Equality

Stand in Solidarity with Bradley Manning – Feb 23rd Marks 1000 Days Imprisonment

February 18, 2013 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

Bradley Manning (the accused wiki-leaks whistle-blower) is facing his 1000th Day Incarcerated without trial. This is a blatant injustice and unconstitutional act by the US Government upon its own people. Brad has not only be deprived his freedom and basic humans rights, but also physically/emotionally tortured and exploited at the hands of his fellow countrymen sworn to protect and serve our nation. Please Join us while we Peacefully PROTEST the imprisonment of this courageous young man. Brad Stands for TRUTH, PEACE, EQUALITY and JUSTICE, wont you Stand Alongside Him??? We will be gathering at Pike Place Market (beneath the clock) in Downtown Seattle at NOON (12:00)!!! Local Activists, Artists, Poets, Performers, Family and Friends will dedicate our time and effort to EDUCATING and RAISING AWARENESS of not only Bradleys imprisonment, but also the horrific war crimes our Government is committing that Bradley is accused of helping to disclose… TRUTH WILL PREVAIL, but only if it is TOLD… Show your Support!!! For information about Brad and his case please visit: http://www.bradleymanning.org/

This event is a PEACEFUL PROTEST and Educational Rally to Raise Awareness and Gain Support for BRADLEY MANNING… THE PEOPLE deserve the TRUTH and we fully intend to provide them with that…
Bring Signs and/or Promotional materials that can be displayed and given out…
Design your own or visit http://www.bradleymanning.org/ to get access to Official Materials… We are also planning on providing materials and supplies as much as we are able to do so… Anyone who can donate printing costs or supply costs for copying handouts and making signs PLEASE let us know so we can get that done ASAP… Thank you for being a GOOD HUMAN and STANDING UP for what is RIGHT and TRUE… WE SUPPORT BRADLEY MANNING!!! and ALL OTHER VICTIMS OF WAR AND OPPRESSION!!! POWER and PEACE TO THE PEOPLE!!!

Those wishing to DONATE to Bradleys Defense Fund can do so at: https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591
Every Donation and Show of Support HELPS!!! Thank you

Seattle, WA Feb.23rd 2013 FREE BRAD MANNING!!!

Join us on Feb.23rd from 12Noon to 4pm at Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle to Peacefully Protest Bradley Mannings Unjust and Inhuman Imprisonment…

“If you had free reign over classified networks… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?”

“God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms… I want people to see the truth… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

-Quotes from an online chat attributed to Bradley Manning

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Still In Need of Volunteers and Sponsors to help with Promo materials/printing and Supplies…

Contact: Anthony Pardi (Ethos)
akaethos@gmail.com ph.(206)504-6488

Source: Email from Anthony Pardi (Ethos)

Filed Under: Equality, Featured, Safety, Whistleblowers

Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

November 25, 2012 by Aaron Jackson 6 Comments

As explained in the article Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System; our society, specifically our education system teaches and prepared us for a careerist lifestyle. Or simply put, working for money is considered success in our societies.

But not only does it teach us to work for currency. Just as we are put down in school for having poor grades, in society we are put down and even ridiculed, almost as criminals, for having low paid jobs, and even more so for having no paid job at all.

This video shows how people are eager to help someone until people assume they are homeless, and that the homeless are also more eager to help people in need:

We live in a society where those with the most important jobs to our survival work long hours, often physically tiring and are not paid very much. There are only a few kinds of workers that we really need, farmers/food producers, construction/manufacturers, delivery, maintenance/repair, and public services such as hospital workers and good police.

As time goes on there is more automation, so there are less jobs available but more people and so more food, building, maintenance, healthcare, and so on is required. However farmers are being paid less as time goes on, many selling their farms to get a different job, as their valuable work doesn’t even pay the bills. Construction workers, store workers, repair services and delivery are often paid low or minimum wage. Construction or farm work is much physically harder than sitting in an office trading stocks, yet those people are praised because they make more money.

There are often stories of fire-fighters and medical workers on strike because they are on a low wage or have poor quality working conditions, but these are the true heroes of our society, these people save us from death. Farmers, medical workers and fire-fighters should be the highest rewarded and praised workers of society, not some of the least.

We should also give more credit to those who are building and maintaining places for us to live comfortably in.

It is shameful that the harder a job is, the less money the workers will make, and those who make the most money in society actually have the easier jobs and often work the least.

In our society even these workers that we require for survival are not made a priority, money is. We are taught that if we work hard we can get a good job, and a good job pays well, most people still believe this and look up to those with ‘well-paid’ jobs and look down on those with a low paid job or those who are considered poor.

The truth is that in almost all cases the LESS-ethical the persons job, the more money they will earn. We could consider the most ethical of all work to be charity work, helping those with less, yet most of this work is either volunteer work or paid minimum wage. Those without jobs at all are looked down on, even when they volunteer to do charity work. Looked down on by those who mess around with numbers to make bigger numbers (trading stocks and shares), or managers; people who make sure that other people work so that they can take a larger cut.

Our parents tried to teach us good ethics and morals, but then they told us to obey at school, which taught us that these twisted careerist ideologies were moral and ethical.

Those without any paid employment, often also without any debt are sometimes homeless, and our society also tells us that they are homeless because they are drug addicts or alcoholics, and therefore we should not help them, even though many of these people are not drug-addicts or alcoholics, and if they are, it is often a sickness that is created by the world they live in, they simply didn’t have enough money or got kicked out by an ex-partner. Relationship breakdown and illness can happen to anyone.

So we have those who work very unethical jobs making ridiculously high amounts of money, those looked down on for having low paid work, even though it is physically more productive, those who are ridiculed for not having a ‘paid’ job or claiming some kind of state benefit, and then the homeless who cannot even apply for many kinds of state benefits or most jobs because they cannot complete the forms without a valid address, and often an email address or phone number; sometimes even the phone number must be a landline number, and of course to apply for a job most of the time these days a printed Résumé/CV is required.

Amnesty international reported that approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans. It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country.

AP also reports that nearly 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty.

CBS News reports that “According to a new report out this past week, poverty in America has reached its highest level since 1965″.

So as a whole this brings up a question, apart from a few specific careers, is paid work ethical? How many ethical jobs do you know that are helping people to survive or live comfortably and are not profiting some corporation, or share holders, sat back, relaxing, watching the money you make entering their bank accounts.

When we do get paid, a high percentage of that money gets cut to go to government as income tax, however we give them another chunk of money from VAT, another tax, then depending on where you live there are multiple other taxes such as state tax, council tax, road tax, import tax, property tax, inheritance tax, and so on…

Click for larger image

Filed Under: Banks, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Employment, Equality, Featured, Financial Crisis, Housing, Income Inequality, Money, Poverty, Safety, Taxes, Unions, Welfare Benefits

Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System

November 17, 2012 by Aaron Jackson 2 Comments

The concepts of consumerism and careerism are predominant in first world countries, and are increasing in countries with less “advanced” economies too, but why?

The definition of careerism or a careerist is “the characteristics associated with one who advances his career even at the expense of his pride and dignity.” Simply looking at this definition, many of us instantly assume ‘it has nothing to do with my career’.

Image source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026998/Parents-told-attend-Maths-lessons-children-improve-primary-results.html

As a child we are brought up by our parents or carers, usually with a mixture of two learning methodologies, the first of which is a reward based learning system, where a child is rewarded for doing good and importantly, doing as they are told. The second is the opposite side of the same coin, a punishment based system, punished for disobeying and for doing bad. In general parents try to give children the best morals and ethics that they are able to comprehend for themselves.

Image source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/27/florida-education-model-reform

However that same parent then tells the child to do as they are told at school. The child goes to school and learns a very systematic, rigid and standardised education without much flexibility, creativity, play, freedom, and importantly, without parental guidance. Parents tend to assume that the governments education programmes have our children’s futures and interests at heart, usually the teachers also believe this.

When we reach 11/12 in the USA people are moved from Elementary school to Middle School, until 14/15 where people are moved to High School. Typically in the UK children go to Secondary School from 10/11/12 until 15/16, why change schools, and why between 10 and 12?

Some school uniforms also represent “smart” worker clothing. (Image from: http://www.theuniformshoponline.co.uk/secondary-school-uniforms.php)

Puberty, during this time of questioning, rebelling against our parents as authority figures to find our own path, we are given alternative answers by our new schools. A lot of these school changes are careerist ideologies, once we reach these ages we are taught that we need to get the grades to get a job because having a job is successful; the better the grades the better the career and pay, right?

In the USA this is pushed even farther as children must pass tests to even get to the next grade/school year, a very early way of learning a careerist promotion based system and also something that appears to be non-optional. Those who do not follow these rules are ridiculed as they are held back, just as people in society are ridiculed for having a low paid job or no job at all.

The poor or jobless considered by many of the rich, the media and the government to be worthless people of society that do not deserve, because they haven’t worked enough.. Even when these people volunteer to do charitable work they are perceived as some kind of hippie scum.

It’s important to note that government taxes and bank’s debt interest are two other ways of getting something without working for it.

Monopoly Money

All along our parents tried to teach us good morals and ethics; what is good and what is bad. Schooling takes over and teaches us that more obeying and work is good, and anything else is bad. By the time we leave school we have learned that working is good and money is a replacement of our parents reward based system.

There’s no longer a reward based system for doing good, now there is only a reward based system of working for currency by obeying. Numbers printed on paper or a computer screen. This is now where our morals are firmly based in society.

Continues to: Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

Filed Under: Consumerism, Economy, Education, Equality, Featured, Income Inequality, Money, Poverty, Taxes, Welfare Benefits

Unheard Martin Luther King Jr. recording found in attic

August 24, 2012 by Ian Crossland Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Lucas L. Johnson II, Associated Press

In this 1960 file photo, Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Atlanta. (AP File Photo)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Stephon Tull was looking through dusty old boxes in his father’s attic in Chattanooga a few months ago when he stumbled onto something startling: an audio reel labeled, “Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960.”

He wasn’t sure what he had until he borrowed a friend’s reel-to-reel player and listened to the recording of his father interviewing Martin Luther King Jr. for a book project that never came to fruition. In clear audio, King discusses the importance of the civil rights movement, his definition of nonviolence and how a recent trip of his to Africa informed his views. Tull said the recording had been in the attic for years, and he wasn’t sure who other than his father may have heard it.

“No words can describe. I couldn’t believe it,” he told The Associated Press this week in a phone interview from his home in Chattanooga. “I found … a lost part of history.”

Many recordings of King are known to exist among hundreds of thousands of documents related to his life that have been catalogued and archived. But one historian said the newly discovered interview is unusual because there’s little audio of King discussing his activities in Africa, while two of King’s contemporaries said it’s exciting to hear a little-known recording of their friend for the first time.

Tull plans to offer the recording at a private sale arranged by a New York broker and collector later this month.

Tull said his father, an insurance salesman, had planned to write a book about the racism he encountered growing up in Chattanooga and later as an adult. He said his dad interviewed King when he visited the city, but never completed the book and just stored the recording with some other interviews he had done. Tull’s father is now in his early 80s and under hospice care.

During part of the interview, King defines nonviolence and justifies its practice.

“I would … say that it is a method which seeks to secure a moral end through moral means,” he said. “And it grows out of the whole concept of love, because if one is truly nonviolent that person has a loving spirit, he refuses to inflict injury upon the opponent because he loves the opponent.”

The interview was made four years before the Civil Rights Act became law, three years before King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and eight years before his assassination. At one point in the interview, King predicts the impact of the civil rights movement.

“I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epics of our heritage,” he said.

King had visited Africa about a month before the interview, and he discusses with Tull’s father how leaders there viewed the racial unrest in the United States.

“I had the opportunity to talk with most of the major leaders of the new independent countries of Africa, and also leaders in countries that are moving toward independence,” he said. “And I think all of them agree that in the United States we must solve this problem of racial injustice if we expect to maintain our leadership in the world.”

Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland’s Morgan State University, said the tape is significant because there are very few recordings of King detailing his activity in Africa.

“It’s clear that in this tape when he’s talking … about Africa, he saw this as a global human rights movement that would inspire other organizations, other nations, other groups around the world,” said Winbush, who is also a psychologist and historian.

“That to me is what’s remarkable about the tape.”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Freedom Rider who organized Tennessee’s first lunch counter sit-in at age 19 in Nashville, said hearing King talk about the sit-ins took him back to the period when more than 100 restaurant counters were desegregated over several months.

“To … hear his voice and listen to his words was so moving, so powerful,” said Lewis, adding that King’s principles of nonviolence are still relevant today.

“I wish people all over America, all over the world, can hear this message over and over again,” he said.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who worked with King while a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, agreed.

“I can’t think of anything better to try,” Lowery said of nonviolence. “What we’re doing now is not working. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Matching violence with violence. We’ve got more guns than we’ve ever had, and more ammunition to go with it. And yet, the situation worsens.”

A spokeswoman for King’s daughter Bernice, head of The King Center in Atlanta, said she was traveling and couldn’t comment on the audio.

Tull is working with a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts to arrange a sale. The broker, Keya Morgan, said he believes that unpublished reel-to-reel audio of King is extremely rare and said he’s confident of the authenticity of the recording based on extensive interviews with Tull, his examination of the tape and his knowledge of King. He’s collected many of the civil rights icon’s letters and photos.

“I was like, wow! To hear him that crisp and clear,” Morgan said. “But beyond that, for him to speak of nonviolence, which is what he represented.”

Source: http://www.kpic.com/news/national/Unheard-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-recording-found-in-attic-167043495.html

Filed Under: Equality, Human Rights, Media, Racism, Revolution, Rights, Social Unrest

Dehumanized: Will Arabs Forgive Them?

July 11, 2012 by Lauren Zak 3 Comments

He lives in a tent. He rides a camel. He carries a sword on his back.
She’s a seductive belly dancer.
She lives in a harem. She only exists for male pleasure.

They are Arabs.

The negative images of Arabs had long been emblazoned into our minds. Where do these images come from?

“Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don’t like your face
It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”

This was one of the verses of the opening song “Arabian Night” in the movie Aladdin, one of the most successful Disney movies ever made.
Following protests from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination, the lyrics were changed from “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face” to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense”. Children from all over the world viewed Aladdin and Arabs have been portrayed as backward, barbaric, sinister, violent and imminently dangerous to the Western world.

At a very young age, many children start to learn stereotypes from the environment in which they are raised. They begin to acquire prejudices from their parents, teacher, peers, the media and others around them. They investigate the world around them and start developing their own racial identity between the ages of two and five. They first become aware of how people look. For instance, they start to notice the difference in skin colors. They also become aware of their own physical characteristics. Then they start seeking explanations for differences. At a later stage, they begin to identify with the ethnic group that they perceive themselves to belong to.

In his paper titled “Development of social categories and stereotypes in early childhood: The case of ”the Arab” concept formation, stereotype and attitudes by Jewish children in Israel”, Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel Aviv University) demonstrated the strength of the Israeli cultural stereotype of Arabs and its influence on young children. Research of concept development shows that Israeli children begin to use the word “Arab” between 24 months and 30 months of age and they also become able to draw a picture of an Arab man which represents their image of him. The majority of young children with any knowledge about Arabs associated them with violent and aggressive behaviors, directed mostly against Jews.

Us and Them

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what believe” – Berger

The Western Media has projected negative images of the Arabs in order to create “Otherness”. The concept of Otherness consists of dividing people into two social groups: Us (in-group) and Them (out-group). The in-group views the out-group as being different in a fundamental way. The out-group may be of a different race, nationality, religion, social class, political ideology, sexual orientation or origin.

Evaluating others as “Us” and “Them” is based on Social Identity Theory developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. The theory is based on three mental processes:

Social categorization
Social identification
Social comparison

The first process is categorization. It represents our tendency to categorize individuals, including ourselves into groups. In his book “The Nature of Prejudice”, Gordon Allport (1954) wrote that the human kind must think with the aid of categories… Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it.

The second process is social identification. In this stage we adopt some of the values and behaviors of the group we have categorized ourselves as belonging to. In other words, we adopt the identity of that group. Belonging to a social group gives us a social identity that boosts our self-esteem by enhancing our image.

The final process is social comparison. Once we see ourselves as members of a group, we start to define ourselves by comparison with other groups. People make social comparison with other individuals they perceive to be better or worse off than themselves.

Many of the studies have shown that our self-esteem is maintained by making social comparison with other groups: individuals with high self-esteem tend to make upward comparison choices, whereas low self-esteem individuals tend to make upward comparisons only when there is no threat to their self-esteem (Wood, 1989).

In conclusion, society is composed of social groups that tend to maintain their self-esteem. The power and status relations between groups are based on social identity (Hogg and Abrams, 1988). Members of high-status groups gain positive social identity and high self-esteem. They even tend to discriminate and be prejudiced against low-status groups in order to enhance their social power and status.

Nations and Identities

National identity is the sense of one’s belonging to one nation. Based on Social Identity Theory, a nation defines its own identity by comparing itself to other nations. As a result, having an out-group strengthens a sense of belonging to a nation that places an enmity between “Us and Them”. In brief, a nation needs enemies to maintain its identity.

As Sam Keen puts it in his book Faces of the Enemy: “In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.” (1986, p. 10).

Governments use the process of creating enemy images as a method of social control. They rely on negative stereotypes in an attempt to create a common enemy. They vilify and dehumanize the enemy as merely being thief, murderer, rapist, monster, criminal, kidnapper and terrorist. Once the enemy is depicted as evil, inferior and not human, it becomes psychologically acceptable by people to persecute him. The psychological process of dehumanization is very dangerous for it often paves the way for violence.

In Search of An Identity

There are many historical examples of dehumanization. Before and during the Second World War, Hitler and his Nazi regime created a negative image of the Jewish people using stereotypes and propaganda. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews by naming them “inferior race” in order to make their persecution more psychologically acceptable.

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers and Cold War began. America used Hollywood and media in order to promote an anti-Communism propaganda. America created the negative images of the Soviet Union enemy and managed to manipulate public opinion to fear the new enemy.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, America needed a post-Soviet foreign devil (Said) to maintain its identity. And once again, the Western monopoly of power has dehumanized an entire group of people in order to create “a stereotypical image of the dangerous ‘Arab Other’.”

Dr. Jack Shaheen, Professor Emeritus of Mass Communication at Southern Illinois University, studied portrayals of Arabs in Western Media by examining 900 U.S. films. He writes “Arabs are the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood. They are portrayed, basically, as sub-human untermenschen, a term used by Nazis to vilify Gypsies and Jews. These images have been with us for more than a century.”

Hollywood has internalized the negative stereotypes of Arabs before 9/11 in order to serve the U.S imperial objectives. The Department of Defense and CIA have always been cooperating with Hollywood. Former Hollywood Reporter staffer Robb exposes In his book “Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies” how Hollywood producers ask the Pentagon for help in making films. The department of Defense provides filmmakers with a crowd of Marines, or a Navy aircraft carrier and Blackhawk helicopters and the CIA provides filmmakers with a pile of script ideas. After all, the producers want to make money and the Defense Department wants to make propaganda (David L. Robb).

Hollywood’s representation of Arabs before 9/11 has been influenced by three major political events: the creation of the state of Israel, the 1973 oil crisis when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo, and the Iranian Islamic revolution.

First, The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926) were two films that depicted Arabs as savage beasts who auction off their own women. After World War II, Exodus (1960), a film based on the 1958 novel Exodus by Leon Uris, was the first movie to deal with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This movie highlighted the Israeli struggle against Nazi oppression and confirmed the U.S. support for Israel. After the Iranian revolution, the film Not Without Your Daughter (1990) depicted the escape of American citizen Betty Mahmoody and her daughter from her husband in Iran. The film was shot in the United States and Israel. The film highlights the return of Iran to the dark ages. After the first Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, the film True Lies (1994) directed by James Cameron, Arnold starring as Harry Tasker leads a double life, performing covert missions for the United States Government under a counter-terrorism task force called “The Omega Sector”. Harry’s latest mission in Switzerland reveals the existence of an Islamic terrorist organization group known as the Crimson Jihad, led by Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik). And once again, Arabs were portrayed as terrorists, extremists and religious fanatics bent on destroying the world. The Rules of Engagement (2000) portrayed Arabs as extremists attacking the U.S. embassy. This movie dehumanized Arabs, which justified US Marines killing Arab women and children. These are some of the movies that depicted negative images of Arabs. After watching more than 900 movies, Jack Shaheen claims that only 50 or so had shown a neutral image of Arabs. He also says, “Each of Hollywood and Washington share the same genes”.

Conclusion

In the period before 9/11, the Western Media has developed a set of negative stereotypes depicting Arabs as enemies in order to serve the U.S. political agenda. On Sept. 20, 2001, President Georges W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and a national television audience to launch the “war on terror”:

“Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

As Slavenka Drakulic expresses it, ‘once the concept of “otherness” takes root, the unimaginable becomes possible’. And once again, President Bush and his administration managed to convince the American public of the need to go to war with Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you’re still wondering:

Why most Westerners do not show empathy to Palestinian suffering
Why most Westerners did not stand up against the war in Iraq
Why most Westerners support Israel
Why most Westerners hate Muslims

That’s because Americans tell the best stories, they can invade a country and immediately construct a narrative justifying it (Jean-Luc Godard).

It’s time to occupy Hollywood.

Sources:

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Jack G. Shaheen

The evolution of Hollywood’s representation of Arabs before 9/11: the relationship between political events and the notion of ‘Otherness’ – SULAIMAN ARTI, Loughborough University

The Construction of Arabs as Enemies: Post-September 11 Discourse of George W. Bush, Debra Merskin

http://www.self.ox.ac.uk/Current_Research_Students/documents/CHAPTER_2.pdf

http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topics/getalong/getalong05

http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/412/studyguide_412.pdf

http://www.ibiblio.org/prism/jan98/anti_arab.html

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

http://arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism/veils-harems-belly-dancers

http://beyondintractability.colorado.edu/essay/dehumanization/?nid=1082

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=16888

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis#Arab_oil_embargo

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

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

Filed Under: Equality, Featured, Media, Propaganda, Racism, Sexism, Women

Where Does Your State Rank In Equal Pay?

April 17, 2012 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

by Jessica Pieklo on April 17, 2012

Today marks Equal Pay Day and an opportunity to take a closer look as the wage disparities between the genders. The bottom line: the wage gap is real and it is persistent.

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) released a new state-by-state report on equal pay rankings, along with an interactive map that shows wage disparities in each state. How does your state rate? Some of the rankings may surprise you.

Overall the wage gap is the narrowest in Washington D.C., where women earn 91 cents on the dollar to men and worst in Wyoming where women make just 64 percent of men’s earnings. As expected, the numbers get worse when you account for race. African American and Hispanic women earn much less–just 70 percent and 61 percent of what white men on average earn. Nationally women earn just 77 percent of their male peers.

This discrepancy in pay costs working women and their families tens of thousands of dollars a year. It directly impacts women’s retirement security and ability to save for emergencies and college and it reinforces an outdated and offensive world view that women’s work is simply not of the same value as men’s.

Source: http://www.care2.com/causes/where-does-your-state-rank-in-equal-pay.html

Filed Under: Economy, Equality, Income Inequality, Money, Sexism, USA, Women

Max Igan’s Trance-Formation (Full)

April 16, 2012 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

Full film available for download at:
http://thecrowhouse.com
IP: http://67.20.81.143
from May 15th 2012

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. – Howard Zinn

Universal Law trumps all others.

1. No man or woman, in or out of government shall initiate force, threat of force or fraud against my life and property and, any and all contracts I am a party to, not giving full disclosure to me, whether signed by me or not, are void at my discretion.

2. I may use force in self-defense against anyone that violates Law 1.

3. There shall be no exceptions to Law 1 and 2.

Filed Under: Banks, Corporations, Corruption, Crime, Education, Environment, Equality, Featured, Human Rights, Illuminati, Politics, Population, Privacy, Revolution, Rights, Safety, Technology

Kim Dotcom: US Military Had 15,634 Megaupload Accounts

April 10, 2012 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

By enigmax for TorrentFreak on March 26, 2012

In recent weeks the battle has continued to save the data stored at the now-defunct site Megaupload. Contrary to the image painted by the entertainment industries, untold numbers of people used the file-hosting service for completely legitimate sharing. Today we can reveal that not only did people at the Senate, Department of Homeland Security, FBI and NASA hold Megaupload accounts, so did more than 15,600 members of the US Military.

Ever since Megaupload was dismantled in January there have been concerns about data being held on the site’s servers.

While the MPAA and RIAA insist that the site was simply a huge piracy hub, the facts point to a much bigger picture of people using the site for countless legitimate transfers of files simply too big to email.

As mentioned earlier this month, Megaupload’s legal team is working hard to reunite site users with their data, an aim also shared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) with their MegaRetrieval campaign.

As part of this process, Megaupload discovered that a large number of Mega accounts are held by US government officials. Today, thanks to fresh information provided to TorrentFreak by Kim Dotcom, we can reveal more details.

From domains including dhs.gov, doe.gov, fbi.gov, hhs.gov, nasa.gov, senate.gov, treas.gov and uscourts.gov, the number of accounts held at Megaupload total 1058. Of these, 344 users went the extra mile and paid for premium access. Between them they uploaded 15,242 files – a total of 1,851,791 MB.

While a couple of million megabytes of lost data is bad enough, another group – the ladies and gentlemen of the US Military – stands to lose much, much more.

From domains including af.mil, army.mil, centcom.mil, navy.mil and osd.mil etc, a total of 15,634 are registered with Megaupload. Of these an impressive 10,223 people paid to upgrade to a premium Megaupload account and between them they uploaded 340,983 files – a total of 96,507,779 MB.

There is no suggestion that any of these military operatives or government employees were using Megaupload for infringing uses but it is almost guaranteed that documents, photographs and videos are now at serious risk of deletion.

More on Kim Dotcom’s response to the US indictment is published in our feature article.

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-us-military-had-15634-megaupload-accounts-120326

Filed Under: ACTA, Censorship, Corruption, Equality, Internet, Privacy, SOPA/PIPA

A Story of Death Threats and Casual Insults: Racism in Germany

November 26, 2011 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

Germany was shocked to learn the extent of the crimes committed by a recently uncovered right-wing extremist group. But racism is hardly an anomaly in Germany. One family’s experience shows just how widespread prejudice and hate really is.

Four weeks. Even the timing itself seemed calculated for maximum intimidation.

Four weeks are long enough to begin forgetting, to regain a certain amount of calm. To begin thinking that maybe it was just a bad joke. But four weeks is too short to completely overcome the fear.

Four weeks was the amount of time that passed between the two death threats the Krause family (eds. note: not their real name) found in their mailbox. The first letter came in August 2011. The sender had cut letters out of a newspaper to form a message warning that Mr. Krause and his family would be killed if they didn’t leave Germany.

Why? Because Mrs. Krause and the couple’s two children have dark skin. Because Mrs. Krause comes from East Africa.

The second letter came in September, and the sender spent far less time on it. He simply drew four crosses on a sheet of white paper — one for each member of the family. For the son, for the daughter, for Mr. Krause and for Mrs. Krause.

Mr. Krause, a middle-aged professor, had long promised himself not to take occasional incidents of hostility too seriously. He wanted to avoid overreacting, to prevent those who would sow fear from feeling the satisfaction of success.

The second threat letter, however, made stoicism impossible. And since news broke of the neo-Nazi group that apparently killed nine immigrants over the course of several years, his composure has completely evaporated. The perpetrators of the killing spree purposefully chose victims who did not originally come from Germany.

“I am afraid,” says Krause. “I feel the presence of an unpredictable threat.”

Concerned about Consequences

Krause is not the kind of person who would normally shy away from openly speaking out. He embraces his civic responsibility. “I won’t accept insults,” he says. But now, Krause is extremely wary of seeing his name in print — and doesn’t even want it known where he is from. He is afraid for the lives of his wife and children, and for his own.

German authorities asked him to keep his story as quiet as possible and to only share it with his closest friends. They were concerned, they said, about the consequences should news of the threats become widespread. The letters are now in the hands of law-enforcement officials.

They have, however, refused to actively pursue the case, says Krause. No guards or police have been posted in front of his house. Krause claims the authorities made it clear to him that he simply wasn’t prominent enough for such measures. Instead, he is to follow a few simple rules: Only go to places that are well-lighted and where there is plenty of human activity. And to always monitor his rear-view mirror when driving. They also assured him that threats such as the ones he received aren’t particularly rare and that it was probably just some crank.

But Anders Behring Breivik, the man who killed almost 80 people in Norway in July, was also a crank. “The fact that someone is crazy doesn’t exclude the possibility that they are violent,” says Krause. He doesn’t believe that the neo-Nazi terror cell from Zwickau is an isolated case. “And it is wrong to think that they are just idiots,” he says. “They may be immoral, but they are intelligent.”

Krause is an economist, and he lives with his wife and children in a house located in a well-off district of a large German city. His wife, a doctor from a country in East Africa, moved to Germany to join her husband. At the time, she was pregnant with their second child. Even Krause’s manner of explaining how he met his wife in 2004 makes it clear just how often he has been confronted with prejudice. No, she wasn’t a prostitute that he met in a hotel, nor was she seeking to marry a rich German. She herself comes from a prosperous family. In reality, he explains, he met her at the university on the way to class one day.

Insulted on Account of Her Skin Color

Krause was happy to be able to bring his wife to Germany. It is safer here, the job market is better, medical care is superior — and he likes his homeland. “Germany is a great country, and it offers the opportunity to live in peace and harmony,” he says. Still, he didn’t want to be naïve. He told his wife that she might be insulted in Germany on account of her skin color.

But the reality has turned out to be much worse than he had imagined. And the death threats are only the tip of the iceberg.

The Krause family has experienced things that white-skinned Germans could never imagine. But everyone in the country who looks “foreign” has plenty of stories to tell – about not being served at the deli counter, of parents at the playground telling their children not to play with the dark-skinned child, of the Israeli’s neighbor who calls over from the neighboring balcony: “You Jews always have money.” Or even stories about open attacks, like the Asian woman who was spat on while walking on the sidewalk.

Krause has kept careful notes on many of the incidents he and his family have experienced, and he has notified the authorities. “It’s the sum total of the relatively small things,” he says. “At some point, you ask yourself if you are being overly sensitive. But the opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s not how I want to be.”

His daughter, the oldest child, goes to kindergarten. “They are all very nice there, the parents and the teachers,” Krause says. But once another child told his daughter, “you are black, dirty and bad.” Where does such a thing come from? “Such a thing doesn’t kill anybody, but it is an indication of an attitude that would seem to be widespread,” Krause says.

No Public Interest

In a department store, according to Krause, one of the saleswomen said “poor Germany” when she saw his dark-skinned wife.

In a pharmacy parking lot, a car refused to stop for Krause’s wife and child, coming dangerously close to them. When Krause rushed to stand between his family and the car, the driver stepped out and called the family “monkey asses.”

Authorities rejected Mrs. Krause’s official complaint. “The accused denies having called you and your husband ‘monkey asses’,” reads the official reply. “Independently of that, such an utterance would not fulfill the legal definition of incitement. The mere incident of someone insulting a person who belongs to a particular ethnic group is not enough if the insult has no connection to that ethnic group.”

The letter also said that there was no public interest to be served in prosecuting the accused for the alleged insult.

Kind Gesture

His wife also tells the story of seeing a neighbour — a former teacher who lost his job because of right-wing extremist statements — give the Hitler salute to an acquaintance. “But maybe my wife just misinterpreted it,” Krause says.

After all, he is concerned that he has become obsessed. And he also tries to emphasize the positive situations he has encountered — like the older woman in the supermarket who gave each of his children a stuffed animal. “She simply wanted to say that we are extra-welcome here,” he says, adding that the gesture of kindness almost made him cry.

And yet, he still can’t sleep anymore. Every night between two and three in the morning, he finds himself standing at the window. Once, he saw a police car parked in front of his house for half an hour. But he doesn’t know what that might mean.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,799987,00.html

Filed Under: European Union, Extremism, Racism, Violence Tagged With: Racism

Has Capitalism Ever Existed in America?

October 29, 2011 by Aaron Jackson Leave a Comment

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about capitalism in the news and among activists. Many people are taking stances on either one side of the issue or the other, but very few are stopping to consider the fact that capitalism may have never even existed. This concept may come as a surprise to some, but it shouldn’t. If you examine most of the words used to describe our society such as democracy, freedom, representative or capitalism, you will find that these words are simply abstract euphemisms which are used to disguise the true nature of authoritarian civilization.

We are supposed to believe that we are represented by people who don’t represent us, that we are somehow “free” in a situation where we are constantly being exploited and ordered around. Much in the same way that we are told we are “free” in our personal lives, we are also told that we are “free” in our financial lives. The word “democracy” is used to make our oppressive political system seem more benevolent and legitimate, while the term “capitalism” is used to give the impression that we operate under a “free market” economy. Obviously, neither are true.

Capitalism itself has been defined many different ways, but the rights to private property, as well as private production of goods and a free market economy, cross over between all of these definitions. Currently none of the above rights are being fully respected in the United States and most Western countries that claim to be capitalist. Sure, at face value it may seem like these ideas are prevalent in Western culture, but when you take a look at property taxes, government subsidies for big corporations and the mountain of red tape faced by entrepreneurs it should become painfully obvious that capitalism has probably never existed in this country; perhaps it has never even existed in this world.

The system that we have in place today could more accurately be called fascism, mercantilism or cartelism. These words describe a system where the elite use their power in government to control the rest of society, as well as prop up their businesses by eliminating competition through the political system. The monolithic corporations that now exist would have never been able to grow into what they are today without the help of government intervention and protection. Without government intervention, the infamous lobbyists in Washington would become obsolete because there would no longer be any ability to manipulate the marketplace through bribes or coercion. Government intervention and protection is the primary means by which the world’s biggest corporations have devastated their competition and developed massive monopolies.

In a system of true free market capitalism there would be absolutely no need for a government, because any “service” that is apparently provided by the government can actually be better handled by entrepreneurs. In today’s system we don’t have independent businesses working on a level playing field, instead we are left with a few massive corporations and cartels that use their power in government to maintain their monopolies and stomp out their competition. This is the very definition of fascism — the merger of state and corporate power — this is the dominant economic system in the world, and has been for centuries, in various different forms.

In fascist countries there is really no line between government and big corporations; both types of organizations use legislative power to establish and maintain monopolies. When it comes down to it, both of these organizations rely on violence and threats of violence as a means of getting their way in the marketplace. Essentially, the government is an organization that is used to justify violence, from the military to the tax collectors to the police. This constant use of force is said to be keeping us safe, but in reality it just instigates further conflict and makes our lives more chaotic and violent.

For any authoritarian government to stay in power they must convince their subjects that they are providing them with safety and security. This is the typical public relations scheme of every oppressive government; the idea that they are providing worthwhile services. This is sadly a myth. The government doesn’t provide services; they monopolize services. In other words, they make sure that they are the only organization that can provide schools, hospitals, roads and other utilities to the public because this creates a situation where the people are completely dependent upon the state for survival. This doesn’t mean that a government is the only type of organization that is capable of providing these services. In fact, community groups and entrepreneurs would most likely do a far better job at providing these services because they would actually be judged by the integrity of their work, unlike politicians and corporations.

Oftentimes when the government is providing a service they are actually doing a very poor job, but no one can really tell the difference because there is no competition to judge it by. If you look at the goals that government organizations apparently set out to achieve, you will see they always fail miserably. Therefore, if the government is claiming to provide maximum safety and security, it would be safe to assume that this goal will not be achieved. In the most authoritarian countries where the “leaders” claim to have established an extreme level of security, things are actually very unsafe and citizens in these kinds of countries live in constant fear. Just because there is a very high level of control does not mean that there will be adequate safety or order within a society. The most controlling type of government in today’s world is without a doubt a fascist one.

Fascism is defined as an authoritarian system of government that has strong nationalist and corporatist values. Fascist governments often have strong military cultures and use force to establish themselves as authority figures, both at home and abroad. A Fascist government never refers to themselves as such; to do so would be to admit that they run unjust and oppressive regimes. Fascism exists in many economic systems that claim to be capitalist or communist and can develop even in countries that call themselves democratic.

In fact, most fascist “leaders” tell their people that they live in a free and democratic society so the public takes their grievances to the polls, instead of taking them into the streets where they could actually make an impact. Currently one of the most fascist nations on Earth is called the “Democratic Republic of North Korea”. Likewise, the government in America and the European Union are some of the most fascist regimes in history, yet they still claim to operate under systems of “capitalism” or “democratic socialism”. Like anything else in politics and economics, it’s a word game that’s designed to disguise the truth.

Personally I believe that the economic system of the future that will finally bring us peace, freedom and opportunity has yet to be discovered. However, there are some basics of capitalism and voluntarism that should be considered necessary if we are going to establish a new economic system that is designed to empower the people. The rights to private property, the freedom for people to open businesses and trade freely amongst themselves are elements of capitalism that will ensure freedom in a future economic system. The idea that all interactions in society should be voluntary and free from threats, coercion and violence will ensure peace. These are some good places to start our discussion, but to establish a system that will actually work in our best interest, we, the 99% need to hit the books and put our heads together.

Today, almost every economy in the world is totally dictated by the ideas of two long-dead aristocrats. Karl Marx on one end representing communism, and Adam Smith on the other end representing capitalism. Our whole way of doing business on this planet has changed very little since the time that these two characters were alive, and that right there is the root of our problem. Imagine if a few people in every city across the world wrote their own economic manifestos and got together to respectfully discuss their ideas. We refuse to accept yesterday’s television shows, IPods and PlayStations but without thinking we have accepted ways of living that are centuries old. It’s time for us to work together in creating strategies where everyone can meet their needs without violating the rights of others.

Source: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/8093-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating

Filed Under: Capitalism, Democracy, Equality, Occupy, Revolution