And suddenly the real use of online flash-mobs becomes clear: stealing junk from convenience stores. Yesterday, a group of about 28 ‘young people,’ believed to have coordinated online, cleaned out a Maryland convenience store in under a a minute.The police have attempted online identification, but no arrests have been made.
Don’t worry, the artificial libertarian islands will have better names than that. Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor, has given $1.25 million to an initiative to build libertarian island states in international waters. Because that’s what you do when you’rea 43-year-old gay libertarian with money to kill, I guess.
A special report in the Daily Maverick today has indicated that Julius Malema should in all likelihood face some much needed disciplining soon, at least from the ruling party that is. According to the report, the ANC is drawing up charges against Malema and a few of his sidekicks following two meetings of the party’s bosses on Monday.
A 20-year-old man in Essex has been charged with “encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence” because he used Blackberry Messenger to invite people to a public water fight. Whether this means British cops can now wiretap the Blackberry messaging network is unclear, but either way: great job, democracy.
During the Vietnam War John Lennon and Yoko Ono held two week-long “Bed-Ins for Peace” in Amsterdam and Montreal, which were their non-violent ways of protesting wars and promoting peace. In the process, a very cool documentary was made from. Yoko Ono, bless her heart, has posted it for free online viewing for a couple of days. Watch inside!
In a rather bizarre twist, as the UK government and security forces attempt to make sense of the wave of violent rioting and looting that swept across major UK cities this week, Prime Minister, David Cameron, called into question the role social networking platforms, such as Blackberry’s BBM (Blackberry Messaging) facility might have played in stirring up unrest that saw millions of pounds worth of damage caused to property around the UK.
It’s becoming a case of “your guess is as good as the next guy’s” in world financial markets now. Share prices are fluctuating like unseasonal temperatures and nobody can really predict what might happen next. French markets rallied earlier, but as soon as they did, rumours that BNP Paribas may face another €500 million loss on Greek debt surfaced.
There is something encouraging coming out of the past three days of rioting and looting, even if it is a remote silver lining: the online mobilization of volunteer clean-up operations, mostly organized via Twitter and Facebook. By this time yesterday, #riotcleanup, was the second-highest trending topic worldwide.
Nice one, guys! South Africa has the highest rate of strikes in the world, a labour analyst said yesterday. We’ve had 1 000 working days per 1 000 workers lost in 2010 – and it is expected to be even worse at the end of this year.
Souveneir t-shirts handed out at a rock festival in Gera, eastern Germany, were decorated with skulls, right-wing flags and the words “hardcore rebels,” to appeal to the vaguely neo-Nazi crowd the festival attracts. Except when the shirts got washed, the douchey decorations faded, replaced with anti-extremist slogans.
Banksy’s put up some new art on his site because all the other well-known people were speaking out about the NewsCorp. hacking scandal, and Banksy didn’t want to be left behind. Which is nice! Because honestly I’d almost forgotten about Murdoch. Way to be relevant, Banksy.
The International Monetary Fund has another scandal to deal with, although this time it’s a financial one. A French court has today ordered an investigation into the new IMF head, Christine Lagarde, and her role in a much-criticised $400 million arbitration deal in favour of a controversial tycoon. It concerns the mishandled sale of sportswear maker, Adidas, in the 1990’s.
Speaking at the Black Hat hacker’s conference in Vegas yesterday, former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center Cofer Black voiced concerns about a future “code war” where hackers tamper with the technology that runs our day-to-day interactions. Then a fire alarm accidentally tripped, which was nice and thematic.
Police have confirmed that the device attached to terrified Australian schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver was not a bomb, just a tremendously elaborate hoax. The device, attached to the girl by a masked intruder in her parent’s home, “gave the appearance of a legitimate improvised explosive device.”
A 31-year-old Swedish man, known only as ‘Richard’, was attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen and was arrested and had his experiment shut down after he contacted the Swedish Radiation Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten) to ask whether or not his pet project was legal.
Italy has become the next European country to join the wave of nations banning women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public. An Italian parliamentary commission has approved a draft law prohibiting women from wearing a burqa, niqab or any other garment that covers the face in public places.
Vilnius is the capitol city of Lithuania – a place where they feel very strongly about cars wrongly parked in specifically allocated bicycle lanes. In this clip the city’s mayor, Arturas Zuokas, can be seen literally crushing an “illegally parked” luxurious blue Mercedes – with an armored vehicle!
This feels like it should have been news sooner, but it wasn’t. Which is why we’re going to talk about it now. Hege Dalen and wife Toril Hansen were one of several Norwegians who, on hearing gunshots and screaming coming from Utöyan Island, got into their boat and drove across the water to try and help.
It’s time to dust off the old cheque book and keep an eye on what’s happening in Greece. You may just find something you want to purchase as Greek officials begin appointing advisers for the country’s ambitious privatisation drive, and what is one of the most ambitious asset-selling campaigns in modern history.
A clip of a distorted interview with a young black boy has raised questions about ethics in journalism in America. Responding to a news reporter’s question about what he’d like to be when he grows up, the boy replied: “I’m going to have me a gun! I’m going to be the police!” Guess which part of that sentence did not make it to TV?
Because robots can’t get depressed over awful working conditions and commit suicide, you see. Also we don’t have a robot union yet, so Foxconn (the guys who manufacture the iPhone and iPad) won’t need to worry about the slowly increasing factory worker wages in Taiwan, which are driving overhead costs upwards throughout the fancy-technology-making-industry.
On Friday Masizole Mnqasela, a DA Member of Parliament, was found not guilty of raping a schoolgirl last year. At the time he invited her to his house “for leftover braai meat” but claims nothing else happened. He branded the charge against him a political smear campaign, adding that he is too sexy to have to rape anyone.
Vodafone shut down their Egyptian network coverage during the revolution, arguably prolonging the event’s bloodshed and indirectly leading to the death of Egyptians who couldn’t summon ambulances when they were needed. This is bad. So it’s nice that AccessNow, a human rights NGO with Vodafone stock, are trying to force a company-wide human rights assessment.
Investigative journalist, Jacques Pauw, has written a fascinating expose about the man who once claimed to be South Africa’s youngest billionaire, Mandla Lamba. In the article Mandla and Pauw have a heart to heart, in Diepsloot prison.
A daily newspaper in Zimbabwe has revealed that Robert Mugabe has spent an excessive amount of money on foreign travel in the last six months, totalling $20 million. And we’re not talking Zimbabwean Dollars here, this is US currency. He has now reportedly surpassed his $15 million travel budget for the year, but that’s probably irrelevant to him.
I wrote yesterday about how depressed I was about the apparent lack of the rule of law in our fair land. Well today I am feeling a little better. The reason: The constitutional court has said that President Jacob Zuma’s decision to extend Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo’s term of office is unconstitutional.
I don’t know about you, but I for one am feeling like a real tit! I can’t believe I fell for that silly City Press article claiming Julius Malema uses his secret trust fund to fund his lavish lifestyle. It turns out he’s actually a young philanthropist and uses it to “fund charitable causes!”
Bigoted members of British society must be speedily wringing their hands and tensely furrowing their eyebrows in anger that this has happened. While not quite the same as the Name Your Hood campaign, Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Shariah law enforcement zones have been set up.
Last week we told you that the National Union of Mineworkers were planning a “massive strike”. Lesiba Seshoka, their spokesperson, has now confirmed that 200 000 gold workers will down their tools at 6pm this afternoon and that “there is no chance of negotiations to halt the strike.”
There are two aspects to this video. The first is very obvious: girls chose to wash Russian-made cars in bikinis for Vladimir Putin, as the headline suggests. And the other is the awkward on air moment between the two television news presenters that happens after they cover the story.