Revenge Porn site dies, but others flourish

It's called "revenge porn" and it's as bad and nasty as it sounds.

You break up with someone and then in a spate of spite, you post  XXX pictures of your ex.

Often with scathing comments. Always with embarassing consequences for the victim, usually the woman.

On The Media, the NPR radio show that has been covering this story, reported that one of the most infamous websites that promoted this kind of online revenge has shut down.

Is Anybody Down was one of the more successful of these sites because it added a powerful tweak: it linked the nude pictures to the target's Facebook or Twitter accounts, thus making it much more likely than someone Googling you would  stumble upon pictures you'd rather not have anyone see.

In a hard-hitting if controversial interview which is worth a listen, the NPR program skewered webist owner Craig Brittain.

Brittain, who boasted he had pictures of over 700 woman on his site, was facing legal action from at least one group of outraged victims in Colorado and investigations  by law enforcement.

Now Brittain has folded his tent.

"Revenge Porn is over," Brittain said in his Twitter feed last month. " I won't be making any more of them. The content is gone. I'm doing the right thing now."

Still, revenge porn flourishes elsewhere on the web. (And no, we are not going to list those sites.)

But also flourishing is revenge against the revenge sites.

NPR reported that "Florida and California are considering bills that would make it a crime to post a nude picture online without the subject's consent."

And a woman in the state of Florida filed charges against her ex-boyfriend and four websites for posting revenge images of her.

A fanous New Yorker cartoon once had two dogs in front of a computer, commenting that on the Internet no one knows you're a dog.

But that has not stopped some humans from behaving like animals.

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Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star and can be reached at jsher@thestar.ca and on Twitter @juliansher. 

Syria's war, King Abdullah's problem whether he likes it or not

It's not possible for Jordan's King Abdullah to remain neutral as Syria's war continues on his country's border. AFP PHOTO/KHALIL MAZRAAWI

The United States military's proposal for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria near the Jordan border will have major implications for the small kingdom which can ill afford to be destabilized by its neighbour’s civil war.

The Wall Street Journal reports American officials as saying the Jordanians have offered the use of their bases to help set up a “no fighting zone” along the border. This would be a 40-kilometre stretch of territory inside Syria to prevent the regime from attacking rebels and refugees arriving into Jordan.

The area would be enforced with aircraft flown from Jordan’s airbases, the Journal reported.  What is not clear is how the U.S. could go ahead with a no-fly zone without authorization from the UN Security Council of which Russia, a staunch Syrian ally, is a permanent veto-wielding member.

What is clear is that Jordan’s role in Syria’s civil war will take on a larger military dimension.

Even though America has Patriot air defense batteries and F-16 fighter planes stationed there, hitherto Jordan’s role has mostly been confined to taking in refugees – half a million and counting.  

Once again, Jordan is being pulled into its neighbours’ troubles – whether it wants to or not and with the consequences in the far future completely unknown.  During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, King Abdullah’s father, the late King Hussein, refused to support America in its war against Iraq or take Saddam Hussein’s side.

The attempt at neutrality earned him the wrath of Washington, which cut off aid, and the UN, which imposed devastating sanctions of $5 billion –nearly $1 billion more than Jordan’s GDP in 1990. The opprobrium of Arab countries who hated Saddam was also fierce.    

But King Hussein warned at the time: “With or without war, nothing will return to what it was. This will be an area of turmoil unless people face up to the need to create new dreams and new realities.”

They are words as prescient today as they were in 1990 when he spoke them. The First Gulf War worsened the region's troubles and eventually led to a second one in 2003 which sent a mass of of Iraqi refugees into Jordan and terrorist attacks in the country. 

Neutrality in the Syrian war is not an option for King Abdullah. The 378-kilometre border is porous in many parts and he has expressed worry about a “jihadist state” emerging out of the conflict. 

Should that happen, it would also be Jordan’s problem. 

READ MORE: Hamida Ghafour in Amman reports on King Abdullah's high wire act

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Indian village plants 111 trees, starts funds for girl babies to stop female feticide

(Screen grab from Piplantri's website.)

India, and Indian women especially, could use more leaders like Shyam Sundar Paliwal.

Paliwal is a former sarpanch, or village elder, in Piplantri, a village of 6,000 in the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

For several years, in an effort to discourage female feticide and bolster the village's green cover, locals plant 111 trees every time a girl is born. Over the past six years alone, according to the The Hindu newspaper, people have planted more than 250,000 neem, sheesham and mango trees.

The village has introduced an interesting effort to encourage families to stop having gender-selective abortions.

For the past four decades, since ultrasound machines were introduced in India, parents desperate for a son to carry on their lineage have had technology on their side, turning a cultural preference into a ruthlessly efficient girl-killing system. If their fetus is female, some mothers opt for an abortion rather than carry to full term.

In the village of Jhajjar, I wrote in 2011 about how just 16 girls had been admitted to school over the prior year, compared to 43 boys.

Piplantri is the kind of good-news story that's sure to draw more attention, at a time when many journalists are covering the many stories of violence against women in India.

The village also makes it more lucrative for families to keep girl children. They collect about $500 from village locals and $250 from the girls' father. The $750 is invested into a fixed deposit for the girl, maturing after 20 years.

 “We make these parents sign an affidavit promising that they would not marry her off before the legal age, send her to school regularly and take care of the trees planted in her name,” Paliwal told the Hindu.

Piplantri is the kind of place to which foreign documentary makers flock.

The village also has a studio-recorded anthem and a website, has completely banned alcohol, open grazing of animals and cutting of trees. Villagers say there have not been any criminal cases here for the last eight years, The Hindu reported.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

 

Why your chopped-off fingertip can sometimes grow back

Top: a mouse digit that regenerated after amputation. Bottom: a mouse digit that failed to regenerate after amputation because it lacked the "Wnt signalling network" described in a new paper published by Nature. Photo credit: Ito Lab, NYU Langone Medical Center

When you cut off your hair, it grows back. Ditto with fingernails. But what about fingertips?

As it turns out, sliced-off fingertips can sometimes grow back on children, as long as enough of the fingernail is left in tact. On NPR's Shots blog, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Christopher Allan recalled an eight-year-old former patient who lost a chunk of her middle fingertip to her brother's bicycle wheel – but in just a few weeks, a new one had already grown back and "it was far better than anything that I could have given her with a graft or surgery," Allan told NPR reporter Michaeleen Doucleff.

Mice, scientists have seen, can also regenerate lost "fingertips." But what's behind this phenomenon? Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center decided to find out and on Wednesday, the results of their study were published in the journal Nature.

In a press release, lead author Mayumi Ito reported that her team discovered a population of stem cells in the nail beds of lab mice that were "rich in nerve endings and blood vessels that stimulate nail growth."  But these cells also seem to drive nearby bone and tissue regeneration thanks to a family of proteins called the "Wnt signaling network" — proteins also responsible for hair and tissue regeneration. The team conducted tests where they blocked this signaling pathway in mice with amputated digits – and sure enough, the tips did not grow back.

While this self-healing process pales in comparison to what occurs in wounded amphibians — which can regenerate limbs even after the most dramatic of amputations — there are some parallel mechanisms, Ito told Nature News.

“I was amazed by the similarities,” Ito said in an interview with science writer Ed Yong. “It suggests that we partly retain the regeneration mechanisms that operate in amphibians.”

Ito told NPR's Shots that she will now look for the same stem cells in humans — the hope is that these findings could pave the way towards future therapies that help people regenerate lost limbs.

But humans probably won't be healing salamander-style anytime soon. As regeneration biologist Ashley Seifert said to Yong at Nature News, perhaps mammals' ability to regrow fingertips evolved independently of amphibians, which completely lack a nail organ, and so it's possible our regenerative powers depend on the presence of a nail. Seifert also pointed out that activating the Wnt pathway failed to trigger any fingertip regeneration when an entire nail was missing.

Jennifer Yang is the Star’s global health reporter. She previously worked as a general assignment reporter and won a NNA in 2011 for her explanatory piece on the Chilean mining disaster. Follow her on Twitter: @jyangstar

Protests and penguins: Turkish media face big chill

Destroyed TV van at Taksim square in Istanbul last week. While Turkey’s largest city was convulsed  by anti-government protests,  demonstrators took out their exasperation as broadcast media looked away.  AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis

Waves of indignation swept through the Canadian media Wednesday at the news that CBC journalists Derek Stoffel and Sasa Petricic were forced to make an unexpected 11 hour stopover in an Istanbul prison.

The two were hauled in for the crime of photographing workers taking down barricades in Taksim Square, where protesters have been gathered for nearly two weeks, bombarded by water cannons and tear gas.

The CBC team’s treatment was exemplary by Turkish standards.

Courtesy of Foreign Minister John Baird and Ottawa’s consular officials, they weren’t held for months or years of pre-trial detention, charged under anti-terrorist legislation, threatened with torture or denied the right to defend themselves before “Special Heavy Penal Courts.”

Unfortunately, Turkish journalists aren’t so lucky.

Reporters Without Borders calls Turkey the world’s biggest prison for journalists. Last December they identified 72 held in detention, 42 of them in direct relation to their work.

“The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has waged one of the world’s biggest crackdowns on press freedom in recent history,” said New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Authorities have imprisoned journalists on a mass scale on terrorism or anti-state charges, launched thousands of other criminal prosecutions on charges such as denigrating Turkishness or influencing court proceedings, and used pressure tactics to sow self-censorship.”

“But these aren’t real journalists,” is the standard line from the Turkish authorities, who insist that the imprisoned people are subversives, Kurdish separatists, linked with terrorism or guilty of various “serious crimes.”

No surprise then that the coverage of the widespread protests was so limited that Turkish TV viewers got a program on penguins rather than protesters, while the international media reported on arrests, scuffles, and attacks on mainly peaceful demonstrators.

King Penguins from the British Antarctic Survey. Associated Press photo/British Antarctic Survey.

When Erdogan himself publicly denounces journalists, urges cowed media organizations to discipline critical staff members and files defamation lawsuits, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

The economic conglomerates that control much of the media are largely unwilling to risk the consequences of real reporting. Fines against media corporations have caused sell-offs and even greater concentration and cronyism.

That’s also caused a public backlash against the media in Turkey. A news van of a leading TV news channel was demolished in Tacksim Square, and the station’s CEO later apologized for its lack of coverage.

The protests have laid bare the nasty secret that the Erdogan government has managed to keep from the outside world for years: it’s a semi-autocracy masquerading as a modern democracy.

When the demos end, there will be a lot of rebuilding to do for both government and media -- starting with public trust. Chill out, penguins. What the public wants now are watchdogs.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to Europe, South Asia and the Middle East, winning national and international awards.


 



 

 

Will online uproar stop looming dog-eating festival in China?

Would you be part of a dog-eating festival?

Okay, that was a loud, disgusted "no."

Something like that seems to be happening in Yulin in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China where the festival is held every year in June; this year, it is supposed to be on June 21.

Protesters have started multiple online campaigns, rapped about it and even petitioned the local mayor. Animal lovers in other countries, like England, have written to the Chinese ambassador. Animal welfare agencies have also joined the chorus of asking for a ban on the “barbaric tradition.”

Some online commentators have described scenes from last year: dogs in cages, their killing, their shaved carcasses hanging on hooks, the haggling by buyers.

Local animal-lovers have said that dogs are often beaten to death.  

In 2011, the Daily Mail reported that over 15,000 dogs were devoured at the week-long festival.

Animal rights activists hope there will be no festival this year. Their hopes seem to be hooked on a ban on a similar festival in Qianxi city in September 2011 because of an uproar on social media.

Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia, said she has heard the argument that dog eating represents Chinese culture and tradition. “We have long answered that culture and tradition are no excuse for cruelty and brutality... Traditions should not be above criticism.”

Legend has it that eating of dog meat will dispel ghosts and even disease. It is also believed that dog meat can boost men’s sexual performance. But as Chinese middle-class starts to keep dogs as pets, anti-cruelty campaigns are expanding.

To be fair, the dog eating tradition is not unique to Yulin. Other cities in Zhejiang, Guangxi, and Guangdong province, are also known to be consumers of dog meat.

Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star’s environment reporter. She is intrigued by climate change and its impact, now and long-term, and wildlife. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh

A vote for Zahra is a (protest) vote for peace and democracy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Courtesy vote4zahra.org)

 

Iranians go to the polls tomorrow to vote for a president and in a sea of grey, dour male candidates, Zahra's feisty campaign jumps out. 

Built on ideals of democracy and justice, she is not afraid to criticize the establishment, blaming them for mismanaging the economy, executing teenagers and throwing into prison anyone who disagrees.

As a mother whose son Mehdi disappeared in the Islamic republic’s prisons while protesting during the last rigged elections in 2009, her pain resonates with millions of ordinary people who tried to stand up to their government in 2009 but were punished severely. 

Unfortunately Zahra is a fictional character. She is the protagonist of an online, popular graphic novel called Zahra’s Paradise written by two American-Iranians, Amir and Khalil.

The title itself is a subtle criticism of the current situation in Iran – it refers to a large cemetery outside the capital Tehran where many opponents of the regime are buried, including Neda Agha Soltan.  

The virtual candidate's attempt at running for president is a form of protesting tomorrow's vote at a time when the violent crackdown on the 2009 post-election protests are still fresh in people's minds . 

Amnesty International said on Wednesday that in the run up to this year's elections authorities have arrested dozens of activists and journalists. Dozens of political prisoners remain in jail since 2009, the organization said. 


“The surge in recent violations underlines Iran’s continued and brazen flouting of human rights standards through its persecution of political dissidents and betrays the glaring absence of a meaningful human rights discourse in the election campaign,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme in a statement.

Two former presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a political activist have been under house arrest since 2011. 

READ MORE: Olivia Ward's Iranian election guide and why the country is at a crossroads 

Zahra's anger: A postcard created by authors of the graphic novel featuring Zahra which readers can download and send to the Guardian Council in Tehran which vets presidential candidates. (Courtesy: vote4zahra.org)

 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour 

Secret life of cats exposed by BBC, veterinary college research project

A cat doing something scientifically interesting. A new research project courtsey of BBC2 Horizon and the U.K. Royal Veterinary College has tracked the secret life of cats. 

 

Isn't science amazing? Sometimes we use science to discover the earliest known primate fossil. Sometimes we use science to search outerspace for evidence of physical mysteries.

And sometimes, if we are the BBC, we use science to unmask the secret lives of cats. Through the magic of science we conjure Mother Nature's deepest secrets to light, like that cats are territorial, and sometimes they eat birds.

Those new insights come courtesy of BBC2's "Horizon" programme, a series that explores "topical scientific issues and their effects for the future." Horizon teamed up with the UK's Royal Veterinary College to bring the world a research project that the British broadcaster is calling "Secret life of the cat: the science of tracking our pets."

While the original study involved 50 felines, the BBC website currently features a multimedia snapshot of 10 animals, complete with data visualizations of the cat's days and video snapshots of important cat moments. 

The ten research subjects are Ginger, Chip, Sooty, Orlando, Hermie, Phoebe, Deebee, Kato, Coco and Rosie. They all live in the village of Shamley Green in Surrey.

The veterinary college researchers modified big-cat tracking technology to equip the pet cats with GPS collars and activity sensors. The most exciting research subjects were outfitted with kitty cams.

The activity sensors were used to make sure the scientists only collected data when the cats were actually moving. That achieved a dual goal: it conserved GPS battery, and it "also saved us from collecting a lot of uninteresting data on sleeping cats," wrote Alan Wilson, one of the veterinary college researcher scientists, who specializes in animal movement.

Let's take Ginger, a haughty-looking ginger tabby who, according to the new research, sometimes fights the neighbour's cat.

An "expert's view" provides readers with this: "Ginger's roaming is pretty average in terms of range or distance from home. However, on one of the days he was tracked he was more active than any of the other cats."

In another segment, Orlando, a second ginger tabby, loses his lunch. Viewers are treated to a cat's perspective of this event, thanks to the camera around Orlando's neck.

Wilson said the research turned out to be fascinating, because we know less about the activities of domestic cats than rare cats that live in the wild.

"We were particularly surprised by how small the ranges of most of the cats were, and how few of them went into the surrounding countryside. They tended to remain within the confines of the village and roamed in those areas. One theory is that their roaming is dictated by the hunt for food - something more easily done in the village. For example, we saw cats going into houses other than their own," he wrote on the BBC website.

Since the filming of the program, the researchers have returned to Shamley Green to collect more data, which will be published in an upcoming scientific paper.

The Horizon television program airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. UK time.

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

Unleash the hounds of Islington, says Boris

If there's one thing London Mayor Boris Johnson hates, its foxes.  And he has a plan. Sort of. LEON NEALLEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Foxes are to London what raccoons are to Toronto. They get into your rubbish, they make shocking noises during mating season, and they rip apart your garden.

They have also recently been blamed for attacks on pets and children. Two little girls were very seriously injured in 2010 by a fox who attacked them in their crib, and earlier this year an infant had his finger ripped off by one of the pointy-faced predators.

Enter London Mayor Boris Johnson, who believed his cat had been attacked by a fox in his north London neighbourhood. He was so enraged, Boris said, he considered using his rifle to dispatch the offending critter to fox heaven.

"This will cause massive unpopularity and I don't care," the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. "If people want to get together to form the fox hounds of Islington I'm all for it."

So this is a good idea and there's no way anyone's going to get mad about it, because if there's one thing British people are indifferent about it's animals.

"We can only assume the mayor is joking with this prepostorous suggestion," Joe Duckworth, who heads the League Against Cruel Sports, an anti-hunting group, told Metro. "He cannot seriously be suggesting that packs of dogs should be allowed to hunt wildlife through the city or that people should be able to freely walk around with dangerous firearms."

He probably wasn't serious. (But then, with Boris, who knows.) Aside from all that, wading -- even jokingly -- into the fox-hunting issue is also a bad idea. Foxes have fans, and hunting with dogs was outlawed by Tony Blair's Labour government. Despite rumblings from hunt supporters, it's unlikely to be repealed.

But still. The image of a pack of red-clad horsemen galloping down Streatham High Street or through Oxford Circus is pretty funny. Boris does it again. Tally ho.

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. As a journalist with the Associated Press, based in London, she wrote extensively about British politics. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

Lashkar-e-Taiba contemplating next move after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, expert says

Lashkar-e Taiba was blamed for terror attack in Mumbai in 2008, including this attack on the Taj Mahal hotel.  (David Guttenfelder/Associated press File photo)

Lashkar-e-Taiba's well-organized attacks in 2008 on Mumbai temporarily seemed to paralyze the Indian security forces, riveted the world's attention, and put the venerable militant group back on the map.

In the five years since LeT extremists stormed the streets of Mumbai, killing 166 and holding India's commercial capital hostage, LeT has been relatively quiet. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, argues an expert on the group.

Stephen Tankel testified Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, and explained LeT's operational capabilities and the prospects for an LeT attack in North America.

Tankel, a professor at American University, non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the 2011 book Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba, told The Star in an interview that U.S. lawmakers are keeping tabs on LeT, which considered Mumbai an operational success, since it bolstered the group's recruiting and fundraising efforts and gave LeT a measure of prestige.

"This a group that is patient, that is calculated," Tankel said, adding it's likely based on open source evidence that LeT is continuing its recruitment efforts in North America.

In January, Pakistani-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to overseas terrorism, including LeT. During the same month, American David Headley, who confessed to helping plan the  2008  attacks in Mumbai, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

"LeT leaders saw the value in having someone like David Headley and it's fair to surmise that they are even more keen now to have more like him," Tankel said.

He said Canada and the U.S. likely remain potential LeT targets.

"Ideologically both countries remain within LeT's target set," he said. "The U.S. more so than Canada. LeT sees itself as a pan-islamist organization that defends and avenges violence against Muslims. But "they're also worried about taking steps that would endanger their privileged status within Pakistan," Tankel said.

One of the questions being posed in security circles, Tankel said, is what LeT will do after the U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan next year.

It's possible that the group has been directed not to be too active in Kashmir because Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan is chock-a-block with militant activity.

Pakistan's murky Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate established Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989 to help attack Indian resources in the disputed Kashmir region. LeT head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed currently lives in the open in Lahore, even though the U.S. has placed a $10 million bounty on his head and the United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list.

When the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, LeT may enjoy a more free hand to target Indian officials in Kashmir. Tankel said it's widely believed that LeT is active in Kashmir on a small-scale directly and indirectly through a domestic militant group know as Hizbul Mujahidin.

But it's similarly possible that Pakistan's western border won't become more peaceful in 2014.

That’s because neither the insurgency Pakistan supports in Afghanistan, nor the one it is facing at home, are likely to end.

And so the beat goes on.

U.S. and Canadians should not become complacent, said Tankel, who has interviewed numerous LeT leaders.

While LeT has resisted attacking North American targets to this point out of strategic calculation, "they could determine that they could get away with it, even if that determination is wrong. They could think 'this won't be traced back to us.' Or they could think ‘Pakistan is too weak and the U.S. is not in a position to punish us.’

"They don't always weigh cost and benefits the way we do. While keeping the threat in perspective and not overreacting, we need to be aware of the fact that it's not their ideology that is stopping LeT from attacking here."

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead