The Cult of the Dead Fish

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2012-01-30T18:46:00.001+01:00

UK paratroopers are trained in riot control

2012-01-30T12:05:00.001+01:00

Hundreds of soldiers from 3rd battalion The Parachute Regiment spent last week learning how to contain and arrest "rioters" in a series of exercises mirroring last summers violence. Defence sources have confirmed that if violence were to return to British cities, especially during the Olympic Games, the Paras would be "ideally placed" to provide "short-term" support to police forces around the UK.

Such a request would have to be made by the Home Office and would have to have Prime Ministerial approval, according to the source. During the exercises at the Lydd training base in Kent, the elite troops were pelted with petrol bombs and missiles and "fought" running battles with gangs of protesters as part of the battalion's "public order training". The battalion is the lead unit in the Airborne Task Force - the Army's premier rapid response unit and can be called on to deal with a wide range of emergency situations - from hostage rescue to riot control - around the world.

Telegraph

Heartland

2012-01-30T10:39:00.001+01:00

The the - 1986

Day of clashes at Occupy Oakland ends with at least 400 arrests

2012-01-30T00:11:00.001+01:00

Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, stole an American flag from the City Council chamber and set it on fire Saturday night, punctuating a wild day in which police deployed tear gas, arrested more than 400 marchers and dodged hurling objects. Demonstrators spent the day trying to break into a convention center and temporarily occupying City Hall and a YMCA, all the while snaking around lines of riot-clad police periodically shooting bean bag projectiles, among other uses of nonlethal force.

Saturday marked the first major clashes between protesters and police since November and left three officers with minor injuries, as protesters threw bottles, metal pipes, rocks, spray cans and "improvised explosive devices," police said. Late Saturday, paramedics wheeled a pregnant protester away from Frank H. Ogawa Plaza after witnesses said she was hit in the kidney by a police baton. She yelled: "Police did this to me!"

San Jose Mercury News - occupyoakland.org

Occupy Oakland Say Oakland Police Violate Their Own Policies (berkeleydailyplanet)

New Google Data Policy Raising Major Privacy Concerns

2012-01-29T15:18:00.001+01:00

Google's new plan to link user data across its email, video, social-networking sites has come under fire from critics who say it's an invasion of privacy because of the sheer volume of information collected and the inability of users to opt out.

Under the plan, information collected about individuals will be integrated across 60 Google products including Gmail, YouTube and web search. Users will have to agree to a new privacy policy that will encompass data including location measurements collected on mobile devices. The result is that Google will soon know more about who users are and what they do on the web, allowing it to target search results and advertising. Users will not be allowed to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1.

cbc.ca

Senegalese pop star tussles with police

2012-01-29T15:14:00.001+01:00

International pop star Youssou N'Dour has has been pushed back by police during a demonstration in Senegal, the news service Associated Press reports.

N'Dour had come on Saturday to the Criminal Investigation Division as part of a large crowd of opposition supporters who wanted to show their solidarity with Alioune Tine, a well-known human rights activist who is being questioned by police. Tine was the organiser of a demonstration on Friday that turned violent following the decision of Senegal's constitutional court to allow the country's leader to run for a third term.

The legal body approved President Abdoulaye Wade's third term bid, even though critics say the constitution allows a maximum of two. N'Dour wanted to run in the February presidential election but his candidacy has been rejected.

BigPond News - youssou.com

Victory

2012-01-29T00:26:00.001+01:00

Daan

The Argument that Fukushima Was Sabotaged

2012-01-28T13:24:00.001+01:00

Former NSA analyst, Jim Stone, argues that there was no earthquake. The tsunami was caused by nuclear bombs in the sea and the Fukushima explosion and meltdown was caused by mini-nukes hidden in cameras installed by an Israeli security firm. The motive: punish Japan for offering to enrich Iranian uranium and straying from Illuminati diktat.

When we compare the 6.8-magnitude earthquake which devastated Kobe, Japan January 17, 1995 with Fukushima, the evidence does not stack up.
A quick Google Images search of Kobe reveals incredible destruction of buildings, bridges, elevated highways, and other infrastructure.
The Fukushima quake, magnitude 9.0, struck about 70 km off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011.
It sent a 30-meter tsunami crashing over perfectly undamaged bridges, houses, roads, and cars -- over a populace which had not been warned of the incoming tsunami, because there was no earthquake. They were taken completely off-guard. Yet helicopters were waiting, and people all over Japan got to watch the tsunami roll in on live TV.

What on earth was going on? Ordinarily, the Japanese people are warned of tsunamis. Why weren't they warned? Why was there no structural damage, no reason for them to suspect that a tsunami was coming?
The quake must have seemed like nothing special to a nation of people who are used to quakes. In a video taken in one Tokyo newsroom during the Fukushima quake, staff were seen to continue typing at their computer stations, totally unfazed by it.
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake is more than 100 times stronger than a 6.8. A 9.0 should have devastated everything within a 1,000-km radius. There should have been widespread urban carnage, even worse than what Kobe suffered.
Yet the Fukushima quake of 3/11/11 did not cause a single structure to collapse.

Full story on savethemales.ca - Jim Stone Website

Bodies of 17 prisoners found in Syrian city

2012-01-28T12:54:00.001+01:00

The bodies of 17 men arrested by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces during an armoured assault this week on the city of Hama were found dumped in the streets after being shot in the head, activists said on Saturday.

The reported killings mark an escalation in a five-month military crackdown on Hama, 240 km (150 miles) north of Damascus, where armed rebels are now backing protesters after tanks stormed the conservative Sunni Muslim city in August.

"They were killed execution style, mostly with one bullet to the head. Iron chains that had tied them were left on their legs as a message to the people to stop resisting," Abu al-Walid, an activist in the city, told Reuters by telephone. Another activist said the bodies, their hands tied by plastic wire and some with their legs chained, were dumped in the streets of five Hama neighborhoods on Thursday evening.

Reuters

Not all Tweets must flow

2012-01-28T01:07:00.001+01:00

Twitter now censors the tweets:

“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.
Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

Twitter Blog: Tweets still must flow

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Takes $300 Million Stake In Twitter (Forbes)

Twitter Boycott Planned To Protest Twitter's Censorship Plan - The Huffington Post

Censorship of Twitter on Wikipedia

Richard Dawkins at the Jaipur Literature Festival

2012-01-28T00:42:00.001+01:00

Richard Dawkins and Lala Ward read excerpts from The Magic of Reality and Unweaving The Rainbow (via RDnet and 3 Quarks Daily)

Atheist Media Blog

Religion is bullshit

2012-01-28T00:06:00.001+01:00

George Carlin (May 12 1937 - June 22 2008)

Boko Haram vows to fight until Nigeria establishes sharia law

2012-01-28T00:03:00.001+01:00

The Islamist group Boko Haram, which has killed almost 1,000 people in Nigeria, will continue its campaign of violence until the country is ruled by sharia law, a senior member has told the Guardian.

"We will consider negotiation only when we have brought the government to their knees," the spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said in the group's first major interview with a western newspaper. "Once we see that things are being done according to the dictates of Allah, and our members are released [from prison], we will only put aside our arms – but we will not lay them down. You don't put down your arms in Islam, you only put them aside."

Qaqa, whose name is a pseudonym, said the group's members were spiritual followers of al-Qaida, and claimed they had met senior figures in the network founded by Osama bin Laden during visits to Saudia Arabia.

The Guardian - Nigeria: Islamist sect Boko Haram is growing threat (RNW)

Israel 'proposes West Bank border with Palestine'

2012-01-27T23:57:00.001+01:00

Israel is proposing to essentially turn its West Bank separation barrier into the border with a future state of Palestine, two Palestinian officials said Friday, based on their interpretation of principles Israel presented in talks this week.

The officials said Israeli envoy Yitzak Molcho told his Palestinian counterpart that Israel wants to keep east Jerusalem and consolidate Jewish settlements behind the separation barrier, which slices close to 10 per cent off the West Bank. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing strict no-leaks rules by Jordanian mediators.

The proposal would fall short of what the Palestinians seem likely to accept, especially because it would leave Jerusalem on the "Israeli" side of the border.

NZ Herald News

Doll 'protesters' present small problem for Russian police

2012-01-26T18:43:00.001+01:00

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."

Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency in a March vote.

The Guardian

Australian PM dragged away after being trapped by protesters

2012-01-26T17:13:00.001+01:00

The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, had to be extracted from a restaurant near Parliament House as angry protesters banged on the glass.

Supporters of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra picketed the Lobby restaurant over comments by Mr Abbott this morning that the tent embassy should close. As many as 200 gathered in front of the restaurant, banging on its glass walls and yelling "shame" and "racist".

The Age

Almost Gone

2012-01-26T15:21:00.001+01:00

Graham Nash and James Raymond – Graham Nash Website

Abusive Identity Checks of Minority Youth by French Police

2012-01-26T15:13:00.001+01:00

French police are using overly broad powers to conduct unwarranted and abusive identity checks on black and Arab young men and boys, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 55-page report, “The Root of Humiliation: Abusive Identity Checks in France,” says that minority youth, including children as young as 13, are subjected to frequent stops involving lengthy questioning, invasive body pat-downs, and the search of personal belongings. These arbitrary stops can take place even in the absence of any indication of wrongdoing, Human Rights Watch found.

Insulting language, including racial slurs, are not uncommon, and some stops involve excessive use of force by the police.
“It’s shocking that young black and Arab kids can be, and are, arbitrarily forced up against walls and manhandled by the police with no real evidence of wrongdoing,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But if you are a young person in some neighborhoods in France, it’s a part of life.”

Human Rights Watch

Doctors Without Borders says detainees tortured in Libya

2012-01-26T15:07:00.001+01:00

Doctors Without Borders is halting work in detention centers in the Libyan city of Misrata because detainees are "tortured and denied urgent medical care," the international aid agency said Thursday. The agency known by its French acronym MSF said it has treated 115 people with torture-related wounds from interrogation sessions.

Some of the patients treated were tortured again after they were returned to detention centers, according to the agency. "Some officials have sought to exploit and obstruct MSF's medical work," said Christopher Stokes, the agency general director. "Patients were brought to us for medical care between interrogation sessions, so that they would be fit for further interrogation. This is unacceptable. Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions."

Libyan officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

CNN – More picture of Djeida prison in Tripoli by Luca Sola

Chinese Workers Making Apple Products Face Shockingly Harsh Conditions

2012-01-26T10:00:00.001+01:00

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China - NYTimes.com - Foxconn

Ex-Apple Exec: 'People Would Still Be Really Disturbed If They Saw Where Their iPhone Comes From'... Deaths, Suicide Attempts... 'We Could Have Saved Lives'... Pay Withheld To Punish Employees... 'Culture Of Secrecy'

CIA exposed giving directives to Al Jazeera

2012-01-25T17:46:00.001+01:00

The far-reaching tentacles of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird are, to this day, responsible for framing and manipulating our perceptions on a scale not easily believed.
Even the once ridiculed 'terrorist news' Al-Jazeera is getting a foothold on American televisions via cable and satellite networks thanks to it's willingness to follow CIA directives on how to present the news.
… says RT…

The Greatest Show on Earth!

2012-01-25T15:15:00.001+01:00

A music video about Evolution - Symphony of Science

Israeli 'immodest dressed' woman attacked by crowd of ultra-Orthodox men

2012-01-25T14:12:00.001+01:00

A woman was attacked in her car in Beit Shemesh Tuesday by ultra-Orthodox extremists - the latest in a series of incidents apparently sparked by what members of the town's Haredi community view as immodest dress.

Ultra Orthodox Jews hold a placard that reads in Hebrew "segregate women" during a protest in the central town of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, on December 26, 2011.

A crowd of ultra-Orthodox men jumped on 27-year-old Natali Mashiah's car in the Haredi Ramat Beit Shemet Bet neighborhood, she said. Members of the crowd smashed her car windows and punctured her four tires before spilling bleach on the inside of her car, said the Beit Shemesh resident, adding that she believed the men were going to set her on fire. As she fled the car, she said she was hit on the head by a rock thrown from very close range.

Haaretz

UK seeking to change the European Court of Human Rights

2012-01-25T09:34:00.001+01:00

David Cameron is seeking to change the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) so that it no longer serves as an automatic last resort for criminals, including foreigners awaiting deportation. But the proposal has been attacked by Labour who believe the prime minister may be paving the way to "walk away" from the court.

The prime minister will use Britain's presidency of the Council of Europe to attempt to make changes to the court and clear the massive backlog of cases across Europe awaiting consideration. However Downing Street has admitted that getting agreement on how to speed up the Court's operation will be an enormous challenge.

Huffington Post - Asylum airlines - your one-way flight to deportation (Telegraph)

Massive Solar Storm Hurtles Towards Earth

2012-01-24T18:35:00.001+01:00

A massive solar storm is hurtling towards the Earth after the biggest eruption on the sun in six years.

The radiation storm is expected to create spectacular displays of the Northern Lights - but there are fears it could also disrupt communications, damage satellites and cause power grid outages at northern latitudes.

That first, moderate flare triggered the release of billions of tons of charged particles from the sun’s atmosphere, now travelling towards the earth at speeds of up to 1400 miles per second, according to Nasa's Goddard Space Weather Centre.

Sky News