New Social Justice Index Places U.S. Near Bottom
Australia not too hot either...
The Jam: Live At Rockpalast 1980
3 hours ago
Friday 28 October 2011
Gaddafi killer faces prosecution, says Libyan interim government
Libya's interim government says it will prosecute anyone found responsible for the death of Muammar Gaddafi after his capture, in a retreat from its earlier insistence that the dictator had been killed by crossfire.
The change in position comes after a week of sustained criticism of the Libyan leader's captors, who used their camera phones to chronicle his death. The footage, including images of a wounded Gaddafi being sodomised with what looked like a bayonet, caused widespread revulsion outside the country.
Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, deputy chief of the National Transitional Council, said it would try to bring to justice anyone proven to have fired the shot to the head that killed Gaddafi.
"With regards to Gaddafi, we do not wait for anybody to tell us," he told the al-Arabiya satellite channel. "We had already launched an investigation. We have issued a code of ethics in handling of prisoners of war. I am sure that was an individual act and not an act of revolutionaries or the national army. Whoever is responsible for that [Gaddafi's killing] will be judged and given a fair trial."
Attempts to launch an investigation are unlikely to be welcomed in Misrata, where the rebels who captured Gaddafi in his home town of Sirte are based. Asked this week about the questions surrounding his death by people outside Libya, Misrata's military chief, Ibrahim Beit al-Mal, said: "Why are they even asking this question? He was caught and he was killed. Would he have given us the same? Of course."
Talk of an inquest was being seen by Misrata officials as an attempt by the Benghazi-dominated NTC to claim prominence in post-Gaddafi affairs.
"Everybody knows who caught him and who fought the most during the past nine months," an official said. "It was us. It was no one else."
The identity of the man who allegedly pulled his 9mm pistol from his waistband and shot the wounded dictator in the left temple around 20 minutes after his capture is widely known in Misrata, as is the unit he belonged to, the Katiba Ghoran.
"They won't come near us," said the rebel who pulled Gaddafi from a drain last Thursday. "They won't dare. Gaddafi was saying: 'What's this, what's this?' After nine months of blood, he was saying: 'What's this?'. What does he expect?"
There is little sympathy on the streets of Misrata for Gaddafi's violent end, despite the troubling images and his rotting body being publicly displayed for the next four days.
Meanwhile, Gaddafi son and former heir apparent Saif al-Islam is thought to be in southern Libya approaching the Niger border, where Nigerien officials believe he is planning to join his brother Saadi and the former regime's spy chief Abdullah Senussi in exile.
The NTC maintains that Saif al-Islam is interested in handing himself in to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant against him and Senussi. The court in The Hague says it has had no contact from Libya.
The United Nations on Thursday said it would terminatethe Nato mandate enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya at the end of October, formally ending an eight-month blockade of the country's skies and military operations on the ground. The NTC had earlier asked for operations to continue until the end of the year.
"This marks a really important milestone in the transition in Libya," Britain's ambassador to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant, said. "It marks the way from the military phase towards the formation of an inclusive government, the full participation of all sectors of society, and for the Libyan people to choose their own future."
The security council said it looked forward "to the swift establishment of an inclusive, representative transitional government of Libya" committed to democracy, good governance, rule of law, national reconciliation and respect for human rights.
It strongly urged Libyan authorities "to refrain from reprisals", to take measures to prevent others from carrying out reprisals, and to protect the population, "including foreign nationals and African migrants"
Martin Chulov @'The Guardian'
Victoria has banned the bong
The elements of the bill
The new bill has made it an offence for retailers from displaying and selling any implement which can be used to inhale cannabis, whether it is a cannabis water pipe or bong kits, or any other components which allows a person to consume marijuana.
Anyone found to be in breach of the new laws will find themselves being hit in the hip pocket. So for instance, any natural person who is found to be displaying or selling a bong, a bong kit, or any other associated components, will face a maximum fine of $7,167, while a body corporate can be fined up to $35,835. Ouch.
Additionally, the bill has also limited the sale of hookahs, although there is no outright ban of the smoking implement being sold in Victoria. Instead, shops are limited to displaying no more than three hookahs, and any person who is found to be selling more than the proscribed amount, can face a maximum fine of $1,194.50, while a body corporate that is found guilty, may be fined a maximum of $5,972.50. We here at FindLaw cannot help but wonder as to how big the demand is of hookahs if a retail owner feels compelled to display more than the allowable amount, anyway.
We should conclude this piece with one of the more interesting aspects of the bill, which requires the police to return any seized items under this Part, and must take reasonable steps to return the items to the lawful owner – either once the reason for seizure of the item no longer exists, or within three months after seizure of the item. However, the caveat is that no proceedings have commenced or has not yet been completed, or a Magistrates’ Court has issued an order extending the retention period. Although, we should point out, that the Court may order that the bong or any other associated component can be destroyed if a person has been found guilty of an offence against the related section.
@'FindLaw'
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Wall Street Firms Spy on Protesters in Tax-Funded Center
According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”
At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.
The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.
In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on facial features. The center is also equipped with live feeds from license plate readers...
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Pam Martens @'Counterpunch'
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