2018/12/16

CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free

Impunity is entrenched in 14 nations, according to CPJ's 2018 Global Impunity Index, which ranks states with the worst records of prosecuting the killers of journalists.


There were 251 journalists jailed for doing their jobs as of Dec. 1, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in an annual study. For the third consecutive year, more than half are in Turkey, China and Egypt, where authorities have accused reporters of anti-governmental activities

[The total does not take into account journalists who have disappeared or are being held by non-state actors. The CPJ said there are dozens of reporters missing or kidnapped in the Middle East and North Africa, including several held by Houthi rebels in Yemen.]

Murdered in Europe: Daphne Galizia (Malta), Kuciak and Kusnirova (Slovakia), Viktoria Marinova (Bulgaria).

Life in Deep Earth Totals 15 to 23 Billion Tonnes of Carbon—Hundreds of Times More than Humans

Barely living “zombie” bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth’s subsurface—245 to 385 times greater than the carbon mass of all humans on the surface, according to scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to reveal Earth’s innermost secrets.

2018/12/11

“Depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm”

whenever people feel stripped of freedom and opportunity, they instinctively challenge their government in order to reclaim control over their lives. “And if a government doesn’t value human life,” she said, “then they will do something to their people that the whole world will have to pay attention to.”

[The secret of Saudi is that they rely almost entirely on our governments -- to sell them weapons, buy their oil, and give them legitimacy. But the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- and the tragic death of Amal, a starving 7-year-old Yemeni girl whose picture appeared in the New York Times -- have those same governments wavering in their devoted support.]

We’re Asleep to Technology’s March & That’s Dangerous

the big tech companies are cornering the market that is humanity.

2018/12/10

Google has been working on a top secret project that will aid China’s oppression in Tibet

Named ‘Dragonfly’, the search engine will comply with Beijing’s notoriously repressive censorship regime. It will restrict or completely block searches for “human rights”, “democracy”, “Dalai Lama” and “Tibet”. 

"A very particular kind of people, with expensive perfumes and makeup, looking really expensive and unapproachable"


The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided

to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

2018/12/09

Allison Zuckerman: Jilted Lover


Warm ice in Mount Everest’s glaciers makes them more sensitive to climate change

Often when the topic of glaciers and climate change is discussed, focus shifts to those in Greenland and Antarctica. But there are glaciers elsewhere too, such as in the Himalayas, which play a vital part in supplying water to people who live downstream. Now, our research has found that these glaciers may react more sensitively to predicted future climate change than previously thought, which could lead to them melting at a faster rate.

2018/12/08

Aide to Mohammed bin Salman 'supervised torture of female prisoner'

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said last month at least three of the activists -- most of whom had agitated for the right to drive and an end to a male guardianship system -- were tortured

2018/12/07

Russian Weapons Maker To Build AI-Directed Guns

Russia’s willingness to embrace lethal autonomy stands in stark contrast to U.S. policy. In 2012, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter (later defense secretary) signed a directive forbidding the U.S. to allow any robot or machine to take lethal action without the supervision of a human operator.

The Russian repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Putin, according to Mueller, and told Cohen the meeting “could have a ‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well’”, because there was “no bigger warranty in any project than consent of Putin”.

2018/12/06

“What does the (m)Other want?”

The infant’s gradual formation of an ego as per the temporally elongated processes delineated in Lacan’s account of the mirror stage (see 2.2 above) is, in part, a response to this riddle (albeit in a broader sense, with the child constructing an ego-level identity informed by the perceived wants of Others in addition to the mother, such as the father).

Over 30 Journalists Murdered by Organized Crime Since 2017

“From Beijing to Moscow, from Tijuana to Bogotá, from Malta to Slovakia *, investigative journalists who shed light on the deals that involve organized crime unleash the wrath of gangsters, whose common feature is an aversion to any publicity unless they control it.”

* and Bulgaria

2018/12/05

Global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018

The rise is due to the growing number of cars on the roads and a renaissance of coal use and means the world remains on the track to catastrophic global warming. 

Run-off from this vast northern ice sheet – currently the biggest single source of meltwater adding to the volume of the world’s oceans – is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and increasing exponentially as a result of manmade global warming

2018/12/04

Ezra Pound's Cantos

Froula noted that the Cantos was "a verbal war against economic corruption, against literal wars, against materialism, against habits of mind that permit the perpetuation of political domination. It advocates economic reform as the basis of social and cultural reform, and it could not have held aloof from political reality."