AJELive AJELive
Reuters: #Saleh says in speech on state TV "I will be leaving power in the coming days". aje.me/lvLnbE
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Protest in London marks 10 years of war in Afghanistan
The Stop The War Coalition says it expects a huge turnout. It says opinion polls show most British people want a "speedy withdrawal" of UK forces.
But a BBC correspondent says protest numbers so far are lower than expected.
Ben Ando, in Trafalgar Square, estimated there were 800 to 1,000 people at the event.
Speakers at the event include Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, journalist John Pilger, activist Jemima Khan, singer Billy Bragg, composer Howard Blake, musician Brian Eno, comedian Mark Steel, Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif, head of the Unite union Len McCluskey, actors Simon McBurney and Mark Rylance, and a number of Labour MPs.
Later, ex-soldiers and military families are due to march on Downing Street.
'Bring troops home' A Stop The War spokesman said: "After 10 years of war in Afghanistan, more than 100,000 Nato troops remain and tens of thousands have died.
"The Government claims that the war is contributing to Britain's stability look increasingly hollow.
"Opinion polls suggest the majority of Britons want a speedy withdrawal of British troops, a view recently endorsed by the trade unions.
"Politicians have to get in step with public opinion and announce a date to bring troops home."
Campaigners held a Naming the Dead Ceremony, in which 120 names of British soldiers and Afghan civilians who have died in the 10 years since the war began will be read out.
The same number of balloons will be released, each symbolising the months of the conflict so far.
'Tweet-out' A "Tweet-out" led by Khan will take place, in which those in attendance will use social media to get their message to a wider audience.
At 16:00 BST - the closing stages of the demo - a delegation are due to march on Downing Street to deliver their message to the prime minister that they want the conflict to end as soon as possible.
Our correspondent said it remained to be seen whether the prime minister was at Downing Street or whether he would come out to meet campaigners.
The number of British military deaths in operations in Afghanistan since 2001 stands at 382.
@'BBC'
Image
Angel - Demon Parade (Swanston Street/St. Kilda Road Melbourne)
We present an apocalyptic parade, which does not constitute the end of the old world. It's the beginning of a new one. The Angels-Demons are infants.
They are all new born and, like embryos, all have tails – long or short, sometimes just pushing through their nappies. All have wings, also of varying sizes. The clear difference between angels and demons, which is common to all cultures, does not exist here. Evil may look like good and vice versa.
They resemble twins – every angel has an identical brother. Or sister. We can't tell which gender as they're at the age when human infants have a strong outward resemblance to each other and are impossible to tell apart. They have the faces of peoples who never settled in Europe but towards whom Europe strived.
(...) The premiere of Angels-Demons was in Lille, France during festival «lille3000» in 2009.
Welcome to the new age.
Via
AES+F
(Photos: TimN)
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Last Riot
I do of course also hope that he was practising safe sex by wearing a helmet at the time and unfortunately 'auto-erotica' now brings up mental images of car exhausts :)
Terror shadow: US set to cut Pak ties
The United States has signaled that it is ready to part ways with Islamabad if Pakistan's military does not mend its ways of using terrorism as a policy tool.
Various US interlocutors have now gone public with allegations long suppressed about Pakistan's dalliance with terrorism, but president Obama himself led the charge at his White House press conference on Thursday with a public disquisition about Pakistani follies that reverberated across South Asia policy circles.
The US president stopped short of terming Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism but left no doubt about what he and his administration thought of a country only nominally regarded as an ally. After a token acknowledgement of its partnership and cooperation, Obama accused Pakistan of interaction with "unsavory characters" and "connection...with with certain individuals that we find troubling," - barely disguised euphemisms for consorting with terrorists.
The US president then delivered a telling message to Pakistan and its supporters who have long argued that Washington will never ditch Islamabad, saying, "there is no doubt that we're not going to feel comfortable with a long-term strategic relationship with Pakistan if we don't think that they're mindful of our interest as well."
The one caveat Obama laid down in the near future though was the US desire to "help the Pakistani people strengthen their own society and their own government" in the context of various crises facing the country". And so I'd be hesitant to punish aid for flood victims in Pakistan because of poor decisions by their intelligence services," he added.
The US president's brutally candid observations dissecting the Pakistani neuroses vis-a-vis India shocked US policy circles that have long been circumspect about Pakistani backing of terrorism because of US dependence on the country for a supply route to landlocked Afghanistan. But Obama showed that he was not going to be constrained by the logistical boondoggle.
Obama observed,"Part of what we want to do is actually get Pakistan to realize that a peaceful approach towards India would be in everybody's interests, and would help Pakistan actually develop, because one of the biggest problems we have in Pakistan right now is poverty, illiteracy, a lack of development, civil institutions that aren't strong enough to deliver for the Pakistani people."
Chidanand Rajghatta @'The Times of India'
Various US interlocutors have now gone public with allegations long suppressed about Pakistan's dalliance with terrorism, but president Obama himself led the charge at his White House press conference on Thursday with a public disquisition about Pakistani follies that reverberated across South Asia policy circles.
The US president stopped short of terming Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism but left no doubt about what he and his administration thought of a country only nominally regarded as an ally. After a token acknowledgement of its partnership and cooperation, Obama accused Pakistan of interaction with "unsavory characters" and "connection...with with certain individuals that we find troubling," - barely disguised euphemisms for consorting with terrorists.
The US president then delivered a telling message to Pakistan and its supporters who have long argued that Washington will never ditch Islamabad, saying, "there is no doubt that we're not going to feel comfortable with a long-term strategic relationship with Pakistan if we don't think that they're mindful of our interest as well."
The one caveat Obama laid down in the near future though was the US desire to "help the Pakistani people strengthen their own society and their own government" in the context of various crises facing the country". And so I'd be hesitant to punish aid for flood victims in Pakistan because of poor decisions by their intelligence services," he added.
The US president's brutally candid observations dissecting the Pakistani neuroses vis-a-vis India shocked US policy circles that have long been circumspect about Pakistani backing of terrorism because of US dependence on the country for a supply route to landlocked Afghanistan. But Obama showed that he was not going to be constrained by the logistical boondoggle.
Obama observed,"Part of what we want to do is actually get Pakistan to realize that a peaceful approach towards India would be in everybody's interests, and would help Pakistan actually develop, because one of the biggest problems we have in Pakistan right now is poverty, illiteracy, a lack of development, civil institutions that aren't strong enough to deliver for the Pakistani people."
Chidanand Rajghatta @'The Times of India'
Wishfull thinking?
Obama To Issue Executive Order On Classified Info, After WikiLeaks
The so-called "WikiLeaks" executive order has been long awaited by the national security establishment and by the privacy and civil liberties communities. It was provided by the White House to National Journal. The order creates a government-wide steering committee to create and assess information sharing policies across the government, as well as a mechanism to determine whether internal auditing procedures work properly.
PFC. Bradley Manning, who the government believes provided WikiLeaks with most of the classified cables and reports it released, was able to access State Department cables that were not germane to his work as a forward-deployed intelligence analyst in Iraq without being detected.
A new Insider Threat Task Force led by the Attorney General will develop a government-wide strategy to see whether agencies that handle classified information can weed out the malcontents and people whose behavior suggests they cannot handle sensitive information appropriately...
Continue reading
Marc Ambinder @'National Journal'
Twitter: ‘We Are Not Blocking Terms Related To #OccupyWallStreet In Any Way, Shape or Form’
Some protesters on Wall Street are chagrined to see that the protest, following an explosion of media coverage, still isn’t trending on Twitter. On Wednesday, “Foley Square”–the meeting place for the megamarch planned with students and labor unions–made it into the top ten trends in New York. “Truly, @twitter. Foley Square is trending but #occupywallstreet never has? #occupytwitter,” one user wrote.
But even “Foley Square” was quickly supplanted by terms related to the death of Steve Jobs. As one blogger representative of the Twitter censorchip theory wrote, “TrendsMap Proves Scary Twitter Censorship Of #OccupyWallStreet From Trending Topics.” And as Young Manhattanite Andrew Krucoff points out, JP Morgan Chase is an investor in Twitter.
Twitter faced similar accusations back in February over Wikileaks, as some users wondered if tweets related to the controversial hacktivist group were being censored. The precise algorithm for determining trends is private, but the basic thrust is that it’s not about volume–or else Justin Bieber, who dominates about three percent of tweets at any given time, would be constantly trending. “The bottom line is that trends on Twitter are NOT the most popular terms,” said Sean Garrett, head of communications at Twitter in an email. “They are the most ‘breaking’ and reward discussions that are new to Twitter. We are not blocking terms related to #occupywallstreet in any way, shape or form.”
And while it may look to a user like no one is talking about anything else, that’s a fallacy of self-selection due to the fact that users tend to follow other people who are similar to them. “With more than 100 million active users on Twitter and more than 230 million tweets a day, everyone’s timeline is vastly different,” Mr. Garrett wrote.
One hypothesis is that the protest is using too many different hashtags–#occupywallstreet, #occupywallst and #ows. “We used to correlate terms for search benefit, but we don’t anymore,” Mr. Garrett said. “Regardless, we do not associate different (but possibly related) terms in the calculation of trends. This means that #ows or a new related term could ‘break’ on its own and be a trending topic if its usage hit a required peak.”
Adrianne Jeffries @'BetaBeat'
But even “Foley Square” was quickly supplanted by terms related to the death of Steve Jobs. As one blogger representative of the Twitter censorchip theory wrote, “TrendsMap Proves Scary Twitter Censorship Of #OccupyWallStreet From Trending Topics.” And as Young Manhattanite Andrew Krucoff points out, JP Morgan Chase is an investor in Twitter.
Twitter faced similar accusations back in February over Wikileaks, as some users wondered if tweets related to the controversial hacktivist group were being censored. The precise algorithm for determining trends is private, but the basic thrust is that it’s not about volume–or else Justin Bieber, who dominates about three percent of tweets at any given time, would be constantly trending. “The bottom line is that trends on Twitter are NOT the most popular terms,” said Sean Garrett, head of communications at Twitter in an email. “They are the most ‘breaking’ and reward discussions that are new to Twitter. We are not blocking terms related to #occupywallstreet in any way, shape or form.”
And while it may look to a user like no one is talking about anything else, that’s a fallacy of self-selection due to the fact that users tend to follow other people who are similar to them. “With more than 100 million active users on Twitter and more than 230 million tweets a day, everyone’s timeline is vastly different,” Mr. Garrett wrote.
One hypothesis is that the protest is using too many different hashtags–#occupywallstreet, #occupywallst and #ows. “We used to correlate terms for search benefit, but we don’t anymore,” Mr. Garrett said. “Regardless, we do not associate different (but possibly related) terms in the calculation of trends. This means that #ows or a new related term could ‘break’ on its own and be a trending topic if its usage hit a required peak.”
Adrianne Jeffries @'BetaBeat'
Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.)
OccupyWallSt.org
A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed there.
Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson
Cinematography by Ed David
Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis
Assistant Camera: Andrew McMullen + Diana Eliavoz
Assistant Producers: Dana Salvatore + Jillian Mason
Titles by Jason Drakeford.
BrooklynFilmmakersCollective.com
twitter.com/AnalectFilms
A new angle on Occupy Wall Street reveals the strong micro community that has formed there.
Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson
Cinematography by Ed David
Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis
Assistant Camera: Andrew McMullen + Diana Eliavoz
Assistant Producers: Dana Salvatore + Jillian Mason
Titles by Jason Drakeford.
BrooklynFilmmakersCollective.com
twitter.com/AnalectFilms
The revolution begins at home
They have created a unique opportunity to shift the tides of history in the tradition of other great peaceful occupations from the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the lunch-counter sit-ins of the 1960s to the democratic uprisings across the Arab world and Europe today.
While the Wall Street occupation is growing, it needs an all-out commitment from everyone who cheered the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, said “We are all Wisconsin”, and stood in solidarity with the Greeks and Spaniards. This is a movement for anyone who lacks a job, housing or healthcare, or thinks they have no future.
Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100 million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to turn the austerity screws on all of us.
Real potential
At some point the number of people occupying Wall Street - whether that’s five thousand, ten thousand or fifty thousand - will force the powers that be to offer concessions. No one can say how many people it will take or even how things will change exactly, but there is a real potential for bypassing a corrupt political process and to begin realising a society based on human needs not hedge fund profits.
At Liberty Park, the nerve centre of the occupation, more than a thousand people gather every day to debate, discuss and organise what to do about our failed system that has allowed the 400 richest Americans at the top to amass more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom.
It’s astonishing that this self-organised festival of democracy has sprouted on the turf of the masters of the universe, the men who play the tune that both political parties and the media dance to. The New York Police Department, which has deployed hundreds of officers at a time to surround and intimidate protesters, is capable of arresting everyone and clearing Liberty Plaza in minutes. But they haven’t, which is also astonishing...
Continue reading
Arun Gupta @'Al Jazeera'
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