Society's Child
Do you believe water is a basic human right? According to Nestlé CEO water is a foodstuff that should be privatized, not a human right. Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck says that with the global population rising water is not a public right, but a resource that should be managed by businessmen. Please do share your thoughts.
© Reuters/Eurokinissi
Bangladeshi workers receive first aid at the Medical Center of Varda near the southwestern Greek town of Manolada April 17, 2013, following a shooting incident.
Bangladeshi workers receive first aid at the Medical Center of Varda near the southwestern Greek town of Manolada April 17, 2013, following a shooting incident.
Officials have promised "swift and exemplary" punishment for the three foremen who disappeared after the incident that took place on April, 17 in Nea Manolada, about 260km (160 miles) west of Athens.
So far police arrested the owner of the farm, in the rural south of the country and a local man on suspicion of hiding the three foremen.
The violence allegedly occurred when one of the supervisors opened fire on a crowd of about 200 foreign workers gathered to request their unpaid salaries.
According to one of the immigrants, they were promised wages of 22 euros ($28.70) a day.
"They keep telling us that we will get paid in a month, and this has been going on for more than a year," Reuters quoted a man who refused to be identified.
Comment: Expect to see more episodes of modern slavery and brutal treatment of workers as the economic crisis worsens in several countries.
© Reuters/Saad Shalash
The city of Baghdad.
The city of Baghdad.
No one claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack so far, however, Al Qaeda's Iraq branch has shown an increase in suicide-attack activity since the start of 2013 in what is seen as an attempt to ratchet up widespread tensions between the country's Shia and Sunni Muslims.
It has only been four days since a series of bombings had taken 55 lives and injured 300 across the country. All of this takes place as Iraqis prepare to head for the polls on April 20 to hold provincial elections - their first since the withdrawal of US troops, following a decade-long occupation of the country.
Comment: The mainstream media has been parroting for years the idea that the so-called branch of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is seeking to divide the country. This is a nonsensical explanation, as the existence of such a branch is a mere assumption, and no one has more to benefit from a weakened and divided Iraq than the US, Israel and their allies. If there is such a branch of Al Qaeda, it is putting a lot of effort into doing the job of the global bullies.
Esther Irene Stokes - Northwest Preparatory Academy Charter School
According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Houston Chronicle, the 7-year-old girl said that 61-year-old Esther Irene Stokes sent all of the other students out of the room on March 1 and then touched her "private part" on the outside of her clothes.
© Siesfund Org
According to them, the pygmies sport dreadlocks, measure no more than 50 centimeters tall and do not wear any clothing.
"A number of rangers claim the pygmies grow their dreadlocks down to their waist. The first sighting by the rangers was on March 17 at 6:40 p.m. local time," said TNWK spokesman Sukatmoko.
He added that several rangers patrolling the park claimed the pygmies were seen moving to the PT Nusantara Tropical Fruit (NTF) plantation. They were seen running from the TNWK forest to the plantation.
"Apparently, many fruit trees, such as banana, guava and dragon fruit, are grown in the NTF plantation area. If the pygmies like fruit, they might have entered the plantation for food," said Sukatmoko.
Forest rangers have secured a number of points at the border between TNWK and PT NTF, concerned that the safety of the pygmies is at stake due to the presence of many workers at the plantation.
"We will try to anticipate the situation with the help of local residents and PT NTF employees. If they come across the pygmies, they should not harm them," he said.
Sukatmoko said that based on information conveyed by forest rangers, the group of pygmies consisted of around 15 individuals. When the rangers spotted them, the pygmies, believed to be an isolated group of people, were walking through a swamp.
© Henryk Sadura / Shutterstock
Wrigley Field in Chicago, Ill., home of the Chicago Cubs.
Wrigley Field in Chicago, Ill., home of the Chicago Cubs.
Officials are investigating whether the headless goat is connected to the goat head delivered to Wrigley Field last week.
Who would send a severed goat head to Wrigley Stadium? A confused Satanist? An angry mobster trying to send a threat but unable to find a horse?
No, it is a response to a supposed "Billy Goat" curse that dates back to 1945 when a man named Bill "Billy Goat" Sianis had a pet goat (named Murphy) that was refused entry to a Cubs game. Offended by the affront, according to legend he cursed the club with the words, "The Cubs ain't gonna win no more!"
Sure enough, the Cubs lost the next game and have not won a World Series in over a century despite many fan attempts over the years to lift the curse (some of them involving goats). While some regard the curse as merely a silly superstition, many longtime fans take it very seriously.
© AP Photo/Charles Krupa
A rack of AR-15 rifles stand to be individually packaged as workers move a pallet of rifles for shipment at the Stag Arms company in New Britain, Conn., Wednesday, April 10, 2013.
A rack of AR-15 rifles stand to be individually packaged as workers move a pallet of rifles for shipment at the Stag Arms company in New Britain, Conn., Wednesday, April 10, 2013.
In its poll from Apr. 4-7, Gallup surveyed 1,005 adults by telephone and asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?"
Starving orphans in North Korea
"One of his strongest thoughts is ... if he didn't take steps to leave North Korea, he would've become a North Korean who ate human flesh," an interpreter for Mr Jeong told news.com.au.
The thought that he would have to one day eat a fellow human being is what drove Mr Jeong to leave his homeland behind and to escape to Sydney in March 2011.
It is not the first time reports of cannibalism have emerged from the secretive state.
Fears that famine-stricken North Koreans are being forced to eat human flesh heightened earlier this year following claims a man was executed for murdering his two children for food.
"While his wife was away on business he killed his eldest daughter and, because his son saw what he had done, he killed his son as well. When the wife came home, he offered her food, saying: 'We have meat,'" a source told The Independent.
© Vice.com
Well, few people knew about this bit of history either until author Nick Turse discovered it in secret US military archives, which he used as the primary sources for his new(ish) book, Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
The book is based on Turse's discovery of theretofore secret internal military investigations of US-perpetrated atrocities alongside extensive reporting in Vietnam and among American veterans, and it reminds us that the most significant fact about the Vietnam War is its most overlooked: massive and devastating Vietnamese civilian suffering.
The debate over the US's war in Vietnam continues to hang over this country's most recent and techno-futuristic imperial adventures. Nick's book makes for timely if extraordinarily painful reading, and I sat down with him recently to talk about the ongoing relevance of Vietnam, massacres, and secretly photocopying whole US government archives.
Heartbreaking daylight images have revealed the extent of the devastation inflicted on the small community of West, Texas when a fertilizer plant exploded on Wednesday night, killing as many as 15 people - including three or four volunteer firefighters - and injuring hundreds more. The blast, which was felt 50 miles away and registered as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake, destroyed as many as 75 homes and buildings, leveled an apartment complex, forced a nursing home to evacuate its residents and blanketed the area in a cloud of toxic fumes.
The missing volunteer firefighters were attending a blaze at the plant at 7.50pm local time when it suddenly exploded into a fireball - thought to be caused by dangerous anhydrous ammonia igniting in the heat of the fire. Some witnesses likened the explosion and damage to that of an atomic bomb.
As many as 179 people have been treated for injuries in hospitals, but Sergeant W. Patrick Swanton from Waco's police department warned that he expects the total number of deaths and injuries to rise as emergency teams conduct a proper search. Today, as the dust settles on the small community of 2,800 people, photographs reveal decimated homes, debris-strewn roads and a massive charred crater where the West Fertilizer Co. once stood.
The missing volunteer firefighters were attending a blaze at the plant at 7.50pm local time when it suddenly exploded into a fireball - thought to be caused by dangerous anhydrous ammonia igniting in the heat of the fire. Some witnesses likened the explosion and damage to that of an atomic bomb.
As many as 179 people have been treated for injuries in hospitals, but Sergeant W. Patrick Swanton from Waco's police department warned that he expects the total number of deaths and injuries to rise as emergency teams conduct a proper search. Today, as the dust settles on the small community of 2,800 people, photographs reveal decimated homes, debris-strewn roads and a massive charred crater where the West Fertilizer Co. once stood.
© AP
Comment: A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Various privatization abuser failures occurred in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. This is because water corporations are primarily accountable to their stockholders, not to the people they serve, they will avoid serving low-income communities where bill collection might be an issue and because of the risk to profits, there is less incentive to maintain infrastructure.
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