“I am relaxed. This is my relaxed face.”
BuzzFeedYellow / Via youtube.com
“I am relaxed. This is my relaxed face.”
BuzzFeedYellow / Via youtube.com
A selfie a day keeps the doctor away.
BuzzFeed News spoke to a protester who chanted for “dead cops” on Dec. 13, which was captured on video and has become a nationwide flashpoint. “We wanted to separate ourselves from people who just want to get a guy fired.”
Video of the "dead cops" chant, shot on Dec. 13.
NEW YORK CITY — On Dec. 13, about 100 protesters splintered off from the #MillionsMarch in lower Manhattan — a huge, peaceful demonstration against police brutality — and headed up Sixth Avenue.
They turned east on 32nd Street, and passed right under the window of Tom Dilello, a computer programer who works for a large bank. At about 4:41 p.m., Dilello took an aerial video of the protesters, to capture a chant he heard, he told BuzzFeed News. He uploaded it to YouTube about six minutes later.
The chant in the video — "What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!" — has been viewed nearly half a million times and rallied critics of the protest, especially after a lone gunman killed two police officers on Dec. 20 in Brooklyn after writing "they take 1 of ours…. Let's take 2 of theirs" and "#RIPEricGarner and #RIPMikeBrown" on Instagram.
Indeed, the chant soon became central to allegations that the movement against police brutality, whose leaders have called for non-violent action, could not be as easily separated from the murders as its members would like. That claim has, in turn, has produced outrage from nonviolent protesters and their leaders.
But one group has been largely silent since lighting this particular match: the people who marched down 32nd street, chanting.
BuzzFeed News on Friday spoke to one person who participated in the Dec. 13 chant heard on the video, along with two other people who marched with other radical contingents involved in the protests that day. All of them claimed that, despite the literal words of the chants, they weren't actually advocating for the murder of police officers.
"There's this sense that the lives of people who get killed by cops don't matter," the person who participated said. "The chants express that those people's lives matter just as much as the lives of cops or anyone else."
The unplanned chant, the person said, was to distinguish a more radical message from the vast majority of the protesters. "The larger march ... had a liberal, reformist agenda. The people who wanted a broader transformation, they were gravitating toward whatever chants could express that," the person said.
"In that moment of outrage, the chant was the only way to express that we wanted to separate ourselves from people who just want to get a guy fired," the person added. "We wanted to see the police disbanded."
The person asked not to be identified for fear of being arrested. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton have called on people to report "information that there might be an attack on our police, there might be an act of violence directed at any police officer."
The person who participated in the chant is affiliated with the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee (TMOC), a loose collective of radicals that advocates for an end to what it calls racist police practices. (In a statement to the Daily Beast, the Martin family said it had not authorized TMOC to use Trayvon's name).
Like many radical groups, TMOC has no leaders, no formal membership, and no uniform political platform — but people who are its affiliates share an anarchist outlook. The group said some of its "comrades" have surrendered to the police in relation to the alleged assault of two officers in the Brooklyn Bridge on the day of the chants.
The Daily Beast was the first media outlet to suggest that TMOC was the group chanting in the video.
"The chant started earlier that day, before we even left Washington Square Park" — nearly 1.5 miles from where the video was shot, the protester who was there said. "It started organically. It wasn't a conspiratorial group who planned to start" a "dead cops" chant, the person said.
Many commentators have denounced the chant, saying it has no place in the public discourse, regardless of the intent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called it "horrible." Republican Rep. Peter King of Long Island said it's contributing to dangerous "anti-cop rhetoric."
But some TMOC affiliates said that the intent of the chant is being misrepresented and that it was not meant as a call for violence against individual police officers.
"I don't think people wanted dead bodies," the person who participated in the chant said. "It was not bloodlust. Some people were laughing when they were chanting it — there was a humorous element to it. Everyone is a human being, and I don't think any of us wants to see someone suffer and die."
Another person who is not affiliated with TMOC but participated in a separate anarchist march on Dec. 13 with some of the group's affiliates — this person did not witness the "dead cops" chant — told BuzzFeed News that the group wouldn't plan such a statement.
"It's almost certainly not a 'group' in the sense that people conventionally mean," the second person said. "It wouldn't be the sort of group that would have, you know, a pre-action meeting where they decided to chant an agreed-upon slogan."
And a third person who marched in anarchist protests on Dec. 13 — who would not say whether he or she participated in the "dead cops" chant — told BuzzFeed News "the notion that some group was devilishly sitting around, plotting to use chants (chants!) to bring about anti-cop counter-violence is insane."
Rhetorical calls for violence against the police are nothing new, the third person argued.
"Death to cops chants have populated protests since the '90s and beyond!" the person told BuzzFeed News. "Blaming TMOC is a mess, and a dangerous one for sure, especially considering that fighting cops is so entrenched in popular imagery," including popular rap music.
In a phone interview on Friday, Dilello, who shot the video, told BuzzFeed News that he posted it to YouTube because, "I had never heard a group of people chanting that kind of crap in my life," he said. "It was totally unacceptable, especially in my street."
After a FOX affiliate in Baltimore aired a video on Dec. 21 purporting to show another group chanting for dead cops — it turned out the video was edited inappropriately — many commenters on news sites like weekly Rockland Times and NBC News said they thought Dilello's video was doctored. Some protesters suggested to BuzzFeed News that Dilello was a plainclothes police officer. He denied both ideas, adding that he had received threats since posting the video.
"I am not a cop, I don't know any cops, nobody in my family is a cop," he told BuzzFeed News. "People think I manipulated the audio. I had a full six minutes from the time I took it to when I uploaded it."
To verify the authenticity of the video, BuzzFeed News asked George Papcun, a forensic audio analyst who is an expert in altered recordings, to listen to the video. (Papcun has provided testimony in several high-profile cases. When George Zimmerman was on trial for the death of Trayvon Martin, Papcun's testimony was ultimately beneficial to Zimmerman.)
"I have listened to [the recording] with sophisticated audio equipment," Papcun said. "Beyond a reasonable doubt, in my opinion, leaders chant, 'What do we want?' The crowd responds, 'Dead cops.' Then leaders chant, 'When do we want it?' The crowd responds, 'Now.'"
Papcun said that he had been able to isolate one more phrase in the muddled audio at the beginning of the recording: "Shoot back."
LINK: Gunman Kills Two NYPD Officers In Brooklyn
LINK: The Origins Of The Alleged “Dead Cops” Chant
The international human rights lawyer has angered officials in Cairo by identifying several flaws within the Egyptian judicial system.
Pool / Getty Images
In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Clooney said a report she helped compile for the International Bar Association in Feb. 2014 was so controversial in Egypt she had been told she would be arrested if she tried to publicly present her findings in the country.
"When I went to launch the report, first of all they stopped us from doing it in Cairo," Clooney told the Guardian. "They said: 'Does the report criticise the army, the judiciary, or the government?' We said: 'Well, yes.' They said: 'Well then, you're risking arrest.'"
Clooney's report, entitled "Separating Law and Politics: Challenges to the Independence of Judges and Prosecutors in Egypt," called for stricter divisions between politics and the judiciary in Egypt.
AP Heba Elkholy
However, Clooney told the newspaper she is concerned the men will not receive a fair new hearing in Egypt, given the problems her earlier report highlighted.
"If the idea is: well, there were errors and now there's going to be a retrial, but then the retrial operates on the same basis as the original one, that doesn't really mean much," Clooney said.
Got my mind on my hedgehog and my hedgehog on my mind.
rhythmic_disarray
rhythmic_disarray
rhythmic_disarray
rhythmic_disarray
It was the best of Yik Yak, it was the worst of Yik Yak.
Charles Scribners Sons / Colin Heasley for BuzzFeed
Colin Heasley for BuzzFeed
Colin Heasley for BuzzFeed
Colin Heasley for BuzzFeed
Every Villain Is Lemons.
The men, two of whom are brothers, are suspected to be part of an organized gang known for targeting female tourists traveling alone. The 22-year-old tourist had reportedly been held hostage at gunpoint in a secluded basement for several weeks.
AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal
Five men have been arrested in India after allegedly kidnapping and repeatedly raping a Japanese tourist, multiple outlets reported Saturday.
The 22-year-old student had reportedly been held hostage at gunpoint for more than three weeks in a secluded basement near Bodh Gaya, Buddhism's holiest site in east India.
Calcutta police commissioner Pallav Kanti Ghosh told BBC that two men who said they were brothers, Sajid Khan, 32, and Jawed, 25, approached the tourist and told her they were tour guides. One of them allegedly spoke in "very fluent Japanese."
The men are suspected to be part of an organized gang known for targeting female tourists traveling alone. The brothers were arrested on Friday "for confining and raping the Japanese student," the deputy superintendent Alok Kumar Singh said. Three others were arrested shortly after for their involvement with the case.
The alleged victim was able to escape after her health suffered enough that was taken to a hospital.
"When her health condition deteriorated due to repeated rape and poor living conditions, she was brought to Gaya [town] for medical treatment on 20 December," a police officer told AFP.
The woman was able to escape, and contacted other Japanese tourists who helped her reach out to the Japanese consulate in Kolkata. She then traveled to the city from Gaya.
The Bodh Gaya complex houses one of the oldest Buddhist temples still standing in India and attracts tourists from across the world. The student is thought to have been living and studying in rural india for many months.
India has come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents of violence against women in recent years, including the fatal gang-rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2013.
LINK: Four Men Accused In Brutal Delhi Gang Rape And Murder Found Guilty
LINK: A Minor Was Allegedly Raped By Two Police Officers In Badaun, Uttar Pradesh
Accio memory!
Be the cat/dog/pillow face you always wanted to be.
http://www.amazon.com
It wasn’t just you. From Ukraine to Ebola to Gaza, it’s been a year of big, horrifying international news stories that just wouldn’t end.
It's easy to blame the fatigue felt as we approach 2015 on the the sheer number of international events that have taken place. But that isn't why this year seemed like an infinity collapsed into 12 months. Instead, it was that every horrific event seemed to last forever. Crises flared up and then sunk down to continue burning, slow and steady without really being resolved, even as new ones roared to take their place.
Yazan Homsy / Reuters
From the beginning of 2014 until the end, Syria remained the home to one of the deadliest conflicts on Earth. The fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seemed almost secondary at times as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) consolidated control of its base city, Raqqa, and it and other groups fought among each other for control of territory.
It was also a humanitarian disaster. Half of all Syrians were displaced from their homes this year. Those displaced inside the country are currently having to survive the winter on just 825 calories per day.
The struggle over the future of Syria, despite lasting for three years already, would color many of the year's other crises, from the situation in Ukraine to the rise of ISIS.
The Associated Press
Stay strong.
Via giphy.com
(Like this, but on your face.)
Via bewarethehorrorblog.tumblr.com
The canvas = your arm.
Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed
It's also the perfect example of how to halfway commit to a sleeve instead of taking the full plunge.
Coordinates + travel documents = awesome.
Instagram: @lupariselli / Via http://www.dreamworxink.com
Maps, boats, a compass, oh my!
Looking back to 15 years ago, when the Backstreet Boys ruled the world and Britney Spears was not a girl, but not yet a woman.
Which apparently means you have to take off your pants to celebrate.
Via rollingstone.com
Also, OMG, we went behind-the-scenes of TRL.
Via rollingstone.com
But what I really want to know is if he talked about his break-through role as Luke on Growing Pains?!
Via rollingstone.com
Via rollingstone.com
It was a year of fighting robots, brawling neighbors, battling tanks, and so much more. SPOILERS BELOW.
2014 was the year we fully surrendered to the blockbuster franchise, with its nine-figure budgets, shared universes, and promises of inevitable reboots, full of sound, fury, and spectacle. But given how much grand action there was on screen, there were surprisingly few standout fight sequences. Part of it's that the swooping digital battles that are everywhere now are... well, everywhere now, the new norm. Take Transformers: Age of Extinction, a movie overflowing with the expected Michael Bay eye-popping visuals, but also one that, at least for me, faded into a blur almost immediately. Except for this scene, which uses the most cutting edge cinematic technology to render, in exquisite detail, a robot that can turn into a truck fighting a robot that can turn into a dinosaur, and then riding it through the streets of Hong Kong. What really cements this moment is not the bewildering speech about freedom Optimus Prime gives the Dinobot he's beating up, but that the observing Autobots seem just as surprised at the T-rex transformation and the expanding rules of their franchise as anyone watching. "I was expecting a giant car!" gasps Drift.
Paramount Home Entertainment
Lucy writes itself into a bit of a corner by having its main character accelerate toward post-human transcendence so quickly — no one can win against or even surprise Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) once she begins her journey. That said, the scene in which she first puts her new awareness to use, taking out the men holding her captive in the back of a Taipei restaurant, digging out the bullet in her shoulder, and passing for some quick caloric intake, is a minor joy in all of its brisk, cold-eyed efficiency.
Universal Pictures
The Hobbit was obviously stretching its material for its final chapter, but who isn't thankful that left plenty of room for one last great Legolas fight? Orlando Bloom's elf prince has gotten to do something physics-defyingly awesome in just about every one of Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptations, and his rematch with the Orc chieftain Bolg on a crumbling bridge was another cleverly orchestrated, impossibly athletic bit of Legolas action.
Warner Bros.
Gareth Edwards' Godzilla reboot was all about anticipation, teasing the first appearance of the MUTOs, the giant monsters that end up terrorizing various American cities, not to mention the famous kaiju himself. When the monsters finally do meet in San Francisco, the battle escalates as well, never more satisfyingly than in the moment in which Godzilla first shows off his nuclear capabilities. A MUTO is closing in on Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) when, just in time, Godzilla rises out of the darkness, spines glowing blue as he prepares a blast of atomic breath.
Warner Home Video
The same folks who organised the “Kiss of Love” protests are now protesting the fact that 45 women were strip-searched in a Kochi factory after one sanitary napkin was discovered there.
Red Alert: You've got a napkin! / Via Facebook: kissoflovekochi
The campaign involves sending in either used or unused sanitary napkins to the officials of Asma Rubber Private Limited in the Kochi, where the strip search was held. On their Facebook page the activists urged people to send in napkins to the factory.
They instruct:
"Protest against this inhuman act! Send a napkin (used or unused) to the MD of the company and mark your protest against this inhuman act."
Scroll reported that this incident at the Asma Asma factory is just the latest in a string of incidents against women's rights that encouraged Red Alert campaigners to take up this initiative.
"Some people have already sent pads to the company," said Maya Leela, a campaigner from Trivandrum, in the Scroll report.
"Women should not face any discrimination in society due to their biology. The body politics that is practiced by patriarchy on women must change," she continued.
This campaign comes from the same people that organised the "Kiss of Love" campaign of late 2014, which protested moral policing of public displays of affection.
On their Facebook page, they say:
This is not a singular act. The lack of, let alone hygienic, but minimal sanitation facilities is a grave issue that women face on a daily basis. Several places do not even allow employees to go to the toilet more than twice during their work time. The several cases reported recently about the discrimination by KSRTC employees towards 'possibly' menstruating women is another instance of this kind which accuses women of 'polluting' and 'contaminating' public and at times, sacred spaces through their presence.
Before winning the historic election, she earned a living by dancing and singing in trains.
Madhu, who was an independent candidate, beat out her closest competition, the Bharatiya Janata Party's Mahaveer Guruji, by 4,537 votes, NDTV reported.
"People have shown faith in me. I consider this win as love and blessings of people for me. I'll put in my best efforts to accomplish their dreams," said Kinnar after her electoral victory.
Madhu completed her studies in the eight grade, after which she began taking up odd jobs and made a living by putting up dance and musical performances on trains.
"I only spent Rs. 60,000-70,000 from my earnings during my campaign. It was the public support that encouraged me to enter the poll fray for the first time and because of their support only, I emerged as the winner," she added.
The Congress Party reportedly described her successful candidacy as "BJP's loss, not Madhu's win."
"There was no Modi wave in Raigarh this time. People of Raigarh were fed up with the corruption of BJP, hence they voted for Madhu," said Raigarh district Congress President Narendra Negi. "It is not Madhu Kinnar's victory, but it's a loss of BJP."
"We accept the decision of people," said BJP district president Rajesh Sharma.
NDTV Video / Via youtube.com
Timothy DeFoggi used the same skills that helped him rise to a prominent position at HHS to exploit children, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services building.
Getty Images / Via Mark WIlson
The statement said that DeFoggi, 56, used the same skills that helped him rise to a prominent position at HHS to exploit children.
He was the sixth person convicted in connection with a group of child porn websites.
The statement said that DeFoggi belonged to a child porn network that used "advanced technological means" to elude authorities.
Obama Police Department