Squatters

Of course I don't hear much about squatter's and squatter's rights here in the US but according to this website it comes up quite often. Globally speaking, no less.

Another option to consider as we continue to wade through the bullshit of predatory lending, greedy corporations while shimmying the fastrack to Recessionville?

link

Underreported slave labor that shames America.

Calling all farmworker allies for a special brand-busting action vs. Burger King!

You might have seen or heard of BK's new "whopper freakout" ad campaign... but now it's time to turn the tables and show that the only thing to "freakout" about at Burger King is the human rights crisis in Florida's tomato fields. link

"The ruthless exploitation of farm workers is a national disgrace,"

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) met with farm workers in Florida on Thursday and Friday to support their campaign to persuade Burger King to join other fast-food chains that have raised the pay for tomato pickers by paying a penny a pound more for the product. link

Victim: Gang Rape Cover-Up by US, Halliburton/KBR

Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation, said an examination by Army doctors after the incident showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

Read More »»

October 18th, 2007

This is Rahna Rasheed’s younger brother.

That’s her body you can see covered on the stretcher in the background. She was 17.

She was shot this morning by green zone government forces who mistook her for a fighter during a raid on her village north of Baqubah.

She was rushed to Baqubah hospital but died of gunshot wounds to the head.

The lady with bloodstained clothers and blood on her face is her mother. The other two adults are Hamid and Shokriya Hasan her uncle and aunt. The photograph was taken this morning at Baqubah hospital morgue.

The savages of war reign down on anyone in their way

Via: Uruknet | Link: gorillasguides.com

MOONSHINE ELECTION SERIES - Part 1

Black Box Voting has found "Moonshine Election patterns" in 16 states, which together carry 210 electoral votes.

Kentucky is a swing state where 87 out of 120 counties had a majority of Democratic registered voters, yet 106 out of 120 counties voted for Bush in 2000; 108 voted for Bush in 2004. It wasn't low turnout -- in fact, turnout has been going up. It was Kentucky politics: Registered Democrats went into the voting booth, Republican votes came out. (Details on website)

THE HUNT FOR JOE BOLTON

We discovered that a man named Joe Bolton has inside access to nearly 200,000 votes, most of them in the most troubled areas, locations that have a history of vote fraud, family-run government, drug-dealing sheriffs, what-have you.

In 23 Kentucky counties, citizens are required to trust their votes to someone named Joe Bolton, who is not an elected official and who is not even a government employee. They probably don't even know they're trusting Joe with their votes, because newspapers don't mention him and the county clerks have no line item for his checks in their published financial statements.

We went through all manner of investigations trying to even locate Joe Bolton, and those are chronicled in the short video and the full reports. Eventually we caught up with him. He has been programming the voting machines in his home in a remote location that even the county election officials don't know much about.

AMONG THE MOST INTERESTING COMMENTS:

Black Box Voting: Okay. Well you've been doing this for 35 years, has anyone ever asked you to do something that made you uncomfortable?

Joe Bolton: Oh, absolutely, get it all the time, I get that all the time you know. "Could you rig this machine?" And I don't know whether it's a conspiracy or a joke, you know, "Could you rig these machines for me Joe? How much would it cost me?" I've heard that for 35 years.

Joe told us all kinds of things, like the Appalachian tradition of vote-buying -- whatever you may have heard, it is alive and well.

Read More »

a bit lengthy, but worth the time

Short Bedtime Stories
by Layla Anwar, from Arab Woman Blues

I would have really liked to sing you a bedtime lullaby. Alas, it is simply not possible. And in most likelihood, my voice will keep you very awake. Surely, I do not want to be a cause for your insomnia. So am offering you a few short stories to lull you into unconsciousness, into a deep catatonic sleep...(not that you really need it.) But just in case you are losing sleep over the ongoing Iraqi genocide.

Once upon a time...

* Once upon a time, was Badiaa, Kamel's wife.
She lived in a small house, borrowed house. Her husband is detained by the American dwarfs and her son has been killed by the same dwarfs.

She would spend many hours sitting in her kitchen, talking to herself. She sold most of the remaining furniture she had. Only three kitchen chairs were left and she confided in them. Sometimes pretending her husband or son were sitting opposite her and listening to her woes...

One night, not long ago, at 1 am, the "Iraqi" army and the dwarfs stormed her home. They searched, ransacked and destroyed the little she had left.

"Why, why? Is it not enough you took my husband and killed my son. Why destroy the little I have?" "It is for your own security. You have a sniper on your roof."

Of course, Badiaa has no electricity. She uses an oil lamp. One of the guards kicks the lamp. No Genie or sniper came out. But a fierce fire spread wildly, catching the doors, the walls,the curtains and the chairs...

Half of Badiaa's house is now burned down.

"We will send you a cheque." They laughed and walked away in the night.

Now Badiaa has only one chair left in the kitchen. Her walls are smoky black, her doors burned to ashes and her curtains eaten up by fire... She still sits in the kitchen. She has stopped talking to herself now that the two other chairs are gone.

* Once upon a time was Nasser.
Half of Nasser's family has been decimated, slaughtered by the dwarfs right where the Butcher prospered most... Every other day Nasser has a funeral. A family member, 20 years old was detained by the dwarfs and held up in some dungeon in Baghdad for months. No trial, no charges.
For months he was "interrogated" in that dungeon and then transferred to another dungeon in Southern Iraq, a sectarian Iranian stronghold.

After several months, the dwarfs decided to release him. No charges. They called him up. "Be ready to leave. You will be signing some release papers tomorrow." One more night in the dungeon and he will be free. That same day, the sectarian militias and some say the dwarfs (and I say both) bombed the prison. A prison filled with Iraqi sunnis.(Omar was there too.) The boy is dead. He finally left the dungeon...free.

* Once upon a time was Radhee
A bright, smart, quick witted man... Radhee has been without a job for well over a year. Radhee is stuck in a walled Sunni enclave called Adhamiya. Radhee spends his days devising ways and routes to get to the grocer without being shot at by snipers, militias or the dwarfs... Radhee gave up his daily schemes. Besides you cannot find any fruits or vegetables in the Adhamiya market and meat and eggs are a luxury from the past.

Radhee has no electricity, Radhee has no gasoline. So Radhee ingeniously invented a way to bake bread in his backyard. He uses the legs of his furniture as wooden logs and places newspapers on top. The whole invention makes for a flamboyant outdoor oven. Radhee and his family can now survive on bread and water. Nice home made bread baked on torn furniture parts and newspapers.
One hundred newspaper publications and "free" press have come in very handy.

Radhee is now living happily ever "after."

* Once upon a time was Salam.
Salam, a beautiful, educated young woman... After her kidnapping and her battering ordeal, Salam has become agoraphobic. She not only is unable to leave the house, she cannot even leave her bedroom.

She lies in bed most of the time, staring at the ceiling and her staring is punctuated by sporadic screams "Please don't, please don't."

* Once upon a time was Raouf.
Raouf, a handsome, loving caring man... Raouf can no longer sit straight. His ribs all are broken, his wounds badly infected... He has more stories to tell you and me. Stories that his bruises kept well hidden. Cigarette burns adorn his body like dark brown halos, like dim, dying stars...

Raouf cannot lie on his back, cannot walk, cannot move... He is slouched all day and all night, inert, his head bent down and his pictures and papers safely tucked close to him... Raouf sits, swallowing his open wounds and the stories they hide, in total silence...

Once upon a time, there was us, there was me.
Once upon a time, there were others, many others...
Once upon a time, there were peaceful nights and dreams.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago.

Sleep well.

link

What does Al know that we don't? by Steven Weber

Why, given the opportunity that's been presented to him on a silver Prius, is this man not going to run for (and win) the presidency of the United States? If ever there was a clarion call to be answered it is this one: heed the will of the majority of the people, take back the yoke Bush and his cracked team of highjackers have used to steer the country into the ground and pull the ship skyward again.

Why, after his self-imposed banishment to the wilderness (suburbia), where he along with every other sentient being has observed the feckless evil of the current executive tenant and his Neo-posse, does he demur? Could he know that any run at the office would surely turn out to be a hollow chrysalis which, after gestation, would not incubate a butterfly but more likely belch forth a wingless, blind slug; that an educated, experienced, wise adult can lead more effectively and make more of a difference by being an activist/celebrity and riding a wave of pop-culture popularity, rather than relying upon the rusted and jury-rigged contraption quaintly referred to as the electoral process?

Maybe Al knows that America (to paraphrase Paddy Chayefsky) is a dying giant, that perhaps she is dead already. And the "business of government" is merely the scramble of organisms over the carcass's wan, flaking skin; any rumbles from within aren't the sounds of legislators engaged in constructive debate but the gasses issuing from the anuses of the bacteria digesting the sad corpse's putrefying innards. Are we destined to have the presidency so finally and utterly mediocritized that it no longer holds any attraction for the most qualified person in recent memory who would imbue it with the honor and prestige it -- and we -- deserve?

Well then, that's what Al must know. Because only that kind of realization would prevent him from participating. He says that politics no longer holds any allure for him. And really, why should it? He won an Oscar, for chrissakes. He's raised awareness of a real issue that actually effects us all in a way that makes him truly a uniter -- not a divider. He is the world's activist uncle. George Bush standing in front of his American Enterprise Institute portable backdrop can barely scrape up a strangulated hosanna from his meticulously vetted and dwindling audiences.

Having only once appropriated the toxic phrase "cut and run" to describe the result of catching my fishnet stockings on a partially extruded staple embedded in the side of a bed post (A long, dull story. Forget I mentioned it.) I am forced to resurrect it once again. It's an extremely ugly phrase, wielded by extremely ugly people but I will use it as that mediocre apparatchik/harridan Jean Schmidt never intended: to provoke the discouraged conscience of the marginalized true-patriot who would ably restore what has been so ignobly destroyed. On second thought, it's so shallow and inflammatory that I can't stand to apply it even in a good cause. There has to be some other way to convince this man of his worth. May be we need to convince him of our worth?

Because this country, for all its gaudy fascinations, for all its daily desperation to fend off reality by consuming goods from China as though they were oxygen atoms is also a country of souls betrayed by their loyalty to the idea of America the beautiful, the judicious and the brave. And it is not the loyalty itself that is at issue but those whom we have entrusted with it. A presidential election is not a parlor game, though it may resemble one far too closely. It is as close to being a sacred exercise as this secular republic asks of its congregants. We require a real leader now, one with a true understanding of the importance of why this country must function correctly and efficiently. We and the world depend on it. So here's your hat. And there's the ring. America needs you need to lead us now more than ever.

That's what we know that Al doesn't.

A wee bit pretentious, but effective.

link

More On The G8 Summit Protests

700 anti-war activists started a new settlement in two places on the planned bombing range at the Kyritz-Ruppiner Heide. The former command tower was painted in anti-militaristic pink, accompanied by a performance by musicians from "Lebenslaute" and over 100 clowns. Tons of accommodations for protesters. link

Here you can see underreported videos on g8tv, g8 radio transmissions, and get updates from the g8 protest timeline, see the anti-g8 camps, etc.

Links:
Dissent!-Network
G8 Podcast
G8 Protests Timeline
G8-TV
G8 Radio
Indymedia - Germany

Are we supposed to believe what we see on television about the Iran/British captured soldiers situation? I don't ask that you believe as I do. I want you to get more than one view.

Most of tv, if not all, is agenda-based. Some television may have detergent or votes to hawk which is expected. It's the demagogue driven television I worry about and is why we're asked to turn off our tv sets from time to time. If US television is where you get most of your news, you're right to be asked to turn it off. If you're wise enough to go outside the US for your news, I admire you for that. It wasn't easy before the internet with all it's global perspectives. So all this blabbering preface brings me to an article I saw on Independent, a British newspaper.

The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis

By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 03 April 2007

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

MORE...

Does Your Car Have A Black Box (EDR)?

When a traffic crash reconstructionist wanted to know the speed of a car in the seconds before it crashed into the side of a school bus, he found that information, and more, in the car's Event Data Recorder (EDR), a feature quickly becoming standard on all cars. The recorder, a four-inch square metal box, is currently installed in most recent GM vehicles and select 2000 and later Ford vehicles.

Does your car have one? Go here and find out. There's Ford cars from 2001 - 2007; and GM cars from 1994 - 2007.

(Photo: link)

I just found out that both our cars are equipped with these EDRs. Doesn't it just suck that it was done surreptitiously years ago and only became public last year?