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Slavery Still Exists - Lisa Kristine. Photographs of human trafficking and enslavement around the world Lisa Kristine It was 130 degrees when I was first introduced to the brick kilns of Nepal. In these severe temperatures, men, women, and children -- whole families, in fact -- were surrounded by a dense cloud of dust while mechanically stacking bricks on their heads, carrying them, 18 at a time, from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away. These are slaves. Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they worked without speaking, repeating the same task 16 hours a day. Around the world human traffickers trick many people into slavery by false promises of good jobs or good education, only to find themselves forced to work without pay, under the threat of violence. For the last 28 years I have documented people in more than 100 countries on six continents.

Oddly, I'd been to most of the locations where I started photographing slavery many times before. These are not images of "problems. " Yovany Gonzalez's Wells Fargo Lawsuit Alleges Bank Fired Him, Cut Dying Daughter's Health Insurance. Wells Fargo allegedly fired an employee because his dying daughter needed expensive cancer treatment, according to a lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County Court on Thursday. Wells Fargo fired mortgage consultant Yovany Gonzalez three days before his daughter Mackenzie was scheduled to get cancer surgery in August of 2010, the lawsuit states. According to the suit, the hospital canceled the surgery because Mackenzie no longer was covered by health insurance.

She died of cancer in March of 2011. Before Gonzalez was fired, Wells Fargo and United Health Care, the health insurer, asked Gonzalez's wife "numerous questions" about Mackenzie's treatment and made "several references ... to the costs of her treatment," the lawsuit states. Around that time, Gonzalez's supervisor told Gonzalez that Wells Fargo was looking for reasons to get rid of him, according to the lawsuit. "This was a loss of an innocent child's life," Jack Scarola, Gonzalez's lawyer, told The Huffington Post. Related on HuffPost: The Fraudulent Criminalization of Marijuana. For almost 40 years, the United States has waged a war on its own citizens who have used marijuana as a part of a drug culture originally encouraged by the government. The war was commenced despite the government's own findings that marijuana posed less of a risk to American society than alcohol, and that the greatest harm that would result from criminalization would be the injury caused to those arrested for possession and use.

The harm caused by the war extends beyond its 15 million prisoners; its cost has exceeded a trillion dollars, and it has benefitted only those who profit from the illegal cultivation and sale of marijuana. Government Responsibility for the Drug Culture Drug use became endemic among U.S. troops serving in Vietnam with more than 80% getting stoned on marijuana and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Although the U.S. was a signatory to the Geneva Convention protocols banning the use of chemical weapons, the U.S. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You | Danger Room. Gen. Keith Alexander, center, the head of the National Security Agency, visits Afghanistan, 2010. Photo: ISAF The surveillance experts at the National Security Agency won’t tell two powerful United States Senators how many Americans have had their communications picked up by the agency as part of its sweeping new counterterrorism powers.

The reason: it would violate your privacy to say so. That claim comes in a short letter sent Monday to civil libertarian Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. The query bounced around the intelligence bureaucracy until it reached I. “All that Senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the Inspectors General cannot provide it,” Wyden told Danger Room on Monday. “If the FISA Amendments Act is not susceptible to oversight in this way,” Aftergood said, “it should be repealed, not renewed.” FDA Must Rethink Antibiotics In Animal Feed, Federal Judge Orders. * Judge critical of FDA's lack of action * Long-standing concerns about creation of superbugs * FDA unveiled voluntary guidelines in April (Rewrites with quotes from judge and industry group comments) By P.J.

Huffstutter June 5 (Reuters) - A federal judge said the Food and Drug Administration had done "shockingly little" to address the human health risks of antibiotic use in animal feed and ordered the agency to reconsider two petitions seeking restrictions on the practice. The ruling, filed on Friday in a lawsuit brought by environmental and public-health groups, is the second recent setback for the FDA amid long-standing concern that overuse of antibiotics in animal feed is endangering human health by creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. U.S. In March, Katz ordered the FDA to complete proceedings to withdraw approval for the non therapeutic use of penicillin and tetracycline in livestock production unless makers of the drugs can produce evidence that their use is safe.

Also on HuffPost: Senate panel approves five-year extension of warrantless wiretapping program. By Eric W. DolanWednesday, May 23, 2012 16:44 EDT The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday approved the extension of legislation that authorized a sweeping warrantless wiretapping program started under the Bush Administration. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 gave the government broad powers to monitor international phone calls and emails, and granted legal immunity to telecommunication companies that had participated in the wiretapping program before 2008. The law was set to expire in 2012, but the Senate bill — passed by a 13-2 vote in the committee — would extend the law for another five years.

“The bill we approved today extends critical counterterrorism and intelligence gathering tools for the Intelligence Community,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said in a statement. Sens. “We have not gotten any clear answer on that,” Jennifer Hoelzer, a Wyden spokeswoman, told the Washington Post. Eric W. Eric W. Help pass the California Wolf PAC Resolution! - Wolf PAC. Wolf PAC, we need your help now making phone calls and sending email! SACRAMENTO, Calif. (April 26, 2012) -- On the heels of successfully passing a resolution calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to overturn the Citizens United decision, three California Assemblymen are championing a resolution that goes one step further.

Assemblyman Michael Allen (D-Sonoma County), Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles), and Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) have filed Assembly Joint Resolution 32. If passed, this resolution -- the first of its kind -- will start the process of the States calling for a constitutional convention, which would be limited to amending the Constitution to limit corporate personhood and declare that money does not constitute speech and can be democratically limited. This landmark resolution is scheduled for a public hearing on May 1st before the California State Assembly Judiciary Committee. Who Googled You? This Website Knows.

After a date, a pitch or a job interview, there's a good chance you're going to get Googled. Online reputation manager BrandYourself now helps you figure out who is searching for your name. The startup, which helps individuals control Google results for names through SEO, launched a new feature on Tuesday that shows users where visitors to their BrandYourself profiles work and where they're located. BrandYourself built a database of organizations' publicly-available IP addresses in order to create the feature. They use it to match IP addressees of profile visitors with the companies that own those addressses. Visitors most frequently reach BrandYourself profiles through Google, but the feature works the same way if visitors reach a user's profile from another search engine or website. The system isn't foolproof. While it's easy to track down IP addresses for large organizations, many smaller companies won't be listed.

College Student Daniel Chong Attempted Suicide After DEA Agents Locked Him in a Small Cell Without Food or Water for Five Days. Several hours after Obama’s drug czar told a room filled with Democratic power brokers at the Center for American Progress that the “war on drugs” was over, 23-year-old Daniel Chong sat down with NBC San Diego to recount the five days he spent handcuffed in a DEA holding cell without food or water after he was arrested at a "4/20 party. " During that period, Chong, a student at UC San Diego, was forced to drink his own urine because his cries for help, for water, and for food went ignored, or perhaps unheard, by DEA agents. By the third day, Chong said he was hallucinating.

He tried to kill himself by breaking the lens of his glasses, cutting his wrists, and then swallowing the shards. More from NBC: Chong said he was at a friend’s house in University City celebrating 4/20, a day many marijuana users set aside to smoke, when agents came inside and raided the residence. Chong was then taken to the DEA office in Kearny Mesa.He said agents questioned him, and then told him he could go home.

Science

Politics. Financial News. Choking Game: 1 in 16 Kids Have Tried It, Study Says. One in 16 eighth-graders surveyed in Oregon admit to experimenting with "the choking game" (also known as asphyxia) at least once, according to research published today in Pediactrics. Though the potentially fatal "game" -– defined by Reuters as "putting pressure on the neck with a towel or belt to cut off someone's oxygen supply, then releasing the pressure to give a 'high' sensation" –- has been around for years, it's gaining new traction and popularity among kids because of its prevalence on YouTube.

ABC News reports that videos of kids participating in the game are "all over" the site. Judy Rogg, whose 12-year-old son Erik died in 2010 after attempting to "play" in his living room, calls the choking game a silent epidemic. "Kids think it's an alternative to drugs," she told ABC. Now Rogg has made it her mission to educate kids, parents and schools about the dangerous risks and severity of the consequences caused by asphyxiation. Beyond the obvious reasons, Dr. Iran Hopes to Be Rid of Meddlesome Internet by August. Facebook isn’t making us lonely. It’s making us anxious. Get over it. As a masterpiece and a cultural catastrophe at once, Facebook is distinctly American. It represents a social regime that’s scintillating and hideous. The values intrinsic to it—velocity, wit, growth, exhibitionism and “connectivity”—can seem superficial, but they’re ours.

This week, the Facebook brass are making housecalls to investors, using razzle, dazzle and astral projections to justify valuing the eight-year-old company at a big, round $100 billion. This comes in preparation for Facebook’s midmonth initial public offering—what’s expected to be the biggest I.P.O. in the history of the Internet. At the same time, government officials have started to cast a cold eye on Facebook, making sure it—and Apple and Google—don’t get a regulatory pass from Washington just because they’re cute. Facebook not long ago had to agree to a 20-year settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the company violated users’ privacy. Many consumers are even wary of Facebook. Father beats man to death; sheriff says dad reacted to his daughter, 4, being sexually assaulted. SHINER - A father caught a man molesting his 4-year-old daughter and beat him to death Saturday, the Lavaca County sheriff said.

Sheriff Micah Harmon said the death occurred about 3:45 p.m. in a residence along County Road 302 near Shiner. The name of the deceased man, a 47-year-old from Gonzales, was not released because his relatives have not been notified, Harmon said. And authorities have not identified the girl nor her father. The Advocate's policy is to not print the names of sexual assault victims. No arrests have yet been made in the case. Harmon said the resident of the home caught the Gonzales man attempting to molest his daughter and attempted to stop him. The girl was taken to DeTar Hospital Navarro in Victoria for an examination.

Harmon said the case remains under investigation. The Gonzales man's body was taken to Travis County for an autopsy. Print • Share Share this item Grab the link Save as a favorite Blog about it Close • • • Report error.

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War. Trayvon Martin Case. How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation. Over the weekend, the Obama administration issued a potentially game-changing statement on the blacklist bills, saying it would oppose PIPA and SOPA as written, and drew an important line in the sand by emphasizing that it “will not support” any bill “that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet. " Yet, the fight is still far from over. Even though the New York Times reported that the White House statement "all but kill[s] current versions of the legislation," the Senate is still poised to bring PIPA to the floor next week, and we can expect SOPA proponents in the House to try to revive the legislation—unless they get the message that these initiatives must stop, now.

So let’s take a look at the dangerous provisions in the blacklist bills that would violate the White House’s own principles by damaging free speech, Internet security, and online innovation: The Anti-Circumvention Provision The “Vigilante” Provision. Meet SOPA's evil twin, ACTA - Big Tech. By Dan Mitchell, contributor FORTUNE -- It's only fitting that a loud, global outcry over ACTA, an international agreement to govern intellectual property, began just after the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA were shelved by the U.S Congress in the face of massive public pressure.

If "copyright maximalists" can't get legislation passed, writes TechDirt's Mike Masnick, "they resort to getting these things put into international trade agreements, which get significantly less scrutiny. " Not that the "maximalists" -- including the movie and music industries -- were following such a timeline, exactly. ACTA -- the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (PDF) -- is their backup, and they've been working on it for years. It's stirring protests now because Poland, Ireland and the European Union announced they would sign on this week, moving the pact closer to reality.

Like many trade agreements, ACTA is a confusing mess. Not that the critics are appeased. They went unheeded. CISPA = SOPA 2.0? CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0. Reporting from Washington — In spite of their hopes, Internet activists are finding that their efforts to keep the digital world free of further regulation did not end with SOPA’s defeat. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 is working its way through Congress, and is the latest proposed legislation to raise concerns among privacy activists. Introduced in November by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), the stated goal of CISPA is to create new channels for communication between government intelligence entities and private firms regarding potential and emerging cyber-security threats.

The communication would deal primarily with what the legislation deems “cyber threat intelligence,” which it defines as “information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or a network of a government or private entity.” To read CISPA in its entirety, click here. White House will propose new digital copyright laws | Privacy Inc. The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows. EU votes in favour of tougher copyright enforcement News. EU Parliament calls for pan-EU copyright law. List of porn pirates leaked on to internet. SOPA Anti-Porn Amendment Rejected By Bipartisan Coalition.