The Benefits of Fracking - The Daily Show - Video Clip | Comedy Central
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
High Culture and Hard Labor - NYTimes.com
On Saadiyat, and throughout the gleaming cityscapes of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the construction work force is almost entirely made up of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi Sri Lankan and Nepalese migrant laborers. Bound to an employer by the kafala sponsorship system, they arrive heavily indebted from recruitment and transit fees, only to find that their gulf dream has been a mirage. Typically, in the United Arab Emirates, the sponsoring employer takes their passports, houses the workers in substandard labor camps, pays much less than they were promised and enforces a punishing regimen under the desert sun.
High Culture and Hard Labor - NYTimes.com
High Culture and Hard Labor - NYTimes.com
Friday, March 28, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
UK Government Reportedly Threatened To Shut The Guardian Down Over Snowden Stories
"The British government threatened to shut down the Guardian newspaper for its publishing of the confidential NSA surveillance documents provided by Edward Snowden, its deputy editor saidat a conference in Dublin on Wednesday.
The newspaper was responsible for breaking the news of the NSA's massive phone and Internet data collection. Deputy editor Paul Johnson told the Radiodays Europe conference in Dublin that the paper was consequently almost forced to shut down.
“We were threatened that we would be closed down," he said. "We were accused of endangering national security and people’s lives. It left us in a very difficult position,”
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Board Rules Northwestern Players Can Unionize - NYTimes.com
This is a major first step in attacking the plantation system which is college sports. The next step is obtaining real salaries
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
This Is What 80 Looks Like - NYTimes.com
ON Tuesday, Gloria Steinem turns 80.
Do not bother to call. She’s planning to celebrate in Botswana. “I thought: ‘What do I really want to do on my birthday?’ First, get out of Dodge. Second, ride elephants.”
Very few people have aged as publicly. It’s been four decades since she told a reporter, “This is what 40 looks like.” Back then many women, including Steinem herself, fudged their age when they left their 20s, so it was a pretty revolutionary announcement. A decade later she had a “This is what 50 looks like” party at the Waldorf for the benefit of Ms. Magazine. Steinem, who has frequently said that she expects her funeral to be a fund-raiser, has been using her birthdays to make money for worthy causes ever since. Before heading off to Botswana, she, along with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, was feted at a “This is what 80 looks like” benefit for the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
This Is What 80 Looks Like - NYTimes.com
Do not bother to call. She’s planning to celebrate in Botswana. “I thought: ‘What do I really want to do on my birthday?’ First, get out of Dodge. Second, ride elephants.”
Very few people have aged as publicly. It’s been four decades since she told a reporter, “This is what 40 looks like.” Back then many women, including Steinem herself, fudged their age when they left their 20s, so it was a pretty revolutionary announcement. A decade later she had a “This is what 50 looks like” party at the Waldorf for the benefit of Ms. Magazine. Steinem, who has frequently said that she expects her funeral to be a fund-raiser, has been using her birthdays to make money for worthy causes ever since. Before heading off to Botswana, she, along with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, was feted at a “This is what 80 looks like” benefit for the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.
This Is What 80 Looks Like - NYTimes.com
Friday, March 21, 2014
It's Official: Aaron McGruder out at Boondocks - The Root
This is terrible. Gangsta capitalism at play again.
It's Official: Aaron McGruder out at Boondocks - The Root
It's Official: Aaron McGruder out at Boondocks - The Root
Migrant Workers In World Cup Host Qatar 'Enslaved,' Living In Squalor: Report
After visiting labor camps near the Qatari capital of Doha, an international federation of trade unions has issued a blistering report chronicling the labor and human rights abuses unfolding in the host country of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Drawing on data from the Indian and Nepalese embassies, the International Trade Union Confederation estimates that 4,000 more workers could die before the World Cup gets underway in 2022 if the workforce grows as expected.
The group calls Qatar a country with only "a facade of government," and says that impoverished migrant workers from abroad are living in squalid conditions while beholden to employers who control their identification cards and exit visas. Working in "unbelievable heat" six days a week, such migrants are now dying in "unprecedented numbers," according to the report's authors.
"Grown men said they were treated like animals, living like horses in a stable," the report states. "Tragically a small number of Qatari power brokers have chosen to build the trappings of a modern economy off the backs of exploited and enslaved workers."
Migrant Workers In World Cup Host Qatar 'Enslaved,' Living In Squalor: Report
Hawaiian Cops Can Have Sex With Prostitutes
"HONOLULU (AP) — Honolulu police officers are urging lawmakers to keep an exemption in state law that lets undercover officers have sex with prostitutes during investigations, but they won't say how often — or even if — they use the provision.
The idea has shocked advocates and law enforcement experts in the sex trade, who note that many prostitutes have been forced into that line of work.
"I don't know of any state or federal law that allows any law enforcement officer undercover to ... do what this law is allowing," said Roger Young, a retired special agent who for more than 20 years worked sex crimes for the FBI from Las Vegas and who has trained vice squads around the country. "Once we agree on the price and the sex act, that's all that you need. That breaks the law."
Fallout From Snowden Hurting Bottom Line of Tech Companies - NYTimes.com
"SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft has lost customers, including the government of Brazil.
IBM is spending more than a billion dollars to build data centers overseas to reassure foreign customers that their information is safe from prying eyes in the United States government."
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Ex Microsoft staffer arrested for allegedly stealing Win 8 trade secrets
"Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who most recently served as a director of product management in 5nine Software (according to his LinkedIn profile), has been arrested for allegedly stealing Windows-related trade secrets while working for Microsoft.
Kibkalo was arrested on Wednesday, according to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
According to a complaint filed on March 17 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Kibkalo -- a Russian national and former Microsoft employee based in Lebanon -- passed on trade secrets involving Windows 8 to an unnamed technology blogger in France.
Microsoft's own investigation found that Kibkalo "uploaded proprietary software including prerelease software updates for Windows 8 RT and ARM devices, as well as the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK) to a computer in Redmond, Washington, and subsequently to his personal Windows Live SkyDrive account." Kibkalo is then said to have provided the blogger with links to the file on his account.
The unnamed blogger was "known to those in the Microsoft blogging community for posting screenshots of prerelease versions of the Windows operating system," according to the complaint. This person also posted information to his own Web sites and on Twitter, according to the document. Kibkalo was found by Microsoft to have elicited assistance from an acquaintance in Washginton state to set up a virtual machine on a server to help distribute the data and products, the complaint said."
Monday, March 17, 2014
Shane L. Windmeyer: The Secret Recipe for Funding Hate Groups: 5 Simple Facts About Chick-fil-A
It should not surprise anyone that a company that sells chicken using cows would also claim to be a Christian-principled family business and then take profits to fund hate groups. The real issue at hand is not freedom of speech or same-sex marriage but Chick-fil-A's secretive funding of documented anti-gay hate groups. The national organization Campus Pride made this clear last week in releasing "5 Simple Facts About Chick-fil-A." Campus Pride specifically called upon our nation's student leaders to share the truth about Chick-fil-A and its funding of radical-right-wing organizations and documented hate groups.
Through its family-controlled nonprofit arm, Chick-fil-A profits have funded such groups as Eagle Forum, Exodus International, Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family. These groups proudly and aggressively work against the rights of LGBT people, advocating their criminalization, psychological abuse, and death. Chick-fil-A has not disputed any of these facts. The "5 Simple Facts About Chick-fil-A" are well documented, showing the funneling of Chick-fil-A profits to anti-gay causes and even a hate group, as determined by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Shane L. Windmeyer: The Secret Recipe for Funding Hate Groups: 5 Simple Facts About Chick-fil-A
The Ugandan Tabloid That Stole Our Pride - NYTimes.com The hate financed and spread by American evangelical Christians
Then, on Feb. 24 this year, everything changed. That was the day President Yoweri Museveni signed Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act into law. Two days later, Uganda’s largest tabloid, the Red Pepper, publishedan article titled “Homosexuality Could Cause Mental Illness — Medics.” One of the photographs accompanying the article was one — also published by The Advocate — that I had taken at Uganda’s very first pride parade in 2012, showing two Ugandans with broad smiles. The Red Pepper had not contacted me or sought my permission.
On many days since, similar stories and photographs have been published. The worst for me and my activist friends came on Feb. 28, when the Red Pepper reprinted — again, without permission — a version of my photo essay for The Advocate. The feature was retitled “Top Ugandan Gays Speak Out: How We Became Homos.” I had been given a byline as if I were one of the newspaper’s reporters. Some words were changed, and the photographs were cropped to cut out my copyright watermark. The Advocate was neither contacted nor credited.
The Ugandan Tabloid That Stole Our Pride - NYTimes.com
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Charges dropped against FAMU hazing defendant | www.ajc.com
"Florida prosecutors have dropped charges against a former band member who called 911 after Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion was beaten during a hazing ritual.
Henry Nesbitt had faced manslaughter and hazing charges until the state attorney notified the court Friday he wouldn’t pursue prosecution of those alleged crimes, according to Orange County court documents.
Champion, who is originally from Decatur, collapsed and died in November 2011 following a hazing ritual in which he walked down the aisle of a bus as other band members beat him with fists and instruments, prosecutors have said.
“Henry Nesbitt was the one person who was there who snatched someone’s cellphone and called 911 for Mr. Champion,” Nesbitt’s attorney, Zachary White, said Saturday. “The evidence shows that he wasn’t on the bus at the time when any of the activities were going on.”
White said there was a lack of evidence for prosecutors to move forward with a case against Nesbitt.
Nesbitt didn’t reach a plea agreement with prosecutors, and he remains on the state’s witness list to potentially testify at the trial of the remaining defendants, White said."
Saturday, March 15, 2014
A Rare Opportunity on Criminal Justice - NYTimes.com
"The Smarter Sentencing Act — introduced in the Senate last year by Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, and Mike Lee, the Utah Republican — would halve mandatory minimum sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, which currently stand at five, 10 and 20 years. It would also give judges more discretion to sentence below the mandatory minimum in some cases, and it would provide a chance at early release for thousands of inmates sentenced under an older law that disproportionately punished crack cocaine offenders.
The Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act, introduced by Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and John Cornyn, the Texas Republican, would allow low-risk prisoners to earn credit for early release by participating in education, job training and drug treatment programs.
Reforms like these were unthinkable even a few years ago, when the Republicans’ longtime tough-on-crime dogma — echoed by Democrats who fearfully fell into line — drove irrational sentencing laws. Why have things changed so quickly? In a word, money — or the lack of it. The bloated Bureau of Prisons eats up nearly $7 billion a year, a quarter of the Justice Department’s entire budget. Politicians like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and Mr. Lee have become the public face of the conservative turnabout, and they deserve credit for their efforts, but it’s important to remember that almost none of this would be happening without the need to save money.
In fact, many of the reforms now under consideration at the federal level began in reliably conservative states, where budget crises long ago demanded sweeping and lasting change. In Texas, which incarcerates more people than any other state, lawmakers have adopted alternatives to prison, such as drug courts and improved community supervision programs, that help keep people from reoffending. The result has been a steady decline in the prison population and the closing of three state prisons, even as crime rates go down. As Mr. Cornyn told The Times, “From Texas’s perspective, the evidence is in.”
Since 2000, 29 states have moved to cut back on mandatory sentences, particularly for low-level and nonviolent drug offenders, according to a new report by the Vera Institute of Justice."
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Japan Won’t Alter Apology to World War II Sex Slaves - NYTimes.com
TOKYO — Japan will not revise a landmark apology to women forced to
work in military brothels during World War II even as it moves ahead with
a review of the testimony used to create that apology, a spokesman for the
Japanese government said Monday.
Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters that the
conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had no intention of
changing the 1993 apology, called the Kono Statement. The apology
admitted for the first time that the Imperial military played at least an
indirect role in forcing the women, known euphemistically as “comfort
women,” to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.
Mr. Suga was responding to rising criticism from South Korea, a
former Japanese colony where many of the women came from, of an
announcement made two weeks ago by Mr. Suga that the government
would review evidence used to support the apology. At that time, Mr. Suga
said the government would form a panel of experts to review the evidence
used to back up the statement, mostly testimony made two decades ago by
16 aging former sex slaves.
Mr. Suga announced the review under pressure from nationalist
lawmakers who denounced the 1993 apology as the product of a Koreanled
campaign to defame Japan, saying the women were just common prostitutes
Japan Won’t Alter Apology to World War II Sex Slaves - NYTimes.com
work in military brothels during World War II even as it moves ahead with
a review of the testimony used to create that apology, a spokesman for the
Japanese government said Monday.
Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters that the
conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had no intention of
changing the 1993 apology, called the Kono Statement. The apology
admitted for the first time that the Imperial military played at least an
indirect role in forcing the women, known euphemistically as “comfort
women,” to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.
Mr. Suga was responding to rising criticism from South Korea, a
former Japanese colony where many of the women came from, of an
announcement made two weeks ago by Mr. Suga that the government
would review evidence used to support the apology. At that time, Mr. Suga
said the government would form a panel of experts to review the evidence
used to back up the statement, mostly testimony made two decades ago by
16 aging former sex slaves.
Mr. Suga announced the review under pressure from nationalist
lawmakers who denounced the 1993 apology as the product of a Koreanled
campaign to defame Japan, saying the women were just common prostitutes
Japan Won’t Alter Apology to World War II Sex Slaves - NYTimes.com
Monday, March 10, 2014
Gun crime statistics by US state: download the data. Visualised | World news | theguardian.com
How high is gun crime across the US - and which states have the worst figures? This is the latest data
Get The Data
crime statistics by US state: download the data. Visualised | World news | theguardian.com
Get The Data
crime statistics by US state: download the data. Visualised | World news | theguardian.com
Friday, March 07, 2014
The Archipelago of Pain - NYTimes.com
We don’t flog people in our prison system, or put them in thumbscrews or
stretch them on the rack. We do, however, lock prisoners away in social
isolation for 23 hours a day, often for months, years or decades at a time.
We prohibit the former and permit the latter because we make a
distinction between physical and social pain. But, at the level of the brain
where pain really resides, this is a distinction without a difference.
Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared
the brain activities of people suffering physical pain with people suffering
from social pain. As he writes in his book, “Social,” “Looking at the screens
side by side ... you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.”
The brain processes both kinds of pain in similar ways. Moreover, at
the level of human experience, social pain is, if anything, more traumatic,
more destabilizing and inflicts more cruel and long-lasting effects than
physical pain. What we’re doing to prisoners in extreme isolation, in other
words, is arguably more inhumane than flogging.
The Archipelago of Pain - NYTimes.com
stretch them on the rack. We do, however, lock prisoners away in social
isolation for 23 hours a day, often for months, years or decades at a time.
We prohibit the former and permit the latter because we make a
distinction between physical and social pain. But, at the level of the brain
where pain really resides, this is a distinction without a difference.
Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared
the brain activities of people suffering physical pain with people suffering
from social pain. As he writes in his book, “Social,” “Looking at the screens
side by side ... you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.”
The brain processes both kinds of pain in similar ways. Moreover, at
the level of human experience, social pain is, if anything, more traumatic,
more destabilizing and inflicts more cruel and long-lasting effects than
physical pain. What we’re doing to prisoners in extreme isolation, in other
words, is arguably more inhumane than flogging.
The Archipelago of Pain - NYTimes.com
Thursday, March 06, 2014
NPR Faces Listener Backlash After Scott Lively Interview | Hatewatch
Evangelical crusader Scott Lively, who is credited with inspiring anti-gay legislation in both Uganda and Russia, was interviewed last week on National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” program by host Michel Martin to discuss Uganda’s harsh new statute outlawing homosexuality. The interview, which lasted over 10 minutes, included the usual doses of Lively’s incendiary rhetoric, including his assertion that “sodomy is not a human right.”
Lively also justified anti-gay discrimination by comparing it to other forms of bigotry: “Gender, race, ethnicity – these are all morally neutral. But homosexuality is – involves voluntary sexual conduct with serious public health, social, sociological implications. It’s not irrational to discriminate on that basis.”
The interview sparked a strong negative reaction from NPR listeners, who took to social media such as Facebook and Twitter to chastise the network and Martin for broadcasting the interview. Among them was Ted Allen of the Food Network, who commented: “Can’t believe ears: Why is @NPR legitimizing anti-gay Scott Lively on @TellMeMoreNPR?!”
NPR Faces Listener Backlash After Scott Lively Interview | Hatewatch
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Sunday, March 02, 2014
A changing tide on criminal justice policies? Years of civil rights organizing, coupled with expensive prisons and tight budgets, are driving a “revolution” on both sides of the political spectrum in rethinking criminal justice policies. Former federal Judge Timothy K. Lewis, the Advancement Project’s Judith Browne Dianis, criminal defense attorney Billy Murphy, Reason’s Peter Suderman and former Iranian hostage and investigative journalist Shane Bauer discuss with Ari Melber.
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