Facial recognition tech is arsenic in the water of democracy, says Liberty
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/facial-recognition-technology-liberty-says-england-wales-police-use-sho
Human rights group calls on England and Wales to ban police use of AFR in public spaces Automated facial recognition poses one of the greatest threats to individual freedom and should be banned from use in public spaces, according to the director of the campaign group Liberty. Martha Spurrier, a human rights lawyer, said the technology had such fundamental problems that, despite police enthusiasm for the equipment, its use on the streets should not be permitted. She said : “I don’t think (...)
#CCTV #biométrie #facial #vidéo-surveillance #surveillance #Islam
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8e6e98b9bdc1c7e71fbcc4fc0b52022b9c2b43d4/0_312_5138_3082/master/5138.jpg
]]>Office worker launches UK’s first police facial recognition legal action
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/21/office-worker-launches-uks-first-police-facial-recognition-legal-action
Ed Bridges, from Cardiff, says ‘intrusive’ technology is used on thousands of people An office worker who believes his image was captured by facial recognition cameras when he popped out for a sandwich in his lunch break has launched a groundbreaking legal battle against the use of the technology. Supported by the campaign group Liberty, Ed Bridges, from Cardiff, raised money through crowdfunding to pursue the action, claiming the suspected use of the technology on him by South Wales police (...)
#CCTV #biométrie #procès #facial #vidéo-surveillance #surveillance #Liberty
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c1a40be9bb16ddac7902147d384d6e3236964721/0_0_3500_2100/master/3500.jpg
]]>How Vilification of George Soros Moved From the Fringes to the Mainstream - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/us/politics/george-soros-bombs-trump.html
On both sides of the Atlantic, a loose network of activists and political figures on the right have spent years seeking to cast Mr. Soros not just as a well-heeled political opponent but also as the personification of all they detest. Employing barely coded anti-Semitism, they have built a warped portrayal of him as the mastermind of a “globalist” movement, a left-wing radical who would undermine the established order and a proponent of diluting the white, Christian nature of their societies through immigration.
In the process, they have pushed their version of Mr. Soros, 88, from the dark corners of the internet and talk radio to the very center of the political debate.
“He’s a banker, he’s Jewish, he gives to Democrats — he’s sort of a perfect storm for vilification by the right, here and in Europe,” said Michael H. Posner, a human rights lawyer and former State Department official in the Obama administration.
Mr. Soros has given his main group, the Open Society Foundations, $32 billion for what it calls democracy-building efforts in the United States and around the world. In addition, in the United States, Mr. Soros has personally contributed more than $75 million over the years to federal candidates and committees, according to Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service records.
That qualifies him as one of the top disclosed donors to American political campaigns in the modern campaign finance era, and it does not include the many millions more he has donated to political nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors.
By contrast, the network of conservative donors led by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who have been similarly attacked by some on the American left, has spent about $2 billion over the past decade on political and public policy advocacy.❞
The closing advertisement for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign featured Mr. Soros — as well as Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve at the time, and Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, both of whom are Jewish — as examples of “global special interests” who enriched themselves on the backs of working Americans.
If anything, Mr. Soros has been elevated by Mr. Trump and his allies to even greater prominence in the narrative they have constructed for the closing weeks of the 2018 midterm elections. They have projected on to him key roles in both the threat they say is posed by the Central Americans making their way toward the United States border and what they characterized as Democratic “mobs” protesting the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
The National Republican Congressional Committee ran an ad in October in Minnesota suggesting that Mr. Soros, who is depicted sitting behind a pile of cash, “bankrolls” everything from “prima donna athletes protesting our anthem” to “left-wing mobs paid to riot in the streets.” The ad links Mr. Soros to a local congressional candidate who worked at a think tank that has received funding from the Open Society Foundations.
Even after the authorities arrested a fervent Trump supporter and accused him of sending the pipe bombs to Mr. Soros and other critics, Republicans did not back away. The president grinned on Friday when supporters at the White House responded to his attacks on Democrats and “globalists” by chanting, “Lock ’em up,” and yelling, “George Soros.”
]]>UK high court blocks mass privacy action against Google
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/08/uk-high-court-blocks-mass-privacy-action-against-google
Tech company faced claims it gathered personal data from more than 4m iPhone users The high court has blocked a mass lawsuit against Google that aimed to collect as much as £3bn in compensation for the company’s historical practice of collecting data on iPhone users whose privacy settings should have prevented surveillance. Mr Justice Warby, sitting in London, announced his decision on Monday. The litigation was brought by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, led by the former Which ? (...)
#Apple #algorithme #iPhone #terms #procès #profiling #données
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0f2183eaf728a88b809ae859d072671cbfc2bfed/0_188_3500_2100/master/3500.jpg
]]>’Surveillance society’ : has technology at the US-Mexico border gone too far ?
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/mexico-us-border-wall-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-technology
Private companies are helping the government build a virtual alternative to the physical wall, prompting an outcry Palmer Luckey, the virtual reality pioneer, left Facebook in 2017, six months after it was discovered that he had secretly funded a pro-Trump campaign group dedicated to influencing the US election through “shitposting” and “meme magic”. The 25-year-old Oculus founder now has a new venture, Anduril Industries, this time supporting Trump’s immigration policies directly through the (...)
#Anduril #Oculus #DHS #algorithme #capteur #CCTV #frontières #surveillance #ACLU (...)
##Google
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c2865fb26610e7bfe2eeebaf76cf7d7addbfede8/0_192_5760_3456/master/5760.jpg
As a doctor, I can see that denying #NHS care to immigrants is inhumane
The government’s charging regime risks costing the lives of thousands of people who can’t pay, such as Albert Thompson, who moved here 44 years ago.
Last week, the Guardian reported on the case of Albert Thompson, a man who came to London 44 years ago from Jamaica, at a time when many people from Commonwealth countries were migrating to the UK. This includes, of course, the thousands of nurses from Jamaica recruited in response to the NHS staffing crisis of the 1950s and 60s. Thompson’s mother was in fact one of these nurses.
In November 2017, Thompson, suffering from prostate cancer, was told he could not continue to receive treatment unless he paid a staggering £54,000 upfront. Unable to pay, he was denied further care. This comes within the first month of the introduction of upfront payments, one facet of the government’s policy of charging for NHS services provided to people who aren’t “ordinarily resident” – in practice, charges for immigrants. The charging policy was first introduced under Gordon Brown in 2009, and extended in 2014 as part of a series of Conservative-led hostile environment measures. This is why Docs Not Cops – the campaign group I am part of – was set up: to campaign for free healthcare for everyone, whatever their immigration status.
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/12/doctor-nhs-care-government-albert-thompson
#accès_aux_soins #santé #frontières #frontières_mobiles #migrations #sans-papiers #UK #Angleterre #inégalité #pauvreté #pauvres #Albert_Thompson #la_frontière_est_partout (du coup : #monde-frontière —> concept de #Paolo_Cuttitta que je devrais utiliser plus souvent comme tag ici)
Haro sur la Russie, mais pas un mot sur le système étasunien qui permet aux influences étrangères de s’exercer, comme expliqué ici :
Dark money and potential foreign influence
▻https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/07/dark-money-potential-foreign-influence
Today, the laws governing transparency of money in politics have not kept pace with other changes to our campaign finance system. In particular, the Citizens United decision threw the door wide open to unlimited contributions from unlimited and secret sources giving to supposedly independent outside groups interested in shaping electoral outcomes.
We already know from past campaign finance scandals that foreign corporations, individuals and governments had the wherewithal and the willingness to try to shape U.S. elections in the past. Given this, it defies logic to think that those motivations or opportunities no longer exist – particularly since foreign donations can be given easily, legally and secretly to nonprofits that are now allowed to be highly politically active.
]]>What McDonald’s doesn’t want you to know about its ‘British’ beef | The Independent
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/mcdonalds-beef-burgers-amazon-rainforest-deforestation-cargill-bunge-
In a report in February, campaign group Mighty Earth revealed how land was being cleared to make way for soy plantations in the Brazilian Cerrado and Bolivian Amazon.
Now, in a follow-up report, they said “large industrial farms” were still selling to major global food companies that supply household names like #McDonald’s, #Burger_King, #Dunkin’Donuts, #Kellogg’s and #Kraft_Heinz.
]]>The Dutch far-right’s election donors are almost exclusively American
▻https://qz.com/928684/the-dutch-far-rights-election-donors-are-almost-exclusively-american
While Europe has been busy fretting about Russian meddling in its politics, a few Americans have been quietly doing their part to boost the continent’s far right.
Wealthy American conservatives have poured large sums into the electoral campaign of far-right leader Geert Wilders of the Netherlands’ Dutch Freedom Party, in support of his anti-Islam, anti-EU views.
Three American donors gave €141,668 ($150,430) to Dutch political parties between 2015 and 2017, according to campaign finance documents released this week by the Dutch interior ministry. Two of these donors funded the far-right Dutch Freedom Party.
]]>Burger King animal feed sourced from deforested lands in Brazil and Bolivia | Environment | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/01/burger-king-animal-feed-sourced-from-deforested-lands-in-brazil-and-bol
The hamburger chain #Burger_King has been buying animal feed produced in soy plantations carved out by the burning of tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia, according to a new report.
Jaguars, giant anteaters and sloths have all been affected by the disappearance of around 700,000 hectares (1,729,738 acres) of forest land between 2011 and 2015.
The campaign group Mighty Earth says that evidence gathered from aerial drones, satellite imaging, supply-chain mapping and field research shows a systematic pattern of forest-burning.
Beauty and destruction: the Amazon rainforest – in pictures
View gallery
Local farmers carried out the forest-burning to grow soybeans for Burger King’s suppliers Cargill and Bunge, the only two agricultural traders known to be operating in the area.
]]>Neoliberalism Is a Political Project
►https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance
Gates Foundation : Spearheading the neoliberal plunder of African agriculture - TruePublica
▻http://truepublica.org.uk/global/gates-foundation-spearheading-neoliberal-plunder-african-agriculture
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is dangerously and unaccountably distorting the direction of international development, according to a new report by the campaign group Global Justice Now. With assets of $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the largest charitable foundation in the world. It actually distributes more aid for global health than any government. As a result, it has a major influence on issues of global health and agriculture.
‘Gated Development – Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good?’ argues that what BMGF is doing could end up exacerbating global inequality and entrenching corporate power globally. Global Justice Now’s analysis of the BMGF’s programmes shows that the foundation’s senior staff are overwhelmingly drawn from corporate America. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted – those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and economic justice rather than charity?
According to the report, the foundation’s strategy is intended to deepen the role of multinational companies in global health and agriculture especially, even though these corporations are responsible for much of the poverty and injustice that already plagues the global south. The report concludes that the foundation’s programmes have a specific ideological strategy that promotes neo-liberal economic policies, corporate globalisation, the technology this brings (such as GMOs) and an outdated view of the centrality of aid in ‘helping’ the poor.
]]>This Is Not a ’Migrant Crisis’ - It’s a Crisis of Inequality and War
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/this-is-not-a-migrant-crisis-its-a-crisis-of-inequality-and-war
The media is wrong to characterise the issues surrounding the thousands of people attempting to travel into Europe as a ‘migrant crisis’, according to a briefing released today by campaign group...
]]>Land rights crucial to save tropical forests - UNDP | Climate Home - climate change news
▻http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/04/26/land-rights-crucial-to-save-tropical-forests-undp
A campaign group, Global Witness, puts the number of land and environment activists killed since the end of 2009 at around 650. It says most died fighting to protect remote land from development which had been approved by governments.
Speaking in New York as world leaders gathered there to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change, the administrator of the UN Development Programme, Helen Clark, said: “If we want to protect the world’s forests, we must safeguard the rights of the indigenous peoples and forest communities who have sustainably managed their forests for generations.
“Clarifying local land rights and tenure security will be a crucial determinant of success for the new global frameworks on climate change and sustainable development.”
She was speaking at an event organised jointly by the UNDP and the Ford Foundation to mark the signing of the Agreement.
]]>I Won’t Vote for Hillary Because I Don’t Vote for Republicans
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/i-wont-vote-for-hillary-because-i-dont-vote-for-republicans
Over at The Daily Banter, Chez Pazienza called me an “idiot.”
Well, not me personally. His article was about people like me, though, who support Bernie Sanders and will never vote for Hillary...
]]>Jimmy Carter calls US campaign finance ruling ’legalised bribery’
▻http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/03/carter-says-campaign-finance-2010-citizens-united-ruling-legalised-brib
#Etats-Unis #corruption_légale Mais bien avant “#Citizens_United”
]]>“Save Us Bill Gates!” Video Game Satirises Philanthrocapitalism | Global Justice Now
▻http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2016/jan/22/save-us-bill-gates-video-game-satirises-philanthrocapitalism
A video game released today by campaign group Global Justice Now puts the player in the role of a super-hero Bill Gates flying above a stereotypical African landscape trying to disperse as much money as he can, while his portfolio of stocks and shares keeps generating more money.
]]>Top 10 Signs the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World | Informed Comment
▻http://www.juancole.com/2015/12/signs-corrupt-country.html
1. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxes on the rich. A nonentity like Donald Trump got filthy rich via tax loopholes, and is now trying to buy the presidency. The way the Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open, unlimited buying of elections is the height of #corruption. Note that despite his supposed “populism,” Trump never talks about the unfairness of our current tax system, instead dividing and ruling working and middle class Americans by stirring racial and religious hatreds. As it stands, 400 American billionaires are worth $2 trillion, as much as the bottom 150 million Americans. That kind of wealth inequality hasn’t been seen in the US since the age of the robber barons in the nineteenth century. Both eras are marked by extreme corruption.
]]>#Start-Up Leaders Embrace Lobbying as Part of the Job (The New York Times, 23/11/2015)
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/technology/start-up-leaders-embrace-lobbying-as-part-of-the-job.html
While total annual spending on #lobbying has decreased slightly over the last five years, Internet companies have tripled their lobbying spending, to $47.5 million, during the same period. The industry now spends just a little less than the auto sector, according to the website OpenSecrets, which tracks lobbying and campaign finance.
]]>Antibiotic resistance : World on cusp of ’post-antibiotic era’
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857015
[scientists] identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.
It is likely resistance emerged after colistin was overused in farm animals.
Bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment - also known as the antibiotic apocalypse - could plunge medicine back into the dark ages.
[...]
Prof Laura Piddock, from the campaign group Antibiotic Action, said the same antibiotics “should not be used in veterinary and human medicine”.
#Antibiotiques : Un gène de #résistance alarme les chercheurs - Savoir : Sciences - tdg.ch
▻http://www.tdg.ch/savoirs/sciences/gene-resistance-alarme-chercheurs/story/28167389
Un gène rendant certaines #bactéries résistantes à une famille d’antibiotiques, dits « de dernier recours », a été retrouvé sur des animaux et des patients chinois. Des chercheurs appellent à restreindre l’utilisation de ces antibiotiques en médecine vétérinaire.
]]>Amtrak disaster: Lawmakers Moved To Delay Rail Safety Rule Weeks Before Philadelphia Derailment
▻http://www.ibtimes.com/amtrak-disaster-lawmakers-moved-delay-rail-safety-rule-weeks-philadelphia-d
Et,
The chief sponsor of the bipartisan bill delaying the safety technology mandate, Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, has accepted more than $290,000 in campaign contributions from the railroad industry during his career — the fifth-highest tally in the Senate, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a campaign finance watchdog group. The Association of American Railroads — which counts private railroad companies and Amtrak as members — backed Blunt’s legislation to delay the mandate.
]]>GM crops: campaigners in #Ghana accuse US of pushing modified food | Afua Hirsch | Global development | guardian.co.uk
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jul/24/gm-crops-ghana-us-genetically-modified-food
But one Ghanaian campaign group refused the invitation. “Our call for a moratorium on GM foods was met with an invitation to a closed-door discussion,” said Duke Tagoe, of Food Sovereignty Ghana, which campaigns for greater transparency about GM foods. “We are deeply worried about what seems like an imposition of genetically modified foods on the good people of Ghana without any meaningful public discourse, compounded by attempts to stifle any opposition.”
Food Sovereignty Ghana and other domestic organisations accuse the US and other foreign donors of promoting GM foods to west African countries, and tying aid to implementation.
#OGM #lobby #semences
According to a leaked cable, the US government was heavily involved in drafting Ghana’s 2011 Biosafety Act, which provided a framework for the introduction of GM foods. The US aid department provided technical assistance and some funding.
]]>Noam Chomsky helped lobby Stephen Hawking to stage Israel boycott | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/10/noam-chomsky-stephen-hawking-israel-boycott?CMP=twt_gu
Robert Booth and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Friday 10 May 2013 19.47 BST
Chomsky, who has backed “boycott and divestment of firms that are carrying out operations in the occupied territories”, agreed to add his considerable weight to the pressure on Hawking after email correspondence with the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine campaign group (Bricup), said its chair, Jonathan Rosenhead.
The letter to Hawking declared: “Israel systematically discriminates against the Palestinians who make up 20% of its population in ways that would be illegal in Britain”, its treatment of the people of Gaza amounts to “collective punishment”, the construction of Jewish settlements breaches the Geneva convention and “Israel places multiple roadblocks, physical, financial and legal, in the way of higher education, both for its own Palestinian citizens and those under occupation”.
The letter continued: “Israel has a name for the promotion of its cultural and scientific standing: ’Brand Israel’. This is a deliberate policy of camouflaging its oppressive acts behind a cultured veneer.”
Professor Malcolm Levitt, a fellow of the Royal Society and an expert in magnetic resonance at Southampton University, who signed the letter, said: “Israel has a totally explicit policy of making life impossible for the non-Jewish population and I find it totally unacceptable. As a scientist, the tool I have available to prevent the normalisation of that situation is boycott. It is a tough choice because Israel is full of brilliant scientists and they are our colleagues.”
]]>Google employees speak out for gay marriage | Gay Star News
►http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/google-employee-speak-out-video-gay-marriage261012
Google employees speak out for gay marriage
Google launched a video in support of marriage equality featuring its employees
26 October 2012 | By Dan Littauer
Google launched a video in support of marriage equality featuring its employees
Google released a short video this week featuring several of the company’s employees speaking out in favor of marriage equality.
The video, titled “Googlers Supporting Marriage Equality,” was as part of a partnership between Google and The Four, a campaign group working to promote marriage equality in the four US states where the issue will put to a referendum during election day — Washington, Maryland, Minnesota and Maine.
The video features several Google employees, some of whom are gay, explaining why they support marriage equality.
‘I support marriage equality, as well as many of my friends and colleagues here at Google,’ says Julio, a YouTube employee in the video’s introduction.
A gay Google employee said on the video: ‘My partner and I are actually engaged, and finding a way to get married right now is kind of tough.’
A lesbian Google employee stated: ‘Every time I fill out a medical insurance form, I have to check single’.
A gay employee said: ‘If you’re in Washington, Main, Minnesota or Maryland now you have the chance to negate fear and prejudice.’
‘Civil rights should never be up for a vote. But the fact that it is means we have to get people behind the cause as much as possible’, said another.
The Four campaign was founded by gay rights and progressive political activists Brain Ellner, Ryan Davis and Andre Banks.
Blue State Digital, a new media firm with ties to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, designed the group’s website.
The video follows a worldwide campaign by Google launched this year to advocate marriage equality rights in countries where it has offices.
Taiwanese media also reported yesterday that Google will be joning the Pride parade in Taipei for the second consecutive year and is urging its staff to participate. It will be sending cheerleaders and offering “free hugs”.
Other major technology companies, including eBay, Amazon and Microsoft, have also supported marriage equality.
]]>$21tn : hoard hidden from taxman by global elite
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
►http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=148
Dans les pays utilisant l’échelle courte un trillion représente le nombre 10^12, c’est-à-dire 1 000 000 000 000 soit mille miliards. Il est appelé billion dans l’échelle longue.
Le préfixe correspondant à ce nombre dans le système international d’unités est le tera.
►http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion
Par chez nous, ça fait donc environ 17 billion d’euros
UK “exporting surveillance technology to repressive nations”
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/07/surveillance-technology-repressive-regimes
Much of the technology, which allows regimes to monitor internet traffic, mobile phone calls and text messages, is similar to that which the government has controversially signalled it wants to use in the UK.
The campaign group, Privacy International, which monitors the use of surveillance technology, claims equipment being exported includes devices known as “IMSI catchers” that masquerade as normal mobile phone masts and identify phone users and malware – software that can allow its operator to control a target’s computer, while allowing the interception to remain undetected.
Trojan horse software that allows hackers to remotely activate the microphone and camera on another person’s phone, and “optical cyber solutions” that can tap submarine cable landing stations, allowing for the mass surveillance of entire populations, are also being exported, according to the group.
]]>Federal contractors donate to ’super PAC’ backing Romney
►http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-contractor-politics-20120318,0,7570089,full.story
At least five companies with government contracts gave a combined $890,000 to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC, a review of federal contracting records and campaign finance data shows.
]]>Bain Capital Tied to Surveillance Push in China - NYTimes.com
►http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/world/asia/bain-capital-tied-to-surveillance-push-in-china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=
As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney.
In public comments and in a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Romney has accused the Obama administration of placing economic concerns above human rights in managing relations with China.
“The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” she said in a phone interview. “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”
]]>Right-wing documentary targets Occupy - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/2012/01/11/right_wing_lens_for_occupy_documentary/singleton
Citizens United, which specializes in making documentaries with strong right-wing messages, is currently in production for a film about the Occupy movement, a spokesman for the group confirms to Salon.
The landmark 2010 Supreme Court case that loosened campaign finance restrictions was brought by Citizens United and centered on an anti-Hillary Clinton movie made by the group. Opposition to that ruling has been a consistent message of participants in Occupy movement.
]]>Go Gandalf ! // Ian McKellen: ’My ambition is to get better as an actor’ | Culture | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/aug/24/ian-mckellen-50-years-gandalf
Over the past couple of years, McKellen has visited more than 50 secondary schools on behalf of Stonewall, the campaign group he co-founded. “It’s wonderful,” he says. “I’ve met kids who think they’re anti-gay and you talk to them and it turns out they don’t know much about it, it’s not a subject that is talked about. But [to see] a young gay person who, at 14 knows, and comes out successfully to his parents and family, teachers and friends, it’s astonishing. When you hear people saying, ’You shouldn’t be talking about homosexuality in schools,’ well, if you don’t there is going to be another generation of people who are confused, bewildered, suspicious, threatened. These kids aren’t threatened by it.”
]]>