Category Archives: Fail!

Avian Flu Diary: Japan Reports 1st Locally Acquired Dengue Case In 60 Years

In order to spread, Dengue requires the right mosquito vector.  And the two species best suited to transmit the virus are the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which also can spread such diseases as West Nile, Malaria, Yellow Fever, and Chikungunya.

 

While the Aedes Aegypti isn’t a problem in Japan, the Aedes Albopictus (`Asian Tiger’) mosquito is.

via Avian Flu Diary: Japan Reports 1st Locally Acquired Dengue Case In 60 Years.

Ebola outbreak ‘worse than we’d feared,’ CDC chief says on… | www.ajc.com

Frieden, in his WSB Radio interview, warned that failure to control the outbreak could be catastrophic.

“This isn’t just a risk to Liberia and West Africa,” Frieden said. “With this kind of transmission, every day it goes on, it increases the risk of spread to other countries in Africa, other countries in the region.

“The impact not just from Ebola but on the delivery of healthcare, on economies, on families and societies. It’s huge. It’s absolutely an emergency.”

via Ebola outbreak ‘worse than we’d feared,’ CDC chief says on… | www.ajc.com.

Simple – Wannabe Caliph Erdogan is anti-educated professional females! Why are pro-AKP Twitter users targeting female journalists? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Zaman also for the first time wrote openly about the “rape and murder” threats female journalists Melis Alphan, Sirin Payzin, Selin Girit, Tugce Tatari, Banu Guven, Nuray Mert and Ece Temelkuran received during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Professor Yasemin Inceoglu at the Galatasaray University communication department told Al-Monitor, “All these journalists are professionals. The attacks against them are nothing but an open threat to silence those few critical minds in the media. I certainly don’t understand the silence of some other female journalists — playing the three monkeys, when their colleagues are subject of such a lynching campaign.”

Although there are campaigns in support of these female journalists, it is something else to stand up against a strong government and a crowd backed and encouraged by this government. “We did not file a lawsuit against those threats because of the sensitive environment back then,” Karan told Al-Monitor. “And I have no knowledge that our security enforcement did anything against it, even when these threats were made public.”

The government’s pressure cost both Zaman and Karan their jobs at the Haberturk daily newspaper, with Zaman now writing for Taraf and Karan for Cumhuriyet. Karan said, “I did not lose the job after one incident, but Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu literally lashed out at me in three separate live TV interviews. I remember well the one in December 2011 when I asked him — based on the information I was receiving from my sources inside Syria — about the Salafist groups that were spreading fear and [their activities] being no less of a threat than those of [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad. He said then that they know Syria street by street, quarter by quarter, while denying the Salafist threat and entirely blaming Assad. Today, we know the result.”

Karan told Al-Monitor that Davutoglu’s appointment as prime minister means nothing but the continuation of pressure on the media. “As long as journalists talk about what the government does in a positive light, there is no problem. Their policies are not supposed to be questioned. Therefore, media freedom is going to shrink even further, if this situation continues.”

via Why are pro-AKP Twitter users targeting female journalists? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Overhyped headline! WHO shuts Sierra Leone lab after worker infected with Ebola | Reuters

“It’s a temporary measure to take care of the welfare of our remaining workers,” WHO spokesperson Christy Feig said, without specifying how long the measure would last. “After our assessment, they will return.”

Feig said she could not assess what impact the withdrawal of WHO staff would have on the fight against Ebola in the Kailahun, the area hardest hit by the disease. The WHO said in a later statement that staff would return after an investigation was completed, adding that testing would continue in the meantime at the Kenema laboratory.

The Senegalese medic — the first worker deployed by WHO to be infected — will be evacuated from Sierra Leone in the coming days, Feig said. He is currently being treated at a government hospital in the eastern town of Kenema.

via WHO shuts Sierra Leone lab after worker infected with Ebola | Reuters.

You Can’t Fight Rape With Nail Polish | Dame Magazine

You Can’t Fight Rape With Nail Polish | Dame Magazine.

Criminals hear that all women have rape fantasies, and that most will make up stories about rape for the flimsiest of reasons—to avoid anyone finding out they had consensual sex, or to punish a man for not calling, say—even though the actual incidence of false reporting is between 2 and 8 percent, similar to other crimes. They hear that there’s no way to know who’s telling the truth in a “he said/she said” situation, and if you can’t prove a man guilty, then he’s innocent.

They hear about their peers being accused of rape and still allowed to graduate from college, while the alleged victims drop out of school. They hear that most rapes are never reported, and of those, very few are prosecuted. About those, they usually hear “not guilty.”

Criminals do listen to what we, as a society, tell them—and what we tell rapists, time and again, is that we don’t take their crime seriously, so they can probably get away with it. If other young men out there earnestly want to prevent rape, they’d be better off talking to their peers about consent, calling out other guys who dehumanize women, and intervening when they see something that makes them uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there’s no prize money for being an engaged and compassionate person. Maybe if there were, we’d have a society where a woman could order a beer in public without feeling the need to perform a chemistry experiment for her own safety.

– See more at: http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/08/25/you-cant-fight-rape-nail-polish#sthash.DbFrlrqS.dpuf

TV Producer In Beverly Hills For Pre-Emmys Event Arrested For Being Tall, Bald And Black: LAist

Who is Charles Belk? He’s a college educated business man, who received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Carolina, then an MBA from Indiana University. He was a consultant for the NAACP, he worked on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, has worked at IBM and has been on the board of numerous film festivals. Here’s his IMDB. Among the long list of credentials he rattled off in his Facebook post, not one of them was “bank robber.”

What Belk says confuses him the most is why the footage from the bank was not reviewed until after multiple requests by Belk, six hours after he was detained and forced to sit on the curb. The footage showed that it was a different tall, bald, black man, and Belk was free to go.

“If it can happen to me,” Belk wrote, “it can happen to anyone. Time has come for a change in the way our law enforcement officers ‘serve and protect’ us. We all do not fit the description.”

via TV Producer In Beverly Hills For Pre-Emmys Event Arrested For Being Tall, Bald And Black: LAist.

Witness in Gaza: Daughter of Leveled Building’s Owner Tells Us Her Story · Global Voices

“They never gave any reason. The IDF is saying that there was a Hamas operations room in the building. That is a lie. There is a resident on the rooftop who is pro-Hamas, but the building did not host any Hamas Operations Room. In fact, most of the residents that lived in the building are from Fatah.

And even if we accepted their story that there was an apartment used by Hamas, why would they bomb and bring down the whole building? The IDF never brought down civilian buildings simply because it hosted Hamas members. We thought that the IDF only targeted specific targets rather than whole buildings. Whatever reason they made up or will make up would never justify destroying a building housing 44 families. They are now all homeless.”

via Witness in Gaza: Daughter of Leveled Building’s Owner Tells Us Her Story · Global Voices.

Over 300 Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants Condemn Israel’s ‘Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza’ · Global Voices

As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.

Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many hundreds of children. Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.

We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!

via Over 300 Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants Condemn Israel’s ‘Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza’ · Global Voices.

AFA Jumps the Shark: ‘ALS Challenge Kills Babies’ | Hatewatch

AFA spokesperson Bryan Fischer has been leading the way. In recent weeks on his radio program, Fischer has:

Declared it will be “the end of America” if Congress does not impeach President Obama.

Denounced anyone who uses the word “racist,” then insisted that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are “racists.”

Sided with radical Islamists in Iraq in calling Obama a “devil worshiper.”

Suggested on Twitter that accepting homosexuality leads to people to commit acts of necrophilia.

Said that LGBT people are inherently disqualified from holding public office.

Written an article in which he wonders if Robin Williams will go to heaven and insults Williams’s mother’s belief system (she was a Christian Scientist, Fischer says, and that is “a counterfeit form of religion that is neither Christian nor scientific”)

via AFA Jumps the Shark: ‘ALS Challenge Kills Babies’ | Hatewatch.