The Best Photographs Of 2014 As Chosen By The Guardian

Best Photographs Of 2014 – In Pictures

 

 

” From the Ferguson riots to the school attack in Peshawar, a Missouri ‘firenado’ and hailstones in Siberia: the Guardian’s features picture editor Sarah Gilbert selects the most compelling images of 2014.”

 

 

 

” “I tried for two years to take this picture. I took the same photo the year before, again from a helicopter, of an almost identical boat. But we didn’t manage to get directly above: some of the people in the boat looked one way, others a different way. This year I tried again. I photograph the Italian navy calendar, so we collaborate. I waited 12 days on an ­Italian navy boat for the force seven sea to calm, for this moment. I took the shot ­outside the helicopter, my feet on the skids. The incredible thing is that every single person in the photo looks up.”

Photograph: Massimo Sestini/eyevine “

 

 

 

Here is one more sample from the paper’s selections …

 

 

 

 

” “On 12 July it was a very hot day on the beach [at the Ob river, in Novosibirsk in western Siberia]. My girlfriend and I decided to go to a city beach. When we got there the weather suddenly changed and a very strong wind blew. I think my sixth sense switched on and I used my phone to take pictures of the trees swaying. Suddenly hail started literally bombarding us until we rushed back to our car. Several people really got a beating from the hail.”

Photograph: Nikita Dudnik/AP “

 

 

 

 

See all of the chosen photos at The Guardian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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While We Fixate On the Scandal Du Jour … The Gang Of Eight Readies Their Shamnesty Bill

COULTER: WHEN DID WE VOTE TO BECOME MEXICO?

 

 

 

 

 

” Before I had resolved which scandal was distracting from which, we found out the Department of Justice was spying on The Associated Press — not to protect national security, but to prevent the AP from scooping the White House. Then, this week, it broke that the Department of Justice was also spying on Fox News for reasons that remain unexplained.

Meanwhile, Sens. Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and John McCain are working feverishly to turn the country into Mexico.

So now I think all the scandals are intended to distract from Rubio’s amnesty bill.

The 50-1 Latin American-to-European ratio isn’t a natural phenomenon that might result from, say, Europeans losing interest in coming here and poor Latin Americans providing some unique skill desperately needed in our modern, technology-based economy.

To the contrary, it’s result of an insane government policy. Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was designed to artificially inflate the number of immigrants from the Third World, while making it virtually impossible for anyone from the nations that historically provided our immigrants to come here.

Pre-1965 immigrants were what made this country what it was for a reason: They were the pre-welfare state immigrants. From around 1630 to 1966, immigrants sank or swam. About a third of them couldn’t make it in America and went home — and those are the ones who weren’t rejected right off the boat for being sick, crippled or idiots.

A majority of Americans still do love this country — including, one hopes, legal immigrants who thought they were leaving Mexico. But a policy that will change America forever is about to slip through under the cloak of endless scandals from the corrupt Obama administration.”

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View Different Areas Before And After Oklahoma Tornado From HuffPost

Before/After Oklahoma Tornado Pictures Capture Devastation (LIVE UPDATES)

 

” The tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20 left many dead and injured, a school destroyed and a community to pick up the pieces.

While rescue workers are still in the process of assessing the damage, President Obama already declared Monday’s tornado to be one of the most destructive in U.S. history.

The National Weather Service gave the tornado a preliminary ranking of EF4, which puts it in the second most powerful category. According to the Associated Press, the twister was an estimated two miles wide with winds up to 200 mph.

Below are images showing what the Moore area looked like before the twister hit, and the tragic destruction that soon followed.”

 

 

 

 

4. Plaza Towers Elementary School

 

 

Before

 

 

 

 

After

 

 

 

See Them All Here

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Government Often Overstates “National Security” Claims To Justify It’s Thuggery

5 Overlooked Lessons From The AP Subpoena Controversy And Other Leak Investigations

 

 

 

” The journalism world has been rightly outraged by the Justice Department dragging the Associated Press (and now a Fox News reporter) into one of its sprawling leak investigations. As we wrote last week, by obtaining the call records of twenty AP phone lines, “the Justice Department has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news.”

But there are several other important lessons that this scandal can teach us besides how important free and uninhibited newsgathering is to the public’s right to know.

For example, according to information released by the phone companies to Rep. Ed Markey, Sprint alone received a staggering 500,000 subpoenas for call records data last year.”

 

 

 

Illustration by Jim Margulies

 

 

 

 

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LOL … The AP Gets A Dose Of The Chicago Way

Government Obtains Wide Set Of Associated Press Phone records In Investigation, Using Subpoena

 

 

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” The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• US Justice Department acknowledges wide-ranging surveillance of Associated Press (rt.com)
• Govt Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe (abcnews.go.com)
• How do you ask a journalist to be the last journalist to lose credibility defending Obama? (legalinsurrection.com)
• Nixonian: Obama Regime Seizes AP Reporters’ Phone Records For Over 20 Separate Lines, More Than 100 Journalists Affected… (redflagnews.com)
• Obama DOJ Secretly Monitored AP Reporters’ Phone Records (freedomoutpost.com)
• Govt obtains wide AP phone records in probe (sacbee.com)
• Watergate Was For Amateurs: Justice Department Spied For Months On Associated Press Reporters (financialsurvivalnetwork.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Please Do

“AP: Black Pastors Say ‘Stay Home’ Election Day”

“Some black clergy see no good presidential choice between a Mormon candidate and one who supports gay marriage, so they are telling their flocks to stay home on Election Day. That’s a worrisome message for the nation’s first African-American president, who can’t afford to lose any voters from his base in a tight race.

The pastors say their congregants are asking how a true Christian could back same-sex marriage, as President Barack Obama did in May. As for Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon nominee from a major party, congregants are questioning the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its former ban on men of African descent in the priesthood.”

What a Boycott

100 Percent FED Up