Daily Archives: July 10, 2013

planetkillers

www.german-foreign-policy.com Not News – German and US spies worked together

New reports are confirming the close cooperation of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) with the National Security Agency (NSA). According to these reports, BND agents have repeatedly visited the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade to discuss technical issues. The NSA has also furnished the BND instruments for analyzing intercepted data. A former head of the Austrian intelligence service has confirmed that it was a “common understanding among all European intelligence services” to be “aware” of the NSA Prism surveillance program. Already years ago, officials of the US military have been quoted saying that the US military espionage center that is being established in the Hessian capital Wiesbaden – and that will reportedly also be used by the NSA – is destined to gather information “on the current situation of friend and foe, and everything that can influence our mission.” The German government has also admitted that the Western block’s cooperation of the intelligence services – which includes abduction and torture of suspects in the so-called war on terror – dates back to secret agreements between the leading NATO powers during the post-WW II decades.

The BND at Fort Meade

Recent reports have confirmed the close cooperation between the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Last Thursday, the German TV magazine “Monitor” presented a document reporting on a working visit by leading personnel of the BND to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in February 2010. For its cooperation with foreign intelligence services, the NSA has established a “Foreign Affairs Directorate” at its headquarters, to exchange intelligence information and organize the delivery of relevant equipment. A former NSA Technical Director confirmed to “Monitor” that he had witnessed “joint meetings and conferences” with BND officials, where “technical and other issues” were discussed.[1] According to a report in the German weekly “Der Spiegel,” NSA has also furnished the BND the instruments for analyzing the cross-border telecommunication passing through German lines. The BND is drawing on data passing through five internet hubs with particular focus on the connections to the Middle East. BND President Gerhard Schindler has confirmed the cooperation with NSA.[2]

via www.german-foreign-policy.com.

Gun-violence

The Gun Report: July 10, 2013 – NYTimes.com

Two children were hit by gunfire when their father fired a shotgun near them last week at their home in Leavenworth, Wash. Police were dispatched to a domestic disturbance call at around 8:45 a.m. Friday, and they found a 2-year-old boy with injuries to his head and shoulder and an 11-year-old girl with chest, arm and hand injuries. The children were treated at the hospital. Police arrested their 36-year-old father, who was reported to be heavily intoxicated earlier in the day when he threatened to kill the children as well as a woman in the house.

via The Gun Report: July 10, 2013 – NYTimes.com.

And Illinois last state to allow conceal and carry –

environment, planetkillers, Profiteering

Why Is Google Supporting a Climate-Denying Senator? : Compass

Senator Inhofe is notorious for his climate denial and disgust for clean energy. He regularly repeats misinformation and outright lies about climate science, going so far as to say that carbon pollution and warming temperatures are “beneficial to our economy and our environment” and calling climate change “the greatest hoax perpetuated on the American people.”

(Update: As of Wednesday afternoon, he even took to the Senate floor to mock and rail against the President’s climate action plan!)

Inhofe’s rhetoric doesn’t really mesh with a company whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, recently said, “You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you’ll be seen as a liar.”

Google’s fundraiser for Senator Inhofe comes on the heels of the news that Google also donated $50,000 for a fundraising dinner for the anti-environment Competitive Enterprise Institute. CEI staff also deny climate disruption and the organization receives significant donations from the dirty fuels industry.

Yet Google’s donation to CEI even outdid donations from the Koch brothers!

This is no way for Google to lead on clean energy and climate action. Google’s support of the most outspoken climate denier in the Senate is backwards, out of place, and doesn’t stand with their strong clean energy credibility.

via Why Is Google Supporting a Climate-Denying Senator? : Compass.

Uncategorized

Erdogan Plays the Headscarf Card – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

One of the lessons of the protests is that younger Turks are far more accepting of each other’s differences. This helps explain why there were covered women who marched shoulder to shoulder with anarchists and gays. A group of uncovered women academics and journalists — myself included — recently petitioned the government to scrap any law that prevents covered women from holding elected or bureaucratic office.

 

Not that it will make a difference. Erdogan’s reluctance to allot power to covered women has less to do with politics than with a deeply engrained patriarchy that cuts across party lines. Only 79 of Turkey’s 550 lawmakers are women. More than half (45) are from the AKP. “Women are twice removed from power,” comments White, “once by their sex, and also by their piety.” And if covered women are fielded by the AKP in the 2014 local elections, she says, “They will end up in ‘the shop window’ — as the Turks say — not in any position of responsibility or power.”

via Erdogan Plays the Headscarf Card – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Uncategorized

Learning to love – or at least like – my race photos

Fit and Feminist

By now it’s pretty much part of my racing routine. A few days after running a race, I’ll get the email directing me to my race photos, which I will then follow (even though I know what awaits me, because I am a masochist), and then I will click through my race photos with a growing sense of dismay and horror that supplants the feelings of pride and badassery that once occupied the part of my brain dedicated to feelings about that particular race.

Here, listen in my brain as my internal Anna Wintour starts in with the inevitable litany of criticism.  What am I doing with your face? Why does your face look like a big, shiny eggplant?  That top makes you look like a rectangle – never wear it again. Your thighs look like a waterbed. Your belly is bulging over your shorts. Why are your arms so…

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Uncategorized

Some Vegetables and Fruits With a Side of Rape

Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz


Our vegetables and fruits come with a side of rape and sexual abuse. That’s right. Rape.

Did you know that many of the farm workers who pick our fruits and vegetables are undocumented? It isn’t enough that they’re underpaid and exploited for their labor. Many are also raped and sexually assaulted while being threatened with being fired if they say something.

It is almost as if immigrant bodies have become public property. Property for many to use and misuse as they please. From not having access to health services, being deported and exploited to being raped.

The fear of deportation and of not being able to provide for their families forces immigrants to stay silent. But not anymore.

Frontline‘s latest documentary entitled, Rape in the Fields, follows a group of women who are raped and/or assaulted at work. The documentary also highlights the rape culture that dominates our…

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Profiteering, racism, Urbanfarm

House GOP Leaders Consider Splitting Farm Bill

Can’t for life of me figure out why GOP super-conservatives want to make people go hungry so badly. Are they so overcome by what they want to believe, that they can’t see who in their own districts would be hurt?

Billy Shore, the founder and CEO of the anti-hunger group Share Our Strength, says the split would make SNAP vulnerable when many families and children are dependent on it. Around one in seven people used food stamps last year.

“The concern is that (splitting the bill) would make it easier for the Republican leadership to find support for those cuts,” Shore said. “For a program that has worked so well for decades it feels a little short-sighted.”

Farm groups agreed.

Jon Doggett, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association, said that farm groups will continue to need allies as rural areas decrease in population and fewer members of Congress are elected on farm issues. In addition to nutrition advocates, the bill also brings together agriculture and environmental groups who favor conservation measures in the bill that protect environmentally-sensitive farmland.

via House GOP Leaders Consider Splitting Farm Bill.

Uncategorized

Chilean president praises raped girl, 11, for going through with pregnancy | World news | guardian.co.uk

Chile’s president has praised an 11-year-old girl after she said in a TV interview that she wants to give birth to the baby who was conceived when she was raped by her mother’s partner.

President Sebastián Pinera’s remark that her decision showed “depth and maturity” caused anger on social media in a case that has ignited a heated national debate over abortion in one of Latin America’s most socially conservative nations. Abortion, even for medical reasons and in the case of rape, has been illegal since General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

via Chilean president praises raped girl, 11, for going through with pregnancy | World news | guardian.co.uk.

There seems to be no limit as to how self-delusional many men can be when it comes to women’s right to control their own destiny or to protect children.

racism, terrorism

Aide to Sen. Rand Paul Exposed for Neo-Confederate Views | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center

Hunter co-wrote Paul’s 2011 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, and joined the Kentucky Republican’s Senate staff in 2012 as social media director.

But from 1999 to 2012, the 39-year-old writer was a South Carolina radio shock jock who “weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln,” according to the Free Beacon, a conservative online publication of the Center for American Freedom.

via Aide to Sen. Rand Paul Exposed for Neo-Confederate Views | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center.