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For the Global Thinker

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages


• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
• Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
• Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
• Company says it is legally compelled to comply

READ MORE HERE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

Statement from Edward Snowden

This guy's a hero in my books...

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

Read full article here: Wikileaks

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Breakthroughs in Health



The future of health looks promising...especially with these breakthroughs.

Researchers in Japan have used human stem cells to create tiny human livers like those that arise early in fetal life - New York Times 

No sign of HIV return in bone marrow transplant patients, say scientists: Two men who had longstanding HIV infections have stopped taking Aids drugs and have no detectable HIV in their blood - Guardian

Researchers have created contact lenses which, when paired with special spectacles, bestow telescopic vision on their wearers - BBC News 

10 Medical advances in the last ten years....CNN

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy – but do our leaders care?


"...a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden "has provided intelligence to America's adversaries".
Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that "facts are important". Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden's leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea."

Read more here...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/05/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-spy

Monday, July 1, 2013

Language at risk of dying out – the last two speakers aren't talking


Trouble in Tabasco for centuries-old Ayapaneco tongue as anthropologists race to compile dictionary of Nuumte Oote...

Read more here...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/13/mexico-language-ayapaneco-dying-out 

Also...

The Devil's Backbone...an incredible stretch of road through No Man's Land...
http://photos.denverpost.com/2013/06/30/photos-the-devils-backbone-mexico/

Three Videos to Warm the Soul IX


Happy Birthday Canada...here's three incredible videos of Canada, if you have more...post them! Cheers and Enjoy!

Northern Lights Legends
https://vimeo.com/22894171

Heart of Van City
https://vimeo.com/62177211

Mountains in Motion: The Canadian Rockies
https://vimeo.com/45941676

See more cool vids here...
http://ajarnmike.blogspot.ca/2013/03/simplicity-is-not-always-bad.html