17 Aug 2011
UK Riot Sentences: Facebook Pair Get Four Years In Jail
Liberal Democrats and justice groups have questioned some of the tough sentences handed down to riot offenders after two men were jailed for four years each for attempting to incite a riot on Facebook.
The party's home affairs spokesman, Tom Brake, said sentencing should not be about "retribution". "Clearly there are cases where offenders who have committed very serious crimes should expect very serious sentences and that is what I expect to happen. But there have been some cases where people who have committed petty offences have received sentences which, if they had committed the same offence the day before the riots, they would not have received a sentence of that nature.
"This should be about restorative justice, in other words making people acknowledge the offences they have committed and preferably if the victims want it, actually sit down face to face with the victims so they can hear from the victims the impact they have had, but it should not be about retribution", he told Newsnight.
Tessa Munt, the MP for Wells, told
16 Aug 2011
Perfect Storm: The England Riots
“If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth.” – African Proverb.
This mini-documentary film looks at the initial causes and wider context surrounding the recent England riots. Politicians refuse to acknowledge their role in creating a deeply unfair and failing society, a perfect storm of police brutality, city poverty and austerity measures, that will only get worse unless the root problem is addressed.
Did you know for the rioters to be on par with the looting by the financial bailouts, corporate tax avoiders and Libyan invasion, they would have to repeat the same level of damage……4,320 times?
15 Aug 2011
5 Ways US Conservatives Attack Sexual Freedom
The hard right turn taken by the conservative movement in the past couple of years has meant a rapid increase in conservatives taking unpopular stances: opposing Social Security and Medicare, pushing for a default on government debt, and various austerity measures sure to protect the rich while plunging the rest of the country into economic darkness. But they haven’t just embraced wildly unpopular views on economic issues, but also on social issues, especially when it comes to sexual freedom.
Traditionally, conservatives have kept their attacks on sexual freedom limited to areas where they know they can gin up more controversy, such as gay rights and abortion. They had a larger anti-sex agenda, but knew it would be hard to sell to the public at large, and so merely chewed on the corners of sexual liberation. But something about the election of Obama caused a synapse to blow in the right-wing brain, and the attacks on sexual liberation have expanded beyond gay rights and abortion. Now conservatives are attacking sexual freedom on many fronts: abortion, access to contraception, and freedom to be sexual without being assaulted for it, freedom to be sexual no matter your race or class.
New laws crack down on America's poor and homeless
The number of laws criminalizing poverty increased during the recession as the housing and homelessness crisis in America worsened. Since 2006, there's been a 7 percent increase in laws prohibiting camping out in public places, an 11 percent increase in laws prohibiting loitering, a 6 percent increase in laws prohibiting begging and a 5 percent increase in laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling, according to a recent report by The National Coalition for the Homeless.
At the same time, after a double-digit jump in 2008, homelessness increased by an average of 2 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness. Among families with children, homelessness increased by 9 percent. An average of 27 percent of homeless persons did not receive assistance last year because there weren't enough beds or shelters would not accept children.
"In this economy, cities are facing really tight budgets, so they may not be able to build up or fund housing to meet the need," Tulin Ozdeger, civil rights director for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told USA Today. "Many people are being forced to live out on the streets."
Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe.
The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe’s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.
In Slotervaart, a majority immigrant neighborhood in southwestern Amsterdam, Maria Kuhlman and her friends watched Muslim families stroll by on a Ramadan afternoon, some of the men in robes and beards, the women wearing headscarves. A large blond woman shouted, “Go Wilders!”
Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party, which combines racist language with calls for more social spending, won 15.5 percent of the vote in June 2010. He was recently acquitted of charges of hate speech for comparing the Koran to “Mein Kampf” and calling mosques “palaces of hatred.” He wants all immigrants and their children deported and warns of the supposed Muslim plot to create “Eurabia.” He declined repeated interview requests.
14 Aug 2011
Stupidity
This documentary about stupidity tells us the history of the word "moron", the difference between stupid, moron, smart, intelligent, genius and questions the regular practice of classifying peoples intelligence through standardized IQ tests.
Nepal Gay Rights Rally Draws Hundreds
Hundreds of gay, lesbian, transgender people marched with supporters in a southern Nepal town Sunday to demand equal rights under a new constitution the country is in the process of writing.
The estimated 500 demonstrators danced, chanted slogans and marched around Narayanghat, a town about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the capital of Katmandu on Sunday, which is also Nepal's traditional festival of Gaijatra honoring the dead. The gay community has been holding demonstrations on the festival day in the capital, but it was the first time that activists have organized a rally outside the capital. Gay rights activists and parliament member Sunil Pant said their main aim was to spread their campaign outside the capital city.
Nepal, a traditionally conservative, mostly Hindu nation, has only recently begun accepting homosexuality. The country is also in the process of writing a new constitution which could include provisions to guarantee rights for the sexual minorities.
Guillotine display stuns Rothschild's 'tent city'
A guillotine, the symbol of the French Revolution, has been placed Wednesday in the center of Tel Aviv's "tent city," turning into one of the biggest attractions in this ongoing social protest.
The surprising display arrived in Rothschild Boulevard following another long night of protests across the country, this time focusing on contractor conditions. Demonstrators in five different cities participated in rallies Wednesday night against working conditions, wearing white masks and chanting: "Contractor companies are organized crime."
In Beersheba protesters organized a 'bathing suit march' to exemplify how the social protest "has taken off." In Bat Yam hundreds of residents marched to protest against the high costs of living and housing shortage, clashing with the police's Special Patrol Unit.
Holon protesters intensified the upheaval by burning tires and furniture, demonstrating against the city council's attempt to vacate the premises. Meanwhile, haredi and secular protestors rallied side by side in Jerusalem against the shaky public transportation in the city. Ynetnews
Collective Punishment of 'Rioters' Families and the Geneva Convention
An interesting exchange on Facebook is reproduced below regarding some Councils' determination to evict persons convicted of involvement in the recent UK riots. Wandsworth Council want to evict an entire family whose son was found guilty of involvement in the Clapham Junction looting.
One wonders what long-term good such a local authority imagines will come from this. Will they make an underclass intimidated into passivity and obedience, however grudging?
Is satisfying the understandable cries for punitive action from shopkeepers and a rattled middle class wise if this action strays into the realms of collective punishment, a point Jim Murphy fairly raises below?
For myself, even if a convicted person is the only one evicted, this strategy makes no sense. Deprive the underclass of even a place to live? I can think of no better way of creating genuinely terrifying psychopaths.
Anyone paying attention to the crimes of the elite (and the cover-up of these crimes by parliament and the media) knows very well that the sickness at the bottom of society is a manifestation of a much greater sickness at the top.
Bearing in mind the unwillingness of our entire parliament, even the old icons of the left like Diane Abbott, who rose to prominence on the back of the Hackney riots, to see itself as part of (never mind the source of) the problem, might we not expect with absolute certainty that a similar sickness will manifest itself later....more than likely on a much larger scale. The middle classes, whose children cannot afford to get a mortgage on a place to live and who are being inducted into massive debt before they even start their working lives will become heavily involved.
When this time comes, and it will, more than sports and mobile phone shops will have cause to worry.
13 Aug 2011
Germany marks 50 years since Berlin Wall
Germany is marking 50 years since the building of the Berlin Wall when the communist East closed its border, dividing the city for 28 years. Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit told a ceremony on Bernauer Street: "The Wall is history but we must not forget it." President Christian Wulff said Germany had been securely established as a reunified country.
The city observed a minute's silence at noon (10:00 GMT) in memory of those who died trying to escape. Soldiers from the East began construction on the morning of 13 August 1961
The women clearing Lebanon of cluster bombs
Only up close does it become clear that some of the bulky figures in armoured vests scouring the fields of southern Lebanon for unexploded cluster bombs are wearing hijabs under their protective helmets.
Once local teachers, nurses and housewives, this group of women are now fully trained to search for mines and make up the only all-female clearance team in Lebanon, combing the undergrowth inch by inch for the remnants of one of the most indiscriminate weapons of modern warfare.
Leading the women in the field is Lamis Zein, a 33-year-old divorced mother of two and the team's supervisor. She was one of the first recruits for the team, which was set up by the de-mining NGO Norwegian People's Aid (NPA).
"When I heard they were recruiting I applied straight away," said Zein. "At the beginning men were surprised to see us in the field, wearing the same protective equipment as men, doing demolitions of bombs like men. But we work together well as a team of women. We share things that we wouldn't with male colleagues. We are good at what we do and we are showing that women can do any kind of job."
Their painstaking task became necessary five years ago this week, after Israel rained cluster munitions on southern Lebanon to a degree the UN condemned as a "flagrant violation of international law".
The Real Source of the British Riots
The statistics, sociology, police brutality, massive food price increases and economic catastrophes behind the recent and continuing riots in Britain. From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web --
12 Aug 2011
Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses
hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing, computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday.
The micro-electronics technology, called an epidermal electronic system (EES), was developed by an international team of researchers from the United States, China and Singapore, and is described in the journal Science.
"It's a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology," said co-author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user."
The patch could be used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain, heart and muscle tissue activity and when placed on the throat it allowed users to operate a voice-activated video game with better than 90 percent accuracy.
Babs Tucker arrested
In London Babs Tucker was kidnapped to cover up massive payouts in civil claims from the High Court over illegal searches, which would see the display that was stolen by 78 police on 23rd May 2006 returned as well.
The prime minister looks stupid lecturing people on looting whilst stopping people peacefully campaigning by stealing their property.
Babs was taken to Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court but refused to leave the cell and consent to their jurisdiction. Magistrates remanded her to Holloway Prison overnight, to appear before them again at 10am in the morning.
Brian and Babs tried every route over the years to get due process and a fair hearing within the corrupt British legal system - and because this has been denied at every stage, she had no option but to stop playing their 'game'.
11 Aug 2011
My Fellow American
The climate of suspicion towards American Muslims compromises the values that the USA was founded upon.
Military-Industrial Complex from Eisenhower to Obama
Gareth Porter on how the Military-Industrial Complex evolved the USA into the Permanent War State on The Real News Network
London riots: Police were soft on looters because they were 'ordered to stand and observe'
Police were ordered to 'stand and observe' rioters as they laid waste to London's streets instead of confronting them, it was claimed today.
Scotland Yard insiders have revealed teams were frustrated at their inability to wade in and arrest troublemakers while they looted and burnt out shops. They had apparently been told to try and contain any violence but not to haul away offenders who would instead be identified through video footage later, according to The Times.
It was only on Monday night, when the riots escalated still further, that tactics changed and armoured vehicles called Jankels were used to disperse the crowds. On Tuesday night, some 16,000 officers also flooded London's streets - almost triple the previous night's deployment - and they were finally given the green light to confront the gangs.
10 Aug 2011
Amazon tribe feared 'massacred'
The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.
On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a "massacre". They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe's land.
"We decided to come back here because we believed that these guys may be massacring the isolated [tribe]," Carlos Travassos, the head of Brazil's department for isolated indigenous peoples, told the Brazilian news website IG. "We are more worried than ever. The situation could be one of the greatest blows we have seen to the work to protect isolated Indians in decades. A catastrophe … genocide!"