Uranium mining is set to expand in Australia unless we actively oppose it.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
WAKE UP by David Bradbury
Professor’s Work Shows People Power Trumps Violence
By Jenny Gustafsson School of Authentic Journalism
Together with Maria J. Stephan, Chenoweth started researching civic resistance movements between 1900 and 2006, comparing them to their violent counterparts. A book, called Why Civil Resistance Works, based on that research came out in August 2011 and presents the findings — quite groundbreaking ones — that nonviolent tactics are twice as effective as violent ones.
For someone who spent her whole academic career studying the logic of violence, working with this research meant questioning many old-established assumptions.
“In the beginning, I was very skeptical,” Chenoweth says. “Now, it has totally changed how I look at my field. I realize that many of those who are committed to violence are doing so for the wrong reasons. They think that it works.”
[ ... ]
“Participation. That’s the single most important element for any successful campaign,” Chenoweth says. “For a movement to succeed, mass mobilization is required. And nonviolent movements have fewer obstacles for people to get involved. Violent campaigns are neither large enough nor diverse enough.”
'Americans don't share global domination policies of their leaders'
RT talks to Peter Dale Scott - former diplomat, poet and prominent anti-war advocate. He says that the US corporate superstructure conglomerate - including financial interests, the defense industry, oil companies and the media - brazenly manipulate American society.
Transcript: https://rt.com/news/america-corporate-conglomerate-scott-751/
Save us from the saviours - Slavoj Žižek on Europe and the Greeks
Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected. When George Papandreou, then Greek prime minister, proposed a referendum on the eurozone bailout deal at the end of last year, the referendum itself was rejected as a false choice.
There are two main stories about the Greek crisis in the media: the German-European story (the Greeks are irresponsible, lazy, free-spending, tax-dodging etc, and have to be brought under control and taught financial discipline) and the Greek story (our national sovereignty is threatened by the neoliberal technocracy imposed by Brussels). When it became impossible to ignore the plight of the Greek people, a third story emerged: the Greeks are now presented as humanitarian victims in need of help, as if a war or natural catastrophe had hit the country. While all three stories are false, the third is arguably the most disgusting. The Greeks are not passive victims: they are at war with the European economic establishment, and what they need is solidarity in their struggle, because it is our struggle too.
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See also:
Greek Misery: Looted, suicidal, desperate
Facebook fury has forced the head of the International Monetary Fund to express sympathy with Greece's financial struggle. Christine Lagarde caused outrage by saying she had more sympathy for poor African children than Greeks suffering economic problems. She suggested that the Greek culture of tax evasion was the main cause of their hardship, prompting tens of thousands of furious messages on her page. For more on the story RT talks to George Katroungalos, attorney and professor of international law.
For Europe’s sake Greece must renege on its bailout commitments – Varoufakis' op-ed in Le Monde
Conventional wisdom has it that, if Greece wants to stay in the Eurozone, it must abide by the terms and conditions of its ‘bailout’ deal.
It is my considered opinion that the conventional wisdom is, once more, profoundly wrong. That Greece’s only realistic chance of staying in the Eurozone is to challenge the terms of its ‘bailout’ agreement. Moreover, I shall be arguing that such a challenge would be a great gift to Europe. Indeed, it may prove a prerequisite for the Eurozone’s survival.
US planned nerve gas attack on Australian troops
The United States planned to gas Australian troops in experiments with two of the most lethal nerve gases ever devised, newly declassified files have revealed.
Previously top secret documents have shown that even as the world was outlawing chemical weapons at the height of the Cold War, Washington sought Canberra's permission to test sarin and VX gas on diggers in remote Queensland.
The documents, shown on Channel Nine's Sunday programme yesterday, indicate that US military scientists wanted to bomb and spray 200 "mainly Australian" troops with the deadly nerve agents in the 1960s.
Shaken by the request, the plan was rejected by Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt, despite Canberra's deep concern to keep the US engaged in the western Pacific.
Government Orders YouTube To Censor Protest Videos
In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.
The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.
Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.
Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.
The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.
More...
Going nuclear-free: Germany smashes solar power world record
Germany’s solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of energy on Friday, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants. The country is already a world-leader in solar power and hopes to be free of nuclear energy by 2022.
The director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, northeast Germany, said the solar power delivered to the national grid on Saturday met 50 per cent of the nation’s energy quota.
"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity. Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over," Norbert Allnoch told Reuters news agency.
The German government decided to turn its back on nuclear energy last year after the Fukushima disaster and plans to be nuclear-free by 2022. Critics have rounded on the initiative, skeptical that renewable sources can meet the nation’s growing energy needs.
One kidney illegally traded every hour worldwide, WHO reveals
The illegal trade in kidneys has become so rampant that more than one of the organs is traded every hour, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Every year, some 10,000 illegal kidney operations take place -- about 75 percent of the black market of all organs traded worldwide -- the Guardian reported Sunday, citing Dr. Luc Noel, a WHO official who monitors trends in human organ transplants.
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1932, A True History of the United States
"...while a nation goes speculation crazy the people neglect to think of fundamental principles."
These were the words of Franklin Roosevelt in the months leading into the Democratic National Convention of 1932. Roosevelt knew that the fight for the United States Presidency was not simply a game of political machines and punditry, but that this coming fight demanded a leader who understood the historic enemy of the United States and the founding principles of the nation.
US behind Russia plane crash: Russian military intelligence org.
Russia’s military intelligence organization (GRU) believes that Washington was behind the crash of a Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 plane in Indonesia earlier in May, which killed 45 passengers onboard.
“We know that they have special equipment that can cut communications between an aircraft and the ground or interfere with the parameters on board,” Christian Science Monitor quoted a GRU general as saying, without mentioning his name.
The Superjet, which was crucial to Russia's hopes of becoming a major player in the modern aviation market, took off from an airport in the capital Jakarta on May 9 on a demonstration flight, but it lost radio contact and vanished from radar screens 50 minutes later.
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