An undercover investigator for the animal protection nonprofit Compassion Over Killing is being charged with animal cruelty for filming animal abuse of newborn calves in Colorado.

Taylor Radig worked at Quanah Cattle Co. in Kersey, Colorado, and covertly filmed calves, some so young they still had umbilical cords attached, being kicked, thrown, and slammed onto trucks. Video footage was released by the group on November 13th, and on November 15th criminal charges were filed against three men shown abusing the animals.

At the time, Sherriff John Cooke said "We still have work to do. We want to make sure we have identified all the suspects and all the parties to determine if we need to make other arrests."

Today the Sherriff's department announced additional charges were filed against the young woman who filmed the abuse and turned over the footage to the police.

In a press release, the police admit as much: "The video footage was eventually provided to law enforcement by representatives of Compassion Over Killing approximately 2 months after Radig's employment ended with Quanah Cattle Company... Radig's failure to report the alleged abuse of the animals in a timely manner adheres to the definition of acting with negligence and substantiates the charge Animal Cruelty." Radig is also accused of participating in the abuse.

Compassion Over Killing said in a statement that the prosecution is retaliatory: "The charge against our investigator is unsupported by the law and it reeks of political motivation fueled by an agribusiness industry that is once again lashing out in desperation to stop undercover investigators from exposing the truth."

The prosecution of a whistleblower who exposed animal cruelty in this way is unprecedented.

What we know about poverty is often academic. It's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that.

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.

Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full courseload, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 1230AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.

When I was pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel for some time. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.

I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.

China has established an " Air Defence Identification Zone" over a group of islands subject to a territorial dispute with Japan that has strained relations between the two powers for months.

China's defence ministry has threatened "defensive emergency measures" against aircrafts flying over the area in the East China Sea who do not comply with the new rules, in a move that is likely to greatly anger Japan.

The defence zone, which came into effect on Saturday morning, means any aircraft entering the airspace must report flight plans to Chinese authorities, maintain radio contact and reply promptly to identification inquiries.

Although the islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are uninhabited, they are believed to be surrounded by energy-rich waters. The long standing dispute, tensions over which have recently been raised, is also seen as a subject of national pride.

The number of victims in the collapse of a superstore in Latvia's capital Riga rose to 52, the European country's state rescue service said Saturday.

The search for bodies was put on hold Saturday because the still unexamined 300 square meters of rubble were unstable and posed danger for rescuers, a police spokeswoman said.

Riga Mayor Nils Usakovs tweeted late Friday that at least five more people could still be under the ruins. He put the figure at 30 earlier the same day.

Usakovs dismissed reports about 13 survivors pending rescue one of whom, according to rumors on Latvian social media, managed to place a call to police from under the rubble.

The red-bellied black snake managed to get onto the car's windscreen while it was doing 70km/h


Forget I'm a Celebrity and the controlled creepy crawlies contestants come up against in the jungle, here is a video of a snake on the windscreen a car driving along a three-lane road in Australia.

The excited Ben Lehmann posted on his Facebook page: "So went for a game of golf at Carbrook today. Twenty minutes into the drive home, this happens. You wont believe it. Excuse the swearing!"

He posted the video on Youtube with the description: "Driving down a 3 lane road at 70 km/hr, when this little fella pops his head up and says G'day. Excuse the swearing. I got a little excited."

Then uploaded a second video "PART 2 of the video where the snake tries to get into the ute.

"Again, excuse the swearing. Not as much excitement in this one though. Enjoy"

While most Americans think of poverty in material terms, said the senate's lone independent, its effects were more insidious and long-lasting.

The U.S. Senate subcommittee on primary health and aging met Wednesday morning to discuss the effects of poverty and stress on children, communities and health in America.

"Stress and poverty, wondering how I'm going to feed my family tomorrow, pay my bills get the income I need to survive, takes a toll on human life," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Recent studies have shown that stress caused by poverty can influence brain development in children and lay the groundwork for physical health problems that show up later in life.

"Lack of choice and the increased stress that low-income people experience increases their level of cortisol (the primary stress hormone), and we know that higher levels of cortisol are correlated with cardiovascular disorders and other chronic illnesses, including diabetes," said Michael Reisch, a professor of social justice at the University of Maryland.

© Tanya Patrice/FlickrSabra hummus

Buying products like SodaStream machines helps fuel Israel's control over Palestinians.

When tax time rolls around each year, every American citizen gives $21.59 in military aid to Israel, according to the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation. But that's not the only way American citizens contribute to the Israeli military, which has occupied Palestinian land for 46 years, and the West Bank settlement project that accompanies the occupation.

Consumers may not know it, but buying products like Sabra hummus and Sodastream helps fuel Israel's military control over Palestinians. Some companies have factories located in one of the 125 officially recognized settlements in occupied Palestine, which are illegal under international law. Other companies contribute to the maintenance of an occupation through cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose main goal is to protect illegal settlements and exercise dominion over the lives of millions of Palestinians. Buying these products gives profits to companies who exploit Palestinian land and resources.

Here are six consumer products and companies that help keep the Israeli occupation rolling along. All of them have been targeted by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a Palestinian-led international campaign to isolate Israel for its violations of international law. BDS groups have called on consumers to boycott these products as a way of sending an economic signal to Israel.

1. Sodastream

This soda-making company is ubiquitous nowadays. Sodastream products, which turn water into sparkling water and other flavored drinks, have been incredibly successful in the U.S. According to CNN, sales of their products have skyrocketed, with the company bringing in $436 million in 2012, a 51% increase from the previous year. The company, which was bought by an Israeli company that eventually sold it to a private equity firm, has touted itself an environmentally friendly company

But the less-progressive side of Sodastream lies in the location of its factory. The main facility where Sodastream products are made is in the industrial settlement area of Mishor Adumim, which is right outside Jerusalem and even closer to the mega-settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. Mishor Adumim serves Ma'ale Adumim by providing the settlement with employment for Israelis and business for nearby Israeli companies.

Sodastream claims it's not violating international law by operating in a settlement because its factory benefits the local population of Palestinians. It's true that Sodastream employs Palestinian laborers. But according to Who Profits?, an Israeli-based organization that tracks occupation profiteers, "the workers in the SodaStream factory suffer from harsh working conditions." Palestinian workers are seen as a cheap labor force to be exploited, and have complained that when they protest for better wages, they are fired.

By bolstering Ma'ale Adumin, Sodastream's factory in Mishor Adumim contributes to the death of any chance for a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Ma'ale Adumim was strategically built as a settlement that cuts off easy access between Ramallah and Bethlehem, two important cities in the West Bank.

For those who love Sodastream but are looking for an alternative, have no fear. A number of similar products allow consumers to make their own bubbly water without giving money to a company operating on occupied land. The alternatives include Cuisinart's beverage maker and a company named SodaSparkle.

Earl Sampson has been stopped and questioned by Miami Gardens police 258 times in four years. He's been searched more than 100 times. And arrested and jailed 56 times.

Despite his long rap sheet, Sampson, 28, has never been convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana. Miami Gardens police have arrested Sampson 62 times for one offense: trespassing.

Almost every citation was issued at the same place: the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store on 207th Street in Miami Gardens. But Sampson isn't loitering. He works as a clerk at the Quickstop.

So how can he be trespassing when he works there?

It's a question the store's owner, Alex Saleh, 36, has been asking for more than a year as he watched Sampson, his other employees and his customers, day after day, being stopped and frisked by Miami Gardens police. Most of them, like Sampson, are poor and black.

"Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?" the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay "The Idea Is the Thing." "If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them."

Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public's imagination.

Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of the citizenry, along with the abject failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt peonage that is crippling more than half of Americans, and the loss of hope and widespread despair, means that blowback is inevitable.

"People across the country are starting to see the real Walmart," said Q Knapp, a Texas Walmart worker who went on strike Wednesday. "And that's why I will continue to stand up because the time for change is now."

Indeed. If there were ever a time to make change at the nation's largest private employer, it's now. Walmart's overwhelming contempt for workers, expressed through its continued low wages and poor benefits, its retaliation against workers who organize, and its sole goal of profit - even pushing Black Friday deals up two hours to begin on 6pm Thanksgiving Day - has caused outrage. The outcry against Walmart's working conditions has been quickly picking up steam, becoming a national topic of conversation right in time for the 1,500 Black Friday protests scheduled across the country, where people will rally in front of stores to demand respect and fair treatment.

Knapp, who has worked at Walmart for 19 years, said she went on strike because she was "tired of being disrespected." She said that when her brother went to the hospital after having a heart attack, she received Walmart's approval to spend time in the hospital with him. But when she returned to work, she was disciplined for being absent. Knapp said she has also witnessed a fellow coworker get terminated after fighting for better working conditions.

"Walmart is a bully, and the only way to fight back against a bully is to speak up," Knapp said. "The message to Walmart is simple: we will not be silent."

And they haven't been. The workers are making a lot of noise and sparking a nationwide dialogue. Here are seven signs that their actions are turning the tide on workers' rights.