MEDIA ROOTS- Media Roots interviews Darfur refugee and human rights activist Adeeb Yousif from the Darfur Reconciliation and Development Organization (DRDO) about his organization, his work documenting human rights abuses, his experience being targeted by the Sudanese government and what he thinks could bring peace to the region.

For more information about the Darfur Reconciliation and Development Organization visit http://www.drdoafrica.org

Photo by flickr user UN Photo

PRESS TV– Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has called for a referendum on whether to demand billions of dollars in compensation from the US for its interference in the Central American state in the 80s.

President Ortega made the call on Tuesday as his country celebrated the 32nd anniversary of the Sandinista revolution, CNN reported.

A huge crowd gathered in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, to celebrate the revolution that led to the ousting of the country’s dictator Anastasio Somoza.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 1986 that the administration of former US President Ronald Reagan had violated international law by fueling the civil war in Nicaragua and mining the country’s harbors.

While the ICJ did not set a fixed amount for compensation, it ordered payment for the US wrongdoings.

Nicaragua, however, had asked for USD 17 billion

Read more about Nicaragua Eyes Reparation From US.

© 2011 PressTV

Photo by Flickr user Presidencia de la Republica del Ecuador

GLOBAL RESEARCH– Watching the international media on the web and TV change gears Friday, as information started to fasten to the fact that the worst terrorist act in Scandinavia since the 3rd Reich was perpetrated by a right-wing Christian zealot, was fascinating. This, rather than what Pam Geller, Steve Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Dennis Prager, David Horowitz, CNN, Fox News and many others were touting for hours as most likely an act of Muslim Jihad in a country that is way, way too liberal.

I was keyed into paying attention to how this meme might have to morph fairly early in the afternoon, by an item carried by Michael Rivero at What Really Happened, about the major event at the youth camp the day before the massacre:

During the second day of Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya got the Labour Party’s young hopefuls visit by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store.

Together with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Sidsel Wold and Norwegian People’s Aid Kirsten Belck-Olsen, discussed the Foreign Minister of the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

As foreign minister arrived Utøya he was met with a demand from the AUF that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state.

– The Palestinians must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now, said the Foreign Minister to cheers from the audience. [automatically translated from Norwegian by Google translate]

That was an event held Thursday at the summer camp for the children of Norwegian liberals.

As the story developed Friday, almost every news outlet was quick to provide experts on Muslim terrorism and how that might have a growing negative impact on Norway and Europe.  On Anderson Cooper, Friday afternoon, as he had his experts on Jihadism on camera, he was being told by another person – a CNN reporter – that the shooter, possibly the bomber, was a blond Norwegian.  Cooper seemed to be taken aback, turning back to his Jihad experts, who were dismissive of the new information.

The bombing-shootings took up enormous bandwidth in our media machine until it came out that the alleged perpetrator has more in common with Sarah Palin and Alan Dershowitz than with Rachel Corrie or Furkan Do?an, both of whom have been labelled terrorists by Dershowitz.

As the end-of-the-week-in-midsummer stupor overtakes the media on a hot Friday evening in the USA, will they get around to trying to find out what set Anders Behring off?

The bombing had to be pre-planned, probably for some time.  Was the pro-Palestinian event Thursday at the camp where over 70 were killed published on the web, facebook, twitter or somewhere else?  Most likely.  That may be what pushed this guy’s last button.

And just who created the group that fictitiously took credit for the massacres early Friday?

The ‘Helpers of Global Jihad’ group, of which al-Nasser is a member, made the claims in an email circular issued to various sources. The group does not appear to have any past history.

It is thought that the bombings are a belated response to Norwegian newspapers and magazines republishing cartoons of Mohammed originally published by Jyllands-Posten of Denmark.

I’m not about to go all conspiracy theory on this story.  I am bothered, though, that the media was extremely rapid to ramp up the radical Islam run amok meme, yet so unready to deal with what is increasingly appearing to be possible – that the Christian gunman was impelled to kill liberals he may have felt were too sympathetic to Palestinians.

Update – Saturday, 12:30 p.m. PDT:

This diary questions what pushed Breivik over the edge.  Phoenix Woman’s diary this morning, He’s Not a Terrorist – He’s a Freedom Fighter! touches upon some of the more pathetic errors in the media on Friday, as accurate information on the shooter-bomber became available.  David Dayen’s front page fdl diary, takes this subject further – Norway Terror Reveals Disturbing Assumptions About Muslims.

Glenn Greenwald devoted his Saturday column to yesterday’s pathetic media coverage.  His second update links to an Electronic Intifada article that shows how the false meme developed soon after the bomb went off in downtown Oslo.  Essentially, it appears one dubious “expert” pushed the global media “over the edge”:

The source is Will McCants, adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. On his website he describes himself as formerly “Senior Adviser for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. Department of State, program manager of the Minerva Initiative at the Department of Defense, and fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.” This morning, he posted “Alleged Claim for Oslo Attacks” on his blog Jihadica:

This was posted by Abu Sulayman al-Nasir to the Arabic jihadi forum, Shmukh, around 10:30am EST (thread 118187). Shmukh is the main forum for Arabic-speaking jihadis who support al-Qaeda. Since the thread is now inaccessible (either locked or taken down), I am posting it here. I don’t have time at the moment to translate the whole thing but I translated the most important bits on twitter.

The Shmukh web site is not accessible to just anyone, so he is the primary source for this claim. McCants stated from the beginning that the claim had been removed or hidden, and on Twitter he even cast doubt on whether it was a claim of responsibility at all.

snip – EI posted screenshots of several tweets by McCants, then this:

McCants later reported that the claim of responsibility was retracted by the author “Abu Sulayman al-Nasir.” Furthermore, according to McCants, the moderator of this forum declared that speculation about the attack would be prohibited because the contents of the forum were appearing in mainstream media. It does seem more than a little bit odd that genuine “jihadis” would post on a closed forum that a former US official and “counterterrorism expert” openly writes about infiltrating.

EI is highly critical about how easily McCants’ dubious information was spread:

The media also failed. They reported on the claims McCants disseminated because his position and perceived expertise gave these claims credibility. Would The New York Times have required multiple sources and independent confirmation of the existence of the posting and its contents if it had not come from someone with McCants’ supposedly solid credentials?

For hours after McCants posted the update that the claim of responsibility was retracted, BBC, the New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post were still promoting information originally sourced from him. The news was carried around the world and became the main story line in much of the initial coverage.

The threshold for a terrorism expert must be very low. This whole rush to disseminate a false, unverifiable and flimsily sourced claim strikes me as a case of an elite fanboy wanting to be the first to pass on leaked gadget specs.

Read more about The Norway Terrorist Attack: “News Without Facts”

Written by Edward Teller

© 2011 Global Research 

Photo by Flickr user toplix

NPR– As the center of the political whirlwind that toppled President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year, Cairo’s Tahrir Square became synonymous with revolution in Egypt.

Now, the protesters have returned: Nearly three weeks ago, demonstrators unhappy with the pace of change in Egypt began camping out in the square, hoping to revive the spirit that shook the country six months ago.

Tahrir, or Liberation, Square has become a political festival — with singing, dancing, face-painting and arguing. It’s a sit-in, a camp-in, a tent city — a place of artistic expression and political freedom unlike anything Egypt has seen in decades.

It was created primarily by the young, and protesters like 26-year-old Ramy Muhammad Abdullah don’t want to give it up.

People in Tahrir Square walk by graffiti showing a protester with an Egyptian flag in front of the sun on Saturday.

“Every day I finish my work and I come here [to] Tahrir Square. I’m trying to do my best to achieve our goals. Because our revolution until now didn’t achieve anything from our goals,” he says.

That’s become the mantra of Cairo’s protest movement: The military council that is Egypt’s caretaker government has moved too slowly; the revolution has stalled. Flags and posters and banners in the square announce that message — sometimes expressed with anger, other times with humor and sarcasm.

Take the fight over the word “thug.” When the protesters march, the military calls them thugs. The protesters counter that the military employs thugs to squash the revolution. Semantics clash on banners flapping in the wind.

Tahrir Square is not a quiet place. The air is filled with the sound of speeches and chanting, which breaks out all the time.

Read more about Revolutionary Spirit Returns To Egypt’s Tahrir Square

© 2011 National Public Radio

Photo by Flickr user madmonk

FAST COMPANY– Scientists have warned that without drastic changes “this century is the last century of wild seafood.” The world’s current trajectory of falling catches and rising consumption is projected to end in 2050 with the collapse of nearly 100% of exploited seafood populations. But those are just abstract numbers. Now a new report tells us the precise day each year when we have eaten more fish than the planet can sustain. In Europe, that day has already passed. Every fish consumed now by Europeans is one that couldn’t come from their own fisheries.

In 2011, according to the study by the New Economics Foundation this “fish dependence day,” fell on July 2, the day when–theortetically–at least, the EU pulled all the fish it could from its waters (NEF extrapolates from the most recent FAO data of 2008). This dependence date has crept forward for more than a decade and is now a full month ahead of where it  was in 2000. The reasons are well known. Since 1950, governments  have deployed policies, loans, and subsidies to build up big industrial fishing operations that feed the world’s growing appetite for seafood. Escalating competition for a dwindling pool of fisheries has had predictable consequences: the world’s catch peaked at 90 million tons in the late 1980s, and declined ever since to 79.5 million tons in 2008 (the most recent year statistics are available).  

The NEF’s study, while detailing which EU countries consume the most seafood (Portugal per capita), the most popular species (tuna, salmon, and cod primarily), and other trends, it also offers solutions it thinks can reverse the situation and prevent the collapse of marine species that, scientists say, may still be saved with proper management.

Read more about Europe Has Already Run Out Of Fish For The Year

© 2011 Fast Company

Photo by Flickr use oggywaffler