The purpose of this game is to simulate in some simple form the shifting and complex strategic relationships between press, government, and Wikileaks during period.During the game, each player will possess a certain number of credibility counters -- which represents the social capital and public standing that allows the players the flexibility to act. The objective of Open Secrets is to be the player with the highest number of credibility counters at the end of the game
Japanese artist Mika Aoki creates exquisite glass sculptures inspired by her fascination with the visible and invisible qualities of the medium. What at first appears to be high-speed macro photographs of water droplets, turn out to be physical stationary sculptures carefully crafted from glass (and occasionally plastic). Aoki often derives her inspiration from the forms found in microscopic life such as spores, fungi, viruses or even sperm. With a masterful command of light and glass, Aoki depicts these propagating life forms in a haunting yet beautiful fashion, which she calls “singing glass.”
Tunisian bloggers succeeded in getting permission to form the first anti-censorship party in Africa and the Arab world. ----- By Monia Ghanmi ------- The Tunisian interior ministry just legalised Africa's first anti-censorship political party. The Tunisian Pirate Party, approved on March 13th, is a branch of the worldwide cyber-activist movement. "We established our party to gather together all those thirsty for knowledge hampered by barriers put in place by the political authority in the country, and our goal is to bring our people up to the level of developed countries," spokesman Mohamed Boukoum said in a press statement.
In 1919, in the midst of the Russian Civil War, Theremin invented the musical instrument that bears his name. The theremin is an electronic device that resonates sound when its operator waves his hands near its two antennas. It was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched. He invented the theremin (also called the thereminvox) in 1919, when his country was in the midst of the Russian Civil War. After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in 1929 (U.S. Patent 1,661,058 ) and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA. In 1938 Theremin was kidnapped in the New York apartment he shared with his American wife (the black ballet dancer, Iavana Williams) by the NKVD (forerunners of the KGB). He was transported back to Russia, and accused of propagating anti-Soviet propaganda by Stalin.
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
By Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky ---------------------------- The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite.
No sane person, especially someone who has had access to the elementary knowledge acquired in primary school, would agree that our species, especially those who are children, teenagers or youth, should be deprived of the right to live, today, tomorrow and forever. Never have human beings, throughout their eventful history, as persons endowed with intelligence, ever heard of an experience like that. I feel the duty to convey to those taking the trouble to read these Reflections the opinion that all of us, with no exception, are obliged to create awareness about the risks that humankind are running in an inexorable manner, towards a final and total catastrophe as the consequence of irresponsible decisions made by politicians who fate, rather than talent or merit, has placed the destiny of humankind in their hands.
The Guardian has continued its war on WikiLeaks with three new attacks over 48 hours—five days before Julian Assange’s final extradition appeal judgement in the High Court and a UK Parliamentary debate and vote on extradition abuses (both Monday, December 5). While it is often counter-productive to divert resources to dealing with PR attacks head-on, we provide here a revealing window into the behind-the-scenes realities that WikiLeaks has to deal with every day as a result of its high profile. While many attacks come from "traditional" enemies — the organizations WikiLeaks has exposed — others come from opportunists trying to work an easy socio-political sector — apparently saying what they believe these powerful enemies would like to be said, in the hope of preferment or relief in other areas. Others still, in fear of their reputations or the legal process, seek to whitewash past opportunism before natural moral or legal redress.
Nick Sturdee ............... Russian guerrilla artists from the Voina art collective are facing criminal prosecution for their controversial brand of political street art. Nick Sturdee reports on the widespread frustration that has fostered the movement... Scandal goes down well in the art world, and the organisers of this April’s prestigious state Innovation art award in Moscow clearly decided to make the most of their moment. The queues outside the cavernous Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture — Konstantin Melnikov’s 1927 constructivist bus depot refurbished as a gallery for Dasha Zhukova, Roman Abramovich’s wife, and graced by Amy Winehouse at its opening in 2008 — were to be expected; so of course were the chic crowd and the TV cameras. But the on-stage video installation of revolution in Cairo, Japanese tsunami, and London student riots — accompanied by epic dissonant swells and jabbing chords, lyrics shouted by a male voice choir and an albino’s falsetto solo — was an unmistakable statement. We live in momentous times, Russia is no exception (or hopes not to be) and Russian art is ready for the challenge.
New Pope Francis isn’t a Hitler Youth like the last guy, but he has own troubled history.Francis I along with the whole Argentine Catholic Church have faced criticism for their silence or complicity during the post-1976 military dictatorship — a failure for which the Church apologized in 2012.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is gravely concerned for the health of three activists and political leaders, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, AbdulHadi Al-Mukhoder and AbdulJalil Al-Singace, who have all begun a hunger strike to protest the unlawful restrictions that the prison authorities have placed on the communications for the Bahrain13, and the lack of response to their complaints by the prison administration.
Iran has for the first time released images of the production line of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which is manufacturing copies of the US ScanEagle drone. The domestically-manufactured drones have been put into service by the Iranian Armed Forces.
By Tom Mcnamara -------------- Once more tragedy befalls America. But this time the tragedy is even more bitter due to the fact that such a large number of young children were involved. A gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people, 20 of them children – all between the ages of 5 and 10 – at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on the 14th of December. The attack ended with the gunman committing suicide. It was the Nation’s second deadliest school shooting. Most people can’t imagine the evil and insanity needed to drive a person to commit such a heinous act. The murder of innocent people is reprehensible, but it is even more so when carried out on the most vulnerable elements of our society, children. Most disturbing of all is the well planned, deliberate and determined manner in which the murders appear to have been carried out. Early reports state that the gunman was highly accurate, leaving only one wounded survivor alive at the school.
Caracas, 22 Dic. AVN.- Science, Technology and Innovation minister Jorge Arreaza informed Friday that there have been allocated 2,315,719 Canaima laptop computers for free in Venezuela. In his Twitter account @jaarreaza, the technology minister reported: "Updated Canaimita data: 2,315,719 distributed. Out of it, 220,939 assembled in Venezuela. 100% free and domestic software." Such laptops are part of an education program named Canaima Educativo (or educational Canaima), launched during the school year 2009-2010. In a first stage, it was addressed to first grade children, with a view to extend the program to second and third grades.
The internal workings of the US military had little significance to the overall state of the nation, except during wars – until the post-WWII era. With the military dominating our foreign policy and being one of the most trusted institution, the character of our senior generals may become a major factor shaping our future. Hence the importance of this chapter by GI Wilson from The Pentagon Labyrinth: Ten Short Essays to Help You Through It, edited by Winslow T. Wheeler and published by the Center for Defense Information and the World Security Institute. You can see a summary and download a free copy of this important book at the Project for Government Oversight (POGO).
On 30 October 1961, the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed was set off over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Russian Arctic Sea. The Soviet ‘Tsar Bomba’ had a yield of 50 megatons, or the power of around 3,800 Hiroshima bombs detonated simultaneously. While its official designation was RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, the Tsar Bomba was given its nickname by the West in an analogy with two other huge Russian objects, the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon, the largest of their kind in the world.
"As a European I feel embarrassed", stated the former UN legal chief regarding the EU's fisheries activities in the waters of occupied Western Sahara, taking place in violation of international law. New trade agreements between Morocco and the EU - which Morocco is applying in Western Sahara - are entering info force in October 2012. WSRW questions the award of the Nobel peace prize to Morocco's important ally.
Today we talk of geo-politics and the freedom of information. But what is happening today technically (i.e. politically) began on 12 December 2008, though some say September of that year, but it took four years for the shock waves to reach Europe and America. The issue relates to Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and the Republic of Ecuador. Mind you, it was assumed in the entire American continent, Australia, and Europe that the world was the same as ten years ago. But the world does not work that way anymore.
The Obama administration has dispatched an elite unit of Marine special forces to Libya after the killing of the US ambassador and three other US personnel in the storming of the American consulate in Benghazi Tuesday. The killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the first such killing of a US envoy since the death of Washington’s ambassador to Afghanistan in 1979, together with the breaching of the walls of the US embassy in Cairo by Islamist demonstrators, touched off bitter political recriminations in Washington.
In an attempt to ‘stop global warming’, scientists have been experimenting with dumping several tons of iron into the Antarctic ocean in order to potentially fertilize the development of plankton. Despite raising a multitude of red flags raised from leading scientific organizations and health watch organizations, a new study is now calling for the practice to be even further extended as a worldwide ‘geoengineering’ strategy to alter the climate via dumping hundreds of tons of iron dust into the ocean. Previous research found that by dumping the heavy metal into oceans worldwide it could not only devastate the marine life population, but deplete oxygen levels and explode the growth of certain unwanted organisms.
Damascus (Agenzia Fides) - New meetings and new initiatives for the inter-religious popular movement "Mussalaha" ("Reconciliation"), which proposes a "reconciliation from below" starting from families, clans, the different communities of Syrian civil society, tired of the conflict. While the country is torn by conflict, peace initiatives and meetings are multiplying, being born in an entirely spontaneous and independent manner: in past days a new meeting which involved civic leaders, religious leaders, moderates, Christians and Muslims, tribal leaders, Sunnis and Alawites citizens of the mosaic that makes up the Syrian society, was held in Deir Ezzor, in the province of Djazirah (eastern Syria), near the Euphrates.
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Category: Recent news
Category: Politics documentary
Category: Recent news
