31 Mar 2012

Sarkozy crackdown on 'radical Islamists': A campaign move?

French police commandos arrested 19 people suspected of radical Islamist activity in Friday morning raids in several cities including Toulouse, scene of the killings of seven people by an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman earlier this month.

3-30-12-French-raids-on-islamists

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is waging an uphill battle for re-election, said more raids would follow. "There will be further operations, allowing us to expel a number of people who have no business in the country," he said in an interview on Europe 1 radio.

Gunman Mohamed Merah was killed by police snipers just over a week ago after shooting dead three Jewish school children, a rabbi and three soldiers in attacks around Toulouse, turning internal security into a bigger campaign issue ahead of the presidential election.

CSMonitor.com

Midnight Midnight

Le Galaxie

Sir! No Sir!


IF you are not a fan of endless war and occupation; and
IF you didn't believe then, and don't believe now, that these wars are about bringing democracy to oppressed people; and
IF you are sickened by the deafening silence where once there was at least outrage; and
IF you are horrified at the prospect of yet another invasion to find "weapons of mass destruction;"
THEN YOU NEED TO BUY, WATCH, AND SPREAD THIS FILM

30 Mar 2012

Drone strikes in Yemen soar as U.S. stokes 'secret war'

America has dramatically stepped up its "secret war" in Yemen with the U.S. ordering dozens of drone attacks on al-Qaida hotspots, which have also killed scores of civilians. With the backing of Yemen's fragile government, President Barack Obama has authorized a rapid increase in attacks since last May, with 26 incidents recorded.

The pace appears to be accelerating, with nine attacks so far this year and at least five this month, including a strike last week near the terrorist hotbed of Zinjibar. Up to 30 militants were killed in three separate missile strikes on the town, witnesses said. Nationwide the figures are comparable to those in Pakistan, where America has struck on 10 occasions this year, despite a fierce public reaction.

US Drone

Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at London's City University has found that as many as 516 people have been killed in the Yemen attacks - mostly suspected members of al-Qaida's local ally al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). As many as 104 were civilians.

The majority of the attacks were carried out by the CIA or U.S. special forces command from a base in nearby Djibouti but American officials refused to confirm any details. President Obama has made plain his determination to go after AQAP, which he has described as "a network of violence and terror". It has attracted a number of U.S. citizens to its cause, including the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki.

Canada.com - Arab spring brings steep rise in US attacks in Yemen on The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

iWhine

The most valuable company needs a little help. See what Apple has in store for the new ipad, now with added features! Ever wanted to take a holiday with the richest company around?

Mark Fiore's Animation

29 Mar 2012

HoodieGate

Newsy

Rough Justice: UK protester almost killed by cops faces jail

A British student who suffered a near-fatal blow to the head in police clashes during a student demo - is on trial himself for the violence. Alfie Meadows and 50 others ended up in hospital after the fighting during protests over tuition fees. He could be jailed for 5 years if convicted but, as Ivor Bennett explains, his supporters want to see the police face justice over brutality.

US Congressman Bobby Rush Kicked Off House Floor For Wearing Hoodie

Illinois' Rep. Bobby Rush (D) was removed from the House floor Wednesday morning after donning the hood of his sweater — and thus, according to Rep. Gregg Harper (R) — violating a rule against wearing hats.
"The chair will ask the Sargent of Arms to enforce the prohibition on decorum," said Harper, acting as speaker. "Members need to remove their hoods or leave the floor."
Rush had donned the hood to commemorate Trayvon Martin, whose hoodie has been the topic of recent public discourse, particularly in light of Geraldo Rivera's assertion that the teen's clothing had been a major contributing factor in his death. "Just because someone wears a hoodie," said Rush, "does not make them a hoodlum."
Rush was swiftly informed that he was "out of order" as he was quoting scripture after having pulling up his hood and donning a pair of sunglasses.

28 Mar 2012

Let them eat cold pasty

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was branded "heartless" yesterday for saying hard-pressed Brits could avoid his VAT hike on hot food by buying COLD pasties. He was branded a modern-day Marie Antoinette for suggesting broke Brits could dodge the 20 per cent price hike by buying cold pasties, pies and sausage rolls. And his Treasury was accused of being "insensitive" to hardship by popular bakery shop chain Greggs.

marie-antoinette

The Chancellor slapped on the tax in his Budget last week. But yesterday he clashed with Labour MP John Mann during a Treasury Committee hearing on his annual economic blueprint. Pressed on whether the "pasty tax" was fair, Mr Osborne said: "If it's cold when you buy it, it will not be VAT-able." Mr Mann also asked: "When was the last time you bought a pasty in Greggs?" The Chancellor replied: "I can't remember." The Labour MP told The Sun later: "It just shows how out of touch Osborne is.

"It's obvious he has never been in Greggs so he'll have no idea on the impact this measure will have. Let them eat cold pasties — how heartless. It sounds just like Marie Antoinette."

The Sun

27 Mar 2012

Stop Cooperating With Your Own Enslavement

(Viewer discretion advised) - www.davidicke.com

Obama "Open Mic" With Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

LiveLeak.com

The Brutal Rape and Murder of South African Lesbians

Ekurhuleni Pride Organizing Committee (EPOC) and the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) call on all supporters for equality and dignity for all, to join us in specific actions calling for justice for slain lesbian, Noxolo Nogwaza and all the other LGBT people who have lost their dignity and lives on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity in South Africa.

Noxolo_Nogwazax

The body of Noxolo Nogwaza, a 24 year old lesbian, was found lying in an alley in Kwa-Thema at about 9am on Sunday, April 24 2011. Noxolo’s head was completely deformed, her eyes out of the sockets, her brain spilt, teeth scattered all around and face crashed beyond recognition.Police and other witnesses at the crime scene say that an empty beer bottle and used condoms were pushed up her genitals. Parts of her body had been stabbed with glass. A large pavement brick that is believed to have been used to crash her head was found by her side.

Noxolo was raped and murdered in a similar manner as that in which another member of EPOC was murdered, 3 years ago today. Eudy Simelane's body was also found in an open field in Kwa-Thema. She had been raped and murdered, crimes that the perpetrators confessed to. Just last year, a gay man in the same township was attacked by eight men, who attempted to rape him. Luckily, he escaped the "vultures." The men, as they attempted to rape him, were heard saying, "We are determined to kill all gay people in this area and we will do it."

Call to Action on the International gay and lesbian human rights commission

Children 'forced to shout Long Live Sarkozy!' when French president visited their school

The French president has caused an outcry after dozens of infant school children were forced to chant 'Long Live Sarkozy!' when he visited their school.

sarko-kids

Parents complained about the youngsters being used as 'propaganda tools' after they were made to treat Nicolas Sarkozy as a hero, waving Tricolour flags and constantly shouting his name. Some were even kissed by Mr Sarkozy, who is hugely unpopular and widely expected to lose the presidential election being held in France in the Spring.

More on Mail Online

Amnesty alarmed by execution surge

Executions around the world soared last year with countries like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia resorting to the death penalty more often, Amnesty International has said in a new report.

The rights group said on Tuesday that at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010, a 78 per cent increase. Executions in the Middle East rose by almost 50 per cent last year to 558, the group said. Methods of execution used around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

iran_execution

However, Amnesty said China executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death penalty in China is a state secret and Amnesty International no longer publishes a figure for Chinese executions, but it said they were in the thousands.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said that when Amnesty was launched in 1961 only nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, whereas last year only 20 countries carried out executions.

Al Jazeera English

26 Mar 2012

Israel doesn’t care about Human Rights

Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.

Illegal_Jewish_settlement

Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders have been in an uproar over the council's adoption of a resolution last week condemning Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its decision to send a fact-finding mission to investigate such activity.

The Associated Press

Private prisons - the most profitable real estate in the US?

While most folks are struggling to survive in these hard times, private prisons are flourishing in the US. In fact - there are tens of billions of dollars in business opportunities out there. It's an enormous industry that's virtually recession proof with sky-high profits to boot. Joe Weisenthall of the Business Insider explains why the prison industrial complex is prospering in America during this tough economic time.

RT America

25 Mar 2012

The World of the Dinosaurs

A musical celebration of dinosaurs investigates their habits, extinction, and how we learn about them. Featuring Alice Roberts, Bill Nye, Nigel Marvin, Dallas Campbell and more.

US approves military aid to Egypt

The US will give $1.3bn in military aid to Egypt despite concerns that Cairo has not met conditions imposed last year that it should take concrete steps towards a more democratic form of government.
The Egyptian military's continued crackdown on non-violent protesters and Cairo's harassment of NGOs that promote civic engagement had led to calls for the aid to be withheld.
And critics say that in deciding to give Egypt the money, the US is putting its strategic interests ahead of human rights. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports.

24 Mar 2012

If You Are Being Beaten, Just Remember the Things You Love About Your Husband

If you need any further proof that the USA is in the midst of a full-on patriarchal biblical-religious war on women, a Wisconsin lawmaker is happy to provide it.

domestic abuse

According to Yahoo News, Wisconsin Rep. Don Pridemore helpfully suggests that, rather than divorcing an abusive spouse, you should try to remember the things you love about the guy while he is beating you up.

In Wisconsin - yes, the same state where lawmakers have introduced a bill penalizing single mothers for being unmarried - a Republican state representative has come out against divorce for any reason - even domestic abuse

Instead of leaving an abusive situation, women should try to remember the things they love about their husbands, Representative Don Pridemore said. "If they can re-find those reasons and get back to why they got married in the first place it might help," he told a local news station.

More on AlterNet

Borat's version of Kazakh anthem played at Kuwait medal ceremony

Kazakhstan's shooting team was taken by surprise when a spoof national anthem from the film Borat was used at a medal ceremony in Kuwait. The team demanded an apology after Maria Dmitrienko was played the obscene song, which features lyrics about prostitutes and potassium exports, as she received her gold medal.

A video posted on YouTube shows Dmitrienko on the podium, her hand on her heart, looking perplexed as the song begins to play. She appears to see the funny side and is smiling by the end. The blunder apparently occurred after the event's organisers downloaded the parody from the internet by mistake. They also got the Serbian anthem wrong. An apology was issued and the ceremony staged again.

The Guardian

Green

Paul Weller

23 Mar 2012

Amazing Ancient Archaeological Artefacts

By Klaus Dona

The Return of Gladio And The Rebirth of Terror Under French Tyrant Nicolas Sarkozy

Another day, another false-flag terror event in another advanced Western democracy. This time, the people of France are the target of Western state-sponsored terrorism and the strategy of tension. The patsy's name is Mohammed Merah. The names of the people who were murdered by the French state are Jonathan (Yonatan) Sandler, plus two of his young children named Aryeh and Gabriel, and another child named Myriam Monsonego.
This is an ordinary state-run terrorist operation to increase tension, fear, and hatred in Western society. This is what the fascist State does when it is free to write history on the spot and blow stuff up. It kills innocent children to make the submerged public gasp for air, hate the scapegoat, and demand security and steel nerve from the leaders of the State.

police france

Vincenzo Vinciguerra, an Italian neo-fascist and terrorist, described in 1984 the existence of a shadow network of military officials and political leaders in Italy who frequently organized terror attacks to keep the country within the sphere of right-wing politics. This network was part of a larger structure known as Gladio that included government fascists in Europe, America, and NATO. Vinciguerra, who was a mercenary of this secret state-terror network until the day he raised awareness of its existence, said in the famous documentary, "Operation Gladio":

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

BlackListedNews.com

22 Mar 2012

Soldiers take control in Mali coup

Mutinous soldiers in Mali have taken over state television and announced that they have seized control of the government. The soldiers said the coup was necessary because of the mishandling of an insurgency in the north.

The spokesman for the soldiers, Lieutenant Amadou Konare, said in a communiqué that the troops had taken the country's security into their own hands "due to the inability of the government to give the armed forces the necessary means to defend the integrity of our national territory".

A soldier at the presidential palace said the presidential guard had failed to defend the palace against the renegade soldiers. They have seized control of the seat of government, but could not find democratically elected leader president Amadou Toumani Toure, who is in hiding.

mali-coup

On national television, a group of about 20 soldiers were shown in fatigues crowding around a desk facing the camera. They introduced themselves as the National Committee for the Re-establishment of Democracy and the Restoration of the State, or CNRDR. "The CNRDR representing all the elements of the armed forces, defensive forces and security forces has decided to assume its responsibilities and end the incompetent and disavowed regime of Amadou Toumani Toure," said their spokesman reading from a statement.

The Press Association

Feeding The Homeless BANNED All Over America

Feeding the homeless has been banned in major cities all over America.  Other cities that have not banned it outright have put so many requirements on those that want to feed the homeless (acquiring expensive permits, taking food preparation courses, etc.) that feeding the homeless has become "out of reach" for most average people.  Some cities are doing these things because they are concerned about the "health risks" of the food being distributed by ordinary "do-gooders".  Other cities are passing these laws because they do not want homeless people congregating in city centers where they know that they will be fed.  But at a time when poverty and government dependence are soaring to unprecedented levels, is it really a good idea to ban people from helping those that are hurting?

homeless-in-america

This is just another example that shows that the USA is being taken over by control freaks.  There seems to be this idea out there that it is the job of the government to take care of everyone and that nobody else should even try.

But do we really want to have a nation where you have to get the permission of the government before you do good to your fellow man?

The Economic Collapse Blog

France ‘poisoned by divisions’, says presidential hopeful

At least one candidate in the forthcoming presidential election has refused to halt his campaign in the wake of the killing of four people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday, hinting that creeping xenophobia in France may have been responsible.

franois_bayrou

Francois Bayrou, of the centrist MoDem party, on Monday said that anti-foreigner sentiment had crept into the election debate and that certain parties “were pointing the finger at people because of their origins and fanning passions in order to gain political capital.”

Police have linked the gun used at the school to the killings of three French soldiers of North African origin in Toulouse and nearby Montauban the previous week, raising speculation that the murders were committed by the same person and that they were racially motivated.

A 24-year-old gunman, still holed up in his besieged Toulouse apartment, has admitted killing seven people in a recent spate of attacks in southwest France, according to Paris's top prosecutor. Follow events as they unfold on France24 live blog.

More on France 24

21 Mar 2012

Ancient Tomorrow Trailer

Ancient Tomorrow is a documentary following a real team of renegade investigators as they travel around the world to search the mysteries surrounding ancient power plants and other ancient technologies.

Kids Adopting “Mean World Syndrome”

Parenting advice to reduce our kids’ worries about a sometimes mean, scary world and curb the “Mean World Syndrome”. Terrorism. War. School shootings. Pedophiles.  Recession. Suicide bombings. Cyberbullying. Kidnappings. Global warming. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Sexual abuse. It’s a scary world out there for us, but how do you think the kids are faring?

meanworld

Let’s face it-we live in frightening times. But if you are feeling a bit jittery about current events or a troubled economy, imagine how our kids must feel. Talk of uncertain times permeates the world around them. Graphic television images of real disasters and terrifying events just reinforce their fears. Think about it. This is the first generation of children who have watched broadcasts of war, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and school massacres in their own living rooms.

Make no mistake: the image of the world as a mean and scary place is affecting our kids’ well-being. In fact, George Gerbner coined the term “Mean World Syndrome” describe a phenomenon when violence-related content in the mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. And that syndrome seems to be one that our kids are catching.

Dr. Michele Borba’s Reality CheckWikipedia

20 Mar 2012

Burma Reforms Yet to Reach Kachin State

The Burmese government has committed serious abuses and blocked humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of displaced civilians since June 2011, in fighting in Burma’s northern Kachin State, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Some 75,000 ethnic Kachin displaced persons and refugees are in desperate need of food, medicine, and shelter, Human Rights Watch said.

Kachin

The 83-page report, “‘Untold Miseries’: Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Burma’s Kachin State,” describes how the Burmese army has attacked Kachin villages, razed homes, pillaged properties, and forced the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Soldiers have threatened and tortured civilians during interrogations and raped women. The army has also used antipersonnel mines and conscripted forced laborers, including children as young as 14, on the front lines.
“The Burmese army is committing unchecked abuses in Kachin State while the government blocks humanitarian aid to those most in need,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Both the army and Kachin rebels need to act to prevent a bad situation for civilians from getting even worse.”

Human Rights Watch

Russia Troops In Syria? Report Claims Military Unit Arrives At Syrian Port

According to ABC News, Russian news reports claim that an Iman tanker carrying an "anti-terror squad" from the Russian Marines has arrived in Syria.

russian troops

Al Arabiya writes that DEBKAfile, an open-source military intelligence website based in Israel, has reported that two Russian ships have arrived in Syria's port of Tartus.

However, ABC also points out that Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has denied the reports.

From the Associated Press: The [Russian defense] ministry said Monday that the navy's Iman oil tanker arrived at Tartus 10 days ago on a mission to assist Russian navy ships on anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden.

The ministry says the tanker is carrying a civilian crew and a team of servicemen protecting it. A ministry spokesman wouldn't say how many troops are on board

Huff Post

Pastor Introduces Presidential candidate Santorum

Religious nut Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry introduces Rick Santorum: "I don't care what the liberals say, I don't care what the naysayers say, this nation was founded as a Christian nation...There is only one God and his name is Jesus. I'm tired of people telling me that I can't say those words.. Listen to me, If you don't love America, If you don't like the way we do things I have one thing to say - GET OUT. We don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Mohammad, we don't worship Allah, we worship God, we worship God's son Jesus Christ."

Right Wing Watch.org

RUIN

oddball animation

19 Mar 2012

Nobel peace prize winner defends law criminalising homosexuality in Liberia

The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are."

President-Ellen-Johnson-Sirleaf

In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve."

Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences.

Blair, on a visit to Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), a charity that aims to strengthen African governments, refused to comment on Sirleaf's remarks.

The Guardian

Sabre Dance

Spike Jones & His City Slickers

The Pork Eating Crusader Patch is a Huge Hit with US Troops in Afghanistan

With tensions at an all time high in Afghanistan following the Koran burnings, the urination video, and the killing of 16 civilians, attention is now falling on a long line of "Infidel" apparel and gear.

pork-patch

Exhausted from how they feel they're being perceived, troops have taken to wearing patches and carrying items that label themselves infidels, and offer translation in local dialect. In the Muslim world an infidel means literally "one without faith" who rejects the central teachings of Islam.

Military.com tracked down Clayton Montgomery at Mil-Spec Monkey, a large online seller of infidel gear, who says his most popular item by far is the "Pork Eating Crusader Patch."

More on businessinsider.com

British Schools ban children making best friends

Teachers are banning schoolkids from having best pals — so they don't get upset by fall-outs. Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups.

uniform-girls

Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey. She added: "I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn't have a best friend and that everyone should play together. "They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend. But it is natural for some children to want a best friend. If they break up, they have to feel the pain because they're learning to deal with it."

The Sun

Heliotropes

Based on the poem by Brian Christian.
langanfilms.com

18 Mar 2012

Hana Shalabi: The Bravest Form of Nonviolence

No sooner had Khader Adnan ended his 66-day life-threatening hunger strike than new urgent concerns are being voiced for Hana Shalabi, another West Bank hunger striker now without food for more than 24 days. Both strikes were directed by Palestinian activists against the abusive use of administrative detention by Israeli West Bank occupying military forces, protesting both the practice of internment without charges or trial and the degrading and physically harsh treatment administered during the arrest, interrogation, and detention process.

Hana al-Shalabi

The case of Hana Shalabi should move even the most hardhearted. She seems a young tender and normal woman. She had previously been held in administrative detention at the HaSharon prison in Israel for a 30 month period between 2009 and 2011, being released in the prisoner exchange of four months ago that freed 1,027 Palestinians and the lone Israeli soldier captive, Gilad Shalit. Since her release, she has been trying to recover from the deep sense of estrangement she experienced in prison, and rarely left her home or the company of her family. As she was returning to normalcy, she was re-arrested in an abusive manner, which allegedly included a strip-search by a male soldier. On February 16, 2012, the day of this renewal of her administrative detention, Hana Shalabi indicated her resolve to start a hunger strike to protest her own treatment and to demand an end of administrative detention now relied upon by Israel to hold at least 309 Palestinian in prison. Her parents have been denied visitation rights, she has been placed in solitary confinement, and her health has deteriorated to the point of concern for her life.

Foreign Policy Journal - UFree Network

La France brûle

Marijane Miracle

Worlds in Collision

Immanuel Velikovsky (1895 – 1979) was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Earlier, he played a role in the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and was a respected psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Bible) to argue that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. In positioning Velikovsky among catastrophists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, and Johann Gottlieb Radlof, the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier noted ". . . Velikovsky is not so much the first of the new catastrophists . . . ; he is the last in a line of traditional catastrophists going back to mediaeval times and probably earlier." Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1100 – 750 BCE) and reconciling biblical history with mainstream archaeology and Egyptian chronology.

In general, Velikovsky's theories have been ignored or vigorously rejected by the academic community. Nonetheless, his books often sold well and gained an enthusiastic support in lay circles, often fuelled by claims of unfair treatment for Velikovsky by orthodox academia. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair".

Wikipedia - The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive

17 Mar 2012

Forced castrations in Dutch Roman Catholic care

Underage sexual abuse victims were castrated in Dutch Roman Catholic psychiatric wards in the 1950s, according to the Rotterdam-based newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Castration was performed on young men who were thought to be homosexual, but also as a means of punishing those who blew the whistle on abusers, the paper quotes sources as saying.

misdienaars

NRC discovered proof of the forced castration of one young man and strong evidence that at least ten other abuse victims were subjected to the removal of their testicles. The proof includes court documents, medical records, letters from lawyers and private correspondence.

According to the paper, the practice was reported in 2010 to the Deetman Commission which completed its investigation of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church last December. The commission, led by former cabinet minister Wim Deetman of the Christian Democrat party (CDA), made no mention of the castration of abuse victims in its final report. NRC also writes that a prominent Dutch politician tried to secure a royal pardon for Catholic brothers convicted of sexual abuse at Harreveld, a former boarding school in the Netherlands. The politician was Vic Marijnen, who later became Dutch prime minister.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Spanish baby-snatching investigators accuse 80-year-old nun

An 80-year-old nun has become the first person to be accused of baby snatching in the scandal over the trafficking of newborns in Spanish hospitals. Sister María Gómez has been formally named as a suspect in the investigation into one of more than 1,500 cases of suspected illegal trafficking of babies who were stolen, sold or given away by adoption over four decades until the 1980s.

The_Stolen_Children_Of_Spain_Franco_dictatorship

Last year, as hundreds of alleged cases of baby snatching began to emerge, Torres's other two daughters set out to find their lost sister. In July a TV programme put the families in contact and paid for DNA tests. Campaigners are demanding a government inquiry into the scandal. They claim that networks of doctors, nurses and nuns who stole and sometimes sold babies were allowed to operate freely in many parts of Spain up until the early 1980s.

A campaign that started with an alleged 261 victims in January 2011 has since seen more than 1,500 complaints lodged at court houses around the country. It appears that what began as a system for removing babies from families deemed politically dangerous by the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco allegedly evolved into an illicit business that targeted single mothers and the poor. In one Madrid clinic where Gómez worked it is alleged that doctors kept a baby's corpse to show to mothers as proof that their child had died.

More on The Guardian

Jimmy´s Gang

Parov Stelar Website or facebook

Kony 2012

Charlie Brooker

16 Mar 2012

Ain't Too Proud to Beg

The Temptations 1967

Israel added Uranium to orange juice

Juice laced with uranium is just one of many clinical trials allegedly conducted at Israel's Negev nuclear plant, claims investigative journalist Yossi Melman.
Melman has accused the plant's management of forcing its workers to take part in life-threatening experiments for the sake of nuclear developments. They also claim the government and the military are involved in a cover-up of the tests. It's taken a decade for them to speak out, but workers at Israel's nuclear reactor facility claim their managers gave them uranium to drink -- as part of an experiment. With no medical supervision or explanation of the risks, the workers now want compensation.

RT.com

Google Faces New Privacy Probes

Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google Inc. for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.'s Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

google-is-watching

The investigations—which span U.S. federal and state agencies, as well as a pan-European effort led by France—could embroil Google in years of legal battles and result in hefty fines for privacy violations. The Journal in February reported that Google was using special computer code to install tiny tracking files, or "cookies," on some people's computers, iPhones and iPads, even if the devices were set to block this kind of tracking.

WSJ.com

Agnes Hernandez, Mexican Transgender Activist, Brutally Murdered

Nearly 2000 individuals congregated outside a civic plaza in Puebla, Mexico on Tuesday, demanding justice for slain Mexican transgender activist Agnés Torres Hernández, whose body was found on Friday by neighbours who reported the crime to local police.

Agnés Torres Hernández

Mexican Attorney General is considering the investigation of Torres' murder as a hate crime, according to the newspaper El Universal (in Spanish).

She was last seen on Friday night when she left her home to attend a party in Chipilo, a small town in the state of Puebla. She was found clothed only in underwear, a blouse with suspenders and a brown jacket on Saturday in a ditch outside the city of Puebla. Her throat had been slashed and their were several burn marks across her body.

Torres, a 28 year-old psychologist and educator, is remembered as an activist and ardent defender of human rights in Mexico's LBGT community. She was an important figure in the strive for acceptance for the transgender community in her native country.

Huffington Post - Justice for Agnes Torres: Slain human rights activist

Feel the Force

Yoda Remixed by Melodysheep

15 Mar 2012

Pussy Riot members charged with hooliganism, face 7 years in jail

Two members of the now notorious "Pussy Riot" punk band have been charged with hooliganism.

­The women face up to seven years in jail for their performance of an anti-Putin song in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Central Moscow. Both detained young women are the mothers of young children. Late last month, four members of Pussy Riot ran into the cathedral in mini-dresses and masks, and performed a song entitled Holy Shit – right at the altar. Two members were subsequently tracked down and arrested. Police opened a criminal case on charges of hooliganism, which could result in up to seven years behind bars. 

More on RT and Reuters

Dick Cheney avoids “dangerous” Canada

The former US vice president Dick Cheney had planned to speak April 24 in Toronto. However, recovered memories of September protests convinced Cheney that "personal safety" was at stake in Canada, and both he and daughter Elizabeth will stay on the safer side of the border.

"On the advice of security, they were worried that quite simply Canada is just not a friendly country to them," said Ryan Ruppert, the president of the promotions company that booked Cheney for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. "God forbid there was ever an emergency" he added, referring to Cheney's heart problems. Cheney, a former heavy smoker, relies on a battery-powered heart pump and has no pulse.

Cheney's turnabout should satisfy the StopWar Coalition, which led the 2011 protests. "We hope to set an example that Cheney doesn't see Canada as a safe haven," co-chair Derrick O'Keefe told the Globe and Mail at the time.

dicky

Not that Cheney isn't used to protests in his backyard. His book tour for "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir" has had Amnesty International on his back in D.C. and New York City, Code Pink in San Francisco, Illinois Coalition Against Torture in Chicago, former vets at the Nixon Library in Southern California.

Canadian critics as high up as Parliament, though, have accused Cheney of being a war criminal, for advocating tactics such as water boarding and sleep deprivation.

The Upshot (Yahoo! News)

Goldman Sachs director quits 'morally bankrupt' Wall Street bank

Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs has suffered a severe blow to its reputation after one of its bankers announced his resignation in the New York Times by declaring his employer "morally bankrupt". Questions were immediately raised about the relationship between the firm and its clients – whom the departing employee, Greg Smith, said were described as "muppets" by his superiors.

GoldmanSachs

Smith, who was based in London, made a savage attack on the culture of Goldman, which only two years ago was damaged by another London-based banker, Fabrice Tourre, who described creating "Frankenstein" products that showed scant regard for the needs of the firm's clients. Smith's public resignation letter made reference to the Tourre affair, as well as to the infamous description of Goldman in Rolling Stone magazine as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity".

More on The Guardian

14 Mar 2012

Kapitali$t

kapitalist

White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

The story of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal colonisation of central Africa, turning it into a vast rubber-harvesting labour camp in which millions died.

Belgian television will show the BBC documentary "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death," about Belgian King Leopold II's reign of terror in his private Congo colony in 1885-1908. The documentary, hardly the stuff of controversy anywhere else, almost didn't make it onto the airwaves here.
Louis Michel, the Belgian foreign minister, and the Royal Palace both pressured state television not to broadcast "White King." The Royal Palace expressed its "concern" about the documentary's "historical accuracy." "This is a partisan work and its thesis is completely one-sided," Mr. Michel said. "The film is a biased diatribe."

congo

As a compromise the state television documentary was "put into the right context" by Belgian "specialists." Jan Van den Berghe of Belgian television says: "We have had the facts qualified by Belgian specialists such as the curator of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren."
The blood-stained history of the former Congo Free State isn't much in dispute anywhere except in Belgium, where it is seldom mentioned. The CFS was a private colony of Leopold II's until 1908 when he sold it to Belgium. He turned the CFS into a labor camp, laying the foundation of his immense personal fortune. His managers on the ground -- the king never set foot in the Congo himself -- used mutilation and killing to get the natives to bring in the rubber. Often, wives and children were taken hostage without food or water to speed up the work. In the 23 years of CFS rule, about half the Congo's 20 million inhabitants perished.

Red Ice Creations

British armed police arrest Muslim woman with rucksack

Dressed in a Muslim veil and surrounded from all angles by armed officers, this was the astonishing scene yesterday as a tranquil seaside resort was plunged into a full-scale terror alert.

woman without bomb

Scores of officers carrying sub-machine guns and wearing full protective uniform descended on Saltburn-by-the-Sea, near Middlesbrough, at 11am after reports that a woman had a bomb in her bag. During a dramatic stand-off with police negotiators, the woman – said to be local to the area – was ordered to place the rucksack on the ground.

In the tense moments that followed, a police helicopter hovered overhead as she was then told to drop to her knees while keeping her hands up. As negotiators continued to talk to her, she was instructed to get to her feet and walk away from the rucksack.

Mail OnlineIndependent - The Sun

13 Mar 2012

Kony 2012 Scam

What is wrong with the Sun?

March 12, 2012 - thesuntoday.org believe the black spherical anomaly is more than likely a prominence cavity.

St Petersburg bans 'homosexual propaganda'

Twenty years after homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia, anti-gay legislation is making a rapid comeback, with St Petersburg becoming the latest city to ban "homosexual propaganda". The law, signed by St Petersburg's governor last week, came amid increasing calls by leading Russian politicians and Orthodox Church officials to bring anti-gay laws to the federal level. Dmitry Pershin, head of the Church's youth council, renewed those calls on Mondayafter praising the St Petersburg law for "helping to protect children from information manipulation by minorities that promote sodomy".

The law's content is vague – it criminalises "public action aimed at propagandising sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism, and transgenderism among minors". Those charged with breaking the law will be fined from 5,000 (£108) to 500,000 roubles.

gay rights russia

Gay rights activists say the law is part of a wider government initiative, supported by the strictly conservative Orthodox Church, to crack down on public protest, civic activity and the liberalisation of society.

"The tendency in Russia is toward limiting freedom of speech and freedom to gather, targeting any group that somehow stands up for its rights," said Yury Gavrikov, the head of Equality, one of several gay rights groups in St Petersburg. "No one knows how the law will work," Gavrikov said. "The main goal seems to be limiting the rights of those who engage in social activity. But in its widest sense, it can mean limiting exhibits, plays, film showings – cultural activities."

After Ryazan, Arkhangelsk and Kostroma, St Petersburg is the fourth city to pass such a law. Its adoption in Russia's most European city and one with a relatively vibrant gay scene has sparked an international outcry. All Out, a global gay rights group, has called on people to avoid travelling to the city until the law is repealed.

The Guardian

12 Mar 2012

In school we are led to believe that we are all living in an ideal vision of what society should be...

This video is actually about how government-run schooling contributed to the rise of socialism, imperialism and eventually fascism in Germany between the 1890s and 1940s. Critical Thinking Question: In school we are led to believe that we are all living in an ideal vision of what society should be... But who's vision is it? And what were their ideals? 

Speechless

We are speechless. Health professionals in the Netherlands use a professional interpreter 166.000 times a year, seeing patients who aren't competent enough in Dutch.
After 35 years, the Dutch ministery of Health stopped paying for professional interpreter services in health care.

wijzijnsprakeloos.nl

Israelis build the world's biggest detention centre

Israel is to begin construction soon on a vast detention facility in the Negev desert to house the thousands of immigrants that cross illegally into Israel from Egypt every year. Human rights groups fear that the detention centre, the largest of its kind in the world, with a capacity to hold 8,000 migrants, will turn into a festering refugee camp, and deprive those escaping persecution at home of their rights to seek asylum in Israel.

african-refugees-israel

The project was approved by Israel's right-wing government 18 months ago, but many Israelis are uncomfortable about spurning asylum seekers from war-torn African countries given their own history as a nation of refugees. "We'll do all it takes to provide reasonably humane conditions," an unnamed defence official told Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "We all wish we didn't have to build such a facility. But we're in a certain situation due to certain circumstances, and we need a facility to address these needs."

Kziot

The facility, which will be built on the grounds of Ketziot prison near Israel's southern border, will accommodate migrants, including women and children, for up to three years before they are deported to their country of origin; those from "enemy" states, such as Sudan, who cannot be repatriated, could be detained indefinitely.

The Independent

Living in the grey area: African refugees in Israel (AIC)

Nicolas Sarkozy courts right-wing voters with Schengen zone threat

Nicolas Sarkozy has stepped up his courtship of hard-right voters by threatening to pull France out of the EU's borderless, passport-free Schengen zone unless Brussels clamps down on illegal immigration.

Nicolas-Sarkozy-waves

Clench-fisted and dripping with sweat, the French president addressed some 30,000 flag-waving supporters at a vast, highly theatrical rally in a hangar on the northern outskirts of Paris on Sunday. Taking to the stage to a thundering, action-movie-style soundtrack, he gave a demonstration of his trademark political showmanship with a hardline speech on securing the borders of Fortress Europe. He said tightening controls was the "only way to avoid the implosion of Europe".

The rally was seen by many as Sarkozy's last chance to fire up his support-base in a faltering campaign for re-election. He is struggling to reverse the trend in the opinion polls which for months have consistently shown the Socialist frontrunner François Hollande easily beating him in the final presidential vote in May.

Sarkozy has been criticised by political opponents for shamelessly courting supporters of the extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen by proposing a referendum on illegal immigrants, complaining there were "too many foreigners" in France and raising the spectre of unsuspecting French people eating halal meat without knowing it.

The Guardian

Nicolas-Sarkozy

Sarkozy is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa a Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah, who is of Greek Jewish and French (Catholic) origin. They were married on 8 February 1950 and divorced in 1959. Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. "What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood", he said later. WikipediaMore about his father on The Telegraph

ODESSA and the Fourth Reich

If you're not familiar with the Vatican ratlines, ODESSA, or the Rise of the Fourth Reich then this video will lead you right up to the rabbit hole. Be careful you don't fall in.
If you ARE familiar with the organizations that were formed around helping SS officers and other high Nazi functionaries to escape JUSTICE after the war, then this video will be equally entertaining if you like taking note of omissions and distortions.

The ODESSA (from Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen) on Wikipedia - Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II, more on Wikipedia.