Tuesday 1 November 2011

Asylum seekers drown on way to Australia

Six asylum seekers including two children have drowned after their boat bound for Australia sank, Indonesian authorities said.

The West Java Anti-People Smuggling Task Force says about 18 asylum seekers are missing after the boat, carrying about 70 people, sank off the coast of Java.
Police Commissioner Fatma Noer says 46 others have been pulled from the water and rescue boats are still searching for the missing passengers.
She says the boat was allegedly heading towards Christmas Island.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young says the deaths of the asylum seekers are awful.
She says the situation shows how desperate asylum seekers are.
"What this clearly shows is that we need to be offering safer pathways for people to reach protection and to ensure that they can seek asylum in a safe way," she said.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has confirmed another boat carrying 92 asylum seekers has arrived at Christmas Island.
The President of the Christmas Island Shire, Gordon Thomson, says the boat arrived this morning and is in Flying Fish Cove with people still onboard.
He says Navy personnel are with the boat.
@'ABC'

Building on WikiLeaks

Ai Weiwei ordered to pay £1.5 million in tax

Fugn WOW!!!

A 40 minutes Feature documentary will be available on November 11 for download on my video blog sebmontaz.com.
You're welcome to watch 14 minutes of the final film on sebmontaz.com.
This feature documentary was shot last summer.
I have been filming the Skyliners on an incredible exploration into the world of free flight.
Tancrède, Julien, Seb and Antoine are pioneers in ‘highlining’ - a vertiginous combination of climbing, slackline and tightrope walking.
We travelled from our home in Chamonix to our training ground in the Verdon gorge, testing the limits for our ultimate goal...
We rigged highlines on the skyscrapers of Paris, and finally came to the spectacular cliffs and fjords of Norway.
Months of training led the Skyliners team to attempt their dream of complete freedom... the freedom of flight !
More about the Skyliners team: facebook.com/pages/Skyliners/270006826367436
My Face Book page: facebook.com/pages/Seb-Montaz-Video-blog/149892381710213
Director/Editor: Sébastien Montaz-Rosset
Sound design: by talented Michael Denny michaeldennymusic.com/
Song used: The Rural Alberta Advantage. Frank, AB
Download the album/track here: amazon.com/Frank-AB/dp/B002A60FN4

jaraparilla Jaraparilla

#Qantas to cut fares, double frequent flyer points, ad blitz to win back passengers: smh.com.au/travel/travel-… <- um, how much does that cost?

Secret Orders Target Email

Has America Become an Oligarchy?

At first, the outraged members of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York were mainly met with ridicule. They didn't seem to stand a chance and were judged incapable of going up against their adversaries, Wall Street's bankers and financial managers, either intellectually or in terms of economic knowledge.
"We are the 99 percent," is the continuing chant of the protestors, who are now in their seventh week of marching through the streets of Manhattan. And, surprisingly, they have hit upon the crux of America's problems with precisely this sentence. Indeed, they have given shape to a development in the country that has been growing more acute for decades, one that numerous academics and experts have tried to analyze elsewhere in lengthy books and essays. It's a development so profound and revolutionary that it has shaken the world's most powerful nation to its core. Inequality in America is greater than it has been in almost a century. Those fortunate enough to belong to the 1 percent, made up of the super-rich, stand on one side of the divide; the remaining 99 percent on the other. Even for a country that has always accepted opposite extremes as part of its identity, the chasm has simply grown too vast.
Those who succeed in the US are congratulated rather than berated. Resenting other people's wealth is viewed as supporting class struggle, which is something very frowned upon.
Still, statistics indicate that the growing disparity is genuinely overwhelming. In fact, the 400 wealthiest Americans now own more than the "lower" 150 million Americans put together.
Nearly two-thirds of net private assets are concentrated in the hands of 5 percent of Americans. In comparison, the upper 5 percent of Germany hold less than half of net assets. In 2009 alone, at the same time as the US was being convulsed by mass layoffs, the number of millionaires in the country skyrocketed.
Indeed, if you look at the reports it compiles on every country in the world, even the CIA has concluded that wealth disparity is greater in the US than in Tunisia or Egypt...

Continue reading

Thomas Schulz @'Der Spiegel'

Army to Disclose Evidence Against Bradley Manning

Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating

I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.
"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO ," he said. "I think that's funny."
"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"
"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."
Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.
"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"
"Well," he said, "it's just, their protests are all about... You know..."
"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."
"Whatever," he said, shrugging.
These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing...

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Matt Taibbi @'Rolling Stone'

Pet Lovers, Pathologized

Balls...

Well, it’s not Jesus, but it’ll do

The Ideas Behind a Move to ‘Occupy London’

Arizona smashes Mexico cartel drug smuggling network

US authorities say they have broken up a massive drug-smuggling network run by a Mexican cartel in Arizona.

A total of 76 suspects have been arrested and huge quantities of drugs and arms seized in a series of raids.
The ring used backpackers and vehicles to smuggle marijuana, cocaine and heroin across Arizona's western desert.
The network was linked to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and generated an estimated $2 billion in profit over the last five years, officials said.
"Today we have dealt a significant blow to a Mexican criminal enterprise that has been responsible for poisoning our communities," said Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.
"I find it completely unacceptable that Arizona neighbourhoods are treated as a trading floor for narcotics", he added.
The bust - known as "Operation Pipeline Express" - followed a 17-month investigation by multiple US law enforcement agencies.
'Monopoly' A mix of US and Mexican nationals were arrested in three sweeps last week, earlier this month and in September, officials announced.
More than 30 tons of marijuana, 90kg (200lbs) of cocaine and 72kg (160lbs) of heroin were seized, as well as more than 100 firearms.
Operating from the Arizona towns of Chandler, Stanfield and Maricopa, the network ferried drugs across the Mexican border on foot and by vehicle to safe houses in the Phoenix area, officials said.
The drugs were then sold to criminal gangs who distributed them in other states across the US.
Officials believe the network made huge profits by securing a monopoly on smuggling routes along an 80 mile (128km) stretch of the remote desert border from Yuma to to the community of Sells in the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation.
Intelligence suggested the ring was linked to the Sinaloa cartel, led by Mexico's most-wanted fugitive drugs lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
"We in Arizona continue to stand and fight the Mexican drug cartels, who think they own the place," Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said.
"This is America and we shall bring a crushing hand of enforcement against those who threaten our families and our national security".
@'BBC'
Smashed? Nothing more than a piddling little drop in the ocean more like...