Dystopia Earth

Medicine’s Big New Battleground: Does Mental Illness Really Exist? – disinformation.

Millions of Brits want to eat human flesh like movie cannibal Hannibal Lecter, a shock report revealed yesterday. Almost a quarter of us reckon we are “curious” to taste human meat – while 14% want a piece of ourselves fried to learn what our own body tastes like.

Even more of those questioned confessed they would be happy to tuck into their own body if a doctor safely took a sample from them.

The findings of the cannibalism poll for telly channel Eden come just days after 40-year-old Brit Geoffrey Portway admitted a US plot to kill and eat a child. He faces up to 27 years in an American jail after law enforcement agents found his home in Massachusetts was equipped with a steel cage and a child-sized homemade coffin. -Daily Star

The United States government is investing tens of millions of dollars each year on offensive hacking operations in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the computers of its adversaries, Reuters reports.

According to an in-depth article published Friday by journalist Joseph Menn, the US and its Department of Defense contractors are increasingly pursuing efforts to hack the computers of foreign competitors, in turn exposing a rarely discussed aspect of the nation’s clandestine cyber operations.

In a time when the government continues to prosecute alleged domestic computer criminals — so much so that demands for technology law reform have been rampant as of late — Menn says the US is guilty of spending millions on discovering, identifying and exploiting previously unknown security flaws, often gaining unfettered access to the systems and networks of international targets.

As a result, the US has become one of the world’s top players in regards to wreaking havoc over the Internet — even as calls to investigate foreign hackers increase in Congress. -The US government might be the biggest hacker in the world — RT USA.

BBC News – Suicides soar among US middle-aged people.

Cephas Lumina, the UN’s independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, said the rights to work, social security, health care and housing had been particularly affected by the ‘harsh’ policies Greece has had to implement since 2010 as conditions of its bailout.

As well large spending cuts, Greece had also adopted a structural reform programme aimed at reducing its debt and deficits and returning the country to growth. However, the economy had shrunk by around 25% since 2010 and was still in recession.

Lumina, who visited Greece last month to assess the situation in the country, raised particular concerns over the country’s ability to deal with the impact of rapidly rising unemployment, tax increases and cuts to wages.

Greece’s jobless rate increased from 6.6% in May 2008 to 27.2% in January 2013, with over half of young people out of work and a ‘disproportionate’ impact on women’s access to work. At the same time, pensions had been cut by up to 60%.

‘The austerity programme is being implemented in the context of a social protection system characterised by protection gaps and which, in its current form, is not able to absorb the shock of unemployment, reductions of salaries and tax increases,’ he said in a statement.

‘Instead of strengthening the social safety net and making it more comprehensive, priority appears to have been accorded to fiscal consolidation at the expense of the welfare of the people in Greece.’

To date, Greece is the only eurozone country without a social safety net ‘of last resort’. Jobless benefits expire after 12 months, leading to a loss of health insurance cover. Only 160,000 people currently receive these benefits due to the rise of long-term unemployment.

Lumina noted that increasingly Greeks had to rely on free health care provided by community clinics. ‘Run by volunteers, the clinics are a laudable expression of solidarity within the Greek society,’ he said. ‘However, it is a primary obligation of the state to ensure access to basic health care for all without any discrimination.’

He also called for a more cautious approach to privatisation. Utilities providing essential services such as water and energy are among those earmarked for privatisation to reduce the public debt, a process likely to increase the amount it costs the public to use them. -Public Finance International

Greece shut down the Athens Indymedia in an attempt to silence independent media but Athens Indymedia has returned!

A leading alternative news site in Greece, Athens Indymedia announced it was being suppressed by Greek judicial authorities, along with two radio stations, and provided a Tor link [el] for alternate access. Potmos asserted on the significance of the site for independent news in Greece:

@potmos: Fast and accurate info posted on Athens #Indymedia led to life sentence for cop who murdered 15yo Alex. Grigoropoulos in 2008.

The site had been hosted on Athens Polytechnic servers, and had become a frequent point of contention in the past, as right-wing politicians campaigned to close it down, accusing it of anti-state incitement. Conservative MP Adonis Georgiadis, who has led the latest calls to shut the site down even congratulated [el] the Public Order Minister Dendias in a tweet. Athens Indymedia was also blocked in September 2012 [el], and its administrators were arrested. -Global Voices Online

The evil, amoral and corrupt Greek government will never succeed in stifling dissent and the truth.

Doctors of the Dark Side | Shelter Island.

This seems like good news to me, “social” networking is anything but “social”. It is anti-social in the way that it allows heartless, evil corporations to spy on our lives, should we be stupid enough to put private information into them which, unfortunately, many people are.

Facebook is the “most important” social media site for about 10% fewer teenagers than it was a year ago, according to a new PiperJaffray survey of over 5,000 teenagers. The teens surveyed are less interested in Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Flickr, and Tumblr too.

This suggests something bigger than a shift away from Facebook; it hints at what could be the beginning of an across-the-board teen rejection of traditional social networking as a whole.

-Are Social Networking Websites Doomed? – disinformation.

Panting for Breath on a Virtual Shore | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters.