Greece’s parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill Monday to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.
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See also:
The Battle of 12th February,Greece,Videos
Riots as Greece approves austerity
Athens burns: has Greece entered its Argentina moment?
Europe is just as guilty as Greece
People rise up against the new memorandum and the latest round of austerity measures; 48 hour General Strike; full Occupied London coverage
Recommended daily allowance of insanity, under-reported news and uncensored opinion dismantling the propaganda matrix.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Mystery of China's missing crusading former police chief
So, where is Wang Lijun? This is the question many in China are asking after the crusading official, who oversaw a crackdown on triads in southwestern city of Chongqing, disappeared after trying to defect at the US consulate in the Sichuan capital, Chengdu.
Mr Wang was removed from his post as gang-busting police chief earlier this month. The Chongqing government said he was suffering from “immense mental stress and serious physical discomfort” and was receiving “vacation-style therapy”.
He was instead put in charge of the section dealing with sanitation and libraries, which was read as a sign that he had been ousted.
Interview with lauren Ornelas
Interview with lauren Ornelas from Because We Must on Vimeo.
In October (2011) we were lucky enough to be able to interview lauren Ornelas of Food Empowerment Project. During this interview lauren discusses environmental racism, the mistreatment of produce farmers, heart wrenching chocolate slavery in Africa and more! If you have the time, we would love for you to check it out. After watching, we hope you read up on these subjects and share with your friends and family. Food is power, knowledge is power.
British bankers arrested in tax probe
Several British bankers have been arrested as part of an investigation into alleged tax-related criminal offences, the country's customs and revenue service said on Sunday, including some from Royal Bank of Scotland .
"As a result of an ongoing HMRC investigation into tax-related criminal offences, HMRC has arrested a number of people, some of whom work for UK banks," Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) department said in a statement.
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"As a result of an ongoing HMRC investigation into tax-related criminal offences, HMRC has arrested a number of people, some of whom work for UK banks," Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) department said in a statement.
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Occupy LA: Scenes from the New Revolution // Part 3: The Movement of Many Leaders
Scenes from the New Revolution is a five-part documentary series written and directed by journalist Sam Slovick, whose research into Occupy Wall Street led to his living in a tent at City Hall in Los Angeles alongside the 99% movement for the better part of two months.
Slovick accessed Occupy Los Angeles at ground level, illuminating stories and faces that were either overlooked or misrepresented by the mainstream media. Told from the center of the year's biggest story, Slovick articulates the global movement through interviews with its activists, footage from the inner sanctum, and stories from its foot soldiers, bringing the sometimes-chaotic picture of Occupy LA into focus.
Scenes from the New Revolution was produced with the help of Slake, a highly acclaimed literary journal based in Los Angeles. A companion piece to the series will appear in the journal's fourth issue.
REMARKABLE: Greek Police Wanted to Arrest EU/IMF Officials Days Before Athens Burned, Not Protesters
Officers saw what was about to happen. And they wanted to stop it. Not by targeting the protesters, but instead by targeting those officials responsible for pressuring Greece to rip the economic heart out of its lower and middle classes in order to keep the country afloat.
Specifically, Greece's largest police union wanted to issue arrest warrants for the IMF's leading Greek official, Poul Thomsen, the European Central Bank's mission chief in Greece, Klaus Masuch, and several other top officials in the IMF and EU.
Occupying Corporations: How to Cut Corporate Power by Bill Quigley / Common Dreams
“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair
Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations. This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations. We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work. People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.
[ ... ]
Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people. Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.
In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal protections they have created for themselves.
The story of how corporations took the full rights of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover only people. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of color, had full rights. There was no mention of protecting corporations. But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood. At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial segregation. Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.
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Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations. This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations. We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work. People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.
[ ... ]
Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people. Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.
In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal protections they have created for themselves.
The story of how corporations took the full rights of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover only people. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of color, had full rights. There was no mention of protecting corporations. But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood. At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial segregation. Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.
More...
Factory building collapses in Pakistan’s Lahore, killing at least 13
At least thirteen people were killed on early Monday morning when a factory building collapsed in eastern Pakistan, rescue officials said. Dozens more are feared to be trapped under the rubble.
The accident happened at around 8:15 a.m. local time when a suspected gas cylinder exploded at a three-story factory building in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab. The powerful explosion devastated the building as more than 60 people were working inside.
As of early Tuesday morning, rescue officials said thirteen bodies had been recovered, including three children. At least 13 others were pulled out alive from underneath the rubble, but it is feared that as many as 30 people could still be trapped. Rescue operations were ongoing overnight.
Keiser Report: The Vaporized & The Deleted (E245)
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the vaporized and the deleted - the new American soap opera in which the assets, wealth, jobs and economy of the 99% have been stolen. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Daniel Collins of TheChinaMoneyReport.com about China's imports of gold and their recent purchases of Germany's legendary mittelstands.
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the supercommittee that runs America, the perils of Draghi's "blitz" and the IMF turnaround on austerity for Greece. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Gonzalo Lira about austerity, printing and running.