Planet Dust

Welcome to David White's Tumblr. I have recently returned to Ireland after two years living in Dalian, China. I usually post on current affairs, technology, human rights, music and the world at large. I started this Tumblr with the intention of blogging as much original content and opinion as I could, but in reality time constraints mean a lot of my posts tend to be interesting articles I have discovered around the web and other bits and pieces. My Facebook, Last FM and Twitter. I can be reached at dathai.de.faoite [at] gmail.com. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-21208447-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[dtwhite]

Evernote

Use #Evernote? To enhance your productivity with Evernote news, tips and advice, check out my #Flipboard magazine http://flip.it/qykW5

[girlslikecarsandmonet]

Manila submerged. Please signal boost, along with the emergency hotlines and donation links:

________________________________________________

notkorra:

PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST THE FUCK OUT OF THIS.

Several of my country men and women are chest-deep in flood because of Typhoon Maring’s (international name: Trami) relentless rains. The sun hasn’t come out for days in Metro Manila and we need your help.

FOR FILIPINOS AFFECTED BY THE WEATHER, IF YOU NEED HELP OR KNOW ANYONE WHO NEEDS HELP, CONTACT THE FOLLOWING:

National Disaster and Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) hotlines: [phone], [phone], [phone], [phone] 

Red Cross hotline: 143, [phone], [phone] to 95 

DSWD: [phone] to 07, local 426 (Disaster Response Unit); [phone]

PAGASA: 433-8526

NDRRMC: 911-1406

MMDA Flood Control: 882-4177

PNP: 117

Philippine Cost Guard: 527-6136

Philippine Red Cross: 911-1876

Bureau of Fire Protection: 729-5166

FOR INTERNATIONAL FOLLOWERS WHO WANT TO HELP, YOU CAN DONATE HERE.

TWITTER NOTICE! Remember: #rescuePH for emergencies, #reliefPH for evacuation centers and relief ops, #floodPH flood situation, #safenow once rescued. TWEET @RescuePH if you or anyone you know needs help!

Please, if you can reblog it, take time from your comfortable and safe life to reblog and spread the word. People are suffering out here and need help. Thank you.

[kellysue]

Please help if you can!

[dtwhite]

Astounding Spaceship Designs From Before The Space Age

Long before we were building spacecraft, we were dreaming of them. And some of our earliest ideas about space vehicles were pretty fanciful, or even downright bizarre. Here are the most astonishing and baffling spaceship designs from before we had spaceships.

These are a lot of fun, from the always excellent io9.com.

[dtwhite]

Krugman:

concludes that the modest fall in unemployment is all about emigration. Actually, we can reach the same conclusion by going straight to employment data:

...But the repeated invocation of Ireland as a role model has gotten to be a sick joke.

Agree with Krugman here. Ireland is in no way an international economic success story. As well as employment levels staying static, as illustrated in Krugman’s chart, the middle classes are still very much living austere lifestyles. While people complain about the new property and water charges, the real killer over the last few years has been the Universal Social Charge. To be paid at rates of up to 7%, on top of income tax, it’s been painful.

[dtwhite]

Martyn Turner on the tragic events in Egypt this week

[dtwhite]

Syria, and the increasing impact of foreign Islamist fighters, by Paul Rogers in his always excellent openDemocracy column:

All this means that the Syrian civil war has entered a new phase which essentially pitches the Alawi-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad against Islamist paramilitaries, with the more secular elements of the rebellion becoming far less important. This in no way diminishes the proxy nature of the war but it is likely substantially to diminish support offered by western countries to the rebels, meaning that the role of Qatar and (especially) Saudi Arabia is becoming even more central to the war.

I don't know how the civil war in Syria will play out in the end, though I don't see al-Assad staying in power in the long term. However, I do fear a post war era dominated by Islamists.

[theatlantic]

In Russia, Violent Videos Show a New Form of Gay Bullying

MOSCOW — Some show youths being forced to drink urine, or having it poured over their heads. Others show young men being taunted with phallic sex toys, threatened with axes, and forced to carry wooden crucifixes.

These are just a few of the images contained in a series of shocking videos filmed by a nationalist gang in Kamensk-Uralsky, an industrial town of 175,000 inhabitants in Russia’s Sverdlovsk Oblast near the Ural Mountains.

Some were shot after the group contacted their victims online and lured them into what they believed would be romantic liaisons with other young men — in at least some cases with minors. Other victims were known homosexuals who were forcibly picked up off the street.

The stated goal of the videos was to “cure" these young men of their homosexuality.

Read more.

[dtwhite]

Shocking treatment of homosexuals in Russia. Local law enforcement appears to turn a blind eye.

[thepoliticalnoteboo1deac]

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

CNN’s Jake Tapper reports that there were dozens of CIA operatives on the ground in Benghazi the night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed, although the agency is going to great lengths to protect against disclosure of what those operatives were up to.

More than 1000 inmates were freed in a massive jailbreak near Benghazi.

Gaddhafi’s former education minister has been sentenced to death by a Libyan court, having been found guilty of murder and inciting violence.

At an Islamist rally in Cairo on Saturday, Egyptian police killed 72 demonstrators. The Lede Blog has collected video and witness accounts of the events.

Egypt’s interim government has instructed security forces to end sit-ins supporting the deposed former president Mohammed Morsy.

Citizens in Mali are coping with post-traumatic stress following last year’s coup, but there were only six psychiatrists in the country before the war.

134 people were killed in clashes in Darfur.

Mugabe will be continuing his thirty-three year run as Zimbabwe’s president, with a little help from electoral fraud. Jon Lee Anderson writes on Mugabe at The New Yorker and Michael Bratton at Foreign Affairs.

The UN threatens to forcibly disarm rebels in the Congo.

The Syrian government has agreed to allow UN investigators into 3 sites where use of chemical weapons has been alleged.

In a message to his army, Assad says he is “sure of victory."

The head of Syria’s opposition has rejected the idea of talks with Assad.

The latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks (first in three years) are taking place with heavy US involvement.

Iran has stepped up support for a Gaza group called Islamic Jihad after a falling out with Hamas over the group’s unwillingness to back Assad.

Saudi online activist Raef Badawi will receive 600 lashes and a seven year prison sentence for calling for religious liberalization.

Six suspected militants were killed by drone in Yemen over the weekend.

Yet another wave of car bombs rocked Iraq over the weekend.

July was the deadliest month in Iraq in five years — about 1000 people were killed last month, which tops monthly death tolls dating back to April of 2008, when the country was just emerging from sectarian civil war. 

Bahrain Watch has released a report detailing the government’s use of fake Twitter accounts to track down and prosecute anonymous anti-regime tweeters.

According to the UN, civilian casualties in Afghanistan are up 23% in the first half of this year.

67 percent of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting for… making the Afghan war more unpopular now than the Iraq war was at any point.

The Afghan government has reached an agreement with NATO over the touchy issue of customs tariffs.

In the last 3 months alone, the Special Investigator General for Afghan Reconstruction has found potentially $2 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in reconstruction contracts.

Quelling rumors of a full pull-out from Afghanistan, the Pentagon released a report detailing long-term military and financial assistance post-2014.

250 prisoners escaped from a prison in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan after a bold Taliban raid freed them following a gunfight with security. Dawn reports that about 45 of the escapees have been rearrested.

Two bombs exploded last Friday night at a market in Parachinar, a town in the northwest near the Afghan border, killing 57.

A mutated strain of polio adds to the worries of those working in Pakistan’s threatened and politicized polio eradication program.

The Taliban are gaining strength and foothold in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

At least six militants were killed by a US drone strike in Pakistan last weekend.

US Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to Islamabad on Wednesday.

Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf will be indicted in the murder of Benazir Bhutto.

Bangladesh’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has been barred from upcoming elections.

Colombian peace talks have resumed in Cuba.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has discovered continued CIA use of double-tap drone strikes, claimed to have ended in July of 2011. Double-tap drone strikes are instances of following the initial strike with another shortly after, deliberately killing rescuers. 

Edward Snowden has been granted one year’s asylum in Russia and has left Sheremetyevo Airport. The US is not pleased.

Glenn Greenwald reveals yet another sweeping data dragnet program. This one is called XKeyscore and allows the NSA to browse a database containing emails, chat logs and browsing histories with no prior authorization — their self-proclaimed “widest reaching" online data collection program. Here are the PowerPoint training materials containing information on XKeyscore.

The Guardian’s UK edition reports that the US has paid the British counterpart to the NSA, the GCHQ, £100m over the past three years to “secure access to and influence over Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes."

Bradley Manning was found not guilty of the charge of aiding the enemy, but was convicted of several other charges. We await sentencing.

The Washington Post visually breaks down the two dozen charges of which he was convicted and the associated possible sentences.

Manning’s use of the 1996 file downloading (not hacking, just downloading) program wget is the basis for his computer fraud charge and conviction.

Reporters Without Borders calls his convictions a “blow for investigative journalism and its sources."

The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan writes about James Risen (who is fighting extensive legal pressures from the government to testify about a source) and what his case means for journalism.

The McClatchy news organization sent a letter to DNI James Clapper asking him if calls between one of their reporters and his sources in Afghanistan had been monitored.

NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander defends the surveillance programs. 

The NSA was questioned by Senators on Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. 

Some help in interpreting what national security officials really mean when they say words like “collect," “relevant" and “minimize."

Read artist Molly Crabapple’s dispatch from Guantánamo Bay prison (including its gift shop!), complete with gorgeous drawings. 

We aren’t actually allowed to know the full list of the groups with whom we are at war… that’s classified.

The issue and role of government surveillance has come up in two Chicago terrorism cases. 

The FAA has approved the first drones for commercial use in US airspace.

Fox News interviewed Reza Aslan and it didn’t go very well.

If you would like to receive this round-up as a weekly email, you can sign up through this form, or email me directly at [email protected].

Photo: Homs, Syria. A government soldier stands in front of the Khaled Ibn al-Walid mosque, which Assad’s forces captured last Saturday. Check out the rest of this slideshow for images of the destruction wreaked upon the city of Homs. Sam Skaine/AFP/Getty

[amnestyirelandfreespeech]

Evidence that the security forces have once again used unwarranted live fire and other excessive force underlines the crucial need for police reform, said Amnesty International after a weekend of violence left 90 dead.

Security forces used live rounds and tear gas to disperse supporters of...

[dtwhite]

Have not heard this song in years, but for some reason it came into my head out of nowhere yesterday. Wonderful stuff from my school days.

[dtwhite]

"On Monday, the US president, Barack Obama, indicated that Morsi had not yet lost his backing. "We don't make those decisions just by counting the number of heads in a protest march but we do make decisions based on whether or not a government is listening to the opposition, maintaining a free press, maintaining freedom of assembly, not using violence or intimidation, conducting fair and free elections," he said." Umm...if that's the case, why did the US support Mubarack for so long?

[amnestyirelandfreespeech]

Image copyright: Nazim Serhat Firat.

Since May 29, some two thousand protesters have been injured as Turkish police employ tear gas, water cannon, and excessive force to disperse them.

Take Action and call on Turkish authorities to:

Ensure the right to freedom of expression and assembly

Immediately end the excessive use of force against protestors

Undertake prompt, independent and impartial investigation into the excessive use of force and bring to justice law enforcement officials found to have ill-treated demonstrators or other members of the public. Act now.

Further Resources:

Turkey must end abusive use of force and reveal the extent of injuries

Watch: Amnesty Turkey says Turkish government commits human rights violations (Source: RTE News)

[dtwhite]

Take action, and support Amnesty's work in Turkey

[courtenaybird]

There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan | Social media and opposition to blame for protests, says Turkish PM  (via courtenaybird)

[dtwhite]

[atjeonjungkook]

“I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Sir, the bible does.”

[amnestyirelandfreespeech]

Last week, Amnesty International’s global annual report, a country-by country survey of the human rights records for 2012, reported findings on human rights abuses around the world, including the repression of freedom of expression. 

According to the report, 101 countries repressed their people’s right to freedom of expression in 2012.

To read the report and learn more about freedom of expression in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere please visit: http://www.amnesty.org/en/annual-report/2013/downloads

[we-are-star-stuff]

Who says North is up?

Upside Down maps (also known as South-Up or Reversed maps) offer a completely different perspective of the world we live in.

Technically speaking, even referring to the earth with words like “up” or “down” or comparing places with words “above” or “below” is flawed, considering that the earth is a spherical body (it’s actually slightly “fatter” at the equator) and flying through 3 dimensional space with no reference of up or down. However, the issue of “up” and “down” does become an issue when viewing the surface of the earth projected onto a flat piece of paper (a map). And the effect of the orientation of a map is more significant than you might realize.

As all maps require orientation for reference, the issue of how to layout the map orientation is as old as maps themselves. As map orientation is completely arbitrary, it is not surprising that they differed throughout time periods and regions.

The convention of North-up is usually attributed to the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). Justifications for his north-up approach vary. In the middle ages, East was often placed at top. This is the origin of the term “The Orient” to refer to East Asia. During the age of exploration, European cartographers again followed the north-up convention…perhaps because the North Star was their fixed reference point for navigation, or because they wanted (subconsciously or otherwise) to ensure Europe’s claim at the top of the world.

In modern times, reversed maps are made as a learning device or to illustrate Northern Hemisphere bias. Different from simply turning a north-up map upside down, a reversed map has the text oriented to be read with south up.

The famous “Blue Marble” photograph of the Earth taken from on board Apollo 17 was originally oriented with the south pole at the top, with the island of Madagascar visible just left of center, and the continent of Africa at its right. However, the image was turned upside-down to fit the traditional view.

While the orientation of a map might seem harmless, it can have a significant effect on one’s perception of the world, and the relative importance of the different place in it.

In speech, we often refer to places being “above” or “below” others. Think of how you would say you’re about to travel to the state or country to your north or south (to go “down” to Kentucky from Indiana, or “up” to Canada from the US). Without even mentioning geography, ask any grade school student whether Mexico is “above” or “below” the United States. We’re all familiar with the “land down under”. As we often correlate importance to relative height (think how a citizens of a country will fly their flag higher than all other flags), the north-up convention reinforces the idea that northern bodies are more important than their southern neighbors. Suddenly, traveling “down” to the South might have an inference much deeper than geographic location.

After looking at the map more closely, you may realize that the South-Up orientation may change your perception of the relative status of different places. For example, South America suddenly looks to have more prominence, and Africa and the Middle East completely dwarf Europe. Likewise, tucking Northern Europe, Canada, and Russia away at the bottom of the map, subconsciously takes away their status.

To summarize, unconditionally accepting the north-up map convention without at least appreciating the effect stands at odds with viewing all people and places within the world equally. x x