Bonjour Planet Earth

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Petition asks Carla Bruni to pay 'obscene' cost of website...

An online petition is calling for France's former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to reimburse the taxpayer following revelations earlier this month that the singer's personal website cost the state €410,000 over a period of two years.

The year 2013 has truly been an annus horribilis for the Bruni-Sarkozy family when it comes to expense scandals.

Following the revelation that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy had breached his spending limits during last year’s presidential election campaign leading to his resignation from France’s highest legal body, the Constitutional Council, the latest scandal to hit the Bruni-Sarkozy clan is certainly something they could do without.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who is currently promoting her new album, ‘Little French Songs’, is now the subject of an online petition protesting the amount of public money injected into the upkeep of her personal website.

The petition, which had 51,187 signatures as of Friday afternoon, was started in reaction to a report published in mid-July from the Court of Auditors, which found that Bruni’s website received a total of €410,000 from the state over two years. The site, it said, was financed by the presidential budget at a cost of €330,000 in 2011 and €80,000 in 2012.

The man who started the petition, Nicolas Bousquet, a Paris-based web developer, describes the cost as “obscene”, estimating that “the site could have been made by anyone for less than €10,000." Full story...

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Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is...

(...)

As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.

The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.

Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.

Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib."

That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also have implications for you and me. Full story...

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Revealing Reality: US & UK 'evolve into full blown police states'

Outrage as bananas thrown at Italy's first black minister...

Italy has seen an outpouring of disgust after a spectator at a party rally threw bananas at the country's first black minister, who has suffered an onslaught of racist slurs since taking office in April.

Integration minister Cecile Kyenge, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was making a speech at the Friday rally when a member of the audience began to launch the pieces of fruit towards her. The bananas missed the podium where she was speaking but the incident drew a deluge of condemnation in the media, where politicians and commentators lamented the shame brought on the country by the actions of the far-right.

"Another shameful and disgraceful gesture. Solidarity with the Minister Kyenge. Now let's just isolate the idiots," Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno said.

"I am ashamed to share the country with people like this," wrote one Twitter user, Eugenio Iannelli, reflecting the dismay of many on the social media network.

The treatment of Ms Kyenge has thrown a spotlight on the ugly racist currents running through some strands of society in Italy, a country grappling with tensions over rising levels of immigration, particularly from North Africa. Full story...

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Saturday, July 27, 2013

How Goldman Sachs robbed you of 5 billion dollars in aluminium fraud...

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"Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the...

Arizona college student suspended for requesting that nursing classes be taught in English, not Spanish...

When it has gotten to the point that Americans cannot even insist that their college courses be taught in English, the true language of our culture, the "debate" over immigrants and immigration has moved past the point of being absurd.

And yet, practically every day Americans in many parts of the country are forced to endure this absurdity. To wit: Arizona nursing student Terri Bennett, who is now suing the Pima Community College in Pima County after the school allegedly labeled her a "bigot" and suspended her for daring to ask that her nursing course be taught in English - so they would be, you know, easier for her to learn. Per Breitbart News:

According Bennett's legal complaint, she started nursing classes at PCC in January 2013. During classroom hours, she and her fellow students were divided up into smaller groups, and she was "the only first-language English speaker" in her group. The other students in her group "spoke primarily in Spanish."

The students were asked to fill out class evaluations in March and were told their answers would remain anonymous. Thus, Bennett indicated on her evaluation she would prefer "there were no Spanish in the classroom."

In another course, Bennett said that, shortly after turning in her course evaluation, Spanish was so heavily used throughout the classroom that she was unable to "concentrate." By April 3, she said, the learning environment was so difficult that she "followed PCC procedures and requested an interview with the Director of the Nursing Program." Full story...

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Bahraini authorities raid homes and torture suspects for confessions...

Security forces in Bahrain have been raiding dozens of homes each day since April, arbitrarily arresting young men, and torturing them to force confessions to some crime, a local rights group said on Tuesday.

Plainclothes police, some of them dressed in neon-colored vests and black ski masks, knocked down doors of houses in at least 10 villages across the tiny Gulf monarchy on Monday and arrested several people, Yousif al-Muhafda, deputy-head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), said.

In the latest home invasions on Tuesday, Muhafda documented raids in at least four villages including al-Shakhtoura, Sehla, Nabi Saleh and Ma’ameer with a number of arrests.

“In one day, there are at least 30-35 house raids,” the rights activist told Al-Akhbar.

“Many times they aren’t looking for specific people. They just storm a house and ask the family if they have any young men,” Muhafda added. Full story...

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South African chef 'too fat' to live in New Zealand...

Authorities in New Zealand have told a South African chef he is too fat to be allowed to live in the country.

Immigration officials said Albert Buitenhuis, who weighs 130kg (286 pounds), did not have "an acceptable standard of health".

He now faces expulsion despite shedding 30kg since he moved to the city of Christchurch six years ago

New Zealand has one of the highest obesity rates in the developed world, with nearly 30% of people overweight.

Mr Buitenhuis and his wife, Marthie, moved from South Africa to Christchurch in 2007. At the time, the chef weighed 160kg.

Until now, their annual work visas had been renewed with "very little problem", his wife said. Full story...

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Samoa Air defends policy to charge passengers by weight...

Slim passenger kicked out of plane to allow obese person to have TWO seats!

Mysterious hum driving people crazy around the world...

It creeps in slowly in the dark of night, and once inside, it almost never goes away.

It's known as the Hum, a steady, droning sound that's heard in places as disparate as Taos, N.M.; Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland.

But what causes the Hum, and why it only affects a small percentage of the population in certain areas, remain a mystery, despite a number of scientific investigations

Reports started trickling in during the 1950s from people who had never heard anything unusual before; suddenly, they were bedeviled by an annoying, low-frequency humming, throbbing or rumbling sound.

The cases seem to have several factors in common: Generally, the Hum is only heard indoors, and it's louder at night than during the day. It's also more common in rural or suburban environments; reports of a hum are rare in urban areas, probably because of the steady background noise in crowded cities. Full story...

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Hundreds of animals, fish and birds from Florida natural lagoon are mysteriously dead...

Strange sky phenomena escalating worldwide...

The mystery of Ata, the 6-inch alien...

'Phoenix Lights' UFO theories still swirl 16 years after sightings...

Intricate crop circles of Buddhist symbol appears in British wheat field...

Australia sending refugees to Papua New Guinea, where they are abused and raped...

(...)

Despite claiming to put the safety and security of immigrants first, Rudd’s agenda has since been entirely discredited by seismic revelations that emerged on Tuesday. Rod St George, former manager at G4S – the security outfit that bungled the job of policing the London Olympics and is now in charge of the deportation operation in Australia – revealed that, during their detention in PNG, immigrants are being raped and abused by fellow detainees with the full knowledge of the staff.

"There was nothing that could be done for these young men who were considered vulnerable, which in many cases is just a euphemism for men who have been raped," he said, speaking about the site that he worked at in Manus, a province of PNG. "They just had to stay where they were."

That such a place should be considered appropriate permanent residence for some of the world’s most vulnerable people seems absurd – but apparently not to everyone. Earlier this year, VICE reported on the hellish conditions of the refugee detention centre in Nauru off the Australian coast – something that the government were fully aware of and seemed to condone. If opposition leader Tony Abbott is anything to go by, some parliamentary officials think immigrants deserve such treatment. That, in trying to protect their own lives and those of their families, these people – consisting largely of Hazaras from Afghanistan, Shias from Pakistan, Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds and Rohingyas, the stateless people of Burma – are behaving in a way that is “un-Christian”. Full story...

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Asylum seekers in Australia sew their lips together in detention protest...

Fake? Phony? Obama lies and scandals...

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Obama promise to 'protect whistleblowers' just disappeared from Change.gov...

The folks from the Sunlight Foundation have noticed that the Change.gov website, which was set up by the Obama transition team after the election in 2008 has suddenly been scrubbed of all of its original content. They noted that the front page had pointed to the White House website for a while, but you could still access a variety of old material and agendas. They were wondering why the administration would suddenly pull all that interesting archival information... and hit upon a clue. A little bit from the "ethics agenda":

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Yeah. That statement seems a bit embarrassing at the very same time Obama's administration is threatening trade sanctions against anyone who grants asylum to Ed Snowden. Also... at the same time that we get to see how whistleblower Bradley Manning's "full access to courts and due process" will turn out. So far, it's been anything but reasonable, considering that the UN has already condemned Manning's treatment as "cruel and inhuman." And people wonder why Snowden left the country... Source

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Malaysia: End alarming rise of deaths in police custody...

The Malaysian authorities must take immediate steps to end the alarming rate of reported deaths in custody, some as a result of torture or other ill-treatment, Amnesty International and Malaysian rights group Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) said in an open letter today.

Twelve people are known to have died in police custody since January 2013 compared to nine in the whole of 2012.

"The rising number of reported deaths in custody is shocking, and sends a chilling message to all those at risk of arrests by police. They point to the lack of adequate systems in place to monitor and prevent such deaths," said Hazel Galang, Amnesty International's Campaigner on Malaysia.

"The Malaysian authorities must commit time and resources to tackle this problem at once. They must ensure that there are appropriate safeguards so that the police cannot simply go on committing abuses, including torture and other ill-treatment, with impunity."

More than 230 deaths in custody have been recorded since 2000, according to the Malaysian Parliament. Full story...

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India officials blasted after telling poor: 'You can eat for five pence'

India's ruling Congress Party was forced to withdraw claims that the country's poor could eat a large meal for five rupees amid a growing row over the scale of poverty in the country.

The claims were made by senior party leaders as they defended new government figures which said poverty had declined by more than 15 per cent since the Congress-led government came to power in 2004.

Its figures were challenged by opponents and anti-poverty campaigners who said they were based on the assumption that people living on 27 rupees per day (29p) in rural India and 33 rupees per day (36p) were not poor.

During the row several Congress Party leaders made a series of claims on how little it costs in India to buy a meal. Former Bollywood star and now Congress MP Raj Babbar said he could eat well in Mumbai for 12 rupees (13p). “I can get a lot of rice, dal, sambar and some vegetables too,” he said.

His Congress colleague Rasheed Masood claimed he could buy a filling meal for five rupees (5.5p) close to Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid mosque, while Farooq Abdullah said it was possible to buy a meal for as low as one rupee. Full story...

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Plenty for few: India's economic miracle bypasses the poor...

Indian minister urges poor to eat rats to combat food prices!!!

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Friday, July 26, 2013

Three ex-UBS bankers sentenced to jail in US...

Three former UBS bankers convicted last August of conspiring to defraud United States municipal bond issuers were fined and sentenced to jail on Wednesday by a district judge in New York. The sentences were significantly below those sought by prosecutors.

The bankers were accused of steering financial contracts to their friends in exchange for kickbacks and other favours between 2001 and 2006, while falsely certifying that the processes were competitive.

(...)

US District Judge Kimba Wood greatly reduced the lengths of all three sentences, saying that the bankers’ criminal behaviour deviated from their otherwise law-abiding lives and that the victims had been "compensated highly" by a UBS settlement.

UBS agreed in 2011 to pay $160 million in restitution, penalties and disgorgement for the scheme.

However, a lawyer at the Department of Justice's antitrust division said Wood's reduction in sentencing ranges "greatly under-estimates the seriousness of the offense." Full story...

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One death in Yemen shows how far the US will go to kill...

Some time after sunset on October 14, 2011, a group of teenagers were eating together at an open-air restaurant. Without warning, there was a devastating explosion - so devastating that when residents rushed to the scene, they found nothing left of the six teenage boys who had been sitting there. They had been blown to pieces.

That incident lasted mere minutes but an explanation of what happened that night and why still has not been unearthed and the repercussions of that explanation, if and when it comes, will have far reaching consequences for international law.

Here is what is known: one of those teenage boys was a 16-year old American citizen called Abdulrahman. He had been raised in the United States but had moved to Yemen around 10 years before his death. His father was Anwar Al Awlaki, a firebrand preacher that the US had put on a "kill list" and had assassinated with a drone strike two weeks before. Al Awlaki holds the notorious distinction of being the first US citizen "targeted" by the US government - the first time that the US has said in advance that it would seek to kill one of its own citizens without telling a court why.

Abdulrahman had not seen his father for years. He had left his family home in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, in September 2011 to try to find him, but his father was killed before they met. Full story...

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Bagram: The other Guantanamo...

The months-long hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay has returned the subject of indefinite detention to U.S. headlines this year, but that notorious island prison isn't the only place where detainees in the war on terror are being held indefinitely by the United States without charge. Around 60 non-Afghan nationals are currently being kept by the U.S. at the prison near Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan – all without charge or trial – following the hand-over of around 3,000 Afghan prisoners to the Afghan government in March.

About two-thirds of the detainees, known as third country nationals, are Pakistani. Some of them have been held for nearly a decade, according to a lawyer who is fighting for his clients' freedom. Omran Belhadi is an attorney with the Justice Pakistan Project, based in Lahore, which represents 11 detainees currently held by the U.S. "They are being held without charge, trial or access to a lawyer, which constitutes a violation of international human rights law," says Belhadi. "Quite a few of them have been recommended for release by the U.S. government but remain stuck at Bagram, because the U.S. and Pakistani governments are failing to negotiate the terms of their repatriation."

Though the detainees at Bagram aren't mentioned often in the U.S., Chris Rogers, who focuses on conflict-related detention at the Open Society Foundations, says that the prison remains a problem for America's image in the Middle East. "For Afghans, Pakistanis and many others around the world, Bagram is a symbol of hypocrisy and injustice," says Rogers. "Ending the war in Afghanistan, and closing the chapter of war-on-terror detention that both Guantanamo and Bagram have come to symbolize, means the U.S. has to resolve detainees' cases and end their legal limbo." Full story...

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Meet Burka Avenger: New Pakistani superhero fights for girls' education...

Wonder Woman and Supergirl now have a Pakistani counterpart in the pantheon of female superheroes -- one who shows a lot less skin.

Meet Burka Avenger: a mild-mannered teacher with secret martial arts skills who uses a flowing black burka to hide her identity as she fights local thugs seeking to shut down the girls' school where she works.

Sadly, it's a battle Pakistanis are all too familiar with in the real world.

The Taliban have blown up hundreds of schools and attacked activists in Pakistan's northwest because they oppose girls' education. The militants sparked worldwide condemnation last fall when they shot Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old schoolgirl activist, in the head in an unsuccessful attempt to kill her.

Action in the "Burka Avenger" cartoon series, which is scheduled to start running on Geo TV in early August, is much more lighthearted. The bungling bad guys evoke more laughter than fear and are no match for the Burka Avenger, undoubtedly the first South Asian ninja who wields books and pens as weapons. Full story...

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Amnesty slams US for ‘blatant attempt’ to influence journalist case in Yemen...

Amnesty International has condemned the White House for its role in detention of a Yemeni journalist who exposed US involvement in a deadly 2009 cluster bombing.

The human rights group is urging the Yemeni authorities to investigate allegations that Abdulelah Shaye, a journalist recently released from jail, could have been put behind bars arbitrarily. The actual reason for his detention is arguably his reports revealing that a 2009 missile attack in Yemen’s Abyan area which killed 41 local residents - including 21 children - was carried out by the US and not by Yemen, as officially presented.

Shaye was arrested in August 2010 on charges of helping Al-Qaeda and militant US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and was found guilty six months later and convicted to five years in jail. The journalist has always denied charges of his cooperating with the terrorist group, insisting he only did interviews with some of its members as part of his professional activity.

“Abdulelah Shaye appeared to be a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for his legitimate work as a journalist,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa program director at Amnesty International. Full story...

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Role reversal: how the USA became the USSR...

I spent the summer of 1961 behind the Iron Curtain. I was part of the US-USSR student exchange program. It was the second year of the program that operated under auspices of the US Department of State. Our return to the West via train through East Germany was interrupted by the construction of the Berlin Wall. We were sent back to Poland. The East German rail tracks were occupied with Soviet troop and tank trains as the Red Army concentrated in East Germany to face down any Western interference.

Fortunately, in those days there were no neoconservatives. Washington had not grown the hubris it so well displays in the 21st century. The wall was built and war was avoided. The wall backfired on the Soviets. Both JFK and Ronald Reagan used it to good propaganda effect.

In those days America stood for freedom, and the Soviet Union for oppression. Much of this impression was created by Western propaganda, but there was some semblance to the truth in the image. The communists had a Julian Assange and an Edward Snowden of their own. His name was Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty, the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church.

Mindszenty opposed tyranny. For his efforts he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Communists also regarded his as an undesirable, and he was tortured and given a life sentence in 1949. Full story...

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Scientists now say UN peacekeepers likely culprit in cholera outbreak that killed thousands in Haiti...

A panel of independent U.N. experts who investigated the source of a deadly cholera epidemic that killed thousands of Haitians has concluded that United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal "most likely" introduced the strain into the Haitian population.

The panel's findings mark a dramatic retreat from their earlier, 2011 finding that found it impossible to assign responsibility for the strain's origins; the evidence was incomplete evidence, they said at the time, and too many things -- inadequate water, lousy sanitation -- contributed to the 2010 epidemic's spread.

The latest findings will increase pressure on the United Nations to acknowledge responsibility for introducing cholera into the country. In February, the United Nations invoked diplomatic immunity in dodging legal responsibility for paying compensation to victims and their families. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and his top advisors specifically invoked the panel's earlier, ambivalent findings in arguing that the U.N. bore no legal responsibility for the epidemic.

But now the four scientists -- Alejandro Cravioto, Daniele Lantagne, G. Balakrish Nair, Claudio F. Lanata -- who wrote the original report say that new evidence that has come to light in the past two years. While not conclusive, that evidence has strengthened the case against the United Nations. Full story...

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Of the world’s seven billion people, six billion have mobile phones. However, only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or latrines – meaning that 2.5 billion people, mostly in rural areas, do not have proper sanitation. In addition, 1.1 billion people still defecate in the open...

In a bid to make sanitation for all a global development priority, the United Nations General Assembly today designated 19 November as World Toilet Day, urging changes in both behaviour and policy on issues ranging from enhancing water management to ending open-air defecation.

Adopting a new resolution, the Assembly urged UN Member States and relevant stakeholders to encourage behavioural change and the implementation of policies to increase access to sanitation among the poor, along with a call to end the practice of open-air defecation, which it deemed “extremely harmful” to public health.

“This new annual observance will go a long way toward raising awareness about the need for all human beings to have access to sanitation,” said UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson in a statement issued immediately following the Assembly’s action.

The resolution also recognizes the role that civil society and non-governmental organizations play in raising awareness of this issue. It also calls on countries to approach sanitation in a much broader context that includes hygiene promotion, the provision of basic sanitation services, and sewerage and wastewater treatment and reuse in the context of integrated water management. Full story...

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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Man buys 500 coffees for customers in Canada...

Call it a cup of coffee karma.

Staff at a downtown Edmonton Tim Hortons were having an ordinary day Monday until a young man in his mid-to-late 20s walked in, ordered a large double-double and a Boston cream doughnut, and posed a question.

“He asked the cashier, ‘how many coffees do you sell in a day?’ ” said store manager Joanne Averion.

Then he asked her to ring in 500 large coffees.

“The manager asked him if he was going to drink all those coffees or was he going to give it to someone?” Averion recalled. “He said, ‘you have to give it to the next 500 customers.’ ”

The motive for the random act of caffeinated kindness isn’t known; Averion said staff questioned the young man, but he didn’t say much and left quickly after paying the $859 bill with his debit card. Full story...

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TSA: give us your fingerprints, web history and you can keep your shoes on...

Now you can keep your shoes on when travelling through the Orwellian TSA ‘security’ checkpoints thanks to a new program that only requires one thing — the complete and utter erosion of your personal privacy.

Instead of cutting the various ‘anti-terrorist’ security functions employed by the TSA that have not caught a single terrorist despite expansive funding and highly invasive techniques that violate our fundamental rights, the TSA is now offering a new ‘quick pass’ system that allows enrolled US citizens through the first few security measures once they are approved by the agency for membership status within the program.

And in order to participate in the ‘PreCheck’ TSA program, you will need to allow them to reach down into the proverbial pants of your personal life as well. Under PreCheck, you are required to not only present your fingerprints to the TSA in person and pay a fee of $85, but the agency is also looking to gather all forms of your data as well — which reports state includes your web history and online data. With the help of a third party organization, the TSA seeks to ‘pre-screen’ (think pre-crime) individuals based on their activity in order to determine if they are worthy of bypassing the most minimal of security checkpoints. Full story...

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The stomach-turning process of how hot dogs are made...

It's National Hot Dog Day, meaning that businesses across the country will give away the American favorite for free.

A camera crew from Discovery Channel's "How It's Made" stepped inside a John Morrell factory to reveal the process for how hot dogs are made.

It isn't pretty, as the photo on the right illustrates.

The factory processes a mindblowing 300,000 hot dogs an hour.

The recipe starts with beef and pork trimmings. Later, a whole bunch of other er, stuff is added. Full story...

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How to go completely invisible on Facebook...

Facebook doesn't exactly make it easy for you to stay off its radar.

Some people don't like getting random friend requests or awkward messages from long-forgotten friends. Some people just want to use Facebook to keep up with others, but don't want others to be able to keep up with them.

Want to stay hidden on Facebook?

We can help you out.

When you're finished, no one but you will be able to see your Facebook activity, view your photos, or see where you've checked in. Your current friends will still be able to view your basic profile — there's no way around this — but all your activity will be blank. Full story...

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The militarization of America...

This week’s deployment of Blackhawk helicopters in Chicago is only the latest in a series of “urban warfare training” exercises that have become a familiar feature of American life.

As elsewhere, this exercise was sprung unannounced on a startled civilian population. Conducted in secrecy, apparently with the collusion of local police agencies and elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, the ostensible purpose of these exercises is to give US troops experience in what Pentagon doctrine refers to as “Military Operations on Urban Terrain.”

Such operations are unquestionably of central importance to the US military. Over the past decade, its primary mission, as evidenced in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been the invasion and occupation of relatively powerless countries and the subjugation of their resisting populations, often in house-to-house fighting in urban centers.

The Army operates a 1,000 acre Urban Training Center in south-central Indiana that boasts over 1,500 “training structures” designed to simulate houses, schools, hospitals and factories. The center’s web site states that it “can be tailored to replicate both foreign and domestic scenarios.” Full story...

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Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Over 100 MPs, ministers trapped by Bulgaria anti-govt protesters...

Anti-corruption protests that have been peacefully going on for 40 days reached a climax in Bulgaria when demonstrators trapped a hundred ministers, lawmakers and journalists inside the parliament for over eight hours, urging the government to resign.

Police with shields formed a pathway through hundreds of Bulgarians to finally get all those trapped out of the building, pushing away the anti-government demonstrators. High-ranking officials were escorted outside in the capital, Sofia, at around 3am in police vans.

Twenty people, including 3 policemen, were injured, hospital sources said.

Anti-government protests escalated on Tuesday evening when several hundred demonstrators trapped the deputies and ministers inside Parliament hoping to oust the left-leaning government.

A total of 109 people - including three ministers, some 30 MPs, journalists and parliamentary staff were trapped inside the building, according to national television. Story, video, photos...

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Singapore anti-graft official charged with fraud...

A Singapore court on Wednesday charged a senior anti-corruption official with siphoning off more than a million dollars of government money to fund his casino gambling habit.

Edwin Yeo Seow Hiong, 39, an assistant director at the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), is accused of misappropriating Sg$1.76 million ($1.4 million) worth of government funds.

Yeo faces additional charges under Singapore's tough anti-corruption laws for using the money to gamble at a casino and forgery after he allegedly duplicated a receipt voucher worth Sg$370,755.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who is also the minister in charge of the civil service, expressed concern that a senior anti-corruption officer was charged with fraud.

He said the case, the latest involving a senior civil servant, had prompted a review of supervisory procedures in government agencies. Full story...

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Los Angeles man gets 25 years after he strangled his mother and then skinned, filleted and dismembered her body as part of a satanic ritual...

Moises Meraz-Espinoza walked into the Huntington Park Police Department two years ago to report a crime: He had killed his mother.

Officers went to the Maywood apartment that the then-18-year-old factory worker shared with his mother, Amelia Espinoza, 42, and found a gruesome scene. A trail of blood led to the bathroom, where plastic covered the walls and floor. There, they found an electrical circular saw with pieces of bone, blood and flesh stuck to the blade. Nearby, in a freezer, police found skin and muscles stored in plastic bags. The woman's skull, with all her teeth plucked out, her eyes removed and two upside-down crosses carved into the bone, was stashed in a backpack.

Prosecutors say that Meraz-Espinoza strangled his mother and then skinned, filleted and dismembered her body as part of a satanic ritual. A Norwalk jury convicted him of first-degree murder in June.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. sentenced Meraz-Espinoza to 25 years to life in prison, saying that the slaying "certainly ranks up there at the top" of "the most disgusting, hideous and vulgar" cases he has seen during his 50 years in the legal profession.

"I don't know what I can say to turn your life around, but you'll have a lot of time to think about it," McKnew said. Full story...

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Dubai offers gold in return for weight loss...

Authorities in Dubai are offering gold in return for weight loss in an scheme to encourage healthier living.

Those interested can sign up from Friday for the initiative which lasts over the next 30 days and coincides with Ramadan, a month of fasting.

For each kilogram lost, participants will receive a gram of gold, which is currently worth about $45 (£30).

Those taking part - dubbed "golden losers" - need to lose at least two kilos to receive the payout.

The three participants who lose the most weight will be entered into a draw to win a gold coin worth $5,400.

Called Your Weight in Gold the scheme was announced by Hussain Nasser Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality. Full story...

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Britain admits selling $12 billion in weapons to Israel...

Journalists love rows. We love them so much that we often let them distract us.

Last week was no exception. Fascinated by an apparent bust-up between Israel and the European Union, most Middle East analysts (myself included) missed a very important story: Britain’s arms sales to Israel are far higher than David Cameron’s government has previously confessed.

Data published in a new report from the House of Commons in London states the value of all British military exports to Israel currently being processed comes to £7.9 billion ($12.1 billion).

(...)

Britain’s foreign ministry has named Israel as one of 27 “countries of concern” for human rights abuses. Of those 27, Israel is the largest destination for British arms exports. Saudi Arabia — long thought to be the biggest client for Britain’s weapons industry — is actually in second place.

The brazen effrontery of the British establishment was on display again today, when it convinced other EU governments to blacklist Hizballah as a “terrorist” organization. The move was taken at the behest of Israel, which alleges that Hizballah was behind a bombing in Bulgaria last year. Full story...

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India, porn and sexual violence...

Pornography seems to evoke instant interest. And the responses, predictably, in most newspapers, to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed default filter on porn sites are prolific. I’ve thought more about porn in the last year, than I’ve had reason to ever before. The April Jones case haunted me. As did the Tia Sharp tragedy. The police reported both killers had images of child porn on their computers.

I’ve had many young people insist that porn is not the reason behind rape or child abuse. Admittedly there are additional factors. But over and over again, evidence points to the fact that porn is playing a pivotal role in both adult and child rape crimes.

In India, we are facing a horrendous daily dose of women and child rape and murder than has ever been recorded in our history. We have always been a child friendly country. An English friend told me how she loved Air India, because the crew, including male pursers, picked up her baby and held it to allow her to eat her meal in peace. Yet we are witnessing an unbelievable surge of sexual violence in India which threatens the very fabric of this society. It’s more dangerous for a woman or child to be alone in our cities currently, than it was 20 years ago.

Yesterday I read a story about a two-and-a-half year old toddler who was kidnapped from beside her sleeping, homeless grandmother soon after midnight. A few hours later, the child’s body was found raped, killed and dumped not far away. The mother was mentally unsound said the report. With a penniless, homeless mother and grandmother, the chances of this story making the headlines of the Delhi media are remote. On 23 July, a 6-year-old child was raped by a 14-year-old boy, a police constable’s son. Full story...

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Chinese man 'kills one-child policy officials'

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China's policy of limiting most families to one child has sown deep resentment since it was imposed more than three decades ago.

Authorities say it has prevented overpopulation and boosted economic development.

But critics argue the policy has led to harsh enforcement methods that incite popular anger as well as creating major demographic problems.

Some users of the Chinese version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, expressed sympathy for Tuesday's attacker.

"As long as family planning serves as a means to persecute the people, the people must resist," wrote one. "How many more people will turn to crime because of this terrible law?"

Outrage spread online last year after a woman who had been forced to undergo an abortion seven months into her pregnancy was pictured alongside the bloody foetus. Full story...

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Singapore bus study reveals hidden social networks...

You can find them everywhere in your own neighborhood—the older gentleman who sweeps the sidewalk in the mornings, the couple that’s always walking a pair of golden retrievers, the grumpy cashier at the supermarket. Chances are you’ve never had a conversation with most of these strangers, but you’ve made assumptions about who they are and what they’re like, to the point where you feel like you kind of know them.

Although scientists have long suspected that our passive interactions with these sorts of “familiar strangers” may be more important than we realize, such encounters have gone largely unstudied. “Usually when people study social networks, they mostly use questionnaires and interviews to analyze connections between family, friends or coworkers, but it’s very difficult to ask questions about people they don’t really know,” says Juliette Stehlé, a physicist affiliated with the Research Center for Economics and Statistics in Paris. “In fact it’s quite a black hole in the study of contacts.”

Now an analysis of the structure of social networks among strangers on the bus, from researchers at the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, is filling that void. The study, first released on Arxiv.org and now accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, parses a huge amount of data from public transit users in Singapore, including 20 million bus trips from 2.9 million passengers over the course of five days. It’s the largest network analysis of daily encounters that has ever been performed, and it reveals that interactions between strangers are not as random as some scientists had assumed. Full story...

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‘Facebook is a monstrous surveillance engine’

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Stallman says that corporations and the state “work hand in hand” in the US, as the Patriot Act obliges companies to “secretly” pass data to security services.

According to the activist, the best way to protect your information is to refrain from using “nasty” services like Facebook, which he described as “a monstrous surveillance engine.”

He added that the “malicious technology” Apple and Microsoft provide “can’t be excused if it had some good effects.”

“We’ve got to realize that, first of all, Microsoft and Apple software is proprietary. That means the users don’t control the program, rather than the program controls the users – and that’s an injustice,” he stressed. “And the existence of proprietary, although it wasn’t for Microsoft or Apple back then, is why I started with the Free Software movement. In addition to setting things up so that they control the program and the program controls the users, they started putting in malicious functionality that spies on users and intentionally restricts users. There are even ‘back doors’ in that software, so, literally speaking, Apple and Microsoft software is malware.”

“We call Windows 8.1 ‘Windows Prison Edition’ because it’s designed to require people to send data to Microsoft servers, and of course, Microsoft will hand over any of that data to the US government on request. It puts the users in prison,” the activist added.

Stallman says that although many modern people have voluntarily traded their privacy for gadgets, he’s sure that “freedom is more important than innovation.” Full story...

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