Mt. Everest to close for the season (audio)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; T.J. Raphael, The World (pri.org)

Dangerous Mt. Everest (Kristoffer Erickson/news.nationalgeographic.com)

  

Yeti hunters, Everest, 1954 (dailymail.co.uk)

Sherpas -- members of a Himalayan ethnic group renowned for their skill at high-altitude climbing -- are crucial to operations on Mount Everest.

They earn a mere $3,000-5,000 risking their lives helping others scale the mountain during each two-to-three-month climbing season. They do on a regular basis what others pay to accomplish just once in a lifetime, putting their lives at great risk for affluent clients due to poverty they are never able to emerge from.
 

Last Friday, an avalanche roared down a climbing route on Everest, killing 13 Sherpa guides and leaving three others missing. When it occurred the Sherpas, who have centuries of history in Nepal's alpine region, were working at 21,000 feet, fixing ropes and preparing the path ahead of peak mountaineering season.

 

Tibet's Rongbuk Buddhist monastery with Mt. Everest in background (wiki commons)

 

Who climbs Mt. Everest without a Sherpa?

As the Sherpa community mourns the loss of family members and friends, the group is considering an unprecedented move: a strike.

On Sunday, disappointed by the Nepali government’s offer of 40,000 rupees ($408) as compensation for the families of each of the dead, some Sherpas gathered at Everest’s base camp to propose a “work stoppage” that could disrupt or cancel the 334 expeditions planned for the 2014 climbing season.

Ellen Barry, South Asia Bureau Chief for The New York Times, says while Sherpas have lived with these conditions for many years, last week's accident changed things.

"I think just the magnitude of the loss of life from Friday's accident has prompted very unusual decisions," she says. More

McDonalds on strike; NSA spies on cell phones

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; DemocracyNow.com, "Fast-Food Workers Strike..."

Fastfood workers nationwide are walking off the job in about 100 cities today (Dec. 5, 2013) in what organizers call their largest action to date. Today’s strikes and protests continue a campaign that began last year to call for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation.

   

NSA collecting data on cellphones worldwide

New leaks from Edward Snowden show the NSA is tracking the locations of cellphones worldwide on a massive scale. The Washington Post reports the NSA is gathering around five billion call records a day that show the whereabouts of cellphone users around the globe. The spying allows the NSA to track individuals’ movements, as well as their personal routes and relationships. The records are fed into a database that monitors hundreds of millions of devices. The data is retrieved by tapping into the cable networks of mobile phones worldwide. Of all the NSA spying programs exposed by Snowden, The Washington Post says the mobile location tracking "in scale, scope, and potential impact on privacy... may be unsurpassed."

NSA morale down after Snowden revelations, former officials say

AT&T says it doesn't have to disclose NSA dealings

The phone company AT&T, under fire for ongoing revelations that it shares and sells customers' communications records to the NSA and other U.S. intelligence offices, says it isn't required to disclose to shareholders what it does with its customers' data. 

AP Exclusive: Rough ride for US-Russia copter deal 

Obama defends NSA against latest spying report  

President Barack Obama is defending the National Security Agency, saying it does a very good job of not engaging in domestic surveillance.

Discussion: The implications of NSA cellphone surveillance 

Switchboard: Patriot Act author wants Clapper prosecuted House of Representatives passes patent bill and FTC sanctions popular "flashlight" app for privacy violations.