Category Archives: Fail!

Iranian reporter sentenced to two years in prison and fifty lashes | World | The Guardian

An Iranian journalist has been sentenced to 50 lashes and two years in prison over charges of spreading anti-government propaganda in the latest incident of Iran’s crackdown on the independent media.

Marzieh Rasouli reported to Evin prison in Tehran on Tuesday, where she became the latest of dozens of journalists imprisoned by the Islamic republic, which has been branded as one of the world’s worst jailer of journalists by the New York Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

via Iranian reporter sentenced to two years in prison and fifty lashes | World | The Guardian.

UN: 50 new Ebola cases in 2 African countries since last week, deadly virus still spreading

The U.N. health agency says there have been 50 new Ebola cases in Sierra Leone and Liberia since last week as the disease, among the deadliest in the world, keeps spreading in West Africa.

The World Health Organization says 34 new cases were reported by Sierra Leone and 16 by Liberia since July 3.

WHO officials said in a statement Tuesday the outbreak in those two countries and Guinea shows “a mixed picture” because of a reduction in the number of new cases in Guinea, where no new cases have been reported during the past week.

The agency says as of Sunday, there have been 844 cases of Ebola in the three countries, including 518 deaths.

via UN: 50 new Ebola cases in 2 African countries since last week, deadly virus still spreading.

Loyalty of oil producers? To Profit$, not America – Qatar and Exxon Mobil seek LNG exporting through Houston company Golden Pass Products – Houston Business Journal

A final investment decision is expected in 2015, after which Golden Pass Products would invest approximately $10 billion over five years to build the proposed facility. Golden Pass claims the effort would create about 45,000 direct and indirect jobs across the nation during the construction phase.

The company also is awaiting Department of Energy authorization for export to non-free trade agreement nations in Asia and Europe.

via Qatar and Exxon Mobil seek LNG exporting through Houston company Golden Pass Products – Houston Business Journal.

82 shot, 14 fatally, in Chicago over July 4th – chicagotribune.com

It was just one of dozens of shooting scenes across Chicago over the long Fourth of July weekend. In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.

Five of the people were shot by police over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, including two boys 14 and 16 who were killed when they allegedly refused to drop their guns.

Many of the long weekend’s shootings were on the South Side, clustered in the Englewood, Roseland, Gresham and West Pullman neighborhoods that rank among the most violent in the city.

The victims ranged from the 14-year-boy shot by police in the Old Irving Park neighborhood to a 66-year-old woman grazed in the head as she walked up the steps of her porch on the Far South Side.  Most victims were in their late teens and 20s.

via 82 shot, 14 fatally, in Chicago over July 4th – chicagotribune.com.

ADM Buys Wild Flavors

“We intend to maintain the Wild Flavors name and grow the brand and the innovative, entrepreneurial culture that sustains it,” said Woertz. “We appreciate the difference in our business models, and will support continued success of the Wild Flavors model by establishing a new business unit called Wild Flavors and Specialty Ingredients. The new unit will include many of our specialty ingredients.”

via ADM Buys Wild Flavors.

Translation: GMO and artificial ingredients will soon be added and with no labeling requirements – who will be the wiser?

Soylant Green is People! Consumer Reports survey ranks McDonald’s McGriddle above Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco – Louisville – Business First

Three out of three taste testers concurred: Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco doesn’t tickle taste buds like a McDonald’s McGriddle breakfast sandwich.

Consumer Reports, a Yonkers, N.Y.-based nonprofit that reviews consumer products, decided to have some fun this year while compiling stories and information related to its fast-food restaurant chain survey released this month. The survey ranked 65 fast-food chains using more than 96,000 of its subscribers’ dining experiences.

via Consumer Reports survey ranks McDonald’s McGriddle above Taco Bell’s Waffle Taco – Louisville – Business First.

Same Interest as Facebook – Manipulate Your Thoughts and Actions for Profit and maybe a Little Good! Participant Index Seeks to Determine Why One Film Spurs Activism, While Others Falter – NYTimes.com

Participant, created in 2004 by the eBay co-founder Jeffrey S. Skoll, is using that methodology to build a proprietary database. It will feature three echelons with 35 projects each, or about 100 distinct bits of media, annually.

The company will lean heavily toward films and television shows of its own, especially those carried on its activism-driven online and pay-television network, Pivot. But it will also index properties for partners, like the Gates and Kaiser Family foundations, and for companies or others who will pay a fee.

Participant was created in 2004 by the eBay co-founder Jeffrey S. Skoll, left, pictured here with James G. Berk, chief executive. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times

(Prices have not been set, Mr. Berk said, but he expects to serve nonprofits at cost. He declined to say how much Participant has invested in the index.)

In an inaugural general survey, which polled 1,055 of its viewers in March and April of this year, Chad Boettcher, Participant’s executive vice president for social action, and Caty Borum Chattoo, a researcher and communications professor at American University, found some perhaps surprising results.

Even among the presumably progressive Participant audience, crime ranked near the top of the list of 40 primary concerns. It was cited by 73 percent of respondents as an important social issue, placing it just behind human rights, health care and education.

Gay rights, female empowerment and prison sentencing reform, by contrast, ranked near the bottom of the list, while climate change was stuck in the middle, a concern among 59 percent of respondents. Digital intellectual property issues, at 38 percent, brought up the rear.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story

Stories about animal rights and food production, it turned out, were the most likely to provoke individual action. But tales about economic inequality — not so much.

Over all, said Marc Karzen, a social media entrepreneur whose company, RelishMix, advises film and television marketers, Participant will most likely affirm what is becoming clear to conventional film studios: Impact can be less about persuasion than nudging an audience to go where it is already pointed.

“You have to embrace your fans, not shout at them,” Mr. Karzen said. “They need to be inspired to spread the word.”

One of the weirdest problems in measuring social impact, and one still unresolved, Mr. Boettcher said, is the paradox of “The Cove.”

That documentary, which looks closely at dolphin killing in Japan, had worldwide ticket sales of just $1.2 million after its release in 2009. Yet it has repeatedly led to campaigns to protect the Japanese dolphins, Mr. Boettcher notes, particularly among activists who are aware of the film but will not watch (and hence, would not be counted under the current methodology of the index) because of its gory content.

“They don’t want to see it,” Mr. Boettcher said, “but they will sign up.”

via Participant Index Seeks to Determine Why One Film Spurs Activism, While Others Falter – NYTimes.com.

 

Is it a documentary or propaganda – the folks who want to profit from your feelings don’t care – they just care about the money!

We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse By Cutting Down Forests | Mother Jones

Human activity is driving bats to find new habitats amongst human populations. More than half of Liberia’s forests—home to 40 endangered species, including the western chimpanzee—have been sold off to industrial loggers during President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s post-war government, according to figures released by Global Witness. Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, and chopping down trees for an increased demand for fire wood, are all driving deforestation in Sierra Leone, where total forest cover has now dropped to just 4 percent, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) which says if deforestation continues at current levels, Sierra Leone’s forests could disappear altogether by 2018.

“We see deforestation or incursion into forests, whether it’s through hunting or just alteration of landscape, causing people and wildlife to have more contact,” says Epstein.

Mining

The 1994 outbreak of Ebola, which killed 31 people, occurred in gold mining camps deep in the rain forest.

The 1994 outbreak of Ebola, which killed 31 people, occurred in gold mining camps deep in the rain forest. Mining also appears to be a feature of this latest outbreak: Its epicenter is in the south east of Guinea, close to iron ore reserves, according to Reuters.

Mining “has become a big livelihood activity across the regions, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, as of the last couple of decades,” says Leach. And that means more mines in the forest, but also “immense movement: people going seasonally in and out of mines, coming in and out, young people coming from all over the country.” Guinea is the world’s top exporter of bauxite, the raw material used in aluminum production, according to Reuters.

“That whole sense of movement is something that means that a disease, an outbreak, once established in a place, is very likely not to stay in that place; it tends to move quite quickly,” Leach says.

via We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse By Cutting Down Forests | Mother Jones.

 

(And it is not just Ebola that breaks out as a result of deforestation – malaria’s, and denge’s expansion is facilitated by deforestation which creates the perfect breed grounds for the mosquito that carries the deadly and more common diseases)

Avian Flu Diary: Despite Crackdown, `Wild Flavor’ Trade Continues In China

A similar concern has been raised in the Middle East, where the consumption of camel products (meat, milk, etc.) has been suggested as being a possible route of MERS-CoV infection in humans (see WHO Update On MERS-CoV Transmission Risks From Animals To Humans).

 

And just last Friday, Reuters reported on an illegal slaughtering operation with tragic results (see Five people hospitalized for suspected anthrax infection in Hungary).

 

Last month, in `Carrion’ Luggage & Other Ways To Import Exotic Diseases, we looked at the extensive international smuggling of bushmeat, and exotic animals, which are also potential routes of zoonotic disease introduction and spread.

 

Beyond SARS, and Ebola, and MERS, a few other zoonotic diseases of concern include Hendra, Nipah, Monkeypox, a variety of avian influenzas, other coronaviruses, various hemorrhagic fevers, many variations of SIV (Simian immunodeficiency virus), and of course . . .  Virus X.

 

The one we don’t know about.  Yet.

via Avian Flu Diary: Despite Crackdown, `Wild Flavor’ Trade Continues In China.

ISIS chief orders Muslims to ‘obey’ him: video | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

{Self-delusion is very comforting to the one who deludes himself – but can be devastating to those who laugh or oppose the delusion}

“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, wearing a black turban and robe.

“If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you.”

AFP was not immediately able to confirm the authenticity of the video purportedly showing Baghdadi, of whom there were previously only two known photographs.

The video is the first ever official appearance by Baghdadi, according to Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on Islamist movements, though the jihadist leader may have appeared in a 2008 video under a different name.

“God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience… so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge,” he said.

“This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries,” he added, sporting a long and slightly greying beard, as he addressed the faithful from the mosque’s pulpit.

via ISIS chief orders Muslims to ‘obey’ him: video | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.