http://www.talkgeektome.us/nlinks.xhtml This is a link blogroll for my general (as opposed to technical) news links. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:40:43 GMT ListGarden Program 1.3.1 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://cair.com/press-center/press-releases/11920-lawsuit-claims-u-s-muslim-tortured-at-behest-of-fbi-state-dept.html The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, announced today that it has joined with Oregon attorney Thomas H. Nelson in filing a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of a Muslim former resident of that state who claims he was tortured in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the behest of the FBI and State Department. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:40:37 GMT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130531/02593523270/bradley-manning-accused-aiding-classified-enemy.shtml Okay, so in Orwell's 1984, the powers that be may have switched who the "enemy" was arbitrarily and then rewritten history to argue we were always at war with Eurasia or Eastasia. But, at least there was a defined enemy. In the court martial case against Bradley Manning, for supposedly "aiding the enemy" by releasing State Department cables and other documents to Wikileaks, he's being charged with aiding a "classified enemy" along with aiding Al-Qaida. We've already explained why the aiding the enemy charge is highly dubious, since that charge is normally reserved for directly handing information to an enemy, not leaking it to the press. But the fact that one of "the enemies" is secret is completely messed up, and has legal scholars scratching their heads as well. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:39:11 GMT http://www.thestand.org/2013/05/righteous-campaigns-for-fast-food-employees-all-workers-in-tacoma/ I was able to picket and march with (and photograph, at right) about 200 of these young workers and community supporters on Capitol Hill yesterday in front of the Qdoba and Subway stores on Broadway. Their spirits were as high as their message was simple and straight-forward. This was a strike against poverty and the obscene inequality that exists in our country and Seattle today. In between chants, young workers spoke passionately about the difficulty of making rent payments, buying groceries and supporting young families on fast-food wages. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:38:11 GMT http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/deafening-silence/ China’s high-profile crackdowns on prostitution have made sex workers more vulnerable to abuse by police and clients while failing to curb the trade…Women described being assaulted by police and other security officials until they admitted to being sex workers, leading to them being fined or detained for up to two years without trial…Prostitution largely disappeared in the Mao era but has flourished since China’s economic reforms began. The United Nations estimates that between 4 million and 6 million adult women are engaged in sex work…Authorities have launched frequent drives against the sex industry, but…while such campaigns see hundreds of women rounded up, brothels often continue to operate with little obvious difficulty…three years ago the ministry of public security ordered an end to the public shaming of sex workers and said they should be treated more respectfully [but] problems remain widespread…Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch…said that one of the problems was that fines were a major source of revenue for the police… Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:37:00 GMT http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1665 The worsening violence and repression in Syria has left policymakers scrambling to think of ways the United States could help end the bloodshed and support those seeking to dislodge the Assad regime. The desperate desire to “do something” has led to increasing calls for the United States to provide military aid to armed insurgents or even engage in direct military intervention, especially in light of the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:35:55 GMT http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/31/is-the-life-and-health-of-a-young-rural-woman-of-any-value-in-el-salvador/ The Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador ignored the danger for the health and life of a young woman and denied her request for an abortion under the irrational argument of “protecting the life” of a fetus who has never had and will never have brain life. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:34:56 GMT http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/20/official-story-has-odd-wrinkles-a-pack-of-questions-about-the-boston-bombing-backpacks/ First of all, nobody looking at the evidence to date has tried loading up one of these Fagor pots with the amount of weight that would have been created by a big four or five quarts’ worth of black powder, perhaps two quarts of nails, and perhaps a pound or two of BB shot, to see what it would look like in a basic unstructured book bag of the type the two men were wearing. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:33:17 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/walmart-protest-movement_n_3354735.html According to OUR Walmart, the union-backed group behind the strikes, the number of workers who have joined the effort has increased by one-fourth in the last year. And while the nascent labor movement inside the world's largest retailer has yet to deliver better pay for workers, John Logan, a professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, thinks the strikes are a testament to the campaign's durability. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:30:30 GMT http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=93982 While Havana’s old town continues to experience a visible architectural and socio-cultural renewal, unattended buildings in the neighboring borough of Centro Habana languish and deteriorate before the eyes of its tenants and the inertia of government authorities. Sun, 02 Jun 2013 20:29:17 GMT