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Showing posts from December, 2017

Battling Lies: The Invasion of Fake News

As convincing as the word of some random person on the internet can be, I do not believe that the flowers in question have birth defects caused by nuclear radiation. For starters, "not much more to say, this is what happens when flowers get nuclear birth defects" isn't the most convincing argument. They're acting as though it must be true simply because they say it is. Also, using a picture with a perfectly normal flower in the corner doesn't help your case. It almost looks as if two of the flowers in the image were simply bent to look abnormal. For these reasons, I do not believe that the flowers in question have nuclear birth defects caused by excessive exposure to radiation. In less than a minute, I found a 2015 article posted by  National Geographic  that confirmed my suspicions. While it is possible for radiation to cause similar defects in flowers, scientists believe it is highly unlikely in this case. One reason for their doubt comes from the location o

Chased by the Law: Julian Assange

  In lieu of the documentary we recently watched on WikiLeaks, I did a bit of digging. After clicking many links, I found an  article  written by Australian journalist and documentary film maker John Pilger in 2014, detailing the various wrongdoings and violations of Julian Assange's human rights during Sweden's seven-year preliminary investigation into an allegation of rape. Violations include the years-long placement of Assange in pre-charge detention, and the denial of his right to due process.    Although Swedish investigators have since dropped the case  against Assange, authorities recently uncovered the involvement of the UK's Crown Prosecution service in destroying key emails  regarding the WikiLeaks founder after the lawyer on the UK end of the investigation retired in 2014. It has also been revealed that the lawyer in question had advised Swedish officials to not visit London to interview Julian Assange in 2010 or 2011, prolonging his standoff with authorities