May 1, 2012

Vatican Declares Gay Marriage Holy War, Forms Worldwide Religions Coalition

A top Vatican representative and Roman Catholic Archbishop is reaching out to form a coalition with other religions and has called on them to join the Vatican in a worldwide holy war against same-sex marriage, claiming that proliferation of equality “is not a good thing for society,” and will lead to “confusion.”

“I wonder if we shouldn’t ask for and look for more support among other Christian confessions and indeed, persons of other faiths,” Archbishop Antonio Mennini, who represents Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican in Great Britain, said in an address to Catholic bishops from England and Wales.

“It seems to me that, concerning the institution of marriage, and indeed the sanctity of human life, we have much in common with the position of the Jewish community, the Chief Rabbi and many of the more significant representatives of Islam,” Mennini added.

Mennini, 64, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to Great Britain 2010, and also served the Pope in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Bulgaria. He speaks Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, Bulgarian, and Russian. (The image above shows Archbishop Mennini with Valdimir Putin in 2003.) .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/vatican-declares-gay-marriage-holy-war-forms-worldwide-religions-coalition/politics/2012/04/30/38744

May 1, 2012

AAA: Inadequate guardrails at NY site where 7 died

NEW YORK — The section of highway where an accident sent seven members of a Bronx family flying over a guardrail and plummeting to their deaths has narrow lanes, steep hills, tight turns, inadequate guardrails and no breakdown lane, an auto safety group said Monday.

The Bronx River Parkway "lacks modern transportation engineering features," said Robert Sinclair, spokesman for the American Automobile Association's New York City affiliate. He said it was conceived in 1907 and opened in 1925 as "the first limited access multilane highway in the U.S."

Three sections of the parkway in the Bronx, including one at or near the accident site, are on the state Transportation Department's 5 Percent List, a federally mandated report of locations "exhibiting the most severe highway safety needs."

The driver, Maria Gonzalez, clipped a highway divider and damaged a tire Sunday afternoon before her SUV plunged off a highway and six stories down into a ravine on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, killing three generations of a family, including three children, police said. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20120429/US.Highway.Plunge.NYC/?cid=hero_media

May 1, 2012

Bill Moyers: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble

http://vimeo.com/41127822


from Moyers & Company:


Marty Kaplan on Big Money’s Effect on Big Media
April 27, 2012

Big money and big media have coupled to create a ‘Disney World’ of democracy in which TV shows, televised debates, even news coverage is being dumbed down, just as the volume is being turned up. The result is a public certainly more entertained, but less informed and personally involved than they should be, says Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center and an entertainment industry veteran. Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.

“It’s all about combat. If every political issue is [represented by] combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other,” Kaplan tells Moyers. “And you have an audience that hasn’t a clue at the end of the story, which is why you’ll hear, ‘Well, we’ll have to leave it there.’”

“The problem is that there’s not that much information out there if you’re an ordinary citizen. You can ferret it out, but it ought not be like that in a democracy,” Kaplan says. “Education and journalism were supposed to, according to our founders, inform our public and make democracy work.”

May 1, 2012

What Merkel's Isolation Means For the Euro Crisis

from Der Spiegel:



Angela Merkel's euro crisis strategy is unpopular and she has lost a number of allies. Worse yet, French presidential candidate François Hollande has pledged a change of course from the strict austerity measures she supports. But in the end, the Paris-Berlin alliance will likely survive and austerity will continue, albeit with a few growth initiatives thrown in.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood behind a podium at the DZ Bank at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, gazing sullenly into the cameras. She had just received the wrong prop for a photo op, and she needed to get it out of sight as quickly as possible.

To thank her for her speech marking the International Year of Cooperatives, a gray-faced official had thrust a porcelain piggy bank into her hands -- an ugly thing with a milky sheen that appeared to reflect the very coldness said to characterize her policies.

Merkel reflected momentarily, then had the gift quickly tucked away in a box. Photos of the piggy-bank chancellor are not exactly what she most urgently needs right now. In fact, for the past few days, she has endeavored to put a more friendly face on her image as the strict belt-tightening politician who is forcing Europe to adhere to Germany's budgetary discipline dictates. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,830594,00.html

May 1, 2012

Chris Hedges on Oligarchy and the Global Collapse

Published on Apr 30, 2012 by munderlarkst

Chris Hedges: "I think if the Occupy movement organizes around raising the minimum wage...to $10 an hour...it can galvanize around an issue. In order to keep labor with it, it has to latch onto issues such as the raising the minimum wage that will bring labor out into the street and keep it as the vanguard movement of the mainstream. Whether it can do that or not I don't know. We'll have to see." -- 4/30/12 in interview on RT.com.

May 1, 2012

May Day in Context

from YES! Magazine:



May Day in Context
How do this year's May Day demonstrations fit into the international movement for economic justice?

by Marina Sitrin, Dario Azzellini
posted Apr 30, 2012


This article is based on May Day—The Secret Rendezvous with History and the Present, by the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series, and the forthcoming book, Occupying Language.


New Social Relationships and a New Common Language

2011 has been a year of uprisings, movements and moments—all against an economic crisis and the politics of repression. Kefya! Ya Basta! and Enough! are shouted by millions against an untenable situation—and simultaneously they are met with Democracia Real Ya! and We are the 99%!—powerful affirmations. The use of the exclamation point reflects the passion—It is the shout of anger, the manifestation of collective power and the strength of people’s voices in the songs of joy in finding one another.

There have been numerous historical epochs where something massive and “new” sweeps the globe—moments such as the revolutions and revolts of the mid 1800s, the massive working class struggles of the early 1900s, and the massive political and cultural shifts and anti-colonial struggles of the 1960s, to name only three. We believe we are in another significant historic epoch.

This one is marked by an ever increasing global rejection of representative democracy, and simultaneously a massive coming together of people, not previously organized, using directly democratic forms to begin to reinvent ways of being together. These global movements are connected in ways not possible in the past with the use of immediate technology, such as the Internet, Twitter, and Facebook. These new technological forms have helped form something that in Latin America is often referred to as “contagion”, a spreading of an idea in a horizontal way, more like a virus than a political program. This should not be confused with a “social network revolution,” a description many in the media have used. The communication tools helped, but the essence and the new in the movements is the collective construction of new social relationships—creating new territory—and the similarities of this phenomenon globally.

Also new, with the directly democratic forms, are similar global ways of speaking about this new social creation. The word horizontal for example is used in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Greek, all as a way of describing aspects of these new relationships. People organize in assemblies, calling them assemblies and gatherings instead of terms such as "meetings"—and use similar forms in these assemblies, as well as all share the experience of doing so in public space, often taking it over and occupying it—even if for only a period of time. Many of these occupied spaces then organize internal forms of conflict resolution, from the mediation group in OWS to the “security” teams in Egypt and Greece, and a group with a very similar intention called “Respect” in Spain. To look at the images from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Syntagma Square in Athens, Zuccotti/Liberty Plaza in New York, or Puerta del Sol in Madrid, to name only a few of the thousands, is to see a very similar occupation, including everything from libraries, child care, health services, food, legal, media and art. The forms of organization and relationships created in the space, all using direct democracy are massive, growing and globally consistent—not the same of course—but so similar as to be a new global phenomenon. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/may-day-in-context

May 1, 2012

Taking Monsanto to the People’s Court

from YES! Magazine:



Taking Monsanto to the People’s Court
The legal system may be unwilling to hold the biotechnology giant accountable for what they've done, but the court of public opinion has no such hesitations.

by Blair Braverman
posted Apr 30, 2012


On April 21, approximately 100 people came to a courtroom in Iowa City to attend a mock trial called the Monsanto Hearings, the second of five such events scheduled nationwide. The trial was modeled after a preliminary hearing, an attempt to collect stories about harm caused by agribusiness giant Monsanto and determine if further public scrutiny is warranted.

The court’s five presiding judges—including a professor, a graduate student and an organic farmer —made no pretense of impartiality. “We are under no obligation to be even-handed,” they announced early on, “because in the court of public opinion, Monsanto is not even-handed. They have money for lobbyists, advertisements, corporate-funded research and media campaigns. The influence of this hearing, by contrast, depends on the power and truth of what is said.” The court, they explained, would not be considering legal violations, but rather violations of nature, ethics and human rights.

Untraditional as it might be, the hearing had an air of formality—the judges looked smart in their black robes, and witnesses swore to the truth before testifying, some in person and some over video. The first witness was a Vietnam veteran, trembling in a Hawaiian shirt, suffering from Hepatitis C linked to exposure to Monsanto’s Agent Orange (of which an active ingredient, 2,4-D, is a common lawn pesticide today); then a small farmer whose neighbor lost acres of organic crops due to pesticides drifting on morning fog; later, a garden and soil educator who brought a wooden box of soil and worms to the witness stand.

Other witnesses included professors, farmers, scientists and local activists. Their testimonies ranged from personal to technical, from stories of the approximately 200,000 Indian farmers who, indebted after Monsanto’s cotton seed prices rose from 7 to 17,000 rupees/kg, have committed suicide, to explanations of the influence of corporate agribusiness on U.S. land-grant universities and how minute manipulations of chemical structure have allowed Monsanto to sidestep health regulations. One man came dressed as a “superweed”—a plant that developed pesticide resistance after exposure to the chemical glyphosate—and lounged with his feet on the edge of the witness box. “I don’t give a fuck about Monsanto,” he said, swigging from a bottle marked “Roundup,” “though they do make a good drink.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/taking-monsanto-to-the-peoples-court

May 1, 2012

Link to the Free Speech TV May Day coverage live feed......

https://www.freespeech.org/fstvmayday


PS - I think the actual "live" coverage begins this afternoon.

May 1, 2012

Rupert Murdoch 'not fit' to lead major international company, MPs conclude

from the Guardian UK:


Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to exercise stewardship of a major international company, a committee of MPs has concluded, in a report highly critical of the mogul and his son James's role in the News of the World phone-hacking affair.

The Commons culture, media and sport select committee also concluded that James Murdoch showed "wilful ignorance" of the extent of phone hacking during 2009 and 2010 – in a highly charged document that saw MPs split on party lines as regards the two Murdochs.

Labour MPs and the sole Liberal Democrat on the committee, Adrian Sanders, voted together in a bloc of six against the five Conservatives to insert the criticisms of Rupert Murdoch and toughen up the remarks about his son James. But the MPs were united in their criticism of other former News International employees.

The cross-party group of MPs said that Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, was "complicit" in a cover-up at the newspaper group, and that Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World, and the paper's ex-head of legal, Tom Crone, deliberately withheld crucial information and answered questions falsely. All three were accused of misleading parliament by the culture select committee. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-not-fit-select-committee

May 1, 2012

US under-reporting Afghan attacks

from the Guardian UK:



The military is under-reporting the number of times that Afghan soldiers and police open fire on American and other foreign troops

The US-led coalition routinely reports each time an American or other foreign soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform. But the AP has learned it does not report insider attacks in which the Afghan wounds – or misses – his US or allied target. It also doesn't report the wounding of troops who were attacked alongside those who were killed.

Such attacks reveal a level of mistrust and ill will between the US-led coalition and its Afghan counterparts in an increasingly unpopular war. The US and its military partners are working more closely with Afghan troops in preparation for handing off security responsibility to them by the end of 2014.

In recent weeks an Afghan soldier opened fire on a group of American soldiers but missed the group entirely. The Americans quickly shot him to death. Not a word about this was reported by the International Security Assistance Force, or Isaf, as the coalition is formally known. It was disclosed to the AP by a US official who was granted anonymity in order to give a fuller picture of the "insider" problem. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/30/us-military-under-reports-insider-attacks