May 2012
11 posts
An estimated 15,000 people marched in Chicago yesterday against the NATO warmakers’ summit, despite an overwhelming police presence and scare-mongering in the media.
The police, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the corporate media are working overtime to…
According to a recent investigation by the Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning, Sweden’s telecommunications giant Teliasonera is the latest Western company revealed to be colluding with authoritarian regimes by selling them high-tech surveillance gear to spy on its citizens. Teliasonera has allegedly enabled the governments of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan to spy on journalists, union leaders, and members of the political opposition. One Teliasonera whistle-blower told the reporters, “The Arab Spring prompted the regimes to tighten their surveillance. … There’s no limit to how much wiretapping is done, none at all.”
It’s been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.
The images were released in response to aFreedom of Information Act request that Greenpeace filed back in August 2010, asking for any communication related to endangered and threatened Gulf species. Now, many months later, Greenpeace received a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included more than 100 photos from the spill, including many of critically endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles dead and covered in oil.
Most photos are missing dates and descriptions, though the FOIA request covered the period of April 20, 2010, to July 30, 2010. But they’re pretty shocking—which is probably why they weren’t made public at the height of the spill. “It just makes me furious,” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist who works for Greenpeace. “I had so many conversations with people in various government agencies working on the Gulf spill, and I feel like they were hiding things from all of us.”
“The White House was sitting on this stuff for over two years, at the same time they were saying everything was fine, that the oil was gone, and while they were rushing ahead with plans for new drilling in the Gulf, the Arctic, elsewhere,” Hocevar continued. “It’s just not okay. This is not an acceptable type of collateral damage.”
Mother Jones has requested comment from NOAA but had not received a response at press time.
Jump below the fold to see some of the photos that have been kept under wraps for the past two years:
Click the hyperlink title of this post to see the grim toll for yourselves. It’s remarkable how quickly we’ve moved on from this disaster, even though its effects will be felt for generations.
Cohort size matters: democracy is in danger as young people’s disenfranchisement accelerates
(via rumagin)
understatement of the week? who writes this shit? have they ever been out of their office? democracy? where?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?
(via theyoungradical)
What he wrote^
(Bolded for emphasis.)