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POPSWe broke the law, admits CIA agent convicted of rendition One of the Americans convicted in absentia by an Italian court for her part in the 2003 abduction of a Muslim cleric by CIA operatives has acknowledged they "broke the law" and complained she was given insufficient protection by her superiors in Washington.
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POPSState’s high court dismisses juvenile convictions Is there any segment of the judicial system that can be trusted? I’m willing to bet this is not the only judge who uses the judicial system to line his pockets. We have been taught to trust the police, trust the judges and this is what we learn of real life. This society is going to hell too damned fast.
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POPSChild Witches
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo nearly 50,000 children live on the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, because they were accused of witchcraft and rejected by their families. In Nigeria, the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network reports that nearly 25,000 children have been abandoned or persecuted on the belief they were witches or wizards. Organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, Africa Unite Against Child Abuse, and Save the Children have stepped in where they could to stop the witch-hunt. But the phenomenon of “witch children” is so widespread throughout Africa these organizations have set up “witch camps” as shelters for children who cannot be safely placed with a relative. Throughout history, people described as witches have been tortured, persecuted, and even murdered. And it is usually society’s most vulnerable who are targeted. With the HIV/AIDS epidemic leaving many children orphaned, and rampant poverty ensuing from crop failure and decade-
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POPSThe only thing certain is nothing is certain. Michel de Montaigne, an influential writer of the French Renaissance, is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre, merging serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, including Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Stefan Zweig, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Isaac Asimov, Eric Hoffer, and perhaps William Shakespeare. Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, 'Que sais-je?' ('What do I know?'). Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly — his own judgment — makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance.
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POPSWhat is "rape culture"?
Click through for the whole thing. More: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality… Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms." Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch")… Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements.
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POPS(satire) 10 things I'd rather do than get a Swine Flu vaccine shot #5) Base jump off a tall building with nothing more than a parachute made under the same quality control oversight as FDA-approved swine flu vaccines. #6) Be subjected to forced chemotherapy at gunpoint, just like all the other U.S. teens who are kidnapped by state authorities and forcibly injected with chemo. #7) Have all the superfoods in my pantry secretly replaced with MSG-laced processed food products made by Frito-Lay. #8) Work as a biological hazards disposal volunteer in the "superbug ward" of a local hospital. #9) Drink diet soda until my brain explodes from the aspartame exposure. #10) Get a public relations job at the White House where my sole responsibility is to show the brain-numbed masses how to stupidly sneeze into their own shirt sleeves.
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POPSSlavery Today During the four years that Benjamin Skinner researched modern-day slavery, he posed as a buyer at illegal brothels on several continents, interviewed convicted human traffickers in a Romanian prison and endured giardia, malaria, dengue and a bad motorcycle accident. But Skinner is most haunted by his experience in a brothel in Bucharest, Romania, where he was offered a young woman with Down syndrome in exchange for a used car.
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POPSLiving with the Wall: Berlin 1961-1989 " The fourth-generation wall was constructed from 45,000 sections of reinforced concrete, each 3.6 metres high, at a cost of around $3.6 million. The top of the wall was lined with a smooth pipe to make it more difficult to scale, while it was further strengthened by mesh fencing, trenches, barbed wire, 116 watchtowers and 20 bunkers. The heavily-guarded "no-man's land" between the wall and West Berlin would become known as the "Death Strip". Around 200 people are believed to have died trying to escape East Berlin."
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POPSDo You Want to Believe? New research indicates that in situations in which a person is not in control, they're more likely to spot patterns where none exist, see illusions, and believe in conspiracy theories
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POPS Murder of Natalia Estemirova ;Will Russia punish the killers? Natasha was well known outside Russia as someone who sought justice and accountability for abuses by all sides to the conflict in Chechnya. We honored her with the Human Rights Watch Defender Award in 2007. Natasha had also been honored by various European institutions: In 2005 she received the European Parliament's Robert Shuman medal and in 2004 was awarded the "Right to Life" award by the Swedish Parliament. She also was the first recipient of the Anna Politkovskaya prize -- named for the journalist who met the same fate. While the international community applauded her work, the Chechen authorities were not as pleased. She risked, and lost, her life for her cause. We are planning a concerted response to ensure that Russia does not let this crime go uninvestigated or forgotten.Shared sentiment with chara and thnx... www.hrw.org
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POPSSelf-help mantras may not always be helpful There are more than 45,000 titles on Amazon that claim they can help us realise our ambitions and desires: riches, career status, an adoring husband, sexual success, and a slim body. Like Self Help they can be punishing in their judgements: if we fail to achieve, it is our fault.
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POPSUK migrant woodland bird species are disappearing Over the period studied, 17 species showed significant decreases in abundance and 12 species showed significant increases. Whilst population trajectories were diverse, long-distance migrants showed more negative trends than other species and the timing of the changes in their populations was related to their wintering latitude, suggesting that these species may be suffering from environmental changes in the non-breeding season. There was also support for habitat specializations being related to population changes. Additionally, species eating seeds in summer declined and those eating vegetation and making use of the agricultural landscape matrix increased. Therefore wide-scale factors such as landscape-scale processes or processes operating outside of Britain appear to be important in addition to local habitat change, especially for long-distance migrants.
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POPSRunning the Numbers – An American Self-Portrait There’s more on the site. The first three photos show 2 million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. The second three photos depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006. The visualization of our consumption is much more impactful than numbers that many of us simply cannot comprehend. We are extracting raw materials from the earth at an increasing rate every day and returning it back to the earth, via landfills and the side of the road, in a form that cannot be re-used by the planet. We can re-use it if it would only re-cycle it properly. But how many of us actually follow through on re-cycling? Again, mere numbers don’t have the impact to get people to do it. Maybe these images will be helpful.
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POPSClowns pwn Nazi/KKK rally - Awesome! Truly brilliant. "Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns. http://www.volunteertv.com/home/headlines/7704982.html"
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