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March for civil war "desaparecidos" in Guatemala: photos

Snip from independent photojournalist James Rodriguez' first-person account of a demonstration that took place in Guatemala City on June 30:

The March for Remembrance, organized by H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetfulness and Silence) [ Ed.: in Spanish, "hijos" means "children," as in "sons and daughters" ] , brought a number of activists and families of victims from the civil war together with the goal of halting the parade which commemorated the 136th annual Military Day.

The demonstration congregated in Jocotenango Park, formerly Morazan Park, in Zone 2 of the Capital City. Those drawn on the sheets represent only a small fraction of the more than 200,000 victims killed during the 36 year internal conflict.


A member of H.I.J.O.S. waves a flag depicting the image of one of the many victims killed by Guatemalan security forces during the civil war. In many cases, the person represented on the flag is the flag-waver’s own father or mother.

(...) Meanwhile, the military parade continued just a block behind the anti-riot forces.


Today is not for celebrating
It’s for struggling and protesting
Because forgiving is not enough
Those who carried on genocide must pay (...)

Who kidnaps, tortures and assassinates?
The Genocidal Army.
Children of the motherland, Children of the Quetzal,
Which son of a bitch took my father?

A demonstrator, while still recovering from the effects of tear gas, adjusts a homemade gas mask in case of a second skirmish.


Link 1, Link 2 (English), Versión en español aquí.

James Rodriguez has many, many photosets on Flickr, including 11+ from Guatemala (where he's based). You might just want to start at the top of the stream and scroll back, tons of absolutely incredible photography in here. Here's his portfolio site. (Gracias, Margarita).

Snip from an advisory about "HIJOS," dated 2000, from Amnesty International:

HIJOS is a new human rights group, made up of young people, many of them students, who were children when their parents were ''disappeared'', killed or massacred and have joined together recently, some of them returning from exile, to try and establish what happened to their parents and who was responsible for it. They also want to help educate the new generation in Guatemala about what happened during the years of repression. Amnesty International shares their view, that understanding what happened, who was responsible and who allowed it to happen are vital in efforts to make sure that no such future violations will be either repeated or tolerated.

HIJOS work to discover the fate of their family members who were victims of the civil conflict which raged in Guatemala over a period of more than 30 years. Before the conflict was formally ended with the signing of the final Peace Accords in 1996, it is estimated that some 200,000 people were extrajudicially executed or ''disappeared'' at the hands of the Guatemalan security services or the civil patrols and so-called ''death squads'' acting under their command. The number of cases where the perpetrators have been identified and brought to justice can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

  • Previous BoingBoing posts about Guatemala: Link.
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    Laptop typewriter mod


    Wow, what a work of art. Writer Mary Robinette Kowal modded her laptop so that the keyboard would resemble keys on an old-fashioned portable typewriter. This looks so touchable! I wonder how she managed to ensure that the stickers won't fade with lots of fingertip action, maybe a layer of clear plastic sticker over the printed and hand-retouched bits? Meticulously documented here: Link. (Update: ruh-roh, we brokeded the website! It's down as of 9pm PT 7/5/07, no doubt from too much traffic. I'm sure it'll resurrect soon enough). (Thanks, John)

     

    Geek Squad jerk caught swiping porn from customer's computer


    Ben Popken at Consumerist writes:

    The Consumerist's 3-month sting operation snared a Geek Squad technician stealing porn from our hard drive, and we've got the work-safe video and logfiles to prove it.

    To investigate claims by current and former Geek Squad techies (see "The 10 Page Geek Squad Confession - "Stealing Customers' Nudie Pics Was An Easter Egg Hunt"), we loaded a computer with porn and rigged it to make a video of itself. We captured every cursor movement, every program opened, every file accessed. Everything that the user saw and did, we recorded.

    Link, includes video and logfiles, and see also Why We're Not Telling Geek Squad CEO Which Agent Stole The Porn.

    The takeaway: this could happen with any tech support service, not just Geek Squad (though Consumerist alleges this is a systemic problem there -- not just one rogue dude). If you've got stuff you don't want strangers to see (or copy or steal), encryption is your friend. By the time your PC needs repair, it will be too late to lock down. Plan ahead, grasshopper!

     

    New Wi-fone service from T-Mobile: Hotspot @ Home

    Snip from NYT piece by David Pogue about "T-Mobile HotSpot @Home" -- which could save you a bundle , but is only available in small test markets so far:
    If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

    But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

    Link to the NYT review, and here's the dedicated T-Mobile website for this product. Here's another (positive) review at ZDNet, and another at BusinessWeek. Want! (via NYCwireless)

    One bummer: they're only offering two phones with this service right now -- the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409, both clunky flipphones, $50 with 2-year contract. Apparently, the sound quality is terrific (particularly over 802.11) but they look and feel kind of lame, don't include a huge set of features, and the display kind of sucks.

    Still, man, what a good landline-replacement deal this sounds like if you just want a basic phone for lots of voice and txt, and you like to hold on to those small pieces of paper with presidents' faces in green ink.

    Reader comment: Alta says,

    Just wanted to let you know Hotspot at home is now nationwide. Link to BusinessWeek article.
    Carl Pappenheim says,
    That AT&T phone sounds fantastic but sadly isn't available, say, in the UK. No matter; a few months ago I bought this: link.

    Which works really well on any wifi network although it doesn't do that slick 802 to GSM switching for obvious reasons. I foresee this being the conspiracy theorist's choice however as it's pretty much untraceable if you're just on some random wifi point and, unlike the AT&T version, you're guaranteed not to switch to the (readily-triangulated) cell network.

    I guarantee this will be a plot device in a Hollywood movie by late 2015.

    Thomas Valley says,
    T-Mobile's releasing the Blackberry 8320 in 3 weeks that will be compatible with the Hotspot @ Home service. The 8320 is simply an upgrade of the existing 8300 (or "Curve") model: Link. This hot little number does everything the top model of BB (8830) does except for GPS integration with maps, and it's smaller and lighter, too.
     

    Sprint-Nextel customers: squeaky wheel gets the -- termination?

    Sprint/Nextel recently notified some customers that their accounts would be involuntarily terminated by the end of this month because these people made too many support calls to customer service:
    "Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information," the letter reads. "While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs."

    "Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007."

    Subscribers who have gotten letters from Sprint terminating their service won't have to pay the early termination fee. Their account balances will also be set to zero. But subscribers will have to sign up with a new wireless provider by July 30 if they want to keep their phone numbers. Otherwise, the numbers won't be available after the Sprint service ends, the letter states.

    Link to News.com article by Marguerite Reardon.
     

    Apelad mistakes human female for mythical horned ostrich

    200707051628 (Click on thumbnail for enlargement) When Apelad saw this photo on a website in thumbnail size, he says he "couda sworn [it] was a horned ostrich of some sort." The drawing on the bottom is what he imagined it would look like when enlarged. He must've been sorely disappointed. Link
     

    Les Paul documentary on PBS - 7/11/07

    Program your TiVo to record the PBS documentary about the masterful guitar player and inventor, Les Paul.
    200707051511Among inductees of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, his name comes alphabetically after Louis Pasteur. In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it follows Parliament-Funkadelic. This singular distinction belongs to Les Paul, whose insatiable curiosity and experiments gave us the musical instrument of the modern era - the solid-body electric guitar - and the predominant studio recording technique - multi-tracking. Audacious and indefatigable at every turn of his career - from small-town Waukesha to Harlem music haunts to Hollywood studios - Paul, at age 92, still holds court every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City. AMERICAN MASTERS explores the revolutionary results of his drive to create sounds that had "never been heard on earth" when Les Paul: Chasing Sound premieres Wednesday, July 11 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS.
    Link (Via Sound Scavengers)
     

    Coop's iPhone wallpaper on Flickr

    200707051506 Coop has resized a bunch of his photos of girls and Japanese monster toys so you can use them as iPhone wallpaper. You can grab them at his Flickr account. (Some are NSFW.) Link
     

    Itsy-bitsy electric generators uses ambient vibes for input

    New Scientist reports that researchers at University of Southampton, UK, have developed a tiny electric generator that converts environmental vibrations into stored electrical energy.
    200707051419 The generator converts 30% of environmental kinetic energy into electrical power, and could keep all sorts of low-power devices running without batteries – particularly when alternatives like solar power are not an option.

    Steve Beeby, an engineer at the University of Southampton, UK, led development of the device. He says it could power devices attached to bridges, large buildings and other structures that experience vibration.

    Link
     

    Recreating a robot from 60 AD

    In 60 AD, Greek engineer Hero built a self-propelled and programmable cart to carry automata around a theater stage. According to University of Sheffield computer scientist Noel Sharkey, this was probably one of the earliest programmable robots ever. Recently, the editors at New Scientist built their own version of the bot. From the New Scientist blog:
    Herorrobot Power (for Hero's cart) came from a falling weight that pulled on string wrapped round the cart's drive axle, and Sharkey reckons this string-based control mechanism is exactly equivalent to a modern programming language...

    Our cart was made from a child's scooter, a broom handle, wood, string, and lead weights from an old sash window.
    Link
     
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