How Does A Prime Minister Explain the Murder of another Canadian Judge - No.12?

From Prime Minister Harper Holds Secret Meetings With N.B. Premier Alyward

It is patently obvious that the strategy devised by Department of Justice lawyers required the services of a judge who could be relied upon to make the extremely rare order blocking an appeal by requiring the appellants post security for costs in a sum the appellants did not have.

With her links to both the Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada, it is reasonable to conclude that Madam Justice Layden-Stevenson was carefully selected for that task and, then, eliminated so she could not identify those who instructed her.

Like a mechanic delivering a defective vehicle to a driver, Justice Minister Nicholson and his subordinates delivered a defective legal strategy to Carolyn Layden-Stevenson. At law, the mechanic would be guilty of, at least, negligent homicide and, at worst, murder. This argument by analogy directly applies to the professional conduct of Justice Minister Nicholson and his subordinates.

More...

See also:

The Story: Caught in the Cross Fire

The Big Picture - Grand Plan To Steal Canada's Water Resource Wealth

We Are Plaintiffs in the Biggest Judicial Political Conspiracy Case in Canadian Legal History

Shaking Spain: 'Take away people's food & homes - expect violence

"Hard to See, Harder to Count": ILO Launches New Global Estimates on Forced Labour

Nearly 21 million people are victims of forced labour across the world, trapped in jobs which they were coerced or deceived into and which they cannot leave, according to the ILO's new global estimate. Guy Ryder (ILO's Executive Director for International Labour Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work) presents the key findings of this new study.

Political Rap on Animal Farm

Thomas Myers spits some Free Style on Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau to the tune of Animal Farm- School Project.

~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, blind to the irony:

CRPF commandant's house to be "George Orwell House"
To commemorate literary giant George Orwell's birth in East Champaran district in Bihar, the CRPF commandant's residence in Motihari will be named as "George Orwell House", CRPF sources said on Friday.

According to Parma Shivan, new commandant of 153rd battalion CRPF, champaran district had seen several great personalities like Mahatma Gandhi and Orwell whose best-seller "Animal Farm" is famous for delving into the reality of living in a communist state.

Shivan said he lamented the grip of the CPI (Maoist) over champaran and assured that the CRPF would leave no stone unturned to root out the Reds from the area. "For this we will take the help of civil police and strengthen relation with the people under Maoists' influence."

Under a civic action plan the CRPF would impart training to 30 youths of Maoist-infested villages with the help of an NGO to provide them job.

30 years since Mexico’s default, lessons for Greece

As Greece’s leaders pay down the latest multi-billion euro instalment on their debt, they would do well to take notice that today is the anniversary of an event of great resonance.

On 20 August 1982, Mexico declared a debt moratorium - effectively defaulting on its massive debts. Although debts in many Latin American countries had caused suffering for a number of years, this was the moment the leaders of the West were forced to confront what came to be called the ‘Third World Debt Crisis’.

Mexico owed over $50 billion, 90% to foreign private creditors - primarily US, Japanese and British banks. These banks had gone on a lending binge during the 1970s using the profits oil exporting countries had deposited with them from the oil spike. American overspending, notably on the Vietnam War, was recycled as debt to the rest of the world and, to help this, controls on international movements of money were dismantled.

Just as in our current financial crisis, bank loans to Third World countries had tended to be organised through syndicates: loans were packaged up together and then lent on in one go. This bundling meant many banks felt no need to conduct their own risk assessment. Four of the fifteen largest lenders to Latin America by 1982 were British banks: Lloyds, Midland, Barclays, and Natwest. American lenders included Citicorp, Bank of America, and Chase Manhattan.

At the end of the 1970s the US Federal Reserve sprung the trap, massively hiking interest rates in order to save their banks from inflation. The costs for this move were pushed onto Third World countries like Mexico. Two years later, the inevitable happened.

Now US and British banks faced a crisis. If loans from Mexico and other Latin American countries were not paid, they could go bankrupt. The banks stopped lending to Latin America, pushing more countries closer to default, and lobbied the US government to get them out of their mess. The US responded by getting the International Monetary Fund, and later the World Bank, to provide bailout loans to Latin American governments.

In 1982 the IMF lent Mexico $4 billion, which went straight back out of the country to pay western banks - a perfect mirror of what is happening with so-called bail-outs to Greece and other Eurozone countries today. At the same time, the IMF insisted Mexico introduce radical austerity and liberalisation. There were cuts in every area of government spending.

More...

~ ~ ~

See also:

European ministers worry about ‘new Berlin Wall’ in North-South debt crisis split

Economic Historian ‘Germany Was Biggest Debt Transgressor of 20th Century’
Greece’s current economic malaise is the worst ever experienced in Europe? Think again. Germany, economic historian Albrecht Ritschl argues in a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, has been the worst debtor nation of the past century. He warns the country should take a more chaste approach in the euro crisis or it could face renewed demands for World War II reparations.

Tunisia to Reject Odious Debt

Leonce Ndikumana: Tunisia to audit foreign debt and reject loans embezzled by former dictator.

Are You Awake Yet? Revolution 2012

Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation -- a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’s Supreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”

More...

The profit incentive, monetary system and consumerism part 3

See also:

We'll make a killing out of food crisis, Glencore trading boss Chris Mahoney boasts

The United Nations, aid agencies and the British Government have lined up to attack the world's largest commodities trading company, Glencore, after it described the current global food crisis and soaring world prices as a "good" business opportunity.

With the US experiencing a rerun of the drought "Dust Bowl" days of the 1930s and Russia suffering a similar food crisis that could see Vladimir Putin's government banning grain exports, the senior economist of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, Concepcion Calpe, told The Independent: "Private companies like Glencore are playing a game that will make them enormous profits."

Ms Calpe said leading international politicians and banks expecting Glencore to back away from trading in potential starvation and hunger in developing nations for "ethical reasons" would be disappointed.

David Brancaccio at the New Economics Institute Strategies for a New Economy Conference

Recorded live at the New Economics Institute Strategies for a New Economy Conference on June 9, 2012, Marketplace Economy 4.0 Special Correspondent David Brancaccio speaks about the role of media in building the New Economy. "Let's think about the future of the economy and how it might better serve more people," Brancaccio says. "So the same guy, me, who when I'm anchoring the Marketplace Morning Report is compelled to do the latest Gross Domestic Product figures, I'll also sometimes bring in alternative measures of our livelihoods, of our success, not necessarily just economic growth, so that we can have a discussion using some of these New Economy measures as part of the discussion of how the world works, of how the economy works."

In speaking about Fixing the Future, the documentary on the New Economy Movement that he recently produced, Brancaccio spotlights the work of BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, which contrasts the emerging "relationship economy" with the existing "one-night-stand economy." As well, Brancaccio highlights a "time banking" system in Portland, Maine for swapping skills and services that he calls a "social capital generation device that forges relationships."

"People think the economy is the way it is, the way the Grand Canyon just is, but the economy isn't that way: we can make it what we want," Brancaccio concludes. "The question is, what do we want out of the economy? And I think it's about lifting up the livelihoods of more people rather than fewer people."

Visit the Strategies for a New Economy Conference webpage for more information, including videos, resources, and a Storify timeline of tweets from the conference: http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/conference

Biting the 1% where it hurts

In this fascinating account of his trial-by-fire in Washington’s wicked ways, Neil Barofsky surfaces with a searing indictment as an insider of both the Bush and Obama administrations, dealing with the ongoing mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. With behind-the-scenes experience, he repeatedly reveals proof of the deep degree to which our government officials sank to serve the interests of Wall Street firms at the expense of the 99%—and at the larger expense of real financial reform.

Recruited during the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky shed his job as a prosecutor in the elite U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City, where he convicted drug kingpins as well as Wall Street execs and perpetrators of mortgage fraud, to take on the job of the special inspector general in charge of oversight of the spending of the bailout money. From day one, his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold the big banks to account for how they spent taxpayer dollars were met with outright hostility from Treasury officials, top down, in charge of the bailouts.

Barofsky tells how, in aiding the interests of the bank, Treasury Secretary timothy Geithner and his sidekicks, worked with Wall Street banksters to design programs that would funnel huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to their firms and would have allowed them to game the markets and make huge profits with practically no risk or accountability, while repeatedly fighting off Barofsky’s attempts to put crucial fraud protections in place.

Of Mcdo and the Games

Multiple language captions

Mr Mondialisation
http://www.facebook.com/M.Mondialisation

Wall Street’s Robot Uprising Quickly Quelled

To hear some tell it, it was as if Wall Street were facing its very own “rise of the machines,” a strange and chaotic robot uprising that wreaked havoc amongst a wide assortment of stocks yesterday morning. “The robots are attacking Wall Street’s integrity,” the New York Post declared. “It’s like technology out of control,” one floor trader at the New York Stock Exchange told Bloomberg. “The machines have taken over,” a market consultant told the New York Times. One trader wondered if poor humans would be left to fend for themselves in “a terminator infested market ran by algos and [High Frequency Traders,] slaughtering the last of the human day traders that are left.”

The Diggers, the land and direct activism

It was in April 1649 that the Diggers, inspired by the writings of Gerrard Winstanley, occupied waste land on St George’s Hill in Surrey, and sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots and beans. For Winstanley, the earth had been corrupted by covetousness and the rise of private property, and the time was ripe for it to become once more a ‘common treasury for all’. Change was to be brought about by the poor working the land in common and refusing to work for hire. The common people had ‘by their labours … lifted up their landlords and others to rule in tyranny and oppression over them’, and, Winstanley insisted, ‘so long as such are rulers as calls the land theirs … the common people shall never have their liberty; nor the land ever freed from troubles, oppressions and complainings’. The earth was made ‘to preserve all her children’, and not to ‘preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the earth from others, that they might beg or starve in a fruitful land’ – everyone should be able to ‘live upon the increase of the earth comfortably’. Soon all people – rich as well as poor – would, Winstanley hoped, be persuaded to throw in their lot with the Diggers and work to create a new, and better society. To Winstanley, agency was key, for ‘action is the life of all and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’.

* * *

How London became the money-laundering capital of the world

Speaking on the Marr Show on BBC One on March 23rd, the former Daily Telegraph editor and historian Max Hastings said a “senior central banker” recently told him that London is now considered to be the “money-laundering capital of the world”.

Hastings was discussing the shooting of a Russian banker in London. The remark was all the more pertinent since Russia is now said to be controlled by a ‘gangster culture’ and because of the large number of Russian oligarchs and other business people who now live and work in the UK. A lot of these people carry criminal baggage, but the authorities seem entirely comfortable with the idea they should reinforce London’s position as the world’s “funny” money hub.

How did this state of affairs come about when, on paper at least, the UK has some of the strictest anti-money laundering legislation in the world?

A Tax Revolt in Japan, and a Bond Bubble Too

The apron protesters, as they are known, argue that a tax increase would crimp household budgets just when the economy can’t withstand a drop in consumption. They say it’s a bad time for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to rein in public debt that will be over 230 percent of national output this year, the biggest anywhere. The tax hike cleared the lower house of Japan’s Parliament in June. Noda got the tax approved by the upper house on August 10 by promising to hold early elections. That’s a dangerous bargain; his coalition has already started to crumble because of opposition to the tax.

RAPresentation: A Hip-hop Participatory Economic Primer for the 99%

A musical primer to a visionary economic system. ParEcon is an alternative to the 1% economics of today's coked out capitalism, and the old record of your grandpapys communism. It is something as new as revolution and as old as revolt. It is in process, and invites participation.

If you dig this vision and this video please share it, and discuss it with friends, family and co-workers. To get more involved with a worldwide movement of people creating culture and organizing towards a new vision for society check out:
www.iopsociety.org

for more on ParEcon: www.parecon.org

Hungary: Standing Up to the West?

Since the fall of Communism, Hungary has been doing everything the Western institutions have asked, privatizing and selling off state assets, which resulted in heavy debts and low living standards. Now, the new government is hitting back by raising taxes on foreign companies and trying to protect its domestic market. However, it has been criticized by the EU, IMF and the Western media. Hungarians have also taken to the streets of Budapest and the Western media is championing the views of the protesters and damning the government. On this week's INFocus we will tell the real story of why the new Hungarian government is becoming a new bogeyman of the West and how fake protests can be started under foreign influence.

http://www.presstv.com/Program/257209.html

Art as Money talk at the Boom Festival

20 minute excerpt from the Art as Money talk by Dadara at the Liminal Village on the 31st of July 2012 at Boom Festival, Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal

http://boomfestival.org/boom2012/program/liminal-village/interactive-talks/

Manufactured Landscapes

Manufactured Landscapes. A film by Jennifer Baichwal

Photographer Edward Burtynsky travels the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing.

Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

Economist Yasheng Huang compares China to India, and asks how China's authoritarian rule contributed to its astonishing economic growth -- leading to a big question: Is democracy actually holding India back? Huang's answer may surprise you.

http://www.ted.com

Co-operative economy outperforms market for fourth consecutive year

Figures from Co-operatives UK show how the co-operative sector is delivering an alternative to austerity.

The Balls of Dada Revolution

Exploring the potential of the humble sphere in great numbers to get under the feet of police brutality some governments are ultimately prepared to employ to control and stifle the democratic voice of the masses.

londondada.blog.co.uk

Music: CRAWLING by One Up Two Down

How London became the money-laundering capital of the world

Speaking on the Marr Show on BBC One on March 23rd, the former Daily Telegraph editor and historian Max Hastings said a “senior central banker” recently told him that London is now considered to be the “money-laundering capital of the world”.

Hastings was discussing the shooting of a Russian banker in London. The remark was all the more pertinent since Russia is now said to be controlled by a ‘gangster culture’ and because of the large number of Russian oligarchs and other business people who now live and work in the UK. A lot of these people carry criminal baggage, but the authorities seem entirely comfortable with the idea they should reinforce London’s position as the world’s “funny” money hub.

How did this state of affairs come about when, on paper at least, the UK has some of the strictest anti-money laundering legislation in the world?

The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that our many laws and regulations have never been effectively enforced by financial regulators, and banks and other financial institutions know they can get away with paying lip service to the rules.

More...

Ogden Nash: Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer

From PoemHunter.com

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.
I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the
jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.
But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off
with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.
Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi-
ness are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.

See also:

Art and Usury from Dante to Pound

The Proud, The Rich, The Reserves (Banking Cartel)

Βy Leesa Stanion / STANION STUDIOS http://baitandswitchtv.com

The Federal Reserve System: Self-serving their country since 1913.

You might have heard of the Federal Reserve Scam, or the Federal Reserve Conspiracy... but you've probably never sen this side of THE RESERVES.

Documentary: 2012 Revolution - World Awakening

Mark Howitt Presents...
2012 Revolution: World Awakening (2011)
Complete Documentary

Documentary about the current state of events in the world, and a detailed analysis of the system of control that has us at the edge of losing many of our rights and freedoms. Where did this begin? How did we let it all happen? What is the solution?

Features many clips from experts and celebrities who all feel that there needs to be a change on earth, a global spiritual awakening within the human soul of everyone who still has a heart on earth. The realization that change is needed in the way that those with power abuse it and wars are not needed anywhere on earth. Warning: Many of these videos contain graphic content, however this information and footage should be seen by every mature human being on this planet, because these are important issues that need to be openly discussed and not ignored.

This documentary was creating using fair rights intentions and is an attempt to spread truth to the people that need to hear the facts straight up, without any sugar coating or cherries on top. This is the raw, true version of history whether you like it or not. This is what we have become.

The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller

Peter Dreier writes for Yes! magazine

In a 1901 article entitled “I Must Speak” in the Ladies Home Journal, Keller wrote, “Once I believed that blindness, deafness, tuberculosis, and other causes of suffering were necessary, unpreventable. But gradually my reading extended, and I found that those evils are to be laid not at the door of Providence, but at the door of mankind; that they are, in large measure, due to ignorance, stupidity and sin.”

She visited slums and learned about the struggles of workers and immigrants to improve their working and living conditions. "I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums,” she wrote, “If I could not see it, I could smell it."

In 1908 Sullivan’s socialist husband, John Macy, encouraged Keller to read H. G. Wells’s New Worlds for Old, which influenced her views about radical change. She soon began to devour Macy’s extensive collection of political books, reading socialist publications (often in German Braille) and Marxist economists. In addition to giving inspirational lectures about blindness, Keller also talked, wrote, and agitated about radical social and political causes, making her class analysis explicit in such books as Social Causes of Blindness (1911), The Unemployed (1911), and The Underprivileged (1931). In 1915, after learning about the Ludlow Massacre—in which John D. Rockefeller’s private army killed coal miners and their wives and children in a labor confrontation in Colorado—Keller denounced him as a “monster of capitalism.”

In 1909 Keller joined the Socialist Party, wrote articles in support of its ideas, campaigned for its candidates, and lent her name to help striking workers. Although she was universally praised for her courage in the face of her physical disabilities, she now found herself criticized for her political views. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle attacked her radical ideas, attributing them to “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development.” In her 1912 essay “How I Became a Socialist,” published in the Call, a socialist newspaper, Keller wrote, “At that time, the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error.”

[ ... ]

In 1918 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, which was initially organized to challenge the U.S. government’s attempts to suppress the ideas of and jail or deport radicals who opposed World War I, including Socialists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The following year she wrote a letter, addressed to “Dear Comrade” Eugene Debs, the Socialist labor leader and presidential candidate, in jail for advocating draft resistance during World War I. She wrote, “I want you to know that I should be proud if the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and doing all in my power to oppose it.”

In 1924, while campaigning for Senator Robert La Follette, the Wisconsin radical and anti-war stalwart who was running for president on the Progressive Party ticket, Keller wrote him a note: "I am for you because you stand for liberal and progressive government. I am for you because you believe the people should rule. I am for you because you believe that labor should participate in public life."

After 1924, Keller devoted most of her time and energy to speaking and fundraising for the American Foundation for the Blind, but still supported radical causes. Even as feminism began to ebb, she continued to agitate for women's rights. In 1932, she wrote an article for Home magazine, "Great American Women," praising the early suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She also penned a humorous article for the Atlantic Monthly, "Put Your Husband in the Kitchen."

More...

See also:

Helen Keller Honored at US Capitol, Lifelong Radical Politics Go Ignored

Norman Spinrad: Squeeze the Fat Cats and Spread it Out Thin

See also:

An Interview with Norman Spinrad, Anarchist by Cat Rambo
American science fiction writer Norman Spinrad described himself as an anarchist and a “syndicalist” in a 1999 interview with Locus. His work challenges and provokes, whether it’s The Iron Dream starring Hitler as a speculative writer or the more recent Osama the Gun. He’s just as outspoken when answering questions, as this interview proves.

Q: The Iron Dream, an alternate history novel about a writer named Adolf Hitler, was banned for eight years in Germany. What drew you to that story and why did you describe the writing of it as “unpleasant”?

NS: Try reading everything Hitler ever wrote for the purpose of being able to channel him and write in his turgid style and see how you like it! I didn’t really know what I was into until I was into it. By the time I finished the novel, I hated it. Only over a few years of awards, world-wide publication, good to rave reviews, did I realize it was the process of writing The Iron Dream that I hated, not the novel itself.

What drew me to write it was that the economic and political reasons for the rise of Nazi Germany never convinced me. Hitler was a media genius, and Nazism a psychosexual phenomenon. … Like a certain species of “heroic fantasy.” Hitler was a big fan of Wagnerian Opera at a time when “Space Opera” had a big fandom too. “Homer Whipple’s” afterward sort of tells the tale, and was the only part of the novel I really enjoyed writing.

Q: Osama the Gun is an experiment in e-publishing and also a book you describe as “literarily and politically important.” Is the impulse behind that book similar to the one behind The Iron Dream? What makes it politically important?

NS: Osama the Gun is indeed literarily and politically important, but not like The Iron Dream, where the importance is literarily and politically historical. Osama the Gun is currently politically, socially, psychologically and spiritually important, for the same reasons that it has been rejected by so many American publishers, which The Iron Dream never was, why one rejection letter, foaming at the mouth, declared that no American publisher would touch it...


Jerome Winter interviews Norman Spinrad
No Political Naïf: An Interview with Norman Spinrad
Spinrad has published over twenty novels in the last fifty years. He became affiliated with science fiction’s New Wave when he began to contribute to Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine during the 1960s. His 1969 novel Bug Jack Barron, serialized in New Worlds, provoked a firestorm of controversy for its forthright depiction of sex, drugs, and radical politics. Spinrad continued to push the satirical envelope with The Iron Dream (1972), written in the persona of an alternate-history Adolf Hitler who, having failed as a dictator, becomes instead a bestselling heroic fantasy writer, author of a series called “Lord of the Swastika.” Other major works include the space operas The Void Captain’s Tale (1983) and Child of Fortune (1985), which infuse the subgenre with an erotic edge. His novel Mexica still has not found an American publisher, and the future publishing prospects of his next two novels, Welcome to Your Dreamtime and Police State, are also uncertain.

[ ... ]

I’m no political naif. I’ve lived in France for over a decade. I’m rather well-travelled. For a non-Muslim, I’m well-grounded in Islam, having, among other things, read the Koran twice, if only in English translation. I am something of a political figure because I am not exactly an apolitical writer, having, after all, been denounced in the British Parliament over political issues however well-concealed, having had The Iron Dream semi-banned in Germany and liberated from the German Index only after an eight-year legal battle that I followed in my lousy German, having been a political columnist for a major Underground newspaper, and so forth. I’ve worked as a literary agent, I’ve been President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I had my commercial viability destroyed when Sonny Mehta, the Grand Poobah of Knopf, torpedoed The Druid King, to the point where Mexica, a best-seller in Spanish translation in Mexico, still hasn’t been able to find an American publisher.

So I knew the score. I knew what I was getting into. I knew what the political tea leaves said. I knew that one reason no one had published a novel like Osama the Gun was because, as one rejection letter would say many tries later, “No American publisher would touch a novel like this with a fork.” Still less if written by someone without the bottom-line power of a Stephen King or Philip Roth.

But I also knew that the very reasons why Osama the Gun was going to be so difficult to get published were the reasons I had to write it. Because someone had to write it. Because things being what they were, the Western body politic, indeed the Islamic body politic, the Umma, needed to read a story like this. And since no one else seemed to be willing to take on the task, and I at least was under no illusion as to what that literary task was, like it or not, and my practical publishing street-smart self certainly didn’t, it seemed I was stuck with it.

Sympathy for the Devil, as the title of a Rolling Stones song put it, and that was what I was compelled to write. Sympathy for the Devils. Both of them. The Great Satan was what the United States had become for the Islamic Umma; indeed Osama bin Laden had in effect quite deliberately created that identity for America and the West in order to marshal up a Jihad that would restore the long-lost Caliphate of his fever-dreams. And America had fallen right into the trap, demonizing Islam itself, not merely bin Laden and the jihadis, creating its own Great Satan, and thus perfecting the Jihad, the apocalyptic clash of civilizations that Benjamin Barber called Jihad vs. McWorld.

English commercial for OSAMA THE GUN--cause celebre in French, currently unavailable in English




From Agent of Chaos by Norman Spinrad
Order is the enemy of Chaos. But the enemy of Order is also the enemy of Chaos.


Star Trek Phase II To Produce Lost Norman Spinrad Script + Watch Teaser For “The Child”

CFR: Measuring the Mafia-State Menace - Are Government-Backed Gangs a Grave New Threat?

Peter Andreas writes for Foreign Affairs

According to Moisés Naím's essay "Mafia States" (May/June 2012), the world now faces a grave "new threat": governments that have been taken over by organized crime. These "mafia states" are so dangerous, Naím argues, that they are no longer merely a law enforcement challenge but a full-blown national security threat.

There is just one problem with this scary picture: it is hardly new. For every eye-popping contemporary example that Naím gives of a criminal organization linked to a state, there are many more equally striking parallels from the past. The state and organized crime have never been as separate as Naím seems to imagine they once were.

Consider the Balkans. Naím labels tiny Montenegro, a cigarette-smuggling hub, a mafia state, and points to Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi's alleged complicity in the heroin trade. Smuggling is indeed a lifeblood of some Balkan economies today. But it pales in comparison to the large-scale organized crime sponsored by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's regime in the 1990s, when Serbian customs agents evaded UN sanctions and facilitated all sorts of smuggling.

Or look at Latin America. Naím points to the current Venezuelan government's alleged high-level military links to drug trafficking. But Venezuela under Hugo Chávez is no more a mafia state than some of the region's corrupt regimes of the past. Manuel Noriega's dictatorship in Panama allowed Colombian cocaine and dirty money to flow freely through the country until he was overthrown by the United States in 1989. In Bolivia, General Luis García Meza had such close ties to drug traffickers that his 1980 takeover was dubbed "the cocaine coup." In the 1940s and 1950s, Cuba under Fulgencio Batista offered a welcome mat for some of the United States' leading organized crime figures. In many places, from Latin America to Southeast Asia, the Cold War created a tolerant climate for states to back criminal enterprises -- links that were often overlooked for geopolitical convenience.

Going back earlier in the twentieth century, one has to wonder if Naím would classify Prohibition-era America as a mafia state, considering that entire police departments were bought off and bootleggers delivered booze directly to Congress. Canada, too, might earn Naím's designation. The Canadian government at the time granted licenses to bootleggers in Windsor, Ontario, to store alcohol right on the banks of the Detroit River, and Canadian customs officials routinely signed off on paperwork falsely indicating that the goods were not destined for the United States.

The British authorities in the Bahamas also operated a mafia state of sorts during Prohibition, letting their territory become a transshipment point for rumrunners. (Officials reprised the role in the 1970s and 1980s, when they allowed the Colombian drug kingpin Carlos Lehder to turn a Bahamian island into his own private airstrip for U.S.-bound cocaine shipments.)

Examples of countries that would qualify as mafia states under Naím's definition extend even further back in history, undermining the ostensibly "unprecedented" nature of the phenomenon even more. In the nineteenth century, the United Kingdom oversaw the flood of opium smuggled into China; the British East India Company, which shipped the opium, had far more power than any of today's so-called drug cartels could ever dream of.

More...

Pentagon Restarts $100 Million Fund to Speed Arms Exports

From Bloomberg

The U.S. Defense Department has restarted a fund designed to speed exports of military gear to allies, with $100 million for initiatives such as stockpiling equipment for resale to partners.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign military sales, won congressional approval in this year’s budget to revive the Special Defense Acquisition Fund to “provide speed and flexibility to the Foreign Military Sales” program, agency spokesman Charles Taylor said in an e-mail in response to questions.

The Defense Department will coordinate with other U.S. departments in advance and use the fund to buy military equipment from U.S. suppliers, such as body armor, night-vision devices, armored vehicles and small patrol boats in anticipation of demand from allies and partners, Taylor said. Otherwise, the agency must wait for a buying nation to sign a letter of agreement with the U.S. before it can place orders, he said.

More...

Beating The Bomb

Beating the Bomb is about war & peace, foreign policy, vested interests, nuclear war and the fight against them. It is a historical documentary that charts 'The Bomb' from 1941 to present day; juxtaposing the political backdrop against the growth of the peace movement and framing the nuclear weapons issue within the wider context of global justice.

Beating the Bomb is an independent, non commercial, labour of love production as well as a piece of activism. It features Tony Benn, Mark Thomas, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot, Kate Hudson, Helen John and Vivienne Westwood amongst others.

Muse - The 2nd Law: Unsustainable

After Capitalism: 'In the anti-worlds of daily struggles the world beyond capitalism is to be found'

From The Guardian

Marxist sociologist John Holloway argues that a world after capitalism is already being imagined in struggles around the world. In the first of a six-part series, which will see an author's words accompanied by animation by students at Central Saint Martins college, Carolina Aguirre, Lucas Gloppe and Magnus Lenneskog interpret Holloway's words.

See also:

High-Ranking Mexican Drug Cartel Member Makes Explosive Allegation: ‘Fast and Furious’ Is Not What You Think It Is

A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.

It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.

The explosive allegations are being made by Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” He was extradited to the Chicago last year to face federal drug charges.

More...

'Scrap banks or they'll bring chaos' - Nobel Economist

Nobel Economics Laureate Edward Prescott explains what he thinks has gone so wrong in the region, and what needs to be done to put it right.

See also:

11 Things That Can Happen When You Allow Your Country To Become Enslaved By Bankers

IMF & World Bank are weapons of war, by John Pilger

The ruins of empire: Asia's emergence from western imperialism

Pankaj Mishra writes for The Guardian:

The British empire, George Orwell wrote, was "despotism with theft as its final object". So what has made imperialism an intellectual fashion in our own time, reopening hoary disputes about whether it was good or bad? After five years as a colonial policeman in Burma, where he found himself shooting an elephant to affirm the white man's right to rule, Orwell was convinced that the imperial relationship was that of "slave and master". Was the master good or bad? "Let us simply say," Orwell wrote, "that this control is despotic and, to put it plainly, self-interested." And "if Burma derives some incidental benefit from the English, she must pay dearly for it."

Orwell's hard-won insights were commonplace truisms for millions of Asians and Africans struggling to end western control of their lands. Their descendants can only be bewildered by the righteous nostalgia for imperialism that has recently seized many prominent Anglo-American politicians and opinion-makers, who continue to see Asia through the narrow perspective of western interests, leaving unexamined and unimagined the collective experiences of Asian peoples.

Certainly, as Joseph Conrad wrote in 1902, "the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Two years after Conrad published Heart of Darkness, Roger Casement, then a British diplomat, revealed in a report that half of the population of Belgian-ruled Congo – nearly 10 million people – had perished under a brutal regime where beheadings, rape and genital mutilation of African labourers had become the norm. Such overt violence and terror is only a small part of the story of European domination of Asia and Africa, which includes the slow-motion slaughter of tens of million in famines caused by unfettered experiments in free trade – and plain callousness (Indians, after all, would go on breeding "like rabbits", Winston Churchill argued when asked to send relief during the Bengal famine of 1943-44).

The unctuous belief that British imperialists, compared to their Belgian and French counterparts, were exponents of fair play has been dented most recently by revelations about mass murder and torture during the British suppression of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. Nevertheless, in one of the weirdest episodes of recent history, a Kipling-esque rhetoric about bringing free trade and humane governance to "lesser breeds outside the law" has resonated again in the Anglo-American public sphere. Even before 9/11, Tony Blair was ready to tend, with military means if necessary, to, as he put it, "the starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant" around the world. His apparently more intellectual rival Gordon Brown urged his compatriots to be "proud" of their imperial past. Sensing a sharper rightward shift after 9/11, many pith-helmet-and-jodhpurs fetishists boisterously outed themselves, exhorting politicians to recreate a new western imperium through old-style military conquest and occupation of native lands.

More...

See also:

The Opium (Heroin) foundations of the BANKING INSTITUTIONS OF INDIA

'US political system hostile to Americans'

The money-ruled American political system has a pretty straight-ahead Wall Street agenda and is designed to eliminate opposition the way dictatorships do, Jill Stein, the US presidential candidate for the Green Party, shared with RT.

Aspartame - Sweet Misery, A Poisoned World!

Vietnam: American Holocaust

The United States killed between 3 and 5 million people in the Vietnam War. This feature looks at the history of that war and the how and why it happened using interviews with participates on both sides, speeches, conversation and actual wartime footage. Contains graphic violence.

Underground Documentaries

Commentary: A new era of depletion, collapse and austerity

From WWIII: Great commodities war to end all wars by Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Yes, WWIII: The Great Commodities War to End All Wars. We’ve heard that before. Remember WWI, known as The War to End All Wars, 37 million casualties. WWII was bigger, 60 million. Will WWIII finally end all wars? Or end the world, civilization, planet?

And it’s already started folks, ending the Great American Dream.

Fasten your seat belts, soon we’ll all be shocked out of denial. Some unpredictable black swan. A global wake-up call will trigger the Pentagon’s prediction in Fortune a decade ago at the launch of the Iraq War: “By 2020 ... an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies is emerging ... warfare defining human life.”

And that’s also the clear message in “The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources,” the latest book by noted international security expert Michael Klare.

Earlier, about the same time as the Pentagon’s prediction, Klare published his classic, “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict,” a look ahead to a world that he now hopes will not “end in war, widespread starvation, or a massive environmental catastrophe.” Although they are “the probable results of persisting in the race for what’s left.” Unfortunately, hope can’t trump reality in today’s race for what little is left.

We need men who pull no punches in describing what’s dead ahead, whether labeling it “Resource Wars” or “WWIII, The Great Commodities War That Can End Everything.” Klare does just that with this warning:

“It is true that eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels and other finite materials cannot be accomplished overnight — our current reliance on them is just too great,” warns Klare, well aware that the forces of capitalism are trapped in denial, cannot see the dangers dead ahead, focusing only on getting richer no matter the consequences to the planet.

“But no matter how much corporate or government officials wish to deny it, there is not nearly enough non-renewable resources on this planet to perpetually satisfy the growing needs of a ballooning world population.”

All major nations are quietly preparing for Resource Wars

Even worse, in today’s world run by climate-denying billionaires, Klare warns “existing modes of production are causing unacceptable damage to the global environment. Eventually continuing with current industrial practices will simply prove impossible. And precisely because implementing a whole new industrial order will be a lengthy task, any delay in beginning that work will prove costly, as resources keep dwindling and their prices continue to rise.”

More...

Biggest story you missed

Companies are set to pay $8 billion to settle charges of ripping off the government. No CEOs have been charged.



See also:

Confused Why Goldman Will Face No Criminal Charges? Here's Why

Congress closes loophole in stock trading law after CNN report

Tainted by corruption in Bratislava, in charge of privatisation in Athens

If the tempo of privatisation in Greece were just half the tempo of privatisation in Slovakia, there would be a good chance of saving the eurozone. [...] As stated in the “Gorilla” document, Bubeníková is very efficient. Selling off 50 billion euros of assets by the deadline of 2015 should be a cakewalk for her.

More...

Homer Simpson and the communism of capital

The task of the capitalist firm today is an ambivalent one: to reify the institution of private property while pretending to “create a better world”.

Deloitte's role cited in Standard Chartered Iran deceit

From Reuters:

Allegations that a banking unit of Standard Chartered Plc (STAN.L) schemed with Iran to conceal billions of dollars in transactions have dragged Deloitte into the spotlight in another hit to the global accounting and consulting firm.

The New York State Department of Financial Services, in a case involving U.S. anti-money laundering laws, on Monday said Deloitte LLP consultants hid details from regulators about Standard Chartered Bank's transactions with Iranian clients.

The bank's actions "left the U.S. financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes," Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the department, said in an order made public on Monday.

Deloitte said in a statement: "Deloitte Financial Advisory Services performed its role as independent consultant properly and had no knowledge of any alleged misconduct by bank employees. Allegations otherwise are unsupported by the facts."

The New York Department of Financial Services regulates New York banks and New York branches of foreign banks. It said Standard Chartered's licence to operate in the state of New York may be revoked.

The allegations are the latest in a string of setbacks for the U.S. arm of Deloitte, the world's second-largest accounting and consulting firm.

Late last year, Deloitte's U.S. arm came under scrutiny from a member of Congress after audit industry regulators unsealed parts of a report criticizing quality controls at Deloitte's corporate auditing business. Deloitte said at the time that it had made investments to improve its audit practice.

More...

Matt Taibbi Explains Wall Street’s "License to Steal," Offshore Tax Havens and Private Equity Firms

In part two of our interview with Matt Taibbi, he describes recent Wall Street scandals — including a decade-long Wall Street scandal that drained money from every county and state in the United States — and notes not a single bank executive has faced individual consequences. He also explains how Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital, and others have used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. "It’s just a scheme to take a cash-rich company and move all that cash to a few actors — typically it’s the executives of the target company and the executives in the private equity firm — and then you force everybody else to pay," Taibbi says. "The workers pay by either losing their jobs or taking reductions in salary, and the guys at the top win."

More...

Financial crisis: 25 people at the heart of the meltdown – where are they now?

In 2009 the Guardian identified 25 people – bankers, economists, central bankers and politicians – whose actions had led the world into the worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression. On the fifth anniversary of the credit crunch, what are they doing?

More...

Spanish miners living underground to protest

Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions

Recorded on 30 January 2012 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Our world is changing dramatically. Social upheaval has followed worldwide economic crisis and the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is widening. In 2011, this profound disconnect found expression in events that we were told had been consigned to history: revolt and revolution.

In his new book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere which he will discuss in this lecture Paul Mason sets out to explore the causes and consequences of this current wave of struggle, illuminating the links between the economic and social crisis. He explores and analyses what lies behind the new revolutions -- a volatile combination of the near collapse of free-market capitalism, new technologies and changes in popular culture, and a profound shift in our understanding of what freedom means. Looking at how new social media have impacted on how we behave and organize, Mason interviews activists on the ground and the people behind these new forms of collective action, providing an insight into the agile networks of Twitter- and Facebook-savvy young protesters supporting the viral spread of international activism.

The economics editor of the BBC's flagship program Newsnight, Paul Mason is also one of the most influential journalists on twitter. He first reported live for the BBC on 9/11, and covered the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 from outside its New York HQ. His television and online reports have tracked the social and economic impact of the global meltdown from the mean streets of Gary, Indiana to the elite salons of Davos.

September 15, 2012 - Berlin - Global Peace Protest

Let's make this global!

http://friedensbuendnis-berlin.de/aufruf/aufruf-english/

War only serves profit interests, not only of the weapons industry - national elites use it to extend their influence – at the cost of countless human lives. Entire regions are being destroyed and made uninhabitable – in the name of “our” democracies, with the help of “our” governments.

Stop all wars, and all preparations for war! Start the disarmament immediately! Stop all arms production!

On September 15, the Occupy movement and the Real Democracy Now movement,
in solidarity with numerous initiatives and organizations, artists and personalities
from science, politics and culture will publicly support and demonstrate
to manifest our following positions:

People all around the world take to the streets and occupy the squares, in order to achieve a fundamental change. The massive problems and issues of injustice in economy, nature and social interaction, are caused by an unjust, destructive economic and monetary system, continuous erosion of democracy, and unequal distribution of wealth. The system is not having a crisis, the system IS the crisis! Only together we will be able to develop a way of living together fairly and equally!

REAL DEMOCRACY
People from all parts of society feel not represented by “politics” and want to shape the society they live in themselves. Let’s look into the future together, so that everyone has a voice, and everyone will be heard: We want decentralized structures and grassroot democracy!

PEACE
War only serves private interests, not only of the weapons industry. National elites use it to extend the territories of their influence – at the cost of countless human lives. Entire regions are being destroyed and made uninhabitable every day – in the name of “our” democracies, with the help of “our” governments. Stop all wars, and all preparations for war! Start the disarmament immediately! Stop all arms production!

SOLIDARITY
In the course of the financial crisis a politics of impoverishment was implemented worldwide. Banks and corporations use the crisis to extend their influence and power bit by bit. Within the EU the financial crisis is being rewritten as a sovereign debt crisis, in order to cut back democracy, workers’ rights, wages and welfare state, and to privatize the remaining commons. This politics is only being persued in the interest of an elite and must be stopped immediately! We call for global solidarity and a redistribution of wealth!

FREDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS
We expect the unrestricted, worldwide implementation of human rights. We insist on an end to government surveillance of private living space, unrestricted right of assembly, as well as unrestrained freedom of opinion and press!

GLOBAL CHANGE
We consider being out of the question, that politics, economic- and financial system need to be radically reorganized. There is enough for everybody. Hunger and poverty are the result of unequal distribution.

Stop the profit- and growth-mania!
Stop the degradation of people to “human capital”!
Stop the overexploitation of nature!
Cooperation instead of competition!
Solidarity and democracy instead of capitalism!

List of supporters:
http://friedensbuendnis-berlin.de/unterstutzer/

Source

Sun Rise Above - Stockholm Syndrome

Album: Everyday I Wake Up On The Wrong Side of Capitalism

Chart of the day, HFT edition

Felix Salmon reports for Reuters:


By the end of 2008, odd spikes in trading activity show up in the middle of the day, and of course there’s a huge flurry of activity around the time of the financial crisis. And then, after that, things just become completely unpredictable. There’s still a morning spike for most of 2009, but even that goes away eventually, to be replaced with sheer noise. Sometimes, like at the end of 2010, high-frequency trading activity is very low. At other times, like at the end of 2011, it’s incredibly high. Intraday spikes can happen at any time of day, and volumes can surge and fall back in pretty much random fashion.

It’s certainly fair to say that if you take a long, five-year view, then you can see a clear rise in trading activity. But it’s also fair to say that there’s something quite literally out of control going on here. Just as the quants at Knight found themselves unable to turn off their machines for 30 long minutes last week, the HFT world in aggregate seemingly has a mind of its own when it comes to trading patterns. Or, to put it another way, if there’s a pattern here, it’s one incomprehensible to human minds.

More...

Welcome to the World Revolution in the Global Age of Rage

From Andrew Gavin Marshall

Mass protest in Spain

Those who govern and rule over our world and its people have been aware of the structural and social changes which would result in bringing about social unrest and rebellion. In fact, they have been warning about the potential for such a circumstance of global revolutionary movements for a number of years. The elite are very worried, most especially at the prospect of revolutionary movements spreading beyond borders and the traditional confines of state structures. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser, co-founder with banker David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission, and an arch-elitist strategic thinker for the American empire, has been warning of what he terms the ‘Global Political Awakening’ as the central challenge for elites in a changing world.

In June of 2010, I published an article entitled, “The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order,” in which I examined this changing reality and in particular, the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski in identifying it. In December of 2008, Brzezinski published an article for the New York Times in which he wrote: “For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.” This situation is made more precarious for elites as it takes place in a global transition in which the Atlantic powers – Western Europe and the United States – are experiencing a decline in their 500-year domination of the world. Brzezinski wrote that what is necessary to maintain control in this changing world is for the United States to spearhead “a collective effort for a more inclusive system of global management,” or in other words, more power for them. Brzezinski has suggested that, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening.”

More...

Anonymous « Free Anarchaos »

[a[A]a] Solidarity with Jeremy Hammond « Anarchaos! »

Another Hero of the Freedom Movement : Jeremy Hammond.
While the anarchist, antiwar and information freedom movements focus their attention - rightly so - on Bradley Manning's torture and detention for exposing U.S. war crimes, let's also spare some attention for another hero : Jeremy Hammond. Hammond is allegedly the main hacker behind last December's LulzSec hack of Stratfor, a quasi-private corporate intelligence and strategic analysis firm with close ties to the national security state.

Accused In Lulzsec/AntiSec Bust
Jeremy Hammond was arrested on allegations of access device fraud and hacking. He is being charged as the main person behind the December document liberation on U.S. security company Stratfor. Sources say Hammond will be charged in a separate indictment, and they described him as a member of Anonymous.

The 34-page indictment released by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago accuses Jeremy Hammond of helping to hack into several company sites, including the Texas-based security consulting company, Stratfor.

Charges against Hammond include conspiracy to commit computer hacking, which carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence. During his initial court appearance in Chicago, he quietly said « Yes, your honor » when asked if he understood the charges against him. The judge ordered him transferred to New York to face the indictment there.

Stunning Crimes of the Big Banks: Worse than Your Wildest Imagination

You Won’t Believe What They’ve Done …

Here are just some of the improprieties by big banks:

• Funding the Nazis

• Laundering money for terrorists

• Financing illegal arms deals, and funding the manufacture of cluster bombs (and see this and this) and other arms which are banned in most of the world

• Launching a coup against the President of the United States

• Handling money for rogue military operations

• Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)

• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

More...

September 15, 2012 - Berlin - Global Peace Protest

From War Is A Crime.org:

http://friedensbuendnis-berlin.de/aufruf/aufruf-english/

War only serves profit interests, not only of the weapons industry - national elites use it to extend their influence – at the cost of countless human lives. Entire regions are being destroyed and made uninhabitable – in the name of “our” democracies, with the help of “our” governments. Stop all wars, and all preparations for war! Start the disarmament immediately! Stop all arms production!

On September 15, the Occupy movement and the Real Democracy Now movement,
in solidarity with numerous initiatives and organizations, artists and personalities
from science, politics and culture will publicly support and demonstrate
to manifest our following positions:

People all around the world take to the streets and occupy the squares, in order to achieve a fundamental change. The massive problems and issues of injustice in economy, nature and social interaction, are caused by an unjust, destructive economic and monetary system, continuous erosion of democracy, and unequal distribution of wealth. The system is not having a crisis, the system IS the crisis! Only together we will be able to develop a way of living together fairly and equally!

More...

Beaver - Sign Of The Times

Footage taken from Generation OS13: The new culture of resistance.

Hedy Lamarr: Inventor of more than the 1st theatrical-film orgasm

From the LA Times:

Hedy Lamarr, Old Hollywood sex symbol, had a brain. It's a fact that may be nearly as overlooked as the inventor's wartime creation: landmark technology that was a precursor to Bluetooth.

It's not surprising that she's known best for her sultry persona, given her film role that made everyone sit up and take notice. In 1933's "Ecstasy," a Czech film, she raised eyebrows and drew condemnation around the globe when she appeared nude in one part of the film and simulated an orgasm in another.

Lamarr is seen going skinny-dipping and, still without a stitch on, chasing a runaway horse. The orgasm scene comes later, and, yes, she does smoke a cigarette afterward.

[ ... ]

Lamarr's invention came about, Rhodes said, because "she was keenly aware of the coming war. She was glued to the newspaper, reading the stories. ... When German submarines began torpedoing passenger liners, she felt at that point, 'I've got to invent something that will put a stop to that.' "

Her idea involved making a radio signal "hop around from radio frequency to radio frequency," Rhodes said, to interfere with signal jamming. Thus, a torpedo could be radio guided with less fear of having the signal jammed.

She and a partner obtained a patent, then gave it free of charge to the U.S. Navy. Brilliant, yes?

The Navy "basically threw it into the file," Rhodes said. Later, however, the idea of frequency-hopping was resuscitated by the Navy, and "then the whole system spread like wildfire. The most well-known application today is Bluetooth."

More...