Saturday, August 31, 2013

Police storm German homeschooling family’s house, seize children...

At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, a team of 20 social workers, police officers, and special agents stormed a homeschooling family’s residence near Darmstadt, Germany, forcibly removing all four of the family’s children (ages 7–14).

The sole grounds for removal were that the parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, continued to homeschool their children in defiance of a German ban on home education.

As the family quietly began their homeschool day, they were interrupted by a ring at the door. Dirk Wunderlich described the frightening turn of events.

“I looked through a window and saw many people, police, and special agents, all armed,” he said. “They told me they wanted to come in to speak with me. I tried to ask questions, but within seconds, three police officers brought a battering ram and were about to break the door in, so I opened it.

 “The police shoved me into a chair and wouldn’t let me even make a phone call at first. It was chaotic as they told me they had an order to take the children. At my slightest movement the agents would grab me as if I were a terrorist,” he said. “You would never expect anything like this to happen in our calm, peaceful village. It was like a scene out of a science fiction movie. Our neighbors and children have been traumatized by this invasion.” Full story...

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'Syrian rebels take responsibility for the chemical attack admitting the weapons were provided by Saudis'

In an interview with Dale Gavlak, a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press and Mint Press News, Syrian rebels tacitly implied that they were responsible for last week’s chemical attack. Some information could not immediately be independently verified.

“From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” he writes in the article.

The rebels noted it was a result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

As Gavlak reports, Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels died in a weapons storage tunnel. The father stated the weapons were provided to rebel forces by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K’. “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.” Full story...

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Neil deGrasse Tyson - Aliens would conclude no intelligent life on Earth...

Syria: look before you leap Mr. President...

Let’s face some hard facts about the vicious conflict in Syria.

If the US directly attacks Syria, the real cause will not be the recent chemical attacks. What are 300 or so dead in a 2-year old war fuelled by the western powers that has so far killed over 100,000?

Chemical weapons are horrible. So are bullets, shells, bombs, cluster bombs, fuel-air explosive, white phosphorus, and napalm. All wars are crime writ large.

We don’t yet know if the recent chemical massacre in Damascus was a real chemical attack using Sarin nerve gas, a rebel provocation, an industrial accident, or an attack by rogue Syrian army units? After Iraq, we can’t trust western intelligence and so-called evidence.

This is not even the main issue at hand though it makes an excellent pretext for outside powers to intervene.

The Syrian conflict is a proxy war being waged against Iran by the United States, conservative Arab oil producers, and three former Mideast colonial powers, Britain, France and Turkey who are seeking to restore their domination in the region. Israel, hoping to isolate Hezbollah and cement its annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, cheers from the sidelines. Syria and Hezbollah are Iran’s only Arab friends. Full story...

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A face in a billion: Facebook to include profile pix in facial recognition database...

Facebook says it will expand its facial recognition database to include over 1 billion extra faces as it incorporates users’ profile pictures into its database, thereby increasing the scope of its existing, highly controversial technology.

The world’s largest social network made the announcement Thursday in an update to its data use policy. Facebook’s “Tag Suggest” feature already automatically recognizes “friend” faces in photo uploads to speed up the process of tagging friends, but the new adaptation will also use the facial recognition technology to identify its own users’ profile pictures.

“Our goal is to facilitate tagging so that people know when there are photos of them on our service,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, told Reuters, adding that the change would give users better control over their information.

 Facebook’s existing technology identifies faces automatically by comparing them to previous tagged photographs. Full story...

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Italian winemaker shunned over racist rant against black minister...

An award-winning Italian winemaker is being shunned by the sector after a bizarre racist tirade on Facebook against Italy's first black government minister.

Fulvio Bressan took to the Internet to rant against Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge, an Italian citizen born in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bressan called the minister a "dirty black monkey" and other racist epithets, later defending his comments by saying he was angry the government was planning to use taxpayer money to house illegal immigrants in hotels.

The organic winemaker, based in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, has been praised for the traditional techniques used at his family farm.

 But Monica Larner, the Italian reviewer for the prestigious industry publication the Wine Advocate, said: "In light of the unacceptable comments recently made by Fulvio Bressan, I will not taste his wine." Full story...

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Italian factory owner moves company to Poland while staff are on holiday...

Earlier this month, the owner of an electrical components factory in the north of the country waved his employees off on their summer holidays. Then, without informing them, he moved the entire operation, lock, stock and barrel, to Poland.

Fabrizio Pedroni, 49, said he was driven to the drastic course of action because his factory, located near the city of Modena, had not turned a profit for five years and he was being strangled by high salaries, crippling taxes and dismal rates of productivity.

Moving the factory to Eastern Europe was the only way of saving his company, which was founded 50 years ago by his grandfather.

When his 40 employees found out what had happened, they were furious. They were not due to return from holiday until next week but got wind of the covert operation in mid-August and turned up at the Firem factory in the town of Formigine to find the place devoid of machinery.

They blocked the last of around 20 trucks from leaving the plant, but the rest were long gone, en route to the town of Olawa in south-west Poland. Full story...

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Snowden reveals US intelligence’s black budget: $52.6 billion on secret programs...

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has leaked a new top-secret document that for the first time ever publically discloses how the United States spends tens of billions of dollars annually on clandestine spy programs.

The Washington Post revealed the so-called “black budget” on Thursday and reports that $52.6 billion was set aside for operations in fiscal year 2013.

Among the biggest priorities for the intelligence community, the Post reported, are “offensive cyber operations” and research devoted to decoding encrypted communications.

The Post’s Barton Gellman, Greg Miller and Julie Tate wrote Thursday that Mr. Snowden, the 30-year-old former Booz Allen Hamilton staffer who started leaking classified national security documents earlier this year, provided the paper with the never-before published summary of this year’s budget.

 But although the Post reported that the document is 178 pages in length, they have at the same time elected to only make available one-tenth of the content, citing “concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods” brought up by US officials who were notified ahead of publication. Full story...

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CNN caught staging news segments on Syria with actors...

The primary “witness” that the mainstream media is using as a source in Syria has been caught staging fake news segments. Recent video evidence proves that “Syria Danny”, the supposed activist who has been begging for military intervention on CNN, is really just a paid actor and a liar.

While Assad is definitely a tyrant like any head of state, a US invasion of the country is a worst case scenario for the people living there.

By pointing out that the mainstream media is orchestrating their entire coverage of this incident, we are not denying that there is a tremendous amount of death and violence in Syria right now. However, we are showing that the mainstream media version of events is scripted and staged propaganda.

The following video shows him contradicting himself while off air, and even asking crew members to “get the gunfire sounds ready” for his video conference with Anderson Cooper on CNN. Full story...

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'Black Jesus' murder: Leader of 6,000-strong cannibal rape cult hacked to death by villagers in Papua New Guinea jungle after killing yet again...

The leader of a vicious cannibal rape cult has been hacked to death in the jungles of Papua New Guinea after he escaped from prison and murdered a local woman.

Preacher Stephen Tari, whose 6,000-strong sect called him “the true Christ” and refereed to themselves as “flower girls” or “disciples”, had been serving a lengthy jail term after being convicted of a brutal rape three years ago.

The 40-year-old, who had previously been accused of raping, murdering and eating three girls in front of their traumatised mothers, was one of 48 prisoners to break-out of a remote jungle prison six months ago.

The charismatic cult leader, who wore white robes and is said to have regularly drunk the blood of his “flower girls”, quickly returned to his home village of Gal after the escape, but could only manage six months before killing yet again. Full story...

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Indian government may ban Gmail for official communication...

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a programme called PRISM. Full story...

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Friday, August 30, 2013

The frightening 71%: Malaysia's Indian gangs...

(...)

Secret societies are international and interracial. However, the quiet evolution of local gangs over the past few decades, particularly the "rise" of Indian gangs, is a phenomenon that should not be neglected.

Indians accounted for 7.3% of the country's total population. According to the figures released recently by the police, Indians have become the mainstay of secret societies in Malaysia, making up almost 71% of all gang members. The huge number of gang members, the brutal means being used, as well as how active they are have shocked the country. For instance, during the funeral of two Indian members of Gang 04, a few hundred of Indian young people, believed to be members of the same party, had actually paraded in the streets with banners bearing the Gang 04 logo. It was reported that they had also lighted firecrackers and ignored the presence of the police. Such an unusual phenomenon has not only reflected the rampancy of gangs, but also how severe the challenges are for the police.

(...)

Seventy one percent gang members are Indians. In the face of the cold and frightening figure, in addition to shock and fear, the people must also be aware of the lessons and potential crisis reflected by the figure. Namely, the plight of the Indian society has gone so serious until is no longer a problem that must be addressed by the Indian community. In fact, it has evolved into a very serious national issue affecting the whole country. The result of lax law enforcement has not only affected the people, but as well foreign investment. Full story...

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Swiss banks face hefty fines under US tax deal...

Swiss banks will pay significant fines to avoid US penalties under a deal announced on Thursday which forces them to begin disclosing the offshore accounts of American clients.

The US Department of Justice said the agreement with Switzerland will advance Washington's campaign against tax avoidance by US citizens hiding funds offshore.

But it also made clear that Switzerland would no longer be able to offer secret banking facilities to Americans out of reach of US tax authorities.

"This program will significantly enhance the Justice Department's ongoing efforts to aggressively pursue those who attempt to evade the law by hiding their assets outside of the United States," US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

 "In addition to strengthening our partnership with the Swiss government, the program's requirement that Swiss banks provide detailed account information will improve our ability to bring tax dollars back to the US Treasury from across the globe." Full story...

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Air India: 'Welcome on-board, you're an idiot'

A PASSENGER was hit with a case of mile-high shock after being called an 'idiot' by the in-flight entertainment unit.

The bizarre incident happened on board a recent Air India flight from London to Mumbai, the Times of India reported.

The woman, whose identity has not been revealed, said she tried to watch a movie about five hours into the flight but the entertainment unit wouldn't work properly.

She adjusted the switches and buttons, at first with no response. The next thing she knew, a rather rude message popped up on the screen.

At the top it read: "The selection is no currently available. Please try again." The message continued towards the bottom of the screen: "Lie low ... Sit down you idiot!". Full story...

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Scary psychological torture: The real message behind force-feeding hunger strikers in Guantanamo...

(...)

President Obama — a lawyer and a progressive, a president who ran on hope and change, promised to close Guantánamo, and won a Nobel Prize for Peace — has sadly furthered this corruption of legal principle more than anyone might have feared. Under his watch we experienced the killing by drone strike of Americans citizens, including a teenager whose main sin was to have been born to the wrong father. Extrajudicial executions came to include “signature strikes” — another shining example of Newspeak meaning we don’t know who we’re killing, of what exactly they have done — only that they fit “patterns” indicating they are a future threat.

But what has been happening in Guantánamo is perhaps even scarier.

Current prisoners who have been in detention for up to a decade have not been charged. In fact, most of them have actually been deemed un-chargeable for lack of evidence, and cleared for release. There is a kind of torture that goes beyond the isolation or physical abuse. It’s the psychological torture of denied hope, the indifference of a government that keeps you in prison just because it can. This is why the Guantánamo prisoners went on a hunger strike.

Prison authorities answered the protest with force-feeding — a violent and painful procedure, involving restraints and nasal intubation, that the United Nations and most medical ethicists consider another form of torture. The force-feeding has allegedly included a brain-altering drug. Over the course of a decade, Guantánamo detainees have thus been stripped first of freedom, then of the right to defend themselves in court, and finally of the right to protest — even through the starving of their own bodies. The U.S. government won’t let them return to their lives, yet it refuses to be embarrassed by their death. Prison officers have stated in the recent past that a hunger strike constitutes asymmetrical warfare — an expression in which “warfare” applies to a form of protest made famous by Gandhi, and “asymmetrical” is intended as a pejorative (as if symmetry were an option).

The government is effectively telling its detainees: You can no longer live — not in the basic sense of having a self-determined life — but neither can you die on your own terms. You can only exist in the nightmare limbo we have created for you, for as long as we deem appropriate. Full story...

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Taxpayer dollars paid a third of richest corporate CEOs...

More than one-third of the nation's highest-paid CEOs from the past two decades led companies that were subsidized by American taxpayers, according to a report released Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.

"Financial bailouts offer just one example of how a significant number of America's CEO pay leaders owe much of their good fortune to America's taxpayers," reads the report. "Government contracts offer another."

IPS has been publishing annual reports on executive compensation since 1993, tracking the 25 highest-paid CEOs each year and analyzing trends in payouts. Of the 500 total company listings, 103 were banks that received government bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, while another 62 were among the nation's most prolific government contractors.

Many of the companies appeared multiple times on the annual top 25 list, with Bank of America appearing 18 times, Citigroup appearing 15 times, while Morgan Stanley and American Express each secured 12 slots. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has landed on the list twice since the bank received $10 billion under TARP, and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault has appeared three times since his company accepted $3.4 billion in bailout money. Full story...

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It's time for the American people to "man up"

I am not naive. I know turning this country back to what it used to be is naive. However, at this point in history, the people with real conviction and guts in this country need to make some bold decisions.

Didn’t you get the memo? The globalists brag in their writings that they want to reduce the global population by 95%. Real men do not succumb to tyranny without a fight. Most of us are not going to survive what is coming anyway, so wouldn’t you rather put up a fight and die with dignity or would you rather be marched off to a FEMA camp without offering so much as a whimper? We have a choice America. And even if this government is able to defeat the Syrians, the Iranians, the Indians, the Chinese and the Russians, do you really want to be a part of such a horrific regime which will rival the death and destruction of any despotic regime in the history of the planet? For myself, I am choosing morality over despotism, right over wrong and Christianity over Satanism. I cannot be killed, only my address will change.

It is time for the American people to “man up.” The day has come where the people who truly understand what it means to be an American need to stand up to this tyrannical and out of control establishment whose lunatic leaders are preparing to lead us into WWIII.

In the next part of this series, I am going to illustrate how quickly things can unravel in our society which will be beset by war. Once we attack Syria, life in America could be impacted as quickly as 24-48 hours as this will not be a benign event for America like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were. But for now, it is time to identify our enemy, resist and make plans to survive. Full story...

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Music in the streets of Damascus...

A 15-year-old girl in India was kidnapped and repeatedly gang-raped in a car by the sons of influential persons with a warning that if she did not return to them every 10 days, her parents would be killed.

The gruesome gang-rape of Nirbhaya and a Mumbai photographer shook the nation's conscience but equally disturbing is the suffering of a dalit family residing in a Haryana village just 150 km from Delhi.

A school-going 15-year-old girl was kidnapped and repeatedly gang-raped in a car by the sons of influential persons in village Chotikalasi in Haryana's Nilokheri tehsil on August 6 last year. The accused released her with a warning that if she did not return to them every 10 days, her parents would be killed.

The girl told her mother about the incident who in turn informed the father. A case was lodged and tests confirmed sexual assault. On learning about the incident, the school principal, instead of taking steps for the girl's rehabilitation, struck off her name from the school rolls.

 Less than a month after the assault, the accused carried out their threat by kidnapping the rape survivor's mother and allegedly shot her dead. A distressed father went to the local police to register FIRs for the rape of his daughter and murder of his wife. The police tore up his complaint. Full story...

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“Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was.”

“This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

Edward Snowden accessed some secret national security documents by assuming the electronic identities of top NSA officials, said intelligence sources.

“Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. “This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

Snowden was a Honolulu-based employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor. His job gave him system administrator privileges on the NSA’s intranet, NSAnet. He reportedly used his privileges to download 20,000 documents.

The NSA still doesn’t know exactly what Snowden took. But its forensic investigation has included trying to figure out which higher level officials Snowden impersonated online to access the most sensitive documents. Full story...

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David Cameron loses Commons vote on Syria action...

British MPs have rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to deter the use of chemical weapons.

A government motion was defeated by 285 to 272, a majority of 13 votes.

PM David Cameron said "the government will act accordingly", effectively ruling out London's involvement in any US-led strikes against Damascus.

(...)

After the vote in London, opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband said the result meant military action was "off the agenda", and added that MPs had reacted against the prime minister's "cavalier and reckless" leadership.

Thirty Conservative and nine Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the government's motion.

The defeat comes as a potential blow to the authority of Mr Cameron, who had already watered down a government motion proposing military action, in response to Labour's demands for more evidence of President Assad's guilt.

The prime minister has now lost control of his own foreign and defence policy, and as a result he will cut a diminished figure on the international stage, the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said. Full story...

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

10 things the processed food industry does not want you to know...

Processed foods are typically loaded with excess sugar, salt, unhealthful fats, preservatives and other additives.

But you probably know this already. What you may not know about processed foods is the extent of the havoc they can wreak on your body, a closely guarded secret that the processed food industry doesn’t want you to know.

In short, though they may taste good and be easy to prepare, when you eat processed foods you’re exchanging convenience for your health.

In the featured article,1 Donna Gates, author of The Body Ecology Diet, explains 10 reasons why you might want to think twice the next time you’re tempted to eat processed foods. Full story...

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Iran to sue U.S. for CIA's role In 1953 coup that overthrew PM Mohammed Mossadegh...

Iran's parliament gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill requiring the government to sue the U.S. for its involvement in the 1953 coup that overthrew the country's democratically elected prime minister.

The bill follows the release of newly declassified documents offering more details of how the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh 60 years ago.

It calls for setting up a committee to study the issue and provide a report within six months before legal action is launched against the U.S. government in an international court.

Of 196 lawmakers attending the session of parliament, 167 voted in favor of the bill while five opposed it. The session was broadcast live on state radio.

The coup restored the despotic regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution. Full story...

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London street protest against Syria intervention at Downing Street...

Rolf Harris charged with indecent assault on under-age girls...

TV presenter Rolf Harris has been charged with nine counts of indecent assault and four of making indecent images of children, police have said.

Mr Harris was first arrested in March by officers investigating historical allegations of child sexual abuse.

Six offences relate to the indecent assault of a girl aged 15-16 between 1980 and 1981 and three relate to a girl aged 14 in 1984.

The indecent images of children were alleged to have been made last year.

Mr Harris will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 23 September.

Alison Saunders, chief Crown prosecutor for London, said: "Having completed our review, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest for Mr Harris to be charged with nine counts of indecent assault and four of making indecent images of a child. Full story...

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Life without a cell-phone...

Being a developer, I really need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get wired in and be productive. Having a cell phone quickly became a nightmare as I grew my client base. I would get a call every half a hour or so, and that was pretty disrupting to my work, since I had to start over 1,000 times, and right when I got back to work the phone would ring again.

Turning it off or worse yet not answer? People would accuse me that I was ignoring them on purpose, even if I’d call them back, and they’d say stuff like “what if it was an emergency! You’re not reliable”, bla bla bla.

When I decided to take the opportunity to drop the cell phone thing once and for all, I was a little scared. I was scared that clients would complain, and take their business elsewhere.

Then, I thought: all right, I might lose 50% of my clients, but I bet I’ll be at least 100% more productive, so I’ll still make the same amount of money (make sense somehow?)!

You know what happened? I didn’t lose a single client (and yes, I’m at least 100% more productive than I used to be). Full story...

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Kim Jong-un's ex-lover 'executed by firing squad'

Kim Jong-un's ex-girlfriend was among a dozen well-known North Korean performers who were executed by firing squad nine days go, according to South Korean reports.

Hyon Song-wol, a singer and rumoured to be a former lover of the North Korean leader, is said to have been arrested on Aug 17 with others for violating laws against pornography.

The group, including members of the Unhasu Orchestra, with which she performed, as well as singers, musicians and dancers with the Wangjaesan Light Music Band, was executed in public three days later.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” said a Chinese source reported in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

 After the executions, family members of the victims were taken to prison camps while the Unhasu Orchestra and Wangjaesan Light Music Band were disbanded. Full story...

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Why America cannot live without wars...

On a day marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I-Have-A-Dream" civil rights speech, the United States is poised to unleash another nightmare some 10,000km away in the Middle-East. Washington's war machine is geared up for limited strikes against Syria because Damascus ostensibly crossed a red line by using chemical weapons against its own population, never mind that many regimes worldwide inflict atrocities against their own people by other means.

Why a President who came to office on the strength of his anti-war credentials - especially on the phony war foisted on Iraq - is running with the war hounds, is something of a mystery. But the rest of the Washington establishment is champing at the bit to unleash missiles on the Syrian regime, promising a short punitive strike, in keeping with the well-worn belief that America cannot live without a war.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was among those who indicated that the US was "ready to go" the moment President Barack Obama gave the sign. "We have moved assets in place to be able to fulfill and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take," Hagel said on Tuesday.

 This, when a UN team is still investigating the reported use of chemical weapons in the conflict between the regime of Bashir al Assad and the rebels. The UN team has been asked to pack up and get out of the way. "We clearly value the UN's work - we've said that from the beginning - when it comes to investigating chemical weapons in Syria. But we've reached a point now where we believe too much time has passed for the investigation to be credible and that it's clear the security situation isn't safe for the team in Syria," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday, echoing the kind of impatience that characterized the descent into the Iraq war. Full story...

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Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?

It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.

So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.

The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the acknowledgements.

Schmidt’s book is not about communicating with the public. He is worth $6.1 billion and does not need to sell books. Rather, this book is a mechanism by which Google seeks to project itself into Washington. It shows Washington that Google can be its partner, its geopolitical visionary, who will help Washington see further about America’s interests. And by tying itself to the US state, Google thereby cements its own security, at the expense of all competitors. Full story...

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Acapella version of the Beatles' "When I'm sixty-four"

Turkish TV program ‘interviews' bull in protest of world silence on Syria, Egypt...

A bull made a surprise appearance during a Turkish TV news bulletin as part of a stunt protesting global silence on the violence in Syria and Egypt.

A reporter “interviewed” the bull during the program aired on Kanal T, asking its opinion on the global silence on the situation in Syria and Egypt.

“Humanity remained silent on massacres. We are bulls; we don't cry, but human beings can cry,” the correspondent reported the bull as saying. He then stated that even the bull had something to say on the violence in Egypt and Syria.

It was clear to viewers that the reporter brought the bull into the studio making a reference to the Turkish phrase “looking the way a bull looks at a passing train,” which normally means “having a dull expression.” But he indicated that he was referring to the phrase to show the lack of action taken by the Western powers. Full story...

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How one man turns annoying cold calls into cash...

A man targeted by marketing companies is making money from cold calls with his own premium-rate phone number.

In November 2011 Lee Beaumont paid £10 plus VAT to set up his personal 0871 line - so to call him now costs 10p, from which he receives 7p.

The Leeds businessman told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme that the premium line had so far made £300.

Phone Pay Plus, which regulates premium numbers, said it strongly discouraged people from adopting the idea.

Mr Beaumont came up with the plan when he grew sick of calls offering to help him reclaim payment protection insurance (PPI), or install solar panels.

He said: "I don't use my normal Leeds number for anyone but my friends and family." Full story...

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Epic fail: All 25,000 students flunk university entrance exam in Liberia...

Liberia's education minister says she finds it hard to believe that not a single candidate passed this year's university admission exam.

Nearly 25,000 school-leavers failed the test for admission to the University of Liberia, one of two state-run universities.

The students lacked enthusiasm and did not have a basic grasp of English, a university official told the BBC.

Liberia is recovering from a brutal civil war that ended a decade ago.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel peace laureate, recently acknowledged that the education system was still "in a mess", and much needed to be done to improve it.

Many schools lack basic education material and teachers are poorly qualified, reports the BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh from the capital, Monrovia.

However, this is the first time that every single student who wrote the exam for a fee of $25 (£16) has failed, our reporter says. Full story...

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Bank CEO admits buying luxury condo with bailout money...

Darryl Layne Woods, the former CEO of a Missouri bank, admitted in court yesterday to using financial crisis bailout funds to purchase a luxury waterfront condo in Florida, Dealbook's Peter Lattman reports.

In November 2008, Woods, 48, who was the head of Mainstreet Bank and the bank's holding company Calvert Financial Corporation, applied for TARP money on behalf of his bank, a press release states.

In January 2009, his bank received $1,037,000. A month later, he used $381,487 of it to buy a place in Fort Myers, Florida.

He pleaded guilty to misleading federal investigators about how he used the TARP money.

Woods is no longer allowed to work in the banking industry, according to the release. He also faces a sentence of up to one year in federal prison without parole and a fine of up to $100,000 plus restitution.  Full story...

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'Sentenced to death for being thirsty': Christian woman tells of moment she was beaten and locked up in Pakistan after 'using Muslim women's cup to drink water'

A Christian woman has spoken of how she was given a death sentence in Pakistan because she drank water from a well with a cup used by Muslim women.

Mother-of-five Asia Bibi, 46, has spent the last four years languishing in a prison cell after being condemned to hang following a conviction for blasphemy.

She denied the charge of defiling the name of the prophet Mohammed during an argument with Muslim co-workers but was convicted following a trial.

With 97 per cent of Pakistan Muslim, hostility towards Christians is rife and the government refuses to release her because of angry protests by extremists.

Two government officials who have spoken out on her behalf have been murdered - including Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti.

Now, as reported by the New York Post, Mrs Bibi - a farm worker from rural Punjab - has released a memoir called 'Blasphemy'. Full story...

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War propaganda and media lies within the Syria conflict...

How not to win a war: Sri Lanka's paradise betrayed by monks, thugs and smugglers...

Four years after its brutal victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a 26-year-long civil war, Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-led government is at pains to persuade the world that it has at last brought peace and unity to this troubled island. And the captain of the flag-carrying SriLankan Airlines flight 423 from Bangkok seems keen to do his national bit.

Easing his Airbus over the tea-studded plantations of the island’s central highlands for the approach into Colombo, the pilot primes those on board for landing.

“A warm welcome to Paradise for all our passengers….” he cheerfully intones in a voice as rich as the coconut curries ‘Mother Lanka’ is famous for. “That is, welcome to Paradise Regained.”

Which Sri Lanka certainly is if you’ve holidayed on its hedonistic beaches – arguably Asia’s most divine. It’s also been a political Shangri-La for the many members of the triumphalist Rajapaksa clan crowding government ranks, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and three of his brothers. They’ve ruled Sri Lanka since 2005 and, in South Asia’s dynastic style, are now positioning the family for yet another generation at the top. Ditto for the ruling brotherhood’s business cronies and military chums, as they pile into cosy government sinecures and the lucrative reconstruction deals that are spurring a modest economic surge now that the guns have been silenced in the Tamil north.

(...)

As the Rajapaksas muzzle dissenting voices in civil society, and the media too, which has seen independent newspapers neutered, and journalists intimidated, forced into exile and even killed, Sinhalese moderates and intellectuals fret that the values and liberties of their unique multicultural ‘masala society’ are being eroded – that South Asia’s only uninterrupted post-colonial democracy is being turned into a dynastic ‘mafia state’. Full story...

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Two SWAT teams shut down a neighborhood in Colorado for 4 hours...

Two SWAT teams were deployed and an entire neighborhood in Ft. Collins, Colorado was shut down for four hours to search for a man suspected of stealing a bicycle and a grocery cart full of merchandise from Wal-Mart.

A sheriff’s deputy on scene said the SWAT teams were searching for a robbery suspect who had been tracked to the area.

The suspect tried to steal a shopping cart filled with tools and a bike from a Walmart earlier in the day. He had fought with staff members and fled in a car with other suspects inside. Police reviewed surveillance video and recognized the man. Police say the suspect has a criminal history.

In conclusion, no suspect was apprehended during the four hours the SWAT teams terrorize the neighborhood. However they did manage to capture a large dog by securing it in the Humane Society van.

American is increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war. Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend. It’s time to understand the true scope of the militarization of policing in America and the impact it is having in our neighborhoods. Source...

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