Category Archives: Post Human

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. REUTERS/Glenn Greenwald/Laura Poitras/The Guardian

Reuters won in international reporting for its coverage of the violent persecution of a Muslim minority in Myanmar who in efforts to flee often fall into the hands of brutal human-trafficking networks.

The celebrated prizes, awarded by Columbia University, are the most respected in US journalism and can bring badly needed attention and recognition to newspapers and websites suffering from economic pressures and budget constraints.

The prize-winning work by the Guardian US and The Washington Post in the Pulitzer's public service category was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of global electronic surveillance by the US spy agency.

Reporting on the leaks not only sparked international debate over the limits of government surveillance but prompted President Barack Obama to introduce curbs on NSA spying powers.

"We are particularly grateful for our colleagues across the world who supported the Guardian in circumstances which threatened to stifle our reporting," Guardian Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger said in a statement.

"And we share this honor, not only with our colleagues at The Washington Post, but also with Edward Snowden, who risked so much in the cause of the public service which has today been acknowledged by the award of this prestigious prize," he said.

Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum last year after the US Justice Department charged him with violating the Espionage Act.

In giving Reuters its first Pulitzer for text coverage, the board commended Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall for their "courageous reports" on the Rohingya, who in their efforts to flee the Southeast Asian country often fall victim to human-trafficking networks.

"For two years, Reuters reporters have tirelessly investigated terrible human-rights abuses in a forgotten corner of the Muslim world, bringing the international dimensions of the oppressed Rohingya of Myanmar to global attention," Stephen Adler, Reuters editor-in-chief, said in a statement.

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NSA stories take Pulitzer prize

BLADE STAFF

The League of Women Voters of the Perrysburg Area is bringing a discussion on human trafficking to town Tuesday evening.

State Rep. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo), legislative sponsor of two Ohio human-trafficking laws, will lead the discussion at the Way Public Library starting at 7 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.

Ms. Fedor sits on the Human Trafficking Commission as chairman of its legislative and legal subcommittee.

Legislation she sponsored, enacted in 2009, created a penalty enhancement for human trafficking and created a task force to study the problem in Ohio. Human trafficking in 2010 became a stand-alone, second-degree felony.

In 2012, she sponsored the Safe Harbor Act, which established harsher penalties for the solicitation of minors.

The library also will show the film Blade Runner at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Mercy Family Activity Center, with a book-club discussion afterward. Admission and refreshments are free of charge, no registration is required, and copies of the book upon which the film was based will be available for checkout.

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Human trafficking talk at library

ObamaCare has killed the career of its beleaguered point person.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has quit her post following months of criticism. Sebelius resignation, confirmed Thursday in an e-mail from Dori Salcido, a department spokeswoman, comes little more than a week after the close of enrollment for the first ObamaCare coverage period.

It also follows recent efforts by the White House to rebound from the fiasco that marked the programs launch last year, when massive technical glitches kept people from logging in to the HealthCare.gov Web site.

A flurry of last-minute applications before the March 31 deadline allowed the White House to claim it had finally hit its target of 7 million enrollees.

Sebelius, an ex-Kansas governor, held her post for five years and was among Obamas longest-serving Cabinet members.

Obama, who is announcing the resignation Friday, has picked his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, to replace Sebelius. Burwell was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for her current job, and her selection suggests the president wants to avoid a bitter nomination fight over Sebelius successor.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sebelius departure would not fix the problems with ObamaCare.

Secretary Sebelius oversaw a disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, but anyone can see that there are more problems on the way, Priebus told Fox News. The next HHS secretary will inherit a mess Americans facing rising costs, families losing their doctors, and an economy weighed down by intrusive regulations.

Sebelius was instrumental in helping ObamaCare win congressional approval and in implementing its initial components, including a popular provision that lets young people remain covered by their parents insurance until age 26.

But her relationship with the White House suffered during the rocky Web rollout of the Web-based insurance exchanges, with complaints about a lack of information from the HHS about the extent of the problems.

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Sebelius quits after ObamaCare nightmare

WASHINGTON, DC (RNN) - After a rocky rollout of the Affordable Care Act, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning, according to the Associated Press and other media outlets.

The announcement comes a week and a half after the deadline to enroll for healthcare on the troubled Healthcare.gov website.

The crippled website was the victim to several failures and crashes for consumers who wanted to sign up for the signature legislation of President Barack Obama's administration.

The New York Times reports Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be nominated by the president as her replacement.

The resignation was Sebelius' decision and she was not forced out, according to the Times.

Despite the rollout, the Obama administration reached its enrollment goal by the March 31 deadline, with more than seven million Americans signing up.

Sebelius testified at a House hearing in mid-March that the administration would not delay the firm March 31 deadline it had set for enrollment. Days before that date, however, it was announced people would be allowed to enroll beyond that deadline if they tried previously to sign up but were hindered by the website's issues.

She also testified before Congress multiple times in relation to the botched launch of the healthcare exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.

The website debuted October 1.

Shortly following the troubled healthcare website, Sebelius admitted the website's flaws as major problems on CNN, and admitted both she and the president were frustrated with the rough start.

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HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius to resign after rocky healthcare rollout

Screenshot from the video from the Huffington Post

At a US Senate hearing focused on intermediate space missions, NASA disclosed some of its ambitious plans, including the goal to send human missions to Mars and a manned spacecraft to the asteroid, the Huffington Post reported April 9. "Our architecture is designed for long-term human exploration of our solar system, including the goal of human missions to Mars," William Gerstenmaier, an associate administrator at NASA, was quoted as saying during testimony before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space. "We're going to grab a piece of the solar system, we're going to deflect it around the moon and insert it into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon where our crews can go visit." NASA hopes to have the Mars trip by 2030s.

Read the full story on the Huffington Post

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NASA plans: Throwing asteroid at moon, sending people to Mars

Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia (l.) and Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics, both have a history of anti-Semitic statements.Reuters

Under pressure from Arab nations, the United Nations Human Rights Council has rejected a U.S.-backed choice to replace its outgoing point man on Palestine, and is now eyeing two candidates who share a long history of alleged anti-Israel bias.

The current front-runner to replace Richard Falk, a 9/11 truther who once praised Ayatollah Khomeinei and was reliably anti-Israel while serving as the council's special rapporteur on Palestinian rights, is Christine Chinkin, a law professor at the London School of Economics. Chinkin authored the Goldstone report, an infamous UN study on the Gaza conflict that was repudiated by Israel. A dark horse candidate is Indonesias former UN envoy, Makarim Wibisono, who has long been an outspoken critic who has a history of making one-sided remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Either choice will ensure the 47-member council employs a monitor with a built-in, anti-Israel bias, said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.

"The real issue is not the nominees, but the biased position itself," Neuer said. "This is the only council mandate that requires the examination not of a given region, but of only one side, with the specific instruction to investigate 'Israel's violations of international law' in the territories, while completely disregarding human rights abuses against women, Christians and dissidents that are being committed by Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad or others."

Georgetown Law Prof. Christina Cerna, who the U.S. backed for the job, was rejected after several Arab nations balked. Neuer said they sent letters to UNHRC President Remigiusz Henczel objecting to her candidacy. Critics of Cerna -- who received a unanimous recommendation from the councils five-member vetting panel -- said she had not been on record in the past with any statements on Palestinian issues.

The impartiality of Chinkin, who has accused Israel of war crimes, was questioned by foreign policy academics as well as then-Human Rights Committee Chair Sir Nigel Rodley.

The panel also is believed to be considering Wibisono, who has long been an outspoken critic who has a history of making one-sided remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neuer's group said Wibisono should be excluded from consideration because of a 2010 trip to Gaza, where he allegedly met with the leader of Hamas, and several past statements. Wibisono has accused Israel of unconscionable use of force against the Palestinians, "untenable acts of aggression," and of having a "policy of retribution against the entire Palestinian nation. In addition, he has often and openly supported what he calls the sacred Palestinian cause.

Appointments of all special rapporteurs have been postponed another month. Falk, an 83-year-old Princeton University professor, is set to leave May 1. Falk has accused Israel of of slouching toward nothing less than a Palestinian Holocaust. Last month, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power left no doubt about how the White House feels about Falk.

"The United States welcomes Mr. Falk's departure, which is long overdue," Power said in a statement. "Falk's relentless anti-Israeli bias, his noxious and outrageous perpetuation of 9/11 conspiracy theories [and] his publication of bizarre and insulting material has tarnished the U.N.'s reputation and undermined the effectiveness of the Human Rights Council.

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UN picks for Palestinian post allegedly anti-Semitic

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New York, Apr 8 : Voicing concern that the Philippines' post-typhoon reconstruction and recovery efforts could be undermined by its heavy debt load, a United Nations independent human rights expert on Monday issued a strong call on international creditors to cancel the country's debt and to provide unrestricted grant aid instead of new loans.

"Grant aid, not new loans, is needed to overcome the impact of the tropical cyclone which struck the country five months ago," said Cephas Lumina, the independent expert tasked with monitoring the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights.

Of great concern, he stressed, was that reconstruction, development and realization of economic and social rights will be undermined if the high debt stock of the country is further enlarged to unsustainable levels.

Noting the international support provided the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, Lumina underscored that more than USD 22 million leaves the country daily to pay off overseas debts.

"While around USD 3 billion has left the country to serve its debt since the typhoon struck, the country has received so far only USD 417 million for its strategic response plan by international and private donors, about half of the total relief requested," the expert stressed.

Although over one fourth of its population lives in poverty, the Philippines is classified as a lower Middle Income Country and therefore has been disqualified from international debt relief programmes. This year alone, the Philippines is supposed to pay USD 8.8 billion debt.

To date, the World Bank has provided a USD 500 million support loan and a USD 480 million loan for rebuilding infrastructure and social services while the Asian Development Bank has offered nearly USD 900 million of assistance. However, most of this was in the form of new loans and only USD 23 million was given in grants.

In theory, loans for reconstruction cannot generate returns to allow the debt to be paid. For his part, Lumina highlighted the importance of cancelling debt by international lenders to ensure that the Country can recover.

"The disaster should rather serve as an opportunity for lenders to acknowledge that odious debts emanating from the rule under Ferdinand Marcos should be cancelled," Lumina underscored.

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Philippines: UN seeks debt relief to support typhoon recovery

[This is areviewforBeing Humanseason 4, episode 13. There will be SPOILERS.]

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The central crux of Being Human has always been can these characters actually be, if not human, something close? Can they tamp down the things that made them unequallymonstrousand be normal? Afterfour seasons, it would be hard to answer in the affirmative as calamities and backslides have marred the existence of the vampire (Sam Witwer), the werewolves (Sam Huntington and Kristen Hager), and the ghost (Meaghan Rath), but through it all, they have continued to strive toward something better, and that is admirable. The question is, is that worth a reward?

Seemingly off on an ambitious journey to the bitter end, Being Human shook things up immediately after it was announced that the show would cease after the current season, introducing the characters to rock bottom before embarking on a trip to an alternate timeline by way of Sallys magic. At the time, we wondered if the show might stay in the other timeline, but it was quickly pushed away to allow for a return to the status quo, save for a newborn relationship between Aidan and Sally that was in-feasible and not nearly as emotionally resonant as producers had hoped it would be.

The greatest sin of this final season of Being Human is that after 3 1/2 seasons of platonic friendship between Aidan and Sally, the audience was asked to not just accept their bittersweet coupling, but to accept that their love was all-consuming and the key to an immortal bliss that their characters, specifically Aidan, might not have deserved.

Aidan is a willing monster at times; moreso than Josh, Nora, and even Sally (whose abuse of magic could qualify as monstrous, considering the consequences). This has been a recurring theme throughout the shows run. Yes, Witwers vampire has openly rebelled against his natural tendencies and pushed himself free from the vampire politics of Boston, but despite those good deeds and the deeds that he has done for his friends, though, there is still a pile of bodies that can be laid at his feet.

When Aidans vampirism is removed by Sally, who saves Josh from both the prophecy and Aidans wrath by way of a completely self-sacrificing act that ends her own life and infuriates Ramona, Aidan worries about whats next. He worries about being judged, so much so that he tries to stave off his suddenly fast approaching death by re-turning into a vampire and thats a sound worry that could have been answered with ambiguity after Aidans own act of sacrifice.

Excerpt from:
Being Human Series Finale Review

The DJ Mystro Hardcore Techno Breakcore Mix "The Hard Way"
The DJ Mystro Hardcore Techno Breakcore Mix "The Hard Way" Recorded 05/04/14 [+8% BPM] 01 -- Stormtrooper -- The Hard Way 02 -- The Clamps feat Thanos -- T...

By: MystroX44

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The DJ Mystro Hardcore Techno & Breakcore Mix "The Hard Way" - Video

Crysis 3 Post-Human Warrior Episode 6
YAY Another episode with no deaths, :). Here we go again with yet another Post-human warrior episode in Crysis 3. Enjoy it guys.

By: JackPunter2012

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Crysis 3 Post-Human Warrior Episode 6 - Video