Category: The Fifth Column

Two days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States, a former contestant on his reality TV Show, The Apprentice, sued him for defamation. At issue was his public response to her allegations of unwanted kisses and forceful gropes. He had caller her a “liar” and claimed she was motivated by greed and/or politics. Now the shoe’s on the other foot: Trump is threatening to sue publisher Henry Holt and Co. if they release a new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff. He claims…

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(GV) – Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was always certain to stir controversy, particularly with regard to the Catholic Church, and it did just that when it delivered its  final report on 15 December 2017. The Royal Commission came about because of, as the report explains, “the sexual and other abuse of children in institutional settings, and the reluctance of those institutions involved to address this problem.” Its five years of hearings had already revealed widespread criminality, cover-ups and systemic failures across a wide range…

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(GV) – Mattan Helman, 20 years old, refuses to serve in the Israeli military, even though doing so means he is breaking the country’s law. Helman is an activist from HaOgen in central Israel, approximately 26 kilometers north-west of Tel Aviv. He was assigned to the Nahal Brigrade, one of the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) main infantries operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, but believes joining up would legitimise Israel’s “immoral” control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. At the time of writing, Helman was serving his second sentence,…

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(GV) – It’s clear by now that something has been brewing in Iran. On 28 December, protests broke out in Mashhad over the ‘high prices’ of everyday goods and spread to smaller towns and major cities by 29 December. Theories about what is driving the current situation abound, with many conjectures and theories being prematurely shared on the issue. I am skeptical of those who have more answers than questions about #Iranprotests. — Mohsen Milani (@milanimohsen) December 30, 2017 To better understand the current situation, it is important to look…

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(HRW) – Analysis of satellite imagery reveals new destruction of Rohingya villages during October and November 2017 in northern Rakhine State in Burma, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch identified 40 villages with building destruction occurring in October and November, increasing the total to 354 villages that have been partially or completely destroyed since August 25, 2017. During this period, thousands more Rohingya refugees fled Burma and arrived in Bangladesh. Satellite imagery confirms that dozens of buildings were burned the same week Burma and Bangladesh signed a Memorandum…

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(CK) – $1 billion sales in two minutes. More than 250,000 purchases every second. Singles’ Day, China’s annual retailing extravaganza, absolutely crushes Black Friday: E-commerce giant Alibaba raked in $17.8 billion in gross sales during last year’s event, more than double the combined total of $6.8 billion in sales during the United States’ 2016 holiday shopping kick-off. The shopping spree lasts only 24 hours, but its environmental impacts will extend for decades. Couriers delivered more than a billion packages after 2016 Singles’ Day sales, and just 10 percent of the packaging was recycled. Packing tape, bubble wrap, and…

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“Stop hate speech!” Poster created by the Japanese Ministry of Justice to address hate speech. (GVO) – The absence of measures to control online hate speech discourages freedom of expression among ethnic minorities in Japan, especially resident Koreans, according to a series of reports published by Kanagawa Shimbun, a regional newspaper. The report details how online hate speech makes non-Japanese residents in the country uncomfortable online. While various city, regional and national efforts have been made to address hate speech, Twitter Japan has been slow to respond, prompting demonstrators to gather on…

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(SCF) – On December 8 the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, tweeted that Washington “will not be lectured to by countries that lack any credibility when it comes to treating both Israelis and Palestinians fairly” which was an insulting rejection of international reaction to Donald Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. She did not mention the unpalatable fact, reported by the New York Times, that the UN Security Council “has adopted a number of resolutions, dating back 50 years, aimed in part at preventing Israel from claiming sovereignty over all…

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(Garrison) – Between 2007 and 2012, the New York Times reports, a secret US Department of Defense program received $22 million to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Although it no longer receives dedicated funding, the program apparently continues as a part-time effort pursued by personnel with other duties. Among the public, opinion on UFOs runs the gamut from belief that the whole idea is a product of fevered imaginations to conviction that Earth is frequently visited by extraterrestrial beings possessed of technologies beyond our ken. But all along that spectrum…

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(FEE) – I just finished listening to Stephen Wolfram’s  three-part podcast titled “The Future of AI and Civilization.” If you have any interest in Artificial Intelligence and are not familiar with Wolfram’s work, you should look into it. Genius polymath, creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language, the author of A New Kind of Science, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Wolfram is probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met. The Slow Seduction What makes his stream-of-consciousness podcast so fascinating is listening to Wolfram think out loud about where…

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