 50 are thought to have beaten 57-year-old Nozawa to death outside a strip club on the upmarket holiday island, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Thursday.

Earlier in the evening the pair had eaten Nozawa's beef, vegetable and fried noodle dish, which they disliked and refused to pay for. They left his restaurant and headed to a nearby strip club, where they bumped into the chef.

Nozawa recognized them and insisted both give him €10 – a request that was not met well and as the argument escalated the trio went outside. It was allegedly there that the two handymen beat the chef so badly he had to be taken to hospital. Full story...

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Chinese police beat Tibetan monk to death over banned...

Youth soccer referee killed after being beaten by players...

South African stoned to death for stealing phone...

Gay barman in Scotland attacked and set on fire...

Truck driver in India beaten to death for refusing to pay bribe...

Benghazi and the deepening crisis for the Obama administration...

The controversy over last year’s Al Qaeda assault on US diplomatic and CIA facilities in Benghazi, Libya has been revived amid a deepening political crisis of the Obama administration.

Even as the debate between the Obama White House and its Republican opponents becomes more heated, however, the real issues underlying the September 11, 2012 attack, which claimed the lives of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans, remain hidden.

Some Republicans have gone so far as to suggest that administration’s handling of the Benghazi affair could become grounds for impeachment of the Democratic president. There is a sense that Obama, also embroiled in controversies over state spying on the media and IRS harassment of groups politically opposed to the administration, is in serious trouble as a result of anti-democratic and militarist policies pursued behind the backs of the American people.

As always, the presentation of these developments by the American media is dishonest and deliberately misleading. Full story...

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Hillary Clinton's sinking ship: lies and cover-ups about Libya...

US embasssy attack in Libya was "complex" and "well-planned..."

"Liberated" Libya has become a country riven by torture, mass murder and...

When Hilary Clinton "deeply valued" the Gadaffis...

Russian convicts beat Americans convicts in cyber chess battle...

A team of Russian convicts have beaten a group of US inmates in a cyber chess battle conducted from their respective prisons, more than 5,000 miles apart.

The 10 players from Russian jails in Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Samara, Saratov and Sverdlovsk regions trounced their 10 opponents from Cook County Jail in Chicago with a score of 14.5 to 5.5.

The tournament, held via the internet and Skype, was the first of its kind.

Russia's team was made up of the country's best chess-playing jailbirds and had heavyweight support from Anatoly Karpov, the Soviet grandmaster and former world champion. The Chicago team was led by their chess teacher Mikhail Korenman, an acquaintance of Mr Karpov.

US media dubbed the international clash "jailhouse rook" and broadcast footage of the American lags hunched over their laptops in a prison library. Full story...

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Brides for sale in Bulgaria...

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Prince Charles slammed over housing deal with Bahraini regime...

Prince Charles has been accused of giving legitimacy to autocratic regime of Bahrain after signing a contract on behalf of his architecture group to advise Al Khalifa regime on housing and planning.

Earlier this month, the £700,000 contract was signed between Hank Dittmar, CEO of the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community and Bahrain’s housing minister Basim Alhamer.

Opposition activists, however, believe the contract gives a green light to Manama regime despite its clear and blatant violations of human rights.

Graham Smith, chief executive of Britain's anti-monarchy campaign group Republic said "Prince Charles should be ashamed”. Full story...

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Malaysian couple sentenced to 24 years in prison for starving Cambodian housemaid to death...

A court has sentenced a Malaysian couple to 24 years in prison for fatally starving their Cambodian housemaid.

Police found the body of Mey Sichan at the couple’s home in Malaysia’s northern Penang state in April last year. Medical reports said she weighed only 26 kilograms (57 pounds).

The Penang High Court on Thursday convicted Soh Chew Tong and his wife, Chin Chui Ling, of causing the death.

Their lawyer could not immediately be contacted to comment on a possible appeal.

The death occurred nearly six months after Cambodia stopped sending women to work as maids in Malaysia because of alleged abuse.

Cases involving employers who assaulted their domestic workers, mainly from Indonesia, have occasionally strained Malaysia’s ties with some of its Asian neighbors over the past decade. Full story...

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A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries...

When two Swedish economists set out to examine whether economic freedom made people any more or less racist, they knew how they would gauge economic freedom, but they needed to find a way to measure a country’s level of racial tolerance. So they turned to something called the World Values Survey, which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it does appear to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)

Unfortunately, the Swedish economists did not include all of the World Values Survey data in their final research paper. So I went back to the source, compiled the original data and mapped it out on the infographic above. In the bluer countries, fewer people said they would not want neighbors of a different race; in red countries, more people did. Full story...

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Africans complain of discrimination in Mumbai, India...

Let's stop pretending there's no racism in India...

Miss Russia shocked over racist vitriol...

Racism very much alive in Australia...

Racism widespread in Israel...

"What if they think Ukraine is in Africa?"

Murder or suicide? Singapore inquest on U.S. engineer's death...

Holding a black noose over her head, Singaporean forensics expert Lim Chin-Chin explained Wednesday to a packed courtroom how re-enactments showed that American engineer Shane Todd would have been able to hang himself from a similar black strap attached to his bathroom door.

"One final push and he lands," she said, describing how a chair could be shoved away by the feet so a body would drop.

This was the third day of the inquiry into the death of Todd, who was found hanging in his Singapore apartment on June 24. Singapore's medical examiner concluded that Todd committed suicide, but Todd's parents disagreed and hired a pathologist in the U.S. who -- based on Singapore's autopsy report and photographs of the body --suggested there was evidence that his death was a homicide.

Singaporean lawyers hired by the Todd family have suggested Singapore's police work was sloppy and that an assumption of suicide led police to neglect other evidence. In court, the Todds' lawyers asserted a possible crime scene was altered: Todd's hanging body was cut down and laid on the floor and a nearby chair moved before a forensics team and photographer arrived. Police maintain this follows standard procedure. Full story...

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WHO in Boston: bombing story mysteries...

Most of the national and international media have left Boston—and essentially moved on from the Marathon bombing story. But at WhoWhatWhy, we’re just getting started.

Why? Because we see a lot of problems with what we’ve been told so far. We’ve been disappointed that the media have failed to demonstrate healthy skepticism while passing along, unchallenged, the (self-serving) assertions of “the authorities.”

It is the job of journalism not only to report what authorities say, but also to confirm their claims, and address anomalies, errors, inconsistencies, outright lies, and cover-ups, large and small.

When it comes to falsehoods of all types, we’ve seen plenty of doozies, and you don’t have to go all the way back to the Tonkin Gulf incident—which helped pave the way for the escalation of the Vietnam conflict. Most people now understand that circa 2002-2003, the George W. Bush Administration knowingly exaggerated and deceived in order to justify a desired invasion of Iraq. Full story...

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Our American Pravda...

Report: there are 3000 child soldiers in India...

Last year, suspected insurgents in Northeast India Manipur abducted three teenage boys. Despite a missing persons complaint and a police search, they were never found. In Manipur, as well as several other Indian states, it is not uncommon for children to be kidnapped by insurgent groups to become child soldiers. Indeed, around the same time as the boys went missing, five teenage girls laid down arms in front of police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, a stronghold of Maoist rebels. They had been kidnapped them from their village in 2008.

Stories like these have been circulating for years, but officials have largely chosen to ignore or downplay the problem. A new study may shake them out of silence: A report released by last week by the Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) found that there are currently as many as 3000 child soldiers in India. “The recruitment of child soldiers is rampant and hundreds of children remain involved in the conflicts,” the report says.

The ACHR findings suggest that the problem is particularly severe in India’s long-running Maoist insurgency, but that children have also been recruited by insurgent groups in Jammu and Kashmir and parts of northeast India such as Manipur, where separatist groups have clashed with Indian forces for decades. ”In certain areas in eastern India, it is mandatory for families to give at least one of their children to Maoist rebels,” says Suhas Chakma, director of the ACHR. Full story...

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A Tamil child-soldier in Sri Lanka tells his story...

A child soldier in the Congo tells her story...

Former Khmer Rouge child soldier clears land-mines with bare hands...

A Swedish child soldier!!!

French rap group Swift Guad with "the child soldier" (graphic)

‘Worse than death row’: Gitmo hunger strike reaches Day 100 amidst mounting intl pressure...

Americans demand closure of Guantanamo Bay prison...As the Guantanamo hunger strike enters its 100th day, the number of voices, both in the US and around the world, to close the facility are growing stronger and louder.

Lawyers acting for prisoners in Guantanamo say the real figures may be higher, but officially of the 166 inmates in Guantanamo, 100 are currently on hunger strike. Of these, 30 are being force-fed through a nasal tube and three are in hospital.

The 166 prisoners have been there eleven and a half years and 90 per cent of them haven’t been charged with a crime.

The hunger strike began in February after an altercation between prisoners and guards, after guards allegedly interfered with the inmates personal belongings including the mishandling of Koran’s.

Original only a few dozen of the prisoners were refusing to eat but by the end of April the authorities in charge of Guantanamo were forced to admit that the number had jumped to 100. Full story...

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