One of the purported achievements of the Coalition government’s disastrous economic policy of austerity, has been the unemployment figures. Pundits say that at 7.8% (2.51m) they are nothing to shout about but not the disastrous rates seen in states such as Greece (26.9%) or Spain (26.3%). In reality, the unemployment rate is more than double this in many areas, while those in employment are facing ever worsening conditions to retain their non-jobs.
Hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army have once again claimed a high profile scalp, compromising the blogs at British broadcaster Channel 4.
The hackers, who back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, took over the blog of the station’s veteran news presenter Jon Snow and posted a story about a tactical nuclear strike against Syria.
“The mistreatment of animals can all-too-often be normalised in our society and we regularly see newspapers reporting “cute” or “funny” stories about animals in which the individual animal’s welfare may be compromised. I must say, though, I have never read a news report which takes a clear example of animal abuse, and a potential breach of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and twists it into an attempt to gain cheap laughs from its readership. A person punching, hitting or otherwise attacking an animal is never funny. I am surprised and saddened that a newspaper like the Sun, which has strongly supported animal protection campaigns in the past, has chosen to highlight a serious incident in this thoughtless manner”
What would US foreign, military and so-called “national security” policy look like if the media reported the most important facts about it? There would be a lot fewer corpses abroad and returning home. And we wouldn’t be cutting “meals on wheels” or other nutrition programs for the poor or elderly in order to sustain the world’s most fantastically bloated military budget.
“The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.”
That day, for nearly two hours, I sat at my computer and poured over undercover footage from inside factory farms. How could it be that in 30 years, no one had told me that this is how animals we eat become our food? I saw the terrified looks on the animals’ faces, the cruel beatings and torment they endured. I heard the desensitized farm-workers screaming in their faces. And inside, I felt hollow because I knew what this felt like. I knew it from growing up. I knew what it’s like to be bullied.
Citizens and rights have nothing to do with elite, covert technologies! The targets of surveillance are oblivious dorks, they’re not even newbies! Even US Senators are decorative objects for the NSA. An American Senator knows as much about PRISM and XKeyScore as a troll-doll on the dashboard knows about internal combustion.
“Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden – liberated by the Soviets – and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there’s a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.
So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we’re gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!”
Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth- certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
Enjoy this fiery debate between Ken O’Keefe and Lee Kaplan on the crisis in Syria by PressTV
Sara Starkey comments on a short piece from The Guardian which relates how sparrow killing in the UK was still going on up until the 1930’s, and shares info on how the Chinese tried to eradicate these ‘pests’ suffering the consequences for tampering with the balance of nature. Her remarks on the grey squirrel, demonised after a killing campaign against the red squirrel, are very pertinent, highlighting how easily people unthinkingly absorb the propaganda against whatever species has fallen out of our favour.
Khan Al Assal was over run by insurgents just before the UN was due to investigate a chemical weapons incident there. Soldiers who surrendered were massacred by Jabhat al Nusra, but showed bravery in death.
