Category: In The News

Gang crackdown, lurid mob trials transfix China

Over the past 30 years, the economic boom caused by free-market reforms forced the Communist Party to withdraw from many areas it formerly controlled, clearing the way for new gangs to emerge and conspire with officials who held bureaucratic power but were poorly paid.

Gangs started out in traditional rackets — drug trafficking, smuggling luxury cars and extortion — in the 1980s. As China’s economy evolved, they moved on to loan-sharking and evicting tenants from land for real estate development. Tax reform in the mid-1990s sent revenue to Beijing at the expense of local governments, making local officials and police eager to cash in on the money-making opportunities offered by gangs.

The leadership now sees the link between endemic corruption and organized crime — or “black societies” in Chinese — as a threat to its very existence, diminishing the party’s already-low popularity.

via The Associated Press: Gang crackdown, lurid mob trials transfix China.

Teen Lotto Winner Blows $3.1 million

Callie Rogers, from Cockermouth in Cumbria, pictured with her chTeenage lottery winner Callie Rogers has confessed to blowing £250,000 on cocaine and said she should never have been allowed to spend her fortune at such a young age. Miss Rogers, 22, scooped £1.9million when she hit the jackpot in 2003 at the age of 16 and went on a never-ending spending spree.

In a frank interview she told how her drug addict boyfriend Nicky Lawson got her hooked on cocaine too and she wasted a fortune on the drug. The former shop assistant believes she shouldn’t have had access to her winnings until she was old enough to deal with her wealth sensibly.

via How teen Lotto winner Callie blew her £2m fortune – including £250,000 on cocaine | Mail Online.

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U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE

The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months.

Veloz had to prove his citizenship from behind bars. An aunt helped him track down his father’s birth certificate and his own, his parents’ marriage certificate, his father’s school, military and Social Security records.

After nine months, a judge determined that he was a citizen, but immigration authorities appealed the decision. He was detained for five more months before he found legal help and a judge ordered his case dropped. “It was a nightmare,” said Veloz, 37, a Los Angeles air conditioning installer.

via U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE.

Iran’s Fascist Coup

The economic role of the Revolutionary Guards has been much remarked on in recent years. The Guards themselves and companies run by the Guards have won major contracts in every corner of the economy, from airport construction to telecommunications to auto manufacturing. They have also allied themselves with some of the most conservative clerics, who view the revolutionary government not as an alliance of Islam and the people but as divinely ordained rule by a philosopher king who is to be regarded as absolute in his judgments—political as well as theological.

These elements combine to form an impenetrable core that arrogates to itself all authority in the Islamic republic. This is a formula for the kind of militarized and nationalist corporate state under a single controlling ideology that is not dissimilar to fascist rule in an earlier day. Like fascism, it defines itself not only in terms of its own objectives but even moreso by what it opposes: liberalism, individualism, unfettered capitalism, etc

via The Thugs Who Lead Iran’s Supreme Leader –  The Daily Beast.

How The News Gets Out Of Iran

“Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.”

This is something of great value to our friends in Iran.

Tor from Iran Traffic Get Tor & Help Iranian Freedom
(all found at https://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en)

Twitter Drives Iranian Revolt

twitterAs the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message.

The key force behind this is the next generation, the Millennials, who elected Obama in America and may oust Ahmadinejad in Iran. They want freedom; they are sick of lies; they enjoy life and know hope.

This generation will determine if the world can avoid the apocalypse that will come if the fear-ridden establishments continue to dominate global politics, motivated by terror, armed with nukes, and playing old but now far too dangerous games. This generation will not bypass existing institutions and methods: look at the record turnout in Iran and the massive mobilization of the young and minority vote in the US. But they will use technology to displace old modes and orders. Maybe this revolt will be crushed. But even if it is, the genie has escaped this Islamist bottle.

Maybe that’s what we’re hearing on the rooftops of Tehran: the sound of the next revolution.           Allah O Akbar!

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

Can a white guy be African-American?

Former medical student Paulo Serodio is suing the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, claiming he was harassed and suspended for defining himself as a white African-American. Born and raised in Mozambique and now a naturalized U.S. citizen, Serodio, 45, is asking for reinstatement at the school and monetary damages in the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey.

Light-skinned Serodio’s problems began during a medical school class exercise, in which each student was asked to define themselves for a discussion on culture and medicine. After Serodio labeled himself as a white African-American, another student said she was offended by his comments and that, because of his white skin, was not an African-American. Serodio said he is a third-generation African of Portuguese ethnicity whose great-grandfather emigrated to Mozambique. He came to the U.S. in 1984 after being accepted at New York University.

The lawsuit claims Serodio began to be harassed by other students who sought disciplinary action against him for his statement in class, but was never given a chance to defend his views against the complaints.

via Louisville City Hall Examiner: Can a white guy be African-American?.

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Mango Dave Murdered?

David Schnittlich dreamed of retiring to the Caribbean. So he bought his favorite restaurant there and became Mango Dave.

The Police aren’t saying much about their investigation, but rumor  has it that he was found dead in his backyard, apparently from a blow to his head. It doesn’t look good for his ex-girlfriend. We’ll see, bit judging from the comments after the “Fantasy Island” Forbes article linked below, he wasn’t as beloved as the Anguilla Forum would lead you to believe (under “Mango Dave”)

via Fantasy Island – Forbes.com.

Swine Flu Started At Smithfield Farm In Mexico

The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site—a level nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production.

April 6 – Veratect reported local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico. Sources characterized the event as a “strange” outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.

via Biosurveillance: Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events.