ikenbot:

theuppitynegras:

iamthegarebear:

ghdos:

thefoxxypoet:

odinsblog:

A Bronx bus company is offering tours billed as a “a ride through a real New York City ‘GHETTO,’” the New York Post reports.

The company, Real Bronx Tours, has taken largely white foreign tourists around the Bronx. The tour guide was caught mocking the Bronx by Post reporter Candice Giove.

Three times a week, Real Bronx Tours takes riders — mainly white Europeans and Australians — on a trip that includes stops at food-pantry lines and a “pickpocket” park.

“Last week, on the first stop of the $45 tour, guide Lynn Battaglia, from Pittsburgh, pointed out a housing project. She then mocked the Grand Concourse, modeled after a Parisian boulevard,” reports Giove.“‘Do you feel like we’re on the Champs-Elysées?’ she teased a couple from Paris.”

The tour also included a drive near a food pantry at a church. Battaglia wondered out loud, “I don’t know what that line’s about, but every Wednesday we see it. We see them go in with empty carts, and we see them come out with carts full.

The tour guide warned of the dangers of going to a park in the Bronx and also gave inaccurate information about the origin of the word “pig” to describe a police officer. While Battaglia claimed the word came from the Bronx, in reality it originated in London.

The Bronx borough president harshly criticized the guide and the tour.

The guide is “the biggest fool on the planet,” said Ruben Diaz, the borough president. “To have foreigners come and gawk at a long line of people who are less fortunate than they are and to make money off of that and to view them as they are some sort of entertainment is pretty disgusting.” [emphasis mine]

This is a total diss to my hometown. Ugh the Bronx is many things, but there is beauty there…and I’m happy I spent a good chunk of my childhood there.

It’s irritating to see these dumb ass tourists come to my city and mock it for their enjoyment and someone is getting paid to be a racist/classist asshole.

They’re taking a tour of the projects like it’s a zoo. Like it’s a fucking exhibit. SMH.

Like, i know yall mad and shit but this aint no worse than what Americans do in other countries. In fact, we are notorious worldwide for this same kinda act happening in other countries. But i see yall wanna get offended when shit hits home right? Granted the tour guide sounds like an idiot, the whole concept isnt anything new and Americans are the biggest perpetrators. 

can somebody please explain to me why I’m supposed to not hate the whites again?

They would do that.

Car hits crowd at Virginia parade

Car hits crowd at Virginia parade http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22584763

"Good job, Internet!"

Teenage chemistry enthusiast won’t be charged with felony, will go to space camp - Boing Boing

Good job, internet!

(via mordicaifeed)

Good stuff

(via progenyofworms)

scinerds:

Deep Canadian mine yields ancient water

Scientists working 2.4 kilometres below Earth’s surface in a Canadian mine have tapped a source of water that has remained isolated for at least a billion years. The researchers say they do not yet know whether anything has been living in it all this time, but the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen — the right stuff to support life.

Micrometre-scale pockets in minerals billions of years old can hold water that was trapped during the minerals’ formation. But no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth’s crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years.

“We were expecting these fluids to be possibly tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years of age,” says Chris Ballentine, a geochemist at the University of Manchester, UK. He and his team carefully captured water flowing through fractures in the 2.7-billion-year-old sulphide deposits in a copper and zinc mine near Timmins, Ontario, ensuring that the water did not come into contact with mine air.

To date the water, the team used three lines of evidence, all based on the relative abundances of various isotopes of noble gases present in the water. The authors determined that the fluid could not have contacted Earth’s atmosphere — and so been at the planet’s surface — for at least 1 billion years, and possibly for as long as 2.64 billion years, not long after the rocks it flows through formed. The study appears today in Nature.

‘Extremely strange’

“The isotopic compositions that they see in these samples are extremely strange, and the preferred explanation in the article seems to me the most likely one,” says Pete Burnard, a geochemist at the Centre of Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Vandœuvre-les-Nancy, France. “For the moment, I think we have to conclude that there are 1.5-billion-year-old fluids trapped in the crust.”

The findings are “doubly interesting”, Ballentine says, because the fluid carries the ingredients necessary to support life. The isolated water supply, he says, provides “secluded biomes, ecosystems, in which life, you can speculate, might have even originated”. His colleagues are now working to establish whether the water does harbour life.

The findings may also have implications for life on Mars, Ballentine says, though he acknowledges that the idea is speculative. The surface of Mars once held water and its rocks are chemically no different from those on Earth, he says. “There is no reason to think the same interconnected fluids systems do not exist there.”

Original Article

thepeoplesrecord:

Navajo Nation battles uranium corporations, nuclear industry
May 10, 2013

Since European settlers first arrived on this continent, they set out to accumulate as much wealth and land as humanly possible. Their reign of terror on the indigenous populations —destructive of land, culture and entire communities—was the basis for immense fortunes that spurred the global economy and advancing capitalism.

This struggle, now over 500 years in the making, is ongoing on many fronts, including the Navajo Nation’s current battle over U.S. companies’ uranium extraction.

In early 2013, uranium companies approached the Navajo Nation in hopes they will allow them to renew mining operations on their land. These companies claim that they have developed newer and safer methods for extracting uranium, after decades of environmental destruction and abuse led the Navajo Nation to officially ban their mining.

This decades-long battle for environmental justice is part and parcel of the struggles for workers’ rights and Native self-determination, and against the forces of militarism and capitalism.

Exploitation of Navajo lands

The Navajo Nation sits on 27,425 square miles in the four corners area of the southwestern United States. The area holds a vast amount of uranium ore and thus has become a center in the struggle over nuclear energy and weaponry.

Since the end of World War II, and the onset of the so-called Cold War, the U.S. government began mining uranium domestically in order to not rely on foreign supplies. Uranium is one of the most common naturally occurring radioactive metals on the planet, and was understood as essential for the development of nuclear weapons and technology.

Due to the unique geology and consistent climate of the Southwest, mining companies saw the Navajo reservation as the most profitable site to open mining operations in the 1940s. In 1948, the United States Atomic Energy Commission declared it would be the sole purchaser of all uranium mined in the country, initiating a mining boom of private companies and contractors who knew they had a guaranteed buyer.

Of the thousands of uranium mines, 92% were located in the Colorado Plateau on which the Navajo Nation is located. Between 1944 and 1986 approximately 4 million tons of uranium ore was mined from Navajo Tribal land.

In the early days of mining, Navajo people flocked to the low-wage work given the scarcity of jobs around the reservation. The Navajo workers dealt with racist bosses and coworkers while going into the most dangerous and undesirable jobs at lesser pay. Nonetheless, after Navajo Code Talkers’ had famously contributed to U.S. forces in World War II, many Navajo workers believed they had a patriotic duty and responsibility to the United States.

Mineworkers were also lied to about the dangers of Radon poisoning.

Full article

(via stfuconservatives)

Images ‘reveal Nigeria army abuse’

Images ‘reveal Nigeria army abuse’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22366016

Fucking Nigeria, man.

American settlers ‘turned cannibal’

American settlers ‘turned cannibal’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22362831

American History, ladies and gentlemen.

Chinese teams reach quake-hit region

Chinese teams reach quake-hit region http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22237162

the-star-stuff:

Magnetic Putty is Completely Amazing/Terrifying

Magnetic putty is just like any other putty in that you can handle it, sculpt it, and squeeze it in a fist as you visualize your enemies. But place it anywhere near a strong magnetic field and it will SPONTANEOUSLY ANIMATE and move to consume anything magnetic in its path like a voracious mutated slug. In fact the putty won’t stop moving until the object has been equally engulfed on all sides.

"According to funeral director Richard Kurtz of Roy Mizell and Kurtz Funeral Home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin did not have any cuts or bruises on his hands to indicate that he was in a fight with George Zimmerman on the night that the neighborhood watch captain murdered him.
Speaking exclusively to HLN’s Nancy Grace, Kurtz said that when he prepared Martin’s body the only injury that was discernible was a gunshot wound to Martin’s upper-chest area."

Funeral Director: No Signs of Fight or Struggle Present on Trayvon’s Hands | Breaking News for Black America (via robot-heart-politics)

(via progenyofworms)

New Zealand legalises gay marriage

progenyofworms:

pantsareforassholes:

New Zealand legalises gay marriage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22184232

America sucks.

“Greatest nation on Earth”, huh? Can’t figure this one out?

Remember when we were the second-to-last country in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery, and it took a damn civil war to di it?

America has no sense of perspective. Unlike European countries, we aren’t surrounded by outside opinions (and we don’t pay any attention to Canada or Mexico). This is a nation of willful ignorance. It disgusts me.

US team’s battery ‘breakthrough’

US team’s battery ‘breakthrough’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22191650

New Zealand legalises gay marriage

New Zealand legalises gay marriage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22184232

America sucks.

‘Ricin’ letter sent to Barack Obama

‘Ricin’ letter sent to Barack Obama http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22190031

Putin shrugs off European protests

Putin shrugs off European protests http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22072994

Somebody shoot this fucker in the kneecaps pronto.