New Year

New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count is incremented. In many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner.^[1] The New Year of the Gregorian calendar, today in worldwide use, falls on 1 January (New Year's Day), as was the case with the Roman calendar. There are numerous calendars that remain in regional use that calculate the New Year differently.

The order of months in the Roman calendar was January to December since King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius. It was only relatively recently that 1 January again became the first day of the year in Western culture. Until 1751 in England and Wales (and all British dominions) the new year started on 25 March – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days (the change to 1 January took place in 1600 in Scotland).^[2] Since then, 1 January has been the first day of the year. During the Middle Ages several other days were variously taken as the beginning of the calendar year (1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, 25 December).^{[citation needed][where?]} In many countries, such as the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and the UK, 1 January is a national holiday.

Baby New Year 1905 chases old 1904 into the history books in this cartoon by John T. McCutcheon.

For information about the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar and the effect on the dating of historical events etc., see Old Style and New Style dates.

With the expansion of Western culture to many other places in the world during recent centuries, the Gregorian calendar has been adopted by many other countries as the official calendar, and the 1 January date of New Year has become global, even in countries with their own New Year celebrations on other days (such as Israel, China and India). In the culture of Latin America there are a variety of traditions and superstitions surrounding these dates^{[clarification needed]} as omens for the coming year

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baddest Blues

Beth Hart

Israeli troops fire on Palestinian farmers

International activists have been accompanying Palestinian farmers to their lands near the separation barrier between the territories occupied in 1948 and the Gaza Strip. We have noticed, in recent days, an increase in the presence of the Zionist occupation forces. A few days ago, we felt more drones and F-16, then Jeeps and bulldozers began to move near the barrier more often. On Sunday, 22nd December, two Jeeps were stationed in front of the area where farmers were seeding and tractors plowing. They fired shots into the air and one the the ground. This video shows the last episode.

Olive, orange and lemon trees grew in these fields until the second Intifada. Then bulldozers and tanks of the occupying forces uprooted them. After “Operation Cast Lead,” the no-go zone was established at 300 meters, but aggression towards Palestinians was not limited to that area. According to UN reports, high-risk areas in some places reach two kilometers from the barrier, and included 35% of all arable land in Gaza.

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Pope Francis 'Shocked' By Gay Adoption Bill

Pope Francis reportedly was "shocked" by a bill that would allow gay couples to adopt children in Malta. Maltese Bishop Charles Scicluna told the Times Of Malta that he spoke with Pope Francis about the bill and the pope encouraged him to speak out against it.

The Holy See's reaction may come as a surprise to those who have viewed him as progressive on gay rights. LGBT magazine "The Advocate" even named him their person of the year, citing his comments about homosexuals. "Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" he told reporters in Italian in July.

Despite his July comments, the pope has a long history of being against gay rights. He has come out strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and called it "a destructive attack" on God's plan.

Huff. Post

Was Alan Turing Murdered By the Security Services?

Turing is generally believed to have been committed suicide following his conviction and chemical castration. However, the original inquest into his death was perfunctory and inadequate. Although it is said that he died from eating an apple laced with cyanide, the allegedly fatal apple was never tested for cyanide. Moreover, he was in an upbeat mood at the time of his death and making plans for the future - not the typical profile of a person who takes their own life.

A new inquiry is long overdue, even if only to dispel any doubts about the true cause of his death - including speculation that he was murdered by the security services.
Although there is no evidence that Turing was killed by state agents, the fact that this possibility has never been investigated is a major failing. Even if the security services did not kill him, did they pressure him and did this pressure contribute to his suicide?

Huffington Post

The Real Christmas Story

Edward Snowden's Christmas Message

Channel 4 UK/Praxis Films

Happy Yule

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time") is a Pagan religious festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples, later being absorbed into and equated with the Christian festival of Christmas.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Breaking the Code: Biography of Alan Turing

A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of the digital computer and one of the key figures in the breaking of the Enigma code, used by the Germans to send secret orders to their U-boats in World War II. Turing was also a homosexual in Britain at a time when this was illegal, besides being a security risk.

Code-Breaker Alan Turing Granted Posthumous Royal Pardon For 'Homosexual Activity' - Huff. Post

Pussy Riot Members Released From Prison

The third member of the Russian punk bank Pussy Riot has been released from custody following an amnesty law passed by parliament. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova left the prison colony in the eastern Siberian city Krasnoyarsk on Monday, hours after another band member, Maria Alekhina, was released in another region.

The amnesty that enabled their release is seen as the Kremlin's attempt to soothe criticism of Russia's human rights record ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February.

Huffington Post

Roseanne Breaks the Set

Abby Martin interviews television legend Roseanne Barr, discussing everything from Saudi Arabia's connection to 9/11, to her VIVID porn pitch, to her next US presidential run.

Ugandan anti-gay bill includes life imprisonment for certain acts

Ugandan lawmakers Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from rights campaigners who called it the worst such legislation in the world. When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it was widely condemned for including the death penalty, but that was removed from the revised version passed by parliament.

Instead it sets life imprisonment as the penalty for a homosexual act in which one of the partners is infected with HIV, for sex with minors and the disabled, and for repeated sexual offenses among consenting adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s parliament. The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously, with no one voicing an objection. President Yoweri Museveni must sign the bill within 30 days for it to become law. Although in the past he spoke disparagingly of gays, in recent times Museveni has softened his position on the matter, saying he is only opposed to gays who appear to “promote” themselves.

The Washington Post

Mossad trained Mandela

Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who passed away earlier this month, received sabotage and weapons training by Mossad operatives in 1962, a report by the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed on Friday. During the training, which took place a few months before Mandela was arrested and jailed for over 27 years, he reportedly expressed interest in the tactics of Israel's pre-state underground military organization the Haganah.

According to documents of the Israel State Archives labeled "Top Secret," Mandela was trained by Mossad operatives in Ethiopia where he stayed while attempting to garner support from African leaders for the armed wing of the underground African National Congress (ANC). At the time, the operatives were unaware of Mandela's true identity as he was going by a fake name. In a letter sent to Israel's Foreign Ministry about two months after Mandela was arrested in South Africa, Mossad agents told of a man who called himself David Mobsari.

“As you may recall, three months ago we discussed the case of a trainee who arrived at the [Israeli] embassy in Ethiopia by the name of David Mobsari who came from Rhodesia,” the letter said. “The aforementioned received training from the Ethiopians [code for Israeli embassy staff, almost certainly Mossad agents] in judo, sabotage and light weapons.”

The letter also said that the man "showed an interest in the methods of the Haganah and other Israeli underground movements," and that he "was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel, and gave the impression of being an intellectual." "The staff tried to make him into a Zionist,” the operative added. “In conversations with him, he expressed socialist worldviews and at times created the impression that he leaned toward communism,” the letter continued, adding that the man who called himself David Mobsari was the same man who had been arrested in South Africa.

More on i24news

Also see: Israel's immoral alliance with South Africa

Head Doctor Says A Rich Kid Isn't Guilty BECAUSE He's Rich. Reporter Says What We're All Thinking.

This whole "affluenza" thing has thrown us all for a loop. For those who don't know, 16-year-old Ethan Couch was sentenced to 10 years of probation after driving drunk, killing four people and injuring nine. The excuse? A psychologist (being questioned by Anderson below) said he suffered from affluenza — being a rich kid and thus having no consequences in life and not realizing the severity of his actions.

Sure, psychologists the world over have said sentencing in this case is atypical, but the reasoning behind it is something that we as a people need to put up for examination. The whole situation is pretty absurd. And if you apply this same logic to a poor person: "I stole a loaf of bread because I was so hungry I didn't realize the consequences of my actions," that poor person would be in jail right now.

upworthy.com

Jesus & Santa Are White

Pope Francis says he’s not a Marxist – but knows lots of good people who are

Pope Francis has been forced to defend his economic and social ideologies after prominent conservatives accused him of coming forward with “pure Marxism”. Speaking to an Italian newspaper today, the pope described Marxism as “wrong”, but refused to condemn people who hold left-wing views.

The comments came after the Pontiff railed against the “new tyranny” of unfettered capitalism in an 84-page document published last month. The “apostolic exhortation” sets out the terms by which a pope intends to run the Catholic Church – yet it was slammed by the outspoken conservative US talk show host Rush Limbaugh.  Mr Limbaugh, who is not a member of the church, said the comments went “beyond Catholicism” and were “purely political”. He claimed parts of the document were “pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope”, and suggested that someone else must have written the papal document for him.

Today, Pope Francis said: “Marxist ideology is wrong. But in my life I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don't feel offended.”

The Independent

Kim Jong-un orders execution of uncle - now it emerges that victim's wife was involved in decision to execute him

The final decision to execute Jang Song Thaek, last seen publicly being frog-marched by armed guards from a special party session last week, was probably made by Kim, his nephew, and Kim Kyong-hui, his wife, according to several sources.

News of Jang's execution was accompanied by a string of extraordinary insults, branding him a "traitor for all ages" and "despicable human scum" who was "worse than a dog."  A 2,700-word state media report of his trial in a special military tribunal on Thursday said he had admitted to plotting insurrection and a string of other crimes. "He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009." The report said Jang led a "dissolute, depraved life" and had squandered at least 4.6 million euro from state coffers on gambling. He was executed, probably by firing squad, immediately after the tribunal.

Jang's killing is the highest-level purge since Kim Jong-un inherited power from his father Kim Jong-il in 2011 and has left opinion divided on what it means.  Many experts say Kim had no choice but to remove his powerful but corrupt uncle if he wanted to graduate from young pretender to dictator    "He had to go," says veteran Pyongyang watcher Andrei Lankov.  "To really start running the country Kim must get rid of the old guard.  They are so much older; they are in their sixties and seventies and he is in his thirties."

But even if Jang's removal was operationally logical, the violence of his public humiliation and disposal was highly unusual, accepts Lankov. "One possibility is that he wanted to terrify everyone, to show that he is young but someone to be afraid of, to show that nobody is immune," he says.  "It might also reflect his personal animosity to Jang. He did not like the man, who probably bossed him around."

More on The Independent

Robert Levinson, American Missing In Iran, Was Working For CIA

In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business.

But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts — with no authority to run spy operations — paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world's darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.

The CIA was slow to respond to Levinson's disappearance and spent the first several months denying any involvement. When Congress eventually discovered what happened, one of the biggest scandals in recent CIA history erupted. Behind closed doors, three veteran analysts were forced out of the agency and seven others were disciplined. The CIA paid Levinson's family $2.5 million to pre-empt a revealing lawsuit, and the agency rewrote its rules restricting how analysts can work with outsiders.

But even after the White House, FBI and State Department officials learned of Levinson's CIA ties, the official story remained unchanged. "He's a private citizen involved in private business in Iran," the State Department said in 2007, shortly after Levinson's disappearance.

More on Huffington Post

In March 2007, the FBI posted a reward for information about the kidnapping with a computerized depiction of what Levinson may look like after being held for 5 years.

See AboveTopSecret: New Robert Levinson Photos seem fishy...

Atheism Punishable By Death In 13 Countries

Atheists living in 13 countries risk being condemned to death, just for the beliefs (or non-belief) according to a new, comprehensive report from the International Humanist and Ethical Union out on Tuesday. All 13 countries identified by the study are Muslim majority.

The countries that impose these penalties are Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. With the exception of Pakistan, those countries all allow for capital punishment against apostasy, i.e., the renunciation of a particular religion. Pakistan, meanwhile, imposes the death penalty for blasphemy, which can obviously include disbelief in God. 

The study's interactive map gives a good, broad, overview of which countries punish apostasy and blasphemy by death (black), with prison time (red), or place legal restrictions on (non-)religious speech and thought (yellow):

Business Insider

Google Wants Microphones In Your Ceiling & Microchips In Your Head

Google engineering director Scott Huffman says that within five years people will have microphones attached to their ceilings and microchips embedded in their brains in order to perform quicker internet searches. In an interview with the London Independent, Huffman said that Google was working towards a concept based around microphones hanging from the ceiling that would respond to verbal queries.

“Like a great personal assistant, it will interrupt you and say ‘ you’ve got to leave now’. It will bring you the information you want,” said Huffman, adding that “five years from now….Google will answer you the same way a person would answer.” When challenged on the likelihood of such a system being vulnerable to NSA wiretapping, Huffman glibly responded that people should just trust Google (a company that allowed the NSA to mine data from its cloud network “at will”) to safeguard their information.

“I could ask my Google ‘assistant’ where we should have lunch, that serves French food and isn’t too expensive? Google will go ‘Ok, we’ll go to that place’ and when I get in my car it should already be navigating to that restaurant. We’re really excited by the idea of multiple devices being able to talk to each other,” said Huffman. “Google believes it can ultimately fulfil people’s data needs by sending results directly to microchips implanted into its user’s brains,” states the report, a concept which Huffman welcomes.

Infowars

#Euromaidan

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A Bar In Amsterdam

Katzenjammer

British MPs' pay rise

David Cameron and Ed Miliband will face embarrassment this week when it is announced that MPs will be paid an annual salary of £74,000 from 2015 despite their calls for "cheaper politics". The independent parliamentary standards authority, Ipsa, is to reveal its decision to increase salaries by 11%. (The Observer)

The coalition of millionaires

David Cameron’s coalition Government may have adopted ‘fairness’ as one of its defining slogans, but his team of Ministers has been drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the financial elite – leading to accusations that politics is once again becoming the preserve of the wealthy. Of the 29 Ministers entitled to attend Cabinet meetings, 23 have assets and investments estimated to be worth more than £1million. (Daily Mail - may 2010)

Muse - Live at Austin City Limits

10/11/13 Zilker Park, Austin, Texas, USA

Nelson Mandela - A Tribute To Madiba!

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela went on to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island. Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as tata (Xhosa: father). Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four decades, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Wikipedia

We Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists

Take a journey into the movement that is Anonymous..

Banksy a Paris

Back To The Roots

The Surveillance State "It's cool to wear the Mark of the Beast"

Hey kids, wear electronic tattoos. Take ingestible "authentication" tokens. Isn't it cool?

Brasscheck TV

Israel to demolish Bedouin village for national-religious Jewish town

The Israeli government voted on Sunday to raze a Bedouin-Palestinian village of 500 citizens to clear space for a Jewish town, prompting yet more protests against Israel’s unabated policy of settlement construction.

The government ministers moved to evict residents from the Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran in accordance with the terms of the so-called “Prawer plan," which calls for the resettlement of large numbers of Bedouin villages.
The Bedouins have been offered alternative sites to which to relocate, but they plan to hold protests against what they claim is “discriminatory treatment by the state,” as quoted by Haaretz, the Israeli daily.
Liberal Israeli publications have harshly denounced the treatment of the Bedouins, who are being displaced by the very military that some of them proudly served.
“These are Israeli citizens – citizens in a ‘democratic’ state, some of whom have even served the country militarily – who are now having their homes destroyed,” David Harris-Gershon wrote in his blog for the Tikkun Daily.
The Israeli government’s reasoning for demolishing Umm al-Hiran is that the villagers never received ‘official’ zoning rights to settle the land. However, critics say Israel refused to give a stamp of approval to the village, despite ordering villagers to settle the site in 1956.
Other commentators point to the ‘symbolic location’ of the Bedouin village, situated as it is in the Negev Desert, described by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion as “Zionism’s final frontier.”

Full story on RT News

Noam Chomsky: America Hates Its Poor

An article that recently came out in Rolling Stone, titled “Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,” by Matt Taibbi, asserts that the government is afraid to prosecute powerful bankers, such as those running HSBC. Taibbi says that there’s “an arrestable class and an unarrestable class.”  What is your view on the current state of class war in the U.S.?

Well, there’s always a class war going on. The United States, to an unusual extent, is a business-run society, more so than others. The business classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized.

We don’t use the term “working class” here because it’s a taboo term. You’re supposed to say “middle class,” because it helps diminish the understanding that there’s a class war going on.

It’s true that there was a one-sided class war, and that’s because the other side hadn’t chosen to participate, so the union leadership had for years pursued a policy of making a compact with the corporations, in which their workers, say the autoworkers—would get certain benefits like fairly decent wages, health benefits and so on. But it wouldn’t engage the general class structure. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why Canada has a national health program and the United States doesn’t. The same unions on the other side of the border were calling for health care for everybody. Here they were calling for health care for themselves and they got it. Of course, it’s a compact with corporations that the corporations can break anytime they want, and by the 1970s they were planning to break it and we’ve seen what has happened since.

This is an excerpt from the just released second edition of Noam Chomsky’s  “Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity,” edited by Greg Ruggiero and published by  Zuccotti Park Press.

More on Alternet

The Goal Of The U.S. Government Is To Eliminate ALL Privacy Globally!

Extensive interview with Glenn Greenwald who leaked the Edward Snowden NSA documents.

The American Holocaust

The powerful and hard-hitting documentary, American Holocaust, is quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million Jews, and the American Holocaust which claimed, according to conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.

Brasscheck TV

Equality is impossible because some people's IQs are too low

Boris Johnson displayed "careless elitism" when advocating that more should be done to help the intelligent wealth-creators of society, and that Johnson was being "fairly unpleasant" by talking about people as if they were a breed of dog.

What so offended Nick Clegg was Johnson's description of the innate intellectual inequality of humans, especially those "of our species" with the lowest IQ scores. When he delivered the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture on Wednesday evening, Johnson said that humans were far from being equal in "raw ability".

"Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent… have an IQ above 130," Johnson told his audience.

More on The Independent

les leçons c'est ''tous les mêmes''

Stromae - Les leçons c'est 'tous les mêmes' leçon n° 24 / Lessons are "all the same"
http://www.stromae.net

"The Problem is Civil Obedience"

Matt Damon, a lifelong friend of Howard Zinn and his family, read excerpts from a speech Howard Zinn gave in 1970 as part of a debate on civil disobedience.

This performance was part of "The People Speak, Live!" with Matt Damon and Lupe Fiasco at the Metro in Chicago, on January 31, 2012, produced by Voices of a People's History (peopleshistory.us) in collaboration with Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival.

Learn more at VoicesofaPeoplesHistory

The Carlyle Connection

What About Dick?

Politician Sledgehammers Homeless Shopping Carts

Armed with a sledgehammer and a self-righteous mission, State Rep. Tom Brower (D.) walks his district's streets and parks looking for the nefarious shopping carts used by homeless people...
Read More At Huffington Post

JFK: The Case for Conspiracy

McDonald's Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full

The latest friendly advice from McDonald’s to their low-wage workers includes tips on how to better handle stress--as well as how to fill yourself up better with dinner.  The fast-food corporation instructs workers that breaking food “into pieces” will keep you full.

The advice was published on the “McResource” website, meant to give tips to fast-food workers.  While you need to be a McDonald’s worker to log-in to the website, details of the advice have been publicized by the group Low Pay Is Not OK, a union-backed group seeking to organize low-wage workers at McDonald’s.  The effort is part of the larger campaign to push for living wages, benefits and the right to organize among low-wage workers across a variety of industries.

A video published by Low Pay Is Not OK shows the website’s advice to workers.  One piece of advice given is for workers to take two vacations a year--an impossible task given that many employees work two low-wage jobs.  It tells workers to “sing away stress” because it “can lower your blood pressure.”  And it tells McDonald’s employees to break “food into pieces,” which “results in eating less and still feeling full.”

Alternet

Normalizing the idea of presidential assassination

The week before Kennedy was assassinated the news media, national and local to Dallas, went into overdrive about two subjects:

1. How many people hated the Kennedys and wanted to do them harm

2. How "reckless" Kennedy was in not strictly following security protocols (a similar charge was made about his son's adherence to aviation safety and who died in a highly mysterious plane accident just as he was about to enter political life.)

Just hours before Kennedy was murdered in cold blood, this bizarre script was read in the two and a half minutes before Kennedy took the stage for a breakfast talk in Fort Worth. Just think of how strange this is. Who would write such a script? Who would order it to be read before a presidential appearance? Just a few hours after this live newscast Kennedy was assassinated by a "lone nut" just like the one described in the local Texas newsfeed.

brasschecktv.com

Dairy industry pushing to hide aspartame in new definition of 'milk'

In an effort to get more children to drink processed milk, the conventional dairy industry is pushing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the very definition of milk to allow for the discreet addition of toxic artificial sweeteners like aspartame. According to a petition filed in the Federal Register earlier this year, the dairy industry's goal is to change the "standard of identity" for milk so that it can be further modified and sweetened to attract more young consumers.

Whether it is due to increasing allergies or a simple distaste for its processed flavor, conventional milk sales have dropped some 25 percent in the U.S. since 1975, and consumption patterns are continuing to dwindle all across the country. So the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association are petitioning to simply redefine the word "milk" to include other things like artificially flavored and sweetened chocolate and strawberry milk beverages.

Learn more at NaturalNews.com

Someone Should Sh*t in Sarah Palin's Mouth

Former Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) punched her way back into the news this week by invoking slavery in remarks about American public debt, then doubling down on the remarks in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. On Friday afternoon's Martin Bashir program on MSNBC, host Martin Bashir delivered a scathing attack on Palin, while attempting to contextualize the horror of slavery for her by detailing some of the cruelty recorded in the diary of Thomas Thistlewood, a British overseer at a Jamaican sugar plantation. Bashir concluded his commentary by suggesting Palin is deserving of the same treatment.

Banksy

banksy.co.uk

Caesar's Messiah

Jeremy Hammond Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison

Convicted hacker Jeremy Hammond was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for stealing internal emails from the global intelligence firm Stratfor.

Shuffling into courtroom with long, wavy hair and a wide smile, Hammond shouted "what's up, my brothers" to a courtroom packed with scores of supporters. When it was his turn to speak to the court, he claimed in a defiant sentencing statement that his acts were meant to expose the truth and that he hacked foreign government websites at the behest of an FBI informant.

"The acts of civil disobedience and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and equality that have guided my life," Hammond said in a prepared statement provided to HuffPost Live. "I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?"

Hammond, 28, has a lengthy criminal record for his protests both online and off against targets like the 2004 Republican National Convention and pro-Iraq War activists. But stealing Stratfor files as part of the online hacking collective Anonymous gave him a new level of notoriety.

Huffington Post

The Presidents

Police say spy in bag died by accident

A spy whose naked, decomposing body was found inside a padlocked gym bag at his apartment likely died in an accident with no one else involved, British police said Wednesday - a tentative conclusion that is unlikely to calm conspiracy theories around the bizarre case.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said the death of Gareth Williams, whose remains were found inside a bag in his bathtub in August 2010, was "most probably" an accident.But he conceded that the facts could not be established beyond a reasonable doubt, and Williams' family members said they still believe he was killed.

Williams, a cyberwarfare expert, worked for Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping service and was attached to the overseas espionage agency MI6 when he died.

AP

Detox

Around the world a growing movement of people are using their creativity, design skills and purchasing power to demand fashion without pollution. United by a shared belief that the clothes we wear should carry a story we can be proud of, activists, bloggers, designers, scientists and models have been able to convince big brands including Zara, Mango, Valentino, UNIQLO and H&M to commit to toxic-free fashion. There is still a long way to go, but our successes so far prove that when we work together, big brands are forced to stand up and deliver.

GreenpeaceVideo

After Super-Typhoon Haiyan

After Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the Philippines, climate change representative Yeb Sano pleaded with the world to take immediate, drastic action to reduce climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions in an emotional speech at the UN's climate meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

Shade

Shade The Motion Picture website

Sacha Baron Cohen at the BAFTA Awards

(Watch til the end...)

The True Core Of The Jesus Myth

Christopher Hitchens

Remembrance Sunday

They are the living who cheated death. Advances in technology and the skills of battlefield surgeons are seeing badly wounded soldiers survive where once they would have died. While 446 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, thousands more have been wounded – hundreds of whom have returned blinded or limbless. Many will attend parades and services around the country today. For Remembrance Sunday is not only about the fallen, it is also about those who live with the wounds of war.

Marine Mark Ormrod, 30, Royal Marines. Wounded when he stood on an IED during a patrol in Afghanistan in 2007. Married with three children, he lives in Plymouth.

“I was deployed to Afghanistan in September 2007. My role as an infantryman was to dominate the ground around our area of responsibility and take the fight to the enemy. I was injured on Christmas Eve. We had been tasked with another foot patrol-it was more of a patrol to keep momentum going, a show of presence. We came to the end of the first leg of the patrol, and we were ready to come back into the camp. I was getting onto my stomach to get into a fi re position, so I could give cover to the other guys, when I stood on and detonated an IED. It created a huge cloud of sand and dust, so I couldn't initially see anything, but I could hear everything that was going on... I'd sustained severe injuries to both my legs and my right arm, which were later amputated.

It is irritating that people avoid me when I'm walking down the street. I see a lot of parents in the distance, the kid will see me before the parent does and then their parent will see me, and they'll drag the kid off and veer away from me. They don't want their kid to ask questions, they think that will embarrass me. But I wear shorts and a T-shirt every day-if I was embarrassed I wouldn't come out, I'd wear a long-sleeved jumper with a pair of trousers. But there are also a lot of people who are completely different; they ask me what's happened and they appreciate the honesty with the children, because the children have to know.

The Independent

Video Of The “Arctic Sunrise” Being Boarded

This video is the first to show the moment that the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise was boarded by Russian authorities. The vessel was seized on Sept. 19, after staging protests against the Prirazlomnaya oil platform, owned by Russian energy firm Gazprom.

The footage — shot by crew members of the ship, and supplied to BuzzFeed by Greenpeace — shows Russian authorities abseiling from a helicopter onto the deck of the Arctic Sunrise. Thirty people from the ship are currently in custody in Russia, facing charges of hooliganism — after initially facing charges of piracy.

BuzzFeed

Ruins

Α documentary about the criminalization of HIV. The story of a group of HIV-positive women who were detained by the Greek Police, forcibly tested, charged with a felony, imprisoned and publicly exposed, when their mug shots and personal data were published in the media, in the run-up to the country’s 2012 national elections.

ruins-documentary.com

An Introduction to Gladio B

James Corbett of The Corbett Report joins Abby Martin of Breaking The Set to discuss "Gladio B," the continuation of the clandestine NATO program, Operation Gladio. We talk about the history of Gladio and the transition of the program into a campaign to fund and foment Islamic terrorism in the Central Asia/Caucasus region. For more information, please consult the "Gladio B" video series from earlier this year available from CorbettReport.com and BoilingFrogsPost.com.

Happy Birthday Nadia

www.facebook.com/RiotGirls.WomenoftheYear 

Yasser Arafat poisoned with polonium

The first forensic tests on remains from the exhumed corpse of Yasser Arafat have shown unexpectedly high levels of radioactive polonium-210, suggesting the Palestinian leader could have been poisoned with the rare and lethal substance.

The Swiss scientists who tested Arafat's remains after the exhumation of his body in November discovered levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than the norm in Arafat's ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his bodily fluids. The Swiss forensic report was handed to representatives of Arafat's widow, Suha Arafat, as well as representatives of the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday. A copy of the report was obtained exclusively by the al-Jazeera TV network, which shared it with the Guardian before publication.

The Swiss report said that even taking into account the eight years since Arafat's death and the quality of specimens taken from bone fragments and tissue scraped from his body and shroud, the results "moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210". Suha Arafat said the evidence in the report suggested that her then healthy 75-year-old husband, who died in 2004 four weeks after he first fell ill shortly after eating dinner, was almost certainly murdered by poisoning.

The Guardian

Pussy Riot Member Relocated To Deep Siberian Prison Colony

Kuwaiti woman caught driving in Saudi Arabia

A Kuwaiti woman was arrested in Saudi Arabia after she was caught driving in the kingdom where ultraconservative laws ban women from taking the wheel. According to a Khafji police report, the woman was caught driving a Chevrolet Epica on the ‘Sitteen Road’ in front of a hotel in the area located near the border with Kuwait, while a Kuwaiti man was in the passenger’s seat.

The woman told the officers that the man was her father, adding that he is diabetic and cannot drive and that she had to take him to the hospital for treatment. The woman remains in custody pending investigations.

Kuwait Times

Sweetie

www.youtube.com/user/sweetie

CIA made doctors torture

Doctors and psychologists working for the US military violated the ethical codes of their profession under instruction from the defence department and the CIA to become involved in the torture and degrading treatment of suspected terrorists, an investigation has concluded.

The report of the Taskforce on Preserving Medical Professionalism in National Security Detention Centres concludes that after 9/11, health professionals working with the military and intelligence services "designed and participated in cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment and torture of detainees". Medical professionals were in effect told that their ethical mantra "first do no harm" did not apply, because they were not treating people who were ill. The report lays blame primarily on the defence department (DoD) and the CIA, which required their healthcare staff to put aside any scruples in the interests of intelligence gathering and security practices that caused severe harm to detainees, from waterboarding to sleep deprivation and force-feeding.

More on The Guardian

Member of Punk Group ‘Pussy Riot’ Missing In The Russian Prison System

Nadya, a member of the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot, has been jailed since 2012, when the group was arrested for playing what the L.A. Times called, a “provocative song”, in a Russian cathedral. The group said they wanted to call attention to Russian government censorship, and the relationship between Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. Nadya and another band member, Maria Alyokhina, still have five months to serve on a two-year sentence for “hooliganism motivated by racial hatred.”

Russian law stipulates that families of prisoners must be notified of where their loved ones have been imprisoned, and Nadya’s family says they have had no information of her location since she began a hunger strike at a prison in Mordovia.“There’s no proof she’s alive,” Nadya’s father told Buzzfeed. “We don’t know the state of her health. Is she sick? Has she been beaten?”

The New Civil Rights Movement

Pope: Ideologically Obsessed Christians Have Illness

Pope Francis has been very clear about how he feels about ideological purity in religion. He’s been particularly critical of right-wing Christian fundamentalism. Pope Francis has shifted the focus of the Catholic Church to issues facing the poor and the sick. He has railed against economic inequality and has criticized the anti-gay and anti-abortion strains that have come to dominate the Christian Right here in America. Such ideological extremism is dangerous, not only to Christianity, but to the world. And Pope Francis said as much last Thursday. (addictinginfo.org)

British Accuse David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald's Partner, Of 'Terrorism'

British authorities claimed the domestic partner of reporter Glenn Greenwald was involved in "terrorism" when he tried to carry documents from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden through a London airport in August, according to police and intelligence documents.

Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was detained and questioned for nine hours by British authorities at Heathrow on Aug. 18, when he landed there from Berlin to change planes for a flight to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. After his release and return to Rio, Miranda filed a legal action against the British government, seeking the return of materials seized from him by British authorities and a judicial review of the legality of his detention.

At a London court hearing this week for Miranda's lawsuit, a document called a "Ports Circulation Sheet" was read into the record. It was prepared by Scotland Yard - in consultation with the MI5 counterintelligence agency - and circulated to British border posts before Miranda's arrival. The precise date of the document is unclear. "Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security," according to the document.

Huffington Post

Fanfare For the Common Man

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

How Monsanto Threatens The Entire Planet

Anthony Gucciardi of Storyleak breaks down how Monsanto and the global elite are on a mission to alter, mutate, and own the entire planet -- and are assaulting humanity in the process.

What religion has contributed to the world this month

the elegant gentleman's guide to knife fighting

Anal disease

In an extremely odd appearance on Fadak TV in the United Kingdom, London-based Kuwaiti Shiite Cleric Yasser Al-Habib argued that an “anal disease” causes some men to become addicted to homosexuality.

According to a translation provided by MEMRI TV, Habib referenced former Caliph Omar, who ruled the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate in the year 634, to make his case. “It is told that Omar Ibn Al-Khattab had an anal disease, which could be cured only by semen,” he said. “Someone who, god forbid, has been penetrated in the anus – a worm grows within him due to the semen discharged in him. A disease develops in his anus, and as a result… he cannot calm down unless he is penetrated again and again.”

Habib went on to say that this is a “well-known” medical condition, one the entire planet has apparently been misdiagnosing for centuries.

More on The Blaze

Project Golden Dragon

Basically it is the complete exposure of alien technology which was hidden from us by the US government.

More about this here.

Bilderberg Group: The Secret Rulers of the World

Remember How We Forgot

Shane Koyczan and Hannah Epperson

No Woman, No Drive

The Love Police Movie

Movie Facebook

A Comedy Nerd's Dream

Blackface for the holidays

Being Green

Russell Brand meets Jeremy Paxman

In a wide ranging interview (this is Part 2), Jeremy Paxman asks comedian Russell Brand about the 2008 Sachsgate scandal, the cult of celebrity, and if he believes in God. Watch and see Russell get mad.

Guantanamo Handbook

Warning: This is disturbing content. So watch at your own risk. As you watch this keep in mind that most of the people who were sent to Guantanamo have not been charged with anything because there is no evidence against them. It's now acknowledged that many of them are guilty of nothing. But they're still not being released. Obama ran on the promise of shutting Guantanamo down. It's still operating and the inmates are still being tortured. To be absolutely clear, the US government reserves the right to do this to any person anywhere on earth without evidence, without charges, without a trial - including US citizens - and the Supreme Court, the Congress and the President who promised to stop this have done nothing to stop it. And where are the people who ordered this torture and carried it out? They're walking around free and many of them will be joining law enforcement in the United States when they leave the military.