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Iceland Erupts In Protest As Panama Papers Reveal Secret Corruption In Government
A crowd gathers around a bonfire during a protest in Reykjavik on Oct. 4, 2010. (Flickr / Tom Burke)
April 7, 2016
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Iceland Erupts In Protest As Panama Papers Reveal Secret Corruption In Government

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Iceland’s government is under pressure from a tax corruption scandal, and the prime minister could be forced to resign.

For now, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson says he’s merely taking a break from the office.

The massive Panama Papers leak, consisting of 11.5 million documents released to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source, revealed several members of Iceland’s government, including its prime minister are among numerous world leaders with secretive offshore shell corporations, potentially allowing them to hide billions in income from taxes.

A video released Sunday by The Guardian showed Gunnlaugsson abruptly ending a television interview, where he was confronted about selling his share in a shell corporation, Wintris, Inc., to his wife just one day before a new law came into effect which would have required him to disclose his holdings.

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Israeli Settlers Send Death Threats, File Police Complaint Against Palestinian Who Filmed IDF Execution
An IDF soldier stands over the body of a fallen Palestinian who was accused of stabbing another soldier. (YouTube screenshot)
March 29, 2016
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Israeli Settlers Send Death Threats, File Police Complaint Against Palestinian Who Filmed IDF Execution

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

After a video of an Israeli soldier executing an incapacitated Palestinian suspect went viral, two Israeli settlers are demanding a police investigation of the activist who recorded the act and the human rights group that released it online.

On March 24, Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif and Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, 21-year-old Palestinian men, were shot by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers after allegedly stabbing an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint near Hebron.Emad Abu Shamsiya, a Palestinian staff member at the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, recorded Elor Azraya, an IDF soldier, shooting al-Sharif at point blank range in the head as al-Sharif was on the ground, motionless but alive.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bentzi Gopstein, two settlers known for subscribing to an extremist form of Zionism, have filed a formal police complaint alleging wrongdoing by Abu Shamsiya and B’Tselem, according to a March 27 report from Mondoweiss, a progressive Jewish news site.

Read moreIsraeli Settlers Send Death Threats, File Police Complaint Against Palestinian Who Filmed IDF Execution
Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton Helped Topple Gadhafi While France & UK Fought Over Libya’s Oil
A group of destroyed tanks in the desert outside Misrata, Libya. Aug. 2, 2012. (Wikimedia Commons / joepyrek)
March 25, 2016
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Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton Helped Topple Gadhafi While France & UK Fought Over Libya’s Oil

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

A message from Hillary Clinton’s private email server reveals that France and the United Kingdom both sought to control Libya’s oil in the days after the U.S.-backed coup in 2011.

An email sent on Sept. 16, 2011 to Clinton, then the U.S. Secretary of State, from journalist and family friend Sidney Blumenthal, shows that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron each traveled to Tripoli about one month after Moammar Gadhafi’s government fell in order to assert their claim on Libya’s energy reserves.

They made these demands, Blumenthal wrote, during meetings with the country’s National Transitional Council, a de facto government which formed with Western support in the aftermath of the coup:

Read moreWikileaks: Hillary Clinton Helped Topple Gadhafi While France & UK Fought Over Libya’s Oil
‘Trapped’ Reveals The Human Cost Of Anti-Abortion Laws
Clinic escorts gather to pray at Reproductive Health Services in Montgomery, Alabama before a long, dangerous day of protecting patients from protesters. (Trapped publicity still)
March 24, 2016
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‘Trapped’ Reveals The Human Cost Of Anti-Abortion Laws

Posted in Journalism, SXSW, and The Establishment

A 13-year-old rape victim makes the long journey from McAllen, in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, to the closest open health clinic that provides abortions. At the time, it’s the Whole Women’s Health Clinic, 200 miles away in San Antonio. At 20 weeks and five days pregnant, she arrives just as the deadline for their services approaches.

Despite the willingness of the clinic workers to help, and the availability of an increasingly rare abortion doctor, the clinic is unable to obtain a nurse anesthetist. Nothing can be done, short of another expensive journey of hundreds of miles into New Mexico. The impoverished victim will never be able to make that journey in time.

“We sentenced her to motherhood,” declares a tearful Marva Sadler, director of clinical services at the clinic, in one of the most affecting scenes of the film Trapped.

Read more‘Trapped’ Reveals The Human Cost Of Anti-Abortion Laws
You Me Her: ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’ And Polyamory On TV (SXSW Review)
Three stone hearts arranged in a circle with their points facing inward. (You Me Her publicity image)
March 23, 2016
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You Me Her: ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’ And Polyamory On TV (SXSW Review)

Posted in Journalism, Polyamory, Sex & Relationships, and SXSW

“Be careful what you wish for,” declared Greg Poehler during the SXSW audience Q&A for “You Me Her,” the new “polyromantic” sitcom which premieres today on DirecTV’s Audience Network.

He was talking the reaction of Jack, the character he plays in the show, to discovering that his wife is bisexual. Jack’s confusion is far from the stereotypical “whoa! two hot chicks together!” response we’ve come to expect from straight guys in the media.

But he could also be describing my reaction to the news that a sitcom centered around polyamory was coming to the airwaves. My trepidation was compounded by the fact that there seemed to be very little information on the show online (it doesn’t help that The Hollywood Reporter called it “a sugar daddy comedy” in July) and even further when the show’s publicity team seemed reluctant to grant me access to their talent at SXSW.

Read moreYou Me Her: ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’ And Polyamory On TV (SXSW Review)
‘Starving The Beast’: Documentary Reveals How Wall Street ‘Disrupted’ Public Education
A stadium and pathways on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Apr 12, 2015. (Wikimedia Commons / Counse)
March 21, 2016
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‘Starving The Beast’: Documentary Reveals How Wall Street ‘Disrupted’ Public Education

Posted in Journalism, MintPress News, and SXSW

Is education a right and a public good, or is it a commodity from which corporations can profit?

“Starving The Beast,” a documentary which premiered March 13 at the SXSW Film festival, reveals the struggle between these two paradigms for higher education taking place across the country at publicly funded universities.

From the University of Texas at Austin to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, decades of budget cuts have resulted in skyrocketing tuition alongside a simultaneous decline in the quality of education. Now Wall Street is moving into the gaps created by a largely Republican-created budget crisis, from the increasing reliance on private student loans as public funding falls to schemes to allow the accreditation of more for-profit universities, a move championed by Sen. Marco Rubio during his 2016 electoral campaign.

Read more‘Starving The Beast’: Documentary Reveals How Wall Street ‘Disrupted’ Public Education