Guardian open journalism: Three Little Pigs advert - the Guardian

This advert for the Guardian's open journalism, screened for the first time on 29 February 2012, imagines how we might cover the story of the three little pigs in print and online. Follow the story from the paper's front page headline, through a social media discussion and finally to an unexpected conclusion

Watch: What Is KONY 2012?

Over the next few days, weeks and months you will be hearing and seeing the slogan ‘KONY 2012′. However, the overall ambiguity of the slogan will confuse a vast majority of you. To quote the organisation behind this campaign, Invisible Children: “KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”.

Who Is Joseph Kony?

The 29-minute documentary (available below), which has become a viral hit being shared nearly 4 million times on Facebook in the past week, is titled after the infamous leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army). It depicts a war-torn child, named Jacob, who is a former LRA child solider, and his struggle for awareness about the issues that Joseph Kony has caused.

The short film calls all supporters to arms on April 20, 2012 to stage their own guerrilla war, but instead of being armed with weapons similar to Kony’s 30,000 strong child army, they will be armed with posters and stickers in what is one of the most diverse political campaigns seen to this day. The campaign will see hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of posters depicting the face of Kony plastered across the globe to achieve this goal of making Kony an infamous celebrity. Director of the film Jason Russell described the 20th April as “The day when we will meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city until the sun comes up. The rest of the world will go to bed Friday night and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice,”. KONY 2012 is one of the most moving viral documentaries available today, and expires at the end of 2012. It’s coming.

watch the video

The Day My God Died (2003)

Filmed in Nepal and India this documentary presents the stories of young girls whose lives have been shattered by the child sex slave trade. The film provides actual footage from inside the brothels of Bombay, known even to the tourists as "The Cages," captured with "spy camera" technology. The documentary also introduces the heroes of the movement who are working to abolish child sex slavery and who remind us that, "these are our daughters." Written by Anonymous

The Day My God Died is a feature-length documentary that presents the stories of young girls whose lives have been shattered by the child sex trade. They describe the day they were abducted from their village and sold into sexual servitude as, The Day My God Died.

The film provides actual footage from the brothels of Bombay, known even to tourists as “The Cages,” captured with “spy camera” technology. It weaves the stories of girls, and their stolen hopes and dreams, into an unforgettable examination of the growing plague of child sex slavery.

Through the film we come to know victims such as Gina, sold into sex slavery at age 7 and beaten with sticks and aluminum rods. Anita, lured by a friend then drugged and sold at age 12, was beaten and threatened that she would be buried alive. Girls are gang-raped, beaten and forced to service up to 20 clients a day as they are held in perpetual sexual servitude.

The film also introduces us to the heroes of the movement to abolish child sex slavery – non-profit organizations which rescue and care for former sex slaves. Some victims have emerged to form their own underground railway out of slavery. Maili, trafficked at 19 along with her infant daughter, risks her life to help other girls. We see Jyoti, sold at age12, lead a raid on a brothel resulting in the rescue of seven girls and the arrest of two brothel owners.

Children are the commodity consumed by the voracious and sophisticated international sex trade. Recruiters capture them, smugglers transport them, brothel owners enslave them, corrupt police betray them and customers rape and infect them. Every person in the chain profits except for the girls, who pay the price with their lives. Sexual servitude is a virtual death sentence. During the making of the film, in Bombay alone, 90 new cases of HIV are reported every hour and the girls suffer up to an 80% HIV/AIDS infection rate.

Watch the full documentary now

7 Devastating Infectious Diseases

7.Catchy Coughs

They cause outbreaks, epidemics, even pandemics that spread from continent to continent. Modern medicine and hygiene have given us some control over devastating infectious diseases, even eradicating smallpox, but, for the most part they remain with us, often preying upon the poorest and most vulnerable.

6.Smallpox

A photo taken in 1975 shows the village cemetery in the Bangladesh countryside where smallpox victims were buried. The disease was believed to have killed 46 percent of its victims at a hospital in the Dacca, Bangladesh and to have ravaged the country for centuries. A disease marked by lesions on the skin, smallpox is believed to have emerged about 3,000 years ago in India or Egypt before sweeping across continents. The variola virus, which causes smallpox, killed as many as third of those it infected and left others scarred and blinded, according to the World Health Organization. In 1980, the WHO declared the disease officially eradicated, after a decade-long vaccination campaign. The last known remaining samples of the virus are being held in facilities in the U.S. and Russia.

5.Plague

Unlike smallpox, this ancient killer is still with us. Plague, which is caused by a bacterium carried by fleas — like the one shown above — has been blamed for decimating societies including 14th century Europe during the Black Death, when it wiped out roughly a third of the population. The disease comes in three forms, but the best known isbubonic plague, which is marked by buboes, or painfully swollen lymph nodes. Plague is now found in animals throughout the world, particularly in the western U.S. and Africa. In 2009, the World Health Organization reported 958 cases worldwide.

4.Malaria

 Although it is preventable and curable, malaria has a devastating effect in Africa, where the disease accounts for 20 percent of all childhood deaths, according to the World Health Organization. It is present on other continents as well. A parasite carried by blood-sucking mosquitoes causes the disease, which is first characterized by fever, chills and flu-like symptoms before progressing on to more serious complications. By 1951, the disease was eliminated from the U.S. with the help of the pesticide DDT. A subsequent WHO campaign to eradicate malaria was successful only in some places, and the goal was downgraded to reducing transmission of disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

3.Influenza 

This 3-D model illustrates a generic flu virus (there are different types). A seasonal, respiratory infection, flu is responsible for about three to five million cases of severe illness, and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Periodically, however, the viral infection becomes much more devastating: A pandemic in 1918 killed about 50 million people worldwide. As we learned from "swine flu" and "bird flu" scares in recent years,
some influenza viruses can jump between species.

2.Tuberculosis

Potentially fatal "TB" is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which usually attacks the lungs causing the signature bloody coughs. The x-ray above shows the chest of a patient suffering from far-advanced tuberculosis. The bacterium does not make everyone it infects sick, and up to one third of the world's population currently carries the bacterium. And among people infected with TB, but not HIV, 5 to 10 percent become sick or infectious at some time during their lifetimes. A full-blown TB infection is more common among those also infected with HIV. The TB bacterium has formed a deadly alliance with the immune-system-destroying HIV, with each disease worsening the other, according to the World Health Organization.                                  

                1     HIV/AIDS

In 2009, about 33 million people were living with a Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection and about 1.8 million died from it, according to the World Health Organization. While many of the worst offenders have a longstanding relationship with humans, HIV is a recent arrival. HIV's decimating effect on certain immune system cells was first documented in 1981. By destroying part of the immune system, HIV leaves its victims vulnerable to all sorts of opportunistic diseases. It is believed to have emerged from Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) which infects apes and monkeys.

Lynas Rare Earth and Controversy

The Lynas rare earth issue and controversy. What is Lynas?


Lynas Corporation, Ltd. is an Australian rare earths mining company, listed on the Australian Securities Exchange as a S&P/ASX 200 company. It has two major operations: a mining and concentration plant at Mount Weld, Western Australia, and a refining facility now under construction at Kuantan, Malaysia.




"The LAMP at Kuantan is being built with support from the Malaysian government,with "pioneer" status including a 12-year tax exemption.The ore processing will annually yield several thousand tonnes of waste product (gypsum) which contains high concentrations of thorium, a radioactive element.



Concerns regarding the short and long term storage of this waste material, politicised in the context of forthcoming parliamentary elections, fueled widespread protests in Malaysia in 2011.According to a New York Times report whistle blower engineers claimed that short cuts were taken on the construction of the LAMP including the use of cheaper standard steel instead of the more expensive materials to deal with the slightly radioactive, super heated and highly corrosive slurry used in the plant.^"

The Lynas rare earth processing plant in Gebeng, Kuantan

Read more: Nuke expert: Lynas plant is safe - General - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/nuke-expert-lynas-plant-is-safe-1.51982#ixzz1nkguVPMa




^{Radioactive : "}Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material, Radioactive waste is hazardous to most forms of life and the environment, and is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment. Radioactivity diminishes over time, so waste is typically isolated and stored for a period of time until it no longer poses a hazard. The period of time waste must be stored depends on the type of waste"


The Lynas issue is a problem for ALL Malaysians. The pollution will spread over a wide area,even into our ASEAN neighbours through the South China Sea. Contaminated seafood and agricultural produce can create serious food safety issue not just for the people of Kuantan but to all the consumers of agriculture and seafood and seafood products. Air pollution from the Lynas plant can be carried far and wide by the north eastern monsoon wind.


a temporary operating licence was issued to Lynas Malaysia, a wholly owned operation of Australia’s Lynas Corporation,for its controversial rare earth refinery plant in Gebeng, an industrial estate about 20 km from Kuantan.



“Many families living in kampungs along the coast in Pahang will be directly affected once Lynas starts to dump its waste water into the South China Sea. These families depend on the seafood and tourism industry. They run small businesses to sustain their livelihoods. Who will want to buy contaminated seafood? Who will want to holiday next to a toxic plant?”

Determined resident going bald against Lynas rare earth plantation in Malaysia


This has been a serious issue since the PRU is coming up, i believe Najib Razak need to do something about it or he will lose his position as the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

movie review : sang pemimpi

Sang pemimpi or The Dreamer is the second novel in the tetralogy Laskar Pelangi by Andrea Hirata.

In The Dreamer, it is about life in the days of high school. The three main characters are Ikal, Arai and Jimbron. Ikal is the alter-ego of Andrea Hirata while Arai is a distant relative of an orphan called "Simpai Keramat" as he is the last family member who is still alive and eventually became the foster brother of Ikal. Jimbron is an orphan who is obsessed with horses and stutter when he's enthusiastic about something or when he is nervous.

All three are intertwined in the story of friendship from childhood until they go to school in SMA Negeri Manggar (SMA means 'Sekolah Menengah Atas', equal to high school in English.

Attended school in the mornings and worked as a worker in the early morning fishing port, from their addiction of erotic movies in theaters and finally discovered by their religious teacher, the love story of Jimbron and Arai, Jimbron's farewell with Ikal and Arai who will study in Jakarta that makes them to separate but will still meet each other in France. Independently living separately from their parents with the background of poor economic conditions but with a big goal that if viewed from the background of their lives, is simply a dream.

i found that the movie is inspiring, emotionally connected to the audience and the director managed to convey the message of the film successively but i would say the book is better than the novel because not everything that written in the book are in the scene, maybe because the scriptwriter have to filter everything.

Andrea hirata
was born in Gantung, Belitung on 24 October.
He grew up in a poor family not far from a government-owned mine.
Degree in economics from the University of Indonesia
Master's degree in Europe, first at the University of Paris then at Sheffield Hallam University in Britain; his thesis dealt with telecommunications and the economy.

Hirata released Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Troops in 2005.
The novel went on to sell five million copies, with pirated editions selling 15 million more. It also spawned three sequels: Sang Pemimpi (The Dreamer), Edensor and Maryamah Karpov.

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Why We Blog?

Hello.. and welcome to our blog :)

We were three friends (Afiq, Epang and Zaty) , who are passionate about sharing ideas,thought,products,and life with others.

Blogging for us,is about sharing ideas with people across time and space and engaging with a variety of thinking on important questions. This is its strength. Its immediate and its free of charge – and its a space where we are able to ask critical questions and hear what people have to say. This feels like a great alternative to publishing research and articles in academic spaces.


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