All Further Articles for 2013-05-misc
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Occupy Gezi: Turkish Police Gas, Spray, Hose Protesters Who Want to Save Park Burning tents and randomly firing tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons, Turkish police cracked down on up to 10,000 peaceful protesters camped out for a week in Istanbul's Gezi Park trying to save the city's last public green space. As is often the counter-productive case in such matters, the violent overreaction by police has helped the protest morph from specific environmental grievance into broader political opposition. Read more |
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The Pain of the Others: Muslims Tour Auschwitz Often drawing parallels between the suffering of Palestinians and Jews, Muslim leaders from around the world made emotional visits last week to Dachau, Auschwitz and other European sites as part of a Holocaust awareness program. Imams recited the Muslim prayer for the dead inside the crematorium at Dachau, and held afternoon prayers in front of Auschwitz' infamous “Wall of Death.” The commonality. Powerful photos. "Whether in Europe today or in the Muslim world, my call to humanity: End racism, for G-d's sake, end anti-Semitism, for G-d's sake, end Islamophobia for G-d's sake, end sexism for G-d's sake. Enough is enough." - Imam Mohamed Magid. Read more |
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Letter from Loretto From John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent now serving 30 months at a federal prison in Loretto, PA. and the only person ever prosecuted in connection with the Bush administration's use of torture - surreally, for blowing the whistle on it - a letter detailing his life inside and just who gives him grief there. Hint: Not his fellow prisoners. Read more |
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A Scared Little Boy, A Matter of Seconds The mother of 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy, the youngest person in Australia to be shot dead by police, has filed a landmark action with the U.N. Human Rights Council arguing the investigation of his death - done not by an independent body but "members of the same police force at whose hands he died" - did not "deliver justice for my son.” Tyler was agitated, intoxicated, and holding two knives in an empty skate park when police sprayed him with two cans of pepper spray and fired 10 bullets at him, five of which hit him. A coroner later found Tyler was “overwhelmed by his emotions” but cleared police. Tyler was killed 73 seconds after first being approached by police, who “didn’t even ask him his name.” Read more |
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Sadly, Bachmann Outta Here Without Waiting for God To Repeal Obamacare or Close the Internment Camps Michele Bachmann is leaving but it's not because she would likely lose in the next election and "this decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign." This seems to call for a trip down Wingnut Memory Lane, with a stop at Bad Lip Reading. Read more |
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We Are Not Greece, Portugal Is Not Cyprus, Or Is It Calling on "all citizens, with or without party, with or without a job, with or without hope," a coalition of groups across Europe plan a June 1 demonstration, People United Against The Troika!, to protest austerity measures imposed by the troika of all-powerful financial institutions that have led to unemployment, foreclosures, social inequity and cuts in health care and education, all in the name of a debt crisis that "once again privatizes profits and socializes losses, while demanding bloody cutbacks in return." With a masterful video. Read more |
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Bikes As Bad Stuff Like Socialism, Terrorism, Class War and Thought Control New York City's new Citi Bike, the nation's largest bike share system offering 6,000 bikes at 300 stations at a (steep) price, has elicited a hilarious, hysterical reaction from tabloids complaining the program not only made two employees late 'cause of a messed up rack thingy but represents other catastrophes from an Al Qaeda-like insurgency to a way for "a few earnest users (to) feel morally superior" to "another governmental incursion into the private marketplace." Oddly, nobody is asking why a for-profit gig and marketing campaign for a financial behemoth once dubbed "too big to fail...regulate...manage (or) care” would cause everyone to freak out like this. Read more |
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Attention Shoppers: Wal-Mart Just Paid A Whopping Fine But Is Still Hazardous to Your Health In case you need a reminder of Wal-Mart's sins: They have now paid fines totalling over $110 million - including $82 million this week - for mishandling fertilizers, pesticides and other hazardous waste by dumping it into city trash bins, piling it in parking lots, pouring it into sewer systems and transporting truckloads of it in damaged containers to recycling centers. Ever unbowed, Wal-Mart adds “no specific environmental impact has been alleged" and they have now "fixed the problem," even though some charges stemming from years ago were evidently not fixed because they're just like this week's charges, but anyway. Read more |
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And On The 8th Day, God Created Hackers and Bikers More hateful buffoonery, more creative responses. When Westboro Baptist Church declared GodHatesOklahoma for supporting gay basketball players and thus sent the tornado, a hacker known as Jester seized the domain name and "put it to good use" - complete with image of Jesus flipping off the infamous Phelps clan - by replacing it with a donation page to charities. Meanwhile, a crowd of bikers turned up to block WBC's announced protest of the first child's funeral. The haters were evidently no-shows, which seems to happen more and more. Read more |
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Death to Whistle-Blowers? Help Get Transcripts Out With Bradley Manning's trial set to start in one week and the government refusing to make transcripts public, Freedom of the Press Foundation is crowd-funding to hire a court stenographer whose daily transcripts would then be posted online. For future whistleblowers and us all. Read more |