, - New Delhi Television (India)
Stephan: Surprise. Surprise. When police know they are on camera they behave differently and police brutality drops sharply. Here is a report on what has happened since body cameras were introduced.
We do you think I had to go to a television network in India to find this story?
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — Growing use of body cameras by police has led to a dramatic fall in brutality, a top UN rights expert said Friday, but warned the technology could be a double-edged sword.
There have been increasing calls for police to wear body cameras following a spate of cases, especially in the United States, of police violence and killings of unarmed people caught on camera.
“It seems from some of the early studies that … up to 60 percent of the use of force (is) reduced when police wear body cameras,” UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns told a briefing. (emphasis added)
He said complaints of the use of excessive force had meanwhile declined by 90 percent, according to the studies. There was as well a marked decrease in what he called the ‘trigger happy’ approach.
Heyns, who in 2011 spearheaded moves to authenticate a five-minute video clip showing atrocities in Sri Lanka during the government’s war against Tamil separatists, however said that new technology had led to a ‘digital divide’ with unfilmed violations risking being ignored.
“A mindset may arise that unless a body camera was used, the police or the courts […]
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, - Alternet (U.S.)/Agence France-Pressé (France)
Stephan: The American death tool industry, through it agent the NRA, would have us believe you will be safer if you carry a gun and have one in your house. Unfortunately, as is true with so much the NRA says, this is a toxic lie. The data are clear, as this report spells out, that you are far more at risk where guns are easily accessible than you are where they are not. And we are talking here of orders of magnitude of difference.
Credit: beararmsaz.com
Contrary to what the gun lobby argues, personal firearms in the United States are rarely used for self-defense, a gun control advocacy group said Wednesday.
In an analysis of FBI and other federal government data, the non-profit Violence Policy Center said Americans are far more likely to hurt themselves or others when handling a lethal weapon.
In 2012, it said, only 259 “justifiable homicides” involving a private citizen were reported, compared to 8,342 criminal homicides committed with a gun. (emphasis added)
Put another way, for every justifiable homicide involving a gun, 32 criminal homicides carried out with a firearm occurred. And that does not take into account “tens of thousands” of gun-related suicides and unintentional shootings.
The influential National Rifle Association contends that “guns are necessary for self-defence,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center in Washington.
“But this gun industry propaganda has no basis in fact,” he said in a statement.
“In fact, in a nation of more than 300 million firearms, it is striking how rarely guns are used in self-defense.”
On […]
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Nina Burleigh, - Rollingstone
Stephan: I doubt that many Americans, maybe even most Americans, know that although the Cold War with the USSR (remember that term) ended over two decades ago the U.S. Nuclear Triad, as it is known, still exists and is manned around the clock. Airplanes filled with hydrogen bombs still fly, ballistic missile submarines still cruise the world ocean at depth, and in deep holes in the ground ballistic missiles still stand poised for Armageddon. Here is the story of the Missileers, the Air Force moles, who operate in those deep holes.
Captain Blake Sellers believes he was punished after a “whistleblower rundown.”
Credit: Chip Kalback
For two and a half years, Air Force Capt. Blake Sellers donned a green U.S. Air Force flight suit, and motored across barren Wyoming grassland in sun, rain, sleet or blizzard, for 24-hour shifts, 60 feet below ground, in a fluorescent-lit buried capsule. Sellers was one of the roughly 600 officers, known as missileers, who are responsible for launching America’s 450 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. Each ICBM in the arsenal is capable of rocketing to the other side of the planet in 30 minutes or less and incinerating 65 square miles. Missileers are the human beings who have agreed to render whole cities — like Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang, but really anywhere there is civilization— into, in the jargon of the base, smokin’ holes. Air Force Academy graduates like Sellers tend to dream of flying jets. In a corps full of […]
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Gary Ruskin, Executive Director and Co-founder of Commercial Alert - Nation of Change
Stephan: As a next step in the consolidation of power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands, two of the world's most evil anti-life corporations, Syngenta and Monsanto are trying to merge. In the process they hope to change their name and thereby cancel their history. Here is a report on the whole sordid tale. It reminds me so much of the tobacco industry, and I am sure they are doing this because it was successful there. How many people remember that Altria was formerly Philip Morris?
The merged entity resulting from the coming together of Syngenta and Monsanto will be one of the largest corporate powers on earth dealing deliberately in death.
“Monsanto wants to escape its ugly history by ditching its name,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know, a consumer group. “This shows how desperate Monsanto is to escape criticism: of its products, which raise environmental and health concerns, as well as concerns about corporate control of agriculture and our food system.”
In a 2014 Harris Poll gauging the reputations of major corporations, Monsanto’s “reputation quotient” ranked 58 out of 60 companies. In other words, it was the third most hated company measured.
“Monsanto is much like Philip Morris when it changed its name to Altria,” Ruskin said. “Monsanto wants us to forget about its old scandals like PCBs and Agent Orange, as well […]
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Mariella Moon, - Engadget
Stephan: Yet another new breakthrough on solar. This one has huge implications.
Solar cells have always been inspired by photosynthesis, so it’s only natural for researchers to take cues from different aspects of the energy-making process. A team of UCLA chemists, for instance, have developed a way that will allow solar cells to keep their charge for weeks instead of just a few seconds like current products are capable of. According to Sarah Tolbert, UCLA chem professor and one of the study’s authors, they looked into plants’ nanoscale structures that can keep negatively charged molecules separated from positively charged ones. “That separation is the key to making the process so efficient,” she said.
The team has discovered that in order to mimic those nanoscale structures in plastic solar cells (which are potentially cheaper to make than silicon-based ones), they need to use two components: a polymer donor and a nano-scale fullerene acceptor. The team describes the process as follows:
The UCLA technology arranges the elements more neatly — like small bundles of uncooked spaghetti with precisely placed meatballs (see image below). Some fullerene meatballs are designed to sit inside the spaghetti […]
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Solar cells have always been inspired by photosynthesis, so it’s only natural for researchers to take cues from different aspects of the energy-making process. A team of UCLA chemists, for instance, have developed a way that will allow solar cells to keep their charge for weeks instead of just a few seconds like current products are capable of. According to Sarah Tolbert, UCLA chem professor and one of the study’s authors, they looked into plants’ nanoscale structures that can keep negatively charged molecules separated from positively charged ones. “That separation is the key to making the process so efficient,” she said.
