So here's the announcement Mike Shinoda tweeted about yesterday:
Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today. Whether relating to jobs, security, climate change, food production or income-generating activity, access to sustainable energy is essential for strengthening economies, protecting ecosystems, and achieving social equity. However, more than 1.4 billion people worldwide have no access to electricity, and 1 billion more have only intermittent access. Additionally, some 2.5 billion people-- almost half of humanity-- rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating. Linkin Park and Music for Relief have pledged to support the UN Secretary-General to help achieve Sustainable Energy for All through Power the World. Join us to help bring sustainable energy solutions to 1 million families. Empower the Planet. Power the World. Learn more about the year of Sustainable Energy for All here.-Linkin Park That's such a great new relief effort! I didn't even know that so many people live without power. This is a more detailed press release by "Sustainable Energy for All":
New York, NY — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the support of the Grammy award winning rock band Linkin Park for his "Sustainable Energy for All Initiative." The band will utilize its extensive social media presence, including more than 36 million Facebook fans, and draw on its significant public profile to mobilize support for the Secretary-General’s Initiative and sustainable energy projects worldwide.Read more... Linkin Park also visited the UN Headquarters today and met Secretery-General Ban Ki-Moon! Here are the video of the press conference, the UN's press release and some pictures: There's a longer video here. Unfortunately I can't download or embed it here, so you just gotta click the link.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with Grammy award-winning Linkin Park band members at UN Headquarters | Photo: UN
Before I post this article I wanna add that, as a blog owner, I definitely see the existence of child porn on the internet, because I can see the search terms that led people to my blog posts. I've often posted articles about child abuse and sex slavery in the past and unfortunately those aren't only read by people like you and me, who try to fight against those disgusting people that abuse our children right under our noses. I just wish there was a way to report them. If anyone got an idea, please tell me.
Props to Anonymous for attacking the right sites:
Members of the Anonymous hacktivist movement are claiming responsibility for taking down more than 40 secret child-pornography websites and leaking the names of more than 1,500 members of one of the illegal sites.
The Anonymous campaign began Oct. 14, when members of the hacktivist group found a cache of child-pornography websites while browsing a secret website called the Hidden Wiki, a guidebook to hundreds of underground websites invisible to search engines and regular Internet users. The hackers singled out Lolita City, a file-sharing site used by pedophiles, and leaked the names of the site's 1,589 active members to Pastebin on Tuesday (Oct. 18), the Examiner reported.
Member of Anonymous deciding to hack a website whose stance they don't agree with is by no means shocking news. In the past year, Anonymous-affiliated hackers have gone after the New York Stock Exchange, the Westboro Baptist Church, the Recording Industry Association of America and government sites in Malaysia, Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.
However, in targeting child pornography sites, and in explaining its methods of attack, these Anonymous-affiliated hackers have revealed a deeply disturbing side of the Internet unknown to most people.
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© Kok Cheow Yeoh
Don Heller: A California Republican against death penalty By Don Heller, Columnist I have been a Republican for many years. I wrote the ballot initiative that reinstated the death penalty in California in 1978. I believe those who commit willful and intentional murder should be locked up and severely punished in the interest of public safety. I made a terrible mistake 33 years ago, but it is one that can be corrected. People are working hard to give voters the opportunity in the next election to replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. If given that chance, I call upon all Californians to join me in voting yes to abolish capital punishment. I have not gone soft on crime. I believe that public safety is one of the primary purposes of a government predicated on the rule of law. Justice should be swift and certain. But the death penalty initiative that I drafted was drawn up without fiscal study, input from others, or committee hearings. I made sure that the legal structure that I created would meet tough constitutional standards and checked my work against relevant U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence. But there was none of the give and take envisioned by our forefathers when they created the legislative process more than 200 years ago. Essentially, I wrote alone and the fiscal impact was never considered by the sponsors or myself. ...
Photo: Music for Relief | Click to Enlarge