ConCen - All Forums

NDAA declared unconstitutional: Indefinite detention of Americans blocked by NY court

Fri, 18 May 2012 04:19:57 -0400

On Wednesday, District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled the National Defense Authorization Act unconstitutional. Forrest issued a preliminary injunction which restrains the US government from administering section 1021 of the NDAA, a provision that allows for the indefinite detention for Americans with alleged terrorist ties. Carl Mayer, attorney for The Mayer Law Group representing the plaintiffs,joins us for more on the judge's ruling.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/user/RTAmerica

http://rt.com/usa/

http://conspiracyscope.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ConspiracyScope

Obama Pamphlet From 1991 States 'Born in Kenya'

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:33:18 -0400

Obama Pamphlet From 1991 States 'Born in Kenya'

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/...sia-Hawaii

Met Police to extract suspects' mobile phone data

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:17:52 -0400

Quote:The Metropolitan Police has implemented a system to extract mobile phone data from suspects held in custody.

The data includes call history, texts and contacts, and the BBC has learned that it will be retained regardless of whether any charges are brought.

The technology is being used in 16 London boroughs, and could potentially be used by police across the UK.

Campaign group Privacy International described the move as a "possible breach of human rights law".

Until now, officers had to send mobiles off for forensic examination in order to gather and store data, a process which took several weeks.

Under the new system, content will be extracted using purpose built terminals in police stations.

It will allow officers to connect a suspect's mobile and produce a print out of data from the device, as well as saving digital records of the content.

'Retained and handled'

A Met Police spokesman told the BBC that when a suspect was released, "data received from the handsets is retained and handled in accordance with other data held by the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service]" - regardless of whether charges had been brought.

Guidelines given to officers state that data extraction can happen only if there is sufficient suspicion the mobile phone was used for criminal activity.

"Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity," said Stephen Kavanagh, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

"When a suspect is arrested and found with a mobile phone that we suspect may have been used in crime, traditionally we submit it to our digital forensic laboratory for analysis.

"Therefore, a solution located within the boroughs that enables trained officers to examine devices and gives immediate access to the data in that handset is welcomed."
'Illegal'

Over 300 London officers will be trained in using the "intuitive, fully-guided touchscreen desktop data acquisition tool", created by mobile forensic firm Radio Tactics.

The cost of leasing the 16 terminals for 12 months and training the officers will be £50,000, the Met said.

Privacy International has expressed serious concern over the system.

"We are looking at a possible breach of human rights law," spokeswoman Emma Draper told the BBC.

"It is illegal to indefinitely retain the DNA profiles of individuals after they are acquitted or released without charge, and the communications, photos and location data contained in most people's smartphones is at least as valuable and as personal as DNA."

Ms Draper added that while the Met's current plans were limited to fixed extraction terminals in stations, portable technology was readily available.

"Examining suspects' mobile phones after they are arrested is one thing, but if this technology was to be taken out onto the streets and used in stop-and-searches, that would be a significant and disturbing expansion of police powers."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18102793

America Dubming Down Whole Populations

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:21:52 -0400

Don't you wish that someone had told you the truth before you went to college? Don't you wish that someone had told you that college has become a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money out of students and parents as possible? Yes, college can be a profitable endeavor if you pick your field of study wisely, if you can get someone else to pay for at least some of it and if you can actually get a good job in that field when you graduate. But most high school students are never told to weigh the pros and the cons before they run off to college. The typical high school student is simply told to get into the "best school" that he or she can and to take out whatever loans are "necessary" to pay for that education. Our high school students are assured that those student loans will be paid back easily once they get "good jobs" following graduation. But the truth is that there are some other things that high school students should be told before they go off to college as well. They should be told that student loan debt can cripple them financially for decades. They should be told that the quality of education at most U.S. colleges and universities is a total joke. They should be told that most college graduates do not get a "good job" once they graduate these days. They should be told that after they receive their diplomas they are likely to end up flat broke, waiting tables and living with their parents.

The Future Looks Uniformed

If we would just be honest with our high school students ahead of time, it would save many of them a whole lot of pain later.
Higher education is not necessarily a bad thing. But these days when it comes to higher education the goal should be to get as much for your money as you possibly can. You don't want to end up spending four years of your life and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a degree in "art history" or "political science".
If you are going to get a college degree, choose a field that will actually advance your career and try to spend as little as you can. Unless you have wealthy parents who can pay for it all, the goal should be to make as big of a profit on your education as possible.
Unfortunately, most young Americans are not told the truth and they end up falling for the scam and many of them end up as debt slaves for decades.
The following are 19 things that all high school students should be told before they go to college....

#1 A college education has become insanely expensive. Over the past 30 years, the cost of college tuition in the United States has tripled. One father down in Texas says that he will spend a total of about 1.5 million dollars on college expenses for his five daughters before it is all said and done.
#2 As costs have risen, so has student borrowing. Sadly, U.S. college students are now borrowing about twice as much money as they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation.
#3 Unless you have a wealthy parent, there are some schools that should be avoided like the plague. In the United States today, there are dozens of schools where tuition, room and board total more than $50,000 a year, and only a handful of those schools provide a top notch education.
#4 Our parents and our grandparents paid far less for their college educations than we do today. Back in 1952, a full year of tuition at Harvard was only $600. Today, it is over $35,000.
#5 The college textbook industry has become a gigantic money making scam. It is now common for many college textbooks to be priced well above $100, and overall the cost of college textbooks has tripled over the past decade.
#6 At the end of your education, your diploma will likely come with a debt burden which will hang around your neck for many years to come. In 2010, the average student loan debt burden at graduation was $25,250.
#7 Student loan debt is one of the greatest debt bubbles the U.S. has ever seen. In fact, student loan debt in America has grown by 511 percent since 1999.
#8 Americans now owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards. In fact, the total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
#9 People that pursue advanced degrees can pile up absolutely enormous amounts of student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, approximately 167,000 Americans currently have more than $200,000 of student loan debt.
#10 The student loan default rate in the U.S. is rising to unprecedented heights. In fact, the student loan default rate has nearly doubled since 2005.
#11 All over America, websites are connecting young college students desperate for college cash with "sugar daddies" that are willing to make a "contribution" to college education in exchange for some "companionship". The following is from a Huffington Post article about this disturbing trend....
On a Sunday morning in late May, Taylor left her Harlem apartment and boarded a train for Greenwich, Conn. She planned on spending the day with a man she had met online, but not in person.
Taylor, a 22-year-old student at Hunter College, had confided in her roommate about the trip and they agreed to swap text messages during the day to make sure she was safe.
Once in Greenwich, a man who appeared significantly older than his advertised age of 42 greeted Taylor at the train station and then drove her to the largest house she had ever seen. He changed into his swimming trunks, she put on a skimpy bathing suit, and then, by the side of his pool, she rubbed sunscreen into the folds of his sagging back -- bracing herself to endure an afternoon of sex with someone she suspected was actually about 30 years her senior.
#12 Once you start college, there is a very good chance that you will not finish. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of the full-time students who began college in 2001 received a bachelor's degree within four years.
#13 At most U.S. colleges and universities, the quality of the education that you will receive is rather poor. Just check out some numbers about the quality of college education in the United States from an article that appeared in USA Today....
-"After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change."
-"Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago"
-"35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone."
-"50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages"
-"32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week."
#14 The good news is that you will have more free time in college than you have ever had before. One survey found that U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.
#15 You are probably not going to be able to find a good job when you graduate. Last year, a staggering 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.
#16 After you leave college, you are much more likely to get a crappy job than you are to get a good paying professional job. The following is an excerpt from a recent CNBC article....
In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).
#17 If you think that you will be able to "beat the odds" and land the job of your dreams once you graduate from college, perhaps you should consider these numbers....
-In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
-In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
-In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
#18 College does a very poor job of preparing people for the "real world". In fact, one poll found that 70% of all college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the "real world" while they were still in school.
#19 Once you graduate from college, there is a really good chance that you will be moving back home with Mom and Dad. One recent poll discovered that 29 percent of all Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are still living with their parents.

Bob Chapman is on his deathbed

Wed, 16 May 2012 22:31:32 -0400

Some of you may have noticed that Bob Chapman sounded heavily medicated a few times on a couple of shows. Well today, John Stadtmiller announced that Bob will not be back on the airwaves ever and will soon be dead.

You can download the CF show here:

http://grizzom.blogspot.com/2012/05/nati...hn_16.html

Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:01:24 -0400

Article from: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/25/2537.asp
9/16/2008
Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide
Vendors plan to add spy technology to existing red light camera and speed camera installations.

Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company's latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.

"We are moving into areas such as homeland security on a national level and on a local level," Redflex regional director Cherif Elsadek said. "Optical character recognition is our next roll out which will be coming out in a few months -- probably about five months or so."

The technology would be integrated with the Australian company's existing red light camera and speed camera systems. It allows officials to keep full video records of passing motorists and their passengers, limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars.

"Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today," Elsadek said. "This is the next step for our technology."

ATS likewise is promoting motorist tracking technologies. In a recent proposal to operate 200 speed cameras for the Arizona state police, the company explained that its ticketing cameras could be integrated into a national vehicle tracking database. This would allow a police officer to simply enter a license plate number into a laptop computer and receive an email as soon as a speed camera anywhere in the state recognized that plate.

Such programs would be fully consistent with existing law on searches and seizures. In the 2003 case Washington v. William Bradley Jackson, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that police could not use a physical GPS tracking device to monitor a suspect's movements without first obtaining a warrant. No warrant would be needed or restrictions applied to license plate tracking systems which do not require any physical contact. Instead, individual police officers could monitor the movements of suspected criminals or even their wives and neighbors at any time.

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city's photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte's personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to "be on the lookout" for Diotte's BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers' plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

In the UK, officials are planning to dramatically expand the use of average speed cameras that track cars over distances as great as six miles. Records on all vehicle movements taken from a nationwide network of cameras will be stored for five years in a central government Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) server, allowing police to keep tabs on criminals and political opponents. Work on the data center in north London began in 2005 and officials expect real-time, nationwide tracking capability to be available by January.

http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/news.asp...37&m=print

÷÷÷÷

Global Spiritual Awakening to our Control System

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:25:43 -0400

In the past two weeks my minds' flow of philosophical inquiry and ability to articulate these thoughts have been at a peak in my life. I've been connecting with everyone I know (social butterfly I am) discussing current times and what I believe to be happening. I felt the urge to look online for another person's account of this matrix we live in order to compare thoughts with an audience outside my circle. This had been removed had to use the way back machine to access it, but I was blown away with its identical nature.

http://www.thecleaver.blogspot.com/2007/...r-own.html

Sooner or later the intelligent human mind realizes that reality is an illusion. This operates on many levels: perceptual, historical, political, molecular, spiritual. Depending on knowledge, circumstances and
belief system – our reality tunnel – we will each have a preferred method and subject of investigation.The scientifically inclined may turn to quantum physics, string theory and holography for answers. The religious temperament may begin to unravel the outer allegories of their sacred texts to get to the inner mysteries of true enlightenment. The social historian may realize that realpolitik, the private
military-industrial complex and supra-national globalist agendas influence world affairs more than any seemingly democratic government. In the end however, all roads lead to the same destination:pretty much everything around us is not the way we thought it was. This epiphany is nothing new. The sages of old, the philosophers, scientists and mystics were aware of this thousands of years ago. Much of their knowledge was handed down and recorded for the benefit of successive generations, but as the sands of time blow across the ages, things can get obscured, lost and even forgotten. Changes to Earth and its ecosystem can further bury man’s knowledge so it appears as if it were never there in the first place. But inevitably, some inquisitive mind will come along and rediscover the ancient wisdom for himself, and upon
the quest, will realize that his attainment is indeed an unearthing rather than an original creation. It is a remembrance. One fundamental principle of the illusion is the false impression of separation; the idea that we are somehow separate from the material things in our world. This is still the foundation for much of our thinking today. Well to distil a thousand learned books into one comment: we are not separate. At the deepest level everything is connected to everything else. Quantum physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) postulated that the ultimate nature of physical reality is not a collection of separate objects (as it appears), but rather it is an undivided whole that is in perpetual dynamic flux. Bohm was reinterpreting ancient knowledge and translating it into a modern quantum vocabulary. This was his remembrance: “at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven… Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one.” We are not separate from the things in our world and we are not separate from each other. Bohm called this gigantic flow of energy and consciousness the holomovement. Within this paradigm, neurophysiologist Karl Pribram suggests that our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, even random events are based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality is seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events express some underlying symmetry. As Pribram himself summarized: “the descriptions you get with spiritual experiences seem to parallel the descriptions of quantum physics.”

The Holomovement
You may be familiar with the holodeck from Star Trek. This is in fact, a mini implementation of Bohm’s holomovement concept. According to the Star Trek Technical Manual, the holodeck is an enclosed room in
which objects and people are simulated by a combination of replicated matter animated with weak tractor beams, as well as shaped force fields onto which holographic images are projected. Sounds and smells are simulated by speakers and fragranced fluid atomizers, respectively. The feel of a large environment is simulated by suspending the participants on force fields which move with their feet, keeping them in one place (a virtual treadmill). Perspective is retained through use of sound damping fields and graviton lenses, which make objects, people, and sounds appear to be more distant. The effect is an ultra-realistic simulation of an environment, with which the user can interact. Wow. Wouldn’t you just love your own holodeck? Well, you’ve got one. And you’re already in it. It is the holomovement. Bigger and better than the holodeck. However, both systems do have one very important thing in common: they require a program to function. Without a program, they don’t work. There is only a blank nothingness. No program - no holodeck. And this is where we get to the crux of the matter. We program the holomovement with our consciousness. Consciousness is the software behind everything. It follows then that if we create the holomovement, and the holomovement constitutes everything (all objects, places and people), then we co-create the entire universe, probably with many other beings and entities. What we call the soul is our little unit of consciousness that we get to work with. Sometimes we incarnate it on different planets and in different individuals. We call them lifetimes, people or experiences. When a 3D manifest experience is complete, the soul travels to a new destination. It is a constantly evolving piece of consciousness, indestructible and eternal. This is one of the great secrets of mankind. Moreover, we can detect within the holomovement, evidence of a super-soul; an awesome quality of consciousness with an ancient evolutionary path that has existed for billions of years. This super-soul is responsible for nurturing and guiding the
substructure of the holomovement and all the souls within it. Many refer to this entity as God. It is this super-soul that authored the holomovement programming language itself. It is my belief that God wants us to go through the holomovement, exploring, creating, charting and enjoying it.

A Virus In The System
When we don’t realize that we are generating our own reality, our contribution to the holomovement is negligible. The reality field that we generate is weak. We feel unimportant and at the mercy of the
world’s ominous, random and wholly impersonal events. We have no control. Even in this unnatural state, our consciousness (our dream as the Australian aboriginals call it) is still programming the holomovement; we are still generating reality. The difference is that the contents of our subconscious and unconscious mind (so easily influenced by external forces) are more literally translated into what we create. What we see through the TV screen we actually program and manifest into reality. Without real mindfulness of our creativity, we simply serve as conduits for the programming instructions we get from the Control System outlets – the TV, the media, the education system, the government and society as a whole. This is the virus that has crept into our section of the holomovement and is infecting our minds. It has contaminated most of the people on earth and corrupted their hard disk, causing them to forget their own infinite, independent, divine power. And sadly, the virus was released intentionally. The creators of the virus have been around for millennia. They have remained well hidden and used third party agents to do their dirty work. Today we know their agents as The Globalists, The New World Order, The Illuminati, The Imperial Elitists etc. Whatever your prefer. All of them stretch back into antiquity in one form or another. Basic study consistently establishes that they have two main operational arms: the global political arm (Bilderberg, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Rockefeller Foundation, Club Of Rome, Tavistock Institute etc), and the secret fraternal arm (Freemasonry, Skull & Bones, Knights Of Malta, Knights Of Columbus, Rosicrucians etc). Information on these organizations is freely available to the reader for their own study. For now, in short, we may reasonably say of the fraternal societies that they are ancient, widespread and exceedingly influential in world affairs. I have come to refer collectively to these groups and their methods of dominion as the Control System. This focuses the mind on the matter in hand and avoids any obscure cross referencing or unintentional intimations.

Unveiling The Control System
Naturally, the enquiring researcher’s studies will turn to specific events and mechanisms orchestrated by the Control System to provide the requisite level of evidence to substantiate the astonishing idea that our world is controlled by highly unpleasant forces. The initial shock that the government is most certainly not your friend, is actually one of the worst along the whole journey. Indeed it is here, at this crucible of realization, that most fail the preliminary test and instead opt out to follow a path of comfortable diversion. For those resolute souls who forge ahead, deep study of the Control System leads to an even more profound unveiling. It becomes clear that even the Control System itself is merely camouflage to obscure a grander and much older strategy: what we now know as ‘the virus in the holomovement’. The awesome magnitude of this strategy, once conceived, indicates a total unlearning of all official personal, national, human and planetary history. The resultant cognitive dissonance at this point will stretch the researcher’s belief system to its limits. Even those who have fully unraveled a mysterious event that proves government complicity in some terrible act of violence, will be tempted to simply re-examine
another aspect of the Control System. Find another project to pour themselves into. Better to be consumed in their own study than face the prospect of a total rebuilding of their personal belief system from the ground up. That’s a hard thing to do.

The Sleeper Must Awaken
You can only examine the Control System for so long. You can only investigate the inside jobs and the setups so many times. Yeah. They perpetrate this stuff all the time and the game has been rigged from the very beginning. So where are you going? What’s next? Sooner or later we must face up to our own spiritual and metaphysical reality. This is the real destination. Only from here can we begin to dismantle their power structures. It is time to get spiritual. It is time to suspend your belief system while you download a major upgrade. We are infinite. We create reality. Without true knowledge and internalization of this information, the Control System successfully manufactures reality for us by controlling our consciousness, our dream, our imagination. If the human consciousness is manipulated through fear-based and trauma-based systems (entrenched in our media, entertainment and news broadcasts) then the Control System can implant a reality of its own that keeps us self-limiting and passive. We are not required to be actively creative in their reality. We are just cabling for their network. But something is changing at a fundamental level. It is accelerating events. Something that was predicted a long time ago. A natural spiritual awakening is occurring planet wide, as our galaxy moves back toward the galactic core where it’s unique frequencies begin to vibrate at higher levels. More and more people are waking up to their own spiritual potential and divine human identity. We do not need anyone else’s programming. The year 2012 marks a key energetic crossroads where a quantum leap in human awareness and a polarization of belief systems is likely. The Control System is well aware of this and is pulling out all the stops to consolidate its authority. Massive fear-based control events are planned - alien invasion, world war and social chaos.
All attempting to nail down human consciousness and make it incapable of shaping its own destiny. The Control System has one major disadvantage though: it does not possess something very important that we all have. Something very special and possibly rather rare in the universe.... what is this thing? It is our divine spark, our piece of the super-soul, our lineage to God. Did David Bohm feel this when he said: “in some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.” We must start generating our own reality again. Begin programming the holomovement with our ideas, our love, our intent and our infinite creativity. The Control System’s holomovement virus is weak. It is dependent on our ignorance and disbelief for it to function properly. Awareness of its very existence begins to instantly erode it. Full comprehension of our own creative consciousness attacks the virus. When we begin to generate our own powerful reality fields again, the virus is eliminated. So we must get natural. No more implanted reality. No more Control System programming. We generate our own reality from on.

Posted by NKS at 12:22 PM Monday June 25th 2007

Free L. Bank

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:10:16 -0400

May 15th, 2012

An Important Update from Director Canupa Gluha Mani:
Hoka hey!

My name is Canupa Gluha Mani, and I am the Ithanchan of the Free Lakota Bank, whip-man of the Black Hills Treaty Council, warrior of the Strong Heart Society and a proud member of the Lakota Oyate.

In 2007, my colleagues and I traveled from the Pine Ridge reservation to Washington DC, declaring our sovereignty and independence from the tyranny of your government and more than a century of abuse and ignoring the treaty of Fort Laramie.

Since then, we have undertaken many tasks to gain the support and recognition of the international community. We sent ambassadors across the globe, established our own monetary system, our own bank, we began issuing our own travel documents and most importantly, started generating our very own profit. The Lakota people are no longer slaves to your government.

In 2008 the Lakota people launched the Free Lakota Bank, in accordance with the demands of the treaty council, in partnership with the American Open Currency Standard and with protection from the Strong Heart Warrior Society. The bank quickly became an international sensation. Support poured in from across the globe, and our project was instantly overwhelmed. It has taken more than three years to catch up on the backlog of interest in our groundbreaking financial institution. Though we still have a long way to go, our founding depositors have helped us accomplish amazing results since inception.

Click the image below for a video update:

Canupa Gluha Mani speaks to the people regarding the Free Lakota Bank update.

Though we are still in the development stage, we can no longer operate quietly. As your governments march steadily toward their own destruction, they cannibalize the citizenry through taxation and regulation.

For example, those of you paying attention may have noticed that, through the work of your government's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, private banking is now effectively dead. In the past, US authorities required foreign banks to report directly, and most international banking centers simply ignored the requests. Now, all banks that wish to participate in the Federal Reserve banking system must report account data to their own governments, and with a few remote exceptions, governments simply swap data with each other. Moreover, popular US peer-to-peer payment systems now issue 1099's for payments received, creating a tax liability for those who wish to transact online. As the government fails, look for the squeeze to continue.

We known how it feels to be treated like this. The basic rights of indigenous people across our lands have been trampled on for years. We were stolen from, forced into colonialism, massacred, cheated and abused in just about every form imaginable. I know first-hand what it's like to stand up to the federal government. I was there at wounded knee in 1973, firing shots in defense of my people. I wish the people of this country never have to personally witness such an atrocity, but I believe that day may come for you too to draw your line in the sand.

We do not intend to do nothing while your government implodes. In fact, there is great profit to be made providing tools and access for people like you to live a sovereign life. There are many components to sovereignty, but one that I believe to be most important is economic independence. You must have the ability to earn your own profit in an objective form of value, like silver or gold. You must have the ability to easily do business with others that demand payment in the same form. You must have the ability to use objective forms of value to satisfy the needs and desires of your life. The Free Lakota Bank is working diligently to create the network for access to the new economy, built of the mutual exchange of value.

Over the years, many have asked why Lakota elders chose to start the Free Lakota Bank. The Lakota people are warriors. Warriors can achieve victory. Like Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Rain in Your Face and other warriors before them, my elders wish to leave a legacy, a positive impact on turtle island, which you call North America, and the people that inhabit Her. The Lakota legacy will be to emancipate the people of this land from financial slavery.

I encourage you to join our economic system. Bank with us or other commodity banks
and be a part of our success while you create your own. The Free Lakota Bank is the first bank in the world to offer deposits and investment opportunities exclusively in silver, and even pays interest on contract deposits in ounces of metal.

Over the next few months, stay tuned for several important announcements from the Free Lakota Bank. Thank you for your continued support and remember, as the great warrior Crazy Horse said, Hoka Hey! Today is a good day to die!

Canupa Gluha Mani
Free Lakota Bank
http://www.FreeLakotaBank.com

Studies Suggest Economic Inequity Is Built Into, and Worsened by, School Systems

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:55:40 -0400

Studies Suggest Economic Inequity Is Built Into, and Worsened by, School Systems

(Photo: trustypics) So why do self-styled education "reformers" keep ignoring class issues?

Ignoring Poverty as Education Reform
As Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan represents both the discourse and policy currently driving education reform in the US. On September 24, 2009, Duncan spoke about equity, education reform and the possibility of reauthorizing the federal education legislation known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Typical of his discourse throughout his tenure as Secretary of Education, Duncan explained: "I heard their voices - their expectations, hopes and dreams for themselves and their kids. They were candid about their fears and frustrations. They did not always understand why some schools struggle while others thrive. They understood profoundly that great teaching and school leadership is the key to a great education for their kids."

Building on the framework for reform endorsed by Obama and Duncan, self-appointed reformers - including Joel Kline, Michelle Rhee, Paul Vallas, and many others - directly announced an education reform manifesto that asserted: "As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income - it is the quality of their teacher."

Duncan's implication that the public doesn't understand variations in educational outcomes (as well as his misinformation about the power of teachers and school leaders to overcome social forces) and reform agendas rejecting the impact of race and ZIP codes are now complicated by the mid-April release of two new reports from the Schott Foundation and Brookings since the conclusions of these two studies highlight that America's faith in a level playing field is not fulfilled in either society or in public schools.

In light of the new research, several components of "no excuses" education reform are likely to increase the current problems with social and educational equity, instead of addressing them. Before we look further at why charter schools, school choice, Teach for America (TFA) and teacher quality will make the problem worse, not better, let's look at some of the data.

Findings Confirm Classrooms Are Not Immune to Forces Beyond the Schoolyard

"We like to believe all students have an equal opportunity to learn," explained Liz Dwyer, "regardless of the color of their skin or the amount of money their families have."

But "A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City," from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, has prompted Pedro Noguera (New York University) to state in the Preface: "[T]his report will show that evidence of blatant disparities amount to Apartheid-like separations that have been accepted in New York for far too long."

The Schott study focuses on New York City (NYC), but the patterns exposed in the report are typical across the US in public education, a system currently under siege by "no excuses" reformers from the US Department of Education to each statehouse across the country.
"The historic link between home values and school quality throughout the United States virtually insures that poor and working-class children will be denied equal educational opportunities," said Scott Henderson, a professor of education at Furman University and author of "Housing and the Democratic Ideal" (2000).

The data in the report connect housing prices and patterns as they correlate with school attendance and measurable outcomes for those students. The patterns exposed by the report's examination of opportunities to learn reveal the following:

"[W]hile 46% of the city's White, non-Hispanic students and 47% of the city's Asian students are enrolled in top quartile high schools, only 18% of Black and 16% of Hispanic students are enrolled in those schools. Seventeen percent of students who, because of their family's low income, are eligible for free or reduced price lunches, are enrolled in those schools. Here, again, the family income metric corroborates those for race and ethnicity. Nineteen percent of the city's few American Indian students were in the highest quartile schools.

"When we look at the racial/ethnic distribution for the lowest quartile, where the average student has a 29% or less chance of graduating in four years with a Regents diploma, we find that a Black or Hispanic student is nearly four times more likely to be enrolled in one of the city's poorest performing high schools as is an Asian or White student." [Executive Summary]

Broadly, then, the report reached this devastating conclusion:
"Most, if not all, students in majority middle class Asian and White, non-Latino Queens Community School Districts 25 and 26 ... have an opportunity to learn in a high-performing school, where most students are able to achieve at high levels. None of the students in Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn Community School Districts 5, 7, 12, 13, 16 and 19 (at the far right on the chart) have the opportunity to learn in a high-performing school. The latter districts serve some of the poorest children in the city.
"Students who live in neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly Black, Latino, or impoverished White or Asian have little opportunity to learn the basic skills needed to succeed on state and national assessments, attend one of the city's selective high schools, or obtain a high school diploma qualifying them for college or a good job.

"This report documents not only where de facto education redlining occurs in New York City communities, but also the devastating impact inequitable educational opportunity has on New York City's public school students." ["A Rotting Apple," p. 4 .]

The NYC study connecting any student's opportunity to learn to the housing and community structures beyond the control of that student and the family reinforces the broader issue of in-school inequity exposed by Peske and Haycock (2006), who examined patterns of teacher assignment based on student characteristics most strongly associated with measurable student outcomes - family income, race, native language, special needs. They conclude:
"Unfortunately, rather than organizing our educational system to pair these children with our most expert teachers, who can help 'catch them up' with their more advantaged peers, we actually do just the opposite. The very children who most need strong teachers are assigned, on average, to teachers with less experience, less education and less skill than those who teach other children."

"New York needs a renewed commitment to equity to insure that the opportunity to learn is not determined by the census tract where a child resides," argued Noguera, but recent evidence suggests that the entire US shares the same need for a "commitment to equity."
"These studies demonstrate a simple, essential reality which corporate reformers ignore: that socioeconomics don't somehow magically stop at classroom door," explained educator and scholar Adam Bessie. He added, "School reform and social reform are inseparable projects and that schools in economically and racially segregated communities are not crippled by 'bad teachers' nor 'evil unions,' but rather, by that very segregation itself."

Bessie also suggested that these studies help challenge the call for "miracle" reform that presents schools as the singular institution to create social change, even though the dynamics of those schools tends to perpetuate the same inequity found in society. Social reform addressing over 20 percent of children living in poverty must accompany reforming school inequity, he maintained.

New York City and Across the US: Education as Inequity
The mid-April release of the Brookings report, "Housing Costs, Zoning and Access to High-Scoring Schools," confirmed as well that education as inequity is not unique to New York. This national analysis concluded:
• Nationwide, the average low-income student attends a school that scores at the 42nd percentile on state exams, while the average middle/high-income student attends a school that scores at the 61st percentile on state exams....
• Northeastern metro areas with relatively high levels of economic segregation exhibit the highest school test-score gaps between low-income students and other students....
• Across the 100 largest metropolitan areas, housing costs an average of 2.4 times as much, or nearly $11,000 more per year, near a high-scoring public school than near a lowscoring public school....
• Large metro areas with the least restrictive zoning have housing cost gaps that are 40 to 63 percentage points lower than metro areas with the most exclusionary zoning.

As Nirvi Shah reported: "While the idea that economic segregation was a function of zoning practices isn't new, Mr. Rothwell said his research is among the first to explicitly link the two and tie the results to access to high-quality schools."

Nancy Flanagan taught in the suburbs of Detroit for 31 years and now blogs at Teacher/EdWeek. As a teacher and consultant, she witnessed firsthand the inequity of children's access to housing and education. Flanagan argued the Brookings report revealed to her that "the answer seems very clear: If every family were earning a fair wage, enough to pull them out of poverty, our problems would be solved."

These patterns of in-school inequity pose significant problems for current education reform narratives and initiatives coming from political and public leaders in the US, especially when evidence on income equity has caused Timothy Noah to confront the data and ask: "That was when the richest 1 percent accounted for 18 percent of the nation's income. Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income. What caused this to happen?"

If children in the US are experiencing growing inequity of income in their homes and communities as well as inequity of opportunity in their community schools, how do the current education reform commitments match the weight of evidence concerning what sort of reform US public education needs?

Jonathan Rothwell, in the Brookings report, reached this conclusion about current reform:
"While all of these efforts deserve careful consideration, none directly addresses one of the central issues that limit educational opportunity for low-income and minority children: their disproportionate concentration in low-performing schools. In particular, limiting the development of inexpensive housing in affluent neighborhoods and jurisdictions fuels economic and racial segregation and contributes to significant differences in school performance across the metropolitan landscape." [Introduction, p. 2.]

Wrong on All Four Counts: Why Charter Schools, School Choice, Teach for America and Teacher Quality Are Not the Answer
Both studies also suggest that the current education reform movement is terribly flawed since politicians and the public have committed to addressing poverty and inequity by ignoring poverty and inequity.
Charter Schools. The Obama administration and states across the US are promoting and expanding charter schools, yet the growing body of research on charter schools shows that student outcomes are little different than outcomes in public or private schools. Further, as Matthew Di Carlo emphasized, "there is nothing about 'charterness' that leads to strong results." Yet, charter schools, notably charter chains such as Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), are being supported as a primary mechanism for addressing the achievement gap among racial and socioeconomic subgroups. As Rothwell concluded, however, charter schools do not address the inequity of children's homes and schools; in fact, the one key pattern shown in the growth of charter schools is that they are resegregating education.

School Choice. The school choice movement gained momentum in the 1990s, and then initiatives such as vouchers lost steam. But in the past few years, choice, vouchers, and other aspects of choice (such as the rise of charter schools as a choice) have all regained popularity, despite the lack of evidence that choice itself addresses social equity, educational equity or educational outcomes. Choice and, specifically, parental choice, is a powerful argument again refuted by current reviews of Milwaukee's extensive voucher program. Casey Cobb's reviews show why both the choice mechanism and the research as well as reporting on that research are yet more reform measures that fail to address equity. In his evaluation of a report comparing test scores from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, public school students with scores from students in the city's school choice program, Cobb wrote:

"The results are not particularly useful beyond providing a snapshot of how MPCP students and a comparison group of low-income MPS students perform on a battery of state exams. The report correctly cautions readers not to make causal inferences about the effects of either sector, given the descriptive rather than analytical nature of the analysis."
Typical of research on the impact of choice to reform educational outcomes, data from the Milwaukee initiative, on balance, according to the review, "provide little to support the 22-year-old school voucher program.... But it's also because the data and the reports simply fail to demonstrate that voucher schools are associated with improved outcomes."

"In New York City, openings in coveted preschools go to parents able to pay for them," explained educator and EdWeek blogger Walt Gardner. "The same advantages persist throughout the entire educational process. The results call into question Milton Friedman's claim that choice will provide a quality education for all."

Teach for America (TFA). Like charter schools, TFA has gained a great deal of support from the Obama administration as well as states and school districts across the US. Since TFA recruits are college graduates without teacher education or teaching experience, however, commitments to TFA fail to address the inequitable distribution of quality teachers to high-needs populations of students. In fact, TFA perpetuates the inequitable practice of assigning inexperienced and unqualified or underqualified teachers to high-poverty, minority, ELL and special needs students.

Teacher Quality. Promoting TFA is a subset of the broader move to shift the accountability movement away from students alone (the standards and testing movement spawned in the early 1980s) and to include teachers as well. Calls for recruiting the best and brightest to teach is being coupled with value-added methods (VAM) for evaluating, paying and dismissing teachers. All of these policies, however, fail to acknowledge that out-of-school factors dwarf the impact of teacher quality, that VAM evaluations and merit pay are unstable and ineffective and that none of these policies address what we know is most inequitable about teaching in the US: affluent students are assigned the most experienced and qualified teachers while poor and minority students are assigned new and unqualified or underqualified teachers.
The reality of "no excuses" reform is that political and public leaders have begun to ignore poverty and inequity by repeating slogans such as "poverty is not destiny" to mask policy that fails to create equity and often increases inequity.

Addressing Inequity as Education Reform
Part of the current reform language includes persistent references to the "achievement gap," but as Gardner explained, even if in-school equity were achieved (and currently it is not), "Don't forget that advantaged children are not standing still in the interim. They continue to benefit from travel and other enriching learning experiences. As a result, the gap will persist."

The Schott Foundation and Brookings reports are messages that US social and education reform must be reimagined in order to address not an achievement gap based on test scores that tell us what we already know - the out-of-school factors of a child's life are more powerful than that child's school - but the equity gap.

Pasi Sahlberg, director general of Finland's Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation and author of "Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?" explained how the US must reform education reform:

"First of all, although Finland can show the United States what equal opportunity looks like, Americans cannot achieve equity without first implementing fundamental changes in their school system. The following three issues require particular attention.

"Funding of schools: Finnish schools are funded based on a formula guaranteeing equal allocation of resources to each school regardless of location or wealth of its community.

"Well-being of children: All children in Finland have, by law, access to childcare, comprehensive health care and pre-school in their own communities. Every school must have a welfare team to advance child happiness in school.

"Education as a human right: All education from preschool to university is free of charge for anybody living in Finland. This makes higher education affordable and accessible for all.

"As long as these conditions don't exist, the Finnish equality-based model bears little relevance in the United States."
"A Rotting Apple" also offers recommendations that likely must be applied to the national education reform movement: restoring full funding of education; instituting equitable access to schools and programs for all children; providing school resources linked to need rather than competitive models, insuring students with identified literacy needs full social and educational support (including health and eye care as well as food security); evaluating schools based on student opportunities to learn ("access to high-quality early childhood education, highly prepared and effective teachers, college preparatory curricula and policies and practices that promote student progress and success"); and addressing teacher experience as well as pay equity within and among schools.
Noguera ended his foreword to the NYC report with: "Let us hope that the policymakers who read this report understand its implications and have the courage and foresight to act upon the recommendations."
If leaders and policy makers are willing to confront the evidence of social and educational inequity, this hope may lead to the changes promised by the current president now trapped in "no excuses" reform commitments that offer no hope or change.
This article is a Truthout original.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8993-stud...ol-systems

White Supremacy and the Murders of Young People of Color

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:52:38 -0400

Trayvon Martin, a Man of His Time: White Supremacy and the Murders of Young People of Color

Dedicated to the memory of the recently departed Joel Olson, an ally in the fight against white supremacy.

Once again, the US black community is up in (figurative) arms about systemic white supremacy raising up (literal) arms. Once again, white America is faced with what philosopher Charles Mills called the "preoccupation of nonwhite moral and political thought with issues of race, puzzling alike to a white liberalism predicated on colorless atomic individuals and a white Marxism predicated on colorless classes in struggle." What indeed is the focus on race? Part of this puzzle's solution - and part of stopping such killings in the future - lies in understanding Trayvon Martin as a man of his time.

American society explains away and apologizes for indefensible behavior by prominent historical figures by labeling them "men of their time." Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, for example, are defined in American discourse by their political writings, military leadership and presidential policies. Their humanity becomes universal, while their inhumanity - African slavery and Indian removal most prominently - is fixed in the past, unrelated to the systems of the present. We call them "men of their time" because we understand society to have been sympathetic to or supportive of their actions. But slaves were always opposed to slavery. Indian tribes were always opposed to removal. Were they not also women and men of their time? Why doesn't their opposition matter in white America's narrative?
If Washington, Jefferson and Jackson can be exculpated by calling them "men of their time," it is only because their victims are not considered men or women of any time. They are not considered men or women at all; they are subhuman. This dehumanization also becomes universal. The slave and settler society narrative did not end with the 13th Amendment, it continues to present them as dehumanized, non-individuals. African slaves are still not seen as "of their time."

Our understanding of slave owners and Indian killers as "men of their time" is actually a misunderstanding perpetuated because their victims are barred from being "men of any time." Systemic white supremacy distorts the way we see the world, including how we misunderstand the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Haynes, Jasmine Thar, and others. The misunderstanding becomes apparent if we listen to the narratives of those systematically dehumanized, those denied the chance to be men and women of their time. For example, the narrative of white supremacist policing and vigilantism has long been common in the black community, most prominently in low-income areas. White America, however, tends to hear this narrative, if hearing it at all, as episodic - a few bad apples rather than a systemic problem.

The 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles was hideous, but not terribly uncommon. Its capture on video, however, was expected to be a watershed moment. This was proof of the narrative of systemic police brutality! With video evidence, how could it be denied? But it was. King's attackers weren't, in the end, even punished as individual bad apples, much less as representatives of a systemic problem. King, too, was not a man of his time.

A Way Forward
Jefferson was indeed a man of his time, but more importantly, James and Sally Hemings were men and women of theirs. Until we can acquaint ourselves with this history, what Walter Benjamin called "the tradition of the oppressed," we will continue to misunderstand the world that white supremacy has created. The crude racism of police profiling, the (supposedly anachronistic) neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan marches and the beatings and killings of people of color by the police and others astonish white America; each are misunderstood as an ugly blight on our (meaning white America's) otherwise just system.

That now, in 21st century America, people are persecuted and killed due to white supremacy (a term more accurate and descriptive than "structural racism") is only astonishing because our conception of history leaves out systemic white supremacy altogether. The conception of history that allows us to see King's attackers as "bad apples," Jefferson's slave owning as fixed in the past and his political writings relevant to the present and Martin's murder as a tragic incident instead of evidence of a white supremacist society, must be discarded. Those victimized by this system must be humanized as men and women of their time. The ongoing dehumanization of Nittakechi, Deborah Squash, Tsiyu Gansini, Oney Judge, and other enslaved Africans and removed Indians is part of the same system that labels a young black man wearing a hoodie as suspicious, threatening and subhuman.

The Million Hoodie march protests are trying to tell white America that, not only is there nothing wrong with being young, black and putting your hood up, but under each hood is a right human, a man or woman of their time. Are we, white America, listening? If we are, we'll learn that Washington, Jefferson and Jackson's African slavery and Indian removal policies are at least as important as their other political work, and that their lionization on currency is horrifying. We will learn that police brutality and racial profiling against communities of color are not episodic, but systemic. We will learn that Martin was a man of his time, and perhaps, by recognizing his humanity, our children and grandchildren won't have to apologize for our actions, claiming our decency against the evidence while sheepishly defending us as "men of our time."
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9122-tray...ite-people

Next 9/11 Revealed In Simpsons?

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:30:52 -0400

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2129/992/...psons.html

In "To Surveil, with Love" (2010), a dirty bomb detonation in Springfield, is used
to justify the introduction of a "Big Brother Surveillance Society".

Note the solitary storm cloud over the 12, the hidden 2 next to the 10 along
Homer's approximate eye line, and the extra 10 from the frame:-

A 01 from the frame, and an extra 01 above the minute hand (click to enlarge):-

Server Bandwidth Overage Charges

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:10:58 -0400

If you have any comments or questions about the current situation, post them in this thread.

The Drug War is a War on Latin America - Chomsky

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:28:11 -0400

The US War on Latin America
By Noam Chomsky, Nation of Change
12 May 12

hough sidelined by the Secret Service scandal, last month’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, was an event of considerable significance. There are three major reasons: Cuba, the drug war, and the isolation of the United States.
A headline in the Jamaica Observer read, "Summit shows how much Yanqui influence had waned." The story reports that "the big items on the agenda were the lucrative and destructive drug trade and how the countries of the entire region could meet while excluding one country – Cuba."

The meetings ended with no agreement because of U.S. opposition on those items – a drug-decriminalization policy and the Cuba ban. Continued U.S. obstructionism may well lead to the displacement of the Organization of American States by the newly-formed Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, from which the United States and Canada are excluded.

Cuba had agreed not to attend the summit because otherwise Washington would have boycotted it. But the meetings made clear that U.S. intransigence would not be long tolerated. The U.S. and Canada were alone in barring Cuban participation, on grounds of Cuba’s violations of democratic principles and human rights.

Latin Americans can evaluate these charges from ample experience. They are familiar with the U.S. record on human rights. Cuba especially has suffered from U.S. terrorist attacks and economic strangulation as punishment for its independence – its "successful defiance" of U.S. policies tracing back to the Monroe Doctrine.

Latin Americans don’t have to read U.S. scholarship to recognize that Washington supports democracy if, and only if, it conforms to strategic and economic objectives, and even when it does, favors "limited, top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been allied â(euro) [ (in) quite undemocratic societies," as neo-Reaganite scholar Thomas Carothers points out.

At the Cartagena summit, the drug war became a key issue at the initiative of newly-elected Guatemalan President Gen. Perez Molina, whom no one would mistake for a soft-hearted liberal. He was joined by the summit host, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and by others.
The concern is nothing new. Three years ago the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy published a report on the drug war by ex-Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia calling for decriminalizing marijuana and treating drug use as a public-health problem.

Much research, including a widely quoted Rand Corporation study of 1994, has shown that prevention and treatment are considerably more cost-effective than the coercive measures that receive the bulk of funding. Such nonpunitive measures are also of course far more humane.
Experience conforms to these conclusions. By far the most lethal substance is tobacco, which also kills nonusers at a high rate (passive smoking). Usage has sharply declined among more educated sectors, not by criminalization but as a result of lifestyle changes.

One country, Portugal, decriminalized all drugs in 2001 – meaning that they remain technically illegal but are considered administrative violations, removed from the criminal domain. A Cato Institute study by Glenn Greenwald found the results to be "a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world."

In dramatic contrast, the coercive procedures of the 40-year U.S. drug war have had virtually no effect on use or price of drugs in the United States, while creating havoc through the continent. The problem is primarily in the United States: both demand (for drugs) and supply (of arms). Latin Americans are the immediate victims, suffering appalling levels of violence and corruption, with addiction spreading through the transit routes.

When policies are pursued for many years with unremitting dedication though they are known to fail in terms of proclaimed objectives, and alternatives that are likely to be far more effective are systematically ignored, questions naturally arise about motives. One rational procedure is to explore predictable consequences. These have never been obscure.
In Colombia, the drug war has been a thin cover for counterinsurgency. Fumigation – a form of chemical warfare – has destroyed crops and rich biodiversity, and contributes to driving millions of poor peasants into urban slums, opening vast territories for mining, agribusiness, ranches and other benefits to the powerful.

Other drug-war beneficiaries are banks laundering massive amounts of money. In Mexico, the major drug cartels are involved in 80 percent of the productive sectors of the economy, according to academic researchers. Similar developments are occurring elsewhere.
In the U.S., the primary victims have been African-American males, increasingly also women and Hispanics – in short, those rendered superfluous by the economic changes instituted in the 1970s, shifting the economy toward financialization and offshoring of production.
Thanks largely to the highly selective drug war, minorities are dispatched to prison – the major factor in the radical rise of incarceration since the 1980s that has become an international scandal. The process resembles "social cleansing" in U.S. client states in Latin America, which gets rid of "undesirables."

The isolation of the U.S. at Cartagena carries forward other turning-point developments of the past decade, as Latin America has at last begun to extricate itself from the control of the great powers, and even to address its shocking internal problems.

Latin America has long had a tradition of liberal jurisprudence and rebellion against imposed authority. The New Deal drew from that tradition. Latin Americans may yet again inspire progress in human rights in the United States.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/...in-america

Kodak Had a Secret Nuclear Reactor With Enriched Uranium

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:55:09 -0400

Thought this might belong here. Not quite sure what to make of this bizarre story... possibly just scaremongering about the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuke.

http://gizmodo.com/5909961/kodak-had-a-s...a-basement

Quote:Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.

But why did Kodak have a hidden nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium? And how did they get permission to own it, let alone install it in a basement in the middle of a densely populated city?

Nobody really knows. Kodak officials now admit that they never made any public announcement about it. In fact, nobody in the city—officials, police or firemen—or in the state of New York or anywhere else knew about it until it was recently leaked by an ex-employee. Its existence and whereabouts were purposely kept vague and only a few engineers and Federal employees really knew about the project.

It's extremely strange that Kodak managed to get something like this. According to Miles Pomper, from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. it's "such an odd situation because private companies just don't have this material." While 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade uranium is not enough to create a nuclear bomb, illegal arm merchants are seeking small amounts like this to put them for sale in the black market—which is why the United States has such a tight control on this material. The government doesn't want Iran or al-Qaeda getting their hands all over the atomic candy for obvious reasons.

Kodak's purpose for the reactor wasn't sinister: they used it to check materials for impurities as well as neutron radiography testing. The reactor, a Californium Neutron Flux multiplier (CFX) was acquired in 1974 and loaded with three and a half pounds of enriched uranium plates placed around a californium-252 core.

The reactor was installed in a closely guarded, two-foot-thick concrete walled underground bunker in the company's headquarters, where it was fed tests using a pneumatic system. According to the company, no employees were ever in contact with the reactor. Apparently, it was operated by atomic fairies and unicorns.

It wasn't until 2006, well after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that it was decided to dismantle it.

Violent Undercover Agents, Nov 9 2011 Student Protests UK

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:45:05 -0400

IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:37:44 -0400

Quote:A Palestinian elementary school was shut down last week after Israel's Civil Administration confiscated the vehicle used to transport teachers to it.

Teachers initially tried coming to the school, located in the Jinba cave village in the southern Hebron hills, by donkey, but this proved disruptive since they were often late.

On Sunday, the administration also confiscated the car of a veterinarian employed by the Palestinian Authority when he came to the village to vaccinate sheep. The vehicles were seized as part of a stepped-up enforcement campaign in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full Israeli control.

The Civil Administration also issued a demolition order against the school, though residents have no access to any other school: The nearest is in Yatta, 20 kilometers away.

In addition, it ordered an access road, tents, mud huts, sheepfolds and solar energy facilities razed, reinstating demolition orders frozen by agreement with the state prosecution in 2007.

In 1999, the area was declared a live-fire exercise zone by the Israel Defense Forces, meaning people aren't allowed to live there. The residents were evicted but petitioned the High Court of Justice, which issued an interim injunction allowing them to return until it issues a final ruling. Ever since, the case has been stuck in court, with the state requesting and receiving continual postponements of the deadline for filing its response. Last month, the state promised to file its response within 30 days.

The residents' attorney, Shlomo Lecker, told Haaretz that the wave of confiscations and demolition orders is a serious violation of the High Court's injunction. "It's the state that asked to delay hearing the petition for the last 12 years, and you can't expect hundreds of residents of the cave village to have their lives put on hold for such a long time - that the access road to the site would be blocked, and they would be denied the possibility of giving their children compulsory education," he said.

Dror Etkes, who has monitored West Bank settlement activity for years, told Haaretz that three settlement outposts had recently expanded into the live-fire zone: Avigail, Mitzpeh Yair and Havat Ma'on. "But as far as I know, there are no restrictions on their movement in the area, and none of their vehicles have been confiscated," he said. "I also don't know of any active army exercise area within this live-fire zone. In most of it, there never were any exercises."

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said the court would hear the petition against the army's declaration of the live-fire zone in a few days, and the state would give its response there.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-de...e-1.430233

Unidentified Foamy Object

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:29:44 -0400

Okay, here's an interesting one. If this is a hoax, it's at least a creative one. Highly unusual atmospheric phenomena touches down on earth, or maybe some kind of synthetic foam, or...?

tl;dw: Video apparently shot in an Arabic (?) speaking country. A white "cloud" about the size of a man floats down to the ground. It lands against a flimsy fence and parts break off. It then rises from a horizontal position on the ground to a vertical position. Parts of it reform. A man approaches and puts his hand into it. The cloud seems to part somewhat but does not disperse. The video pans out to the sky then repeats once.

Palestinian hunger strike - Former IRA hunger striker Tommy McKearney

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:46:47 -0400

Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia

Sat, 12 May 2012 17:10:29 -0400

by Yvonne Ridley
May 12, 2012

Kuala Lumpur — It’s official; George W Bush is a war criminal.

In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.

Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.

The trial held in Kuala Lumpur heard harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They included testimony from British man Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo detainee and Iraqi woman Jameelah Abbas Hameedi who was tortured in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is also asking that the names of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, Addington and Haynes be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals for public record.

The tribunal is the initiative of Malaysia’s retired Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who staunchly opposed the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He sat through the entire hearing as it took personal statements and testimonies of three witnesses namely Abbas Abid, Moazzam Begg and Jameelah Hameedi. The tribunal also heard two other Statutory Declarations of Iraqi citizen Ali Shalal and Rahul Ahmed, another British citizen.

After the guilty verdict reached by five senior judges was delivered, Mahathir Mohamad said: “Powerful countries are getting away with murder.”

War crimes expert and lawyer Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law in America, was part of the prosecution team.

After the case he said: “This is the first conviction of these people anywhere in the world.”

While the hearing is regarded by some as being purely symbolic, human rights activist Boyle said he was hopeful that Bush and Co could soon find themselves facing similar trials elsewhere in the world.

“We tried three times to get Bush in Canada but were thwarted by the Canadian Government, then we scared Bush out of going to Switzerland. The Spanish attempt failed because of the government there and the same happened in Germany.”

Boyle then referenced the Nuremberg Charter which was used as the format for the tribunal when asked about the credibility of the initiative in Malaysia. He quoted: “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such a plan.”

The US is subject to customary international law and to the Principles of the Nuremberg Charter said Boyle who also believes the week-long trial was “almost certainly” being monitored closely by both Pentagon and White House officials.

Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar, who headed the prosecution said: “The tribunal was very careful to adhere scrupulously to the regulations drawn up by the Nuremberg courts and the International Criminal Courts”.

He added that he was optimistic the tribunal would be followed up elsewhere in the world where “countries have a duty to try war criminals” and he cited the case of the former Chilean dictator Augustine Pinochet who was arrested in Britain to be extradited to Spain on charges of war crimes.

“Pinochet was only eight years out of his presidency when that happened.”

The Pinochet case was the first time that several European judges applied the principle of universal jurisdiction, declaring themselves competent to judge crimes committed by former heads of state, despite local amnesty laws.

Throughout the week the tribunal was packed with legal experts and law students as witnesses gave testimony and then cross examination by the defence led by lawyer Jason Kay Kit Leon.

The court heard how

Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old engineer from Fallujah in Iraq had his fingernails removed by pliers.
Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from a wall.
Moazzam Begg was beaten, hooded and put in solitary confinement.
Jameelah was stripped and humiliated, and was used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter.

The witnesses also detailed how they have residual injuries till today.

Moazzam Begg, now working as a director for the London-based human rights group Cageprisoners said he was delighted with the verdict, but added: “When people talk about Nuremberg you have to remember those tried were all prosecuted after the war.

“Right now Guantanamo is still open, people are still being held there and are still being tortured there.”

In response to questions about the difference between the Bush and Obama Administrations, he added: “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”

The prosecution case rested on proving how the decision-makers at the highest level President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, aided and abetted by the lawyers and the other commanders and CIA officials – all acted in concert. Torture was systematically applied and became an accepted norm.

According to the prosecution, the testimony of all the witnesses exposed a sustained perpetration of brutal, barbaric, cruel and dehumanising course of conduct against them.

These acts of crimes were applied cumulatively to inflict the worst possible pain and suffering, said lawyers.

The president of the tribunal Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin, found that the prosecution had established beyond a “reasonable doubt that the accused persons, former President George Bush and his co-conspirators engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of Torture and War Crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “War on Terror” and the wars launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

President Lamin told a packed courtroom: “As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. The tribunal has no power of enforcement, no power to impose any custodial sentence on any one or more of the 8 convicted persons. What we can do, under Article 31 of Chapter VI of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

“The Tribunal also recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of all the 8 convicted persons be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicised accordingly.

“The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions if any of these Accused persons may enter their jurisdictions”.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012...-absentia/

save 1000's of hours of bullshit and listen to this (filter of course)

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:41:42 -0400

save 1000's of hours of bullshit and listen to this (filter of course)

http://mp3.oraclebroadcasting.com/LiveFr...08_16k.mp3