Thursday, May 10, 2012

A message from the Hippie Elders: The Houseboat Summit - 1967

Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Allen Cohen.
 
Psychedelic Salon Podcast 193 ~ Alan Watts & friends "The Houseboat Summit - 1967"

Global Corporations Undermining Democracy Worldwide

By Isolda Agazzi, Inter Press Service 

In a world where governments are increasingly subservient to global finance capital, multinationals are gaining ground in the fight against state regulations that aim to protect the environment, public health or social policies.  

According to the most recent data released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the number of lawsuits brought against governments by companies evoking clauses in bilateral investment treaties (BITs) was 450 at the end of 2011.  

These are only the known cases; most are kept secret.  

In the many instances in which these lawsuits have been successful, governments have been made to pay fines amounting to tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars or euros.

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She's just a girl who can't say Nein: The Munich nymphomaniac claims a second victim after 36-hour sex ordeal

Mr Schulz phoned police and pleaded for assistance.  

'You have got to help me,' he told them. 'She is trying to kill me with sex. I cannot get out - and I cannot go on!'  

When police arrived to question the woman and free Schulz she invited two officers to join her in bed for a 'quickie.'  

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Jack The Ripper, Was Murderer Really A Woman? Asks Author John Morris

The story of Morris’s research includes many twists and turns as he examines the principle players, the killer’s motivation, and modern day cases that bear some similarity to the Ripper murders.

The Ripper victims were all prostitutes, murdered and mutilated in the foggy alleyways of Whitechapel. By the surgical nature of the wounds, the killer was assumed to have some surgical knowledge.


Morris's theory is supported by the findings of an Australian scientist who in 2006 used swabs from letters supposedly sent to police by the Ripper to build a partial DNA profile of the killer.


The results suggested that the person who murdered and mutilated at least five women from 1888 onwards may have been a woman.

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Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 47

In addition to his career with the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heavily involved in the movement to free Tibet. A founder of the Milarepa Fund, Yauch was instrumental in the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park 1996, which drew 100,000 people – the largest U.S. benefit concert since 1985's Live Aid. After 9/11, Yauch and the Beastie Boys organized New Yorkers Against Violence, a concert benefit for some of the victims least likely to receive help from elsewhere. 

Authorities define “violence” as any restriction of capital flows

By Our Crit in Frankfurt

As debate spilled over into a shouting match in the Hessian State Parliament concerning the effective ban of Blockupy protests this 16-19 May in Frankfurt am Main, the administrative decision that effected this ban has come to light. The key finding being that:
The blockade action cannot be assessed as peaceful. To make blockades and hinder traffic with the goal of closing down the entire financial district and the everyday life of the metropolis, has to be defined as violence.[Decision of the Administrative Clerk, p.12, emphasis added.]
The decision continues:
Furthermore, in order that “European legal obligations” be guaranteed, the European Central Bank “must be functional, especially in times of financial crisis around the clock”. This includes things like “the operation of large-value payment system TARGET2″.1
So in effect, a civil disobedience directed against the Eurozone’s financial authorities cannot take place because the obligation of the Frankfurt government to support the operation of the Euro-system overrides the right of European protesters to assemble and demonstrate against that very operation. Yet as Rosa Luxemburg once said, Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently (Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden).

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Shocking Video Of Kelly Thomas Beating Death Released. Watch With Caution.

The city surveillance video that shows a group of Fullerton police officers beating a homeless mentally ill man to death last year was finally released today, laying to rest any argument that Kelly Thomas was a threat to officers.

The shocking video, which was combined with an audio recorder worn by one of the police officers on the night of July 5, 2011, was shown in court today, then later released to the media.

“Now you see my fists?” Fullerton police officer Manny Ramos asked Thomas while slipping on a pair of latex gloves.

“Yeah, what about them?” Thomas responded.

“They are getting ready to fuck you up,” said Ramos, a burly cop who appears to outweigh Thomas by 100 pounds.

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Sibel Edmonds, '1st Amendment is Conditional'


Sibel Edmonds has called the most classified woman in US history. But now, after a long battle with government secrecy, the full story has finally been written. She faced a nearly yearlong FBI campaign to prevent its publication. She joins the show to tell us about her memoir, "Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story".

The Obama administration has the worst track record when it comes to prosecuting whistleblowers. Obama once claimed he'd work hard to have a transparent government, but many have faced retaliation for revealing controversial government information. Sibel Edmonds, who is a whistleblower, waited 340 days for FBI clearance of her memoir but finally released it on her own. Edmonds, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us for more.