Patrick deHahn

• 2013-06-05

  Summer is the killing season in American cities. The temperature rises and, yes, tempers do, too. […] In Los Angeles County, with an estimated 450 gangs that have 45,000 members, about half the murders are gang related. […] In Chicago, gang and gun violence is endemic, with 12 shootings last weekend and one death. And in New York, although the murder rate is much lower than the other cities, in the rougher parts of town that’s no guarantee of immunity. Between Friday and Sunday the first weekend in June, 26 people were shot and seven of them killed. […] The embattled streets of the city and the gunland of the heartland are wildly different places, and the failure to understand that difference, and overcome it, is the great American tragedy of our time.

  — American “gun control isn’t about rights, it’s about survival.”

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  The battle of Qusair ends Wednesday as Syria troops say they have retaken the city from the opposition. 

• 2013-06-04

  fotojournalismus:

  Istanbul today

  1. A pedestrian walks in front of a banner featuring an owl with a gas mask at Taksim Square in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Kostas Tsironis/AP)

  2. A protester sleeps at a bus stop sprayed with graffiti at Taksim Square in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)

  3. A protester holds a placard that reads “Police, How we will forgive you?” during clashes with riot police near Taksim Square in Istanbul, early Tuesday, June 4, 2013. (Kostas Tsironis/AP)

  4. Seyfi Yasar, a waiter, pauses while smoking next to barricades outside of a hotel which he works for, near Taksim Square in central Istanbul June 4, 2013. (Murad Sezer/Reuters)

  5. Guy Fawkes masks are seen on the ground as anti-government protesters gather in Istanbul’s Taksim Square on June 4, 2013. (Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

  6. Demonstrators stand at a wall with graffities between Taksim and Besiktas in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

  7. A volunteer places food donated by people for protesters at Gezi Park in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Kostas Tsironis/AP)

  8. A man leaves from clash site between Taksim and Besiktas in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

  9. A couple wearing gas masks walk at a street between Taksim and Besiktas in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

  10. A protester sleeps in Gezi Park in Istanbul on June 4, 2013. (Kostas Tsironis/AP)

  (via nslayton)

  Source: fotojournalismus

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  From nationalpostphotos:

  Tens of thousands of people attended a candlelight vigil in heavy rain at Victoria Park in Hong Kong Tuesday, June 4, 2013 to mark the 24th anniversary of the June 4th Chinese military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing.

  [AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

  (via nationalpost)

  Source: nationalpostphotos

• 2013-05-23

  

  From reuters:

  Obama gives major foreign policy speech: President Barack Obama plans to limit the use of U.S. drone strikes and close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
  
  Obama also asked the Attorney General to report on how the Department of Justice investigates the media. The report is due by July 12, 2013. 
  

  [Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing]

  Source: reuters

• 2013-05-21

  Chinese troops suffering post-traumatic stress disorder in Tibet

  From the Telegraph: 

  The battle to keep Tibetans under control is inflicting severe psychological damage on Chinese armed police, an internal training document has revealed.

  Give it a read, it’s rather quite interesting. 

• 2013-04-15

  Everyone needs to read this.

  An op-ed from a hunger striker Guantánamo Bay, sharing details on his case and his force feedings, citing that “the situation is desperate now.”

• 2013-03-27

  Beautiful journalistic drawn pieces of events in Syria, thus making reports more personal

• 2013-03-12

  Reuters: Cyber attacks now equal to terrorist attacks

  reuters:

  Cyber attacks and cyber espionage have supplanted terrorism as the top threats to the United States in an annual “worldwide threat” assessment released on Tuesday by the U.S. intelligence community.

  However, in testimony prepared for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, played down the likelihood of catastrophic attacks on the United States by either cyber attackers or foreign or domestic militants in the immediate future.

  In what has become an annual ritual, Clapper presented to the Senate panel a 34-page paper that ran through a wide variety of threats covered by U.S. intelligence agencies.

  Source: reuters

• 2013-03-08

  

  From reuters:

  North Korea threatened on Tuesday to scrap an armistice that ended the 1950-53 civil war and sever a military “hotline” with the United States if South Korea and Washington pressed on with two-month-long war games.

  It was a notable sharpening in the North’s often bellicose rhetoric and followed word from U.N. diplomats that the United States and China had struck a tentative deal on a draft U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution that would punish North Korea for its third nuclear test, which it conducted last month.

  “We will completely nullify the Korean armistice,” the North’s KCNA news agency said, quoting the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Supreme Command spokesman.

  Read on: North Korea threatens to scrap armistice ending war

  Source: reuters

• 2013-03-04

  Per @BSyria, the area viewed here in Raqqa, “the square was bombed and casualties were reported” just after the statue of Hafez al-Assad fell.

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  Video of the Hafez al-Assad statue falling in Raqqa of Syria today. 

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  Follow BBC News coverage on the elections held in Kenya amid violence

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  I'm sure none of the Middle East revolutions aimed for this: "Arab spring" brings new buyers for bulletproof cars

• 2013-03-03

  It must have been really tough for them to do this: Exiled opposition figure Moaz Alkhatib visited Syria on Sunday for the first time since fleeing last year

  Source: reuters.com