Guardian stream - more later. More than 35 international news organisations were on this unarmed convoy of humanitarian aid, which had been checked by international auditors to check the convoy was ok and legal prior to setting off.
So far, 19 innocents dead. RIP.
The free Gaza movement
Civilians Under Attack by Israel Written by Free Gaza Team 31 May 2010
Posted in Press releases
(Cyprus, June 1, 2010, 6:30 am) Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck. They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep. According to the live video from the ship, two have been killed, and 31 injured. Al Jazeera has just confirmed the numbers.
Streaming video shows the Israeli soldiers shooting at civilians, and our last SPOT beacon said, “HELP, we are being contacted by the Israelis.”
We know nothing about the other five boats. Israel says they are taking over the boats.
The coalition of Free Gaza Movement (FG), European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), the Perdana Global Peace Organisation , Ship to Gaza Greece, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and the International Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza appeal to the international community to demand that Israel stop their brutal attack on civilians delivering vitally needed aid to the imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza and permit the ships to continue on their way.
The attack has happened in international waters, 75 miles off the coast of Israel, in direct violation of international law.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The rescue!
Turkey: Boy Saved From Escalator Plunge
Shopkeeper sees 4 year old grab hold of escalator, and rise up on the OUTSIDE, and dangle dangerously. He rushes over, positioning himself below the 4 year old hanging from the floor above, poised ready to catch the child if he fell. Child lost grip. Child fell. Shopkeeper caught child. Child went home from mall with his father.
Respect to you shopkeeper Ali Apari!
Shopkeeper sees 4 year old grab hold of escalator, and rise up on the OUTSIDE, and dangle dangerously. He rushes over, positioning himself below the 4 year old hanging from the floor above, poised ready to catch the child if he fell. Child lost grip. Child fell. Shopkeeper caught child. Child went home from mall with his father.
Respect to you shopkeeper Ali Apari!
Capturing a time...
... reflecting on a period. How much things have changed. How much things haven't changed.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner , a film worth watching. This is the monologue at the end of the film, which summarises much of the film, and ties it together beautifully. Although obviously, the whole film needs to be watched to do it justice.
As a by the by, a quote from one of the actresses:
"There are a lot of movies out there that I would hate to be paid to do, some real demeaning, real woman-denigrating stuff. It is up to women to change their roles. They are going to have to write the stuff and do it. And they will."
Beah Richards
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner , a film worth watching. This is the monologue at the end of the film, which summarises much of the film, and ties it together beautifully. Although obviously, the whole film needs to be watched to do it justice.
As a by the by, a quote from one of the actresses:
"There are a lot of movies out there that I would hate to be paid to do, some real demeaning, real woman-denigrating stuff. It is up to women to change their roles. They are going to have to write the stuff and do it. And they will."
Beah Richards
Friday, May 28, 2010
Poem : "Hope" is the thing with feathers
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.
Emily Dickinson
Sunday, May 16, 2010
mind stunting technology
Confessions of a Tech Apostate - newsweek
President Obama says devices like Apple's iPad are rotting our brains. He's right.
President Obama has been taking some heat in techie circles over comments he made at a commencement address over the weekend about iPods and iPads and other digital distractions. Because of these things, he said, "information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation." To his critics, it made him sound, well, like a Luddite, not the cool, tech-friendly, BlackBerry-carrying president they thought he was.
I hate to say this, but he's right. In fact I'd expand his list of distractions to include Web sites like Facebook and Twitter. And I'd go further on the notion of emancipation and say that in many ways our digital tools serve only to enslave us. This may sound like heresy coming from a technology editor but hear me out.
Remember when computers were supposed to save us time? Now it seems just the opposite. The Internet just keeps giving us more ways to do nothing.
We have more information than ever before. We're never away from it. The air around us fairly hums with it. Computers are all around us too—they're on our desks, in our pockets, on our coffee tables.
And yet I can't shake the sense that we are all becoming stupider and stupider—and that we are, on average, less well informed today than we were a generation ago.
I mean, look at us, lining up outside Apple stores like a bunch of kooks. Or walking around, staring down at our phones. We've been turned into zombie people.
Oh, but we're very, very busy zombies. We're reading e-mail. We're tweeting and retweeting. We're downloading apps, and uploading photos. We're updating our Facebook status and reading our news feeds and telling the whole world what we like and don't like, because for some reason we imagine that the whole world actually cares. You know what we're not doing? We're not thinking. We're processing. There's a difference.
We're putting our brains into neutral, and revving the engine. We're digitally dithering, clicking on links and swimming through a torrent of useless garbage being thrown at us by idiots and self-promoters, pundits and PR flacks and marketing people.
We're immersing ourselves in games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, obsessing about earning energy packs, spending billions of dollars on virtual gardening tools.
We're turning the world around us into a videogame, using sites like Foursquare to tell our friends where we're eating lunch, and competing to see who can become "mayor" of some restaurant.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, Glenn Beck has become an influential television commentator, and Sarah Palin is a credible candidate for president in 2012. You think this is a coincidence?
No way. What's happening is this: we are being so overwhelmed by the noise and junk zooming past us that we're becoming immune to it. We've become a nation of Internet-powered imbeciles, with an ever-lower threshold for inanity.
Beck and Palin are the inevitable outcome of that devolution. They are what we deserve. They are, in fact, what we've created.
We have amazing new systems and tools for communicating information. The problem is we've become so fascinated with the means of transmission that we've lost sight of what's actually passing along over the wires and airwaves.
Sadly, I don't see that changing any time soon. If anything, I imagine it will get worse.
Daniel Lyons is also the author of Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs and Dog Days: A Novel.
© 2010
President Obama says devices like Apple's iPad are rotting our brains. He's right.
President Obama has been taking some heat in techie circles over comments he made at a commencement address over the weekend about iPods and iPads and other digital distractions. Because of these things, he said, "information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation." To his critics, it made him sound, well, like a Luddite, not the cool, tech-friendly, BlackBerry-carrying president they thought he was.
I hate to say this, but he's right. In fact I'd expand his list of distractions to include Web sites like Facebook and Twitter. And I'd go further on the notion of emancipation and say that in many ways our digital tools serve only to enslave us. This may sound like heresy coming from a technology editor but hear me out.
Remember when computers were supposed to save us time? Now it seems just the opposite. The Internet just keeps giving us more ways to do nothing.
We have more information than ever before. We're never away from it. The air around us fairly hums with it. Computers are all around us too—they're on our desks, in our pockets, on our coffee tables.
And yet I can't shake the sense that we are all becoming stupider and stupider—and that we are, on average, less well informed today than we were a generation ago.
I mean, look at us, lining up outside Apple stores like a bunch of kooks. Or walking around, staring down at our phones. We've been turned into zombie people.
Oh, but we're very, very busy zombies. We're reading e-mail. We're tweeting and retweeting. We're downloading apps, and uploading photos. We're updating our Facebook status and reading our news feeds and telling the whole world what we like and don't like, because for some reason we imagine that the whole world actually cares. You know what we're not doing? We're not thinking. We're processing. There's a difference.
We're putting our brains into neutral, and revving the engine. We're digitally dithering, clicking on links and swimming through a torrent of useless garbage being thrown at us by idiots and self-promoters, pundits and PR flacks and marketing people.
We're immersing ourselves in games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, obsessing about earning energy packs, spending billions of dollars on virtual gardening tools.
We're turning the world around us into a videogame, using sites like Foursquare to tell our friends where we're eating lunch, and competing to see who can become "mayor" of some restaurant.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, Glenn Beck has become an influential television commentator, and Sarah Palin is a credible candidate for president in 2012. You think this is a coincidence?
No way. What's happening is this: we are being so overwhelmed by the noise and junk zooming past us that we're becoming immune to it. We've become a nation of Internet-powered imbeciles, with an ever-lower threshold for inanity.
Beck and Palin are the inevitable outcome of that devolution. They are what we deserve. They are, in fact, what we've created.
We have amazing new systems and tools for communicating information. The problem is we've become so fascinated with the means of transmission that we've lost sight of what's actually passing along over the wires and airwaves.
Sadly, I don't see that changing any time soon. If anything, I imagine it will get worse.
Daniel Lyons is also the author of Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs and Dog Days: A Novel.
© 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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