Nadia Zahel – Given Away as a Child Bride, Afghan Woman Describes 24 Years of Abuse

Spogmai was just 12 years old when she was separated from her parents and handed over to another family. But this was no ordinary arranged marriage. Instead, she was given to a man more than three times her age in order to settle a family feud. Her voice trembles as she recalls the day she entered a form of slavery. …

Resistance Radio – Jay Tiernan – 01.08.17

In April 1997 after only a few months of being involved in hunt sabotage and environmental activism Jay Tiernan became well known in the U.K. animal rights scene when at a demonstration against a breeder for beagle dogs for vivisection he climbed onto the roof of a building with one of those dogs (something he later went to prison for). A riot ensued and after another very violent demonstration a month later “Consort Beagle Kennels” closed down, he became heavily involved in a variety of animal liberation campaigns until summer 2000 when a fellow activist was nearly killed during a publicity stunt he’d helped organise. At that point he retired from activism, returning in the summer of 2012 to set up the campaign against the then-planned badger culls. As a spokesperson for the campaign, the bulk of his energy goes into using social media and working out creative ways to get into the mainstream media. The badger cull campaign has gone from a handful of people four years ago to now well over a hundred active people on any single night during the six week annual badger culls.

Lori Alton – Airline cover-up: Toxic oil from jet engines poisoning passengers and crew for decades

Aerotoxic syndrome, the term for the illness caused by exposure to contaminated air in jet aircraft, is ruining careers and claiming lives, causing the illness, permanent disability and even death of airline employees and passengers. Yet the issue is minimized, swept under the rug and largely ignored by corporate giants Boeing and Airbus, with those who speak out facing character assassination, …

Bruce Melton – We Can Have a Healthy Climate With Zero Warming in Our Lifetimes

We can have a healthy climate — a climate with zero warming — in our lifetimes. The message for the last 20 years has been that we have to reduce emissions drastically to prevent dangerous climate change of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F). This strategy would have likely worked when it was first suggested, but we have delayed …

Hillary’s Latest Scandal: She And Bill Siphoned $100 Mil From Mideast Leaders

Scandal: A new investigation reveals that Bill and Hillary Clinton took in at least $100 million from Middle East leaders. Can such a financially and ethically compromised candidate truly function as our nation’s leader? The investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation has uncovered a disturbing pattern of the Clintons’ raising money for the Clinton Foundation from regimes that have checkered records on …

Nellie Bowles – Silicon Valley braces itself for a fall: ‘There’ll be a lot of blood’

A sharply dressed French investor is leaning against a doorway, arms folded and his expression slightly bemused. Philippe Suchet is considering the latest raft of hopeful new technology entrepreneurs that have presented at 500 Startups – a major hothouse for up-and-coming Silicon Valley talent. There’s no shortage of enthusiasm and ideas in the valley, but Suchet is sceptical. “Things have …

Graham E. Fuller – Turning Change into Chaos

A renowned Arab religious scholar in the Fourteenth Century, ibn Taymiyya, is sometimes quoted as saying,  Al-zulm afdal ‘ala al-fawda — “oppression is to be favored over anarchy.” Although ibn Taiymiyya was no establishment figure in his time, this perspective was welcomed by all rulers since it provided explicit religious justification in support of arbitrary and often oppressive authority.Maybe there’s …

Sonali Kolhatkar – I Wish You a Merry Christmas—Even Though I’m a Nonbeliever

I’ve been celebrating Christmas for as long as I can remember. As a child, I believed in Santa Claus and was rewarded every December for that temporary faith with a varied, if modest, set of gifts. But I am not a Christian, although my mother was born a Catholic. During Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, I often decorated the …

What Major University Charges $71K a Year and Epitomizes Corporatism and Self-Dealing? – Michael Arria

A new report [3] released by members of New York University’s faculty shows that NYU gouges students to raise billions for real-estate transactions and compensation packages for its top executives. Concerned about the economic situation of many students, the professors spent an entire academic year interviewing people and researching the school’s finances. They discovered that NYU students pay the highest tuition in the …

Enough War: Living Beneath Bombs, Yemenis Refuse to be Collateral Damage

Nearly two weeks into a Saudi Arabia-led military assault on Yemen, that has rained down bombs on civilian neighborhoods and infrastructure while locking out food and medical aid, people within the country and across the global diaspora are turning to social media—and to the streets—to send a message to the world: Enough War. The online campaign Kefaya War (“enough war” …