After a spring training in the segregated South, newlywed Rachel Robinson went to look at an apartment in a white neighborhood in Montreal. A French-Canadian woman who spoke English welcomed her to the home.
''She received me so pleasantly,'' Jackie Robinson's widow recalled. ''Then she poured tea for me and agreed to rent the apartment to me furnished and she insisted I use her things -- like her linens and her china. It was an extraordinary welcome to Canada.''
The event will be attended by the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Montreal's mayor and Robinson's daughter as part of Black History Month.
Robinson, now 88, recalls arriving in Montreal after having survived the Jim Crow South during spring training in Florida.
There they were met with racism at every turn: on whites-only flights, in hotels and restaurants and ballparks. In some cities, they were chased out of town. The couple was twice bumped off airplanes while trying to get to Daytona.
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"This is especially a special moment," said Sharon Robinson, the couple's daughter, who is vice-chairman of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. "I had never been to the home where my parents lived, so this is an emotional experience.
"My mother and father had such positive memories about their time in Montreal," she said. "To have it recognized where they lived in a neighbourhood that welcomed them and supported them then is quite emotional. I'm from Chicago and baseball was a very important part of my life growing up and this part of baseball was particularly important to everybody in the United States," Jacobson said. "So it's an honour to be here and to be able to celebrate this and in particular to be able to celebrate what the people of Montreal did and what they showed to Americans at a time when we weren't particularly as tolerant as we ought to have been."
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We’ve seen Wikileaks lose its DNS provider, so it had to change its domain name from wikileaks.org to wikileaks.ch.
We’ve seen Wikileaks lose access to income sources when PayPal, MasterCard, and others stopped accepting payments on its behalf.
We’ve seen Wikileaks lose hosting services from Amazon, when Amazon rightly determined that Wikileaks had violated its terms of service (the part where you need to own your own content was a clear violation).
We’ve also seen Wikileaks’ ringmaster, Julian Assange, finally tracked down and arrested. Weirdly, though, he wasn’t arrested for trafficking in stolen government documents, but for some conveniently strange sexual deviance charge.
I honestly can’t tell how to parse that one. We don’t really know Assange, so we don’t know if he is a sexual offender, but isn’t it curious how those charges suddenly showed up? I’m obviously not a fan of the guy, but the timing is…interesting.
But even though Wikileaks continues to take a licking, it still keeps on ticking.
How is it possible that a simple Web site can so infuriate governments the world over, but still remain active?
We may start to see in-depth packet analysis for all traffic, so that torrents containing classified information can be disrupted. We may see ISPs required to block any encrypted or binary communication, so anything that’s unreadable by governments can’t travel across the network. We may see citizens permanently cut off from the Internet (and, by extension, cut off from their friends, jobs, and society) because they’re hosting files that only just might be similar to files of interest.
WASHINGTON — Some US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners now being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.
"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.
"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.
"We still don't know the beam intensity or other details of their classified system."
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Nice. The government creates a device they won't release the specs to, forces you to submit to a scan, examines your genitalia, and says "Trust us, it's safe".
New York, October 05, 2010
Despite public protests in Pakistan over relentless US drone strikes within that country in the last 45 days, the US isn’t relenting in its drone attacks in Pakistan, with three already in October including one on Monday that reportedly killed eight German nationals in North Waziristan. They are unlikely to forgo the CIA-led strategy as it has proven effective in killing terrorists. The numbers are startling – 78 strikes so far in 2010 as against 53 in all of 2009.
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Can't Americans see that despite killing terrorists, would-be terrorists, suspected terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, and innocent men, women and children in the vicinity of possible terrorists in increasing numbers has done nothing but increase the number of terrorists? Are they so blind that they cannot see that they are quickly running out of goodwill capital with the nations of the world? Overseas adventures was a bad idea when America was the defacto superpower, but in her current weakened condition, coupled with the rise of China and others on her heels, she is tempting fate. I shudder to think what a war between or among developed countries would be like. Iraq and Afghanistan are a picnic in comparison. Terrorists aren't born--they're made.
Note: There was a time when certain events (such as drone attacks) could go on without notice and third-hand reports reaching the media could always be dismissed as lies or propaganda. Today, a Pakistani resting in the shade of a tree waiting for a bus, might capture video of a U.S. military action in the area on his cell phone and have it on YouTube and or Facebook and be seen by a million people around the world less than an hour after it occurred. It's becoming increasingly difficult to BS the people as more and more of our "news" is reported live and by ordinary people without an agenda colouring/spinning it.
We know that vitamin D deficiency can lead to rickets. But a lack of vitamin D can also bring on less obvious ones to the naked eye:
Marco Renda, who is organizing the expo, said he expects well over 30,000 visitors, including many from the United States and Europe.
Marijuana will not be available at the expo, although registered medical users are welcome to bring cannabis to smoke in a marijuana vaporization room, he said. Vaporization is a process in which hot air is pushed through a chamber containing marijuana. That air is then pushed into a separate chamber, and then inhaled. "Vaporization is a way of using cannabis in a healthier mode because there's no combustion," said Renda, who is a registered grower of marijuana. He is also a registered user of the drug, which he uses to mitigate symptoms of hepatitis C.
"Less than two per cent of the licensed cannabis card holders in Canada actually buy the medicine from the government," he said, adding that many users get the drug from so-called compassion clubs. He said government investment in the growth of medical marijuana is inadequate. As of June 2009, there are just over 4,000 registered medical marijuana users in the country.
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The evil weed is de-criminalized in Canada for small amounts for personal use, but IMO it should be made available through government outlets. It would add huge amounts of money to the public coffers and would probably reduce some of the carnage associated with alcohol abuse as I believe many drinkers would opt for pot, instead.
The investigation, conducted by an army committee, also found that mistakes were made "at quite a senior level" but did not recommend punishments for any of the officers involved in the May 31 raid.
The team determined that the Navy Commando soldiers operated properly, with professionalism, bravery and resourcefulness and that the commanders exhibited correct decision making," the Israeli army said in a statement on Monday.In other news, the AIG probe into the company's massive losses caused by the creation of worthless mortgage-based assets which required huge infusions of taxpayer money to bail out the company, has found that the executives' actions were justified.
The study, undertaken by the AIG board of directors, also found that mistakes were made "at quite a senior level" but did not recommend punishments for any of the principles involved in the scheme.
The board determined that the executives operated properly, with professionalism, creativity and resourcefulness and that they exhibited "correct decision making".
