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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Kapitali$t

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."

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.

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 Online – Independent - The Sun

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 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

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