RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism

In this RSA Animate, renowned academic David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

This is based on a lecture at the RSA (www.theRSA.org).

Torture Inc.: 'US can't lecture world on human rights'

The U.S. has for the first time ever faced unprecedented public scrutiny over its human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The U.S.delegation received strong criticism over human rights violations, including racial profiling, use of the death penalty and abuse allegations overseas. Council members in Geneva called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and further investigation into alleged torture by US troops abroad. American representatives defended their nation's human rights record, but stressed they were not satisfied with the status quo.

High-profile Russian journo brutally beaten into coma

Moscow police are investigating a brutal attack on a correspondent with Russia's Kommersant newspaper. Oleg Kashin was fiercely beaten near his home, and is now in an induced coma.

Kymatica: The Follow Up To Esoteric Agenda

Sniper - Brûle

The song strongly criticizes French politicians and calls on French people to rebel against that rotten State we live in.

From: http://lyricstranslate.com

Tunisiano - Because, when we climb the social ladder, they fear us
Aketo - Because inside they fear us
Tunisiano - Because on the TV news they slag us off
Aketo - Because we're getting to the breaking point
Tunisiano - 'Cause blood is boiling in our veins
Aketo - 'Cause we must break our chains
Tunisiano - We'd like them to understand us
Aketo - They'll get fire for sowing hatred

Tunisiano
Welcome to the hood, where moms are sucked into the turmoil
No gang-bang, just two or three ghettos as hubs
Here everything is for sale, everyone lies and pride themselves on wanting to become millionaire
Before being over 30, adults or kids
In weapons is the spite we needed, our savings accounts are hidden in our matresses
Check it out, youth are starving, they have stomach cramps
And to achieve their aims, they would even traumat you
And don't miss your shot, don't take advantage of people
Modern times' disabled man and thief in all weathers
Big boy, youth work, fight and then get off
Proficient in bumping cars, they don't wave their hands at the red fire
And there are the water pistols and the big Berreta's
Like there are ghetto parties and David Guetta parties
Everyone the same haircut as Olmetta, studs and we go round you
There is the law of our [???], facing the cops shut up, f_cking jerk
You got the creeps, so you cough, you justify yourself
Shut up bro, cops know how my d--- smells like
I live where I grew up, there's not youth & culture center in my hood
Few tough men, too many MC's, too many gays from the judicial police
Yes, our brother reacted to those offenses
An unpunished crime, tear gas in a mosque
Funeral in the grove, caught up in a tragic spiral
Snowball effect, photos, media hype
They mention the pressure washer, divide France into two parts
Sarkozy offers you a car wash
But what is sad is, we burn the few things we have
Whereas voting would be enough to oust those assholes

(chorus Blacko)
Burn, burn, Babylon burn
I wanna hear you yell out, you gotta howl
Let the heat make cell bars melt
Let it incinerate your system that's turning to dejection
Burn, burn, Babylon burn
I wanna hear you yell out, you gotta howl
You say we go forwards, but we actually go backwards
Step forth with a flame-thrower for the youth who scr-- you

Blacko
The more I grow up, the more I see everything's going wrong
Actually we come to this Earth just to get ripped off
Babylon, my flow is a virus in your programs
It uninstalls, breaks everything then it gets all on fire
Let no one give up, we're full of damn good vibes
Man, I've pulled out my weapon
Give me bullets, that's what Jaguarr Gorgone would say
I come to set in on fire, I belch flames like a dragon
F_ck the system, they'll get fire for sowing hatred
Let them be burnt, be hung or thrown into the Seine river
Ghetto youth got rage running through their veins
We gotta break the chains
Slavery is mental and modernized
You walk over us, you despise us
Man don't be astonished if your car gets reduced to ashes
No matter who felt they're were being got at

(chorus)

Aketo
Descendants of immigrants, that's what they like to remind us all the time
It's been 30 years since they've only been talking about integration
I don't feel French
You can't but notice that we all know
That's not refusal; that's just a fact
I've seen, I know and the gap is widening
More and more all those liers whip up a storm
About insecurity, use people's fear of each other
They don't hesitate to try and attract the National Front's voters
Here I feel history is repeating itself, I can hear
Of the positive role of France at the time of the colonies
What the fuck is that bullshit?
When our fathers were useful and productive, were they good to this country?
Okay, but when their sons call for revenge
They're good to their homeland, France
A country governed by irresponsible people who make endless blunders
Don't wonder why I agress you; I'm addressing
The first cop, a shy guy who won't face up to the facts
And sully the memory of the victims, who add
Fuel to the flames; an unfit behavior
That's what those too ambitious pretentious people have
Who's gonna clean who ?

Argentina: A Possible Forum to Prosecute War Criminals

From TamilNet:

In a notable reversal of roles Judge María Servini is taking steps, to litigate in Argentina's Courts, cases of torture, murder and disappearance of Franco's political opponents during Spain’s Civil War between 1936 and 1939. Such probes supported by universal jurisdiction, have long been exercised in Spain by the mercurial Judge Baltasar Garzón, whose case against Chilean General Augusto Pinochet in 1998 helped lead to the undoing of amnesties that had protected dictators. With Spain's judicial system imposing constraints on filing such cases, Argentina might become a suitable forum to bring charges against alleged war criminals in other parts of the world hiding behind the cover of diplomatic immunity, or by keeping UN silent using the support of other rights violator nations. 

The three cases filed in Argentinian courts are the civil war shooting deaths of Spanish citizens Severino Rivas, Elías García Holgado and Luis García Holgado, and Argentine Vicente Garcia Holgado.

The plaintiffs want the Argentine courts to expand the case to include any murders and disappearances committed by Franco’s forces between July 17, 1936, the day before Franco’s military turned against Spain’s Republican government, and June 15, 1977, when Spain held its first democratic elections following the dictator’s death in 1975.

Máximo Castex, one of the lawyers involved, told the Associated Press that by alleging genocide and in some cases crimes against humanity, many other cases involving Argentines whose relatives were killed in Spain will likely be added. He also predicts a flow of Spanish citizens travelling to Argentina seeking to add their names as plaintiffs.

The core issue in this case was whether Argentinian courts have jurisdiction under the principle of universal jurisdiction which, the plaintiffs will argue, is implicit in Article 118 of the Argentinian Constitution. 

Article 118 provides that a special law will determine the place of trial for crimes against the ius gentium (law of nations), which were committed outside the borders of the Nation. 

According to the claimants, this requirement is met by law 26200, or the International Criminal Court Statute Implementation Law (ICC Statute), passed on 13 December 2006, which grants jurisdiction to the Argentinian Federal Courts to try crimes of the competence of the ICC (Article 5).

Article 3(d) provides that the law applies to cases where jurisdiction is provided by international treaties to which Argentina is a party. 

A spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, told TamilNet, "This is an interesting development. Universal jurisdiction is a hard hurdle to cross, and progress of the above cases underscores that Argentinian laws support universal jurisdiction for egregious crimes. If, in addition, the Court permits non-Argentinian plaintiffs, then Argentina opens up the possibility that the same forum can be used by expatriate Tamils, whose family members are victims, to file charges against Sri Lanka officials for war crimes, and crimes against humanity."

'International Justice - More a Moment Than an Enduring Movement'

From Sovereignty strikes back by David Bosco, Foreign Policy:

"I had a good discussion on this matter twice with the Prime Minister Hun Sen, and also [the] deputy prime minister this morning, and I can tell you that the government of Cambodia is committed to completion of the process," he said. "The United Nations will discuss this matter with the international community members, particularly donors. That is what I can tell you at this stage."

Hun Sen's gambit is just part of a broader pushback against international justice: Hezbollah and Syria are working to shut down the U.N.-mandated investigation into Rafik Hariri's assassination, and some toughs in Beirut just beat up international investigators; China is lobbying hard -- and apparently with some success -- to torpedo an international inquiry into Myanmar's human rights record; and a number of African leaders (including some court members) are circumventing the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudan's president.

The response from the advocates of international justice has been muted. Facing the possibility of renewed north-south violence in Sudan, the Obama administration needs to negotiate with Khartoum and mostly keeps quiet about the Bashir indictment. Both the United States and Europe are understandably reluctant to make international justice a priority in relations with China. And Europe itself has in some respects turned away from a broad concept of universal jurisdiction for international crimes. Britain may amend its law to avoid awkward confrontations with foreign leaders. Spain has even put crusading judge Baltasar Garzón -- who became famous trying to right international wrongs in Spanish courts -- under investigation. We are a long way from the heady days of the Pinochet prosecution.

It turns out that the countries and leaders most supportive of international justice either didn't fully understand the implications of the process or don't have much appetite for the hard political work necessary to make it stick. For their part, emerging powers like India and Brazil are lukewarm on the phenomenon in the first place and certainly not inclined to expend any political capital on it.

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Transhumanism: Techno-eugenics for the neo-feudal age

Tom Horn interview by Alex Ansary

Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Part 7

"Ye shall be as God", or so the story goes.

Transhumanism was founded in the 1950s by top eugenicist Julian Huxley and the Rockefeller Foundation, as a new brand name for the pseudoscience of Eugenics. Its obsession for culling off the 'genetically inferior', while at the same time striving to promote dominance for the 'superior' had given Eugenics a bad name, particularly after the Nazi brand of Eugenics created the Holocaust, during WWII. Sadly, what most people didn't know at that time was that Nazi eugenics was merely the full-blown application of the principles that had been developed and were openly espoused by the British, French and American Eugenics Societies. 

So, Eugenics lived on, under many, heavily funded formats, one of them being Transhumanism. By and large, Transhumanism proposes to use applied science in the fields of genetics, robotics and others, to 'steer human evolution into the future'. A Transhumanist society will have, as its name implies, 'transcended humanity'. In such a society, human beings will have been replaced with hyper-efficient worker chimeras, bio-robotic warriors, and other purpose-made humanoid life forms.

These stated goals must be tied in with the bigger picture into which Eugenics and Transhumanism fit into. These fields have never been limited to 'science' per se -- they've always been primarily political and economical, and they reflect a very particular view of the world. 

Under that view, the planet has limited resources, and technological advancement under free market systems cannot be trusted to overcome those limitations (one of the many Malthusian fallacies and myths) -- therefore, control must be exercised over the users of resources, to avoid any over-usage of those resources. To exercise that control, eugenicists believe they have to shut down development, and create an heavily regulated social and economic environment. In that controlled environment, those people who are alive must also be economically efficient -- i.e., produce more than they consume. So, on the one hand, the intelligentsia feels it needs to get rid of the 'wrong' sorts of people (the masses of 'unfit', 'unemployables', 'junk genes'), through techniques such as famine, abortion, sterilization, or euthanasia. On the other hand, the workers that will be allowed to go on into the future will have to be made into incrementally more 'efficient' humans -- which will eventually imply robotic add-ons and genetic-engineering.

This is none other than the worldwide, dehumanized, hyper-efficient 'hive society', that was advocated by eugenicist Charles Galton Darwin in "The Next Million Years". Or, "Our Benevolent Feudalism", as eugenicist William J. Ghent put it, in his portrayal of the techno-fascist global society that, he said, would eventually be ushered in, using the combined power of finance and science. And, of course, it was also explained in romanticized form in the "Brave New World" of Aldous Huxley, who was none other than the brother of Transhumanism founder, Eugenics Society chairman, Julian Huxley. 

A neo-feudal, technocratic, new world order. That's what Eugenics and its offspring Transhumanism, strive for. A system under which you will not just lose your physical rights to independent living (and that is happening right now as this video plays), but you will also be engineered to lose your very soul. Since, as Charles Galton Darwin put it, you will be nothing more than a good worker, which includes being engineered to have the right beliefs, or no beliefs at all.

That is the final and most serious note of mental and spiritual disease behind this incredibly selfish and hypocritical paradigm. 

And that is why it must be stopped. 

http://www.youtube.com/alexansary/