Duet by Sinead O'Connor and Bob Marley.
Sinead sings Bob Marley's 'War' live at the Bob Dylan Tribute (1992), after she ripped up a photo of the pope on Saturday Night Live... (You Tube) – More about this on Wikipedia
15 Sept 2011
Dutch state liable over Indonesia massacre
A Dutch court has ordered the government to compensate the widows of seven villagers who were summarily executed and a man shot and wounded in a notorious massacre during Indonesia's bloody battle for independence from colonial rule. The Hague Civil Court ruled on Wednesday it was "unreasonable" for the government to argue that the widows were not entitled to compensation because the statute of limitations had expired.
According to Indonesian researchers, Dutch troops wiped out almost the entire male population of Rawagede, a village in West Java, two years before the former colony declared independence in 1949.
"Justice has been done," said Liesbeth Zegveld, lawyer for the plaintiffs. "This means that the state can't just sit in silence for 60 years waiting for the case to go away of the plaintiffs to die and then appeal to the statute of limitations."
14 Sept 2011
London arming the World
The biennial Defence and Security Equipment International at the ExCel Centre has attracted hundreds of companies, ranging from the world's biggest producers of warplanes and missiles to niche hi-tech firms, although exhibitors also include makers of life-saving and medical products.
Delegations from 65 governments have been invited, including Bahrain, a longtime recipient of British arms, whose security forces have recently fired at unarmed demonstrators. Other invited Middle East governments include Iraq, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
India, which may soon overtake Saudi Arabia as Britain's largest single arms market, is on the guest list, which also features Algeria and Morocco.
Libya, whose arms dealers were guests two years ago, has not been invited, although it can expect to be asked next time when its new government should be in power. China, invited two years ago, is not on the official guestlist this time.
The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and other groups are planning a mass lobby of parliament and demonstrations in the Docklands.
10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked
Atheists don’t have a moral code. Atheist are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.
If anything, atheism correlates to better behavior on average. Atheists are under-represented in prison, for instance, and more religious nations have higher rates of violent crime, teen pregnancy, early adult mortality and even abortion. But setting the numbers aside, we can see that even religious people generally believe that morality exists outside of religion. After all, most religious people condemn people who commit acts of evil in the name of religion. If religiosity were the measure of morality, terrorists who murder in the name of God would be more moral than atheists who pay their taxes and give to charity. You’ll find few believers agreeing that a murderous terrorist for God is a better person than a nonviolent atheist, showing that believers grasp that morality doesn’t come from religion, but that we can measure religious claims against our pre-existing understanding of morality.
9 More Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked on AlterNet
Citizenship Denied: The Latest in the Cherokee Freedmen Saga
The late Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller wrote in her autobiography the following words: “The truth is that the practice of slavery will forever cast a shadow on the great Cherokee Nation.”
The repercussions of slavery are still being felt within the Cherokee Nation, as a five-year legal battle between the Cherokee Nation and the descendants of freed Cherokee slaves ended on August 22, with the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruling against freedmen who had sought to have their status as citizens of the Cherokee Nation validated.
The ruling upheld a 2007 Cherokee Nation Constitutional amendment that requires the nation’s citizens to have at least one Indian ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, the primary document used to determine Cherokee Nation eligibility. That amendment was passed after the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the freedmen could qualify for tribal citizenship. This latest ruling immediately revoked the citizenship of approximately 2,800 non-Indians, whose enrolment had been reinstated by a Cherokee Nation District Court four years ago. This ends the membership of Cherokee Nation members who are descendants of freedmen or of intermarried whites who had been granted Cherokee Nation citizenship.
One of the main legal arguments of the freedmen was based on a treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. government in 1866, after the end of the Civil War. Article 9 of that treaty states that the Cherokee Nation abolished slavery by 1863 and that “all freedmen who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners or by law, as well as all free colored persons who were in the country at the commencement of the rebellion, and are now residents therein, or who may return within six months, and their descendants, shall have all the rights of Native Cherokees.”
Rick Perry in the spotlight as Texas sets to work on controversial executions
Rick Perry, the frontrunner to become the Republican candidate in next year's US presidential election, has just hours left to prevent a man being put to death in Texas in a case in which the jury was told the prisoner was a danger to the public – and should therefore be executed – because he was black.
Duane Buck is one of four men scheduled to die by lethal injection in Texas, where Perry is governor, over the next eight days – an exceptional rate even in this execution-happy state. At Buck's sentencing hearing, the jury that set his punishment was informed by a psychologist that black people had a higher rate of violent behaviour, a statement used by the prosecution as its key argument against giving him an alternative penalty of life imprisonment.
On Tuesday night, another hotly contested case is scheduled to reach its climax with the execution of Steven Woods, who was sentenced to death for a double murder, even though an alleged accomplice later confessed to having pulled the trigger.
More on The Guardian – Also see Scheduled Executions on Texas Department of Criminal Justice
PLO to seek full UN recognition
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) will go to the United Nations Security Council and seek full membership in the world body next week, despite the looming threat of a US veto, a Palestinian official said.
The announcement was made by Mohammed Shtayyeh, a senior member of Fatah's central committee, at a news conference in Ramallah on Tuesday. Fatah is the largest Palestinian faction in the PLO. His announcement would seem to end months of speculation about the PLO's diplomatic strategy. "We are going to the United Nations, we are going to the Security Council," Shtayyeh said. "We are going to seek full membership based on 1967 borders."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president, will deliver a speech in Ramallah on Friday night outlining the bid. Full recognition would allow Palestine to vote at the UN, and to join the International Criminal Court and other world bodies.
The PLO will have little trouble securing the required two-thirds majority at the General Assembly; more than 120 nations have already promised to support the bid, according to Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. But the White House and various other US officials have already pledged to veto the Palestinian bid, and it cannot proceed without Security Council approval.
In that case, the PLO could still pursue "non-member observer status," which would give it diplomatic standing on a par with the Vatican. But it is unclear what, if anything, would change after that upgrade. Still, some Palestinian officials have urged the PLO to avoid the US veto and go directly to the General Assembly.
13 Sept 2011
UK Gangs Are Tricking Homeless People Into Slavery
The UK is seeing a rise in the number of rough sleepers being exploited and enslaved by criminal gangs, charities are warning, following the revelations that some of the "slaves" kept at a traveller camp in Bedfordshire were homeless people.
London-based homelessness charity Thames Reach told the Huffington Post UK that they had come across 20 cases in the last few months where people had come to them for help after fleeing captivity.
The warning comes after 24 people were found to have been allegedly held against their will and forced to work at a traveller site in Leighton Buzzard.
huffingtonpost.co.uk – More on The Guardian
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. (Wikipedia)
UNIT 731
Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (19371945) and World War II.
It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel. Officially known by the Imperial Japanese Army as the Kempeitai Political Department and Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory, it was initially set up under the Kempeitai military police of the Empire of Japan to develop weapons of mass destruction for potential use against Chinese, and possibly Soviet forces.
Super-earth exoplanet found that could support life
Astronomers say they have found a second planet outside our solar system which is the right distance from its star to potentially support life. But any possible inhabitants would have to have a taste for an environment that felt like a hot steam bath.
European astronomers announced the discovery of a total of 50 planets outside our solar system. Among these was one which lies in the 'Goldilocks zone' - an area which is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water, an essential for Earth-like life, to be present. The only past discovery of a Goldilocks planet that still stands up today is one that was found in 2007. In order to be able to support life the new planet would need not only to have water, it would also need to be solid, like earth and not made up primarily of gas, like Jupiter.
The newly discovered planet, which is called HD85512b, is about 3.6 times the mass of Earth, it is estimated that temperatures there range from 30 to 50 Celsius, and it is thought that the atmosphere is very humid.
The Pitch: Religion should be banned
The Gruen Transfer asks two ad agencies to sell the concept that Religion should be banned.
12 Sept 2011
Masquerade in Moscow
The Russian Bolshevik revolution was not a spontaneous uprising of the masses. It was planned, financed, and orchestrated by outsiders. Some of the financing came from Germany which hoped that internal problems would force Russia out of the war against her. But most of the money and leadership came from financiers in England and the United States. It was the perfect example of the Rothschild formula in action.
This group centered mainly around a secret society created by Cecil Rhodes, one of the world's wealthiest men at the time. The purpose of that group was nothing less than world dominion and the establishment of a modern feudalist society controlled by the world's central banks. Headquartered in England, the Rhodes inner-most directorate was called the Round Table. In other countries, there were established subordinate structures called Round-Table Groups. The Round-Table Group in the united States became known as the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR, which was initially dominated by J.P. Morgan and later by the Rockefellers, is the most powerful group in America today. it is even more powerful than the federal government, because almost all of the key positions in government are held by its members. In other words, it is the United States government.
Fabled Enemies
Jason Bermas' Fabled Enemies on the intelligence apparatus and its involvement in 9/11
11 Sept 2011
Mohamed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus
What the US government doesn't want you to know about the "terror pilots" and their friends.
Who's the bigger beast?
Millionaire banker Sir David Scholey, an ex-Bank of England director and BBC governor, poses by the bloody corpse of a lion after shooting it for fun on a "trophy-hunting" holiday. Other souvenir snaps show the Tory party donor grinning as he stands in front of elephant tusks and antelope and buffalo skulls during a big game hunting trip to Zambia.
Angry animal welfare groups yesterday described Sir David's trips as "sadistic and selfish" — but he said he saw nothing wrong in paying huge sums to kill exotic beasts. He added: "I have been hunting all over the world for many, many years and I have always hunted within the legal arrangements of the country concerned. I regard that as an entirely personal matter. All the animals I hunt are wild beasts. And I have felt threatened by them at times.
Prosperity
Prosperity is the state of flourishing, thriving, success, or good fortune. Prosperity often encompasses wealth but also includes others factors which are independent of wealth to varying degrees, such as happiness and health. (Wikipedia)
9/11 Fairytales Hit Schools
Official 9/11 Fable To Become Part Of School Curriculum Government-supported effort to 'encourage critical thinking' actually encourages obedient regurgitation of lies
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