ARTICLE 1
Titans of tech raise millions to enter the political arena: but what is it they want?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/30/facebook-google-twitter-political-lobbying
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is to launch a lobby group. But critics warn their values differ from those of most Americans – Paul Harris in New York – The Observer, Saturday 30 March 2013 13.57 GMT
Obama Holds Facebook Town Hall On The Economy
Barack Obama debates with Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
One day last month about 40 noisy protesters gathered outside the home of the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in Palo Alto in California’s Silicon Valley. They chanted slogans and held up signs as a small, select group of people arrived in sleek sports cars and were ushered inside the relatively modest residence where the billionaire lives with his wife, Priscilla Chan.
It must have been an unusual experience for Zuckerberg, 28, whose position as head of Facebook is more likely to inspire admiration or curiosity from Americans rather than outraged, placard-waving demonstrators shepherded by local police. But this was no ordinary party. It was his first political fundraiser and his choice of candidate raised eyebrows: the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.
Under the gaze of protesters, Republican bigwigs such as Condoleezza Rice arrived to pay homage to – and write cheques for – a governor who has taken stances against gay marriage and the issue of raising taxes on the rich, while at the same time embarking on a union-bashing crusade against teachers in his home state.
But the fundraiser was just one of Zuckerberg’s moves into politics. This week the Wall Street Journal reported that he was helping to organise a political advocacy group with other top tech leaders. The unnamed organisation would lobby for reform on issues such as immigration, education and scientific research. The newspaper said that it had raised millions of dollars from donors and had an initial target of $50m.
It is a remarkable development but also inevitable. The tech sector that has sprung up from Silicon Valley and other development hotspots across the US has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry whose top companies – such as Google, Facebook and Twitter – have reshaped how most of us live. As it grew in power and influence, it was bound to enter politics, seeking to change policy and win allies across the political spectrum. To Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco and Big Banking, you can now add Big Tech. This raises an important question that is rarely asked: as they increasingly seek to shape American politics, what do the titans of tech want?
Kate Losse thinks that question needs a lot of attention. She should know. She was an early employee at Facebook and rose to being Zuckerberg’s speechwriter before leaving to write a book about her experiences, The Boy Kings.
It seems that her book was aptly titled, and recent tech advances into the political world, especially the creation of a well-funded political organisation, are probably only the tip of an iceberg. “The fact that this sort of development is happening suggests there is a political project,” Losse said.
“That is why it is important to ask questions now. Otherwise we might wake up one day and there is a whole system in place that we did not see coming.”
As with any major industry, the people involved in Silicon Valley have political views across the spectrum. But in general they are often a blend of social liberalism and free-market economics. It is a world where people are happy with ethnic diversity and sexual freedoms but distrustful of big government and see the “heroic entrepreneur” as an aspirational ideal. It is a political culture that owes a debt to libertarian novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who preached that free-market self-interest was the future and the hand of government was little more than a dead weight on creativity.
To many, those sort of beliefs in the very young, very rich and very powerful minds of Silicon Valley could be a dangerous mix. “The youth is there in Silicon Valley culture and the hubris is pretty high too,” said Paul Argenti, a communications professor at the Tuck school of business at Dartmouth, New Hampshire.
Some of the agenda can be seen in the issues and politicians that the industry is seeking to back. For example, it is lobbying aggressively to relax immigration laws on the highly educated. That may or may not be good policy, but as a values system it is no vision of egalitarianism of the sort that America was founded upon. It is replacing the huddled masses yearning to be free with not-so-huddled elites bearing PhDs. That may suit the belief system of tech start-up people, but less so union members, the working class or the millions of Americans struggling with high levels of joblessness. “By attaching himself personally to this sort of issue, Mark Zuckerberg is young, arrogant and naive,” Argenti said.
The way that the sector is seeking to wield power politically is anything but naive, and actually old school. Tech bosses are pouring millions of dollars into lobbying firms. They are bucking a trend too. Overall, the amount spent on lobbying by all industries has been falling since 2010 and the number of lobbyists in Washington has been declining since 2007. But not in tech; the sector has grown each year since 2009, signing up more big-name firms and pouring in millions more dollars.
Google is the leading company in the sector and has hired former top politicians – such as the former congressman Richard Gephardt and the former congresswoman Susan Molinari – to fight for its interests. Facebook has lobbied on bills about privacy, seeking to protect its business model of exploiting its users’ content and data as a way of marketing to advertisers. It has a former congressman on board as well, with John Shadegg.
Senior tech executives have also wooed politicians at the highest level. Zuckerberg and the Google chief executive Eric Schmidt were two of the dozen tech titans who attended a private dinner with Barack Obama in 2011. In one of his state of the union addresses, Obama called out Facebook and Google by name as the natural heirs to the great industrial innovators of America’s past. Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has just published a book aimed at creating a social movement of women in the office. She too spans the private and public sectors, having worked as a senior official at the US treasury: no doubt her contacts book still contains a host of powerful government officials on speed-dial.
Observers say this is a tried and tested model for any large industry. “They are singing from the same playbook as everybody else and this is big money. You will find that rarely does a big corporation spend big money except to protect its own commercial concerns,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Centre for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group that monitors the power of money in US politics.
Yet tech has tried to paint itself as different. Google’s informal mantra of “Don’t be evil” has helped to craft its image as a socially responsive firm that would be fun to work for. Facebook markets itself simply as a way of connecting people.
Advocates of Twitter say that the company helped to bring down dictatorships in the Arab spring. The legions of Apple fans believe that their favourite firm’s sleek products make the world a better – and much more aesthetically pleasing – place to live and work.
But critics see that happy, hippyish public image as a potential trojan horse for a mega-powerful industry hellbent on pursuing its self-interest. Facebook, Google, Twitter and a million other internet-based products might be fun and convenient and make our lives better, but their commercial interests are as real as any oil company, defence manufacturer or bank.
“They have had a honeymoon period,” said Krumholz. “But it might be starting to wear off. They have the same corporate interests as anyone else.” Except maybe they are on an even bigger scale. Other big industries’ products do not shape people’s lives in the way search engines and social media sites do. Google and Facebook and Twitter have not created new products that stand alone like a car or a new house; they have created things that invade every other aspect of the economy and our culture. That is a different level of power.
Losse has seen this close-up. Working with Zuckerberg, she says he would frequently see Facebook as becoming a rival to nation states in the future. “Companies over countries,” he would say in meetings.
When Zuckerberg talks of a “Facebook nation”, it is not idle marketing-speak; he means it. “They are trading the very nature of social interaction. They are very much in people’s lives. Don’t mistake these companies for fun. They don’t see it that way,” Losse said.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Real goods and real people please. A Tech-Bubble Nation will be exactly what the enemies of America want – Orwellians, Plutocrat Corporate raiders, Islamists or fundo cultists, Neurotech Mind Control technocrats . . . methinks the Amish Paradise of Weird Al and things people can touch and see would be healthier than a ‘Council’ of Aeofluxers (Karyn Kusama 2006) far removed from realities of the 99% and even further removed than your REAL GOODS and REAL SERVICES tycoons – think Branson or Trump are slimy? These technocrats will bring a new level of slippery based around non-existent spaces/goods and profit off mere swaying of public opinion . . .
Lets have a cabbie or a cook (who is good with kitchen knives?) as President or Governor or Senator or Congressman. A Technocrat governmment is a sugar coated one-way ticket to a VIRTUAL VERSION (not even real chocolate!) of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, except not only 3% Grey Water Newater will result . . . but 99% of people end up a s soylent green for a Techno-Corporate America where a Corporate America already is murder to live in.
Technocrat-Neurotech Corporatocracy society will make Robocop Series of movies of the 80s and and that broken Detroit run by fictional ‘OCP’ look tame by comparison – at least the Cyborgs or Execs of ‘OCP’ are present are present and can be grabbed or dented abit if not dangerous to do so, with these Techno-Corporatist guys and their foreign account tax havens and Seastead Yatching mindset ala ‘Carter Burke’ Aliens (James Cameron 1986) Weyland Yutani Corporation, no accountability or storming of any bastille will be possible against these sorts, the mobs and 99%ters won’t know where this new set of 1%ters are to be torn apart or even be able to reach them . . .
The 99% prefers POOR canaries in a cage as politicians and by that I mean organic and white zone visions for an American future – WITH term limits and prohibitions on plutocracy and nepotism. Sorry technocrats, you stole from us ideas in collusion with neurotech wielding politicians already unaccountable, and then never cared when your sources suffered and near died perhaps at your orders and now still suffer despite being used endlessly for cruel experimentations. At very least have the ethics to not steal from, and spy on people’s thoughts.
I strongly do advocate any 99%ter not vote for any such heartless people or regard any of their Techno-Corporatist lobbies viable, unless immediate expositions on neutotech and satellite cell tech denouncements are immediately done, technocrat corporatists are entirely unvotable and an INTERNAL national security threat.
Parasites are but parasites, no matter the wealth, more so those who stood by and watched people suffer and now even want to supplant mankind’s last political refuge painstakingly developed by moi from years long blogs written in blood, likely interspersed with literal poisonings and much tears from sheer MSM brainwashed societal insanity.
Have at these techno Corporatists! Satellite celltech Neurotech expositions NOW . . . or go f yourselves – FB and Google can die along with their entire company in flames from The 6th Day (Roger Spottiswood 2000) type green-atheist extremists, Bible and Quran thumpers – if that means mankind will have privacy and mental freedom AFTER a low tech fashion. Burn down the TV stations and shut down the internet even – the 99% would rather have MENTAL privacy than countries that do not write laws to protect citizens run by Techno Corporatists to boot. Real goods and real people please. A livestock butcherer has less blood on their hands than a Corporatist, much less a Techno-Corporatist – even a butcher is more useful !
Apply the Neurotech Paradigm to the below environmental alarmist article, and understand Humanity’s freedom (privacy already ended the day the cellphone was invented, but Zuckerberg and Schmidt are not telling how they can read or even suppress or your mind through your satellite cellphone, ‘fess up creeps, there is no way you know what you do unless MENTAL privacy is being invaded . . . ) . . . ends quite suddenly, drowned by the Technocracy (there aren’t even Electronics White Zones yet in the USA! http://www.zoneblanche.fr/index-eng.html ). . .
And you think the below link’s people are bad? If the above lot get into power Orwell’s 1984 would be a shadow of what ‘End of Freedom of Mind’ for mankind . . .
http://rt.com/news/uk-millionaire-government-people-222/
We like Titans, but only benevolent ones that will demand Electronic White Zones or lay off invading minds of non-techies, that will demand the same from governments of the day. If not, lets roll giant sculptures (Fight Club 1999 David Fincher) style over these new Tech based Marie Antoinettes of the USA or crush them with the corporate signboards much like the same corps are used to crush the 99% – watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron 1991), the new ‘gods’ won’t be a cool AI, instead that will be a government stooge, a pasty faced techie kid or techie tub of lard who doesn’t understand the principle that a person’s thoughts are their own NOT public property to steal from IF the 99% are not aware enough to not touch these sorts with a 10 foor, nay 100 foot pole. Alot to think about eh techies? Well consider this at the point of a gun, and do be ethical for many gun owners are itching for scapegoats . . .
We are 99%
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Well the 99% can forgive or forget, AFTER the abusers are treated to the same . . . but forget about friendship. Don’t hurt people then apologize, we do not like being hurt at all.
Unless this confirms that HAARP is not responsible for Earthquakes and weather disasters, which means Human spirituality is, could Obama being disingenuous about the existence of neurotech? Is this old news posing as something new? They probably already have everyone’s brains mapped who knows? So many non-MSM cases and recorded instances proving mind control exist – if those articles are not fake. Would Obama fight for human freedom, or front for Techno-Orwellian-Corporatists?
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/04/20134362513107163.html
ARTICLE 2
Strange Sleep Disorder Makes People See ‘Demons’ – by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com
A still from an upcoming short film on sleep paralysis by filmmaker Carla MacKinnon about sleep paralysis, a phenomenon where people wake up with frozen muscles and, often, scary hallucinations.
When filmmaker Carla MacKinnon started waking up several times a week unable to move, with the sense that a disturbing presence was in the room with her, she didn’t call up her local ghost hunter. She got researching.
Now, that research is becoming a short film and multiplatform art project exploring the strange and spooky phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The film, supported by the Wellcome Trust and set to screen at the Royal College of Arts in London, will debut in May.
Sleep paralysis happens when people become conscious while their muscles remain in the ultra-relaxed state that prevents them from acting out their dreams. The experience can be quite terrifying, with many people hallucinating a malevolent presence nearby, or even an attacker suffocating them.
Surveys put the number of sleep paralysis sufferers between about 5 percent and 60 percent of the population.
“I was getting quite a lot of sleep paralysis over the summer, quite frequently, and I became quite interested in what was happening, what medically or scientifically, it was all about,” MacKinnon said. [Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders]
Her questions led her to talk with psychologists and scientists, as well as to people who experience the phenomenon. Myths and legends about sleep paralysis persist all over the globe, from the incubus and succubus (male and female demons, respectively) of European tales to a pink dolphin-turned-nighttime seducer in Brazil. Some of the stories MacKinnon uncovered reveal why these myths are so chilling.
Sleep stories
One man told her about his frequent sleep paralysis episodes, during which he’d experience extremely realistic hallucinations of a young child, skipping around the bed and singing nursery rhymes. Sometimes, the child would sit on his pillow and talk to him. One night, the tot asked the man a personal question. When he refused to answer, the child transformed into a “horrendous demon,” MacKinnon said.
For another man, who had the sleep disorder narcolepsy (which can make sleep paralysis more common), his dream world clashed with the real world in a horrifying way. His sleep paralysis episodes typically included hallucinations that someone else was in his house or his room — he’d hear voices or banging around. One night, he awoke in a paralyzed state and saw a figure in his room as usual. [See MacKinnon’s Artistic Images of Sleep Paralysis]
“He suddenly realizes something is different,” MacKinnon said. “He suddenly realizes that he is in sleep paralysis, and his eyes are open, but the person who is in the room is in his room in real life.”
The figure was no dream demon, but an actual burglar.
Myths and science of sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis experiences are almost certainly behind the myths of the incubus and succubus, demons thought have sex with unsuspecting humans in their sleep. In many cases, MacKinnon said, the science of sleep paralysis explains these myths. The feeling of suffocating or someone pushing down on the chest that often occurs during sleep paralysis may be a result of the automatic breathing pattern people fall into during sleep. When they become conscious while still in this breathing pattern, people may try to bring their breathing under voluntary control, leading to the feeling of suffocating.
Add to that the hallucinations that seem to seep in from the dream world, and it’s no surprise that interpretations lend themselves to demons, ghosts or even alien abduction, MacKinnon said.
What’s more, MacKinnon said, sleep paralysis is more likely when your sleep is disrupted in some way — perhaps because you’ve been traveling, you’re too hot or too cold, or you’re sleeping in an unfamiliar or spooky place. Those tendencies may make it more likely that a person will experience sleep paralysis when already vulnerable to thoughts of ghosts and ghouls.
“It’s interesting seeing how these scientific narratives and the more psychoanalytical or psychological narratives can support each other rather than conflict,” MacKinnon said.
Since working on the project, MacKinnon has been able to bring her own sleep paralysis episodes under control — or at least learned to calm herself during them. The trick, she said, is to use episodes like a form of research, by paying attention to details like how her hands feel and what position she’s in. This sort of mindfulness tends to make scary hallucinations blink away, she said.
“Rationalizing it is incredibly counterintuitive,” she said. “It took me a really long time to stop believing that it was real, because it feels so incredibly real.”
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Here’s an example of what neurotech can do, to create hallucinations.
Theories : Rationalizing below if viable and not mere neutotech implants wreaking havoc with the individuals. The sleep paralysis problem is an issue ONLY for those with certain diets. How hands feel and what position in, is a way of anchoring the astral self to the body. There ARE drugs used by psychiatrists though to ‘control’ or brainwash political dissidents or used in 3rd world countries that suppress the LGBT community.
Astral projection INTO animals can cause a person to ‘see’ what the animal is seeing (beware of looking after pets or animals in your sleeping space – the cruel form of retaliation would be to hurt the peeping tom through the animal – this can be enforced by killing and used in cattle or meat farming access spirtual types who want to hurt their enemies, though normally one has as much chance of being hurn from travelling into humans who have accidents etc..), and the otherworldly stuff is distortion between perceptions WHEN the person ‘awakens’ astrally, sometimes migrating spirits waiting to be reborn or some such. This is an enhanced state of spiritual perception that can be dangerous.
However, the issue if CRIMINAL dream walkers familiar with these ‘functions’ who disturb sleeping persons or in the case of the succubus or incubus theories rape the astral or ethreal forms of the sleeping person, even to the point where when the person is awake, the form is still ‘held’ by the criminal dream walker. There are various states of awareness and vision between such criminals, and what happens is possible between 4th dimensional and higher realities or between 2 individuals human or animal in near or distant locations in the world.
Never let them tell you that these are mere dreams. These are timeslips or dimensional shifts, alternate time line perceptions into alternate, greater or darker realities that one may drift into upon death, show that one is evolving beyond the human body or the physical plane of existence. Sometimes highly developed chakra portions of oneself depart for such realms to work, fight, even make friends with the locals and can alo get trapped in such realms (I surmise that the the COMPUTER WORLD and the MOVIE world are entire dimensions where the spaces between living times can also seep into regular dream worlds – careful what you post or who you associate with or talk to as if this was the waking world . . . ) and that is why even the wealthy and infleuncial who have everything can commit suicide – their soul portions are being held and the only way to reunite soul portions is to die physically though spirit work can be done to recall or pluck lost souls out of alternate realities or those trapped in otrher people – that can result in people dying incidentally as well . . . so soul trappers beware).
What one does in one’s waking time is ‘audited’ in the astral when asleep – though psychiatric medications can, (but not always due to genetic variations and genetic mutation) suppress the capability of weaker and less developed chakras from departing to be audited or even be used to control such portions to benefit the controller or at least to neutral effect where ther soul is instructed to rest rather than being ‘used’. The subconscious self thus must be communicated with in waking hours (schizophrenia or alzheimers are soul loss and soul reality dilation respectively NOT psychiatric illnesses, that is why old people fade away mentally, they are TRAVELLING alternate realties so the ‘reality field’ nominally comparable to ‘dark energy’ sustaining the physical body allows ageing . . . but if disrupted can cause weather or geological disasters, even manifest asteroids or solar flares if the Sun assents – as a single person’s awarenes and influence can reach far beyond the Solar system) and in turn the chakras will follow.
This requires much ‘self love’ and ‘self consideration’ and ‘common sense’ (i.e. this can be casually checked measured against HOW a person votes and how much they care for the effects of who they vote or the spirit of the law or how they treat others, the awareness of necessity of amendments to law etc..). If one is fretting about the stock market, shopping like mad, shouting at neighbours or neglecting one’s spiritual state entirely, parasiting off others’ spiritual states, refusing to amend harmful laws if in power – one becomes susceptible to being not on command of one’s astral self which if neglected or overly dependent on the host one ios draining awareness from, and ends up susceptible to what the person does in waking life (i.e. if the host drinks alcohol or takes drugs, indulges in bdsm or contact sports the parasite will feel sickened), being abused by other dream walkers more capable or lower realm entities who have been around far longer than our Sun or influence great swathes of the Universe, even the Multiverse.
In such cases, psychiatric meds are useful but again create very dangerous spiritul level addictions that cause insanity as well as an immense well of negative karma, not to mention the abuse by the psychiatric establishment to empowerr themselves over the populace which does not have access to these psychiatric substances.
ARTICLE 3
US citizens increasingly facing austerity dictatorship – by Dr. Webster G. Tarpley – Sunday Mar 31, 201303:12 PM GMT
The lawyer Kevyn Orr took power as dictator of Detroit on Monday, March 25, 2013. He is expected to begin voiding labor contracts, imposing unilateral sacrifices on city workers, autocratically cutting the Detroit city budget, selling off city assets to Governor Snyder’s cronies and backers at bargain basement prices, and privatizing or simply terminating city services. Orr has signaled that one of his priorities will be to renege on Detroit’s pension and healthcare commitments to retired policemen, firemen, teachers, and other municipal workers. He does not rule out a haircut for the bondholders, but this must be considered window dressing unless and until it occurs.”
To the extent that the modern world thinks at all about the problem of fascism, there is a tendency to regard this form of bankers’ totalitarian dictatorship as something which happens suddenly and all at once.
Historians can remember Mussolini’s march on Rome in October 1922, and Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933. But we must also recall that the definitive seizure of power by fascism in these two countries was preceded by dress rehearsals and pilot projects of fascist rule on a more limited scale.
Mussolini’s dictatorship had its precursor in the dictatorship of the fascist literary man Gabriele d’Annunzio in the city of Fiume, bordering Yugoslavia, in 1919-1920. Here many of the rituals, methods, slogans, and other paraphernalia of fascism originated. The stalking horse for Hitler was the
coup d’état by Chancellor von Papen in the state of Prussia in July 1932, which ousted the Social Democratic government there, ending government by elected leaders and replacing them with Reichskommissars sent by von Papen from Berlin as Prussia went into receivership.
Von Papen’s Prussian coup gets us uncomfortably close to what has just happened this past week in the great American city of Detroit, Michigan, well-known as the capital of the automobile industry but now especially hard hit by the world economic depression. The Republican governor, Rick
Snyder, has just ousted the Mayor and City Council of Detroit, replacing them with a single outside overseer who will combine both executive and legislative functions to enforce austerity.
The lawyer Kevyn Orr took power as dictator of Detroit on Monday, March 25, 2013. He is expected to begin voiding labor contracts, imposing unilateral sacrifices on city workers, autocratically cutting the Detroit city budget, selling off city assets to Governor Snyder’s cronies and backers at
bargain basement prices, and privatizing or simply terminating city services. Orr has signaled that one of his priorities will be to renege on Detroit’s pension and healthcare commitments to retired policemen, firemen, teachers, and other municipal workers. He does not rule out a haircut for the
bondholders, but this must be considered window dressing unless and until it occurs.
Orr has boasted: “I’m prepared to be the most hated man for a period of time.” Here is one promise on which he can be expected to deliver. Orr has announced that, although Detroit Mayor David Bing and the City Council have no more authority to decide anything, he will keep paying their
salaries in an attempt to buy the passivity of the local Democratic Party machine. Snyder’s goal is to maintain debt service payments on Detroit’s $8.6 billion in bonded debt. A year ago, Moody’s Investors Service, one of the notoriously mendacious ratings agencies, reduced its rating for
Detroit’s general obligation bonds to B2, which is five notches below investment grade. In November 2012, Moody’s downgraded Detroit by two notches to Caa1, meaning junk bonds with a significant risk of default.
During 2012, the city utility agency for water and sewage borrowed money to pay off $300 million in toxic derivative swaps on which it wanted to cut its losses. This came at the same time that Mayor Bing and the Detroit Water Board (sic) announced a plan to cut 81% of city workers in this
sector, reducing jobs from 1,978 to 374 over the next five years. Bing and the city council were attempting to implement austerity cuts so brutal that they could convince Snyder that an outside commissar was not necessary, thus hoping to keep their jobs. It was during this phase that Bing first
hired Jones Day as a restructuring consultant.
Detroit the victim of toxic derivatives
Detroit is also facing a payment of between $350 million and $400 million on toxic derivatives contracts which were sold to the city over recent years as the mayor and council struggled to avoid bankruptcy. Detroit had issued floating-rate bonds, but then with great folly decided to swap these for
fixed rate instruments. When interest rates declined, the city did not reap the benefit of having to pay less debt service. Many US municipalities, ranging from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts have had to pay billions of
dollars to zombie banks to get out of interest rate swaps gone sour.
It is estimated that Wall Street firms including UBS, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan Chase have since 2005 (when Detroit began running large yearly deficits) collected more than $474 million from Detroit in fees for floating $3.7 billion of bonds. One of those backing these deals
was the former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was just convicted on corruption charges. The banks told Detroit that these interest rate swaps would offer protection against higher interest rates which failed to materialize. (Darrell Preston and Chris Christoff, “Only Wall Street Wins in
Detroit Crisis Reaping $474 Million Fee,” Bloomberg, March 13, 2013)
Snyder’s emergency manager law also poses the problem of conflicts of interest. The city of Detroit is presently saddled with a toxic credit swap arrangement in which Bank of America/Merrill Lynch is a counterparty. Bank of America is a former client of Jones Day. This derivatives trap could
force the city to pay $400 million to the zombie banks under certain circumstances, one of which is the imposition of an emergency manager – which is what has just happened. Detroit’s financial position is further complicated by the deliberate policy of the Snyder administration to delay and
withhold tens of millions of dollars of payments owed to the city by the state.
Detroit, the capital of the US automobile industry, has been cynically driven into deep financial crisis. The 700,000 residents are currently suffering shortages of streetlights, buses, and street repairs, and many homes are now abandoned. In 2012, the Detroit Police Department was cut by almost
12% of its officers, leading to a 9% rise in the number of homicides in the city. The policy of Governor Snyder is to force Detroit to make debt service payments to the banks a top priority, even as he sends in a financial commissar to impose additional measures of savage austerity.
November 2012: Michigan voters reject dictators, but Snyder installs them anyway
In November 2012, a broad coalition of community forces with strong representation from the black community gathered almost a quarter of a million signatures to get the repeal of the existing emergency manager law (Public Act 4) onto the state’s November election ballot in the form of Proposal
1. Incredibly, the United Auto Workers dragged its feet in this process, and preferred to focus its energies on efforts to get out the vote for Obama, who has never lifted a finger to defend the rights of Michigan citizens under attack. In the November 2012 election, Michigan voters nevertheless
voted by 52% to 48% to strike down Snyder’s Public Act Four of 2011. Unfortunately, an attempt to write collective bargaining into the state constitution failed, most likely due to union efforts siphoned off for the benefit of Obama.
At this point, the GOP State Attorney General invoked the older and weaker emergency manager law, Public Act 72 of 1990, to keep the existing commissars in power. Snyder’s minions in the state legislature then quickly rubberstamped Public Act for 36 of 2012, a measure practically identical to the
law which Michigan voters had just rejected. This new enabling legislation for city dictators has just gone into effect on March 28, 2013.
Who is governor Rick Snyder?
What kind of governor imposes dictatorial rule on a large part of his state? Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder represents Schachtian economics in a business suit for the United States in the 21st century. His outward demeanor seems reasonable, measured, moderate, even affable.
Snyder wears button-down oxfords, with no black shirt or brown shirt, no Roman salute, no screaming (at least in public), no speeches from balconies. He uses the direct apologetic, arguing that his oppressive measures are rational and practical responses to the problems of Michigan and its
cities. This is known as Snyder’s “positive” style – wildly ideological in content, muted in packaging.
Rick Snyder, like Bill Gates, Gianroberto Casaleggio, and Peter Thiel is a reactionary operative from the modern computer and information technology industry. Snyder was at various times chairman of the board (2005-2007), CEO, and cofounder of Gateway 2000, a computer hardware firm originally
based in Iowa and South Dakota which later moved to California. Gateway’s stock price averaged about four dollars per share in the mid-1990s, and peaked at $84 in 1999 thanks to the dotcom bubble. Gateway at one time had a network of hundreds of its own retail computer shops, but this fell
apart in 2004 after the dotcom bubble burst. The brand was damaged by shoddy customer service due to the overseas outsourcing of call centers. In October 2007, Gateway was sold to Acer of Taiwan for about $1.90 per share. The Gateway name is now in the process of being phased out.
Gateway appears as a company which was decimated by unwise acquisitions, the reckless quest for short-term profit, outsourcing, and the desire to cash in by selling out to a foreign buyer.
Trained as a certified public accountant, Snyder was also a venture capitalist. In 1997, he founded Avalon investments Inc. of Ann Arbor. In 2000, he was cofounder of Ardesta, an investment firm which reportedly put money into 20 startup companies over the subsequent years.
Hear a word of clarification is in order. It would be misleading to expect fascism in the United States in the second decade of the 21st century to imitate each and every feature of historical fascism as it existed in Europe between the two world wars. Fascism today means first of all a commitment to
destroy all remaining forms of trade unionism and other labor organization. It includes efforts to impose brutal austerity policies, such as the lowering of real wages, and a shifting of the tax burden from the super rich to the middle class and the underclass – in other words, tax cuts for the rich and
tax hikes for working people. Modern-day fascists seek to destroy the social safety net, including food stamps, unemployment benefits, and child nutrition programs. They demand the radical deregulation of the entire economy, including in such savage directions as abolishing the child labor
laws. Modern fascist economics also includes the vehement refusal to use public funds for building vital infrastructure.
Snyder was elected governor in 2010, the year of the hysterical tea party revolt against Obama as the first black president and as a Wall Street puppet. He campaigned as pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-family while touting his business experience. Unlike many less clever reactionaries, Snyder
supported the federal rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, which make up a huge part of the Michigan economy. Upon taking power in Lansing in early 2011, Snyder rammed through a policy of balancing the budget by cutting spending on vital services to the disadvantaged while lowering
taxes on corporate profits and increasing the burden on the middle class and the poor. Snyder claimed to be asking for “shared sacrifice,” but Democrats accused him of balancing his budget on the backs of children, working families, and seniors, brutally harming certain groups to get the result
they wanted.
Snyder’s push for austerity dictatorship went into high gear in March 2011, when he signed a law increasing the powers of “emergency managers” whom the governor could appoint to take over the government of cities and other entities declared in receivership because of alleged financial
insolvency. The new law also made easier for Snyder to oust existing mayors and city council members, replacing them with local budget dictators. To make it easier to implement these takeovers under bipartisan cover, Snyder had appointed as State Treasurer Democrat Andy Dillon, a former
speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives who had lost the 2010 Democratic primary to choose an opponent for Snyder. Dillon had worked in Washington as an aide to the former right-wing Democratic Senator and basketball star Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who later went to work on
Wall Street.
Snyder uses “right to work” law to bust unions
In December 2012, Snyder – ignoring vehement protests by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other unions who have large memberships and deep historical roots in Michigan – ordered his rubberstamp state legislature to ram through a bill making Michigan a “Right to Work” state. This bill
outlawed the union shop by forbidding employers to collect dues on behalf of the labor union representing a bargaining unit. Henceforth only the open shop is allowed, with workers free to enjoy the benefits of union bargaining without paying any of the costs. Such an arrangement usually
leads to the collapse of the union, which is Snyder’s goal. Snyder’s cited motivation was to make Michigan more business friendly. Michigan is thus walking in the footsteps of Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s Nazi regime, both of which had the total destruction of labor unions as the leading
point on their agenda. This Michigan union-busting offensive came at the same time that other Midwestern Republican governors, including Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, and Daniels of Indiana, were pushing programs to wipe out public sector unions and/or all labor organizations.
Democrats and republicans serve the bondholders
The installation of local dictators tasked with defending the interests of the bondholders and derivatives mongers at the expense of the people was already gathering momentum under Snyder’s predecessor, former two-term Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm, whose brief attempt to host a
cable television news program on Current TV ended in failure in February 2013 after a year’s run. Granholm imposed dictatorial rule on Ecorse in October 2009, Highland Park from 2005 to 2009, Benton Harbor in April 2010, Pontiac in August 2010, and on the Detroit public schools. Snyder kept
most of these dictators in place, increased their powers, and appointed new ones for the Highland Park schools in January 2012 and for Flint in August of 2012.
Emergency manager Kevyn Orr now rules Detroit
Kevyn Orr, Snyder’s choice as resident enforcer for the bondholders in Detroit, is a professional bankruptcy administrator. Representing Chrysler for $700 an hour during its 2009 bankruptcy and reorganization, Orr was instrumental in the asset-stripping of the number three automaker even as he
further weakened the UAW to the point where Snyder could attempt to destroy this union with a frontal attack a few years later. One of Orr’s bright ideas was convincing a federal judge to allow Chrysler to suddenly close 800 dealerships — one quarter its US total — almost all of which represented
not just showrooms but also repair and maintenance capabilities and skilled jobs important for local communities. Orr was a backer of John Kerry in 2004 and of Obama in 2008. He was therefore a logical choice for the Obama policy of forcing General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy,
eliminating scores of factories and tens of thousands of jobs, cutting retirement and health benefits, and lowering the pay of new hires to the level of non-union Mississippi sweatshops. At his current assignment, Orr will be getting $270,000 per year.
Orr lives in a $1 million mansion in tony Chevy Chase, Maryland. Between 2009 and 2012, the state of Maryland’s Office of Unemployment Insurance filed four separate tax liens on the Orr residence seeking to recover unpaid taxes Orr owed the state from hiring childcare providers to look after his
two children and then not paying state taxes related to this household help. At the time that Orr was named Detroit commissar by Snyder, two tax liens totaling almost $16,000 were still pending back in Maryland. Orr described in this situation as “remarkably embarrassing” and “something that fell
through the cracks.” (Matt Helms and John Gallagher, “Kevyn Orr Pays On Two Maryland Liens: Snyder Says He Overlooked Taxes, Detroit Free Press, March 18, 2013)
This looks like a typical nannygate problem. One of the surest ways to identify an oligarch from the top 1% in the United States today is that the individual in question can afford domestic servants, something the vast majority of the population cannot even dream of. These elitists, who are
lawyers, often hire undocumented foreign workers as domestic help, or else fail to pay state or federal taxes for the servants they employ. Nanny problems have terminated a number of elitist careers, but Orr is likely to remain in power regardless.
Federal lawsuit, constitutional challenge, and protest march against emergency rule
There have been numerous political protests and legal actions against Snyder’s oppressive law. On March 27, 2013, a group of lawyers and civil rights leaders filed suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, naming Snyder and Dillon as defendants. The lawsuit seeks to
establish the unconstitutionality of Snyder’s emergency manager procedures as applied under the current Public Act 436. The suit argues that Snyder’s emergency manager law violates the voting rights of Michigan citizens by depriving them of the chance to elect local officials for the purpose of
self-government. Supporters of the lawsuit point out is that Snyder’s methods violate the equal protection of the laws which the XIV Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires every state to provide. The vote of the Detroit resident is worth less than the vote of an inhabitant of the nearby
upscale Grosse Pointe because the Detroit resident no longer can elect a mayor and city council. The fact that majority black communities totaling over 50% of Michigan’s Afro-Americans are being singled out for finance dictators also means that civil rights laws are being violated. Public
employees in the cities now under dictatorship are having their collective bargaining rights eroded even more than workers in the rest of Michigan.
On the day after this lawsuit was filed, a group of protesters featuring the Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action Network and MSNBC staged a protest march in downtown Detroit from the headquarters of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) –
which is the largest public employee union in the city – to the federal courthouse. Sharpton correctly noted that “There will be a threat to everyone in this nation if the emergency management in Detroit stands.” Sharpton’s intervention is of course welcome, but it should not be forgotten that he
and his associates had contributed relatively little to the struggle against Snyder’s program over the previous two years, and remain subordinated to Obama. Snyder blandly commented that lawsuits like this are “part of democracy” and boasted of his high success rate in getting judges to reject
legal challenges to his dictatorial measures.
In effect, Public Act 436 creates a new form of dictatorial government under which cities and municipal corporations are subjected to the arbitrary rule of one unelected and unaccountable official who combines executive and legislative powers, and whose decisions, decrees, appointments,
expenditures, and sales cannot be influenced by local voters. (Matt Helms and Joe Guillen,”Lawsuit Challenges Michigan Emergency Manager Law,” Detroit Free Press, March 28, 2013) There is a strong prima facie case that this new form of government is in blatant violation of the U.S.
Constitution.
Article IV of the U.S. Constitution guarantees to every state a “republican form of government.” When mayors and city councils in so much of a state are ousted from power and replaced by dictatorial rule, it is clear that republican government has ended.
The XIV Amendment of this same Constitution orders that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Each state is further forbidden to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As
noted, if you live in Ann Arbor you can elect your own local government, but if you live in Benton Harbor or Detroit you cannot, meaning that Snyder has thrown the U.S. Constitution out the window. Obama is charged by the Constitution to “take care” that the laws be faithfully enforced, but so
far he and his Attorney General Eric Holder have done nothing in favor of Michigan.
Secrecy and graft under the emergency manager law
The local organization Citizens United against Government Corruption has filed suit in state court claiming that the Michigan Emergency Financial Assistance Loan Board violated the Michigan Open Meetings Law because of excessive secrecy in the way Orr was appointed. This group is also
suing Snyder for usurping the authority of the Loan Board by picking out Orr by himself.
One of the perks of being a Michigan emergency management commissar is that you can pay yourself large sums of money without any check or balance. The Michigan Court of Appeals has just upheld a judgment of $333,000 against the former dictator of Highland Park, who had paid himself a
handsome $264,000 on his own authority — something the courts have found illegal. This particular commissar is also under federal indictment for stealing money from the Highland Park school system when he served on their board – indicating that kind of person who gets appointed as
emergency manager.
In Detroit, a major focus of resistance to Snyder’s dictatorship policy is the group For a Moratorium on Detroit’s Public Debt: Make the Banks Pay! There is also the Moratorium Now! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shutoffs, where David Sole is one spokesman. This
organization demands that Wayne County and other Michigan counties immediately stop all foreclosures due to unpaid back real estate taxes. This includes a demand that Fannie Mae, a privatized agency which was seized by the federal government in September 2008, stop participating in these
foreclosures. These actions are key to maintaining the Detroit real estate tax base.
One of the mass leaders of the resistance to Snyder’s commissars in Benton Harbor, on the western edge of the mitten, is the Reverend Edward Pinckney. Pinckney is a leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO). This past week, Pinckney organized protest
motorcades on the I-94 Interstate near Benton Harbor.
Program to save Detroit and other cities
The most immediate remedy necessary for Detroit and other cash-strapped cities is to declare an immediate and unilateral debt moratorium freezing all payments of interest and principal for at least five years or for the duration of the world economic depression, which ever lasts longer. The
survival needs of the Michigan population and economy must take precedence over the demands of the bondholders, which can be sorted out later on. The debt freeze is all the more justified since in large part of Detroit’s debt is represented by toxic credit derivatives which were sold to city
officials through fraud, misrepresentation, and other corruption, with the investment bankers blatantly lying about future prospects. This hemorrhaging of cash must come to an end now.
Debt freeze
As the website For a Moratorium on Detroit’s Public Debt sums up the case: “Why should the same banks who destroyed the tax base of our city, who drove over 200,000 people out of the city of Detroit with their criminal, fraudulent foreclosures and evictions, who were bailed out by taxpayers
and the Federal Reserve with trillions of our dollars, get paid first? The banks owe Detroit billions in reparations for the destruction they have caused. A suspension in debt service payments would immediately resolve the city’s fiscal crisis and allow for the restoration of city services and the
recall of laid-off workers.”
1% federal wall street sales tax with revenue sharing for states and cities
Detroit and other Michigan cities would also benefit from the enactment of a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax on speculative turnover in financial markets. As of now, most Wall Street banks and hedge funds pay little to nothing in the way of federal corporate income taxes, and not a dime on their
quadrillions of trading. A 1% Wall Street Sales Tax might produce as much as $1 trillion of revenue for the United States. Half of this should go to the federal government, but the other half should be apportioned to the states and localities through revenue sharing. This is where of Michigan and
Detroit could find more needed liquidity to maintain police, fire, health, highway, education, and other vital services during the process of economic reconstruction and recovery.
Outlaw credit swaps and other derivatives
The role of toxic credit derivatives in destroying Detroit’s financial position reminds us of the need for outright bans -bright line prohibitions backed up by criminal penalties – on the sale of Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and other types of derivatives. The CDS and CDOs
just mentioned played the central role in the 2008 collapse of the US banking system, and outlawing them is long overdue. The US economy did much better when these instruments were unheard of. Credit default swaps are inherently illegal. If they are gambling, that violates the law. If they are
insurance, those who issue them are not properly registered an issue policies. All payments on credit derivatives must cease.
Fed must provide $3.6 trillion credit stimulus to build infrastructure
Finally, Detroit is now a city in urgent need of having its entire infrastructure rebuilt. The pressures on the federal and state budget to maintain the social safety net are already considerable, so it is not advisable to attempt to finance an infrastructure program through on-budget spending. At the
same time, the principal money center banks have earned their title of zombie banks because of their inability to engage in normal commercial banking through their insolvency due to derivatives. The only available source of large-scale liquidity to finance the economic reconstruction and
recovery of the US economy is therefore the Federal Reserve. Political forces must now force Bernanke to open an infrastructure window empowered to purchase $3.6 trillion of 0% century bonds issued by US states, municipalities, and regional authorities for modern superhighways, bridges,
high speed rail, water and canal projects, modern energy production and distribution, public housing, schools, hospitals, public buildings, and telecommunications. (The $3.6 trillion corresponds to the most recent estimate by the American Society of Civil Engineers of the expenditures necessary
to restore an adequate infrastructure in this country over the next few years.) This credit stimulus is indispensable to restart the US economy. Detroit would benefit from such a program by receiving a 21st-century infrastructure. At the same time, much of the construction equipment and
transportation rolling stock would be produced in Detroit’s factories. The target is full employment, which will require at least 30 million new productive jobs over the years ahead.
WT/JR
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
i) . . . but then with great folly decided to swap these for fixed rate instruments. . . .
Under who’s watch? What are the assets of those currently, who oversaw these swaps? Confiscate some assets if needed. If some ex-bureaucrat multibillionaires are left with a ‘mere’ handful of millions (no more than 20 perhaps?) in the after math, too bad then. The guys still don’t have to work.
ii) Snyder uses “right to work” law to bust unions . . .
Then that law is unonstitutional as it allows the single representative to scuttle the citizens’ wishes. A lawmaker must challenge the legal system to amend the “right to work” law into a manner that respects the voters, even as Unions cannot force all workers to join a Union. The overreach factor must be tempered by correctness but at the lower level the right to be wrong, in this case busting unions should be carefully looked into. This is like saying a Nazi Club or BDSM Club on private property is disallowed, and to deny the right of association to like minded individuals. Democracy will allow everything BUT will make sure that inequitable invasion upon spaces not needed relevant to the size of the community will not occur. Moratoriums and Freezes, especially compound interest freezes are critical to places like Detriot.
iii) Orr has signaled that one of his priorities will be to renege on Detroit’s pension and healthcare commitments to retired policemen, firemen, teachers, and other municipal workers. He does not rule out a haircut for the bondholders, but this must be considered window dressing unless and until it occurs.
If a handful of above mentioned billionaires are targeted for wealth confiscation instead, the above groups need not guve anything up at all. How about targeting the rich ex-bureaucrats Orr? Unless excessive, leave the 99% workers alone.
iv) . . . expected to begin voiding labor contracts, imposing unilateral sacrifices on city workers . . .
Are those labour contracts legal to begin with? Are city workers living on salaries beyond national average annual wage, with costly entitlements and benefits? Then the wage reductions at a time of near bankruptcy of USA will be timely.
v) Mayor Bing and the Detroit Water Board (sic) announced a plan to cut 81% of city workers in this sector, reducing jobs from 1,978 to 374 over the next five years.
See this link on how the US and Malaysian bureaucracy is overloaded with rent seekers and nonsensical posts that are salaried :
Observations on Parasite Bureaucracy Paradigms (circa Jan 2012) :
vi) Orr was instrumental in the asset-stripping of the number three automaker even as he further weakened the UAW to the point where Snyder could attempt to destroy this union with a frontal attack a few years later. One of Orr’s bright ideas was convincing a federal judge to allow Chrysler to suddenly close 800 dealerships — one quarter its US total — almost all of which represented not just showrooms but also repair and maintenance capabilities and skilled jobs important for local communities.
I think collusion between the largest corporations with government is the worst as opposed to non-GLC companies. Perhaps Orr could get some evidence and transparency article writers to say how and why this was done. Chrysler probably is leaner and meaner now, and will survive though the emplopyess doubtless suffered the most being fired. But likely the company ws unsustainable? the last thing USA needs to be is pretending to be maintaining jobs at expense of 800 companies worth of infrastructure without customers.
vii) The XIV Amendment of this same Constitution orders that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Each state is further forbidden to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
As noted, if you live in Ann Arbor you can elect your own local government, but if you live in Benton Harbor or Detroit you cannot, meaning that Snyder has thrown the U.S. Constitution out the window. Obama is charged by the Constitution to “take care” that the laws be faithfully enforced, but so far he and his Attorney General Eric Holder have done nothing in favor of Michigan.
Good work on this paragraph! Will the civil rights groups begin doing an audit of democracy in USA, filing lawsuits for democracy? Benton Harbour and Detriot look like places for American citizens to run from now. No elections and appointments only? Dictatorship!
viii) One of the mass leaders of the resistance to Snyder’s commissars in Benton Harbor, on the western edge of the mitten, is the Reverend Edward Pinckney. Pinckney is a leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO). This past week, Pinckney organized protest
motorcades on the I-94 Interstate near Benton Harbor.
File a lawsuit backed by a signature petition, funded by signatories. Motorcades do nothing.
ix) . . . selling off city assets to Governor Snyder’s cronies and backers at bargain basement prices . . .
A panel of neutral valuers should decide if Kevyn Orr’s pricing is indeed bargain basement. Nobody politically linked to Snyder or Kevyn or even from Detriot may be involved in such valuations. That way conflict of interest from vested interest will not occur.
x) As the website For a Moratorium on Detroit’s Public Debt sums up the case: “Why should the same banks who destroyed the tax base of our city, who drove over 200,000 people out of the city of Detroit with their criminal, fraudulent foreclosures and evictions, who were bailed out by taxpayers and the Federal Reserve with trillions of our dollars, get paid first? The banks owe Detroit billions in reparations for the destruction they have caused. A suspension in debt service payments would immediately resolve the city’s fiscal crisis and allow for the restoration of city services and the recall of laid-off workers.”
Only lawsuits will work here.
xi) Detroit and other Michigan cities would also benefit from the enactment of a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax on speculative turnover in financial markets. As of now, most Wall Street banks and hedge funds pay little to nothing in the way of federal corporate income taxes, and not a dime on their quadrillions of trading. A 1% Wall Street Sales Tax might produce as much as $1 trillion of revenue for the United States. Half of this should go to the federal government, but the other half should be apportioned to the states and localities through revenue sharing. This is where of Michigan and Detroit could find more needed liquidity to maintain police, fire, health, highway, education, and other vital services during the process of economic reconstruction and recovery.
Actually speculative turnover should be done away with entirely. Spinning money out of thin air in stock market is not real money. Taxing such gains, destroys the economy. Instead, trace previous speculative trading gains held by individuals worth more than 20 million.
xii) Finally, Detroit is now a city in urgent need of having its entire infrastructure rebuilt.
No. Opportunists hoping to profit from the above issues? Some cracks or old buildings can last another few decades. Now is not the time to build and enrich construction industry contractors which I suddenly wonder if Dr. Webster G. Tarpley has links to, especially if government is to hand
these companies contracts. Good article on many democratic points, but buildings cost money and no way does anyone have cash to do that in a downturn and USA in extreme debt – even if the locals get crappy construction jobs at expense of the construction firms.
ARTICLE 4
China mobilizes military, on ‘high alert’ over N. Korea threats – Published time: April 02, 2013 04:16
China has started mobilizing military forces around the Korean peninsula in response to rising tensions that follow recent threats by North Korea to launch missile attacks against its southern neighbor and the United States.
According to US officials, Pyongyang’s declaration of a ‘state of war’ against South Korea has led to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to increase its military presence on the border with the North. The officials say the process has been going on since mid-March, and includes troop
movements and readying fighter jets. The PLA is now at ‘Level One’ readiness, its highest.
Chinese forces, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, have been spotted in the city of Ji’an and near the Yalu River, which splits China and North Korea. Other border regions were also reportedly being patrolled by planes.
China has also been conducting live-firing naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, scheduled to end on Monday. The move is widely viewed as open support for North Korea, which continues to show extreme opposition to the US-South Korean military drills that are to last until May.
The news comes as the US deployed its USS Fitzgerald destroyer off the coast of North Korea, adding to its Sunday deployment of F-22 fighter jets to take part in the drills with the friendly South, which has further served to heighten tensions on the peninsula.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been mobilizing its short and medium-range missile arsenal, according to analyses of satellite imagery. Officials say Pyongyang is set to test its new KN-08 medium-range mobile missile; they say preparations have been spotted in the past. Pyongyang claims that
since March 26, its forces have been placed on their highest possible status of alert.
Although officials believe Pyongyang will not provoke Seoul during the war games, they also fear that a miscalculation by South Korea could lead to all-out war, following its promise of retaliation against the North, should it launch its missiles first.
South Korean anti-aircraft armoured vehicles move over a temporary bridge during a river-crossing military drill in Hwacheon near the border with North Korea on April 1, 2013 (AFP Photo / KIim Jae-Hwan)
North Korea and China have maintained a long-standing defense treaty under which Beijing is to come to Pyongyang’s aid in the event of an attack. The last time this was put into practice was during the Korean War, when tens of thousands of Chinese volunteer forces were deployed on the
Korean Peninsula. The relationship between the two countries is often referred to as being “as close as lips and teeth” by Chinese military spokesmen.
Despite the heated tensions leading to an apparent disruption in trade and commerce between China and North Korea, the two are already making future plans to bolster their economic ties. March 27 saw the announcement of a new high-speed railway, as well as a special highway passenger line.
Still, many in Chinese circles have shown displeasure at Pyongyang’s seemingly aggressive relationship with Seoul and Washington. A Chinese official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, has testified that US presence in the region is a helpful restraint against an unpredictable Kim
Jong-un, which many believe to be the real reason Beijing has not been strong in its criticism of the amassing of US forces in the region.
Furthermore, Chinese websites and blogs could sometimes be found openly bashing the North Korean leader for an apparent mishandling of the situation in the region, playing diplomatic games amid chronic food shortages in his country. An editor at the country’s Study Times newspaper was
recently suspended for openly criticizing China for abandoning North Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attending the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang (AFP Photo / KCNA via KNS)
Expert opinion differs on what China’s exact position is in the unfolding regional crisis.
US officials claim the China’s main fear is a collapse of order in North Korea, which would lead to a large-scale refugee flow into China.
Another possible reason for China to worry is advanced by journalist James Corbett, host of the Corbett Report, who believes that foreign military presence in the region is just as unnerving to China as it is to Pyongyang. He discussed this in the light of the latest war drills.
“I think that this has the possibility of ratcheting things up to the point where tensions might actually spill over as a result of this, and we saw that recently with the deployment of B-2 nuclear armed bombers in South Korea which is not only, I think, worrying to Pyongyang, but also to China, to
have nuclear bombers that close to the peninsula there, on China’s southern border. I think that China wouldn’t be pleased with that either, so this is quite an escalation that’s taking place.”
Others believe openly that the US strategy is geared not towards the destabilization of North Korea, but that of China. Li Jie, an expert with a Chinese navy research institution, has told Reuters that “the ultimate strategic aim is to contain and blockade China, to distract China’s attention and slow
its development. What the US is most worried about is the further development of China’s economy and military strength.”
Retired Major General Luo Yuan, who is one of China’s foremost military authorities, believes, however that “once the joint US-South Korean exercises have finished and with birthday celebrations for (late founder of North Korea) Kim Il-sung imminent, the temperature will gradually cool and get
back to the status quo of no war, no unification.”
While it has been urging calm and peace in the region, Beijing has been very obliging at the UN Security Council, when it helped push through the latest round of sanctions against North Korea in March, following its third nuclear test the previous month. Despite being Pyongyang’s greatest ally
in the region, some experts believe this is a sign of Beijing’s growing impatience. American diplomat Christopher R. Hill, who helped under the Bush administration to negotiate a deal for the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities (which didn’t last), says that the Chinese strategy is“not
about the words, it is about the music.”
The resolution came hours after North Korea, angered at both the US-South Korean war games, and at the proposed UN plan, threatened pre-emptive nuclear action against the South and US military bases in the region.
This latest standoff between North and South Korea and the US is credited to have started on February 12, when Pyongyang supposedly performed its latest underground nuclear weapons test. Just this weekend, North Korea vowed to boost its nuclear arsenal, calling it a “treasure of a reunified
country” which it would never trade for anything, even “billions of dollars” worth of aid.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Possible escalation scenario. North Korea conquers South Korea via land invasion after a non-Nuke barrage. China props up North Korea, equals to Japan and perhaps double agent Singapore (a single nuke from North Korea or even China if need be, would put paid to that microstate anyway)
alone in a Western stooge in ASEAN against China. This is the turning point in driving ‘the West’ out of Asia since the Opium Wars in 1800s. North Korea will play bad cop and China may or may not acknowledge anything on penalty of a worldwide economic collapse followed by WW3 if the
West pushes too hard (this is China and Russia’s backyard anyway?).
The West can choose a potential WW3 or withdraw from Asia depending on how the Japanese 99% vote – for the West or for the East. South Korea alternatively could make peace with BOTH China and North Korea by pledging no more military drills with USA with Japan needing a transition to demilitarise/decouple from USA. South korea and Japan are the back door to the East and North Koreas actions will be welcome by both China and Russia. I love USA’s democracy but geopolitics wise American presence here is not very good, this is the Eastern leg of the ‘multipolar world’, traitors (South Korea and Japan), and globalist hegemonists – USA, only destabilize the world by trying to have a presence in the East, this is no better than if Russia and China set up base in Cuba. USA can’t even control South America, or the Middle East, they should not take on the East via traitors (South Korea, perhaps also Phillipines? . . . face of traitor unless the promise to conduct zero joint drills is done immediately – not mean any capitulation to North Korea – just choosing not to rely on the USA for military help – if South Korea conducts military drills alone, probably North Korea woyuld have far less to say IF North Korea is ethical enough AND South Korea does not intrude into disputed territorial waters WITHOUT claiming the same or if that happens the one firing the first shot would be in the wrong at any rate – China can arbotrate from here, but USA a foreign power 1000s of miles away is inappropriate, at least until the 2 countries are reunited as a single Korean nation. In-ASEAN nation joint drills are of course acceptable and a show of solidarity, but foreign region joint drills are just plain fifth columnism and treacherous willingness to project power against local powers instead of working with them through diplomacy. How about USA target any human rights abuses in China so that any war will never result in Japan
like invasions of WW2?
ARTICLE 5
He provoked fury by describing a burglar as courageous. Now the same judge has refused to lock up this paedophile ‘because he’d have a hard time in prison’ — by Simon Tomlinson – PUBLISHED: 12:22 GMT, 1 April 2013 | UPDATED: 15:44 GMT, 1 April 2013
Judge Peters Bowers claimed Mark Martin would ‘suffer badly’ if sent down
Martin already on suspended jail term when caught with more sick images
Campaigners slammed decision ‘strange’ and ‘remarkably short-sighted’
Judge provoked outrage last year when he also let serial burglar walk free
A soft-touch judge provoked more controversy today after refusing to jail a paedophile caught with child pornography for a second time because he would ‘suffer badly’ in prison.
Judge Peter Bowers let Mark Martin walk free despite being found with more sick images while already on a suspended jail sentence.
His decision comes months after he caused public outrage for describing a serial burglar as ‘courageous’.
‘Strange decision’: Pervert Mark Martin (pictured) has been spared jail by a controversial judge despite being caught with child porn while already on a suspended prison sentence
‘Remarkably short-sighted’: Judge Peter Bowers (pictured) has been criticised for refusing to jail a paedophile caught with child pronography for a second time
Pervert Mark Martin who has been caught with images of child abuse twice
‘Remarkably short-sighted’: Judge Peter Bowers (left) has been criticised for refusing to jail Martin because he would ‘suffer badly’ in prison
At the time, he was criticised for his choice of words, which which were branded a ‘serious error of judgement’, when opting not to jail Richard Rochford, 26, in September last year.
Rochford was instead given a one-year prison sentence, suspended for 18 months.
Following an investigation, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice upheld complaints about the judge’s comments and issued him with a reprimand after his remarks ‘damaged public confidence in the judicial process’.
In the latest case, Martin was already on a suspended jail sentence for making indecent images when police found more indecent pictures on his mobile phone.
Reprimanded: Judge Bowers caused public outrage last year for describing serial burglar Richard Rochford (above) as ‘courageous’
The 24-year-old had also been using his brother’s computer to download other vile pictures of young boys and girls.
At Teesside Crown Court on Friday, Judge Peter Bowers passed another suspended sentence, and told Martin: ‘This really is your last chance.’
Campaigners branded the most recent let-off ‘remarkably short-sighted’ and said the jobless shop worker should have been locked up.
Martin, of Dent Street, Hartlepool, got a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with probation service supervision.
In 2009, he was given a similar punishment and was ordered to go on a sex offenders’ treatment programme to cure his ‘addiction’.
A Sexual Offences Prevention Order was also made which banned him from putting anti-forensic software on his computers which would hide his internet history.
Police visited his home in February last year to check on his internet activity and ask about his computer use, the court heard.
He claimed not to have the internet and when he was asked by officers about his mobile phone, he reacted ‘suspiciously’.
Prosecutor Sue Jacobs told the court that a total of 48 still and moving images of child abuse – some in the worst category – were found.
Martin Scarborough, mitigating, said Martin knew he faced prison, but had shown ‘genuine remorse’ and was candid with police.
Judge Bowers told him: ‘You present quite a problem for me because, in theory, you had breached the suspended sentence.
‘As most people will know, if people do breach a suspended sentence, then it is almost inevitable they go straight away to prison.
JUDGE PETER BOWERS NO STRANGER TO CONTROVERSY AND CONTRADICTION IN 20-YR CAREER
Peter Bowers, 67, a married father-of-three, has been no stranger to controversy in his 20-year career as a judge.
Three years ago, he allowed a violent thug to walk free from court despite admitting that the public think judges are ‘going mad’ for passing soft sentences.
In another case, he told a man who led police on a ten-mile car chase after trying to kill himself: ‘Next time you want to commit suicide find somewhere quiet to do it.’
More recently, he has made contradictory comments about burglary sentencing.
In May last year, he criticised sentencing guidelines that let first-time burglars escape with a ‘slap across the wrist’.
But weeks later, he allowed a man with almost 80 crimes on his record to walk free for a burglary committed four days after his release from prison, telling the court: ‘I must be getting soft in my old age.’
‘But I have read with some concern about you, and this addiction you have had of looking at pornography of little children.
‘I think you would suffer very badly in prison and I don’t think, at the moment, it is necessary to send you there today.
‘I am going to give you another suspended sentence, but you have got to understand it is the very last chance you are ever going to get.
‘You are probably doing the right thing not to have any internet access… it is a temptation you will find very hard to resist.’
The National Association of People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) last night described the decision not to jail Mark Martin as ‘strange by any standard’.
Acting operations manager, Dr Jon Bird, said: ‘This is a remarkably short-sighted decision in my opinion.
‘We know that people who have this kind of problem need help to control it, but the sympathy should only go so far.
‘Two suspended sentences in a row is strange, by any standards. In prison this kind of offender would be segregated for his protection.
‘I imagine he is at home laughing about how he fooled a judge.
‘There has to be a strong deterrent enforced on these criminals who cause so much pain to their victims.’
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If this is not a false flag article . . . etc. etc. heres the reponse even if the article is fake.
Saves money, saves rehabilitory useless torment in jail for the offender. Whats to compalin about? Incidentally viewing any kind of porn is a victimless crime though thought-wise I am sure the creepiness factor exuded by Mark Martin’s porn viewing has made many priests into paedophiles . . . yet the discipline was lacking in the priests while Mark Martin at least was disciplined enough to keep all his ogling activities in the virtual world (not advocating child pron, looks sickly to am not advocating child pron, looks sick/sickly to – perhaps in Mark’s case that might be a ‘size-osmosis’ desire . . . being oversized and wanting to slim down somehow?).
Since Martin did not touch a single child, or appears unlikely to do so (in the past dunno maybe? Where are those Forensics teams . . . ), the National Association of People Abused in Childhood should not have an issue. This is more a cyber crime, which if considered against freedom of speech or in this case the right to ogle porn, makes this a non-issue and non-crime. Mark Martin is a harmless 3rd party type (unlike those who go around sabotaging their potential political competitors with psychiatry or religious fundos), though potentially predatory has not done anything to any child, or made such porn and could feel remorseful. Go after the porn producers and actual child predators (lots of priests?)! England is going bankrupt and cannot afford to throw every incidental uninvolved viewer of porn into jail. Judge Bowers is very ‘grey area aware’ btw and should train the legal profession in mindset about such
grey area crimes and unnecessary sentencing as well as empathy. A rare breed of benevolent if not capable of reflecting on that of ‘others’ – if not a false flag article . . .
As for ” But weeks later, he allowed a man with almost 80 crimes on his record to walk free for a burglary committed four days after his release from prison, telling the court: ‘I must be getting soft in my old age.’ ”
40K a year of jail vs a few thousand over a decade, makes fiscal sense if not legal sense. If England was wealthy, for sure, jail away. But England is in debt, near bankruptcy, more Judges like Bowers are needed. Being all judgmental while ignoring the financial state of the nation is one way to
destroy the nation. Throwing people in prison is a luxury that England does not have – even as the callous nature of other judges about the fragile state of future of the lives of offenders who could be let off as above shown, does no justice to the justice system. Guess who’s protecting English
interest and the Offenders’ interest (empathising with the offender is also a Judges’ job, judges who simply imprison are doing half the work – Judges must empathise with the offender to be doing 100% of the job . . . ask a ‘Virtual’ Fagin for pointers) maybe best here?
This pedophile Martin really looks like one of our local politicians . . .
ARTICLE 6
Pope to pray at St. Peter’s tomb at Vatican – 4th March 2013 – by FRANCES D’EMILIO | Associated Press
Pope Francis speaks before the Regina Coeli prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Monday, April 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)View Photo
Pope Francis speaks before the …
Faithful try to watch Pope Francis delivering his Regina Coeli prayer from his studio window overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Monday, April 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)View Photo
Faithful try to watch Pope Francis …
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will spend Monday’s Vatican holiday praying at the tomb of Peter, the church’s first pontiff, during a visit to the excavated necropolis under St. Peter’s Basilica.
A Vatican statement called the visit private, but promised to release photos and video later in the day. The basilica was built over the location where early Christians would gather in secret, at a time of persecution in ancient Rome, to pray at an unmarked tomb believed to be that of Peter, the
apostle Jesus chose to lead his church.
In past years, popes often spent the day after Easter, known in Italy as “little Easter,” at Castel Gandolfo, the Vatican palace in the Alban Hills, a short drive from Rome. But that oasis of sprawling gardens and strolling paths in the quaint hill town is occupied by the predecessor of Francis,
Benedict XVI, who spent the last hours of his papacy there before becoming the first pope in 600 years to retire. Benedict is staying in Castel Gandolfo until a monastery at the Vatican in Rome can be readied for him.
Many Italians spend “little Easter” by having a picnic lunch in the countryside or in city parks, and Francis told Romans and tourists who gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Monday at noon to see him to “have a good lunch.” Francis said he was praying that Easter would inspire the faithful so
that “hatred gives way to love, lies to truth,” and that it would especially comfort those in “most need of trust and hope.”
He spoke to them from the studio window of the apartment in the Apostolic Palace overlooking the square. Benedict and popes before him lived there, but so far Francis, who stresses simplicity, has declined to move into the quarters. Instead, he has continued to stay in a hotel on Vatican City’s
grounds, the same residence where as Buenos Aires archbishop he stayed with fellow cardinals to elect Benedict’s successor.
They chose him, Jorge Bergoglio, the first pontiff from South America.
St. Peter’s mission was to continue to preach the message of Jesus and reach more souls. Francis, as a Jesuit, is steeped in the evangelizing mission of the church, and the necropolis tour brings him back to the origins of the church in its simplest years as a community of Christians professing
their faith in defiance of the crackdown by Roman emperors.
Peter himself was among the Christian martyrs during Nero’s reign. He is believed to have been crucified, head down, on the Vatican hill.
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had an early basilica built on the slopes of the Vatican Hill, burying the pagan and Christian cemetery — necropolis means ‘city of the dead’ — that surrounded Peter’s burial site. The current basilica, named after St. Peter, was constructed over the earlier
basilica that was deemed unsafe and demolished in the late 15th century. The Baroque master architect Bernini designed the bronze canopy over the central altar over the spot of Peter’s burial site. The current basilica was planned as an awe-inspiring monument that would project the image of a
powerful church.
Under popes of the last century, extensive excavations were carried out of the sprawling necropolis. In 1965, archaeologists said they had found the bones of Peter in an area near an ancient Greek inscription saying “Peter is here.”
Part of a nearby necropolis came to light in 2003 during construction of a parking lot.
A few years ago, the Vatican unveiled the largest and most luxurious of the pagan tombs under St. Peter’s Basilica, that of a family of former slaves. Guided tours of the necropolis, upon appointment, have been one of the most sought-after attractions for tourists to the Vatican.
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This ‘spiritual method’ the Catholic Church practices is universally done in all faiths, and they can aid or reach others of other faiths if linguistically similar (needs understanding of language). Unfortunately the Catholic Church is as guilty and in this case cynically expedient, as all other faiths intentionally using culture as a weapon of control of othere etnicities and nations (i.e. proselytization, more so when the locals are barely familiar with their own native faith systems), to choose to couch the methods in an ethnic and cultural, also linguistic lens based around hierarchies that are equally nationalistic.
Meanwhile how many bad cardinals, archbishops and bishops hiding paedophiles are still on the loose? Not sacked yet? Francis would be untouchable by any for any politically inclined or reputational hiding types taken out. The Church needs to drop all these bad hats (or birettas), or the Church will be a lens through which the Devil of lower astral entities will corrupt the world by. Kissing 12 inmates’ feet every single day would do less than a single papal edict ordering mass defrockings and excommunications.
This is not about courage even, this is about purification and every day the Pope holds back from these required expulsions so the Church can renew, the Church mires deeper in the lower expressions of humanity’s soul – especially for those professing the faith or even those linguistically similar (that is one reason why some countries refuse to learn common languages). Without fear or favour, and one can only ask, is this how the Pope serves God? If angry paedophiles even dare to retaliate by assassinating Francis, then martyrdom will result. Does Pope Francis dare or is Pope Francis complicit?
ARTICLE 7
Small town way to producing power – by Tan Hui Yee, Thailand Correspondent – published on Mar 22, 2013
One of the small reservoirs on the compound of Tonghua rice mill, which runs a power plant which generates energy from rice husks. — PHOTO: TAN HUI YEE
NAKHON RATCHASIMA – Think of a thermal power plant and the mind conjures up images of blazing heat, roaring engines and soot. But scenic reservoirs?
That’s the picture at least at Tonghua, a rice mill in northeastern Thailand which operates a small-scale, 7.7-megawatt facility that generates electricity from the 170 tonnes of rice husk it accumulates every day.
Located in Bua Yai district among the paddy farms in Nakhon Ratchasima province, it is a bright spot in the energy scene wracked by controversy after officials warned that the country could face partial blackouts next month due to the routine maintenance work on gas pipelines from Myanmar.
Tonghua is one of more than 300 small power producers in the country which generate electricity from renewable sources like agricultural waste, solar energy and wind. The power they produce makes up about five per cent of total electricity consumed Thailand right now, but there are plans to
grow this sector.
These small plants are supported by energy purchase agreements, subsidies as well as a shorter-than-normal approval process.
The scheme has its downsides: Because plants smaller than 10 megawatts in capacity were not required to go through lengthy environmental impact assessments prior to construction, some operations have drawn complaints of polluted water and foul smell from immediate neighbours.
Over at Tonghua, managing director Suthep Wiroadpaisit runs the plant with a mixture of big city business sense and small town goodwill.
Before plant was built in 2006, the Bua Yai-born businessman, whose family has been operating there for five decades, gathered surrounding villagers to explain his plans and field any questions they had.
“They were worried about water,” he told The Straits Times. “It’s dry here, so they were afraid the plant would use up the district’s water.”
In response, he dug several reservoirs on his 2-million sq m property, enough to hold 3 million cubic metres of water. Rimmed with pleasant greenery, the reservoirs fill up in the rainy reason, and the water is slowly processed before use.
“I make my own water, like Newater!” he says proudly, before declaring that he is an enthusiast of Singapore’s environmental policies.
The resource-constrained city state recycles water for its drinking needs, and brands this product Newater. Mr Suthep has personally been to Singapore’s Newater visitor centre and carefully studied the water treatment process documented there.
Since his plant began operations in 2006, he has had a handful more meetings with neighbouring villagers, addressing questions like how the filters he uses keep ash from blanketing the surrounding district. The going has been fairly smooth, he says.
“That’s the culture upcountry – we help each other,” he says. “It’s not like in Bangkok, where we may not know each other even though we live side by side.”
tanhy@sph.com.sg
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“I make my own water, like Newater!” he says proudly, before declaring that he is an enthusiast of Singapore’s environmental policies.
NO Mr.Foolish-Rich-Thai-Guy . . . no comparison . . . Newater is water with a 3% greywater EeeewwwW! nEW! Newater! Thats 3% processed sewer water Mr.Suthep.
The water here in the beautifully greenery edged pools (not the 100% ‘ew’ water that Suthep and everyone else ‘makes’), , is REAL water not like Singapores recycled GREY sewer based water. Please don’t compare fresh water from natural equivalent artificial Thai reservoirs (in a nice green setting I must say) in very impressive land banks (2 milllion sq m is a dream for most landowners, bravo, with a nice green (if the smoke is not too much) energy source. Those filters are moi’s idea no? Suthep should not ruin Thailand’s reputation by associating with Singapore’s water system which is ridiculed by Singaporeans themselves, who are quite angry that Singapore with all that wealth won’t install Desalisation Plants but instead chooses to make citizens drink 3% grey water which is barely suitable for discharge into the oceans as is . . .
ARTICLE 8
Homosexual marriage faces social pressure – by Tian Ying, Zhang Hui (Xinhua) – 08:03, April 01, 2013
BEIJING, March 31 (Xinhua) — Nine years into his second marriage, Yang Bin still awkwardly refers to his wife as “my date” while conversing with others. The failure to settle for a heterosexual marriage has once again saddled him with guilt and remorse.
Yang Bin (not his real name), born in 1970 in the outskirts of China’s Tianjin Municipality, is now the owner of a small restaurant. He looks pale and speaks in an utterly gentle voice, his face covered with chiseled wrinkles.
Like many Chinese homosexuals, Yang has a sad story of struggling in heterosexual marriage, as China’s family-centered culture accentuates one getting married and carrying on the family name, and the social tolerance for homosexuals is still limited, particularly in less-developed areas.
Yang’s story unfolded when he noticed at a very young age that he was different from his peers. “I never had any special feelings for girls but my heart beat fast for boys,” he says.
As Yang grew older, he realized he was gay. However, this knowledge spent a long time locked up deep in his mind, unexpressed to anyone as the sexual tendency was deemed abnormal and untenable by Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s, when homosexuality was included in the official Chinese
Classification of Mental Disorders.
It wasn’t until 1997, when Yang was 27, that he got his first chance to meet other homosexuals. In a park frequented by gays, a man approached and flirted with him. The experience excited Yang and the next day, he returned to the park, boldly found another man and “everything that should
happen happened.”
Finally falling in love and having an outlet for his long-oppressed emotion immersed Yang in happiness. But it didn’t last long.
In 2001, Yang’s parents repeatedly urged him to get married. With no other choice, Yang disclosed his real sexual inclination, hoping to be understood and accepted by them.
Yang recalls the evening of his coming out. Sitting with his parents in a bedroom, Yang told them, “I am gay, I don’t like women,” and explained how he became convinced.
But he did not convince his parents. During their talk, Yang’s father kept murmuring ‘not possible’ and asking Yang how he became like this.
He tried to win their understanding by spelling out, “I also want to lead a normal life, but I can’t help myself. Although I’ve been going out with a girl for four years, I never touched her hands.”
However, the discussion soon descended into a fight, with his furious father roaring, “Don’t try to find excuses [to break up with Yang’s then girlfriend],” and Yang making the accusation to his parents that “It is your genes that made me gay,” citing a hypothesis he read in a book that
homosexuality is genetic.
Later that evening, Yang’s parents brought in reinforcements consisting of his uncles and aunts to talk Yang out of homosexuality.
His father insisted that he get married, saying “I would rather you divorce than never marry.” His parents, who lived in the countryside, where people tend to be more conservative, could not stand gossip from other villagers.
The frustrated young man left home the next day. “When I returned half a year later, my parents were not mad at me any longer, and my father, who seldom cooked, made me my favorite seafood. Thinking of all the miseries I created for them and their unconditional love to me, I softened,” he
recalls.
Yang finally got married later that year, but divorced after just three months.
Four years on, in 2005, Yang stepped into a second marriage that he says he could never have imagined after the first. This time, an outgoing woman, blind to Yang’s real sexuality, was attracted to him and started pursuing him right in the period in which he broke up with his boyfriend of eight
years.
“I was deeply hurt by the break-up and no longer had faith in homosexual love. At that moment, I just wanted to get married and lead a normal life,” Yang explains.
However, his parents fiercely rejected the decision as they were clear about his sexuality and refused to arrange a ceremony for them. So the couple got married on their own and departed for a honeymoon.
Things did not work out as he wished. “I really thought I could distance myself from homosexual circles but I couldn’t,” Yang says. During their 15-day trip, the couple had an awkward sexual incident that saddened the bride, and Yang remembers seeing her “crying in pajamas in the hallway.” But
the bride did not have the faintest idea of what lay at the root of their problems.
In the following eight years so far, the couple have only made love five times, all in an unsuccessful attempt to conceive a child. “I felt deeply guilty and didn’t know how to face her,” Yang says.
To relieve his guilt, he treated his wife the best way he could and has taken good care of her family as well. “When her mother was hospitalized after a brain hemorrhage, I left my work behind and attended her bedside for months.” Yang’s parents also treated his wife like their own daughter to
“make up for their son’s mistake.”
But his feelings of guilt cannot be totally laid down. Though an unsatisfying sexual life is not necessarily lethal to a marriage in China, where women are often deemed not virtuous for speaking explicitly about or showing interest in sex, being childless is another matter. This gradually poisoned
the couple’s relationship, with them fighting about it occasionally.
During these incidents, even his virtuous wife could not help complaining, “I demand nothing of you but to let me feel I am a woman.”
“I cannot even satisfy such a simple wish in her,” Yang says, tears welling up in his eyes.
As time went by, he gave up on making their marriage work and cheated on his wife with another man. The resulting menage a trois has tragically worked as Yang and his wife now only reunite at weekends because the husband has to attend the restaurant day and night.
Yang’s boyfriend moved in with him in the restaurant (retrofitted from a four-bedroomed residential apartment), but his wife still continued to visit him every weekend. “I think that was when she discovered my problem,” he speculates, although Yang told his wife the man was just helping out in
the restaurant.
Yang recalls that his boyfriend once slipped into his bed, snuggling with him after his wife got up, but she only jokingly remarked ‘look how happy you are when he is under your blanket.’
But they never openly talked about Yang’s being gay. Like his parents, many Chinese do not accept the idea of homosexuality, taking it as a correctable morbidity.
In 2007, Yang was diagnosed HIV-positive but his wife fortunately not. Yang still kept her in the dark, getting a blood sample from her on the pretext that it was needed for a hepatitis test. After the discovery of his condition, however, Yang began trying to persuade his wife that they should
divorce.
Due to social stigma, many people with HIV in China even withhold their HIV status from close relatives. Some localities have endeavored to make it legally binding for HIV-positive people to inform their spouses, moves which have sparked fierce opposition from the HIV community.
“I have brought up divorce many times and encouraged her to date other men because I want her to start a new life, but she refused each time,” Yang sighs. She has always believed that the fundamental problem between them is that Yang is not mature enough (she is two years older her
husband) and things will improve when he gets ages.
Lack of public discussions about homosexuality keeps a lot of women, especially less educated ones, unaware of the landmine they may tread upon, and even if they realize someday, many will not let go, clinging onto gay husbands in the hope of turning them straight.
“We may look an admirable couple, doing the very best to care for each other and living a well-off life, but it hurts to think how she has turned from a happy and extrovert girl when we first met into a sad woman whose face is full of melancholy.”
In her book “The Subculture of Homosexuality,” renowned sexologist Li Yinhe estimated that there are 36 to 48 million homosexuals in China.
A large percentage of them surrender to pressures coming from their families and society by entering into heterosexual marriages.
According to HIV/AIDS and homosexuality expert Zhang Beichuan’s citing of his own research in 2012, 80 percent of gay men in China have married or will marry a woman.
However, changes are under way, with China developing more tolerance of homosexuals, particularly among young people and in big cities.
Li Hu, head of Haihe Star, a Tianjin-based HIV/AIDS non-governmental organization, says, “I find fewer and fewer friends and people we work with are married gays.”
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Sometimes the issue may be rather than a family line destroying m2m or f2f ONLY, is merely transvestitism or transgenderism and the lack of women/men who can match these men/women THEN these men and women becoming gay or lesbian because of the larger group of m2m and f2f voices in general, drowning the voices of all variants considered neither gender.
While same gender relationships certainly must be allowed to exist, the education system needs to promote variants of the same – to introduce transvestitism or transgenderism to males and female variants not fully of either gender, so they could still get married to their ‘primary characteristic organ present’ counterparts and set up families, rather than be swept away by the PERCEIVED lack of choices or lack of awareness of the many possible variants of gender orientation versus sexual expression versus not having children entirely.
The government could also promote a form of ‘male mistress (correct term being catamite)’ or ‘female playing male role’ culture – perhaps with further marriage union rights (for registration purposes so that this does not becoming an underground mess with all kinds of problems – the police regulating will help alot, the law recognizing will prevent any disenfranchisement), with the parents of the individuals’ family being continued with a ‘first wife’ that will bear the obligatory child for the parents (by artificial insemination overseen by registered medicos if not the state itself) if the parents wish that.
Actually m2m or f2f dna splicing is already possible and with a surrogate mother, a gay or lesbian couple can have children as well. While this particular type of new generation may be as discriminated against as GMO babies, the government again must inform and educate that m2m or f2f does not mean that the family line ends, but instead could use technology or as above suggested paragraphs, subculture, to allow everyone to get what they want (i.e. same gender unions for the people, also parents get their grandchildren).
ARTICLE 9
Gay son doesn’t change Arizona congressman’s position against same-sex marriage – by Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Ticket
A Republican congressman from Arizona told a local news station that his son’s sexual orientation hasn’t changed his view that same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry.
Rep. Matt Salmon, from Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, told 3TV that he loves his son and does not believe he chose to be gay, but that he has not “evolved” to the position that his son should be allowed to marry someone of the same sex.
“I don’t support the gay marriage,” Salmon says in the clip. “My son is by far one of the most important people in my life. I love him more than I can say. I’m just not there as far as believing in my heart that we should change 2,000 years of social policy in favor of a redefinition of the family. I’m not
there.
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t have respect,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean that I don’t sympathize with some of the issues. It just means I haven’t evolved to that station.”
Last week, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio became the most prominent Republican politician to announce his support for same-sex marriage. He wrote in an op-ed that he changed his strong stance against gay marriage after his son came out as gay to Portman and his wife, when he was a college
freshman two years ago. “Knowing that my son is gay prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the people they love, a blessing Jane and I have shared for 26 years,” he wrote.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases last week that could pave the way for the legalization of same-sex marriage in California and other states. Their decisions aren’t expected until June.
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Regardless, there must be equitable spaces appropriate to the size of the local community, or options for those wishing to relocate to communities friendly to the group. Perhaps for the particularly estranged, adoptive fathers who are understanding of such issues could be matched up to
‘psychologically disowned’ children, which is effectively what not evolving effectively causes. That part of Salmon has effectively denounced a major part of his son’s life – regardless that most people will not be sharing their sexuality with their parents even to begin with.
Thats like saying love is conditional, when the only real love is unconditional and that would be more valuable than blood ties. As they say we can’t choose our relatives . . .
ARTICLE 10
Judge rejects divorce for transgender pregnant man – by PAUL DAVENPORT and FELICIA FONSECA | Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona judge on Friday refused to grant a divorce for a transgender Arizona man who gave birth to three children after beginning to change his sex from female.
Maricopa County Family Court Judge Douglas Gerlach ruled that Arizona’s ban on same-sex marriages prevents Thomas Beatie’s 9-year union from being recognized as valid.
Thomas Beatie was born a woman and later underwent a double-mastectomy, and began testosterone hormone therapy and psychological treatment to become a man, but he retained female reproductive organs and gave birth to three children.
Gerlach said he had no jurisdiction to approve a divorce because there’s insufficient evidence that Beatie was a man when he married Nancy Beatie in Hawaii. He said the Beaties never provided records to fully explain what Thomas Beatie actually had done and not done to become a man.
“The decision here is not based on the conclusion that this case involves a same-sex marriage merely because one of the parties is a transsexual male, but instead, the decision is compelled by the fact that the parties failed to prove that (Thomas Beatie) was a transsexual male when they were
issued their marriage license,” he wrote in Friday’s ruling.
A spokesman for Beatie, Ryan Gordon, said the judge’s comments came as a shock and that Beatie plans to appeal the ruling. He said Beatie legally was married as a man and never was required to disclose that he retained female reproductive organs when applying for and being granted a new
birth certificate in Hawaii as a man. He said Beatie halted testosterone treatments so that he could give birth to his children.
“It’s unfortunate that the judge out here doesn’t recognize marriage in another state,” Gordon said.
Beatie is eager to end his marriage, but the couple’s divorce plans stalled last summer when Gerlach said he was unable to find legal authority defining a man as someone who can give birth.
Gerlach’s ruling didn’t address whether Arizona law allows a person who was born female to marry another female after undergoing a sex change operation.
A separate ruling issued Friday by Gerlach sets guidelines on how the Beaties will co-parent their three children and grants them joint authority in making legal decisions. Thomas Beatie is required to pay nearly $240 a month to Nancy Beatie for child support, but she won’t get alimony because
the marriage was declared invalid.
Nancy Beatie’s attorney, David Higgins, praised Gerlach for the thoroughness of the decision on the marriage, although it wasn’t the one she had hoped for.
“He still sees a same-sex marriage, but he gave us all the rulings that we’re asking for as far as the children,” Higgins said.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights, which isn’t involved in the Beatie divorce case, has said courts have declared marriages involving a transgender person invalid in a handful of cases across the country, but that those cases had different factual and legal issues than those in the Beatie
case.
Thomas Beatie, known as “The Pregnant Man,” was born Tracy Lehuanani Lagondino in Oahu, Hawaii. He began testosterone treatments in 1997 and underwent double mastectomy and chest reconstruction surgery in 2002. He changed his Hawaii driver’s license to say he was a man and had a
Hawaiian court approve his name change to Thomas.
Gerlach’s ruling noted that Thomas Beatie halted the testosterone treatments and that he didn’t provide documentation for any additional non-surgical efforts.
Thomas Beatie married his partner Nancy in early 2003 in Honolulu and became pregnant because Nancy was unable to have children. Thomas Beatie conceived with donated sperm and gave birth to children who are now 4, 3 and 2 years old. The couple eventually moved to Arizona.
Beatie has garnered a range of media attention, making the rounds on talk shows such as Larry King and Oprah Winfrey and winning a spot on Barbara Walters’ list of “10 Most Fascinating People” in 2008, alongside President Barack Obama, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and
swimmer Michael Phelps. He also published a book, “Labor Of Love: The Story of One Man’s Extraordinary Pregnancy,” the cover displaying an image of a shirtless Thomas sporting facial hair and holding a hand over his bare pregnant belly.
___
Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Ariz. Associated Press Writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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A good example of M2F transgender person with sexual organs of both genders. A transexual would be ‘either/or’ regardless of gender of birth, someone who changed sex not has sexual organs of either. Hear that Rogan? In court the difference is very relevant, so don’t pull a media skew on the
words because you think to ‘NLP basis’ force transgender persons to CHOOSE EITHER male of female, when what they really prefer to be somewhere in between. Fallon Fox is not transgender, she is a TRANSSEXUAL woman. The 2 words mean totally different things okay? Duh . . .
ARTICLE 11
Flashback: When even liberals backed ‘traditional marriage’ – by Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 5 hrs ago
Even as Democratic lawmakers rush to announce their support for gay marriage, a look back at the congressional debate over the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 shows they haven’t always championed the rights of same sex couples.
In historic gay marriage arguments before the Supreme Court this week, justices noted comments made by congressional Republicans about DOMA, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. Justice Elena Kagan quoted the House report on the law at the time, which
said its purpose was to express “moral disapproval” of homosexuality. She suggested that if lawmakers were “infected” by animus toward an unpopular minority group when they passed the law, it could put DOMA on constitutionally shaky ground.
McClatchy has collected some of the more virulent comments made at the time by Republican lawmakers. But Democrats weren’t exactly gay marriage champions at the time either, and while they avoided the rhetoric espoused by their conservative colleagues, few took to the floor to argue that
the bill was discriminatory.
Then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., spoke against DOMA, saying it was unnecessary and an intrusion into states’ rights to define marriage. But he emphasized his own opposition to gay marriage before expressing reservations about the bill.
“I am not for same-sex marriage. I have said that publicly. I would not vote for same-sex marriage,” Kerry, now U.S. secretary of state, said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California made a similar point. “I personally believe that the legal institution of marriage is the union between a man and a woman,” she said. “But, as a matter of public policy, I oppose this legislation.”
Republicans were definitely more forceful in their opposition.
Then-Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said he and his constituents believe “homosexuality is immoral, that it is based on perversion, that it is based on lust.” Coburn was elected to the Senate in 2004.
“Homosexuality has been discouraged in all cultures because it is inherently wrong and harmful to individuals, families and societies,” then-Rep. David Funderburk of North Carolina said.
A few lawmakers suggested American civilization would collapse if it accepted homosexuality.
DOMA passed Congress with large, bipartisan support: 85 votes in the Senate and 342 votes in the House. Democratic President Bill Clinton, facing re-election, signed it into law in the middle of the night. (Earlier this month, he disavowed the legislation.) At the time, the vast majority of
Americans opposed same-sex marriage.
Seven years later, when Republicans launched an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to exclude same-sex couples from the definition of marriage, Democrats argued against the move while stressing their belief that marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples.
In the video from Slate’s Dave Weigel, above, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Dick Durbin, who both recently endorsed same-sex marriage, said they were opposed to taking a drastic step of amending the Constitution. But they both elaborately declared their opposition to same-sex marriage, with
Clinton praising “the fundamental bedrock principle that it exists between a man and woman going back into the mists of history.”
Democrats’ position has changed extraordinarily fast since then, with President Barack Obama announcing his own support for gay marriage during the 2012 election campaign and calling for equality for “our gay brothers and sisters” in his inaugural address. Only 10 of the 55 Democratic
senators now do not back gay marriage.
Republican lawmakers have been far slower to embrace gay marriage. Rob Portman of Ohio became the first sitting Republican senator to support gay marriage earlier this month, when he revealed in an op-ed that his position changed after his son came out as gay. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa
Murkowski may be next: She said earlier this week that her position is “evolving.”
The shift has dovetailed with a dramatic reversal of public opinion on the issue. Recent polls show a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, compared with less than 30 percent in 1996.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
The physical genitals do not define a male or female or bigendered soul. Marriage is a bond between 2 individuals not 2 bodies. A male may have a female soul, a female a male soul. Too difficult for those lawmakers to understand? Some people have less empathy, those who have difficulty understanding this comment’s logic need to learn sensitivity and to look beyond the physical person.
ARTICLE 12
Stephen Colbert On Bill O’Reilly’s Gay Marriage Flip-Flop: ‘Shaken To My Core’ (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | By Ross Luippold Posted: 03/28/2013 8:22 am EDT | Updated: 03/28/2013 8:24 am EDT
Stephen Colbert opened Wednesday’s “Colbert Report” with a declaration of something that disturbed him even more than what appears to be the imminent embrace of gay marriage by the Supreme Court: Bill O’Reilly’s flip-flop on the issue, which he announced on his show Tuesday.
“I am shaken to the core,” the faux conservative pundit said. “Last night, even Papa Bear let me down.”
Colbert, who modeled his blustery “Colbert Report” character on O’Reilly, blasted the Fox News host for changing his mind about something he formerly denounced. “On gay marriage, Bill O’Reilly has flip-flopped. The gayest of all footwear.”
But he was particularly offended that O’Reilly took a noncommittal stance about gay marriage, saying on “The O’Reilly Factor” that he does not “feel that strongly about it one way or the other.”
This left Colbert aghast. “Bill O’Reilly doesn’t feel that strongly about something? What’s happening?! You’re Bill O’Reilly! Read your f*cking contract!”
He rolled several clips of O’Reilly proclaiming his distaste for gay marriage over the years, including clips where O’Reilly compared gay marriage to “plural marriage” and the right to get married to ducks and goats.
But if O’Reilly is a man of consistent philosophy, Colbert’s logic dictates, then his comparison of gay marriage to marrying a goat must have been a tacit endorsement of goat marriage, given his current feelings on gay marriage. And far be it from Stephen to get in the way of O’Reilly marrying a
goat.
“This is about a man and a goat who want to share all the joys and sorrows of life together. And if they choose to make it a lifelong commitment together, they should honor it.”
Check out the clip above to see Stephen Colbert try to wrap his head around O’Reilly’s flip-flop.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Tacit approach/broach on bestiality rather? This is not a flip flop, just Colbert trying to hold O’reilly back from growing as a person – DEMOCRATICALLY. This is about democratic rights nothing else. And all countries who want to rule the world cannot take any religious stance on anything
because religion discriminates though grants a form of pedigree. But if USA is to continue being the leader for human rights, O’Reilly has not flip flopped, this just shows Media Mogul maturation towards more democratic mindsets. Read the below links’ short discussion on bestiality :
Article 9 and Response to Article 9
O’Reilly expands on Gay Marriage by broaching the issue of Goat Marriage . . . where are those brain scan translating technologies or apps? Lets see if the hypothetical goat in question approves of marriage to a human if the concept is at first even communicable . . .
ARTICLE 13
Pot Dealer in UK Gets Sentenced to Write 10-Page Essay – by Beth Greenfield, Shine Staff
Convicted UK pot dealer Terry Bennett, 32, was just sentenced to the grown-up version of writing “I will not chew gum in class” on the chalkboard 100 times. He must pen a 5,000-word essay about the dangers of cannabis by April 4—or spend a year in jail.
More on Shine: Busted: 15-Year-Old Son Caught with Marijuana Thanks to Dog’s Strange Symptoms
“It was a shock to be given such an unusual punishment. It’s been ages since I last wrote an essay,” Bennett, who was caught with just over two pounds of marijuana and admitted his intent to sell it, told the UK newspaper the Mirror.
More on Yahoo!: For Investors, Marijuana Remains a Cloudy Bet
“I think it’s good in a way because it gives me a chance to express my opinion about the crime that I’ve committed,” he added in a video interview with SWNS. “And it also gives me more of an understanding of why the crime’s illegal, because I’m having to actually do the research.”
Bennett’s original sentence from Bristol Judge Julian Lambert, given in January 2012, was for a one-year suspended prison sentence with 240 hours of community service. But a shoulder injury Bennett got while snowboarding, he eventually explained to the judge, made that impossible. Last week
Lambert came back with the alternative essay-writing sentence, which also comes with a four-month daily curfew of 8pm to 8am.
“I asked the judge if I could write a balanced argument for and against cannabis, but he said that since it’s illegal, I should only write about the bad things,” said Bennett. “I’m just going to write about certain dangers caused by cannabis that people might not necessarily know.”
The former plumber and father of two kids left high school at 16 and lives in Gloucestershire with his mother. Speaking with various UK news outlets, he seemed rather excited about the assignment, saying he’d gotten right to work with online research.
“I’ve always loved writing, and used to write stories from when I was 11, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to write a proper essay,” Bennett told the SWNS. “I didn’t realize just how much work it would be to get my point across properly.”
He said he plans to take a slightly different tack than the judge may be expecting.
“I’m going to approach it from a different angle, writing about the dangers that come about because it is illegal, rather than the nature of weed itself,” he explained to the Telegraph. He shared points he planned to cover in his 10-page thesis, including the concepts that pot can cause psychotic
episodes, that money generated around the selling of the drug is not taxable, and that smoking the stuff can cause cancers. Then, he stressed, there are the social dangers.
“Weed often causes more problems because of the social inertia and stigma that surrounds it,” the blooming writer noted. “It would be good if there was no stigma attached to people who want help with weed.”
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Kindness and savings on preventing prison collusion cannot change the Orwellian bent of the sentence, in that ONLY bad things can be written. This is a form of inculpation of intolerance towards organic psychedelics users, even as state laws should be challenged and yet the users and non-
users need to stay away from each other if they find this offfensive. We can appreciate the half measure nature of the judge but this really falls short of ensuring everyone gets their way as a democracy should ensure.
ARTICLE 14
No children allowed! Town bans under-16s at night in bid to tackle anti-social behaviour – by Kerry Mcdermott – PUBLISHED: 11:06 GMT, 30 March 2013 | UPDATED: 14:30 GMT, 30 March 2013
Police can stop under 16s from walking streets after 9pm in Barnsley
Dispersal order came into force yesterday in South Yorkshire town
Branded ‘totally wrong’ by civil liberties campaigners
Follows reports of rowdy and abusive behaviour, police say
Children have been banned from a town centre at night under sweeping new police plans to crack down on anti-social behaviour.
Police officers have been given the power to stop anyone under 16 from walking the streets in Barsley, South Yorkshire, after 9pm, and to take them home if they are not with a parent or responsible adult.
The six-month dispersal order – which police said was introduced in the wake of reports of rowdy and abusive behaviour in the town centre – has been branded ‘totally wrong’ and a ‘blatant infringement’ of civil liberties by critics.
No children allowed: Police in Barnsley can now stop children under 16 from walking around the town centre after 9pm
No children allowed: Police in Barnsley can now stop children under 16 from walking around the town centre after 9pm
The order, which came into force yesterday and covers the hours between 9pm and 6am, also gives police the power to disperse groups of two or more people from areas where there is persistent anti-social behaviour.
Any breach of a dispersal order, such as refusing to comply with being told to leave, is classed as a criminal offence.
‘Abusive behaviour’: Police said Barnsley residents have complained of feeling ‘harassed and intimidated’
Campaigners have warned that the ban infringes on civil liberties and said it amounted to treating groups of young people as criminals.
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said a dispersal order was a ‘blunt, crude tool’ that, at best, moves the problem to another location nearby.
‘It is a sign that the police have lost control of the streets and yet does nothing to restore either the community spirit or respect for the law that has been lost,’ he said.
‘It’s simple – if people break the law, harass people and cause distress then the police should arrest them.
‘The idea that simply by being under 16 and in town is grounds for the police to take you home seems a waste of time and resources.
‘To treat every group of young people as criminals is totally wrong and a blatant infringement on people’s rights to move around Barnsley.’
The campaign group Liberty has said dispersal orders ‘blur the distinction between nuisance and criminal behaviour’.
Inspector Julie Mitchell, from South Yorkshire Police, said: ‘Over the past few months, we have received numerous reports of nuisance caused by large groups congregating in the town centre.
‘The Barnsley Interchange has reported a number of nuisance behaviour incidents within their premises, and the County Way car park has been a regular venue for nuisance drivers late at night.
‘Many interventions have been put in place and although some measures have had some success, nuisance behaviour still persists on an almost daily basis.
‘The common theme that appears to cause the most concern is rowdy, inconsiderate and abusive behaviour,’ Insp Mitchell added.
‘This is often from people in large groups and has led to members of the public and business community reporting the feeling of being harassed and intimidated.’
The officer said discretion would be used and that the force wants to encourage residents and visitors to go into the town centre for retail and leisure.
‘By dispersing those groups intent on engaging in poor behaviour, we will ensure Barnsley is a safer and stronger town for everyone else,’ she said.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
This is alright provided there are towns which disallow ABOVE 16s from entering some districts as well. Door swings both ways.
ARTICLE 15
Why some women ‘trip for bad boys’ – Sarah-Maude Lefebvre | QMI AGENCY – 10:13 am, March 31st, 2013
MONTREAL — Some women are embarrassed if their significant other lands in jail, others however, actively pursue incarcerated men.
“All inmates will tell you that there are women who trip for bad boys,” said Stephane Lamarche, a former prisoner who spoke to QMI Agency from a halfway house in Quebec.
Even Guy Turcotte, who stabbed his two children to death in 2009 and was found not criminally responsible for mental health reasons, has admirers. He received letters and photos from women suitors when he was detained in a psychiatric institution.
Many former prisoners and others connected to the prison industry told QMI Agency that these cases are not unique.
“Prisoners have told me about these women,” said criminologist Jean-Claude Bernheim, who added that he’s met women who pursue imprisoned men.
“There are a lot of psychological elements in play here. For many of these women, (the relationships) are linked to a fantasy.”
There are many ways for women to meet incarcerated men. Some volunteer with prisoner advocate organizations while others respond to newspaper advertisements placed by inmates.
Community chaplain Laurent Champagne said that the phenomenon of women pursuing prisoners is “marginal” yet he said every year he catches women volunteers trying to find a boyfriend or husband behind bars.
Pascal Belanger from a group that organizes visits between prisoners and members of the community, said he lost an employee not long ago because they started a relationship with an inmate.
Belanger told QMI Agency that even correctional officers have fallen for prisoners.
“At least one prison guard in Canada every year quits their job and marries an inmate,” Belanger said.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Male prisoners are easier to communicate with and also vulnerable. The spirit of such males are easier to bond with being so imprisoned and thus ‘friendlier’ and more accepting, so the women working in prisons or even out in society target these ‘weakened’ state males. The true male state is
however, unfettered and wild, and this unsettles the women who prefer ‘easy prey’ or are too LAZY to work on relationships preferring to allow the prison system to do that for them. . Conversly women who target the free ranging males are stronger or more principled. They do not need men in chains or do not want to approach men in these damaged states. Free ranging men though have their bad habits and in spirit are in many ways more adequate than imprisoned males to not get caught or are equally ‘bad’.
The logic behind this article is Orwellian if anything and has subtle elements of militant feminism as well as BDSM culture, encourages men to get into prison to seek mates! While such relationships may be more sustainable at times, they are less healthier, display psychotic and possibly incestuous or enslavement undertones, and women who do have the confidence or principles do not need to be in a relative position of power or superiority in society (i.e. not been charged as criminal) to accept a mate. Meanwhile though, some of these prisoner/ex-con seeking women have been fractured by bad relationships and do better with equally damaged men – and also indicate vulnerability which is also a desirable quality for non-working class women to have, even though most prisoners are working class men who cannot fully appreciate the very vulnerability that brings these women to these men . . . lost of missed connections being EXPLOITED by such women here . . . A mish mash beta society in promotion by MSM perhaps? To each their own . . .
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/lifestyle/archives/2013/03/20130331-101325.html
ARTICLE 16
Saudi Arabia beheads murderer… and then CRUCIFIES his body – Friday, 29 March 2013 09:31
Saudi authorities have beheaded a murderer and crucified his body after he killed and raped a Pakistani national.
The kingdom’s interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death.
‘The Yemeni citizen Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain killed a Pakistani, Pashteh Sayed Khan, after he committed sodomy with him,’ said a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
Hussain was also convicted of robbery and carrying out a series of attacks.
The execution, in the southern city of Jizan, was followed by crucifixion, a punishment used by the ultra-conservative country for serious crimes.
Saudi Arabia have been criticised in the international community for their harsh punishments, including executions by beheading and firing squad.
There have been 28 people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year.
In 2012, they executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, while the US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69.
The oil-rich kingdom follows a strict implementation of Islamic law, or Shariah, under which people convicted of murder, rape or armed robbery can be executed, usually by sword.
The announcement comes after Amnesty International released the final words of a man sentenced to death by firing squad.
He was allegedly forced to confess after the authorities threatened to torture his mother.
Seven juveniles were arrested and convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death in the Southern city of Abha after their appeals to the king were rejected.
One of the robbers was interviewed by the human rights charity before his death.
He said: ‘I have nine hours left until I die. We found this out through friends and relatives who saw the market square being prepared for the execution.
‘There are now seven spots in the square for seven people to be shot. It’s going to be in public, in the market, in the city of Abha.
‘We don’t know what we are supposed to have done wrong.
‘We were forced to make confessions. We were mistreated by the investigators – they took our clothes and it was winter. They tortured us by suspending us from chains on the wall.
‘They also used psychological torture such as threatening they would bring in our mothers and torture them in front of us.
‘I didn’t kill anyone – we were tried for robbery and we were forced to confess. I hope the execution will be stopped.
‘I wish for it to be stopped and for a fair trial and for a reinvestigation. The trial was totally unjust.’
One of the men told The Associated Press last month he was only 15 when he was arrested as part of a ring that stole jewelry in 2004 and 2005.It was also reported that they had no access to lawyers.
The south has been marginalized and suffered discrimination by the powerful central Saudi region where the capital, Riyadh, and holy shrines of Mecca and Medina are located.
It was reported on March 13 that the execution went ahead despite appeals from human rights charities.
There was also an international outcry, including from human rights groups, after a Sri Lankan maid, Rizana Nafeek, was beheaded in public by sword last month.
Miss Nafeek was sentenced to death aged 17 in 2007 after her Saudi employer accused her of strangling his four-month-old baby two years earlier after a dispute with the child’s mother.
A government spokesman said Riyadh: ‘deplores the statements made… about the execution of a Sri Lankan maid who had plotted and killed an infant by suffocating him to death one week after she arrived in the kingdom.’
The case soured the kingdom’s diplomatic relations with Sri Lanka, which on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Saudi Arabia in protest.
The UN’s main human rights body on Friday expressed ‘deep dismay’ at the beheading, while the European Union said it had asked Saudi authorities to commute the death penalty.
Riyadh, however, rejected the statements as ‘external interference’ in its domestic affairs.
The spokesman said: Saudi Arabia ‘respects… all rules and laws and protects the rights of its people and residents, and completely rejects any intervention in its affairs and judicial verdicts, whatever the excuse.’
-dailymail.co.uk
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Life for life is fair but perhaps modern less vicious methods applicable instead? The crucifixion is merely dramatic and a waste of time for the middle and upper classes at any rate. But thieves getting hands chopped for stealing less valuable items is excessive. A thief can earn enough to compensate victims a whole lifetime WITH hands intact. Cripple a thief and society is that much poorer, creates dependents in the form of cripples.. As Gandhi said something therabouts, “An eye for an eye leaves the world blinder . . . “, how can a limited resource that is connected to a living being like a hand be compared to any small goods petty thieves steal? This extreme punishment is not equitable at all.
ARTICLE 17
Boris Berezovsky’s last interview: ‘There is no point in life’ – by Tom Parfitt in Moscow and Steven Swinford – 12:34PM GMT 24 Mar 2013
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, said less than 48 hours before he was found dead at his home in Berkshire that he no longer saw the point in life.
Mr Berezovsky, a fiery critic of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who fled to the UK in 2000, was found dead at the age of 67, reportedly in a bath at his home.
Boris Berezovsky was discovered dead yesterday afternoon at his home in Ascot, Berkshire. Reports from Russia said he was found in the bath.
lya Zhegulev, a commentator with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, met the 67-year-old oligarch in the restaurant of the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane on Friday evening.
Mr Berezovsky said had had lived through “many disappointments” in London. He said: “I’ve lost the point… there is no point [or meaning] in my life. I don’t want to be involved in politics. I don’t know what to do. I’m 67 years old. And I don’t know what I should do from now on.”
He said he wanted to return to Moscow: “I want nothing more than to return to Russia. Even when they opened a criminal case against me, I wanted to return to Russia… that was my main miscalculation: that Russia is so dear to me that I cannot be an émigré.”
Friends of Mr Berezovsky today claimed he may have been victim of a Russian hit. However, there are conflicting reports that he may have committed suicide after suffering from severe depression.
Friends raised the possibility of suicide and said Berezovsky had been “destroyed” by losing a £3billion legal action with his former business partner, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club. Berezovsky had been living in exile in Britain since 2000.
He was given asylum in 2003, which created tensions between London and Moscow.
Once worth as much as £3billion, he had suffered financial and personal problems, his friends said.
News of Berezovsky’s death emerged in a posting on Facebook by his son-in-law, Egor Schuppe. Mr Schuppe simply posted: “Boris Berezovsky is dead.”
Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had long feared for his life and had survived repeated assassination attempts — although none in recent years.
He had been due to be a witness at the inquest next month into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy who was murdered in 2006 after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 in what is believed to have been a Kremlin-sanctioned assassination.
The police investigation into Berezvosky’s death is the first of its kind since the murder of the spy. The scale of the investigation was announced at 1am this morning by police in a reflection of its seriousness.
Mr Putin’s spokesman said the Russian president had been informed of Berezovsky’s death.
The spokesman claimed that in recent weeks the oligarch had written a letter to Mr Putin “asking for forgiveness” and seeking “help to return to the motherland”.
Such a move would have been a dramatic change for Berezovsky as he had been for 13 years an enemy of the Kremlin. In a report which deepened the mystery, Russia’s Channel
One state television claimed that Berezovsky had suffered several heart attacks in the past week.
Specialist officers were called in to investigate whether he had been killed by a chemical or biological agent
Lord Bell, the PR executive who had acted as Berezovsky’s spokesman and was also a good friend, told The Sunday Telegraph that he had last seen the oligarch three weeks ago.
“He was extremely depressed,” said Lord Bell. “He has been very low since the court ruling against him. He had huge financial problems and personal problems, too.”
Berezovsky had sued Mr Abramovich over allegations that he had been intimidated into selling the football club owner shares in Sibneft, the Russian oil conglomerate. The ensuing legal battle is thought to be the most expensive of all time, with legal costs as high as £100million.
In a devastating ruling against him in August last year, Mrs Justice Gloster had “found Mr Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes”.
Lord Bell said yesterday that the ruling had wrecked his reputation and that he had never recovered. “That judge destroyed his morale. It destroyed his self-esteem,” he said.
Lord Bell added: “He was an extremely nice man, very kind to me and all the people around him. I had a huge amount of admiration for him.”
Berezovsky said after the trial: “Sometimes I have the impression that Putin himself wrote this judgment.”
Lord Bell said his friend, whom he had known for 14 years, had long lived in fear of his life after making enemies with Mr Putin.
“Russia is a very dangerous place,” said Lord Bell, the founder of Bell Pottinger, the public relations company.
The alarm over Berezovsky was raised at one of his homes in Ascot by his bodyguard. His private lawyer told Lord Bell that an ambulance had been called but that Berezovsky could not be revived.
A South Central Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called at 3.18pm by a caller who was concerned for the welfare of a gentleman at an address in Ascot. A 67-year-old man was confirmed dead at the scene. The death is unexplained and is being investigated by Thames Valley Police.”
Berezovsky had been facing a new legal battle brought by his former girlfriend, with whom he had two children.
Elena Gorbunova had sat at Berezovsky’s side throughout his High Court battle with Mr Abramovich.
But the couple subsequently split up and in January she had applied to the court to freeze £200million of his assets to prevent the sale of property in Britain and France.
At a preliminary hearing Mr Justice Mann said: “On the evidence, Mr Berezovsky is a man under financial pressure.”
Berezovsky, a former mathematician who had made his fortune in oil, aviation and television in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Communism, fled Russia in 2000 and was put on the country’s official wanted list in 2001 on charges of fraud and money laundering.
The British Government granted him political asylum in 2003 and he used London as a base from which to launch critical attacks on Mr Putin and to call for his overthrow.
Among his circle of exiles was Mr Litvinenko, who lived in a house in north London which was owned by Berezovsky.
The oligarch had survived several assassination attempts while in Russia, including a bomb that decapitated his chauffeur. Demyan Kudryavtsev, a journalist and former associate of Berezovsky, yesterday wrote on Twitter: “There were no signs of violent death.”
Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer whose partnership has offices in Park Lane — where Berezovsky was also based — told Russia’s Rossiya 24 channel that he had been called from London and told the oligarch had committed suicide.
“He was in a terrible, awful state recently. He had so many debts, he was practically ruined,” said the lawyer. Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, claimed that Berezovsky had been in contact with the president in recent weeks, asking for forgiveness.
Mr Peskov told Rossiya 24: “Berezovsky addressed Putin in a letter, written by him personally, in which he admitted he made a lot of mistakes and was asking for forgiveness and to help him to return to the motherland.”
Thames Valley Police said Berezovsky’s death was being treated as “unexplained” and had cordoned off the property while investigations were carried out.
During his conversation with the Russian Forbes journalist, which was not recorded, Mr Berezovsky is said to have compared his life to that of the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed on fraud charges after clashing with the Kremlin. He suggested that Mr Khodorkovsky had
“preserved himself” despite being in prison.
Mr Berezovsky reportedly added: “I have changed many of my views, including those about myself, and concerning what is Russia and what is the West.
“I had an absolutely idealistic idea about the possibilities for building democracy in Russia. And an idealistic idea about what democracy is in the centre of Europe. I underestimated the inertia of Russia and overestimated the West.”
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
People of such high profile and capacity to do so much with their wealth deserve to die when they bandy about fake maudlin sentimentality like this. No point in life? Do something for Russia, help democracy, field candidates with that money. No? Just moan about life with all that capacity? Little
wonder the Fates did this fat cat in. Useless eater among fat cats. Some of the worst off among the 99% live on and struggle, probably though this was an execution.
ARTICLE 18
One of the nastiest and most immoral political acts in modern times – by Max Hastings – PUBLISHED: 23:54 GMT, 25 March 2013 | UPDATED: 12:53 GMT, 26 March 2013
People who rob old ladies in the street, or hold up security vans, are branded as thieves. Yet when Germany presides over a heist of billions of pounds from private savers’ Cyprus bank accounts, to ‘save the euro’ for the hundredth time, this is claimed as high statesmanship.
It is nothing of the sort. The deal to secure a €10?billion German bailout of the bankrupt Mediterranean island is one of the nastiest and most immoral political acts of modern times.
It has struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of millions of European citizens, because it establishes a dire precedent.
Hands off! Banking sector workers have been protesting outside of Cyprus’s parliament in Nicosia
A Europe-wide precedent? The deal to secure a German bailout of the bankrupt Mediterranean island has struck fear into the hearts of hundreds of millions of European citizens
If democratically elected governments are willing to impose outright confiscation of up to 40 per cent of balances over €100,000 upon depositors in Cyprus, then why not another such hit tomorrow — in Spain, Italy or, most plausibly, Greece?
This is the most brutal display since 2008 of how far the euro-committed nations are willing to go to save the tottering single currency. It shows that the zone’s crisis will run and run, to the grievous disadvantage of almost everyone except the Germans.
Berlin insisted upon a harsh line towards the Cypriots because they inhabit a small island with no political clout. Cypriot bankers have behaved with fantastic irresponsibility. They lent huge sums to Greece, and offered high interest rates to dirty money, with no questions asked.
Months ago, the Germans made it clear that they baulked at providing a cash lifeline to the Russian gangsters who have tried to take over Cyprus with a nod from their friends in the Kremlin.
But hundreds of thousands of honest, decent citizens, including British residents, also had money in the island’s banks. They took it for granted that if Cyprus’s financial system was deemed worthy to be part of the eurozone, it must be as safe as the Bundesbank.
They were fully entitled to make that assumption, and to be outraged by the looting of their accounts today.
Cypriots want to get back to work as banks remain closed
Hundreds of thousands of honest, decent citizens, including British residents, had money in the island’s banks
Protest: Many citizens took it for granted that if Cyprus’s financial system was deemed worthy to be part of the eurozone, it must be as safe as the Bundesbank
The fact that Cyprus is a rackety semi-gangster society made it madness ever to allow the island to join the eurozone, rather than an excuse, as now, for stealing its citizens’ money.
The Germans, who effectively control and bankroll the whole single-currency system, acted recklessly by signing on Cyprus — and Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. None of these countries had economic convergence with northern Europe.
But Berlin chose to pretend that they did, because it thus became enormously profitable for Germany to trade with them in an undervalued common currency rather than a sky-high Deutschmark.
It always appeared absurd for the Germans, who — like the British — obey rules, pay taxes and tell the truth in financial documents, to form a financial union with the southern Europeans, who do none of those things, and are never likely to.
There is a real prospect that Silvio Berlusconi will be able to form a new Italian coalition government
Incredibly, there is a real prospect that Silvio Berlusconi will be able to form a new Italian coalition government, even though a string of court verdicts has found him to be a major criminal with a repulsive record of sexual behaviour.
How can the rest of Europe do serious business with a country that wilfully chooses to be led by such a man? Many Italians find this acceptable, and somehow make it work. But the Italian way, like the Cypriot and Greek way, is not our way. The Germans, by trying to pretend otherwise, are
defying gravity.
More than two years ago now, I heard a senior central banker flatly declare that the eurozone is unsustainable. He has repeated the same view every time I have seen him since, most recently a few weeks ago.
He believes that if the southern Europeans left the system, after a period of turmoil they might be amazed how quickly they can restore themselves to prosperity, once they can trade in their own heavily devalued currencies. But he has always believed that if, alternatively, the southern Europeans
attempt to cling on in the euro, the consequence will be an interminable crisis, with unending austerity imposing huge and perhaps uncontainable social and political strains — riots on the streets.
Nothing has happened since 2011 to make my friend seem a foolish merchant of doom. On the contrary: we see seething, steaming popular rage in the Mediterranean countries growing rather than abating. What have the Cypriot people now got to look forward to, save the ruin of their economy
along with their banking system, its principal engine? Who will ever trust money to a Cyprus bank again?
Any British tourist who has bought a cup of coffee in Italy, Greece or Spain in the past few years knows how fantastically high is those countries’ cost of living. Yet they stagger blindly on, stubbornly seeking to pretend that they can play with the big boys, share a currency with mighty Germany.
This masquerade may continue for years, with France joining the ranks of the economic basket-cases, because its government, too, rejects economic reality.
And even though Britain is not in the euro, what is happening has immense implications for us. As long as the European economies remain stagnant, conditions will remain tough here, because so much of our trade is with Europe. Moreover, the Cyprus precedent is as scary for people who live in
Luton as for those who live in Limassol. Almost every Western society, including Britain, is burdened with debt it cannot ever realistically hope to pay off. There are only three ways in which governments can get off the hook: taxation, inflation and confiscation. The current Coalition is playing
with only the first two of these.
Demonstration: Thousands of bank employees protest outside the Ministry of Finance in Cyprus last week
But Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Nick Clegg are openly wedded to a mansion tax, which, if introduced, would be no more and no less an act of highway robbery than the Cypriot so-called ‘haircut’ on bank deposits.
Forget about whether your own house is currently under their radar — worth less than the £2?million value threshold they are publicly proposing. Having adopted the principle that it is morally acceptable to seize a proportion of citizens’ assets, they are on the road to a Cypriot position; a
Cypriot solution.
I have English friends who are neither hugely rich nor willing to do anything remotely illegal who are today thinking furiously about where they might put some of their assets, beyond the reach of a prospective Labour smash-and-grab.
We should not dismiss such people as nervous nellies.
Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Nick Clegg are openly wedded to a mansion tax, which, if introduced, would be no more and no less an act of highway robbery than the Cypriot so-called ‘haircut’ on bank deposits
Miliband and Balls salivate at the prospect of resuming a socialist assault on capitalism where Old Labour left off back in 1979.
It cannot too often to be said that the economic crisis that began in 2008 looks far more threatening to the historic interests of the West than anything Osama bin Laden contemplated in his dreams.
Germany still has a stubborn, visceral belief that the euro can be preserved in its present form, along with its own economic and political dominance of Europe.
Berlin’s rulers seem willing to pay almost any price to achieve this, though we shall discover at the country’s October elections whether their voters feel the same way.
The spectacle of the richest nation in Europe foreclosing on one of the smallest, looting the savings of thousands of people, is profoundly repugnant.
Surely the euro cannot long survive by such anti-democratic means. It certainly does not deserve to.
Commentator Comments :
The comments below have not been moderated.
`One of the nastiest and most immoral political acts in modern times` < < < < < = Not when compared to the bedroom tax that only applies to the poorest in society it isn’t.
– TG-3323 , LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom, 28/3/2013 00:06
Rating 30
Another DM article trying to rouse up hatred against the Germans. The English people like the Germans . A press run by English people for English people is desperately needed.
– kiwi123 , dunedin, New Zealand, 27/3/2013 20:11
Rating 22
Jamesin London00.44 …………………….Obviously sour grapes —–because you lost your money you think it is OK for others to lose theirs.
– ENJAY , WIRRAL, United Kingdom, 27/3/2013 18:08
Rating 17
Cyprus is a rackety semi-gangster society? Really? This statement alone makes the rest of the article irrelevant to any reader with a sense of fairness. I wouldn’t have it if it were said about the British, the Germans, or anyone else, and we all know that historically, Greeks and Cypriots have many
more real reasons to be prejudiced against both these nations than the other way around. If/When the powers that be decide that they want to snatch money from your bank accounts, have no doubts that some “publication” somewhere will describe your country more-or-less in the same terms.
What goes around comes around. Respectfully.
– Leonidas Kossis , Athens, Greece, 27/3/2013 16:09
Rating 8
Germany’s history is littered with repugnant acts a leopard can’t change it’s spots but Cameron could get us out of this nightmare that is the E.U,but all you get from him are empty worthless promises.The conservative backbenches if they had an ounce of courage would dump him and his millionaire friend in the treasury.
– roadrunner , England, 27/3/2013 16:01
Rating 27
If they get away with this in Cyprus then they can do it anywhere in the Eurozone or for that matter within the EU.
– George C. , Maidenhead, United Kingdom, 27/3/2013 14:59
Rating 63
What we did was an even nastier and immoral political and cowardly act. We rewarded the Banksters and City Fraudsters with tax cuts, massive bonuses and billions of Pounds worth of Taxpayers and Savers hard earned money. The (usual suspects) the poor, the unemployed and the low paid are now being punished with benefit cuts and Bedroom Taxes, so spare me the hypocritical right-wing lecture.
– joe reilly , Lincs England, 27/3/2013 14:15
Rating 11
………….and this the mob that Scotlands’ Alex Salmond wants to part of.. No thanks !!!
– John , Glasgow, 27/3/2013 12:24
Rating 25
Isn’t Socialism grand?
– Junior Naturel , NYC, United States, 27/3/2013 11:40
Rating 54
JamesinLondon , London, 27/3/2013 00:44 You’re an idiot.
– Mark , Liverpool, 27/3/2013 11:28
Rating 2
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Try this format instead. 100,000 all the way up to 1 million should be left alone.
1 million to 5 million should be hit with 20%
5 million to 20 million should be hit with 40%.
20 million onwards should be hit with 80%.
This way the 99% 100K to 1 million types who really are not exactly wealthy (mostly middle class actually) will be left alone. For the most part most above 1 million in savings can definitely get by comfortably enough.
ARTICLE 19
Mexican vigilantes take over town – Associated Press in Acapulco guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 March 2013 07.19 GMT
Armed members of ‘self-defence’ group throw up checkpoints and arrest police and officials they accuse of gang links
Armed men stand at the entrance to the town of Tierra Colorada, Mexico, where vigilantes have arrested local police and officials accused of gang links. Photograph: Alejandrino Gonzalez/AP
Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after one of their leaders was killed. Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.
Members of the area’s self-described “community police” say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic on Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits on the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco. They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state’s vigilante movement was slain on Monday.
A tourist heading to the beach with relatives was slightly wounded on Tuesday after they refused to stop at a roadblock and vigilantes fired shots at their car, officials said.
The vigilantes accuse the ex-security director of participating in the killing of their leader Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of local organised crime groups and dumping his body in a nearby town on Monday.
“We have besieged the municipality, because here criminals operate with impunity in broad daylight, in view of municipal authorities. We have detained the director of public security because he is involved with criminals and he knows who killed our commander,” said Bruno Placido Valerio, a spokesman for the vigilante group.
Placido said vigilantes had searched a number of homes in the town and seized drugs from some. They turned over the ex-security director and police officers to state prosecutors, who agreed to investigate their alleged ties to organised crime.
The growing movement of “self-defence” vigilante groups has seen masked townspeople throw up checkpoints in several parts of southern and western Mexico, stopping passing motorists to search for weapons or people whose names are on hand-written lists of “suspects” wanted for crimes like theft and extortion.
The vigilantes have opened fire before on motorists who refused to stop, slightly wounding a pair of tourists from Mexico City visiting a local beach in early February.
The groups say they are fighting violence, kidnappings and extortions carried out by drug cartels, but concerns have surfaced that the vigilantes may be violating the law, the human rights of people they detain, or even cooperating with criminals in some cases.
Sensitive over their lack of ability to enforce public safety in rural areas, official have largely tolerated vigilante groups.
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Some hombres have been watching ‘3 Amigos’ (1986 John Landis) . . . but this is good overall. Police with ganglinks destroy democracy. Meanwhile consider what is crime and what has been labeled as crime to necessitate SOME of these police linke to gangs or even for people to join gangs at all. Drugs legal to grow and offered by government at very low prices? (No addicts running around committing crimes.) if cheap cigarettes and alcohol available? (No smuggling or fake products.) Price controlled Red light district legalized and all workers and patrons monitored for communicable diseases? (No diseases, no human trafficking, no profiteering.) Fight arenas legal and with medical oversight? Gunnery-Racing tracks with bouncers to ‘keep peace’ available? (No boredom for disruptive people – they can arm themselves and get into the rink with equally bored people who expect to get hurt and spend a few weeks or months healing up in controlled conditions.) Gun owners carefully monitored for insanity before ownership? (No smuggling.) So much of the above are ‘crime’ but could be legalized and end up being just another tax contributing subculture.
ARTICLE 20
Angelina Jolie to sell jewellery line to fund overseas schools – April 02, 2013
Jolie is not the first celebrity to open schools in faraway places.
LOS ANGELES, April 2 — Angelina Jolie has opened another girls school in Afghanistan and plans to fund more from the proceeds of a jewellery line going on sale this week that she helped to design, celebrity website E! News reported yesterday.
Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, funded the girls-only primary school in an area outside Kabul that has a high refugee population, E! News said in an exclusive report.
The school educates 200-300 girls, E! said. It showed pictures of the school, which opened in November, and a plaque acknowledging Jolie’s contribution.
Jolie also funded a girl school in eastern Afghanistan that opened in 2010, according to the UNCHR.
Jolie’s representatives did not return calls for comment.
E! said that Jolie plans to pay for more schools by selling a “Style of Jolie” jewellery line that she helped create with jewellery maker Robert Procop.
Procop designed the engagement ring given to the actress by her partner Brad Pitt in April 2012.
“Beyond enjoying the artistic satisfaction of designing these jewels, we are inspired by knowing our work is also serving the mutual goal of providing for children in need,” Jolie was quoted as telling the website.
Procop’s website said the “first funds from our collaboration together have been dedicated to the Education Partnership for Children in Conflict (founded by Jolie) to build a school in Afghanistan.”
According to the Style of Jolie website, the newly expanded collection includes versions of the black and gold necklace that the actress wore to the premiere of her 2010 movie “Salt,” a pear-shaped citrine and gold necklace, and rose gold and emerald tablet-shaped rings, earrings and bracelets.
No price details were released.
The jewellery will go on retail sale for the first time on April 4 through Kansas City jewellery store Tivol, Tivol said.
Procop told E! that it was “an honor to have the opportunity to be part of creating this line with Angie, as we both believe every child has right to an education.”
Jolie is not the first celebrity to open schools in faraway places.
Both Oprah Winfrey and Madonna have funded the building of schools in South Africa and Malawi in the past six years, although both ran into trouble.
Madonna’s project provoked controversy over costs and mismanagement, while a staff member at Winfrey’s school was arrested on charges of assault and abuse of students. – Reuters
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So greedy and selfish to cause so much pain to China’s 99%ters who have nothing and are most affected. Those styles belong to China forever, and debt from interest as well. The ‘Cradle of Death’ more like . . . Cambodia will be forever tainted dealing with this evil . . .
Jolie is not the first celebrity to open schools in faraway places. . . . Hows your school doing in Africa Madonna? I heard Oprah has contributed hers as well too . . . when’s Oprah getting her O.A.E.? Extant African Royalty, ready to make a Dame out of Oprah before the Anglo-Saxons get to Oprah first?
ARTICLE 21
Smartphones Could Get Sapphire Touch Screens – by Jesse Emspak – Mar 22, 2013 02:56 PM ET
The glass touch screen on a smartphone is a great piece of technology — until it hits the floor and cracks. Manufacturers have attempted to solve the breakage problem with different formulations of glass, such as Corning’s famous Gorilla Glass. But now there’s an alternative: sapphire, the
hardest mineral next to diamond.
Coated Sapphire Is Invisible To Infrared Cameras
Sapphire, like diamonds, can be made artificially. To make sapphire, aluminum oxide is melted down and then allowed to cool and crystallize. When cut into sheets, it works great as a touch screen. So great in fact that several companies are working on how to get the price down. It’s about ten times the cost of glass, which currently runs about $3 for a smartphone screen.
Vertu Ti uses sapphire for its screens, which sell for $9,600. (To buy one you have to set up an appointment at one of their boutiques).
New Hampshire-based GT Advanced Technologies is working on bringing the price down. It demonstrated an iPhone 5 with a sapphire screen at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month. (Apple already uses it to protect the lens on the camera).
The trick to making sapphire less expensive is finding a way to make sheets of it in large quantities.
Silver, Gold Makes For Cheap Flexible Touch Screens
Rubicon Technology in the U.S. has been showcasing its ability to make large sheets, while Monocrystal in Russia says it can make large sapphire windows. Sapphire Technology in South Korea are also all working on getting the costs of sapphire low enough that it cold go on a mass-market phone.
The price could be kept down by making the sheets of sapphire that make up the screen thinner, or using the sapphire to boost the strength of glass by tacking on an ultra-thin layer to an ordinary touch screen.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Daniel Torres via Technology Review
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No. Sapphire crystal artificially grown costs very little. What is Jesse trying to pull here? Most medium end watches are sapphire crystal glass covered and don’t cost more than 960 or even 96.
malaysiandemocracy1 