-
politics
-
Call Of Duty: UK Teacher Appointed Somali Deputy PM
15 Sep 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
UK teacher, Mohamed Ibrahim, unexpectedly received an email from Somalia asking him to visit his former homeland over the UK summer holidays. When he returned to war-torn Mogadishu, he was unexpectedly appointed the Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the country.
-
JuJu’s Favourite Tune Deemed Hate Speech
12 Sep 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In a recent ruling by Judge Colin Lamont, “Dubula Ibhunu”, also known as “shoot the boer”, has been deemed hate speech. Lamont, who is presiding over Julius Malema’s hate speech trial, also made it clear that the Equality Act was put in place to protect all groups in a country, and in this case, more specifically, minorities. Sorry JuJu. Not.
-
China Not Gaga for Gaga, Bans Song Downloads
26 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
The Chinese government, in a not-unusual display of authoritarian petulance, has banned the download of over a hundred music titles from popular online music sites in China.
-
Syrian Cartoonist Has Hands Broken As Warning To Anti-Assad Activists
26 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
You should know about this. Ali Ferzat, an immensely popular Syrian cartoonist and outspoken critic of President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on the opposition, has been beaten, burned, and had both of his hands broken by masked gunmen, as a warning to cease his anti-Assad activism.
-
Chinese Propaganda Video Accidentally Reveals Cyber Attack Against US.
25 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Screenshots from a Chinese military propaganda video uploaded to YouTube last month reveal a cyberwarfare app designed to make attacks look like they’re coming from any IP address. In the video, the Chinese government can be seen sending attacks from an IP address belonging to the University of Alabama.
-
Ugandan Police Spray Dye At Opposition Protestors [PICS]
18 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Bravo. Anti-riot police used tear gas and water canons (loaded with dyed water) to disperse supporters of the opposition party in the outskirts of Kampala yesterday. The group had gathered to mourn people killed during demonstrations earlier this year.
-
English Man Arrested For Planning Water-Fight With BBM
16 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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.
-
Vodafone’s Wrists Slapped By Shareholders For Shutdown In Egypt
01 Aug 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Moscow’s First Sex Museum A.K.A The ‘G-Spot’
15 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
When opening a sex museum in a country where, publicly, sex almost doesn’t exist, you had better make sure that it’s as offensive as possible, since controversy is sure to follow. I’m pretty sure naming it Tochka G, meaning G-spot in Russian, and covering the walls with images of Putin sword-dick-fighting Obama, should do the trick.
-
Floyd Shivambu Swears At Journalist [AUDIO]
12 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
A journalist had the audacity to call Floyd Shivambu right out of the blue to ask his opinion on reports that Julius Malema had spent roughly R78 000 on a holiday. Shockingly, Floyd answered his phone. Also, he swore at the journalist. Listen to an audio clip of the conversation inside.
-
Ugandan Activists Could Be Charged With “Annoying The Person Of The President”
12 Jul 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Youth activists in Uganda recently attempted to throw a public birthday party for President Yoweri Museveni. They brought cake, sweets, and mangoes! By doing this, they hoped to focus attention on his disputed age. See, he claims he is 67, but they say he is actually 73. The president took offence and had them and their cake arrested.
-
French Journalists, Held By Taliban Since December 2009, Freed
30 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
After 547 days of being held as hostages in Afghanistan, two French journalists,Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier, have been released and are due back in France today. The two were kidnapped on the 30th of December 2009 along with their Afghan translator, fixer and driver in the mountainous Kapisa province northeast of the Afghan capital of Kabul.
-
Sao Paolo Judge Approves Brazil’s First Gay Marriage
29 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
After New York, every subsequent gay marriage approval is going to seem less exciting, but this is still a thing. Judge Fernando Henrique Pinto ruled that two men could convert their civil union into a full marriage, a right that’s been lobbeyed for since the Supreme Court recognized same-sex civil unions in May, but stopped short of approving marriage.
-
The Dutch May Ban Religious Animal Slaughter
28 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Dutch political left sees the ritual slaughter of animals as cruel to animals, whilst the right sees it as foreign and barbaric. They will both pass a law next week that will make the killing of animals without stunning them first illegal. This poses a problem for orthodox Dutch Jews and Muslims who’ve been doing it differently for the last couple of millennia.
-
Taiwanese Food-Blogger Jailed For A Bad Noodle Review
24 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Wonderful. A Taiwanese court ruled this week that a female food-blogger’s claim that a local restaurant’s beef noodles “were too salty” justified 30 days in detention, and two years of probation. Even better, she has to pay 200,000 Taiwenese dollars (about 50K ZAR) in compensation to the restaurant.
-
FBI’s Search For Hacking Group Takes Out Random, Unrelated Websites
22 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The cyber-war on cyber-terror now has innocent bystanders, apparently. In a hunt for LulzSec, the hacking group claiming responsibility for the compromise of huge amounts of Sony user accounts and for briefly taking the CIA website offline, the FBI raided DigitalOne’s data – finding nothing, but causing a bunch of unrelated websites to go offline.
-
Former Tunisian President Sentenced To 35-Year Jail Sentence In Absentia
21 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A Tunisian court found former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his wife guilty of theft and the illegal possession of large quantities of money and jewelry. He sentenced them to 35 years in jail, which is great and all, except Ben Ali and his wife are in Saudi Arabia, making extradition a little unlikely.
-
“Tasteful” Obama Impersonator At Republican Leadership Conference [VIDEO]
20 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Professional Barack Obama impersonator Reggie Brown was invited by the Republican Party to speak at their Leadership Conference in New Orleans over the weekend. Classy birth certificate references and borderline racist jokes ensued, until he was pulled off the stage by a conference official. Come, observe democracy at its high point.
-
Apple Patents Technology That Lets Other People Turn Off Your Camera
17 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
And they’d been doing so well with the ‘not evil’ thing. Apple’s new patent is for software that would sense when people are trying to film concerts or events with their iPhone, then automatically disable the camera. It’d be nice to see a concert without a thousand iPhones blocking the way, but Big Brother much?
-
Democracy For Realsies: Iceland Is Crowdsourcing Its Constitution
13 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Hot damn but I love the future. Iceland is drawing up a new constitution, in the wake of the country’s commercial banks collapsing. Which is news, but not news-news; the interesting part is how the former vikings are going about the process – they’re crowdsourcing the draft online, with links to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts.
-
“Gay Girl In Damascus” Blogger Is A Married Dude From Georgia
13 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
There was a fair amount of coverage about the apparent arrest of “Amina Arraf”, the pseudonym of openly gay Syrian blogger behind ‘Gay Girl In Damascus,’ which did a lot for getting word out about human rights issues in Syria. Except it turns out that Amina was invented by 40-year-old Tom McMaster, from Georgia.
-
Norway To Train Foreign Diplomats In Black Metal
09 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In yet another move to convince us that Scandinavian politics makes sense: the government of Norway is inexplicably offering to ‘train’ foreign diplomats in the ways of black metal. As in, the musical genre. Specifically, ‘True Norwegian Black Metal’, which you would know by now if you were a foreign diplomat in Norway.
-
France Uses A 1992 Law To Ban ‘Follow Us On Twitter’
06 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
I know this isn’t the worst thing to happen to French civil liberties by a long shot, but still; the interpretation of a law prohibiting ‘commercial advertising’ – which, in effect, will mean that newsreaders may no longer mention Facebook or Twitter, unless the story is about Facebook or Twitter – makes total social media sense. Total.
-
Global Commission On Drug Policy: We Should Legalize ‘Em.
03 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Global Commission on Drug Policy has released a report stating that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. Like Dame Judi Dench and Sting, the 19-member panel – which includes Sir Richard Branson, Kofi Annan and former leaders of Brazil and Mexico – is urging for the decriminalization of drugs. The USA is not amused.
-
Chinese Hackers Used Fake Gmail Site To Steal Activist Data
02 Jun 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Google announced on Tuesday that they’d been they target of a phishing scam originating in Jinan, China, aimed at the accounts of Chinese activists and senior officials in the U.S. Victims were sent fake emails with links to a fake Gmail site, which harvested the usernames and passwords of anyone trying to log in.
-
“Virginity Checks” Forced On Female Protesters By Military In Egypt
31 May 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Multiple news sources reported today that a senior Egyptian general has come forward to confirm that forced “virginity checks” had been performed on women arrested during demonstrations. This had previously been denied by military authorities, but general Amr Imam has not only confirmed but defended the practice as a protective measure for the women’s own good.
-
The Economist Punts Trevor Manuel As IMF Successor
23 May 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
What with IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn jailed on sex assault charges, there’s speculation about who’ll be replacing him. Calls from non-European countries to instate a non-European head have become increasingly vocal, especially after French Strauss-Kahn’s shenanigans – so it’s interesting that The Economist looked to Trevor Manuel, among others, as a potential succcessor.
-
Donald Trump Not Running For President Anymore – Instead Focusing On His TV Career [VIDEO]
17 May 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In an incredibly patriotic move, Donald Trump yesterday announced that he no longer plans to run for the American presidency. Instead he will rather selflessly become part of the 12th season of The Apprentice once again because “it is for charity and for a great cause.” See the video statement inside. I love the applauding when he announces his decision not to run anymore. Awkward.
-
ANC And City Of Cape Town Arguing About Posters
16 May 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
This is a little like me not being allowed to have posters up in my bedroom, but less serious: the ANC has lodged a complaint with the Electoral Commission after Cape Town city workers were found removing COSATU posters campaigning for Tony Ehrenreich. Because they want their posters back, apparently.
-
Texas Trying To Ban TSA Searches
16 May 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Since 9/11, flying has sucked. For all of the wrong reasons, flight security has become paranoid and despotic, and nowhere worse than the USA – where TSA agents have manhandled infants and the infirm in ‘the war on terror.’ So it’s nice to see that the Texas House of Representatives just banned TSA searches without probable cause.
-
-
-
2oceansvibe Partners
-
-
