ChrisRRegan Chris Regan
Mike Huckabee's son hanged a stray dog at a boy scout camp in 1998 & carried a loaded gun onto a plane. Your move, Natalie Portman's foetus!
Melissa Ethridge - Bonsoir , Montreal 1994
2 hours ago
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Fallen Marine's father says anti-gay pickets will draw gunfire
A day after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Westboro Baptist Church's right to protest against homosexuality at military funerals, the fallen Marine's father, who unsuccessfully sued the controversial Kansas congregation, warned that the church's protests will eventually spark violence.
"Something is going to happen," Albert Snyder told CNN Thursday. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
"You have too many soldiers and Marines coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and they (the Westboro protesters) are going to go to the wrong funeral and the guns are going to go off."
"And when it does," Snyder said. "I just hope it doesn't hit the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother. It's inevitable."
In an 8-1 decision, the high court ruled Wednesday that Westboro Baptist Church has a First Amendment right to picket military funerals, no matter how "hurtful" the message may be. The decision ended Snyder's five-year court fight on behalf of his late son, Matthew, a Marine lance corporal killed in Iraq, whose funeral was picketed by Westboro church members.
Albert Snyder again slammed the high court justices for not having "the common sense that God gave a goat."
"The worst part of this," Snyder said, "is I know they are going to use that money to do this to other soldiers."
Snyder recalled his son's funeral.
"When my son died, I knew two days ahead of time that they were coming," Snyder said. "I had other children that I had to worry about that didn't know what was going on."
"Because of (the protesters') presence, I had police coming out of the woodwork, I had sheriffs. I had a SWAT team. I had emergency vehicles. I had media coming in," Snyder said. "All I wanted to do was have a private dignified funeral for my son.
"They turned it into a three-ring circus," Snyder said.
When asked what his next step will be, Snyder replied. "The thing that just hits me the hardest is all the hatred in this country."
"Something is going to happen," Albert Snyder told CNN Thursday. "Somebody is going to get hurt."
"You have too many soldiers and Marines coming back with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and they (the Westboro protesters) are going to go to the wrong funeral and the guns are going to go off."
"And when it does," Snyder said. "I just hope it doesn't hit the mother that's burying her child or the little girl that's burying her father or mother. It's inevitable."
In an 8-1 decision, the high court ruled Wednesday that Westboro Baptist Church has a First Amendment right to picket military funerals, no matter how "hurtful" the message may be. The decision ended Snyder's five-year court fight on behalf of his late son, Matthew, a Marine lance corporal killed in Iraq, whose funeral was picketed by Westboro church members.
Albert Snyder again slammed the high court justices for not having "the common sense that God gave a goat."
"I just can't believe that there was no common sense used in this decision," Snyder said.
Because of the ruling, Snyder will have to pay $116,000 in court costs to the Rev. Fred Phelps, the pastor of Westboro."The worst part of this," Snyder said, "is I know they are going to use that money to do this to other soldiers."
Snyder recalled his son's funeral.
"When my son died, I knew two days ahead of time that they were coming," Snyder said. "I had other children that I had to worry about that didn't know what was going on."
"Because of (the protesters') presence, I had police coming out of the woodwork, I had sheriffs. I had a SWAT team. I had emergency vehicles. I had media coming in," Snyder said. "All I wanted to do was have a private dignified funeral for my son.
"They turned it into a three-ring circus," Snyder said.
When asked what his next step will be, Snyder replied. "The thing that just hits me the hardest is all the hatred in this country."
"And I think if I wanted to look to what I'm going to do in the future, I feel like that maybe there's where I need to be," Snyder said, "to try do something with all the hatred that's in this country."
DJDMK - Dubstep vol 2
Download
1. Mstrkrft ft. John Legend - Heartbreaker (12th Planet Remix)
2. FunkyStepz ft. Lily McKenzie - For U (Dodge & Fuski Remix)
3. Dreadzone - Gangster (Trolley Snatcha Remix)
4. Kano ft. Michelle Breeze - Upside (Bar 9 Remix)
5. Kelly Rowland - Commander (True Tiger Remix)
6. 12th Planet & Juakali - Reasons (Doctor P remix)
7. Gorillaz - Doncamatic (feat. Daley) Joker Remix
8. Flux Pavilion - I Can't Stop
9. Kromestar - Jabber Jawz
10. Subscape - Mr Kipling
11. Toddla T ft Wayne Marshal - Sky Surfing (Benga Remix)
12. Doctor P Vs P Money - Sweet Shop (Come Follow Me)
13. Bare - Rocks
14. Noah D - That Hardcore Track
15. Liquid Stranger - Nucleor Bomb
16. Caspa - Marmite (Doctor P Remix)
17. Mojo - Pocket full Of rocks
18. Trolley Snatcha - Pass Me By
19. Diplo & Lil Jon - U Don't Like Me (Datsik Remix)
20. Freestylers - Cracks (Flux Pavilion Remix)
21. Subscape - Screw UP
22. P Money Feat Sukh Knight - Slang Like This
1. Mstrkrft ft. John Legend - Heartbreaker (12th Planet Remix)
2. FunkyStepz ft. Lily McKenzie - For U (Dodge & Fuski Remix)
3. Dreadzone - Gangster (Trolley Snatcha Remix)
4. Kano ft. Michelle Breeze - Upside (Bar 9 Remix)
5. Kelly Rowland - Commander (True Tiger Remix)
6. 12th Planet & Juakali - Reasons (Doctor P remix)
7. Gorillaz - Doncamatic (feat. Daley) Joker Remix
8. Flux Pavilion - I Can't Stop
9. Kromestar - Jabber Jawz
10. Subscape - Mr Kipling
11. Toddla T ft Wayne Marshal - Sky Surfing (Benga Remix)
12. Doctor P Vs P Money - Sweet Shop (Come Follow Me)
13. Bare - Rocks
14. Noah D - That Hardcore Track
15. Liquid Stranger - Nucleor Bomb
16. Caspa - Marmite (Doctor P Remix)
17. Mojo - Pocket full Of rocks
18. Trolley Snatcha - Pass Me By
19. Diplo & Lil Jon - U Don't Like Me (Datsik Remix)
20. Freestylers - Cracks (Flux Pavilion Remix)
21. Subscape - Screw UP
22. P Money Feat Sukh Knight - Slang Like This
&
Wisconsin class war in perspective: Walker’s false choice
Close to 200,000 working Wisconsinites have been given the following option by Gov. Scott Walker: If you want to keep your job, give up your rights. If you want to keep your rights, you’re going to be laid off.AMEN TO THAT.
This is downright un-American. The governor’s choice is a false one, manufactured for political reasons.
The real question, the one at the heart of our economic debate, is this: Do we continue down a path that delivers virtually all income growth to the richest 1% of Americans, or do we commit to rebuilding a thriving middle class?
We believe to address this question, it’s crucial that we sit down at the table together and find a way to grow without taking more away from the middle class.
The business climate couldn’t be stronger. Corporate profits reached an annualized level of $1.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, the highest figure since the government began keeping statistics 60 years ago.
But, as we’ve seen, high corporate profits aren’t enough to drive robust and equitable economic growth. Three years after the onset of this epic recession, unemployment is still near double digits, millions of Americans are facing home foreclosure, and wages have been stagnant. In our consumer-driven economy, that pulls down businesses as well as tax revenues. Our entire economy is weaker when we have the kind of income inequality that we have today.
The freedom of workers to come together to bargain for decent living standards, safe workplaces, and dignity on the job has been a cornerstone of building our middle class. It’s also recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This right ensures that there is sufficient spending power to drive the consumer demand, which makes up two-thirds of our GDP. And it benefits all Americans—not just those who are in unions.
It’s no secret that boosting corporate profits no longer translates into shared prosperity. Many private-sector companies have gone to extraordinary lengths in recent years to effectively eliminate the freedom of workers to come together to bargain to lift living standards. That’s one reason middle-class wages have stagnated since the 1970s, and why the U.S. is at risk of becoming an hourglass economy—one with all the income at the top and people at the bottom.
Sadly, a group of radical Republican governors is working overtime to export the most short-sighted private-sector labor practices into the public sector. Not only are they demanding steep cuts in wages and pensions for public workers, they also want to take away workplace rights, so that workers can no longer bargain for better compensation and benefits.
Their claim is that public workers have become parasites, busting state budgets with bloated wages and benefits at a terrible cost to taxpayers.
But average citizens have little interest in taking away workers’ rights. According to a CBS/New York Times survey, Americans support bargaining rights for public workers by a nearly two-to-one margin. Despite their best efforts, governors like Scott Walker haven’t convinced Americans that public workers are at fault for state budget woes.
Nor does economic research support their arguments. When adjusted for education, experience and training, the data show that public-sector workers are paid less than their private-sector counterparts. Right now, state and municipal budgets are in trouble primarily because of high unemployment, falling incomes, and losses in the stock market. Together, these lead to lower tax revenues and depleted pension funds.
It wasn’t teachers or firefighters or nurses who crashed the stock market and caused the recession that led to millions of layoffs and foreclosures. It was the so-called engine of our economy—Wall Street—which has suffered no consequence after nearly destroying the global financial system in 2008. Wall Street bonuses averaged over $128,000 per person in 2010, more than six times the average pension for a retired public-service worker in Wisconsin.
So here’s working America’s message to governors like Scott Walker and New Jersey’s Chris Christie: We believe in shared sacrifice. But we don’t believe in your version of shared sacrifice, where the wealthy and Wall Street reap all the benefits of economic growth, and working people do all the sacrificing.
We need to improve the climate for America’s middle class. We need tough rules to protect the health of workers and consumers, fair taxes on the super-rich to support decent public services, fair trade policies, and a 21st century approach to workplace rights, which recognizes that high-performance enterprises depend on making employees a part of the team.
That’s a recipe that can repair not only our budgets, but also our body politic.
But I do have just one question for the esteemed Mr.Trumka: “Where’s your buddy Obama?”
Richard Metzger @'Dangerous Minds'
Here we go again: Christians give voice to outrage over 'Salo'
Thanks to the work of a dedicated band of Christian activists led by the Liberal senator Julian McGauran, Salo has been banned in Australia for most of the last 36 years. A brief few years of release in the 1990s saw the reinvigoration of film censorship in Australia and the banning of Salo again for another dozen years.
Salo follows a group of young men and women abducted by fascists and subjected to rape, torture and death in an Italian palace. Described by the board as ''a serious study of corruption which accompanies the exercise of absolute power'', the film was released last year in a boxed set with ''additional documentary features'' that the board thought ''would mitigate the level of potential community offence''.
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Nevertheless, Senator McGaur- an and FamilyVoice Australia moved against the film again, this time in the courts. The barrister Anthony Tudehope accused the board of a long list of failings when judging the film, in particular the failure to separately identify and assess elements of violence, cruelty and fetishes - even bestiality, though Salo contains no congress with animals. But the controversy surrounding Salo has been the age of the victims and the actors playing them. Along with a minority of the Classification Review Board, Mr Tudehope argued they are children being subjected to child sexual abuse, which was ''simply not acceptable'', he told the court.
But that was not the view of a majority of the board, which found Pasolini's victims ''clearly sexually mature'' and that their fate at the hands of the fascists would not offend reasonable adults given the ''context, purpose and stylised, detached cinematic techniques'' of the film.
The solicitor Nick Gouliaditis denied any failures of process in Salo's release. He told the court that assessing the merits of a film required ''highly subjective'' judgments which ''the Classification Review Board has been entrusted to make''.
Justice Margaret Stone has reserved her decision.
David Marr @'SMH'
John Waters On Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Bradley Manning and the stench of US hypocrisy
Earlier this week, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of confidential documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, was handed an additional 22 charges as part of his ongoing court martial process. The 23-year-old, who has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months, stands accused of computer fraud, theft of public records and willfully communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it. He now also finds himself faced with a rare charge known as "aiding the enemy" – a capital offence for which he could face the death penalty.
The revelation will no doubt have come as a blow to Manning, although given his ongoing treatment it is likely he already feared the worst. Made to endure strict conditions under a prevention of injury order against the advice of military psychiatrists, he is treated like no other prisoner at the 250-capacity Quantico Brig detention facility in Virginia. Despite that he is yet to be convicted of any crime, for the past 218 consecutive days he has been made to live in a cell 6ft wide and 12ft long, without contact with any other detainees. He is not allowed to exercise or have personal effects in his cell, and for the one hour each day he is allowed free from his windowless cell he is taken to an empty room where he is allowed to walk, but not run.
One of the few people to have visited Manning, David House, spoke yesterday of how he had witnessed his friend go from a "bright-eyed intelligent young man" to someone who at times has appeared "catatonic" with "very high difficulty carrying on day to day conversation". House drew similarities with the case of Bobby Dellelo, an American prisoner who developed psychosis after a lengthy period in solitary confinement conditions similar to Manning's. "For me this has been like watching a really good friend succumb to an illness or something," he said. "I think that Bradley Manning is being punished this way because the US government wants him to crack ahead of his trial."
While there has been widespread and well publicised condemnation of issues surrounding Manning's detainment, his conditions have failed to improve. In fact, things may have got worse, not better, for the Oklahoma-born soldier who is incidentally entitled to UK citizenship through his Welsh mother. Just two days ago, for instance, only 24 hours after having been told he now faces a capital charge, Manning was made to strip naked in his cell for no apparent reason. According to David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, the soldier was then left without clothes for seven hours. When the wake-up call sounded for the detainees at 5am, in an act of forced humiliation, Manning was made to stand naked at the front of his cell.
The incident, described as "inexcusable and without justification" by Coombs, is symbolic of the entire twisted saga: a gross injustice on a nauseating scale. We must bear in mind, of course, that Manning allegedly leaked military files because he, according to unverified internet chat logs, saw wrongdoing and had no other course of action because his superiors told him they "didn't want to hear any of it". He did not want to be complicit in war crimes, and felt that by leaking the files he could prompt "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms".
In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.
"Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," said Barack Obama in 2008. But the stench of his hypocrisy is no longer bearable. It is time, now more than ever, that Bradley Manning received the justice he so clearly deserves.
Ryan Gallagher @'The Guardian'
The revelation will no doubt have come as a blow to Manning, although given his ongoing treatment it is likely he already feared the worst. Made to endure strict conditions under a prevention of injury order against the advice of military psychiatrists, he is treated like no other prisoner at the 250-capacity Quantico Brig detention facility in Virginia. Despite that he is yet to be convicted of any crime, for the past 218 consecutive days he has been made to live in a cell 6ft wide and 12ft long, without contact with any other detainees. He is not allowed to exercise or have personal effects in his cell, and for the one hour each day he is allowed free from his windowless cell he is taken to an empty room where he is allowed to walk, but not run.
One of the few people to have visited Manning, David House, spoke yesterday of how he had witnessed his friend go from a "bright-eyed intelligent young man" to someone who at times has appeared "catatonic" with "very high difficulty carrying on day to day conversation". House drew similarities with the case of Bobby Dellelo, an American prisoner who developed psychosis after a lengthy period in solitary confinement conditions similar to Manning's. "For me this has been like watching a really good friend succumb to an illness or something," he said. "I think that Bradley Manning is being punished this way because the US government wants him to crack ahead of his trial."
While there has been widespread and well publicised condemnation of issues surrounding Manning's detainment, his conditions have failed to improve. In fact, things may have got worse, not better, for the Oklahoma-born soldier who is incidentally entitled to UK citizenship through his Welsh mother. Just two days ago, for instance, only 24 hours after having been told he now faces a capital charge, Manning was made to strip naked in his cell for no apparent reason. According to David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, the soldier was then left without clothes for seven hours. When the wake-up call sounded for the detainees at 5am, in an act of forced humiliation, Manning was made to stand naked at the front of his cell.
The incident, described as "inexcusable and without justification" by Coombs, is symbolic of the entire twisted saga: a gross injustice on a nauseating scale. We must bear in mind, of course, that Manning allegedly leaked military files because he, according to unverified internet chat logs, saw wrongdoing and had no other course of action because his superiors told him they "didn't want to hear any of it". He did not want to be complicit in war crimes, and felt that by leaking the files he could prompt "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms".
In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.
"Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," said Barack Obama in 2008. But the stench of his hypocrisy is no longer bearable. It is time, now more than ever, that Bradley Manning received the justice he so clearly deserves.
Ryan Gallagher @'The Guardian'
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