Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Self Assessment – normabobb

We have to find the time to look at what we are doing and assess whether it is working or not. What matters is continuous flow, not stagnation. We are in charge of our lives, no one else is.

© Norma Bobb-Semple 2024

 

Source: Self Assessment – normabobb

Dos mistérios das coisas – O Outro Lado

Vi um céu sem estrelas no mesmo dia em que uma sonda seguiu viagem rumo aos anéis de Saturno. A flor tão pequena ficou gigante diante da vida miúda. E a noite alguém falou sobre o mistério das coisas. Arranquei as ervas daninhas do quintal e começou de novo o processo de plantar. Lembrei -me da colheita e de como as sementes fazem diferença para colher as flores.

Mariana Gouveia

Source: Dos mistérios das coisas – O Outro Lado

Portrait of 15-Year-Old Mark Twain by GH Jones in 1850 ~ Vintage Everyday

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain (1835–1910), age 15 holding metal type in a composing stick that spells out his first name. He understood that the photographic printing process reversed the contents of an image in the same way backwards moveable type was reversed in printing to give clear copy.

Portrait of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain as a young man holding a printer’s composing stick with letters SAM, 1850.

Source: Portrait of 15-Year-Old Mark Twain by GH Jones in 1850 ~ Vintage Everyday

In Brazil, the intelligence services spied on over 300,000 citizens during the military dictatorship · Global Voices

…Created immediately after the 1964 coup d’état which led to 21 years of dictatorship in Brazil, the SNI quickly became the centre of a complex repressive apparatus put in place by the military. Established by Law No. 4,341 on June 13, 1964, the legally defined purpose of the agency was to “advise the President of the Republic” regarding information and counter-information activities.” In practice, SNI agents carried out all kinds of activities linked to political repression, participating in street operations and torture.

The institution was created by General Golbery do Couto e Silva, one of the main figures in the coup.

The historian Priscila Brandão, author of the book “SNI and Abin: A Reading of Brazilian Secret Services Throughout the Twentieth Century,” explains that the body expanded rapidly after its creation. “The SNI, like an octopus, spread throughout the State. Where it thought it needed to, it created a new agency, ” she explained.

Soon, the agency had a presence in civilian ministries, universities, and public companies and coordinated with the intelligence services of the three armed forces, the National Security Council, and the state-level security secretariats…

Source: In Brazil, the intelligence services spied on over 300,000 citizens during the military dictatorship · Global Voices

The New Humanitarian | ‘If we survive’: Palestinians in Rafah on fears of an imminent Israeli invasion

header-vox-pop-collage.jpg Mohamed Soulaimane/TNH

“We live in constant fear, day and night, of what our fate will be if this invasion occurs,” Maisaa Abu Samaan, a 35-year-old mother of six, told The New Humanitarian in a recent interview.

Abu Samaan is one of around 1.5 million Palestinains living in Rafah after being displaced from their homes by Israel’s nearly seven-month long military campaign. Earlier in the war, Israel ordered Palestinians to head to Rafah for their safety as it bombarded and then invaded the north of the enclave, causing massive destruction and high numbers of civilian casualties.

Rafah is also a key access point for humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Aid groups have warned that an Israeli invasion would almost certainly force the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings – the entry points for the vast majority of assistance that has been allowed to enter the enclave – to close.

Source: The New Humanitarian | ‘If we survive’: Palestinians in Rafah on fears of an imminent Israeli invasion