Passwords, pin numbers, and credit cards could soon be a thing of the past.
Soon, your heart and your body might be used to keep track of just about everything if new technology is able to unlock “pulse passwords”.
Your heartbeat reveals more about you than your health, Bionym chief executive officer Karl Martin explained.
“There’s actually unique characteristics that relate to the size of the heart, the position of the heart, and the physiology surrounding the heart,” he said.
Our heartbeats are as unique to us as our fingerprints and now they are being used to replace passwords, key cards, and bank cards, CBS 2′s Kristine Johnson reported.
“It’s like your personal pin number is your heartbeat,” Mashable.com’s Lance Ulanoff said.
The technology could allow you to open a door without a key or have tech gadgets like smartphones and tablets unlock the second that you walk into a room. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but experts say it is the wave of the future.
“It’s going to be a way for us to interact with the world around us without having to constantly identify ourselves,” Ulanoff explained.
Bionym, a Canadian company, developed a wristband to recognize the pattern of an individual pulse. The wristband transmits information that allows the user to do things like withdrawing money without a bank card.
“You don’t have to remember anything. You don’t have to do anything special,” Ulanoff said.
Bionym isn’t the only company developing concepts that use the human body as a form of identification. Motorola is working on a temporary tattoo that contains a computer chip and an antenna.
A pill that dissolves and turns the entire body into a transmitter is also in the works.
Security experts say traditional passwords don’t offer much protection from identity thieves.
“If they’re alpha numeric, and usually they are because they have to be easy to remember, they’re also correspondingly easier to break into,” security expert Rohit Sethi explained.
The new technology could pose considerable roadblocks for hackers because heartbeats cannot be replicated.
“You’re not going to have a piece of paper in your pocket with your password. You’re going to have it as part of your body so that is safer,” Ulanoff said.
Bionym’s wristband is so in tune with its owner that if somebody did steal it, it would not work. The wristband costs about $100 and is expected to hit stores in 2014.
A white Obama and black McCain, not the right recipe
Neo-Conservative warmongers must be feeling rather frustrated by the most recent turn of events regarding Syria.
Will the Neo-cons, AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), the powerful Israeli lobby, the McCain/Graham/Rice hawks lay the whole thing to rest, or will they just wait for a better opportunity to ignite in the already volatile Middle East?
Actually, they might fabricate just such an opportunity, seeing that their current fabrication is being exposed.
They may very well have no other choice. Failing to act “decisively” the US and UK will have lost some sizable measure of global credibility, tantamount to defeat in their estimation, whilst Russia and China are the moderate powers in the eyes of the world.
To have to admit to that would be too costly for Washington.
The hysteria about Iraq’s WMD back in 2003, is proving harder to stir a decade later in Syria.
Unless of course something really big, dramatic, fear-inducing and unprecedented takes place. Perhaps in South Carolina
Yes, South Carolina: Senator Lindsey Graham’s home state. Together with John McCain, Graham has been a key war-monger against Syria in Congress. He sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Interestingly, on Tuesday, 3 September the local CBS Network outlet in his home State reported some odd remarks the senator made on Syria, stressing that “if there is no US response, Iran will not believe America’s resolve to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons…. those nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could result in a bomb coming to Charleston Harbor.”
That same 3 September, some alarming news was reported by an independent journalist on Storyleak.com, referring to an alleged “high level source inside the military confirming that Dyess Air Force base in Texas was actively moving nuclear warheads to the East Coast of the United States”.
It was apparently South Carolina. Normally, such extreme reports would be dismissed outright, were it not for uneasy precedents like the “Bent Spear” incident of the 29th August 2007 which occurred at Minot and Barksdale Air Force bases in the US, after six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles loaded with W80-1 variable yield nuclear warheads went missing for 36 hours, “by mistake” of course.
Many observers believe that it was in fact a foiled attempt by the Neo-cons to get hold of some nukes for “special use” that was fortunately thwarted when whistleblowers leaked the secret to the press…
A terror attack on the US mainland could provide the “ample proof” that it was perpetrated by those “evil” Iranians in connivance with the Syrians, backed by the Russians (and China), and so the “War on Terror” would then escalate to “DefCom 1 Mode”.
They could then blow Syria to smithereens, erase Iran off the map, deal with the Awakened Bear, and order FEMA to deal with any wayward patriot.
Naturally this would all be carefully staged by the “PsyOps Dept.” generating news flashes, teary-eyed reporting, and “news analysis” on CNN, FoxNews, ABC-CBS-NBC, BBC, NYT, Telegraph, TV5 France.
The concept of False Flag attacks is being increasingly debated and understood throughout the world. When addressed with historical perspective regarding key events over the past century, they shed totally new light on how “behind the curtains” misdeeds may have actually triggered major world events.
See prof Daniele Ganser’s questions that still haunt 9/11.
This increased awareness is fast eroding the effectiveness of False Flags. Today’s warmongers have a small advantage in that a Democrat sits in the White House who obviously does not fit the Neo-con profile: clearly he’s not a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant). In fact, he’s a “liberal”, he’s black, he doesn’t come from an establishment family, he’s a Nobel Peace Prize laureate… and he’s rooting for war on Syria and Iran.
Two scientists at Hampton Creek, working on the artificial egg
A radical ‘artificial egg’ backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today.
Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise – without a chicken ever coming close to the production process.
The team today started selling their ‘plant egg’, called Beyond Eggs, in Whole Foods in California – and say it could soon be available in supermarkets worldwide.
‘We want to take animals out of the equation,’ said Josh Tetrick, the firm’s founder. ‘The food industry is begging for innovation, especially where animals are involved – it is a broken industry.’
‘Even better than the real thing’
MailOnline was able to try two of Hampton Creek’s products – its mayonnaise, and cookies made using its baking product.
The results were surprising, if a little anticlimactic. Both tasted exactly as you would expect – and are indistinguishable from products made with real egg.
The chocolate chip cookies we tried were excellent – crumbly, moist and with a feel in the mouth identical to a normal cookie. Crucially, they also look identical to a normal cookie – despite containing no egg.
Hampton Creek’s ‘Beyond Egg’ mayonnaise was also extremely similar to ‘normal’ mayo – and after trying it out on a few friends, some even preferred to to normal mayonnaise.
Tetrick’s idea was to find a mix of easy-to-grow plants that, when mixed together in the right way, replicate the taste, nutritional values and cooking properties of an egg.
This, he believes will allow the firm to produce its substitute for mass market foods – and to allow developing worlds to grow their own versions with added nutrients.
‘Eggs are functionally incredible, they do everything from hold oil and water in mayo to making the muffin rise and holding scrambled eggs together,’ he said ‘I started to think what if we can find plants that can do this. We have about 12 plants pre-selected, including a pea already widely grown in Canada. There’s also a bean in South Asia that is incredible in scrambled eggs.’
The firm is already in talks with major food manufacturers around the world – including several in the UK, to replace eggs in supermarket products with their alternative.
So far, he says the team has perfected an egg substitute for mayonnaise, and one for cakes.
‘We can make really good mayonnaise, we’ve done taste tests against market leaders, and beaten them consistently. In the world of cookies, we’ve trialled our products with everyone from Bill Gates to Tony Blair, both of whom couldn’t taste the difference.
‘Bill Gates became an advisor to the company, and has been one of its most vocal supporters in the Silicon Valley world where Hampton Creek is based. – dailymail.co.uk
Al-Qaida-linked rebels have launched an assault on a regime-held Christian village in the densely populated west of Syria and new clashes erupted near the capital, Damascus – part of a brutal battle of attrition each side believes it can win despite more than two years of deadlock.
As the world focused on possible U.S. military action against Syria, rebels commandeered a mountaintop hotel in the village of Maaloula and shelled the community below Wednesday, said a nun, speaking by phone from a convent in the village. She spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The attack came hours before a Senate panel voted to give President Barack Obama authority to use military force against Syria – the first time lawmakers have voted to allow military action since the October 2002 votes authorizing the invasion of Iraq.
The measure, which cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a 10-7 vote, was altered at the last minute to support “decisive changes to the present military balance of power” in Syria’s civil war, though it ruled out U.S. combat operations on the ground. It was expected to reach the full Senate floor next week.
The Syria conflict, which began with a popular uprising in March 2011, has been stalemated, and it’s not clear if U.S. military strikes over the regime’s alleged chemical weapons use would change that. Obama has said he seeks limited pinpoint action to deter future chemical attacks, not regime change.
Obama has been lobbying for international and domestic support for punishing President Bashar Assad’s regime, which the U.S. says fired rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin on rebel-held areas near Damascus before dawn on Aug. 21, killing hundreds of civilians.
So far, however, he has won little international backing for action. Among major allies, only France has offered publicly to join the U.S. in a strike.
In a parliament debate, France’s Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault made a passionate appeal for intervention in Syria, placing the blame for the alleged chemical attack on Assad and warning that inaction could let him carry out more atrocities.
The debate ended without a vote since President Francois Hollande can order a military operation without one.
Obama has called chemical weapons use a “red line,” and top administration officials argued before the Senate on Tuesday that Assad would take inaction by Washington as a license for further brutality against his people. The fighting has killed more than 100,000 Syrians and uprooted nearly 7 million from their homes.
During a visit to Sweden on Wednesday, Obama said a red line had been drawn by countries around the world that have backed a long-standing ban on chemical weapons. “I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” he said.
With the Syria debate in Congress in full swing, questions arose around the administration’s assurances. It’s not clear, critics said, how the U.S. could expect to deliver surgical strikes in Syria’s chaotic battlefield or predict the repercussions, including possible Assad regime reprisals against Syria’s neighbors.
The civil war in Syria hit a stalemate almost from the start. The rebels control much of the countryside in the north, east and south, but the regime is hanging on to most urban centers in the west, where the majority of Syrians live.
Within that deadlock, each side has consolidated control over certain areas, said Peter Harling, a Syria expert at the International Crisis Group think tank.
Momentum “is always shifting enough for both sides to be able to convince themselves that victory is ultimately feasible,” he said. “In practice, both sides are stuck and can achieve very little militarily.”
The dawn assault on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula was carried out by rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, according to a Syrian government official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group.
At the start of the attack, an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the village, said the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists.
The suicide attack was followed by fighting between the rebels and regime forces, the Observatory and a nun in the village said. Eventually, the rebels seized the checkpoint, disabled two tanks and an armored personnel carrier and killed eight regime soldiers in fighting, the British-based group said.
The nun said the rebels took over the Safir hotel atop a mountain overlooking the village and fired shells at it from there. “It’s a war. It has been going from 6 a.m. in the morning,” she said.
Some 80 people from the village took refuge in the convent, which houses 13 nuns and 27 orphans, she said.
A Syrian government official confirmed the assault and said the military was trying to repel the rebels. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements.
Maaloula, a mountain village some 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Damascus, is home to about 2,000 residents, some of whom still speak a version of Aramaic, the ancient language of biblical times believed to have been spoken by Jesus.
The four-decade iron rule of the Assad clan over Syria has long rested on support from the country’s ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The Assad family and key regime figures are Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, while most rebels and their supporters are Sunni Muslims.
In fighting in Damascus, a mortar shell fired by rebels hit a sports hall, killing a member of the national tae kwon do team, 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Neimeh, the state news agency SANA said. Neimeh had been training for an upcoming Islamic Solidarity Tournament in Indonesia this week.
Rebels and regime forces also clashed on the outskirts of the capital, according to amateur video. In the Daraya district, several fighters fired assault rifles from behind an earthen embankment. Smoke rose from the neighborhood of Barzek after the shelling.
There were new signs of rivalry among rebel groups that have been fragmented from the start. The two main camps are the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, which portrays itself as the largest fighting group, and jihadist fighters, including thousands from outside Syria, who have become increasingly dominant, particularly in the north and sparsely populated east.
Among the jihadists, there have been several splits in recent months, particularly between those loyal to commanders in Syria and those who pledge allegiance to al-Qaida-linked groups in Iraq.
In an amateur video posted online Wednesday, a foreign fighter was seen standing among other bearded men who he says have come to Syria from Russia and the Caucasus to wage jihad, or holy war.
“Our brigade is called the Mujahedin of the Caucasus and the Levant, and we have our brothers from all over the world with us,” he said in halting Russian translated into Arabic. He said his men had broken away from one of the jihadi blocs, known as ISIS, and that the group is also “independent from Jabhat al-Nusra and others.” – AP
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Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.
When Zimbabwe’s veteran President Robert Mugabe suavely hosted journalists at State House on the eve of last month’s election, there was only one question that caught him off guard.
Asked if the presence of Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa by his side meant he was his chosen successor, Mugabe paused awkwardly amid laughter and then replied unconvincingly that Mnangagwa had just dropped by to see him.
Three weeks after Mugabe’s re-election in a disputed vote called a fraud by his main rival but accepted by his African neighbours, there are no doubts Africa’s oldest leader is holding firmly on to the presidency after 33 years in power.
But the question of whether, at 89, he can serve out all of his new five-year term – and who will succeed him if he steps down or dies – would have hung uncomfortably over his re-installation as Zimbabwe’s head of state last Thursday.
It will also be crucial for the future of the nation, which is rich in minerals but still emerging from a decade-long recession brought on by political violence and government-backed land seizures.
Mugabe faces few immediate threats. Rival Morgan Tsvangirai has been stunned by the enormity of his defeat in an election he says was rigged from start to finish; last week he dropped a challenge to Mugabe’s re-election that his Movement for Democratic Change had filed in the Constitutional Court. The court confirmed Mugabe’s win was “free, fair and credible” and had reflected the “will of the people”.
Faced with broad endorsement of the result by regional and continental bodies, Western governments must now decide whether to shun the man they have reviled as a ruthless dictator for years, or attempt a rapprochement in the interests of practical diplomacy.
Mugabe’s non-committal answer on the succession is typical of a wily and inscrutable guerrilla politician who fought a liberation war leading to independence in 1980, crushed a revolt once in power and has outfoxed rivals in and outside his fractious Zanu-PF.
“Mugabe and Tsvangirai have fought their last elections… one way or another. Whether it was stolen or not, this was a historic election that prefigures change,” Stephen Chan, professor of international relations at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said.
Adding to Zimbabwe’s uncertain outlook is the perception that another Mugabe term will intensify a succession battle within the ruling party. Zanu-PF has a history of feuds and splits dating back to its bush war against white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia.
Defence Minister Mnangagwa, 66, a guerrilla war veteran and Mugabe’s main security enforcer, is widely seen as a succession contender, along with vice-president Joice Mujuru and State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi.
Mnangagwa, earned a hardline reputation as security minister in the 1980s for his role in suppressing rebels in Matabeleland.
Mnangagwa, Mujuru and Sekeramayi have been members of Mugabe’s cabinet since 1980, and played a major role in Zanu-PF’s re-election machine.
During campaigning, Mujuru addressed rallies, Mnangagwa acted as Mugabe’s presidential election agent and Sekeramayi was the ruling party’s point man for the legislative elections in which Zanu-PF was declared the winner.
On the face of it, Mujuru, 58, another liberation war veteran whose nom de guerre was Teurai Ropa (“Spill the Blood”) appears to hold an advantage in the succession stakes because as first party vice-president she acts for Mugabe when he is away.
But under a new constitution adopted earlier this year, Zanu-PF would choose a new president if Mugabe stepped down or were to die before the end of his term. Many fear this could lead to a scramble for power among ambitious aspirants.
This week Mujuru attacked party rivals and presented herself as the moderate leader Zanu-PF needs after Mugabe, local media reported.
“We know that the president will soon be 90 and God might decide to call him … I am best placed to succeed Mugabe if he departs whether by natural wastage or voluntary retirement,” she said.
Far from mellowing his rhetoric, Mugabe has told his post-election critics to “go hang” and promised to increase the pace of “indigenisation” policies forcing foreign-owned firms to sell majority stakes to black Zimbabweans. – Reuters
The march on Washington that took place on 28 August 1963. About 80% of participants were black and an estimated 250 000 people took part.
by Shaun Tandon
As 250,000 people packed central Washington to push for civil rights 50 years ago, the actor Burt Lancaster opened a scroll and read a petition brought in from Paris.
The statement, signed by 1,500 Americans in the French capital, saluted the March on Washington for providing “an example of what America aspires to become.”
“All Americans, traveling no matter where in the world today, are in the position of ambassadors and are very often made bitterly aware of our country’s reputation,” said the petition, read by Lancaster in his crisp delivery.
“It is not easy to be an American abroad,” said the petition, calling the movement for civil rights part of a “struggle toward freedom” being waged worldwide.
American students learn of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a defining moment in the nation’s history, with Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech and Congress less than a year later banning laws that enforced racial segregation.
But the march also carried an international dimension, coming at a delicate moment in the Cold War in which the United States increasingly realized that its oppression of African Americans cost it dearly on the global stage.
The march was one of the first events to be broadcast live internationally, with the BBC and other networks in Europe fed from the then-revolutionary Telstar satellite. The now defunct Washington Evening Star reported that police issued media credentials to television crews from Canada, France, Germany and Japan.
The Americans in Paris, in an initiative organized partly by self-exiled novelist James Baldwin, walked to the US embassy ahead of the march to show solidarity. Similar gatherings took place in other cities, although — in one echo of how little has changed 50 years later — authorities prevented a demonstration in Cairo.
Mary L. Dudziak, a professor at the Emory University School of Law and author of the book “Cold War Civil Rights,” said that John F. Kennedy’s administration initially opposed the march but, unable to stop it, gave out talking points to US diplomats.
The message, she said, was to cast the march not as a protest against racial injustice but as a triumph of free expression that could not happen under Communism. Much of the global media embraced a similar narrative, other than in the Soviet bloc where newspapers were predictably critical.
“The US government felt like they had effectively used the story of the march to reinforce their Cold War message about the wonders of democracy,” Dudziak said.
The United States, which since its independence has prided itself on its values, has faced international pressure at various points of its history over its own human rights record.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass campaigned in England before the US Civil War. In more recent times, the United States has faced European criticism over capital punishment and its prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
But Dudziak said that 1963 was a particularly sensitive moment, with much of Africa freshly independent and Cold War alliances not yet solidified.
“In this very dynamic and fluid environment, the US cared a lot about the American image. American diplomats and presidents thought that that was going to have an impact on their ability to develop alliances and keep countries on the democratic side of the column,” she said.
In a cause of deep embarrassment, African diplomats were routinely snubbed when traveling near Washington. A highway cafe in Maryland in 1961 refused to serve the ambassador of newly independent Chad as he was heading to Washington from New York to present his credentials to Kennedy.
Besides Africa, the United States paid close attention to coverage of the civil rights movement in India, a democracy which refused to take sides in the Cold War.
In an editorial at the time, The Indian Express said that African Americans “have every right to feel frustrated” with their conditions but lauded the “new mood” represented by the peace march.
In a news article, the newspaper said that the US ambassador, Chester Bowles, had sent a telegram to King voicing support for the march and noting that the civil rights leader was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, India’s independence leader and apostle of non-violence. – AFP
The Arkansas National Guard forcing the school to accept nine black students in Little Rock, Arkansas
As the USA commemorates with fanfare the so-called “March on Washington in August 1963” by black Americans, here follows some of the milestones on the road to equal rights between blacks and whites in the United States:
December 1955 -MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: Rosa Parks, an African American from Montgomery, Alabama, became an icon of the civil rights movement. Age 42 at the time, she refused to vacate her bus seat for white passengers. She was arrested and sentenced to a fine for violating segregation laws. Black people led by the clergyman Martin Luther King Jr organised a boycott of the city’s buses in protest. Thirteen months later, the Supreme Court in Washington ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.
September 1957 – LITTLE ROCK NINE: Nine black students became the first African Americans to be admitted into a previously all-white public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The governor deployed the National Guard to prevent them from attending the school. US president Dwight D Eisenhower federalised the National Guard and established his own command above the governors, and deployed soldiers to enforce integration. A 1954 ruling by the Supreme Court in Washington had officially ended racial segregation in public schools, but it took years until that was fully implemented within individual states. February 1960 – RESTAURANT SIT-IN: Four African American students sat at a restaurant counter reserved for whites only in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their sit-in was the start of many nonviolent actions across the South to demand the end of segregation in public places. This group evolved into the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
August 1963 – MARCH ON WASHINGTON: Around 250,000 people rallied in Washington to protest discrimination in jobs and living, at the time the largest demonstration in the history of the United States. The highlight of the event was Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he demanded that blacks and whites live as equals. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his non-violent fight to end segregation. Four years later at age 39, he was felled by an assassin’s bullet.
March 1965 – SELMA-MONTGOMERY MARCHES: Civil rights groups launched in Selma, Alabama, a programme to register blacks to vote. On March 7, 600 people started to march from Selma to the Alabama state capital Montgomery, 86 kilometres away. Police attacked participants. The so-called “Bloody Sunday” left scores of people injured, and single participants were later killed. The second march also failed to reach its desired destination. After a third march that was protected by the National Guard, King addressed 25,000 people in Montgomery in March 24. In August 1965, US president Lyndon B Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act, which banned poll taxes and literacy tests that kept blacks from registering to vote. Millions signed up after the act passed. – dpa
In a testament to the depravity of black thug culture, an Australian collegiate baseball player attending school in America was killed by three teenagers looking for fun, police reported. Christopher Lane, who was out for a jog in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma where his girlfriend and her family live, was targeted at random after he passed a home where the boys were staying. ”They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: ‘There’s our target,’” said Police Chief Danny Ford. ”The boy who has talked to us said, ‘We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.’”
James Edwards, 15, Chancey Luna, 16, and Michael Jones, 17, have all been charged as adults in Lane’s death. Edwards and Luna, both black Americans, have been charged with first degree murder, and will be tried as adults per Oklahoma law. Jones, who is white, was charged with using a vehicle in the discharge of a weapon and with accessory to first-degree murder after the fact. He will also be tried in adult court, but is still considered a youthful offender. If convicted, Edwards and Luna face life in prison without parole. Jones, who wept in court as he tried to talk about the crime before being cut off by the judge, faces anywhere from two years to life in prison. Edwards and Luna are being held without bond. Jones’s bond is set at $1 million.
Police noted that Lane was jogging through an affluent section of Duncan around 3 p.m. local time when a car carrying the three teenagers pulled up behind him. In court, prosecutor Jason Hicks alleged that Luna was in the back seat, Edwards was in the passenger seat and Jones was driving the vehicle. Luna allegedly shot Lane in the back with a .22 caliber revolver that has yet to be recovered. ”We were bored,” Luna reportedly admitted to authorities.
Hicks, who called the boys “thugs,” noted that Edwards found the slaying amusing. “I believe this man is a threat to the community and should not be let out,” Hicks said during the bail hearing. “He thinks it’s all a joke.” Edwards, who has had earlier run-ins with the law, had also been in court on Friday, apparently after the crime had been committed, to sign papers related to his juvenile probation.
James Johnson, who called police to tell them the trio was hiding in the carpark of the Immanuel Baptist Church about 5pm on Friday, described them in all-too-familiar terms. He called them “troublemakers” and “bullies” with no parental supervision, and said that Edwards had threatened to kill his own son using Facebook. ”They threatened to kill my son because they are in a gang, the Crips, and were trying to get my son in it and I wouldn’t let him do it.,” Johnson explained. “I told him he couldn’t run with those boys. He’s a little terrified.” Police Chief Ford believes that the teens’ wanted “to make a name for themselves” on the streets.
Indeed, a dark picture emerges as one peruses the social media sites teens like these invariably use to brag about themselves and their exploits. Before it was removed, Chauncy Luna’s Facebook page revealed he goes by the alias Baby Drake. It showed photos of him posing with friends, including Edwards, and flashing gang signs. Two pictures on James “Lilbuggy” Edwards’ Facebook page are also quite revealing. One shows a handgun, and several others show staggeringly large sums of cash. Both may be explained by another photo containing hashtags suggesting he was a member of the Crips. There is also a photo of him posing with a shotgun. ”Bitch we up them poles,” Edwards says in the clip, “F— ‘em.” (A dismantled shotgun with the serial numbers ground off was found in the car, but it is not currently known if it is the same weapon).
Tweets on Edwards’ Twitter account suggest he is racist. On April 29, he tweeted “90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM.” On July 15, shortly after George Zimmerman was acquitted, Edwards tweeted “Ayeee I knocced out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!:) lol shit ima keep sleepin shit! #ayeeee.” “Woods” is a term used to denigrate white people. Yet Chief Ford, who has yet to see Edwards’ social media, told the Daily Caller a hate crime charge is not likely. “I’m not discounting the stuff that’s on there, but they do that for shock and effect,” he contended.
The real shock and effect evidenced by this case so far is the deafening silence of the racial grievance industry along with their media and celebrity enablers who apparently see no way to exploit this tragedy. Jesse Jackson is the lone exception, if one considers a single tweet much of an effort. “Praying for the family of Chris Lane,” Jackson said Wednesday on Twitter. “This senseless violence is frowned upon and the justice system must prevail.” Not a word, however from people like Al Sharpton, Attorney General Eric Holder, or President Obama, all of whom were willing to weigh in on the Trayvon Martin case on numerous occasions.
Former Congressman Allen West directly addressed the reticence of what he characterized as the “race industry crew.” On Twitter, he castigated Obama. “‘We were bored & decided to kill somebody.’ 3 black teens shoot white jogger.Who will POTUS identify w/this time?” West tweeted Tuesday afternoon. West’s Facebook posting was equally caustic. “[S]hall we hear anything from the race industry crew, Hollywood elites, or maybe Oprah Winfrey? The issue is not about proliferation of guns in America. This is about a failing black community and the fact that its young men are desensitized to violence because a gangsta culture promotes it,” West wrote.
The apologists for the status quo invariably point to America’s long and tattered track record of racism, going all the way back to the days of slavery, to explain the cultural dysfunction behind such heinous crimes. Yet as black conservatives such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have pointed out on numerous occasions, black Americans were making steady progress in times that were far more racist (and poorer) than today. Yet today, in a time of vastly more racial equality and wealth redistribution, black men between the ages of 14 and 24 commit homicides at a rate 10 times that of young white and Hispanic males combined, according to a study by Northeastern University.
The key factors observers like Sowell and Williams frequently point to are the destruction of the nuclear family and the widespread glorification of social dysfunction. Though they affect all racial groups to varying degrees (after all, one conspirator in the Lane killing was white) no one can dispute their devastating effects on the black community. Rather than address this, many politicians, businessmen and entertainers hypocritically glamorize, enrich themselves and further their careers by promoting this culture of destruction. Thus, as Barack Obama wonders aloud how America “can bolster and reinforce our African-American boys,” he pals around with rapper Jay-Z, who has become a multi-millionaire rapping about guns, dope, misogyny and gratuitous violence. Amazon.com is selling a line of Trayvon Martin hoodies, while Ebony magazine has published several covers with celebrities dressed in the same thug-symbolizing attire. A director at the Smithsonian Institute expressed an interest in displaying Martin’s hoodie there, before the idea was ultimately rejected.
Yet when violence occurs, “civil rights” leaders like Jesse Jackson call it “senseless” and carefully avoid drawing attention to the real problem. The same goes for all the celebrities who have lined up to turn Trayvon Martin into a cause célèbre, but are currently nowhere to be found or heard on the Lane case. And despite wall-to-wall media coverage of this atrocity, principal deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest professed ignorance about the case, before claiming he “wouldn’t want to get ahead of the legal process here.” When Fox News chief White House correspondent Ed Henry noted President Obama was more than willing to get ahead of the legal process with regard to Trayvon Martin, Earnest offered up a generic response about the president’s “concerns” regarding the “impact of violence and whether there is more we can do to try to protect our children.”
We can’t protect our children from a thug culture when those who know better can’t be bothered to acknowledge its existence because it doesn’t accrue to their political advantage. And while the social dysfunction proliferates, blessed by the liberal and cultural elite, the racial divide widens. That is the real reason why the usual suspects have nothing to say about the killing of Christopher Lane. They know they, too, are part of the problem. – frontpagemag.com
The elevation of Mrs Doreen Lawrence to Britain’s highest parliamentary chamber, the House of Lords, should come as no surprise to seasoned observers of the British political elite.
Baroness Lawrence
For as the mother of arguably the most important murder victim in modern British history, she occupies a special place in the political firmament somewhere beside Bob Geldof and the late Princess Diana — perhaps equivalent to Rosa Parks or the parents of the sainted Trayvon Martin.
While no-one can put a name to any of the dozens of teenage Blacks murdered every year in London since then, Doreen’s son Stephen Lawrence was different — he was killed by Whites and his death was an opportunity to create the most potent weapon that has ever been aimed at the British people: mass demonization.
In an earlier age, tactical area bombing was used to deliver a relentless, sustained and never-ending barrage to cow a civilian population. But instead of the RAF this time the propaganda barrage was delivered by the media and Doreen Lawrence played a vital role as a living symbol of the evils of White racism.
So in a sense, her ennoblement is for services to the political elite, the human-rights industrial complex, the bureaucratic class, the media and for everyone else who has benefited from the murder which took place twenty years ago this year.
Several hundred miles to the north in the Lancashire seaside resort of Blackpool another mother Mrs Karen Downes could be forgiven for allowing herself a smile of bitter resignation at this latest accolade.
It is unlikely that Doreen Lawrence and Karen Downes will ever meet but the two mothers have much in common. Both had children murdered by racists and both have had to fight long battles against police incompetence and official indifference.
But there the similarity ends. For while Jamaica-born Mrs Lawrence has become a national heroine, lionised by the establishment, feted by the media and showered with honours, Mrs Downes is a shunned and marginalised figure who does not know if the killers of her daughter will ever be brought to justice.
The discrepancy in the treatment of the two cases can only be understood through the prism of the victimhood hierarchy. While Mrs Lawrence is the mother of a Black teenager, Mrs Downes and her daughter both belong to the despised White working class.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the events that followed the knifing to death of Stephen Lawrence in a random attack at a bus stop in Eltham south east London in 1993 and it could well be argued that the crime was the single most transformative event in the creation of the new settlement imposed on the country.
A botched police investigation and collapsed trial triggered a full scale judicial inquiry in 1999 led by Lord McPherson and this had two effects. The first was the branding of the Metropolitan Police in perpetuity as guilty of vague and ill-defined “institutional racism”.
The second was the demonization of the White working class as irredeemably racist and hate-filled bigots who had no more call on the sympathies of right-thinking citizens than did the German people in the aftermath of World War II.
The elevation of this blood libel to a central place in the new settlement had one overriding political purpose — it meant the objections of working class Whites to mass immigration or multiculturalism could be safely cast aside as of no account.
The case was swiftly picked up by the media, politicians and human rights lawyers and barristers who smelled a winning cause célèbre and began jostling furiously for the anticipated glory.
In their pursuit of the five suspects in the killing of Stephen Lawrence normal conventions such as the assumption of innocence and contempt of court were ignored — and it was apparent that their White working class aspect produced an additional frisson of loathing.
As the media bombardment followed — the acres of newsprint, TV documentaries the TV dramas, the feature film — one message was unmistakeable; all working class Whites had to share the blame for what happened to Stephen Lawrence.
Finally in 2011, after an estimated 16 separate inquiries and a failed trial, the House of Commons decided to overturn the centuries-old law of double-jeopardy solely for the purpose of prosecuting the Stephen Lawrence killers. Convictions were duly obtained on two of the five suspects in what was condemned as a showtrial.
But there was far too much political capital to be had from the saga to leave it at that and, like a medieval religious play, there are now frequent re-enactments of the martyrdom of Stephen Lawrence in which self-aggrandising politicians, loudmouthed race-hustlers, sanctimonious journalists and grandstanding human-rights lawyers — and Doreen Lawrence — all play their appointed parts.
This summer’s passion play has not disappointed. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Shadow Home Secretary, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee were all arguing furiously about how best to satisfy Mrs Lawrence’s demands for yet another public inquiry. They duly obliged and in July two new reviews were launched into the conduct of the police in 1993.
It is enlightening to compare all this activity with the experience of Mrs Karen Downes whose 14-year old daughter Charlene went missing on 1st November 2003 while apparently making her way home from Blackpool’s north pier after school.
She had been in the habit of hanging out at the Funny Boyz kebab shop in Dickson Road ran by Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi who were known to target young White girls by plying them with cigarettes and alcohol.
But initially the police were reluctant to take action or even provide the family with basic information. It was only when Karen approached the local newspaper that things began to move. The main suspects were reported boasting to friends that the body had been put into kebabs, and a proper investigation was launched. Eventually surveillance recordings produced apparently damning statements and the men were duly arrested and tried.
In one conversation Mr Reveshi was reported to have said to Mr Albattikhi: “Well, hopefully I [done] it properly you know . . . he thought he saw me cutting her body up…
“Do you remember she was bleeding to death?” “Yes,” replied Mr Albattikhi. “So that she made a mess,” Mr Reveshi allegedly added. Later in the transcript Mr Reveshi allegedly says: “The last one then, it was the last deep one and then it was the [heart] . . . that finally killed her.” …
At one point Mr Reveshi said: “I’m so worried and you was the one who killed her.” …
But the case sensationally collapsed in court because the prosecution had botched the presentation of the evidence. The jury were unable to reach a unanimous decision, and instead of requesting a re-count with a majority decision, the judge dismissed the case.
The two Muslims received half a million pounds in compensation for their ordeal but despite this the police have admitted there are no other suspects in the frame.
Since then there has been no movement in the Charlene Downes case despite reports of compelling fresh evidence, new witnesses, allegations of jury-tampering and the fact that the double-jeopardy law is no longer an obstacle to another prosecution of the same men.
Meanwhile, down south Mrs Doreen Lawrence is still receiving more accolades and awards to add to the OBE she received in 2003 for her services to community relations.
The gleaming £10 million Stephen Lawrence Centre was opened five years ago and is the base for the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, set up by Doreen in 1998. This body, of which Doreen is a director, has become one of London’s largest training providers, not least because of the millions poured in by local and national government and corporate sponsors.
For Baroness Lawrence — as we must learn to call her — the awards, the accolades, the public appearances and the praise just never seem to stop rolling. Last summer, in front of an international television audience of millions, she was an Olympic flagbearer, alongside Muhammad Ali and former UN secretary general Ban-Ki Moon.
And then she received the lifetime achievement award in the UK media’s nationally televised “Pride of Britain Awards” to a standing ovation in November 2012. Her portrait “No Woman No Cry” rendered by one of our most fashionable modern artists, hangs in the Tate Gallery.
The Stephen Lawrence Trust has become one of the biggest brands in the charity sector. There is the Memorial Service — attended by the Prime Minister — the Woman of the Year Award, the star-studded concert at London’s largest venue, the O2 Arena — all in the name of Stephen Lawrence. Not to mention the Memorial Lecture which has been given by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.
For any ambitious young politico on the make a photo-opportunity with Doreen is not to be passed by. There is every possibility thanks to the Stephen Lawrence Legacy black tie gala dinners which have become prime networking events for the great and good.
The Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane will be the venue for the next one. Recent dinners have featured the Home Secretary, the Leader of the Opposition, the editor of the Daily Mail and the editor of the Mirror not to mention the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police again.
As if all this did not keep Doreen busy enough, she has been awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of East Anglia, Bradford, Staffordshire, Greenwich, York, East London and Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln. She also received an Honorary Fellowship from Goldsmith’s College.
She has a seat on important government panels and charity boards. Her autobiography is called, without irony, And Still I Rise.
Despite being nominally above the political fray, Mrs Lawrence has waded in when it suits her, and her statements that the police are still institutionally racist are guaranteed to dominate the headlines. In fact her supposed special insights into every subject from schooling to knife crime are given special weight by an ever doting media.
It is educational to compare this with the disappearance of Charlene Downes. It could hardly have happened at a more sensitive time. Despite undeniable evidence of organised grooming of White underage girls by Muslims in towns across the north of England the authorities refused to act or even speak out on the matter.
Instead the mainstream parties together with the police, the BBC, local papers and social services, closed ranks and refused to discuss the matter. The only politician speaking out was the British National Party’s Nick Griffin, and it was on the back of this issue that the BNP won four local elections in Bradford.
Then only months after Charlene disappeared, the BBC broadcast secretly recorded public speeches by the BNP leader and his colleague Mark Collett in which they vociferously spoke out against Muslim grooming gangs and the authorities refusal to act on the matter.
The BBC handed footage to the police and the two were duly charged with “using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred,” only to be sensationally acquitted after a retrial at Leeds Crown Court in 2006.
As for Karen Downes and her family, it would be fair to say that the intervening years have not treated them kindly. Karen has been on the receiving end of a campaign of vile abuse mounted by local left-wingers who crowed their delight at the collapse of the trial of the men accused of killing her daughter. A commemorative bench inscribed to Charlene and placed in her favourite park was thrown into a pond, and the police do not even return her phone calls any more.
She has taken to mounting ad hoc protests outside the kebab bar in Dickson Street but the police have issued her with a harassment order banning her from approaching the takeaway and warning her if she does not stop she could be jailed for racial harassment.
Most weekends Karen Downes can be found forlornly searching among the arcades of the north pier in a vain attempt to catch sight of the daughter she last saw ten years ago this November. – The Occidental Observer
After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like “prisoners of war” before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority. The campaign of intimidation appears to be a warning to Christians outside Cairo to stand down from political activism.
Christians have long suffered from discrimination and violence in Muslim majority Egypt, where they make up 10 percent of the 90 million population. Attacks increased after the Islamists rose to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that drove Hosni Mubarak from power, emboldening extremists. But Christians have come further under fire since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3, sparking a wave of Islamist anger led by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged since Wednesday, when chaos erupted after Egypt’s military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi’s reinstatement, killing scores of protesters and sparking deadly clashes nationwide.
One of the world’s oldest Christian communities has generally kept a low-profile, but has become more politically active since Mubarak was ousted and Christians sought to ensure fair treatment in the aftermath.
Many Morsi supporters say Christians played a disproportionately large role in the days of mass rallies, with millions demanding that he step down ahead of the coup.
Despite the violence, Egypt’s Coptic Christian church renewed its commitment to the new political order on Friday, saying in a statement that it stood by the army and the police in their fight against “the armed violent groups and black terrorism.”
While the Christians of Egypt have endured attacks by extremists, they have drawn closer to moderate Muslims in some places, in a rare show of solidarity.
Hundreds from both communities thronged two monasteries in the province of Bani Suef south of Cairo to thwart what they had expected to be imminent attacks on Saturday, local activist Girgis Waheeb said. Activists reported similar incidents elsewhere in regions south of Cairo, but not enough to provide effective protection of churches and monasteries.
Waheeb, other activists and victims of the latest wave of attacks blame the police as much as hard-line Islamists for what happened. The attacks, they said, coincided with assaults on police stations in provinces like Bani Suef and Minya, leaving most police pinned down to defend their stations or reinforcing others rather than rushing to the rescue of Christians under attack.
Another Christian activist, Ezzat Ibrahim of Minya, a province also south of Cairo where Christians make up around 35 percent of the population, said police have melted away from seven of the region’s nine districts, leaving the extremists to act with near impunity.
Two Christians have been killed since Wednesday, including a taxi driver who strayed into a protest by Morsi supporters in Alexandria and another man who was shot to death by Islamists in the southern province of Sohag, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information.
The attacks served as a reminder that while on the defensive in Cairo, Islamists maintain influence and the ability to stage violence in provincial strongholds with a large minority of Christians.
Gamaa Islamiya, the hard-line Islamist group that wields considerable influence in provinces south of Cairo, denied any link to the attacks. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has led the defiant protest against Morsi’s ouster, has condemned the attacks, spokesman Mourad Ali said.
Sister Manal is the principal of the Franciscan school in Bani Suef. She was having breakfast with two visiting nuns when news broke of the clearance of the two sit-in camps by police, killing hundreds. In an ordeal that lasted about six hours, she, sisters Abeer and Demiana and a handful of school employees saw a mob break into the school through the wall and windows, loot its contents, knock off the cross on the street gate and replace it with a black banner resembling the flag of al-Qaida.
By the time the Islamists ordered them out, fire was raging at every corner of the 115-year-old main building and two recent additions. Money saved for a new school was gone, said Manal, and every computer, projector, desk and chair was hauled away. Frantic SOS calls to the police, including senior officers with children at the school, produced promises of quick response but no one came.
The Islamists gave her just enough time to grab some clothes.
In an hourlong telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manal, 47, recounted her ordeal while trapped at the school with others as the fire raged in the ground floor and a battle between police and Islamists went on out on the street. At times she was overwhelmed by the toxic fumes from the fire in the library or the whiffs of tears gas used by the police outside.
Sister Manal recalled being told a week earlier by the policeman father of one pupil that her school was targeted by hard-line Islamists convinced that it was giving an inappropriate education to Muslim children. She paid no attention, comfortable in the belief that a school that had an equal number of Muslim and Christian pupils could not be targeted by Muslim extremists. She was wrong.
The school has a high-profile location. It is across the road from the main railway station and adjacent to a busy bus terminal that in recent weeks attracted a large number of Islamists headed to Cairo to join the larger of two sit-in camps by Morsi’s supporters. The area of the school is also in one of Bani Suef’s main bastions of Islamists from Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafis.
“We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us,” she said. “At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us,” she said. A Muslim woman who once taught at the school spotted Manal and the two other nuns as they walked past her home, attracting a crowd of curious onlookers.
“I remembered her, her name is Saadiyah. She offered to take us in and said she can protect us since her son-in-law was a policeman. We accepted her offer,” she said. Two Christian women employed by the school, siblings Wardah and Bedour, had to fight their way out of the mob, while groped, hit and insulted by the extremists. “I looked at that and it was very nasty,” said Manal.
The incident at the Franciscan school was repeated at Minya where a Catholic school was razed to the ground by an arson attack and a Christian orphanage was also torched.
“I am terrified and unable to focus,” said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal’s school. “I am expecting an attack on my church any time now,” he said on Saturday.
Bishoy Alfons Naguib, a 33-year-old businessman from Minya, has a similarly harrowing story.
His home supplies store on a main commercial street in the provincial capital, also called Minya, was torched this week and the flames consumed everything inside.
“A neighbor called me and said the store was on fire. When I arrived, three extremists with knifes approached me menacingly when they realized I was the owner,” recounted Naguib. His father and brother pleaded with the men to spare him. Luckily, he said, someone shouted that a Christian boy was filming the proceedings using his cell phone, so the crowd rushed toward the boy shouting “Nusrani, Nusrani,” the Quranic word for Christians which has become a derogatory way of referring to them in today’s Egypt.
Naguib ran up a nearby building where he has an apartment and locked himself in. After waiting there for a while, he left the apartment, ran up to the roof and jumped to the one next door building from which he exited at a safe distance from the crowd.
“On our Mustafa Fahmy street, the Islamists had earlier painted a red X on Muslim stores and a black X on Christian stores,” he said. “You can be sure that the ones with a red X are intact.”
In Fayoum, an oasis province southwest of Cairo, Islamists looted and torched five churches, according to Bishop Ibram, the local head of the Coptic Orthodox church, by far the largest of Egypt’s Christian denominations. He said he had instructed Christians and clerics alike not to try to resist the mobs of Islamists, fearing any loss of life.
“The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had ransacked to see if they can get more,” he told the AP. “They were loading our chairs and benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they destroyed them.” – AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has created an anti-CNN for Western audiences with the international satellite news network Russia Today. With its recipe of smart propaganda, sex appeal and unlimited cash, it is outperforming its peers worldwide.
Russia Today uses the source material America supplies to its rivals untiringly and with relish. Even Washington’s relatively minor peccadilloes don’t escape notice. For instance, the show also includes a story about Gabonese dictator Ali Bongo Ondimba, whom US President Barack Obama supports.
Many in the West are also interested in seeing critical coverage of the self-proclaimed top world power. Russia Today is already more successful than all other foreign broadcast stations available in major US cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York. In Washington, 13 times as many people watch the Russian program as those that tune into Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster.
Two million Britons watch the Kremlin channel regularly. Its online presence is also more successful than those of all its competitors. What’s more, in June, Russia Today broke a YouTube record by being the first TV station to get a billion views of its videos.
The station was even more triumphant when it signed Larry King, a legend of American radio and TV journalism who began working for Russia Today this summer. “America’s best known TV interviewer is defecting to the Russians,” wrote the London-based Times in May.
King and his new colleagues have a simple assignment: They are to “break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon mass media,” President Vladimir Putin said during a studio visit a few weeks ago. The Russians’ recipe for success has three ingredients: sex appeal, which has been atypical for most news channel; a rigidly anti-American stance; and a never-ending flow of money from the Kremlin.
The Ministry of Media Defense
Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel’s annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today’s budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps.
The Moscow leadership views the funds going to the channel as money “well invested,” says Natalya Timakova, the press attaché to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “In addition, Russia Today is — and I hope the Germans will forgive me for this remark — significantly more modern than Deutsche Welle, for example, and it also has more money.”
The government has also spent a lot of money on the new broadcasting center in northeast Moscow, which Russia Today moved into in May. The station, citing confidentiality requirements, isn’t willing to quote an exact price tag. On the grounds of a former Soviet tea factory, the broadcaster is now creating programming in Arabic, English and Spanish. In 2009, it rebranded its English- and Spanish speaking divisions as simply “RT.” The evening news is currently focused on the euro crisis, social protests in Portugal and the NSA surveillance scandal.
Margarita Simonyan
Margarita Simonyan is the woman who shaped Russia Today into Russia’s most effective weapon in the battle for influencing the opinions of the global public. In her office on the eighth floor of its headquarters in Moscow, the editor-in-chief has Orthodox icons on her desk and a dozen flickering screens around it. Putin made Simonyan the head of the new station in 2005. At the time, she was only 25 and derided as an unknown reporter from the crowd of journalists that accompany the president at meetings.
Simonyan’s mission is to prevent Russia from ever losing a war of images.
CNN showed images of destroyed buildings, allegedly taken after a Russian bomb strike on the Georgian provincial city of Gori. According to Russia Today, however, they were actually shots of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali after a Georgian attack. “There is no objectivity,” Simonyan says today, “only approximations of the truth by as many different voices as possible.”
Mistrust of the domestic media is also greater than ever in the United States. CNN, for example, is struggling to cope with a massive loss of viewers. – Der Spiegel
As a teenager radicalised by China’s Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing denounced his mother to the authorities. Two months later a firing squad shot her dead.
Now after more than 40 years of mounting guilt, Zhang has ruffled the silence that cloaks China’s decade of turmoil with a public confession.
Such rare apologies have been welcomed as a potential gateway to the collective soul-searching that could bring healing — but is blocked by a ruling Communist Party whose critics say is unwilling to confront its own responsibility.
“Back then everyone was swept up and you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to. Any kindness or beauty in me was thoroughly, irretrievably ‘formatted’,” Zhang told the Beijing News last week.
“I hope that from my self-reflection other people can understand what the situation was like at that time.”
The 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, unleashed by then-leader Mao Zedong to reassert power after the famines caused by his disastrous Great Leap Forward, inflicted myriad personal tragedies and threw society into chaos.
“Red Guard” youths abused their elders — officials, intellectuals, neighbours, relatives — dragging them into “struggle sessions”, ransacking their homes and driving some to suicide.
Many targets were jailed or killed, and while no official figure has been issued, one Western historian estimated half a million people died in 1967 alone.
Zhang reported his mother in 1970 for criticising Mao, and military officials came to their home, assaulted her and took her away.
But as the political winds changed — a few years after the Cultural Revolution ended, a court in his native central Anhui province recanted his mother’s sentence — Zhang began to rethink as well.
“I will never forgive myself,” he said.
Only a handful of public confessions have appeared, mostly in recent years as the Revolution’s once-heady teenagers enter their 60s.
Wen Qingfu from the central province of Hunan cited age as a spur for admitting in an essay in June that, following orders, he once led a mob to storm the home of a teacher whose son he often played with.
“When people get old they look back and reflect,” he told a provincial newspaper. “If I didn’t apologise now we would both get too old.”
Wen acted in time to see his victim’s daughter reply in a public letter on behalf of her frail mother: “You can let go of your guilt.”
Many Chinese have embraced these apologies, even though wide airing of past wrongs might invite a spate of legal action, said Ding Xueliang, a Cultural Revolution expert at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
In a rare trial stemming from the era, a court in Zhejiang province in April sentenced a man in his 80s to 42 months in prison for a 1967 murder.
Still, Ding said, “the positive consequences would go far beyond the negative ones… to collective soul-searching, to build a more law-based society”.
But China’s ruling party prohibits such discussion, which would inevitably broach the question of its own ugly role. Any trial or apology tends to skirt around this central issue, say academics.
“Individual responsibility is one part of this,” said Xu Youyu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“Some things are basic, for example, you can’t hit people or humiliate or persecute them.”
But the confessions “have not touched on the more important or fundamental issues,” he said, and if they did, “there might be a question of whether the discussion could continue”.
Shortly after Mao died in 1976 the campaign was ended, and the authorities hung blame on the controversial Gang of Four leaders headed by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, jailing them in 1980.
The following year the official party line declared that the Cultural Revolution had dealt China “the most severe setback and the heaviest losses” since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
Mao was deemed to have been 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong, having made “gross mistakes” but far greater contributions.
And with that a curtain over the matter was drawn.
Former premier Wen Jiabao briefly referenced the period last year, warning that China should never retread such “historical tragedies”.
The remark — seen as a rebuke to the recently disgraced leader Bo Xilai who had championed “red revival” — heartened those who support freer discussion of the decade, but the impact of Wen’s words ended there.
Virtually no museums, memorials or films in China explore the Revolution, except for little-known private efforts such as one museum in southwestern Sichuan province that refers discreetly to a “Red era”.
In a public apology published in June, Liu Boqin of Shandong province in the east detailed his crimes and listed his victims, but only vaguely referenced the political directives that drove him.
Instead he cited “youth and ignorance, being incited, wicked, not distinguishing right and wrong” for having hounded teachers and vandalised homes.
“Although being swept up in the environment of the Cultural Revolution was one reason,” he wrote, “I as an individual bear responsibility for my evil actions.” – AFP
Monique Locke (13) whose father was shot in front of her through the heart, only to be officially recorded as ‘having died of natural causes’
According to newspaper reports recently unearthed by several rights groups in South Africa, murders of South African whites are being disguised by issuing death certificates showing that they had died of “natural causes”. At least three such cases have come to light.
In a brutal murder, auto-electrician Henry Locke (41) was shot through the heart in front of his whole family on 5 October 2009. Afterwards, the ANC-controlled state issued a death certificate stating that he had died of “natural causes”.
Commenting on the certificate, published in the Johannesburg daily Beeld on 30 October 2009, his wife Amanda Locke (43) expressed shock, saying: “On the contrary, he was shot dead right in front of us, before our very eyes.” (Beeld archive here.)
“They did not say anything. They just shot him dead. On the spot where he was shot, he fell and died.
“How can the murder case continue if the death certificate states that he died of natural causes?
“It is impossible that he could have died of natural causes. It simply cannot be.”
Mr. Locke was shot in the heart on the Elands game farm near Cullinan, northeast of Pretoria, in front of his daughter, Monique (13) and son Dawie (23), a paraplegic. According to Mrs. Locke, the government officials told her that the bullet hitting her husband’s heart had caused a heart attack, therefore the cause was “natural”.
When the Beeld reporter contacted Mr. Ronnie Mamoepa, the spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs, he told her that he was “certain that the information on the death certificate was wrong” and that “the mistake would definitely be corrected”. To date, there has been no news of any correction.
After the publication of the report in Beeld, another case came to light. A woman writing under the name of “Elsabé” in the letters column on 30 October 2009 stated the following:
“In reaction to the report ‘Is being shot in the heart a “natural cause”?’ on the late Mr. Henry Locke, I wish to mention that my husband was shot on 14 July in the house where we lived on a smallholding in Raslouw in what was presumably an armed robbery.
“His death certificate, too, states that he died ‘of natural causes’.
“My impression is that such ‘mistakes’ are committed deliberately (to falsify statistics?) or it could be simply lazy officials.
“In a previous letter to Beeld I had stated that the crime mentioned on my husband’s police docket was ‘domestic robbery’.
“The report of the post-mortem is still not available, after three months.
“Such mistakes are pointed out in the media, but alas – nothing happens afterwards.
“We must realise that we are at the mercy of the elements.”
A third case took an even bizarre turn when a man initially thought to have been killed by a buffalo was shown to have been stabbed to death. This case was mentioned in the Beeld on 6 October 2009, so three such cases were reported within one month.
Mr. Roy Munks (65) of Dunnottar near Springs on the East Rand was wounded in the neck, damaging his artery. He was presumed to have had a heart attack due to the shock of being gouged by a buffalo.
However, two suspected robbers were being questioned the previous week when they admitted during the interrogation that they had been a party to Munks’s death. The men, whose names were withheld by police, were charged with murder and held.
The results of the post mortem on Munks found that he had bled to death after being gouged by the buffalo. The wounds on his body “were commensurate with the wounds possibly caused by a buffalo’s horns”. The police now believe that Munks was stabbed with knives because the attackers wanted to rob his farmhouse.
None of these stories was published in the English-language media of South Africa. A thorough search of fhe names and dates returned no results.
Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.
If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook Inc. If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-mail to Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and Sprint Corp.; and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter Inc., Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. or whatever other site is hosting them.
The primary business model of the Internet is built on mass surveillance, and our government’s intelligence-gathering agencies have become addicted to that data. Understanding how we got here is critical to understanding how we undo the damage.
Computers and networks inherently produce data, and our constant interactions with them allow corporations to collect an enormous amount of intensely personal data about us as we go about our daily lives. Sometimes we produce this data inadvertently simply by using our phones, credit cards, computers and other devices. Sometimes we give corporations this data directly on Google, Facebook, Apple Inc.’s iCloud and so on in exchange for whatever free or cheap service we receive from the Internet in return.
The NSA is also in the business of spying on everyone, and it has realized it’s far easier to collect all the data from these corporations rather than from us directly. In some cases, the NSA asks for this data nicely. In other cases, it makes use of subtle threats or overt pressure. If that doesn’t work, it uses tools like national security letters.
The result is a corporate-government surveillance partnership, one that allows both the government and corporations to get away with things they couldn’t otherwise.
There are two types of laws in the U.S., each designed to constrain a different type of power: constitutional law, which places limitations on government, and regulatory law, which constrains corporations. Historically, these two areas have largely remained separate, but today each group has learned how to use the other’s laws to bypass their own restrictions. The government uses corporations to get around its limits, and corporations use the government to get around their limits.
This partnership manifests itself in various ways. The government uses corporations to circumvent its prohibitions against eavesdropping domestically on its citizens. Corporations rely on the government to ensure that they have unfettered use of the data they collect.
Here’s an example: It would be reasonable for our government to debate the circumstances under which corporations can collect and use our data, and to provide for protections against misuse. But if the government is using that very data for its own surveillance purposes, it has an incentive to oppose any laws to limit data collection. And because corporations see no need to give consumers any choice in this matter — because it would only reduce their profits — the market isn’t going to protect consumers, either.
Our elected officials are often supported, endorsed and funded by these corporations as well, setting up an incestuous relationship between corporations, lawmakers and the intelligence community.
The losers are us, the people, who are left with no one to stand up for our interests. Our elected government, which is supposed to be responsible to us, is not. And corporations, which in a market economy are supposed to be responsive to our needs, are not. What we have now is death to privacy — and that’s very dangerous to democracy and liberty.
The simple answer is to blame consumers, who shouldn’t use mobile phones, credit cards, banks or the Internet if they don’t want to be tracked. But that argument deliberately ignores the reality of today’s world. Everything we do involves computers, even if we’re not using them directly. And by their nature, computers produce tracking data. We can’t go back to a world where we don’t use computers, the Internet or social networking. We have no choice but to share our personal information with these corporations, because that’s how our world works today.
Curbing the power of the corporate-private surveillance partnership requires limitations on both what corporations can do with the data we choose to give them and restrictions on how and when the government can demand access to that data. Because both of these changes go against the interests of corporations and the government, we have to demand them as citizens and voters. We can lobby our government to operate more transparently — disclosing the opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would be a good start — and hold our lawmakers accountable when it doesn’t. But it’s not going to be easy. There are strong interests doing their best to ensure that the steady stream of data keeps flowing.
Bruce Schneier is a computer security technologist. – Bloomberg
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