The Monday Night Muse - November 3 2015

If you want to know what’s going on in the world, there are places that will tell you the truth, not paint you a picture, maintain the status quo or be part of any international/inter-business synergy.

This is one of those places.

Stories, truths and angles that you need to know and have probably been sheltered from by the powers that be or your own search bubble.

Every Monday evening.

 

 

Over 2,500 Palestinians shot in October

Israeli forces shot and wounded at least 2,617 Palestinians with live and rubber-coated steel bullets through October, the Palestinian Red Cross said Sunday, as clashes carried on into the new month.

A Red Crescent spokesperson told Ma’an that at least 760 Palestinians were shot with live rounds across the occupied Palestinian territory, while another 1,857 were hit with rubber-coated steel bullets.

He said that a further 5,399 Palestinians were treated for excessive tear gas inhalation during the period, while another 246 were injured in other ways, including assault by Israeli soldiers and burns from tear gas canisters.

The spokesperson said that it brought the total injured during October to 8,262 Palestinians. For most parts of the occupied Palestinian territory, October was also the deadliest month since the Second Intifada, with at least 69 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

While 26 were shot dead during clashes, another 40 Palestinians were shot dead after Israel alleges they attempted or carried out attacks on Israelis.

While Palestinians agree that a number of Palestinians were shot dead while carrying out attacks — ultimately claiming 10 Israelis’ lives — footage and witness testimony have raised serious doubts over the Israeli army’s version of events in many of the other cases.

Officials claim that 4,000 could die in Qatar 2022 preparation

It has been projected that by the time all of the stadiums and infrastructure required to host the world cup in Qatar are built, up to 4000 workers will have died during the construction process.

Temperatures in Qatar can reach up to 125º F, which is quite obviously a danger to public health, and medics say they can’t accept responsibility for these risks.

At least 1,200 workers enduring slave like conditions have died creating infrastructure in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup that a FIFA executive just claimed won’t be happening, although Qatari world cup chiefs refute this. Theo Zwaniger says that he does not believe Qatar’s climate is mild enough to host the event. Qatar contend that they will be able to cool the stadiums, while Zwaniger maintains that the World Cup goes on in many places other than inside the stadiums, putting tourists at risk.

What’s worse is that Qatar has imported at least 90% of the workers who have been building world cup infrastructure, and dying at astounding rates of heat exhaustion and heart attacks. Workers from Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines were recruited in their home countries and sent to Qatar.

This is an example of one of the richest countries in the world extracting slave labour from some of the poorest. Workers are caught in huge debts to these recruiters, and are living in deadly conditions, including overcrowded and filthy hostels. They endure unpaid wages, heat exhaustion, and brutality on a daily basis.

Russian spokesman blames airplane crash on external event

The Russian passenger jet that crashed in Sinai, Egypt, must have been damaged by a force in flight and couldn’t have just broken apart, the airline of the ill-fated Airbus A321 said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has urged an end to speculation until the investigation is complete. 

“It would be wrong to articulate any preliminary guesses or voice statements that are not based on anything,” said Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian president, on Monday. “Let the investigators produce at least some results first.”

The crew of Kolavia Flight 7K9268 was apparently disabled before the aircraft started its rapid descent and crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, Viktor Yung, deputy director of the airline told the media on Monday. “As the catastrophic incident started to develop, the crew members were rendered completely incapable. This explains why they didn’t attempt to contact air traffic and report the incident happening on board,” he said.

The airline doesn’t believe human error could have been the cause of the disaster either, citing the experience of its captain and other crewmembers. “We are certain that neither technical malfunction nor pilot error” can be blamed for the disaster, Aleksandr Smirnov, who supervises the company’s fleet, said.

Man has sunglasses tattooed onto his face on stag do

Stags can be messy. The man, pictured above, was left with a permanent memory of a stag trip to Blackpool after waking with a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses tattooed on his face.

He initially thought that the specs had been scrawled on with permanent marker but soon realised that they were even worse than that.

The unnamed reveller, from Swansea, said: ‘Waking up the morning after, I thought someone had used a permanent marker on my face.

Judging by the rest of this man’s ink, this tattoo is only marginally worse than his existing tattoos. Something tells me it was all his idea.