Responders rush to help the fallen seconds after the explosion

It is very important that facts rule a response to the atrocious bombing of Boston Marathon runners yesterday. As conspiracy theorists attempt to insert their own prejudice and hate into the equation, responsible news outlets and publications must do their best to provide the best information according to what we actually know. Thus far, the following facts have emerged about the bombing:

Two bombs went off and a possible third and fourth were defused. The two explosions happened near the finish line on Boylston Street, only hundreds of yards apart and over 5 hours into the race. According to the BBC:

The first explosion came at about 14:50 local time (18:50 GMT) on the north side of Boylston Street, about two hours after the winners crossed the line.

There was initial confusion and panic. Some runners fell to the floor while police and bystanders ran to help those caught in the blast.

Then seconds later, another explosion ripped into the crowd further away from the finishing line, about 170m from the first blast….

Unconfirmed reports said two other unexploded devices were found near the end of the race but were safely defused.

Three people are dead, and over 150 have been injured (although the number is still rising). Eight people are thought to be in critical condition. An eight year old boy, Martin Richard, was killed waiting for his father to finish the marathon. His mother and sister were seriously injured. According to the Huffington Post, 25 -30 people have at least one leg missing.

According to CNN, an apartment in Boston has been searched and items removed. There is still no official suspect.

According to the Guardian, police questioned two male Saudi Arabian students this morning:

Speaking beforehand, one of the men told the Guardian he was there to meet a friend who lived on the fifth floor. Police examined the men’s passports and appeared to make telephone calls before escorting them into the elevator.

CBS reports that a civilian tackled one of the students after noticing ‘suspicious behavior’, but that: “The person in custody is not charged and not under arrest. He is being cooperative, answering their questions, and denying involvement.”

The White House stated that the bombings would be treated as “An act of terror”. President Barack Obama stated that: ”We will find out who did this. We’ll find out why they did this.. Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice.”

According to Reuters, local hospitals have been treating lots of shrapnel injuries, indicating the the bombs were designed to maim:

Hospitals in the Boston area were planning surgeries for some of the victims, many of whom sustained lower leg injuries in the blasts, said Peter Fagenholz, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We’re seeing a lot of shrapnel injuries” from small metal debris, Fagenholz told reporters outside the hospital. Doctors treated 29 people, of whom eight were in a critical condition.

Below is footage of the immediate aftermath. The enormous bravery that so many people showed in rushing to help those caught in the blast with almost no regard for their own safety is absolutely astonishing:

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Amazon Rainforest: Vital to our survival

As we all know, the global environmental outlook isn’t exactly great – temperatures are rising, eco systems are being destroyed and species disappearing at a frightening rate. But it isn’t all doom and gloom, as Brazil’s new deforestation legislation appears to be slowing down the overall rate of destruction of the Amazon. From the BBC:

The destruction of Amazon rainforest has reached its lowest level since monitoring began 24 years ago, the Brazilian government says.

Environment minister Izabella Teixeira said it was thanks to government action against offenders.

Figures show the rate of deforestation fell 27% in the year to July compared with the previous 12 months.

Even so, more than 4,600 sq km (1,780 sq miles) of rainforest have been lost in a year.

“It is the lowest deforestation rate since Brazil began its monitoring,” Ms Teixeira told a press conference.

“I believe that it is the only good piece of environmental news.”

Critics point to the data from the National Institute of Space Research as being incomplete as it shows numbers for a period of time before the government introduced recent changes to Brazil’s forest protection code that they say could reverse the trend. Teixeira and the Brazilian government dispute this, but do note that while overall rates were down, states that hadn’t adopted stricter measures saw a rise in deforestation:

In Acre there was a rise of 10%; in Amazonas 29% and in Tocantins 33%.

“Regrettably we have noticed that in states that didn’t have an aggressive level of deforestation there has been a rise,” Ms Teixeira said.

It’s clear from the data that legislation and regulation is vital in order to protect our natural environment, particularly the Amazon rainforest that produces 20% of the world’s oxygen and is a major absorber of CO2 – vital to maintaining sustainable global temperatures. The decrease seen in Brazil, South America’s biggest country, is certainly nothing to get excited about, but it is a start.

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Quite often, it takes me hours to settle into writing a fairly straight forward piece for The Daily Banter. A blog post like this one should take 15 minute at the most, but I often find myself distracted by the dozens of other articles I have open on my web browser. This post actually started out as something else until I got distracted and read this fascinating BBC piece on why humans are so curious and get distracted all the time….

The crux:

The roots of our peculiar curiosity can be linked to a trait of the human species call neoteny. This is a term from evolutionary theory that means the “retention of juvenile characteristics”. It means that as a species we are more child-like than other mammals. Being relatively hairless is one physical example. A large brain relative to body size is another. Our lifelong curiosity and playfulness is a behavioural characteristic of neoteny.

Apparently, this curiosity and desire to explore have tangible long term benefits that are not immediately evident, as proven by mathematical algorithms:

In the world of artificial intelligence, computer scientists have explored how behaviour evolves when guided by different learning algorithms. An important result is that even the best learning algorithms fall down if they are not encouraged to explore a little. Without a little something to distract them from what they should be doing, these algorithms get stuck in a rut, relying on the same responses time and time again.

Computer scientists have learnt to adjust how these algorithms rate different possible actions with an ‘exploration bonus’ – that is, a reward just for trying something new. Weighted like this, the algorithms then occasionally leave the beaten track to explore. These exploratory actions cost them some opportunities, but leave them better off in the long run because they’ve gain knowledge about what they might do, even if it didn’t benefit them immediately.

The implication for the evolution of our own brain is clear. Curiosity is nature’s built-in exploration bonus. We’re evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we’re wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow.

The conclusion? It pays to be distracted – thank God.

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State Television showed pictures of burnt and wrecked buildings after the attack

From the BBC:

Gunmen have attacked a Syrian pro-government TV channel, killing seven people, state media say.

Journalists and security guards died in the attack on al-Ikhbariya TV south of Damascus, Sana news agency reported.

Hours earlier, President Bashar al-Assad said Syria was in “a real state of war” and US intelligence officials predicted a long, drawn-out struggle.

UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has called a meeting of the UN action group for Syria for Saturday.

His deputy envoy said on Wednesday that the violence in the country had “reached or surpassed” levels before the April ceasefire deal.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says that Syrian TV dropped normal programming on Wednesday to run live coverage of the attack on the headquarters of Ikhbariya TV in the town of Drusha, some 20km (14 miles) south of the capital.

State TV showed pictures of burnt and wrecked buildings, with fires still smouldering.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi, on a visit to the site, said some of the victims had been abducted, bound, and killed in cold blood.

He also condemned the EU’s decision to impose sanctions on Syria’s state-run TV and radio agency for its support of the Assad government.

The Ikhbariya attack followed fierce clashes in suburbs of the capital, Damascus, described by opposition activists as the worst there so far.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting had taken place near positions of the Republican Guard, which is led by President Assad’s younger brother Maher and has the role of protecting the capital.

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Disorder erupts in Tahrir square in CairoFrom the BBC:

From the BBC:

Egypt’s supreme court has caused widespread alarm by calling for the dissolution of the lower house of parliament and for fresh elections.

Two days before Egyptians choose a new president, it has declared last year’s parliamentary vote unconstitutional.

Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi said the decision “must be respected”.

But other political figures have expressed anger amid fears that the military wants to increase its power.

Another senior Muslim Brotherhood politician, Essam Al-Arian, said the ruling on parliament would send Egypt into a “dark tunnel”.

The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party won 46% of the vote in the three-month parliamentary poll and Mr Arian warned that the decision would leave the incoming president without a parliament or a constitution.

Islamist Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who took part in the first round of the presidential vote in May, said that dissolving parliament amounted to “a total coup, anyone who imagines that the millions of youths will let this pass is dreaming.”

Protesters gathered in Tahrir square in the centre of Cairo after the ruling.

The Salafist Al-Nour party, which has the second biggest representation in parliament, said the ruling showed “a complete disregard for the free will of voters”.

Parliament speaker Saad El Katatny was equally scathing, arguing that no-one had the authority to dissolve parliament.

‘Historic ruling’

In a separate ruling, the supreme court also decided that former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq could continue to run for president in the June 16-17 presidential run-off election, rejecting as unconstitutional a law that would have barred him from standing.

Under the Political Exclusion Law, passed by parliament, senior officials from former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime were banned from standing for office.

Mr Shafiq is standing against Mr Mursi in a tight run-off. He told supporters that the court had made a “historic ruling and verdict that meant there was no way for anyone to do particular laws for particular people.”

Egypt’s ruling military council (Scaf) held an emergency meeting after the two court rulings and later confirmed that the election would go ahead as planned, and urged Egyptians to vote

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Images of the alleged victims in Hama

Syrian pro-government forces have killed at least 86 people in Hama province, many of them women and children, activists say.

The opposition said government-backed militia stabbed and shot their victims in the villages of Qubair and Maarzaf.

Syrian state TV said troops found some bodies after attacking “terrorists”.

Neither account could be confirmed, but activists said 140 had been killed nationwide on Wednesday – one of the bloodiest days of the uprising.

It comes less than two weeks after 108 people were killed in a massacre in Houla.

UN monitors were able to confirm those deaths, and the BBC’s Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says activists say that the observers are likely to go to the Hama shortly to try to verify the latest claims.

Activist groups reported that Qubair and Maarzaf, about 20km (12 miles) north-west of the city of Hama, had come under heavy bombardment from security forces backed by tanks.

But they said much of the killing in Qubair was done by accompanying groups of pro-government militiamen known as shabiha, who had come from nearby pro-government villages.

The activists said they shot at close range and stabbed many people, and that some of the bodies were later burnt in houses that were set on fire.

“They executed [nearly] every person in the village. Very few numbers could flee. The majority were slaughtered with knives and in a horrible and ugly way,” one activist in Hama told the BBC’s World Tonight.

“The small number of villagers who fled were the only people remaining who could tell the world about this horrible massacre.”

One of Qubair’s residents told the BBC that when the army and militia left the village, he had discovered about 40 bodies – mostly women and children who had been stabbed to death.

Among the victims were four members of his family, the villager said. He added that he saw the burned corpse of a three-month-old baby.

Read more at the BBC…

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Liberia’s ex-President Charles Taylor has been sentenced to 50 years in jail by a UN-backed war crimes court.

Last month Taylor was found guilty of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.

Special Court for Sierra Leone judges said the sentence reflected his status as head of state at the time and his betrayal of public trust.

Taylor, 64, insists he is innocent and his lawyer has told the BBC he will appeal against the sentence.

In Sierra Leone, where victims of the war gathered in silence to watch the hearing on a large screen in a courtroom in the capital, Freetown, the sentence was welcomed.

The chairman of the country’s Amputees’ Association, Edward Conteh, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme it came as a “relief” as Taylor was likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

“It is a step forward as justice has been done, though the magnitude of the sentence is not commensurate with the atrocities committed,” AP news agency quotes Deputy Information Minister Sheku Tarawali as saying.

Taylor, wearing a suit and yellow tie, showed no emotion during the hearing.

“The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history,” Judge Richard Lussick said.

The crimes – which took place over five years – included cutting off the limbs of their victims and cutting open pregnant women to settle bets over the sex of their unborn children, he said.

The prosecution had wanted an 80-year prison term to reflect the severity of the crimes and the central role that Taylor had in facilitating them.

But the judge said that would have been excessive – taking into account the limited scope of his involvement in planning operations in Sierra Leone.

Read more at the BBC…

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The president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Al-Assad no can no longer count on support from the West (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Major Western powers say they are expelling senior Syrian diplomats following the killing of 108 people in the Houla region of Syria on Friday.

The United States, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland all took action.

Most of the victims in Houla were summarily executed, the UN says.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said, after talks with President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was at a “tipping point”.

Mr Annan said he had asked Mr Assad to take “bold steps” to see that his peace plan was implemented.

President Assad blamed the violence on “terrorists”. His remarks were quoted by state TV.

Earlier, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said initial investigations had suggested that most of those killed in the village of Taldou, near Houla, were summarily executed.

He said 49 children and 34 women were among the victims. UN observers who visited Taldou said many of the victims had been killed by close-range gunfire or knife attacks.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that pro-government shabiha militiamen had carried out the killings. Survivors said they had hidden or played dead.

Syrian leaders insist that the massacre was the work of “terrorists”, aiming to derail the peace process and provoke intervention by Western powers.

Violence continued on Tuesday, with nearly 50 people killed in various incidents, according to activists.

Read more at the BBC….

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I received a fair few emails about my piece defending George Monbiot against Noam Chomsky, most of them supporting Chomsky’s point of view. My take was pretty one sided – I believe that Chomsky was way off the mark and was completely unfair to Monbiot, who was asking him a relatively straight forward question that Chomsky didn’t seem to want to answer.

A friend of mine, Jan Frel (former editor of Alternet) engaged in a conversation with me about the article on the comments section, and I think he brought up some pretty good points. I will always look for ways to be lenient with Chomsky given his extraordinary contribution to human knowledge, and I think Jan’s explanation at least helps understand Chomsky’s side. Here’s the dialogue:

Jan: Monbiot is good sometimes, fishy others. I emailed him some simple questions about his support for the nuclear industry after he endorsed it, and he couldn’t answer them, as in: he didn’t. Monbiot disappoints often, but is also often good. Chomsky, at age 82 or whatever he is, I have a lot of charity for, especially on the question of genocide, especially when it comes to questions of genocide in former Yugoslavia, since there is an ongoing geopolitical campaign to overstate the number of corpses created there. There’s a lot of back story on that one, and one constant trend is to instill in our memories that pre-NATO/US political-military intervention, there was the potential for enormous horrific bloodshed, and that this was in full swing until the US came in there.

Me: Interesting point Jan – I do agree that Chomsky is worthy of a lot of charity – he’s done an inhuman amount of good work and can be forgiven for taking his eyes off the ball at his age. I just think that this time, he was way off the mark and was clearly not answering Monbiot’s questions because he probably knew he was wrong.

Jan: Right, there is that point that the guy may well not have read the book, but there’s a fairly involved history here. It becomes apparent if you watch a handful of Chomsky talks on YouTube and his article archive on Chomsky.info, and his essays available on Nexis on state terror and genocide denial and the fairly sophisticated and counter intuitive methods of undermining scholarly work on the topic that he and his colleagues endured since he got in the business starting with Vietnam, proceeding to East Timor, and then in Nicaragua and beyond. Scholars and journalists did employ exactly the method that Monbiot did, and many of its cousins, and when Chomsky was fully on his game, he refuted them. At this point it’s probably reflexive for Chomsky to respond the way he did, and meanwhile, he very well may not have read the book he blurbed, which is quite a common thing. I think Chomsky felt secure about the book because he and Herman did a book together I believe.

I think Jan is probably right – I’ve seen Chomsky refute a lot of journalists for completely ignoring the crimes of their own country while focusing on those on the ‘official enemies’ list (his take down of the BBC’s Andrew Marr for example, was absolutely devastating) – and I think he just reverted to type when dealing with Monbiot. The thing is, he completely underestimated his subject and got caught out. Rather than back track and apologize, Chomsky continued his attack and came off looking petty and arrogant.

Still, it doesn’t undermine the work Chomsky has done over the years, and that’s why his spat with Monbiot is probably best put down to a bit of age weariness.

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Stocks tumble in Europe as Greeces prepares for Euro Zone exit

European stock markets have fallen sharply as concerns mount over Greece’s future in the euro.

Shares fell after a report quoted former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos saying that the Greek government may be making preparations for leaving the euro.

By lunchtime shares in London, Paris and Frankfurt were down about 2%.

Adding to the negative mood, Germany’s central bank said the developments in Greece were “highly alarming”.

“Greece is threatening not to implement the agreed reforms and consolidation measures,” the Bundesbank said in its latest monthly report.

It said that scenerio could create “substantial” challenges for the eurozone and Germany, but the situation would be “manageable via careful crisis management”.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said: “It cannot be excluded that preparations are being made to contain the potential consequences of a Greek euro exit.”

“The risk of Greece leaving the euro is real and it depends effectively on whether the Greek people will support the continued implementation of the economic programme,” he said.

Despite the prospect of Greece leaving the euro, the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, is keeping up the pressure on Greece to fix its finances.

In an interview with the BBC, Ms Lagarde said there had to be more tax collection and structural reform.

That is despite the deep unpopularity of austerity measures imposed on Greece by the IMF and European Union in return for bailout funds.

Greek politicians are divided over whether to continue supporting those austerity measures and face a 17 June election.

“The Greek population has made huge efforts. But they have more to do. There are more structural reforms to be had, there is more tax to be collected and that has a price,” Ms Lagarde said in an interview with the BBC’s Today programme.

Many analysts think that Greece may abandon the austerity measures and be forced out of the euro.

Ms Lagarde said the IMF did not like the that prospect, but that it was “prepared for all possible situations”.

Read more at theBBC….

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