the First Amendment

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- When a high school senior tweeted that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback "sucked," among other invectives, reaction at the state Capitol led her principal to demand an apology. Instead, it was the Republican governor offering a mea culpa Monday, forced to admit to a self-described overreaction by his staff that subjected him to ridicule for efforts to police a teenager's Internet musings.

Emma Sullivan's tweet from the back of a crowd listening to Brownback speak last week, and her subsequent refusal to write an apology letter, spurred several thousand supporters to rush to her online defense - boosting her Twitter following from 61 friends to more than 12,000 people in less than a week.

The 18-year-old from the Kansas City suburb of Fairway was taking part in a Youth in Government program in Topeka when she tweeted from her cell phone: "Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot."

She said she was just joking with friends, but Brownback's office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor's name, contacted the youth program. Sullivan said she was called to the principal's office for the first time ever and told to apologize in writing to the governor.

"My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize," Brownback said in a statement Monday. "Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms."

The reaction exemplifies what Bradley Shear, a Washington, D.C.-area social media attorney, called an example of the nationwide chasm between government officials and rapidly evolving technology.

"This reflects poorly on the governor's office," Shear said. "It demonstrates their P.R. department and whoever is dealing with these issues need to get a better understanding of social media in the social media age. The biggest problem is government disconnect and a lack of understanding of how people use the technology."

Brownback's office declined to discuss its social media monitoring in detail, but politicians and governmental offices across the county are increasingly keeping an eye on the Internet for mentions of their campaigns or policies, not unlike the way newspapers and television broadcasts have been watched for decades. Many officials even maintain their own Facebook and Twitter accounts to inform constituents of events or policy announcements.

Shear said the disconnect comes in determining how, or if, to respond in a new age of interactivity.

"Whatever issues are out there, we're just starting the conversation about them," Shear said. "There needs to be a national conversation on how to respond to these issues and how to do it right."

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon's office, for example, doesn't formally monitor comments about the governor posted through social media sites, nor has the office reached out to anybody because of comments they posted, spokesman Scott Holste said.

"Our focus and concerns are really on bigger things," Holste said. "It's an occasional glance, but it's not something that is systematic."

Sullivan's tweet Nov. 21 caught the eye of Brownback's deputy communications officer, who forwarded it to two staffers in the governor's office, according to a string of emails obtained by The Associated Press.

Niomi Burget, assistant director of scheduling, forwarded the tweet to Deborah Brown with the Shawnee Mission School District, who is state coordinator for the Youth in Government program, and said she didn't know if the student was in Brown's group, but thought if she was Brown might want to know about the tweet.

Brown responded that she had contacted Sullivan's principal, was embarrassed for the program, and hoped Brownback would speak to students again next year.

As Sullivan's tweet and her school's call for an apology letter gained traction online, Shawnee Mission East Principal Karl Krawitz emailed Burget to say that the teen never was threatened with punishment if she refused to write the letter. Krawitz, who said he had received "disgusting" hate mail over the incident, acknowledged he wasn't a Brownback supporter but was troubled that a student had been disrespectful while on a school trip.

"I am not a big fan of the governor, but I respect the person and the office," he wrote in the email Saturday, adding that he thought the incident "will probably get ugly."

The Shawnee Mission School District said Monday it was no long seeking a letter from Sullivan.

"Whether and to whom any apologies are issued will be left to the individuals involved," the statement said. "The issue has resulted in many teachable moments concerning the use of social media. The district does not intend to take any further action on this matter."

Doug Bonney, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, said the teen's speech was clearly protected by the First Amendment.

"Saying that the governor is no good and is a blowhard is core protected speech," Bonney said. "It's absolutely what the First Amendment was designed to protect."

Sullivan said Monday that nobody from the school told her about the statement it issued saying she didn't have to write the apology letter, nor did she hear from the Brownback's office about its apology. She instead heard about both from news media seeking comment.

"They were just kind of out there for the world, but no one reached me directly," she said.

----

Milburn reported from Topeka. Draper reported from Kansas City, Mo. Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

nobody knew

Osama Bin Laden fathered four children while on the run, the wife who bore them has told Pakistani officials.

Amal Abdulfattah, from Yemen, was Bin Laden's youngest wife. She was arrested after the US raid on his compound near the Pakistani capital in 2011.

She said two of her children were delivered in state hospitals, but she stayed there just "two or three hours".

He evaded the forces of the US and its allies for almost a decade, despite a $25m (£15m) bounty on his head.

Family 'scattered'

According to a report of the interrogation carried out by Pakistani investigators, Ms Abdulfattah, who came from a family with 17 children, married Bin Laden because "she had a desire to marry a Mujahideen", or holy warrior.

Along with three other wives found living at the residence, she was charged with entering and living illegally in the country.

The report recommends that the 30-year-old and her children be immediately deported.

However, a lawyer for the three widows has said that they would be formally charged for illegally staying in Pakistan - a charge that carried a maximum prison term of five years - on 2 April.

Her account says she flew to Pakistan in 2000 and travelled to Afghanistan where she married Bin Laden before the 11 September 2001 attacks.

The family was subsequently "scattered" she told investigators and she travelled to Karachi in Pakistan, later meeting up with Bin Laden in Peshawar and then moving to the Swat Valley, where they lived in two houses.

They moved once again before settling in Abbottabad in 2005.

During the hunt for him, most US and Pakistani officials believed he was hiding somewhere along the remote Afghanistan-Pakistan border, possibly in a cave.

the ‘trust me’ concept

Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts?

Since September, at least 60 people have died in 14 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions. The Obama administration has named only one of the dead, hailing the elimination of Janbaz Zadran, a top official in the Haqqani insurgent network, as a counterterrorism victory.
The identities of the rest remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself. Because the names of the dead and the threat they were believed to pose are secret, it is impossible for anyone without access to U.S. intelligence to assess whether the deaths were justified.
In outlining its legal reasoning, the administration has cited broad congressional authorizations and presidential approvals, the international laws of war and the right to self-defense. But it has not offered the American public, uneasy allies or international authorities any specifics that would make it possible to judge how it is applying those laws. . . .
“They’ve based it on the personal legitimacy of [President] Obama — the ‘trust me’ concept,” [American University Professor Kenneth] Anderson said. “That’s not a viable concept for a president going forward.”

That is the heart and soul of the U.S. Government’s framework: we can do what we want, in total secrecy and with no checks, including to U.S. citizens, and you don’t need to know anything about it and we need no checks: you should just trust us. That, of course, was precisely the rationale long offered by the neocon Right to justify the radical, transparency-free powers of detention, surveillance and militarism seized by the Bush administration: maybe these powers could theoretically be abused one day by a Bad Leader, but right now, we have a good, noble, Christian family man in office who only wants to Keep us Safe, so we can trust him. That has now been replaced by: maybe these powers could theoretically be abused one day by a Bad Leader, but right now, we have a good, noble, urbane, progressive Constitutional scholar and family man in office who only wants to Keep us Safe, so we can trust him (see, for instance, CAP’s Ken Gude dismissing concerns about the indefinite detention bill by expressly invoking the Goodness of President Obama: “if the president does not believe it is necessary or appropriate to order military operations in the United States, then there is no military detention authority in the United States”; “President Obama has made clear he does not want military detention in the United States. . . . Yes, a future president may interpret that authority differently, but that is [] a fight for another day . . .”).

Sand Creek Massacre

On November 29, 1864, approximately seven hundred soldiers, under the command of Colonel John Chivington, approached a Cheyenne encampment near Sand Creek, in Colorado. The dawn's early light revealed to the soldiers about a hundred lodges scattered below.

Chivington knew that in an attempt to demonstrate that they were no threat, the Indians of this village had voluntarily turned in all but their hunting weapons to the Federal government. He knew that the Indians were considered by the military to be prisoners of war. He knew further that nearly all of the Cheyenne men were away hunting buffalo. His response to all of this: "I long to be wading in gore."

As was true of Descartes centuries before him, Chivington was no lone lunatic, but had an entire culture for company. This highly respected man—a former Methodist minister, still an elder in good standing at his church, recently a candidate for Congress—had already stated in a speech that his policy toward Indians was that we should "kill and scalp them all, little and big." It would be comforting to think that such a murderous impulse would stamp the man an outcast. We would be wrong. The Rocky Mountain News, the paper of record for the region, had ten times during the previous year used editorials to urge "extermination against the red devils," stating that the Indians "are a dissolute, vagabondish, brutal, and ungrateful race, and ought to be wiped from the face of the earth." The paper worked closely with the governor, who proclaimed it was the right and obligation of the citizens and the military of the region to "pursue, kill, and destroy" all Indians. Chivington and his troops did not act alone.

Two white men who happened to be visiting the camp spied the soldiers, and tied a tanned buffalo hide to a pole, then waved it above their heads as a signal that this was a friendly village. Black Kettle, the Cheyenne's principle leader, raised first a white flag and, fearing the worst, a United States flag (given to him by Abraham Lincoln) in a desperate attempt to convince the soldiers not to attack.

There is an awful inevitability about what happened next. Soldiers opened fire. Indians fled. Chivington ordered his artillery to shoot into the panicked mass of women and children. Troops charged, cutting down every nonwhite in their path. Women scratched at the creek's sandy bank, trying to scoop out shelters for themselves and their children. As one soldier later reported, "There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Everyone I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by her side."

Picture the scene: a happy Chivington wades in gore. Mutilated Indians lie still in the cold November morning. In the distance, you can see a group of Cheyenne women and children trying to escape on foot. Far behind them, a group of soldiers charges on horseback. A movement in the dry creek bed to your left catches your eye. In the middle distance you see a child. As a soldier later recalled, "There was one child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand. The Indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, traveling on the sand. I saw one man get off his horse, at a distance of about seventy-five yards, and draw up his rifle and fire—he missed the child. An­other man came up and said, 'Let me try the son of a bitch; I can hit him.' He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped."

Now picture another scene, this of the soldiers riding home, victorious. You know that they scalped ever body they could find, even digging up those which by accident had been buried with their heads full of hair. You see so many scalps that, as The Rocky Mountain News will soon report, "Cheyenne scalps are getting as thick here now as toads in Egypt. Everybody has got one and is anxious to get another to send east." You know also that the soldiers cut off fingers and ears to get at the jewelry of the dead. But now you look closer and closer still, and you see that the soldiers "cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows, and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks."

Now picture, if you will, a third and final scene. Congress orders an investigation into what Chivington calls "one of the most bloody Indian battles ever fought," and what Theodore Roosevelt later calls "as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier." The investigating committee calls a meeting with the governor and with Chivington, to be held at the Denver Opera House. Open to the public, the meeting is well-attended. You are in the back. You smell sweat, smoke, and you cannot be sure, but you think liquor. During the meeting someone asks whether, as a solution to the obvious Indian problem, it would be better to civilize or exterminate them. The crowd explodes. As a senator later wrote, "there suddenly arose such a shout as is never heard unless upon some battlefield—a shout almost loud enough to raise the roof of the opera house—'exterminate them! exterminate them!'"

Chivington did not act alone.

Chivington was neither reprimanded nor otherwise punished, and parlayed his fame into fortune as an after-dinner speaker. The University of Colorado named a dormitory after his second-in-command.

That these Indians were killed was in no way surprising. They were never considered human. The women were "squaws" and the men "bucks." The children? They counted even less. They should be killed because, as Chivington was fond of saying, "Nits make lice."

(Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, 2000)

censored networks

The right to read is a fictional story but it warns of a future that has already started to arrive; it paints a picture where information is controlled with a heavy hand and simply reading, let alone speaking is an extremely dangerous activity. In the words of William Gibson, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed". Restrictions on the right to read though the Internet perfectly match this observation. A lot should be said about perceptions of censorship, and it is often thought that places like Syria or Iran are unique. Generally, people in the West hold that those countries obviously censor as is consistent with facts of life in a supposedly non-free country. This probably holds a lot of truth but it absolutely fails to address the core of the issue — these countries and those networks are not unique.

In fact, we find uncensored networks to almost be an abnormal state. The so-called free countries in the West often shape and tamper with network traffic. They often also log data and even collaborate with governments. Generally, people don't see evidence of this and as a result, they often perceive that their Internet connections aren't monitored or censored. These days are quickly coming to an end and while it sounds like hyperbole, here are examples in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America.

The five monkeys, the banana, and the water spray

Does any one knows the origin of the tale about the five monkeys on a torture cage? It´s all over in many languages almost verbatim indicating an specific source. This experiment involved 5 monkeys (10 altogether, including replacements), a cage, a banana, a ladder and, an ice cold water hose.

CANNIBALS

HOW COLUMBUS CREATED THE CANNIBALS
Paper presented at a Quincentennial Conference 1992

Those who can define are the masters. --Stokley Carmichael

Also, I do not know the language, and the people of these lands do
not understand me, nor do I or any other person I have with me
understand them. --Columbus, Nov. 27, 1492

Romantic technocrats

PAUL KRUGMAN Boring Cruel Romantics

NYTimes, Published: November 20, 2011

The Wagner Act of 1935

SEC. 7. Employees shall have the right of self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

SEC. 8. It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer-

(1) To interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7.

(2) To dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it: Provided, That... an employer shall not be prohibited from permitting employees to confer with him during working hours without loss of time or pay.

(3) By discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization: Provided, That nothing in this Act or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude an employer from making an agreement with a labor organization (not established, maintained, or assisted by any action defined in this Act as an unfair labor practice) to require as a condition of employment membership therein, if such labor organization is the representative of the employees in the appropriate collec tive bargaining unit covered by such agreement when made.

(4) To discharge or otherwise discriminate against an employee because he has filed charges or given testimony under this Act.

(5) To refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees.

Mohawk Valley formula

• When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".
• Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.
• Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.
• Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.
• Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.

• When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.
• Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.
• Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.
• Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—-the employer has broken the strike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula

Islam is growing

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Doomsday Preppers

In Orwellian terms nationalism is sociopathic behavior

George Orwell on the Evil Iranian Menace

By Glenn Greenwald

This person appeared right-wing

OSLO (Reuters) - The man who killed 77 people last summer to protest at Muslim immigration to Europe said on Monday he believed he could tell the ideology of his prospective massacre victims by looking at them, and tried to spare one who appeared "right-wing".

"Certain people look more leftist than others," Anders Behring Breivik said on the sixth day of a trial that has transfixed Norway, explaining how he picked off "Marxists" with his rifle and pistol while passing over a young man he thought looked conservative.

"This person ... appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him," said Breivik, 33, whose sanity or lack of it is a prime issue to be determined in the trial.

Breivik has given a detailed account of his car bomb attack at government headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and a follow-up gun massacre at a Labour Party island camp where he killed 69, mostly teenagers, all within a few hours on July 22.

Most Norwegians have reacted with contained horror to the content of Breivik's testimony, delivered in a cold, matter-of-fact manner, while there is wide public acceptance of his right as a defendant to give it.

Breivik has had almost free rein to issue warnings against immigration and explain how he scoured the Internet for bomb-making recipes while writing a 1,500-page document declaring himself part of a secretive group that is Europe's answer to Al Qaeda - a group the police have said likely does not exist.

Breivik has denied criminal guilt, insisting that his victims were "traitors" whose multiculturalist views facilitated what he saw as a de facto Muslim invasion of Europe.

SEEMING APOLOGY

But on Monday Breivik issued his first seeming apology, to innocent bystanders hurt or killed when his 950-kilogram fertilizer bomb went off in Oslo. More than 200 were injured.

"To all of those ... I want to say I am deeply sorry for what happened," he said. "But what happened, happened."

He called his acts "a minor barbarity to prevent a larger one", apparently referring to Europe's supposed cultural decline.

The 22-year-old he chose not to kill, a Labour Party youth wing activist named Adrian Pracon, has told Reuters:

"I remember him pointing the gun at me for quite a long time before he took it down, turned and walked away."

Later in the rampage, which lasted more than an hour, Breivik came upon Pracon again as he played dead, and this time shot the son of Polish immigrants through the shoulder.

In another separate apparent bid to show he has a conscience, Breivik pointed out that he spared the life of a 10-year-old boy whom he had had in his rifle sights on the island.

"I could not understand what such a little boy was doing at a political indoctrination camp," said Breivik, whose victims were as young as 14.

The boy's name has not been released by the authorities but his father, Trond Berntsen, was an off-duty police officer serving as the island's security guard. He was Breivik's first victim, according to the indictment.

Ahead of the trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, one court-appointed team of psychiatrists concluded Breivik was psychotic while a second found him mentally capable.

If Breivik is deemed sane, as he hopes to be, he could face a 21-year prison sentence with indefinite extensions for as long as he is considered dangerous.

(Editing by Stephen Nisbet)

a man with no identity

Amir Salima, 21, from the Old City of Jerusalem, has no legal status - not in Israel, not in the Palestinian Authority and not anywhere else. He has no identity card, no passport, he cannot register for university studies, apply for a job, sign up for an HMO or open a bank account. He cannot visit the West Bank or anywhere else outside of Jerusalem. In fact, he can barely leave his house, for fear of being caught by the police.

Salima is a man with no identity. The absurdity of his situation is amplified by the fact that his parents and five siblings all hold Israeli identity cards. The reason is simple: unfortunately for him, he was born in a hospital in Ramallah, and not in Jerusalem.

The number of immigrants illegally in the U.S. has dropped

By Hope Yen, The Associated Press / April 23, 2012

The number of Mexican immigrants living illegally in the U.S. has dropped significantly for the first time in decades, a dramatic shift as many illegal workers, already in the U.S. and seeing few job opportunities, return to Mexico.

An analysis of census data from the U.S. and Mexican governments details the movement to and from Mexico, a nation accounting for nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. It comes amid renewed debate over U.S. immigration policy as the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on Arizona's tough immigration law.

refugees in China

Moses Bak's* childhood friend faces imminent execution, but with your help, he can save her.

She and two dozen North Korean refugees in China are in a terrifying limbo -- the Chinese government wants to deport them back to North Korea, where the new "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong-Un is cracking down by shooting defectors on sight and vowing to kill "three generations" of their families.

Moses escaped the nightmare of surveillance, intimidation, human rights abuses and famine in North Korea -- he's a refugee now living in Seoul, South Korea. But a young woman he’s known since they were kids in North Korea is in the group currently being detained in China.

"We have cried our eyes out," Moses and his friends say, certain the young woman will be executed if she's returned to North Korea. Moses's only hope is that international pressure can save her -- he started a petition on Change.org calling on world leaders including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's Catherine Ashton to do everything they can to stop China from deporting his friend and others back to North Korea.

 Click here to sign Moses's petition telling world leaders to stop China from sending two dozen refugees back to North Korea, where they face imprisonment and execution.

North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong-Un, is ruthlessly cracking down to assert his new authority since his father, Kim Jong-Il, died. In December, Kim Jong-Un told border guards to shoot defectors on sight rather than sending them to reeducation camps and decreed defectors' families would also be killed.

But one deadline for the deportation of these refugees has already passed, signaling that China knows it will have blood on its hands if it follows through. China may be bending to international pressure, but needs to hear more from other global leaders to release the refugees to South Korea.

Already, more than 30,000 people have signed Moses's petition. In November, 35,000 people signed a petition on Change.org asking Secretary Clinton to call for the release of political prisoners in Burma -- and she did. She also spoke out for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia after receiving a Change.org petition. If every person who cares about human rights signs Moses's petition, world leaders like Secretary Clinton will listen again.

Click here to sign North Korean refugee Moses Bak's petition calling on Secretary Clinton and other world leaders to stop China from sending two dozen defectors back to North Korea, where they will face imprisonment and execution.

Thanks for being a change-maker,

- Sarah and the Change.org team

*Moses Bak is a pseudonym to protect the petition creator’s identity and safety.

Korean contrast

When Kim Sung-Il died in 1994 and was replaced by Kim Jong-Il, there was a period of paralysis in government, poor harvests, terrible technology, highly inefficient and completely state-run agriculture and industry. It was a perfect storm that people say caused the deaths of 1-1.5m people.

Since 1998, people have been fed but the diet is very poor - low in meat, poor quality grain, no fruit and sporadic famine. So their calorie intake must be very low and it's no surprise they have stunted growth. You don't see a fat North Korean except their leader.

There has been no industrialisation so there are nearly medieval agricultural conditions, very low in fertiliser and very low productivity because people are so weak. It's a vicious circle and no trade with the outside world to bring food in.


In the 1990s North Korea suffered a terrible famine. Today, according to the World Food Programme, "one in every three children remains chronically malnourished or 'stunted', meaning they are too short for their age".

South Korea, in contrast, has experienced rapid economic growth. Bloem says "economic growth is one of the main determinants of height improvement".

So while North Koreans have been getting shorter, South Koreans have been getting taller.
Farm in North Korea

"If you look at older Koreans," says Schwekendiek, "we now see a situation where the average South Korean woman is approaching the height of the average North Korean man.

"This is to my knowledge a unique situation, where women become taller than men."

The secretive nature of North Korea makes it difficult to find reliable data for analysis.

Schwekendiek has studied refugees, but he rejects the notion that people driven to cross the border to South Korea are the most disadvantaged and therefore most likely to be stunted.

The refugees, he says, "come from all social strata and from all regions".

He has also studied data collected by the North Korean government and by international organisations working in North Korea, which he says support his findings.

It seems that this height statistic reveals a tragic fact - that as South Koreans have got richer and taller, North Korean children are being stunted by malnourishment.

kindergartner was carted off to jail

Salecia Johnson is six years old. On April 13, her teachers say she had a temper tantrum in class -- but instead of putting her in time-out, the school called the police. 

Salecia was handcuffed, charged with battery, and kept in police custody for an hour before her parents found out what was going on. Though all charges have been dropped, Salecia -- a 6-year-old --  now has an arrest record.

Salecia's mom, Constance, says that "Salecia has been traumatized by this experience. She's afraid to return to school and recently woke up in the middle of the night saying 'they are coming to get me.'" Constance wants to make sure that this incident won't affect Salecia's future, and she wants answers about why police officers were involved in the first place.

So Constance started a petition on Change.org demanding that Salecia's arrest be removed from her record and that Creekside Elementary pledge to stop involving police in school discipline.

Click here to add your name.

Constance believes that what happened to Salecia is part of a larger problem. Schools across America are adopting "zero-tolerance" policies that are making police involvement in school disciplinary matters more and more common, according to the Advancement Project, a group working with Constance's family.

If thousands of people sign Constance's petition, the police and the officials at Creekside Elementary will see that they can't arrest and handcuff a six-year-old girl without facing public consequences. Schools around the country will take notice -- and Constance hopes there won't be another child that faces what Salecia did.

Click here to sign Constance's petition demanding that Salecia's arrest be removed from her record and that Creekside Elementary pledge to stop involving police in school discipline.

Thanks for being a change-maker,

- William and the Change.org team

---

Even though it's been a week since Georgia kindergartner Salecia Johnson was carted off to jail in handcuffs after throwing a temper tantrum in school, her parents are still unsure what caused the 6-year-old's behavior.

"The facts aren't really clear to me how she ended up in the office in the first place. I'm sure something else was going on, because my child is not a bad child and she does not act out to this degree," Salecia's mother, Constance Ruff, 27, told The Root. She believes there's more to the story than what school officials or the local police department reported.

Last Friday, April 13, around 11:30 a.m., Salecia, who attends Creekside Elementary School in Milledgeville, Ga. -- about 100 miles outside of Atlanta -- was taken to the principal's office after being involved in an altercation with two other girls who were pushing one another, Ruff shared.

Once in the office, Salecia became "violent and disruptive" and displayed behavior that included "pushing several other students; running away from the school staff; slamming chairs around the school office; climbing up and knocking over a bookcase; knocking pictures off the wall; scribbling over the walls and door; and injuring a school employee," Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Geneva Braziel said in a written statement.

"That could have played a role in Salecia's acting out, because she was being disciplined and other girls weren't," said Ruff, who added that the school never contacted her about Salecia misbehaving but said that she did speak with her daughter's teacher after the girl complained about kids "picking on" her. Creekside Elementary School officials referred all questions to superintendent Braziel.

Braziel's statement also says that the school called the girl's emergency contacts -- who included Salecia's parents and Ruff's sister -- and that the police were involved because safety became a concern, pointing out that it was the Milledgeville Police Department's decision to handcuff and transport Salecia to jail. Milledgeville Police Chief Dray Swicord declined The Root's request to be interviewed for this story.

Kim Dotcom is furious

The US judge handling the Megaupload case noted today that it may never be tried due to a procedural error, a comment that has sparked the anger of Megaupload’s founder. Kim Dotcom is furious with the US Government for destroying his businesses and rendering hundreds of people unemployed. According to Dotcom the case is the result of “corruption on the highest political level, serving the interests of the copyright extremists in Hollywood.”

Wal-Mart de Mexico

By Jessica Wohl and Carlyn Kolker

(Reuters) - Allegations that Wal-Mart Stores Inc stymied an internal investigation into extensive bribery at its Mexican subsidiary are likely to lead to years of regulatory scrutiny and could eventually cost some executives their jobs.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that in September 2005, a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an email from Sergio Cicero Zapata, a former executive at the company's largest foreign unit, Wal-Mart de Mexico, describing how the subsidiary had paid bribes to obtain permits to build stores in the country.

Wal-Mart sent investigators to Mexico City and found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million, but the company's leaders shut down the investigation and neglected to notify U.S. or Mexican law enforcement officials, the Times reported.

Legal and retail experts said that the allegations, if proven true, could badly hamper the company and its management for years. They could lead to a time-consuming global probe, substantial financial penalties paid to U.S. authorities, and the departure of some executives.

One option Wal-Mart will have is to remove some of those involved in the alleged bribery or cover-up as this could make it easier to reach an out-of-court settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning possible breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a U.S. law that forbids the payment of bribes to foreign government officials.

"Among the remedial actions is 'house cleaning' of anyone involved in illegal conduct," said Richard Cassin, a lawyer who is an expert on the FCPA and writes a blog about it. "If a company can say those involved in the questionable conduct are already gone, the DOJ is likely to look more favorably on the company and current management."

Wal-Mart said it had disclosed its probe to the DOJ and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also said it had taken steps at the Mexico unit, which is widely known as Walmex, to boost internal controls to make sure it was FCPA compliant.

But, according to the Times, the disclosure came only after it informed Wal-Mart that it was looking into the bribery allegations, years after the bribes were said to first come to management's attention.

A spokesman at the SEC said on Saturday he did not have any comment on the Times article. A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment.

"Because of Wal-Mart's inaction for a very long time, it's likely its exposure is only going to increase," said Michael Koehler, a professor at Butler University and an expert on the FCPA.

According to the Times, current Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke and former CEO Lee Scott, who still sits on the company's board, were among senior executives allegedly aware of the situation. Duke was put in charge of Wal-Mart's international division in 2005.

"DEEPLY CONCERNED"

The newspaper also reported that the whistleblower Cicero had identified former Walmex CEO Eduardo Castro-Wright as the driving force behind years of bribery.

Castro-Wright became CEO of Walmex in 2003 and was named CEO of Walmart US in 2005 and became a vice chairman in 2008. He led Wal-Mart's e-commerce business from 2010 until January this year, and is set to retire on July 1 after the company said last September that he was going to leave to spend more time with his family. He could not be reached for comment.

Wal-Mart said in a statement on Saturday it was "deeply concerned" about the allegations in the Times report. It said it began an investigation into its compliance with anti-bribery laws last autumn. The company declined to make Duke or any other executives available for comment, and said the investigation was continuing.

On Sunday, Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar said Duke had instructed the company to conduct a worldwide FCPA compliance review in March 2011.

"Mike is fully supportive of the independent investigation being conducted in Mexico with oversight by the Audit Committee, including ensuring that all resources necessary are available to pursue the independent investigation aggressively," Tovar said.

On Friday, Walmex announced that one executive named the next day in the Times report, its general counsel and secretary to the board Jose Luis Rodriguezmacedo, had been assigned to other duties. He was removed from his role "in the interest of the investigation," Walmex spokesman Antonio Ocaranza said in an email, adding that he could not give further details about Rodriguezmacedo's status at Walmex. Calls to Rodriguezmacedo were referred to the spokesman.

COSTLY AND FAR-REACHING

Experts in bribery laws said Wal-Mart will be forced to devote millions of dollars and enormous amounts of manpower to its internal investigation. In many FCPA cases involving large companies, they do a large part of the investigation themselves and then hand the results over to the authorities.

"This is very likely to last two to four years for Walmart. These worldwide investigations tend to take two to four years in the normal course of business; it simply takes time," said Koehler.

Cassin said Wal-Mart faces an uphill battle to convince U.S. regulators that its problems are confined to Mexico. The U.S. retailer also has major operations in the UK, Brazil, Japan, China and Canada, and it is also seeking to expand rapidly in emerging markets such as India and parts of Africa.

"Before any resolution with U.S. authorities is possible, the company has to look under every stone for possible corruption. Are there any similar issues in China or other countries? That's what U.S. authorities will want to know. Wal-Mart's shareholders will be asking the same question," said Cassin.

The allegations could prove a huge problem for Wal-Mart if proven true, said Deutsche Bank retail analyst Charles Grom. "It would put a broadside in the growth engine of the company," he said. "Unlike prior bad PR stories in recent years, this will be a material distraction for Wal-Mart on multiple fronts."

Some retail experts said they thought that Wal-Mart would be unlikely to sacrifice Duke in the investigation and any related talks over a settlement with the government.

"I don't get the sense that Mike Duke's going to lose his job over this," said Joseph Feldman, senior retail analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. "I think that they'll try to put the spin on it that they have been putting on it - that it happened years ago, they rooted it out and it doesn't happen anymore."

The company's corporate structure may also reduce the chances of outside pressure from shareholder activists and others leading to drastic changes in the executive suite. The family of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton owns nearly 50 percent of the shares and Walton's eldest son, S. Robson (Rob) Walton, is chairman, and his younger brother Jim is also on the board.

According to the Times, Rob Walton, Duke and Scott also had received an anonymous email in January 2006 saying Wal-Mart de Mexico's top real estate executives were receiving kickbacks from construction companies.

IMAGE STRUGGLES

Wal-Mart, which employs 2.2 million people and runs more than 10,000 stores around the world, is often targeted by labor and community activists who argue that it underpays its workers and its sprawling stores undercut smaller shops, often putting them out of business. It has fought hard to improve its image in recent years with a number of campaigns, including one to make its operations more environmentally friendly.

Wal-Mart executives have, though, been active in a lobbying group that is pushing to scale back the FCPA. A 2010 tax return for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform lists Jeff Gearhart, Wal-Mart's general counsel since 2009, and Thomas Hyde, who retired in August 2010 as Wal-Mart corporate secretary, as two of 40 people who served as board members.

The board includes top lawyers and executives from other major corporations. Dow Chemical Co, Exxon Mobil Corp and State Farm Insurance each had two people among the 40 listed board members during 2010.

The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform is associated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. It wants lawmakers to make several changes to the corruption law, for example by adding a provision that would protect a corporation from liability if one of its employees circumvented compliance measures.

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan, Aruna Viswanatha, Jeremy Pelofsky, David Ingram, Elinor Comlay and Suzi Parker; Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Martin Howell)

Dumped By NPR Because Occupy DC Protest

Trayvon shooter George Zimmerman

We are still devastated by the loss of our son Trayvon Martin, and nothing can bring him back. But we are heartened to tell you that justice may finally be served for Trayvon.

Florida State Attorney Angela Corey announced that she will charge George Zimmerman with 2nd degree murder, weeks after he confessed to killing Trayvon -- and now he's in custody.

For weeks after Trayvon was killed, authorities refused to arrest Zimmerman. We couldn't believe that in 2012, public officials would turn a blind eye to our son's killing. We couldn't let that happen.

More than 2 million people joined our call for Zimmerman's arrest. We are so much closer to justice with the decision to bring charges against our son’s killer. We feel less alone knowing that so many people stood with our family during this impossible time.

When Trayvon was just nine, he ran into a burning house to save his father's life. He may be gone, but he is still our hero. We are so thankful to all of you who fought to honor his memory.

Thank you for standing with us, and with Trayvon.

- Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton

---

George Zimmerman turned himself in on Wednesday and is now in custody, special prosecutor Angela Corey said.

Martin's parents said the charge was a first step towards justice, but added there was "a long way to go".

Mr Zimmerman, 28, claimed self-defence and was not arrested in the weeks after Trayvon Martin's fatal shooting.

"Today we filed an information charging George Zimmerman with murder in the second degree," Ms Corey told reporters.

"I can tell you we did not come to this decision lightly. Let me emphasise that we do not prosecute by public pressure or petition," Ms Corey added, in a reference to the intense media scrutiny that has surrounded the case in recent weeks.

After the charges against him were made public, Mr Zimmerman's new defence lawyer, Mark O'Mara, said his client seemed lucid, and he was "not concerned about his mental well-being right now".

Mr O'Mara said he had been appointed to the case about 90 minutes before Ms Corey unveiled the charges against his client and he had not yet had time to look at the evidence.

However, Mr Zimmerman was likely to plead not guilty, Mr O'Mara said.



In a highly contentious press conference, attorneys Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig announced they have withdrawn as counsel for George Zimmerman, who remains under intense scrutiny for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

"It's no so much that we are resigning. It's that we cannot continue to represent him until he comes forward," said attorney Craig Sonner.

Sonner and Uhrig say they have been unable to contact Zimmerman since Sunday, when he stopped returning their phone calls.

"He's not returning my messages not returning my texts not returning my emails. He won't even give me a collect call," Sonner said.

However, both attorneys said they would be willing to resume their representation of Zimmerman if he contacts them directly.

"He's got to reach out to us," added co-counsel Hal Uhrig.

The press conference than took an unusual twist, with Uhrig essentially trying the case before the gathered members of the press. Both attorneys stressed that they continue to believe Zimmerman acted in self-defense, while Uhrig criticized both the press and Martin himself.

Going after the press directly, Uhrig said, "If you don't believe this has been crouched in racial terms, you're not watching the same media, the same TV, reading the same blogs." In an unfortunate choice of words, Uhrig added,  "I'm taking a shot at the press when I say this."

Uhrig then directed criticism at the now-deceased Martin, alleging that his own actions were to blame for Zimmerman shooting him.

"Whoever decided to turn it from a war of words into a war of fists does so at their own peril," Uhrig said.

"We frankly believe the correct decision will be to not charge him [Zimmerman]," Uhrig said.

"The first person that swung, as far as we can tell, was Trayvon Martin," Uhrig said. "The crime was battery against George Zimmerman."

Both attorneys repeatedly refused to reveal Zimmerman's location but insinuated that he is no longer in Florida. "You can stop looking in Florida. Look much further away than that," Uhrig said.

---

Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman has apparently launched a website—TheRealGeorgeZimmerman.com—to relay a message thanking his supporters, and to collect donations via PayPal for his living and defense expenses. The site had been down intermittently on Monday afternoon.

"I am the real George Zimmerman," a message on the site begins. "On Sunday February 26th, I was involved in a life altering event which led me to become the subject of intense media coverage. As a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage, I have been forced to leave my home, my school, my employer, my family and ultimately, my entire life. This website's sole purpose is to ensure my supporters they are receiving my full attention without any intermediaries."

The site's background is an image of a large American flag. The domain was privately registered on Sunday, according to NetworkSolutions.com records.

NBC News' Mara Schiavocampo said she confirmed through Zimmerman's lawyers that the site is indeed his. CNN and other media outlets followed.

---

NEW YORK (AP) — No one knows what led a Florida neighborhood watch captain to shoot Trayvon Martin, a teenager carrying no weapon.

But a new study raises an intriguing question: Could the watch captain have been fooled into thinking the youth was armed in part because he himself was holding a gun?

In the study, volunteers who held a toy gun and glimpsed fleeting images of people holding an object were biased toward thinking the object was a gun.

It's another indication that the brain shapes what we perceive in the world beyond the information that comes in through our eyes, said James Brockmole of the University of Notre Dame, who did the work with psychologist Jessica Witt at Purdue University.

In a telephone interview, Brockmole stressed he had no inside information on the Feb. 26 shooting of 17-year-old Martin, who was shot and killed in a gated community in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. The neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, said he shot the teen in self-defense because the youth attacked him. The case has drawn outrage and protests, and the federal Department of Justice said Monday it will investigate.

Brockmole said it's possible that Zimmerman's perception might have been skewed by being armed.

Race may have also played a role. Martin is black; Zimmerman's family says he is Hispanic. Past research suggests that people can be more likely to perceive a poorly seen object as a gun if it's held by a black person than by a white person, experts say.

Zimmerman has not spoken publicly. The police report does not mention whether he thought Martin had a firearm. But during his patrol of the neighborhood in his SUV, Zimmerman called 911 and told a police dispatcher that he was following Martin. "We've had some break-ins my neighborhood. ...There is a really suspicious guy."

straw poll

getting ready

Pentagon War Gaming Economic Breakdown and ‘Civil Unrest’

Mac Slavo
November 22nd, 2010

The majority of Americans believe that recent government intervention into financial markets, the economy and corporate insolvency has reversed the economic downturn which was described by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as being “on the brink” in 2008. The stimulus, bailouts and unrelenting quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve have thus far been perceived as having averted the further erosion of the U.S. real estate and equities markets. And though the Federal Reserve and economic analysts have recently readjusted their economic growth forecasts downward for the next six months, Americans no longer have to worry about, as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said on the house floor in October of 2008, the sky falling, multi-thousand point drops in stock markets and martial law in America.
The recovery – if our government, the Federal Reserve and mainstream media are to be believed – is on the road to recovery – albeit slowly and with some more pain ahead.
If we’ve “prevented economic collapse” and “avoided the depression many feared,” according to President Obama, inquiring minds are asking why the Pentagon and US Military are actively and aggressively engaged in planning responsive action to large scale economic breakdown and civil unrest scenarios:

Ever since the crash of 2008 the defense intelligence establishment has really been paying a lot of attention to global markets and how they can serve as a threat to U.S. national security interests. At one upcoming seminar next month they’re taking a look at a lot of the issues.
source: see CNBC video report below

According to the report, the Army has spent time on financial market trading floors with JP Morgan and others, in the hopes that they can learn more about how a financial and economic attack may occur, and what the ramifications of such attacks on US stocks and bonds may be.
The Army, in a year-long war games series called Unified Quest 2011, is looking at a variety of possibilities and how to deal with them, including:

• the implications of “large scale economic breakdown” inside of the United States
• how to maintain “domestic order amid civil unrest”
• and ways to deal with fragmented global power and drastically lower budgets

Clearly, the U.S. government is making contingency plans to deal with a worst-case, all-out-collapse scenario of not only the economy, but our social and political systems.
The war gaming, according to reports, began in 2008 at the onset of the economic crisis, but planners from not just the United States, but around the globe, may have been aware of the dire possibility of economic collapse even earlier. It’s well known that the U.S. government as well as foreign counterparts have been preparing bunkers and continuity of government for decades, but recent preparedness activities suggest that the planning in some aspects has been expedited. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the US government has been the leading buyer of freeze died foods for the last couple of years, and private emergency shelter contractors have reported a shortage in equipment and supplies for building personal-sized bunkers.
In a previous report titled Homeland Security To ‘Regionalize’ Emergency Supplies Over Next 90 Days, we pointed out that FEMA, headed by Department of Homeland Security, is decentralizing emergency supplies from one main distribution facility in Washington D.C. to fifteen regional facilities around the country. Even the Russians and the EU are in high gear. Russia has reportedly begun planning and development of 5,000 new underground bunkers for the city of Moscow scheduled for completion no later than 2012. The EU, in 2006, commissioned the building of a “Doomsday Seed Vault” in a mountainside several hundred feet above sea level. The facility was built and fully stocked with millions of seeds from around the world within 18 months.
Though the activities of global governments in recent years could potentially be chalked up to standard national security preparedness and contingency planning, the most alarming indicator that the U.S. government is not just looking at one-in-a-million possibilities in terms of economic collapse is the training of several thousand U.S. Army soldiers to respond to domestic policing and enforcement issues that may include evacuation, detainment and riot response. The real possibility of the need to deploy U.S. military under martial law exists, and the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars training and equipping soldiers to do so if necessary.
For those who may have their doubts about some of the scenarios these soldiers are training for, we point out the sign being held by one of the riot role players below.

(Photo taken by U.S. Airforce Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard at Vigilant Guard training exercise Ft. Richardson, Alaska – April 2010)

It is hard to imagine an America under an economic attack so serious that the U.S. economy could suffer a collapse that would essentially put an end to the world as we have come to know it. But for those who think rationally, especially given the current malaise in financial markets and the U.S. dollar, the possibility cannot be ruled out.

As such, any government acting in the interests of national security would take steps to deal with and respond to such an event(s).

For the average populace prole, however, there may not be any real assistance should something like this occur. First and foremost, any government response to an attack on our financial and economic systems will have the primary goal of maintaining order and the rule of law, as well as continuity of government. This is a given.

This means that if, for whatever reason, be it a collapse of the US dollar that leads to disruptions in the flow of U.S. food supplies or an economic war that goes “hot” leading to worst-case scenarios like cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure elements like electric and water utility plants or an EMP attack, the government’s mandate will not be to provide food and security for your family, but rather, for those who are deemed essential to accomplishing the primary goals.

This means that when and/or if it hits the fan, you’re going to be on your own.

If you haven’t yet, we recommend taking the advice of FEMA (pdf), who suggest that every family have emergency preparedness supplies on hand, including food and water, for at least a couple of weeks.

For the hard core “preppers” amongst us, you may have already considered this possibility and the chance that the fallout from an economic collapse may lead to an inability to perform daily transactions with the U.S. dollar,  food supply disruptions, violence and looting, and even a completely ‘down-grid’ where utilities are completely out of service. If you haven’t, what would you do if you awoke to news of a total meltdown in the US dollar – one that led to rejection of the US dollar as a currency for international settlement?

Will you be the one facing off against highly trained U.S. military personnel holding a “Food Now” sign at an inner city riot?

The U.S. government and many of their counterparts around the world are getting ready – just in case – maybe you should be too.

Moscow on 19 August 1991

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14589691

It is one of the abiding images of modern Russian history, the famous picture of Boris Yeltsin speaking on a tank outside the parliament in Moscow on 19 August 1991. It was a moment when the future of the Soviet Union hung in the balance. That morning a group of communist hardliners had staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. The Soviet leader was trapped in Crimea, and troops and tanks were on the streets of Moscow. Mikhail Arutyunov (second right) left the White House with Boris Yeltsin to meet the tanks
It seemed like the era of glasnost and perestroika was at an end.

jews spit on christians

Spitting on them is an improvement from having the IDF snipers killing them like they did several years back.

The Washington Post reports that on 20 October 2001, in front of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, 17-year-old Orthodox altar server Johnny Thalgieh was shot from afar by Israeli army sinpers. Struck in the chest by a large-caliber bullet, he was hoisted skyward, cried out, fell, rolled three times, and died on the spot. Johnny, who had hoped to become an Orthodox priest, was visiting with his cousins in Manger Square, after attending Vespers in the church. A Greek Orthodox priest, Fr. Theophanis, said, "He was loving toward every human being...I feel I have lost one of my family." Ibrahim Abdullah, 20, a Muslim friend, said that some of Johnny's friends sometimes threw stones at the Israeli soldiers, but that Johnny never did, "He just wasn't violent like that."

---

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- From his ceramics gallery along Armenian Patriarchate Road, Garo Sandrouni has a sweeping view of one of the Old City of Jerusalem's longest thoroughfares, stretching from Jaffa Gate deep into the Jewish Quarter.

Jewish worshipers heading to and from the Western Wall jostle for space along the narrow passage with Armenian priests and seminarians, and Sandrouni says about once a week he finds himself breaking up fights between them.

Typically the skirmishes begin when a young yeshiva student spits on or near a group of teenage seminarians, who occasionally respond by beating up their attacker. Several years ago, a young religious man pulled a gun when Sandrouni moved to intervene in a fight.

"Most of the incidents that happen, unfortunately, they happen in front of my store," said Sandrouni, who more than once has come to the aid of a yeshiva student bloodied after a run-in with a group of seminarians."Almost everybody, after the fight, they apologized," Sandrouni said. "They say, 'We are sorry. We didn't know that their reaction would be so strong.' "

Attacks on Christian clergyman in Jerusalem are not a new phenomenon, and may result from an extreme interpretation of the Bible's injunction to "abhor" idol worshipers.

But several people familiar with the issue say the attacks recently have reached epidemic proportions -- or at least enough that government officials and Orthodox rabbinic figures have begun to take notice.

A recent meeting between Foreign Ministry officials, the Jerusalem municipality and fervently Orthodox, or haredi, leaders resulted in a statement by Beth Din Tzedek, a haredi rabbinic tribunal, denouncing the phenomenon. In a sign of the ministry's concern over the issue, both the meeting and the statement were publicized on the Web site of Israel's diplomatic mission to the Vatican.

"Besides desecrating the Holy Name, which in itself represents a very grave sin, provoking gentiles is, according to our sages -- blessed be their holy and righteous memory -- forbidden and is liable to bring tragic consequences upon our own community, may God have mercy," said the statement.

The incident that appears to have gotten the ministry's attention occurred last September, when a pair of teenage Armenian seminarians reportedly fought with a young yeshiva student who spit on them. Police intervened, arrested the seminarians and referred the matter to the Interior Ministry.

According to George Hintlian, a spokesman for the Armenian community in Jerusalem, the seminarians are now facing deportation -- a decision the Armenians have officially protested. Carrying out the order would require the police to seize the boys from their seminary in the Old City, Hintlian said, which likely would result in a public relations disaster.

"It won't happen easily," Hintlian said. "They'll think twice."

Christian leaders stress that the problem is not one of Christian-Jewish relations in Israel. Most Israelis, they say, are peaceful and welcoming. In an interview with several Armenian Jerusalemites, they emphasized repeatedly that their relations with the largely religious community in the Old City's Jewish Quarter are normal.

The assaults, according to George Hintlian, a spokesman for the Armenian community in Jerusalem, are carried out by people from the outside -- visitors to Jerusalem from other towns, and even from abroad.

Though they may bear the brunt of the phenomenon, given the proximity of the Armenian and Jewish quarters, cases of spitting are confined neither to Armenian clergy nor the Old City.

Athanasius Macora, a Texas-born Franciscan friar who lives in western Jerusalem, frequently has been the target of spitting during his nearly two decades residing in the Israeli capital.

Macora, whose brown habit easily identifies him as a Christian clergyman, says that while he has not endured any spitting incidents recently, recollections of past incidents started flowing over the course of 30-minute interview.

In a sitting room at Terra Sancta College, where he is the superior, Macora recalled the blond-haired man who spit at him on Agron Street, not far from the U.S. Consulate. Another time, walking with an Armenian priest in the same area, a man in a car opened his window to let the spittle fly. Once it was a group of yeshiva students in the Old City, another time a young girl.

Five years ago, in what many say is the worst incident on record, a crucifix hanging from the neck of the Armenian archbishop, Nourhan Manougian, was broken in the course of an altercation with a yeshiva student who had spit on him.

Sometimes the assailants are clad in distinctive haredi garb; other times the attackers are wearing the knitted yarmulkes of the national religious camp. In almost all cases, though, they are young religious men.

A Franciscan church just outside the Old City walls was vandalized recently with anti-Christian graffiti, Macora said.

"I think it's just a small group of people who are hostile, and a very small group of people," Macora said. "If I go to offices or other places, a lot of people are very friendly."

Meanwhile, the Beth Din Tzedek statement, and an earlier one from Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, have impressed the Christians and raised hopes that the spitting may soon end.

"We hope that this problem will be solved one day," Sandrouni said, "for the sake of mutual coexistence."

---

Ultra-Orthodox young men curse and spit at Christian clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem's Old City as a matter of routine. In most cases the clergymen ignore the attacks, but sometimes they strike back. Last week the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court quashed the indictment against an Armenian priesthood student who had punched the man who spat at him.

Johannes Martarsian was walking in the Old City in May 2008 when an young ultra-Orthodox Jew spat at him. Maratersian punched the spitter in the face, making him bleed, and was charged for assault. But Judge Dov Pollock, who unexpectedly annulled the indictment, wrote in his verdict that "putting the defendant on trial for a single blow at a man who spat at his face, after suffering the degradation of being spat on for years while walking around in his church robes is a fundamental contravention of the principles of justice and decency."

---

By Amiram Barkat
Haaretz.com
10-12-4


A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.

But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.

"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

"I'm sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it," he says.

Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. "A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched."

Jerusalem municipal officials said they are aware of the problem but it has to be dealt with by the police. Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said they had only two complaints from Christians in the past two years. He said that, in both cases, the culprits were caught and punished.

He said the police deploy an inordinately high number of patrols and special technology in the Old City and its surroundings in an attempt to keep order.

The King’s Torah

The ADL is denouncing Peter Beinart who is a Jewish critic of Israel and American Jewish organizations like the ADL. In their article “Peter Beinart: is Right, but for the wrong reasons” they denounce him for advocating a One State Solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stating that:

“…if Israel were to hold on to all the territory, the demographic challenge would emerge in full force. Even if one takes seriously those who argue that the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank has been exaggerated (and most Israeli demographers disagree with that assessment), the ratio of Jews to Arabs in one-state would be near the 50 percent mark and would make the concept of a Jewish and democratic state, the hallmark of Israel through its history, a practical impossibility. A truly Jewish state can exist, as it does now, only with an overwhelming Jewish majority.”

---

by Tishrei

I recently ran across an article on a Jewish news publication about something called The King’s Torah. It’s a Jewish commentary written by Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur who are located in the settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank. It is flying off the shelves in Israel. What makes this commentary so shocking is it calls for the murder of the “goyem” (a derogatory term for gentiles), including children. Unbelievably it states that gentiles are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them ‘curb their evil inclination,’ while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

This book is not making a distinction between their enemies and the rest of the world’s population who are not out to harm them. In fact, this commentary states “it is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation.” (emphasis added). The justification is “if we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

Joseph Kony 2012

Kony sources condensed:
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/kony-scam




A group of blond haired, blue-eyed southern California surfer boys from advocacy group Invisible Children got more than 30 million people to watch a half-hour video on a 20-year-old conflict in Central Africa—in just two days. But, the fallout has been some tough criticism charging that the group is raising awareness about a conflict that has essentially wound down since its height in 2003-4. Detractors piled on that Invisible Children spends only a third of its revenues on advocacy programs and not enough money goes to actually helping people. But in a backlash to the backlash, other African experts and human rights advocates today say the widespread negativity is unfounded.

"The argument now is that Kony and the LRA are no longer this massive threat," Cameron Hudson, former Africa director at the George W. Bush National Security Council, told Yahoo News Thursday, referring to Joseph Kony, the founder of the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The conflict involves the Ugandan army and the LRA which is thought to be responsible for thousands of children having gone missing.

Hudson, now policy director at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, stressed that he doesn't share the critique that the group is no longer harmful and he praised Invisible Children for creating a campaign that reached 30 million people. "I just saw PDiddy Tweet about this thing," he said.
Hudson believes the criticism is mostly sour grapes. "I think that these guys are getting mercilessly picked apart by a bunch of intellectual elites who spend their days tweeting but never trending," he said. "If their aim is to raise awareness, they have done that in spades."

Invisible Children is a California-based advocacy group whose founders were San Diego college students who went to south Sudan and northern Uganda in 2003 at the height of the conflict. On Monday, Invisible Children released a powerful, slickly produced half-hour video on the clash, seeking a half million viewers. By Thursday morning they were well on their way, with over 30 million viewers. Their viral tag lines: #Kony2012 and #Stop Kony, along with Uganda and Invisible Children, were top 10 trending topics around the country.

"Where you live shouldn't determine whether you live #KONY2012", the group posted to Twitter Thursday.

Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve, an advocacy organization that works with Invisible Children agrees this is nothing but a good thing. "You have to recognize that for more than two decades [Joseph] Kony and the LRA have been perpetrating horrific atrocities in remote parts of Central Africa, and nobody has been paying attention," he told Yahoo News in an interview Thursday.

Poffenberger said he and the founders of Invisible Children became obsessed with the Lords Resistance Army, its founder Joseph Kony and the plight of thousands of African children disappearing in the conflict back in 2003-2004. "They created this initial film that took off," he said. "And they have been connecting with an audience. The majority of their supporters - and they have 100s of thousands of supporters--are millennials." And he believes this new millennial audience could help foment political change.

In May 2010, members of Invisible Children and Resolve were in the Oval Office as President Obama signed legislation--the Lords Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Recovery Act. The bill, originally spearheaded by former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), ended up with the support or sponsorship of 267 members of Congress--more than any other piece of Africa legislation in history, said Sarah Margon, a former Feingold staff member.

border patrol

The Border Patrol cites federal laws permitting it to operate checkpoints and stop suspicious drivers. Establishing internal checkpoints has been a long-standing policy in Texas and California, states along the border with Mexico, as well as (less frequently) New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.

The constitutionality of such laws, which clearly violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, has been challenged over the last several decades, but federal courts have consistently upheld the governments right to operate the checkpoints. The checkpoint issue reached the Supreme Court in 1976, which claimed that warrantless stops and searches do not violate the Constitution in areas near the border.

However, civil liberties advocates in Texas, Arizona and California have aptly described the checkpoints as ever-expanding militarized zones. There are approximately 8,000 Border Patrol agents on the US-Mexican border.

TSA Viper

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) protects the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.




Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, December 22, 2011

The TSA has been responsible for over 9,000 unannounced “security checkpoints” over the last year alone, as the federal agency’s VIPR program expands to become a literal occupying army in the name of safety.

“The TSA’s 25 “viper” teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year,” reports the L.A. Times.

The figure is completely independent from the federal agency’s role inside the nation’s airports, which costs taxpayers $5 billion a year, with the department having spent an additional $110 million in fiscal year 2011 for “surface transportation security,” while requesting a further $24 million for next year.

The extra money is being demanded despite the fact that there is “no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety,” according to the report, which also highlights how the TSA’s sniffer dogs are used to single out people for questioning if the dog smells the scent of the owner’s pets on their clothing.

The TSA is being used as a literal occupying army to ensure Americans who travel anywhere are constantly under the scrutiny of Big Brother, from highways, to train & bus stations, to NASCAR events, and even high school prom nights.

Back in October we reported on how Tennessee’s Homeland Security Commissioner announced that a raft of new “security checkpoints” would be in place over the Halloween period to “keep roadways safe for trick-or-treaters”.

Earlier that same month it was announced that Transportation Security Administration officials would be manning highway checkpoints in Tennessee targeting truck drivers.

After public outrage, the TSA attempted to neutralize the controversy by claiming that the inspections were carried out by State Troopers (the TSA agents were there to try to recruit truck drivers into becoming snitches for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign), and that the checkpoints were merely temporary.
In reality, the program was the latest phase of the TSA’s rapidly expanding VIPR program, under which TSA agents have been deployed to shake down Americans at everywhere from bus depots, to ferry terminals, to train stations, in one instance conducting pat downs of passengers, including children, who had already completed their journey when arriving in Savannah.

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(NaturalNews) When the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced last year that it would soon begin setting up security checkpoints in places other than just airports, it definitely was not joking. News Channel 5 in Nashville, Tenn., has announced that Tennessee is the official inaugural state for the launch of TSA's new Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program, which will be setting up security checkpoints along interstates to conduct random (illegal) searches of vehicles.

inflation in Britain increased again in March

After falling for several months, the yearly consumer price inflation in Britain rate increased again in March , from 3.4% to 3.5%.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said in February last year after several years of inflation at 3% or more similarly that the high inflation then was just "temporary", and in February 2010 he similarly assured us that high inflation then just reflected "short-run factors".

The failure of British inflation to fall despite the fact that growth is stagnant or slightly negative is of course something that contradicts the Keynesian dogma that a weak economy must mean that inflation will be low

nationalization of YPF

MADRID (Reuters) - An incensed Spain threatened swift economic retaliation against Argentina on Tuesday after it announced plans to seize YPF, the South American nation's biggest oil company, in a move which pushed down shares in Spanish energy giant Repsol, the controlling shareholder.

Madrid called in the Argentine ambassador in a rapidly escalating row over the nationalization order by Argentina's populist and increasingly assertive president, Cristina Fernandez, a move which delighted many of her compatriots but alarmed some foreign governments and investors.

Promising action in the coming days, Spanish industry minister Jose Manuel Soria said: "With this attitude, this hostility from the Argentine authorities, there will be consequences that we'll see over the next few days. They will be in the diplomatic field, the industrial field, and on energy."

"Argentina has shot itself in the foot," said Foreign Minister Jose Manual Garcia-Margallo.

Despite the rhetoric, Spain appeared to have little leverage over Buenos Aires - any action to be taken will be determined at a cabinet meeting on Friday - and Argentina has proven impervious to such pressure in the past.

Repsol said YPF was worth $18 billion as a whole and it would be seeking compensation on that basis, but the Spanish oil major's shares fell by 7.5 percent in Madrid on Tuesday. The company said it could raise money in the bond market and sell some assets to help its cash flow.

Repsol described Argentina's move as "clearly unlawful and seriously discriminatory" and said it would take legal action.

"This battle is not over," Repsol Chairman Antonio Brufau said. "The expropriation is nothing more than a way of covering over the social and economic crisis facing Argentina right now."

But Fernandez dismissed the risk of reprisals. "This president isn't going to respond to any threats ... because I represent the Argentine people. I'm the head of state, not a thug," she said.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he expected Argentina to uphold international agreements on business protection with Spain. "I am seriously disappointed about yesterday's announcement," he said in Brussels.

But action against Argentina appeared limited in scope. The EU Trade Commissioner would write to Argentina's trade minister to "reiterate our serious concerns" while an EU-Argentine meeting this week would be postponed.

"It's absolutely shameful considering everything that Spain has done for Argentina," said a woman called Domi, who was filling her tank at a Repsol petrol station in Madrid.

"I hope the government takes measures and does something serious. They've pulled our leg long enough!"

Spanish media condemned the Argentine action, believed to be the biggest nationalization in the natural resources field since the seizure of Russia's Yukos oil giant a decade ago.

La Razon newspaper carried a photograph of Fernandez on its front page in a pool of oil with the headline: "Kirchner's Dirty War", referring to her full name. The business newspaper La Gaceta de los Negocios called the takeover "an act of pillage".

El Periodico spoke of "The New Evita", pointing out that Fernandez had announced the nationalization in a room decorated with a large portrait of Eva Peron, the actress who was married to a president and revered by many Argentines as a populist mother of the nation and champion of the poor.

Repsol's Brufau said he suspected nationalization of YPF was imminent when he tried to contact Fernandez last Friday and was told that the president "was angry" and did not want to speak.

YPF has been under pressure from Fernandez's centre-left government to boost oil production, and its share price has plunged in recent months on speculation about a state takeover.

Spanish investment in Argentina may now be at risk after the move on YPF. In the "reconquista" or reconquest, of the 1990s, newly privatized Spanish businesses bought Latin American banks, telephone companies and utilities, much as their armor-clad ancestors had conquered the region 500 years earlier.

Through its latest nationalization move, Argentina runs the risk of frightening off foreign investors, key to contributing money to help develop one of the world's largest reserves of shale oil and gas recently discovered in the Vaca Muerta area.

ACE UP ITS SLEEVE?

This led some analysts to question whether Argentina might have an ace up its sleeve in the form of a new partner such as China Petrochemical Corp (Sinopec Group).

Repsol has, however, identified Vaca Muerta as "the cause of the pillage", or the reason Argentina went after its YPF share.

A Chinese website said Sinopec was in talks with Repsol to buy YPF for more than $15 billion, although other sources said the nationalization move would probably get in the way of such a deal. Sinopec dismissed the report as a rumor.

Fernandez said the government would ask Congress, which she controls, to approve a bill to expropriate a controlling 51 percent stake in YPF by seizing shares held exclusively by Repsol, saying energy was a "vital resource".

"If this policy continues - draining fields dry, no exploration and practically no investment - the country will end up having no viable future, not because of a lack of resources but because of business policies," she said.

YPF's market value is $10.6 billion, although an Argentine tribunal will be responsible for valuing the company as part of the takeover. Central bank reserves or state pension funds could be used for compensation.

Fernandez, who still wears the black of mourning 18 months after the death of her husband and predecessor as president Nestor Kirchner, stunned investors in 2008 when she nationalized private pension funds. She has also renationalized the country's flagship airline, Aerolineas Argentinas.

Such measures are popular with ordinary Argentines, many of whom blame free-market policies such as the privatizations of the 1990s for the economic crisis and debt default of 2001/02.

Her announcement of the YPF takeover plan, however, drew strong warnings from Spain, Mexico and the European Union, a key market for Argentina's soymeal exports.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said Fernandez's plan would damage chances for future foreign investment in Argentina and hurt Repsol, in which Mexico's state oil monopoly Pemex holds a 10-percent stake.

Venezuela, where socialist President Hugo Chavez has nationalized almost all the oil industry, applauded her move.

The row over YPF comes as Fernandez heaps pressure on Britain over oil exploration off the Falkland Islands, over which Argentina claims sovereignty.

(Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid, Tom bergin in London, Karina Grazina, Juliana Castilla and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires, and Daniel Wallis in Caracas; Writing by Giles Elgood)