9 Aug 2013
"I Do Not Want to Die in Prison": Cancer-Stricken Lawyer Lynne Stewart Seeks Compassionate Release
Lawyers for imprisoned attorney Lynne Stewart head to federal court today to seek her release from prison. Now 73 years old, Stewart is dying from cancer in a Texas prison.
Last month, Stewart’s treating physician in prison estimated her life expectancy is approximately 18 months. This comes after the Federal Bureau of Prisons denied Stewart’s request for early release — a denial her lawyers are appealing and hope to address today in a hearing before her original sentencing judge, Judge John Koeltl. In 2010, Stewart was sentenced to 10 years in prison for passing messages from her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, to his followers in Egypt. In a letter to Judge Koeltl, Stewart wrote: "I do not intend to go 'gently into that good night' as Dylan Thomas wrote. There is much to be done in this world. I do know that I do not want to die here in prison — a strange and loveless place. I want to be where all is familiar — in a word, home. ...
The Sun’s Magnetic Field is about to Flip
Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip.
“It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”
8 Aug 2013
Father and son brought back from jungle after fleeing Vietnam War bombs
Authorities in the central province of Quang Ngai Wednesday rescued a father and son who have been living up a tree house in the jungle for more than 40 years.It took many hours and around 40 kilometers through the jungle for the officials to reach the men’s place, which had been found by some of their family members.
The father, Ho Van Thanh, 82, was too weak to walk and some men had to carry him out of the jungle on a hammock. First investigations found Thanh had fled into the jungle bringing his son Ho Van Lang, then around one year old, during a panicking night in 1971 in the Vietnam War, when his house was bombed, killing his wife and two older sons.
They lived in a house that looks like a bird nest, built from sticks on a big tree around six meters from the ground, and near a stream. They used dry bark to make pants, though officials found Thanh has carefully kept a little red coat of his son and his soldier’s trousers at a corner of the house.
The two also made their own tools like knives, axes and arrows for hunting. Daily foods include cassava, corn, and wild leaves. They have a field of nearly one hectare (2.47 acre) that also plants sugarcanes. Both have forgotten the mainstream Kinh language.
Ex-spy 'Falcon': U.S. likes Snowden in Russia
Christopher Boyce, the subject of the 1985 movie "The Falcon and the Snowman," spent 25 years in federal prison for providing U.S. intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union.
It was with a heavy heart that I heard Edward Snowden has been granted, and apparently accepted, temporary asylum in Russia for one year. Short of locking him naked in solitary confinement as an example to other leakers, as was done to Bradley Manning, Russia is exactly where the American intelligence community wants Snowden.
How better to discredit Snowden's warnings of the threat posed to civil liberties by our ever-growing surveillance state than to ceaselessly point out that he has found sanctuary in the arms of the FSB, the successor to the KGB? I suspect this latest development will nix any possibility of reform of domestic surveillance operations coming out of the House Judiciary Committee.
Of course, at this point, where else could Snowden go? He had spent five weeks in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport. That had to be a purgatory on earth. By leaning on our allies, America had effectively trapped him there. One should not take too seriously, though, the outrage expressed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Congress over this latest Russian perfidy. By fleeing to America's traditional bogeyman, Snowden has seriously blunted his own effectiveness. He has become an easy target for the U.S. government to demonize.
Mr. Hulot's Holiday
Les Vacances de M. Hulot (released as Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in the UK and Mr. Hulot's Holiday in the US) is a comedy film starring and directed by Jacques Tati. It introduced the pipe-smoking, well-meaning but clumsy character of Monsieur Hulot. The film gained an international reputation for its creator when released in 1953. The film was very successful as it had a total of 5,071,920 admissions in France.
7 Aug 2013
Best Use Of A Billboard Ever
The lack of clean water is one of the leading causes of life-threatening conditions like diarrhea. I am completely digging the fact that these engineers tapped into a water source that was always there.
Radioactive water emergency at Fukushima 'beyond Tepco's control'
Japan's devastated nuclear plant at Fukushima is facing a new emergency due to radioactive water...
An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC by Stephen Fry
Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee,
I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.
Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.
An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the “values” of Russia are not the “values” of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great’s philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).
6 Aug 2013
Russians who want to immigrate to Israel could need DNA test
A number of people from the former Soviet Union wishing to immigrate to Israel could be subjected to DNA testing to prove their Jewishness, the Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday. The policy was reported in Maariv on Monday, one day after the Israeli paper revealed that a19-year-old woman from the former Soviet Union was required to take the test to qualify for a Birthright Israel trip.
The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that many Jews from the FSU who were born out-of-wedlock can be required to bring DNA confirmation of Jewish heritage in order to be allowed to immigrate as a Jew. A source in the PMO told Maariv that the consul’s procedure, approved by the legal department of the Interior Ministry, states that a Russian-speaking child born out-of-wedlock is eligible to receive an Israeli immigration visa if the birth was registered before the child turned 3. Otherwise a DNA test to prove Jewish parentage is necessary. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the decision to require DNA testing for Russian Jews is based on the recommendations of Nativ, an educational program under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office to help Jews from the FSU immigrate to Israel.
Infecting Puerto Rico With Cancer
In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads was sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute to conduct experiments in Puerto Rico. He infected Puerto Rican citizens with cancer cells, presumably to study the effects. Thirteen of them died.
What’s most striking is that the accusations stem from a note he allegedly wrote:
"The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere... I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more... All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects."
A man that seems to be hell-bent on killing Puerto Rico through a cancer infestation would not seem a suitable candidate to be elected by the US to be in charge of chemical warfare projects and receive a seat on the United States Atomic Energy Commission, right?
But that’s exactly what happened. He also became vice-president of the American Cancer Society.
Any shocking documentation that would have happened during his chemical warfare period would probably have been destroyed by now.
The 13 Most Evil U.S. Government Experiments on Humans ranker.com
5 Aug 2013
Punks vs. Monks: Rockers aside, few willing to criticize Buddhist-led violence in Myanmar
Punk rockers draw double-takes as they dart through traffic, but it’s not just the pink hair, leather jackets or skull tattoos that make these 20-somethings rebels: It’s their willingness to speak out against Buddhist monks instigating violence against Muslims while others in Myanmar are silent.
“If they were real monks, I’d be quiet, but they aren’t,” says Kyaw Kyaw, lead singer of Rebel Riot, as his drummer knocks out the beat for a new song slamming religious hypocrisy and an anti-Muslim movement known as “969.” ‘’They are nationalists, fascists. No one wants to hear it, but it’s true.”
Radical monks are at the forefront of a bloody campaign against Muslims, and few in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million people are willing to speak against them. For many, being Buddhist is an important part of being Burmese, and monks, the most venerable members of society, are beyond reproach. Others are simply in denial, or buy into claims the Muslim “outsiders” pose a threat to their culture and traditions.
4 Aug 2013
Riddles In Stone
Explore the fascinating history behind the Masonic and Rosicrucian influence so prevalent amongst the Founding Fathers as they planned the layout of America's Capitol. For years, extreme controversy has abounded as to the exact meaning of the occult symbols found within the street layout, the buildings, and the monuments of Washington, D.C. Was this city laid out to reflect the vision of a Masonic Christ foreseen by Sir Francis Bacon? Is it true that America's capitol was laid out according to the astrological shapes of certain planets and stars so revered by occultists? Does this occult "wisdom" represent the interests of America, or a hidden agenda? What can these realities mean for the unfolding destiny of America and the world? Now you will know that, when President Bush said he was fulfilling the "Ancient Hope" of the "New Order of the Ages" he was merely acting out the plan reflected in the street layout and in the architecture of Washington, D.C
Russia Promises To Prosecute Gays During 2014 Olympics
"Russia will enforce a new law cracking down on gay rights activism when it hosts international athletes and fans during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the country's sports minister said Thursday, appearing to contradict assurances to the contrary from the International Olympic Committee.
2 Aug 2013
How the Media Got Guatemala's Dos Erres Massacre Wrong
NPR received a Peabody award for their piece on the 1982 massacre, but they omit one important fact; the US directly sponsored the Guatemalan special forces that brutally killed thousands of civilians
International Banking Conspiracy
A documentary looking at banking tycoons: from the Rothschild family in Europe to JP Morgan and others in the US. How banks not only control governments but also appoint politicians through huge campaign donations.
Governments at the service of the major banks, the best example: the Obama administration and the history's biggest bail out of the same institutions that caused the Great Recession.
Also looking at the International Banking Cartel led by the Bank for International Settlement (in Basel, Switzerland) known as the bank of central banks (58 central banks) and The US Federal reserve System.
Dance Craze
The film was directed by Joe Massot, who originally wanted to do a film only about the band Madness, whom he met during their first US tour. Massot later changed his plans to include the whole 2 Tone movement. The film, shot in 1980, comprised performance footage of Madness, The Specials, The Selecter, The Bodysnatchers, The Beat and Bad Manners on tour throughout the United Kingdom.
1 Aug 2013
Gay Athletes & Tourists Could Face Arrest During Russia's Olympic Games
Gay athletes and supporters at Russia’s 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games could face arrest under the country’s newly approved anti-gay legislation. That's according to politician Vitaly Milonov, who says the law cannot be selectively enforced nor suspended, despite claims from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the Russian government has given assurances as to the safety of athletes and supporters, regardless of their sexual orientation.
In an interview with Interfax news agency, Milonov said: “I haven’t heard any comments from the government of the Russian Federation, but I know that it is acting in accordance with Russian law. “And if a law has been approved by the federal legislature and signed by the president, then the government has no right to suspend it. It doesn’t have the authority.”
Milonov, who co-sponsored the bill against “non-traditional relationships”, added he had “spoken with many American politicians” and that they “support the stance I’ve taken on this issue.”
Uruguay votes to create world's first national legal marijuana market
Uruguay's unprecedented plan to create a legal marijuana market has taken its critical first step in the lower house of Congress. All 50 members of the ruling Broad Front coalition approved the proposal just before midnight on Wednesday in a party line vote, keeping a narrow majority of the 96 MPs present after more than 13 hours of passionate debate.
The measure now goes to the Senate, where passage is expected to make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adult consumers. Legislators in the ruling coalition said putting the government at the centre of a legal marijuana industry is worth trying because the global war on drugs had been a costly and bloody failure, and displacing illegal dealers through licensed pot sales could save money and lives. They also hope to eliminate a legal contradiction in Uruguay, where it has been legal to use pot but against the law to sell it, buy it, produce it or possess even one marijuana plant.
"Uruguay appears poised, in the weeks ahead, to become the first nation in modern times to create a legal, regulated framework for marijuana," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. "In doing so, Uruguay will be bravely taking a leading role in establishing and testing a compelling alternative to the prohibitionist paradigm."