Category: World

Nigerian coach blames white US referee for Africa’s loss

Nigeria’s coach Stephen Keshi blamed American referee Mark Geiger after his side lost 2-0 to France in the World Cup last 16 in Brasilia.

Germany and France snuffed out African hopes after both European powerhouses left Africa with no teams to support.

France beat African champions Nigeria 2-0 and Germany secured their 2-1 victory over Algeria in extra time.

Joseph Yobo from Nigeria scored an own goal to add to France’s 1-0 victory.

It was the first time two African teams had reached the second round.

Both black teams went out within hours of each other to leave the continent still struggling to make an impact despite many teams including black players.

SABC commentators in South Africa openly favoured only-black teams in the competition, often making it a case of racial pride.

Many Nigerian supporters however, wore white-face to cheer their team.

Keshi opined at his post-match press conference at the Mane Garrincha National Stadium. “I’m not happy with the officiating,” because Emmanuel Emenike had a first-half goal ruled out for offside.

Replays show however that the call was correct.

Keshi also complained that France had been allowed to get away with certain offences.

Facebook massively manipulates feed for psy-ops

Facebook secretly manipulated the feelings of 700 000 users to understand “emotional contagion” in a study that prompted anger and forced the social network giant on the defensive.

For one week in 2012, Facebook tampered with the algorithm used to place posts into users’ news feeds to study how this affected their mood, all without their explicit consent or knowledge.

The researchers wanted to see if the number of positive or negative words in messages the users read determined whether they then posted positive or negative content in their status updates.

The study, conducted by researchers affiliated with Facebook, Cornell University and the University of California at San Francisco, appeared in the June 17 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Results of the study spread – and with that anger and disbelief – when the online magazine Slate and The Atlantic website wrote about it on Saturday.

“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness,” the study authors wrote.

“These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”

While other research has used metadata to study trends, this experiment appears to be unique because it manipulated the data to see if there was a reaction.

The social network, which counts more than one billion active users, said in a statement that “none of the data used was associated with a specific person’s Facebook account”.

“We do research to improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible,” it added.

“A big part of this is understanding how people respond to different types of content, whether it’s positive or negative in tone, news from friends or information from pages they follow. We carefully consider what research we do and have a strong internal review process.”

Source: Daily Mail

Nazi-themed cafe reopens

A Nazi-themed cafe in Indonesia reopened on Saturday with its walls still bearing swastikas and a painting of Adolf Hitler.

Ninety percent of Indonesia’s 250 million people identify as Muslim, making the country home to the world’s biggest Islamic population.

The owner voluntarily shut down his SoldatenKaffee last year after media reports exposed his swastika-clad establishment, prompting death threats and accusation of inciting racial hatred.

Following the closure, his lawyer told AFP that the cafe would reopen with a broader World War II theme.

“All aspects of the SoldatenKaffee are legal. We have a lot of customers from Europe and they don’t have a problem with the World War II theme, because it is seen here from a historical perspective,” the owner said.

Judge who sentenced Saddam murdered by ISIS

After the second invasion of Iraq in 2006 found no WMD’s – the pretext for the invasion in the first place – the Americans settled for the kangaroo court trial of Saddam Hussein.

Quick to announce “mission accomplished” then, recent events however have made a mockery of that claim.

As part of its blitz-campaign to take over northern Iraq, ISIS found and then promptly executed Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, the judge who sentenced Saddam to death – a death which was crowning moment of the second US invasion of Iraq, and the confirmation of successful US foreign policy.

It goes without saying that if local reports are true, the man who indirectly did the US bidding in slamming the book shut on the Saddam regime and Iraqi “liberation”, has met with poetic justice.

As LiveLeak first reported, Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman was the replacement chief judge of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal’s Al-Dujail trial of Saddam Hussein in 2006. His background, from Wikipedia:

Abd al-Rahman was an ethnic Kurd from Halabja. He replaced Rizgar Mohammed Amin as chief judge on 23 January 2006. Amin had resigned after being criticised in the Iraqi media for appearing “too soft” on the defendants by allowing them to speak aloud in court without being recognized. After Amin’s resignation, Abd al-Rahman headed the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal during the rest of the trial of Saddam Hussein and when it sentenced him to death. He also sentenced to death some of his top aides. In December 2006, Abd al-Rahman took his family to Britain on a travel visa, and three months later applied for asylum. He later cancelled his application. In 16 June 2014, Abd al-Rahman was arrested by ISIS rebels during 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. Two days later, it was reported that ISIS captured and executed him.

Al-Jazeera journalists sentenced to 7 years in Egypt

Three Al Jazeera journalists have been sentenced to seven years in jail after an Egyptian judge found them guilty on charges of aiding a “terrorist organisation” by publishing lies.

The three include Australian Peter Greste, Al Jazeera’s Kenya-based correspondent, and Canadian-Egyptian national Mohamed Fahmy, bureau chief of Al Jazeera English.

The verdict — delivered to a packed courtroom in Cairo — has left Greste’s Brisbane-based family devastated.

A third defendant, Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed, received an additional three-year jail sentence on a separate charge involving gun possession.

Another 11 defendants were sentenced in absentia to 10 years.

MSF: Ebola totally out of control

The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is “totally out of control,” according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in responding.

The outbreak has caused more deaths than any other of the disease, said another official with the medical charity. Ebola has been linked to more than 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the World Health Organization.

International organizations and the governments involved need to send in more health experts and increase public education messages about how to stop the spread of the disease, Bart Janssens, the director of operations for the medical group in Brussels, told The Associated Press on Friday.

“The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave,” Janssens said. “And, for me, it is totally out of control.”

The Ebola virus, which causes internal bleeding and organ failure, spreads through direct contact with infected people. There is no cure or vaccine, so containing an outbreak focuses on supportive care for the ill and isolating them to limit the spread of the virus.

The current outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year, had appeared to slow before picking up pace again in recent weeks, including spreading to the Liberian capital for the first time.

“This is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths, so this is unprecedented so far,” said Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders.

According to the WHO, the highest previous death toll was in the first recorded Ebola outbreak in Congo in 1976, when 280 deaths were reported. Because Ebola often touches remote areas and the first cases sometimes go unrecognized, it is likely that there are deaths that go uncounted during outbreaks.

The multiple locations of the current outbreak and its movement across borders make it one of the “most challenging Ebola outbreaks ever,” Fadela Chaib, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said earlier in the week.

But Janssens’ description of the Ebola outbreak was even more alarming, and he warned that the countries involved had not recognized the gravity of the situation. He criticized WHO for not doing enough to prod local leaders; the U.N. health agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency,” he said. “Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries.”

But Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s deputy minister of health, said the highest levels of government are working to contain the outbreak, noting that Liberia had a long period with no new cases before this second wave.

Source: Breitbart.com

Slave children allegedly make chocolate

Lawsuit alleging that Nestlé, ADM and Cargill benefit from child slavery in their cocoa supply chain in back in court, throwing new light on decades-old concern that the chocolate industry is built on the backs of slave children

Swiss multinational Nestlé, the largest food company on the planet—and anybody who consumes their products—has a chocolate problem.

More specifically, they have a child slavery problem.

Since the late 1990s, allegations have continually surfaced that the company benefits from slave children in its supply chain, and that slave children are used in its cocoa production in West Africa.

The allegations—including reports from UNICEF and the US State Department—brought enough attention and heat, including coverage from the BBC, that Nestlé’s CEO Bradley Alford signed an international agreement to end cocoa child labor in 2001, but by 2005 had not met the agreement’s deadline for eliminating the worst child labor offenses from the company’s supply chain.

In the same year, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a class-action lawsuit on the behalf of three children from Mali who claimed that between 1994 and 2000 they had been lured into Côte d’Ivoire by child traffickers promising them easy work for good pay, subsequently enslaved on a cocoa plantation and regularly beaten. The lawsuit was later amended to name three companies as complicit in the chocolate-production slave trade: Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and Nestlé itself.

Source: Ultraculture

ISIS Inc, Jihadists attract investors

The notorious ISIS, which has been slicing through Iraq moving closer to Baghdad, behaves like a big corporation, issuing press releases to create an image of a well-structured, disciplined and effective organization to attract investors and new members.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), which has made lightning advances against government forces seizing key cities, is determined to sweep towards Baghdad.

In just a few days ISIS fighters have almost reached the Iraqi capital, killing scores of people along the way. During the US-led invasion of the country it took the allied forces 22 days to reach Baghdad.

ISIS emerged back in 2004 following the chaos of invasion from radical Sunni jihadists, whose main objective is to establish an Islamic caliphate based on Sharia law.

Manipulating religions tensions in the country between Shias and Sunnis, they were able to unite followers of Saddam Hussein Ba’ath party, a Sunni dominant force. By 2011, ISIS militants regrouped after Nouri al-Maliki’s government released high-profile members of the militant movement.

Today ISIS claims to have over 15,000 fighters most of who are thought to be from neighboring middle eastern countries, but around 2,000 are believed to have come from Europe, including Britain.

In the militant’s own assessment, found in an annual report called al-Naba, or “the news”, ISIS boasts of its destructive force. A regurgitated version of the report, covering the period of November 2012 to November 2013, is offered by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Originally in Arabic the 400 page long document was initially published by the I’tisaam Media Foundation. It is also the second known ISIS release advertising their bloody rampage in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War summary also claims that “From the period of April 2013 through to the present, ISIS has been operating in Syria as well, though the distinctions between their military operations in Iraq and Syria is the subject of ongoing study at ISW.”

In its conclusion, the institute believed the organization is making several nation-wide changes to its tactics. “This is a strong indication of a unified, coherent leadership structure that commands from the top down.”

The report has been described as “almost like a company with details of martyrdom operations and targets,” by Nigel Inkster, former assistant chief of UK intelligence service MI6, in an interview to the Financial Times. “You have a clear overlay of structure, planning and strategy to the organisation.”

“ISIS is an extension of Al-Qaeda. With American funds, now ISIS is killing Iraqis and planning to go for Baghdad and Iraqi Shiite shrines to settle an old score,” Elijah Abraham, an Iraqi Christian evangelist told Baptist Press. “Since 2009 with President Obama’s policies in the Middle East, there has also been a systematic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.”

Washington which spent $25 billion to train Iraq’s security forces over the years, according to a report by the special inspector general on Iraq, now finds itself at ground zero – Islamists are taking over Iraq.

Source: RT

Ebola death toll hits 337

The death toll in west Africa’s three-nation Ebola outbreak has risen to 337, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, making it the deadliest ever outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever.

The new toll marks a more than 60-percent hike since the WHO’s last figure on June 4, when it said 208 people had succumbed to the deadly virus.

Including the deaths, 528 people across the three countries have contracted Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, the WHO said.

A majority of cases, 398 of them, have surfaced in Guinea, where west Africa’s first ever Ebola outbreak began in January.

Sierra Leone has registered 97 cases in total, while Liberia has seen 33.

That outbreak, until now the deadliest, killed 280 people, according to WHO figures.

Source: Yahoo

Islamic radicals in Iraq trained by US

Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.

The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaida.

In February 2012, WND was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi in the country’s northern desert region.

That report has since been corroborated by numerous other media accounts.

Source: WND.com

Black identity and racism in Brazil

Integration and miscegenation were actually government policy in Brazil.

Before teams representing their countries from around the world arrived in Brazil, the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, took the opportunity to label 2014 the “anti-racism World Cup.”

The declaration came after a wave of racist incidents in soccer around the world targeting black players, many of whom are Brazilian. While it’s a well-intentioned gesture and a particularly important one for a World Cup being hosted in the country that’s home to the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa, Brazil has a complex past and present when it comes to race.

That complexity can perhaps best be illustrated by the fact that many black Brazilians don’t think of themselves as black. Brazilian soccer star Neymar is a great example. Asked during an interview in 2010 if he had ever experienced racism, his response was, “Never.” He added, “Not inside nor outside of the soccer field. Even more because I’m not black, right?”

This denial of blackness may seem confusing to many Americans, because despite his long, straightened and occasionally blond hair, Neymar is clearly black. But for Brazilians, being black is very different from what it is in the United States.

“The darker a person is in Brazil, the more racism she or he is going to suffer. Light-skinned black people don’t identify as black most of the time,” says Daniela Gomes, a black Brazilian activist who is currently pursuing a doctorate in African Diaspora studies at the University of Texas. “A lot of people choose to deny their blackness. They don’t believe they are black, but they suffer racism without knowing why.”

Gomes calls it a “brainwash” that Brazilians go through in a country that likes to hold itself up as a model for racial harmony. But she also points to differences in the histories of the United States and Brazil. “We never had segregation, we never had the one-drop rule, we never had those kinds of things that are so normal for an African American,” she said. “What happened in Brazil was the opposite.”

Integration and miscegenation were actually government policy in Brazil. Around the time that slaves were freed, in 1888, the government sought to whiten its population through the importation of European immigrants. This idea was made law by Decree 528 in 1890 and opened the country’s borders to foreign immigrants, except for those from Africa and Asia.

The goal of this immigration effort was depicted in an 1895 painting by Brazilian artist Modesto Brocos known as The Redemption of Ham, which features a black grandmother, mixed-race mother, white father and white baby. The grandmother stands to the left with her hands raised in prayer, praising God that her grandson is white. This, says Brazilian entrepreneur and activist Carlos Alberto David, is the “final point” of racism in Brazil.

“Racism in Brazil is very sophisticated and structured,” says David. “The racism here is not physical. It works on people psychologically.”

Neymar, whose son looks very similar to the grandson in The Redemption of Ham, seems to have had quite a different experience in the four years since saying that he wasn’t black. The star forward has been subjected to monkey noises made by his own teammates, had multiple bananas thrown at him during international matches and even confronted an opposing coach he thought called him a monkey during a game.

Source: The Root

Tutu calls Presbyterians to back divestment from Israel

Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged Presbyterians, meeting in Detroit, to name Israel as an apartheid state and divest monies from certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people.
As Presbyterians meeting in Detroit consider divestment from three companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Palestine – Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the leader who more than any other human being alive is associated with the successful use of divestment to help overturn apartheid in South Africa, is calling on Presbyterians to choose divestment from the Israeli occupation.
Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his leadership, as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, of the nonviolent resistance campaign to challenge apartheid.

As the Presbyterian General Assembly gathers for its biennial meeting, I reach out in prayer and solidarity that the assembly will make a strong witness for reconciliation, justice and peace. I am aware that the assembly will consider eight overtures on the confounding and intractable conflict in Israel and Palestine, however, I am especially urging the assembly to adopt the overture naming Israel as an apartheid state through its domestic policies and maintenance of the occupation and the overture calling for divestment of certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people. Both are worthy of adoption, by speaking truth in the first instance, and owning up to the church’s complicity in maintaining the occupation through its investments in the second.
The sustainability of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people has always been dependent on its ability to deliver justice to the Palestinians. I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed. Realistic Israeli leaders have acknowledged that Israel will either end its occupation through a one- or two-state solution, or live in an apartheid state in perpetuity. The latter option is unsustainable and an offense to justice. We learned in South Africa that the only way to end apartheid peacefully was to force the powerful to the table through economic pressure.
The overtures proposed at the General Assembly are not about delegitimizing the State of Israel, but about ending its suppression of 4,000,000 Palestinian sisters and brothers. It’s about naming an unjust system and refusing to participate in it. The stubbornness of Israel’s leaders in wanting to hold onto and settling land that is not theirs can only lead to tragedy for both peoples. For the sake of them both as God’s cherished, the strong witness of the two overtures is the only peaceful route left in the cause of justice and ultimate reconciliation. My prayers today are with the members of the General Assembly and with all the peoples of the Holy Land in Israel and Palestine.

South Africa’s last president under white rule has also suggested that Israel risks heading toward apartheid if it does not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The comments by FW de Klerk echo warnings from Palestinian, American and dovish Israeli officials.

De Klerk was the last president under apartheid and along with the late Nelson Mandela, the two jointly winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Comparisons to South Africa have increased in public discourse about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. In April, US Secretary of State John Kerry – who had been mediating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – created uproar when he made a similar warning.

Bill Gates Foundation’s GM superbanana to save the world

Malnutrition is a problem across large swaths of the globe, but it’s a difficult problem to solve. It’s not only a matter of people getting enough to eat; they need to have the right combination of food as well. People in developing countries often subside on a very limited diet, which can lead to life-threatening vitamin deficiencies. Surprisingly, a genetically modified (GM) super-banana backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might be a key weapon in the fight against malnutrition. Yeah, it’s not as sexy as the Gates-backed condoms.

So what makes it “super?” This banana is absolutely chock full of beta-carotene, which the body uses to produce vitamin A. That may not sound like a food with the potential to make an impact on malnutrition, but vitamin A deficiency is a huge problem in the developing world. World health experts estimate 650,000-700,000 children die annually from a lack of vitamin A in their diets. A further 300,000 avoid death only to lose their eyesight. By tweaking a few genes, scientists have created a banana that could prevent such things.

Beta-carotene itself is a large hydrocarbon molecule that has a deep orange color. If you’ve ever wondered why carrots, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes are orange, it’s because of all the beta-carotene they contain. Some species of bananas also produce higher levels of beta-carotene, but they aren’t the ones cultivated for human consumption. It’s these other bananas that Queensland University of Technology scientists used as the source of genetic material to create the super-banana.

Source: Extreme Tech

Greenpeace employee loses millions in failed currency gamble

The know-it-alls, don’t know much about handling their own money.

Greenpeace has fired an employee who lost the environmental charity $5.47 million in a failed gamble on international currency markets, reports ABC Australia.

Greenpeace communications director Mike Townsley said the unnamed employee “went above his authority” in agreeing the deal with a broker who was meant to mitigate currency losses for the charity.