16 Jul 2015
15 Jul 2015
Why Is The Child In Hands of The Beggar Always Sleeping?
“Near the metro station sits a woman of uncertain age. Women’s hair is confused and dirty, her head bowed in grief. The woman sits on the dirty floor and next to her lies a bag. In that bag people throw money. On the hands of a woman, asleep, is a two year old baby. He’s in a dirty hat and dirty clothes. “Madonna with baby” – numerous passers-by will donate money. The people of our kind- we always feel sorry for less fortunate. We are ready to give unfortunate people the last shirt, the last penny out of your pocket and never think another issue. Helping, seems like. “Good job done”…
Next day I called a friend. It was a funny man with eyes like olives Romanian nationality. He only managed to complete three and a half years of education. The complete lack of education does not prevent him from moving around the City streets on very expensive foreign cars and live in a “small” house with countless number of windows and balconies. From my friend I managed to find out that this business, despite the apparent spontaneity, clearly organized. Its supervised by begging organized crime rings. The children used are in “rent” from families of alcoholics, or simply stolen.
I needed to get the answer to the question – why is the baby sleeping? And I received it. My friend Gypsy said the phrase, completely ordinary with calm voice that twisted me in shock, just like he was talking about weather report: -They are on heroin, or vodka … I was dumbfounded. “Who is on heroin? Whom – under vodka?! ” He answered -The Child, so he doesn’t scream. The women will be sitting whole day with him, imagine how he might get bored?
In order to make the baby slept the whole day, it pumped up with vodka or drugs. Of course, children’s bodies are not able to cope with such a shock. And children often die. The most terrible thing – sometimes children die during the “working day”. And imaginary mother must hold another dead child on her hands until the evening. These are the rules. And the by passers-by will throw some money in the bag, and believe that they are moral. Helping “mother alone” …
14 Jul 2015
GOP's Trump problem a monster of their own creation
Rachel Maddow reports on how Donald Trump has been reinforced and legitimized as a political figure by Republican politicians and media outlets, making it difficult to distance themselves from his presidential campaign. Today it was revealed that people attending Trump's campaign announcement included actors paid to attend.
13 Jul 2015
ISIS sex slaves subjected to rape freed by secret resistance network
Women and young girls held as sex slaves by depraved Islamic State militants are fleeing their captors with the help of a heroic underground network of resistance fighters. Risking certain death and torture in a bid to flee their brutal oppressors, many spend several days making their way through Syria and Iraq to the safety of government-controlled territory. Many of them have been subjected to appalling violence, rape and sexual abuse at the hands of ISIS fighters and commanders.
ISIS has carried out 'systematic sexual crimes' against girls from the Yazidi community since kidnapping more than 3,000 girls from their homes in northern Iraq last August. Unjustly regarded as ‘devil worshippers’ on account of their unusual beliefs, the Yazidi have for centuries been one of the most persecuted minorities of the Middle East. Islamic extremists regard them as infidels, worthy only of being killed. Those considered the 'most beautiful' by ISIS leaders are sent to horrendous auction houses where they are stripped naked and sold to the highest bidder.
Get ready for TTIP
The Trouble With TTIP - A documentary about the dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade talks being held between the European Union and the United States of America.
12 Jul 2015
Full Metal Playmobil: The police state comes to kids’ toys
According to Playmobil’s marketing manager: “The whole premise behind Playmobil toys is to familiarize the child with the realities of life through play.” They’ve shown us that it’s a brutal reality, where our rights are shorn away by state employees wearing smiling plastic faces. The following three toys show us just how militarized our society has become. The customer reviews of these toys are priceless.
Playmobil’s Militarized Police Toy
Playmobil’s Tactical Unit Team allows kids to play an updated version of cowboys versus indians, modernized into police officers versus civilians. How could you not love drug-sniffing dogs, swat teams, and black helicopters when you get to hold them in your little hands? Playmobil lets you decide whether black lives matter, and which poor people go to prison for selling $20 worth of weed. Playmobil has had a reputation for realism, especially when it comes to weapons and vehicles. Like it or not, modern police forces have become military forces, and civilians have become enemy combatants. Playmobil toys merely reflect that reality.
Resistance comes in the form of internet comments. The reviews at Amazon are notably libertarian:
“Finally we have the right kind of toy to teach children how to be completely subservient to authority…”
“Perfect for cops to pretend they’re soldiers!”
8 US Right-wing Lunacies This Week
Marco Rubio will not rest until women all over the world no longer have the right to choose abortion. As president, he would see to it that women in other countries were just as oppressed and pregnant as the ones right here at home. He made this vow during a speech before the National Right to Life Committee’s annual convention in New Orleans on Friday. He even compared the fight against abortion rights to the fights to end slavery and for women’s suffrage.
This is some seriously messed up thinking, which Rubio nonetheless seems to fervently believe in. During his speech, Rubio called the historic Roe v. Wade decision “historically and egregiously flawed.” He did not explain that one, but with this crowd, he did not have to. He talked about how the current occupant of the White House has sought to expand women’s right to choose (and access to birth control), which is just awful. He hoped the crowd would help send him to the White House so he can reverse any progress that might have been made under said occcupant. Finally he commended the crowd for fighting the most important battle in the whole wide world: to deprive women of this measure of control over their reproductive life.
11 Jul 2015
Over 20 Chinese Human Rights Lawyers & Staff Arrested, Kidnapped or Missing
The mass arrests started since lawyer Wang Yu, her husband Bao Longjun and their young son were kidnapped on July 9 (Wang Yu’s arrest, Radio Free Asia). Their son has been released, according to information on WeChat. Her colleague at Fengrui Law Firm, Beijing lawyer Zhou Shifeng was abducted from his hotel room on July 9, after he picked up Zhang Miao, Chinese news assistant to German magazine Die Zeit since last October for her support to Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution.
About a dozen lawyers throughout China were summoned to police station on late July 10 for interrogation, including Lu Fangzhi, Wen Donghai, Yang Jinzhu of Hunan province, Zeng Weixu of Shangdong, Xue Rongmin of Shanghai, Fu Jianbo of Chongqing, Wang Cheng of Zhejiang province, Ji Laisong of Henan province. Lawyers Zou Lihui of Fujiang province, Jiang Yongji of Gansu province have been allowed to returned home after police interrogations. Activist Ou Biaofeng @oubiaofeng Tweeted around 2:50am quoting Yang Jinzhu who’s under interrogation at a police station in Hunan province as saying the Domestic Security officers told him lawyer Zhou Shifeng has committed “severe criminal offence”, according to a decree issued by Beijing.
Human RIghts Lawyer Wang Yu
Renowned legal scholar and lawyer Zhang Xuezhong is suspected to have been detained. The police broke into Zhang’s home, and homes of lawyer Li Dawei in Gansu province, lawyer Guo Xiongwei in Hunan province. Police ransacked a dozen lawyers’ homes in Chongqing city, Yunnan, Hunan, Shangdong, Zhejiang, Henan provinces. According to New York-based activist Wen Yunchaos Tweet @wenyunchao, Chongqing human rights lawyer You Feizhu wrote: “There’re guests outside the door…I firmly believe I’m innocent. You need to firmly believe that, too! I love this country and the people on this land deeply. What I’ve been doing, is just trying to make this country and lives of ordinary people a bit better.”
The mass arrests and kidnapping by Chinese police followed last Wednesday’s passing of National Security Law which lawyers and scholars say gives Beijing more legitimacy to create a garrison state. “This law will legitimize the abuse of power by state and public security bureaus,” said prominent human rights lawyer Teng Biao, who was detained before.
10 Jul 2015
Swearing off bad language: Russia bans cussing in films, books, music
Thinking about making a film? Better leave out the foul language if you want it to be seen in Russia. The same goes for plays. Even rock stars will need to leave their potty mouths at home. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a new law Monday that bans swearing at arts, cultural and entertainment events in the country.
Any new film containing obscene language won't be granted a distribution certificate, so there's no chance of seeing it at the movie theater. And copies of books, CDs or films containing swearing can only be distributed in a sealed package labelled "Contains obscene language," a Kremlin statement said.
According to state news agency ITAR-Tass, individuals caught using foul language face a fine of up to $70, while officials can be fined up to $40 and businesses nearly $1,400. They face a higher fine and a three-month suspension of business for repeated offenses.
8 Jul 2015
Hillary Clinton Tells Israeli Billionaire and Mega-Donor She Will Support Israel, Fight Palestinian Movement
Israeli-American Haim Saban is one of America's richest men, the owner of numerous media and entertainment outlets — and a big Democratic donor. When the Democratic National Committee needed a new building, he coughed up $7 million to fund it, “one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party.” What does Saban want for all that money? “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” he said.
In order to pursue this objective, Saban has been pouring money into Hillary Clinton's super PAC, $2 million by one estimate. This week, Hillary returned the favor. She wrote a long letter to Saban praising Israel and pledging to fight the Palestinian-led boycott movement, which seeks to use economic pressures to end the occupation of their territories. Saban was so proud of the letter he took the rare step of publishing it in full through a public relations firm, broadcasting it to the world. Here it is.
In the letter, Clinton clearly links the boycott movement to anti-semitism, even raising the terrorist attack in Paris. She also condemns the increasingly popular apartheid analogy, one that current Secretary of State John Kerry used. This is likely intentional messaging, distancing herself from Obama so as to tell pro-Israel donors like Saban that she's on their team.
6 Jul 2015
Crazy Right-Wing American Preacher Says Confederates Will March On The North And Win This Time
Oh, Pastor James Manning, you’re the gift that just keeps on giving. This guy is the one who put up a sign telling black women that gays would take their men. That Obama has released the “homo demons.” That Starbucks was putting semen in their lattes. I seriously worry about this man’s mental state. Perhaps if he acted on those gay urges he’s admitted to, he’d get it all out of his system.
This time the head of the ATLAH World Missionary Church in the Harlem area of New York City is gearing up for a new Civil War. Not metaphorically. No, he means a real, honest-to-god, marching-Confederate-troops-in-uniforms Civil War. To “rescue the North.” Yeah.
“Surely the Confederates and the South will win this time. There’s no doubt about it. They will win this time. Now the nation must be rescued from the liberal God-haters and Constitution-haters and those that are pushing this sodomy agenda. America will be rescued and the rescuers will be the Confederates, the Southerners, those that have been the blood-washed, Bible-believing, locked-and-loaded. I’m James David Manning and I want to be one of them. I’m the Lord’s servant.”
The Greek No Vote Marks a Victory for Humanity
You could almost hear the collective sound of hearts being lifted across Europe in response to the Greek No ('Oxi') vote to the Troika's bailout demands, making it a moment to savour in itself. The hope that resonates with the defiance shown by the Greek people has been a long time coming for people suffering the weight of austerity, measured in the lack of fight to what has seemed a juggernaut of despair rolling over the lives of millions without respite.
Not anymore.
What this unfolding Greek crisis has exposed is that austerity is not so much an economic theory as an ideological concept - a code for class war, waged by the rich and their political servants against working people and the poor in order to maintain the wealth, privileges and profits of those who crashed the global economy with their unfettered greed and recklessness in the first place.
In calling this referendum, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, and his Syriza government delivered a masterstroke, counterposing democracy to the tyranny of global capital, specifically the European Central Bank, IMF, and the European Commission, otherwise known as the Troika. The pressure arrayed against them in the process, both from without and within Greece by the country's privately owned media was inordinate and unprecedented. Yet despite this the people delivered a resounding No, thus plunging the Troika into crisis as Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and exit from the EU.
5 Jul 2015
4 Jul 2015
Millions of Americans Have Nothing to Celebrate on the Fourth of July
To ring in another July Fourth, most Americans will kick off celebrations with beer, BBQ and fireworks. Most, but not all.
On Independence Day, the stirring words of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, promising "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," set the tone. Buried a bit further down, however, is another passage that is somewhat less well-known:
"...the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
That line, and America's subsequent history with Native Americans, goes a long way toward explaining why the holiday largely does not resonate with the United States' roughly 5.2 million indigenous peoples.
"Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating," Simon Moya-Smith, a culture editor at Indian Country Today told Mic. "[July Fourth] is a day we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions — literally millions — of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism." For him, Independence Day is a celebration of genocide. A number of tribes and nations contacted for this story expressed various levels of discomfort with the holiday.
What do you think of Israeli settlers forcing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem
Want to know what Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East really think about The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have all called on Israel to stop the illegal eviction of Palestinians and the demolition of their houses.
Israelis: What do you think of settlers forcing Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem?
3 Jul 2015
10 People Who Turned Against Scientology and Revealed Its Bizarre Secrets
The Church of Scientology, which the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard founded in 1952, has experienced more than its share of criticism along the way. But criticism has escalated in recent years, from Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear (aired on HBO earlier this year, watch here) to books by ex-members such as Jenna Miscavige Hill’s Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape in 2013 and Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology in 2009. All of these works paint a disturbing picture of the organization, which has been accused of everything from forced child labour to coercive mind control to breaking up families.
Screenwriter/director Paul Haggis, who is known for his work in Million Dollar Baby, Crash and other Hollywood films, spent more than half his life in the Church of Scientology. But in 2009, Haggis (who is now 62), left the cult after 35 years because of its homophobic ways. That year, the cult’s San Diego branch came out in support of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California. Haggis, who has two lesbian daughters, refused to keep quiet. In an open letter to Scientologist official Tommy Davis explaining his reasons for leaving, Haggis asserted that he could not be a part of a group that would “support a bill that strips a group of its civil rights.” Haggis was also quite critical of “disconnection,” a practice in which Scientologists are encouraged to discontinue all contact with relatives and friends who are deemed hostile to the cult.
9 More People Who Turned Against Scientology and Revealed Its Bizarre Secrets at Alternet
300,000 Babies Stolen & Sold for Adoption by The Catholic Church in Spain
Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals. The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.
Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.
Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth. But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial.
In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents. Official documents were forged so the adoptive parents’ names were on the infants’ birth certificates.
More at Occupy The Vatican
(facebook: www.fb.com/occupythevatican)
2 Jul 2015
Syrian children 'increasingly exploited' for labour
The conflict in Syria is pushing an ever increasing number of children into exploitation in the labour market, a new report revealed.
Children in the country were now contributing to the family income in more than three quarters of surveyed households, according the report released by Save the Children and UNICEF. Thursday's report (PDF) also showed that close to half of all Syrian refugee children in neighbouring Jordan were now the joint or sole family breadwinners in surveyed households.
In Lebanon, children as young as six years old are reportedly working, the report said. "As families become increasingly desperate, children are working primarily for their survival. Whether in Syria or neighbouring countries, they are becoming main economic players," Roger Hearn, regional Director for Save the Children in the Middle East and Eurasia, said.
Full story at Al Jazeera English
1 Jul 2015
Orthodox Jews Can’t Protest Gay Pride Parade, Hire Mexicans Instead
Some of the most curious costumes worn along the parade route belonged to protesters. Behind a barricade, a group of men wore the fringed Jewish prayer garment known as the tzitzit and held up anti-gay signs bearing the logo of a group calling itself the Jewish Political Action Committee. “Judaism prohibits homosexuality,” one sign read.
But the men were not Jewish. They were Mexican laborers, protesting because they were paid to protest, said one of the men, who would not give his name. Heshie Freed, a member of the political action committee, an Orthodox Jewish group based in Brooklyn, said that the men were supplementary troops, filling in for the Jewish students who would normally be called upon to demonstrate.
“The rabbis said that the yeshiva boys shouldn’t come out for this because of what they would see at the parade,” Mr. Freed said.