Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Speaks Out On China And Internet Freedom

Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopaedia and perhaps the most potent symbol of an open and free Internet, has turned his sights on China. The People's Republic has undergone great transition over the past decade, with a loosening of the economy that has seen global companies pour in, including those at the forefront of information technology.

However, the Chinese political system still rests on orthodoxies of control, fear and a restriction of information. That's not to say China isn't changing, with more than 475 million of the country's 1.3 billion citizens now online. Mandarin is currently the second most popular language on the web behind English.

Yet for some, including the Wikipedia-founder, change isn't coming quickly enough, so much so that the he recently featured in the first episode of Amnesty TV, an online magazine show, talking about internet freedom, with particular reference the situation in China.

More on Huffington Post – Also see Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales meets China's censors from October 01, 2008

US/Canada Crossing

Audio only - Just because this guy gave them a little attitude back, they couldn't take that, so they got pissed off and arrested him. and to make matters worse they tell him moving away from a cop is assault. WTF.
Is this not fascism? This is like Nazi Germany.. show me your papers... Well, they catch 3 terrorists a day…..?

Saudi’s want urgent, safe transport solution for women

Amid the high costs to Saudi families that employ drivers, the suffering of female employees due to the lack of means of transportation to their jobs and regulations barring women from driving, suggestions have been put forward to develop safe means of transport that are similar to those in foreign countries.

Experts said there is a serious need to address the matter because some families are forced to pay thousands of riyals to drivers, which can cause a financial burden on the families. Some drivers demand higher salaries, which can make it unbearable for families in need of their services. Taking taxis every day adds up to a considerable expense and male family members are often unavailable.

Al Arabiya - More on Saudi Gazette

Also see: Saudi woman driver detained by police on Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Going Underground

The Jam

Criminal gardening in the USA

Brasscheck TV

Ai Weiwei attacks China over justice and human rights

The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has launched a scathing attack on the Chinese government after his release from secretive detention in late June, accusing officials of denying citizens their basic rights.

In a strongly worded commentary published late on Sunday on the website of Newsweek magazine, Ai – whose detention prompted an international outcry – branded the capital, Beijing, as "a city of violence". He criticised the government for rampant corruption, the judicial system and its policy on migrant workers, all issues that have inflamed social tensions in China.

Ai's commentary signals his growing impatience with the strict terms of his release from 81 days in captivity in late June. It also presents Beijing with a direct challenge on how to handle the country's most famous social critic.

"Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses … They are Beijing's slaves," Ai wrote. "They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts – and the restaurants and karaoke parlours and saunas are very rich as a result."

The Guardian

Michele Bachmann Says Irene Is God's Warning To Washington

As Hurricane Irene ravaged the East Coast this weekend, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said the storm and last week's earthquake were God's way of trying to get politicians in Washington to deal with soaring federal deficits.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending," Bachmann said in Sarasota on Sunday, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

ABC News

Famed Scientist Richard Dawkins Destroys Rick Perry on Evolution

We all know Texas Governor and GOP Presidential Candidate Rick Perry is full of it with his anti-science agenda, and we've read about his close ties to a cadre of religious extremists who have anointed him for privileging religion over scientific evidence (his "pray for rain" moment being a prime example).

Still, a smackdown from none other than Richard Dawkins on the subject of those outmoded, dangerous beliefs has a particularly satisfying highbrow but low-blow quality to it. Dawkins, an evolutionary bioligist and outspoken atheist, delivered such a smackdown to Perry in the course of a Q and A in the Washington Post's On Faith column.

Dawkins said that while a candidate's views on evolution are not paramount, they're indicative of his or her ability to understand science and his or her general levels of educational literacy. He also had harsh words for the valuation of ignorance among the Republican electorate.

Here are some choice excerpts:

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Full story on AlterNet

De Menezes cop sues Met over 'cover-up'

A Christian counter-terrorism officer involved in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes is suing the Metropolitan Police over allegations that senior officers tried to cover-up vital evidence.

He says his faith compelled him to blow the whistle and he is now claiming thousands of pounds for loss of overtime pay and promotions after Special Branch bosses allegedly sidelined him. One allegation involves anti-terror officers perverting justice by replacing a chief inspector with another to give more favourable evidence at the 2008 inquest into de Menezes’s death.

An inquest jury returned an open verdict into the shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian who was mistaken for a suicide bomber in 2005 – rejecting the police view that he was killed lawfully.

See the Mail Online

Song for Bradley Manning

Song by David Rovics -  Bradley Manning Support Network

Homelessness escalates in Britain

Homelessness in one of the richest country's in the world is on the rise. More and more people in Britain are now relying on the state and charities for a roof over their heads.
In the second quarter of this year, around 9, 000 homes were repossessed in Britain. Interest rates here are low at the moment.
But, there are fears that when they do eventually rise, more families will struggle. And more will end up turning to the authorities to help provide a roof over their heads.

Al Jazeera English

'Cuddly' Libertarian Has Some Very Dark Politics

There are few things as maddening in a maddening political season as the warm and fuzzy feelings some progressives evince for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the Republican presidential candidate. "The anti-war Republican," people say, as if that's good enough.

But Ron Paul is much, much more than that. He's the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. He's an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He's a gay-demonizing Republican. He's an anti-public education Republican and an anti-Social Security Republican. He's the John Birch Society's favorite congressman. And he's a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you're a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I can see how he'd be your guy.

Read further on AlterNet

They Live 2011

David Icke Website

Chinese police 'to detain suspects without telling families'

Chinese police will gain new legal powers to detain suspects for up to six months without telling their families where or why they are held, according to a state newspaper's account of planned reforms.

Human rights activists and legal scholars warned that the change would legitimise an alarming pattern of detentions under the residential surveillance law, which was initially intended as a less punitive measure than formal detention.

Most of those who went missing in a crackdown on activists, dissidents and lawyers this year were taken to secret locations chosen by police. They were held for weeks or even months under residential surveillance. The law does not specify that relatives must be informed, presumably because it was assumed suspects would be held at their homes. In comparison, police must inform relatives within 24 hours of detention and must seek prosecutors' approval for arrest within 30 days.

More on The Guardian

The Libyan Civil War: Critical Views: The Tripoli Massacres

There are a multitude of aspects to what's going on right now in Libya, Tripoli in particular things I don't know well enough - but one aspect is emerging and grabs my attention - a side-effect of the near-total liberation of the capitol is literally blood flowing in the streets. At least one journalist has captured some of the horror of it as armed butchers from one side or another massacre fighters and civilians alike in growing numbers all across the city.

So far I have one rather stark, and detailed, article by Hadeel al-Shalchi, AP, Aug 26:
Fight 'the rats,' Gadhafi urges as rebels push on.

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The streets where rebel fighters bombarded snipers loyal to Moammar Gadhafi were strewn with bullet-ridden corpses from both sides Thursday. Streams of blood ran down the gutters and turned sewers red.
By sundown the rebels appeared to have won the battle for the Abu Salim neighborhood, next to Gadhafi's captured Tripoli compound [...] Outside his Bab al-Aziziya compound, which rebels captured Tuesday, there was another grim scene — one that suggested mass, execution-style killings of civilians.
About two dozen bodies — some with their hands bound by plastic ties and with bullet wounds to the head — lay scattered on grassy lots in an area where Gadhafi sympathizers had camped out for months.
The identities of the dead were unclear, but they were in all likelihood activists who had set up an impromptu tent city in solidarity with Gadhafi in defiance of the NATO bombing campaign.
Five or six bodies were in a tent erected on a roundabout that had served as a field clinic. One of the dead still had an IV in his arm, and another body was completely charred, its legs missing. The body of a doctor, in his green hospital gown, was found dumped in the canal.

More on The Libyan Civil War Blog

More TRIPOLI HORRORS REVEALED on BBC and War Crime Claims After Bodies Found on SKY

Slave!

The KGB Connections

Disturbing and eye-opening US propaganda documentary about the  KGB activities/Soviet Operations in North America during the 1970s and 80s.

More CineVault documentaries

‫( هههههه ) Gaddafi's Hat Remix

Also see the Zenga Zenga Song - Noy Alooshe Remix

Israelis chant 'Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies'

Also on The Real News Network: Dubious Evidence Israeli Bus Attackers Based in Gaza

The Secret Space Program

Is there a human civilization living off-world with highly advanced technology and knowledge about the existence of aliens? Why are we being kept in the dark? We feature Peter Levenda, Richard Dolan, Richard Hoagland, Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, Timothy Good, Hugh Newman, Jonathan Adams, Ed Grimsley, Robin Falkov, Jeroen Van Straaten and attendees of the Secret Space Program conference in Amsterdam who also share their own experiences with UFO sightings. Then, we hit the streets of Amsterdam where the locals speak their mind about aliens, abductions and making contact with ET.

Red Ice Creations – More of the Secret Space Program conference in Amsterdam

Masked men break hands of critical Syrian cartoonist

Ali Ferzat, a famous Syrian cartoonist critical of the government, was abducted and severely beaten by masked gunmen as he left his office early on Thursday in Damascus, international media reported. The attackers stomped on his hands and said the beating was a warning, the Associated Press said. He was dumped bleeding on a roadside several hours later.

"Since the start of the uprising, stories of brutality against journalists in prison have surfaced but the beating of Ali Farzat shows publicly the intensity of the violence against the critical press," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "The international community must condemn this attack and make clear to the government in Damascus that it will be held accountable for this and all attacks on journalists."

Ferzat, 60, is renowned in the Arab world for his caricatures of authoritarian leaders including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who has sought to quell protests across the country this year and silence critical media.

Committee to Protect Journalists

Anti-Psychotic Drug May Be In Some Packets Of Nurofen Plus

People are being warned to check packs of Nurofen Plus after it emerged that thousands of them could mistakenly contain anti-psychotic drugs.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a safety alert following reports that some batches of Nurofen Plus contain individual blister packs of another drug, Seroquel XL 50mg.

The mix-up is believed to have happened at a wholesaler's and thousands of packs could potentially be affected, prompting the MHRA to urge extra vigilance. The packs have been found in pharmacies across the UK.

Huffington post

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad's Nazi ties 'went deeper'

The founder of the Ikea furniture chain, Ingvar Kamprad, is facing further questions about his Nazi past following claims in a new book.

Author Elisabeth Asbrink says Mr Kamprad was an active recruiter for a Swedish Nazi group, and stayed close to sympathisers well after World War II. The details go beyond what Mr Kamprad has previously admitted.

The Swedish billionaire has said his involvement was youthful "stupidity", and the "greatest mistake" of his life. In her book, Ms Asbrink says Mr Kamprad actively recruited people to the fascist Sweden's Socialist Union (SSS). She says the activity prompted security police to set up a file on him in 1943 when he was 17 - the same year that he founded Ikea. Ms Asbrink says the security police intercepted his post, and noted that he "had some sort of functionary position" in a youth Nazi organization.

The intelligence services have refused to comment.

See BBC News for full article – Also see The Telegaph

Young Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh

The Original 1984 Macintosh Introduction: the magic moment, when Steve Jobs unveils the Macintosh and releases it from its bag.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO - Is Apple Evil?

Foreign forces in Libya helping rebel forces advance

Special forces troops from Britain, France, Jordan and Qatar on the ground in Libya have stepped up operations in Tripoli and other cities in recent days to help rebel forces as they conducted their final advance on the Gadhafi regime, a NATO official confirmed to CNN Wednesday.

British forces, in particular, have assisted rebel units by "helping them get better organized to conduct operations," the official said. Some of these forces from all the countries have travelled with rebel units from towns across Libya as they advanced on Tripoli.

The official declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence information.

CNN.com

Freedom Sound

Skatalites

Recognize Palestine

In 48 hours, the UN Security Council will meet again to discuss Palestine's bid to become the 194th country. Already 700,000 of us have joined the campaign. But we need more of us to shift key countries to vote in favour.
Watch the video, sign the petition and send this page to everyone -- let's get 1 million signers now!

In days, the UN Security Council will meet again to discuss whether Palestine should become a new state. But key countries are still unsure how to vote.
Our campaign for Palestinian independence is on fire, and our voices are reaching leaders. But we need to ramp up the pressure and many people don't feel they understand the situation well enough to take action. Avaaz has made a short new video that tells the real story of the conflict.

Sign the petition on Avaaz.org

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Anonymous has just released a video communiqué endorsing #OCCUPYWALLSTREET on September 17. Using language from our first Tactical Briefing, the video calls on protestors to adopt the nonviolent Tahrir-acampadas model. On the 17th of September, it says, "flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months … Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices."

See also signs of support for S17 on Anonymous's Twitter and websites.

Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

Rebel wears Gaddafi's Hat

Turkish strikes 'kill scores of PKK fighters'

Turkish air attacks on northern Iraq have killed between 90 and 100 Kurdish fighters, with 132 targets struck in six days of air raids, according to the Turkish military.

In a statement on Tuesday, the armed forces said it had information that more than 80 Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters had been wounded in the operations, which it said would continue.

Turkey last Wednesday resumed a bombing campaign against bases of the separatist group after a lull of more than a year in response to a PKK attack that killed nine soldiers in southeastern Turkey. On Sunday, seven Iraqis were reportedly killed in a Turkish air strike near Qalat Dizah, a town in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Ankara did not confirm the strike.

The PKK, which the US and the European Union consider a terrorist organisation, is fighting for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast.

See Al Jazeera English for more on this story or see Al Arabiya

Defense Against the Psychopath

Defense Against the Psychopath is a documentary excerpted from chapter one of my book; The Art of Urban Survival. Teaches people how to recognize and defend against our society's most dangerous predators, psychopaths.

Some journalists covering events in Libya are “not real journalists”

Global Research journalist Mahdi Nazemroaya says he fears for his life and is being threatened for “not going by what NATO is presenting” as news out of Libya. He says he believes that some of the journalists covering events are “not real journalists”, but are instead working for security services.

You're a Fucking Human Being

A rant off the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on itunes put to a beat.

Terror Wins: “Police in the streets creates security. Controls. Exercises. Equipment,"”

"Freedom is stronger than fear," King Harald told Norwegians Sunday, hoping to unite a nation shattered by an anti-immigration zealot who killed 77, mostly young, people in two attacks.

Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who has been praised across the country for the way he dealt with the aftermath of the attacks, said Norway must stand firm behind its democratic values to fight extremism.

"We must invite in those who have gone astray. We must oppose those who want to use violence," he said. "We must meet them with all the arms of democracy."

But in a sign that Norway's open society may change, the prime minister said there must be more security.

"Good preparation creates security. Police in the streets creates security. Controls. Exercises. Equipment," he said. "We must do all this."

Yahoo! News

Gaddafi Regime Crumbling

In the Washington Post, David Ignatius writes that Gaddafi's family has reportedly been moving money and assets outside Libya over the past five days.

A sign that the implosion may at last be happening is the reported transfer of money. Some of it has gone to Algerian accounts, according to a source in contact with the banking network that is said to be conducting the transactions.

Today 8:23 AM Clashes Break Out Near Gaddafi Compound, Tanks Firing

Heavy clashes have broken out near Moammar Gadhafi's compound in the Libyan capital.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Rahman says that tanks emerged from the complex, known as Bab al-Aziziya, early Monday and began firing.

An Associated Press reporter at the nearby Rixos Hotel where foreign journalists are staying could hear gunfire and loud explosions that have been going on for more than 30 minutes.

Live Blog on The Guardian and BBC and Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya

54 46

Toots of The Maytals with sly and robbie on the White Room

The 'Unfashionable' Matt Damon, Mensch of the Year

It's rare when a Hollywood superstar earns the respect of hard-working activists and progressives leaders alike. Usually stars dabble in activism for the publicity, and associate themselves with safe issues, so as not to rock the boat.

But not Matt Damon. Like many other progressives, Damon has grown weary of Democrats looking for phony centrism instead of standing up to a shockingly far-right Republican party. Against this backdrop, Damon’s principled and public stands do indeed make us sit up and pay attention.

Progressive star Michael Moore went so far as to suggest that Damon run for president in an online townhall with the blog, FireDogLake.  Moore wants Damon because Moore is unhappy that President Obama has continually tracked to the right with conservative narratives about taxes, spending and the role of government, saying that debt is the “greatest threat” facing the United States today. That's right, not military spending, the banks, corporate excess and corruption, poverty, and a few other pressing problems. Yes, Obama has a tough job dealing with the rigid, ransom-seeking right-wing. But seriously, Mr. President. Get on message. We need to be spending money, not cutting jobs

See AlterNet for the full story – Also see The Guardian

Coco Chanel: Nazi agent?

She was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th Century, but Coco Chanel's reputation is again under scrutiny over allegations that she was a Nazi agent in WWII France. To millions of people around the globe Chanel stands for style, opulence and understated elegance, from haute couture worn by the few to ready-to-wear treasured by the masses.

Her achievements are undeniable. Chanel's instantly recognisable suits have been sported by stylistas from the Duchess of Windsor to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink version when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

Like many luminaries, including the singers Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, the writer Jean Cocteau and the late president Francois Mitterrand, Chanel remained in her native country following its occupation by German forces in the summer of 1940.

And since the war's end, rumours have abounded about the real nature of her association with the Nazis. Now according to Hal Vaughan, author of the new book, Sleeping with the Enemy, Chanel is revealed as having actually worked for German military intelligence during the war.

Being a Nazi agent was "part of her daily life" in Paris during the occupation, he says. "Chanel was a consummate opportunist. The Nazis were in power, and Chanel gravitated to power. It was the story of her life.

More on BBC News

Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants

The full extent of the campaign of intimidation, attacks and death threats made against scientists by activists who claim researchers are suppressing the real cause of chronic fatigue syndrome is revealed today by the Observer.

According to the police, the militants are now considered to be as dangerous and uncompromising as animal rights extremists. One researcher told the Observer that a woman protester who had turned up at one of his lectures was found to be carrying a knife. Another scientist had to abandon a collaboration with American doctors after being told she risked being shot, while another was punched in the street. All said they had received death threats and vitriolic abuse.

Chronic fatigue syndrome – also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) – is common and debilitating. A recent BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) feature suggested that as many as one in 250 people in the UK suffers from it. Patients are sometimes unable to move and become bedridden, occasionally having to be fed through a tube. For more than 20 years, scientists have struggled to find the cause, with some pointing to physiological reasons, in particular viral infections, while others have argued that psychological problems are involved.

More on The Observer

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Government Biological Weapon? THE CONSPIRACY TO HIDE THE ORIGINS OF CFS

The West Memphis Three are Free

See wm3.org for the latest news

February 2009 post about the West Memphis Three

Aliens 'Could Destroy Humanity To Stop Global Warming'

In the latest bid to get us to cut greenhouse gases, scientists have decided that eco-conscious aliens disgusted by mankind's emissions could destroy our planet in disgust. When observed from afar, the changes in Earth's atmosphere could label us as a civilisation that has grown out of control. Aliens reaching that conclusion may then launch a pre-emptive attack to protect this perceived threat to their own way of life.

But that is only one possibility. Scientists are also considering other unwelcome - and far-fetched - outcomes, such as aggressive extra-terrestrials who eat or enslave us, or perhaps they are industrial types who want to improve their own technological infrastructure and so pillage ours.

More on Mail Online – Also see 6 Ancient Things That Were Probably Built By Aliens

Embarrassment

Madness

‘Leaders of the Western World’

It is so pathetic to watch. Grown men (it says here) and a grown woman (ditto) reading their script like good little children and when they are finished they can have a sweetie. My god. ‘Leaders of the Western World’ – the ‘Free World’? Terrifying. I wouldn’t pay them in washers.

Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, Merkel and their fellow ‘leaders’ (readers) are political prostitutes singing for their supper and the illusion of ‘power’. They have no ‘power’, except officially and in theory. They say what they are told to say and this is why they always say the same.

Ever noticed that? No matter if they are the ‘leader’ in America, Canada, Britain, Germany or France they always agree on the same statements and the same course of action. The media calls this ‘unity’. I call it: ‘Do what we tell you all – or else.’

There are essentially four kinds of ‘leader’: (1) Those who know what is happening and what they are working towards (the few); (2) People who are desperate for ‘power’ for power’s sake and will do and say anything to get it; (3) Those with big secrets to hide through which they can be blackmailed into doing what they are told to do; (4) Idiots who are easily manipulated by ‘advisors’ and public ‘servants’.

Some, like Barack Obama, can be all four. Whichever category it is, singular or in combination, the ‘leaders’ are not chosen by ‘the people’, but by those that control the money and the media – the Rothschild networks. Whenever any of these ‘leaders’ open their mouths-for-sale it is the Rothschilds speaking; and given that the Rothschilds are born with ‘forked tongues’ it is no surprise that lies issue from their puppet front-people like bullets from a machine gun.

From David Icke Website

Rico Rodriguez

Wikipedia – You Tube

The Nigerian Connection

Every year tens of thousands of West Africans migrate to Europe in search of a better life. But for some of them that search will end in tragedy, as they fall victim to competing mafia gangs that prey on the hopes of the desperate. In southern Italy, it is Nigerian women who are among the most exploited, with many ending up trapped in the nightmare world of the sex trade.

Al Jazeera

Chilean students demand education reform

Tens of thousands of students demonstrating in the capital against their country's education system. Al Jazeera

9/11 10th Anniversary Campaign by Remember Building 7

Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper that was part of the World Trade Center complex. It collapsed at 5:20 pm on September 11, 2001. It was not hit by an airplane and suffered minimal damage compared to other buildings much closer to the Twin Towers.

rememberbuilding7.org

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Website (go here to watch full screen)

American - The Bill Hicks Story

AMERICAN The Bill Hicks Story You Tube Channel – Website

UK Riot Sentences: Facebook Pair Get Four Years In Jail

Liberal Democrats and justice groups have questioned some of the tough sentences handed down to riot offenders after two men were jailed for four years each for attempting to incite a riot on Facebook.

The party's home affairs spokesman, Tom Brake, said sentencing should not be about "retribution". "Clearly there are cases where offenders who have committed very serious crimes should expect very serious sentences and that is what I expect to happen. But there have been some cases where people who have committed petty offences have received sentences which, if they had committed the same offence the day before the riots, they would not have received a sentence of that nature.

"This should be about restorative justice, in other words making people acknowledge the offences they have committed and preferably if the victims want it, actually sit down face to face with the victims so they can hear from the victims the impact they have had, but it should not be about retribution", he told Newsnight.

Tessa Munt, the MP for Wells, told the Guardian the plans were "bonkers, bonkers, bonkers" and only served to make headlines instead of "calm, rational policy-making".

The Huffington Post

Perfect Storm: The England Riots

“If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth.” – African Proverb.

This mini-documentary film looks at the initial causes and wider context surrounding the recent England riots. Politicians refuse to acknowledge their role in creating a deeply unfair and failing society, a perfect storm of police brutality, city poverty and austerity measures, that will only get worse unless the root problem is addressed.

Did you know for the rioters to be on par with the looting by the financial bailouts, corporate tax avoiders and Libyan invasion, they would have to repeat the same level of damage……4,320 times?

See WideShut for more info

Riots Analysis: Will PM Strip Away Benefits? -The flames of the riots have subsided, but the political fall-out has only just begun. (Sky News)

Ring of Power: Empire of the City

5 hours long..

5 Ways US Conservatives Attack Sexual Freedom

The hard right turn taken by the conservative movement in the past couple of years has meant a rapid increase in conservatives taking unpopular stances: opposing Social Security and Medicare, pushing for a default on government debt, and various austerity measures sure to protect the rich while plunging the rest of the country into economic darkness. But they haven’t just embraced wildly unpopular views on economic issues, but also on social issues, especially when it comes to sexual freedom.  

Traditionally, conservatives have kept their attacks on sexual freedom limited to areas where they know they can gin up more controversy, such as gay rights and abortion. They had a larger anti-sex agenda, but knew it would be hard to sell to the public at large, and so merely chewed on the corners of sexual liberation. But something about the election of Obama caused a synapse to blow in the right-wing brain, and the attacks on sexual liberation have expanded beyond gay rights and abortion. Now conservatives are attacking sexual freedom on many fronts: abortion, access to contraception, and freedom to be sexual without being assaulted for it, freedom to be sexual no matter your race or class.  

Read the 5 points on AlterNet

New laws crack down on America's poor and homeless

The number of laws criminalizing poverty increased during the recession as the housing and homelessness crisis in America worsened. Since 2006, there's been a 7 percent increase in laws prohibiting camping out in public places, an 11 percent increase in laws prohibiting loitering, a 6 percent increase in laws prohibiting begging and a 5 percent increase in laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling, according to a recent report by The National Coalition for the Homeless.

At the same time, after a double-digit jump in 2008, homelessness increased by an average of 2 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness. Among families with children, homelessness increased by 9 percent. An average of 27 percent of homeless persons did not receive assistance last year because there weren't enough beds or shelters would not accept children.

"In this economy, cities are facing really tight budgets, so they may not be able to build up or fund housing to meet the need," Tulin Ozdeger, civil rights director for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told USA Today. "Many people are being forced to live out on the streets."

Full story on Deseret News

Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe.

The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe’s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.

In Slotervaart, a majority immigrant neighborhood in southwestern Amsterdam, Maria Kuhlman and her friends watched Muslim families stroll by on a Ramadan afternoon, some of the men in robes and beards, the women wearing headscarves. A large blond woman shouted, “Go Wilders!”

Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party, which combines racist language with calls for more social spending, won 15.5 percent of the vote in June 2010. He was recently acquitted of charges of hate speech for comparing the Koran to “Mein Kampf” and calling mosques “palaces of hatred.” He wants all immigrants and their children deported and warns of the supposed Muslim plot to create “Eurabia.” He declined repeated interview requests.

Full article on NYTimes.com

Stupidity

This documentary about stupidity tells us the history of the word "moron", the difference between stupid, moron, smart, intelligent, genius and questions the regular practice of classifying peoples intelligence through standardized IQ tests.

Amy Winehouse In Pills

by Jason Mecier

Nepal Gay Rights Rally Draws Hundreds

Hundreds of gay, lesbian, transgender people marched with supporters in a southern Nepal town Sunday to demand equal rights under a new constitution the country is in the process of writing.

The estimated 500 demonstrators danced, chanted slogans and marched around Narayanghat, a town about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the capital of Katmandu on Sunday, which is also Nepal's traditional festival of Gaijatra honoring the dead. The gay community has been holding demonstrations on the festival day in the capital, but it was the first time that activists have organized a rally outside the capital. Gay rights activists and parliament member Sunil Pant said their main aim was to spread their campaign outside the capital city.

Nepal, a traditionally conservative, mostly Hindu nation, has only recently begun accepting homosexuality. The country is also in the process of writing a new constitution which could include provisions to guarantee rights for the sexual minorities.

huffingtonpost.com

Guillotine display stuns Rothschild's 'tent city'

A guillotine, the symbol of the French Revolution, has been placed Wednesday in the center of Tel Aviv's "tent city," turning into one of the biggest attractions in this ongoing social protest.
The surprising display arrived in Rothschild Boulevard following another long night of protests across the country, this time focusing on contractor conditions. Demonstrators in five different cities participated in rallies Wednesday night against working conditions, wearing white masks and chanting: "Contractor companies are organized crime."

In Beersheba protesters organized a 'bathing suit march' to exemplify how the social protest "has taken off." In Bat Yam hundreds of residents marched to protest against the high costs of living and housing shortage, clashing with the police's Special Patrol Unit.
Holon protesters intensified the upheaval by burning tires and furniture, demonstrating against the city council's attempt to vacate the premises. Meanwhile, haredi and secular protestors rallied side by side in Jerusalem against the shaky public transportation in the city. Ynetnews

Collective Punishment of 'Rioters' Families and the Geneva Convention

An interesting exchange on Facebook is reproduced below regarding some Councils' determination to evict persons convicted of involvement in the recent UK riots. Wandsworth Council want to evict an entire family whose son was found guilty of involvement in the Clapham Junction looting.

One wonders what long-term good such a local authority imagines will come from this. Will they make an underclass intimidated into passivity and obedience, however grudging?
Is satisfying the understandable cries for punitive action from shopkeepers and a rattled middle class wise if this action strays into the realms of collective punishment, a point Jim Murphy fairly raises below?
For myself, even if a convicted person is the only one evicted, this strategy makes no sense. Deprive the underclass of even a place to live? I can think of no better way of creating genuinely terrifying psychopaths.

Anyone paying attention to the crimes of the elite (and the cover-up of these crimes by parliament and the media) knows very well that the sickness at the bottom of society is a manifestation of a much greater sickness at the top.
Bearing in mind the unwillingness of our entire parliament, even the old icons of the left like Diane Abbott, who rose to prominence on the back of the Hackney riots, to see itself as part of (never mind the source of) the problem, might we not expect with absolute certainty that a similar sickness will manifest itself later....more than likely on a much larger scale. The middle classes, whose children cannot afford to get a mortgage on a place to live and who are being inducted into massive debt before they even start their working lives will become heavily involved.
When this time comes, and it will, more than sports and mobile phone shops will have cause to worry.

NO ONE TO VOTE FOR: Kev Boyle Blog

First riot-related eviction notice served – Yahoo news

Germany marks 50 years since Berlin Wall

Germany is marking 50 years since the building of the Berlin Wall when the communist East closed its border, dividing the city for 28 years. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit told a ceremony on Bernauer Street: "The Wall is history but we must not forget it." President Christian Wulff said Germany had been securely established as a reunified country.

The city observed a minute's silence at noon (10:00 GMT) in memory of those who died trying to escape. Soldiers from the East began construction on the morning of 13 August 1961

BBC News

Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

The women clearing Lebanon of cluster bombs

Only up close does it become clear that some of the bulky figures in armoured vests scouring the fields of southern Lebanon for unexploded cluster bombs are wearing hijabs under their protective helmets.

Once local teachers, nurses and housewives, this group of women are now fully trained to search for mines and make up the only all-female clearance team in Lebanon, combing the undergrowth inch by inch for the remnants of one of the most indiscriminate weapons of modern warfare.

Leading the women in the field is Lamis Zein, a 33-year-old divorced mother of two and the team's supervisor. She was one of the first recruits for the team, which was set up by the de-mining NGO Norwegian People's Aid (NPA).

"When I heard they were recruiting I applied straight away," said Zein. "At the beginning men were surprised to see us in the field, wearing the same protective equipment as men, doing demolitions of bombs like men. But we work together well as a team of women. We share things that we wouldn't with male colleagues. We are good at what we do and we are showing that women can do any kind of job."

Their painstaking task became necessary five years ago this week, after Israel rained cluster munitions on southern Lebanon to a degree the UN condemned as a "flagrant violation of international law".

The Guardian

Protest Song by Hugh Laurie

The Real Source of the British Riots

The statistics, sociology, police brutality, massive food price increases and economic catastrophes behind the recent and continuing riots in Britain. From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web --

Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses

hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday.

The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science.

"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."

The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.

Breitbart

Babs Tucker arrested

In London Babs Tucker was kidnapped to cover up massive payouts in civil claims from the High Court over illegal searches, which would see the display that was stolen by 78 police on 23rd May 2006 returned as well.
The prime minister looks stupid lecturing people on looting whilst stopping people peacefully campaigning by stealing their property.
Babs was taken to Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court but refused to leave the cell and consent to their jurisdiction. Magistrates remanded her to Holloway Prison overnight, to appear before them again at 10am in the morning.

Brian and Babs tried every route over the years to get due process and a fair hearing within the corrupt British legal system - and because this has been denied at every stage, she had no option but to stop playing their 'game'.

Keep updated at brianhaw.tv

My Fellow American

The climate of suspicion towards American Muslims compromises the values that the USA was founded upon.

More information about this project on myfellowamerican.us

Military-Industrial Complex from Eisenhower to Obama

Gareth Porter on how the Military-Industrial Complex evolved the USA into the Permanent War State on The Real News Network

“Retail Riots” Are Not a Political Revolution

RussiaToday

Priest says Hell is an invention of the church to control people with fear

John Shelby Spong

London riots: Police were soft on looters because they were 'ordered to stand and observe'

Police were ordered to 'stand and observe' rioters as they laid waste to London's streets instead of confronting them, it was claimed today.

Scotland Yard insiders have revealed teams were frustrated at their inability to wade in and arrest troublemakers while they looted and burnt out shops. They had apparently been told to try and contain any violence but not to haul away offenders who would instead be identified through video footage later, according to The Times.

It was only on Monday night, when the riots escalated still further, that tactics changed and armoured vehicles called Jankels were used to disperse the crowds. On Tuesday night, some 16,000 officers also flooded London's streets - almost triple the previous night's deployment - and they were finally given the green light to confront the gangs. 

Mail Online

Town Called Malice

The Jam (Fan)

Amazon tribe feared 'massacred'

The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.

On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a "massacre". They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe's land.

"We decided to come back here because we believed that these guys may be massacring the isolated [tribe]," Carlos Travassos, the head of Brazil's department for isolated indigenous peoples, told the Brazilian news website IG. "We are more worried than ever. The situation could be one of the greatest blows we have seen to the work to protect isolated Indians in decades. A catastrophe … genocide!"

More on The Guardian

More on Altino Machado's Blog