zaterdag 25 april 2015

The Lie We Live




The Lie We Live

  
7,115,043
Published on Jan 27, 2015
Exposing the truth about our corrupt world. My name is Spencer Cathcart and this is a short film I made & wrote. If you'd like to see more videos I'd appreciate if you subscribed. 

Boat Refugees 5

People Across Europe Protest Inhumane Immigration Policy


By teleSUR
25 April 15

Citizens demand their leaders do more to help immigrants and refugees.

fter nearly 900 people drowned in the Mediterranean on Sunday trying to reach Europe from Libya, European leaders have finally decided that the looming migration crisis should be taken seriously. 
In an emergency summit in Brussels Thursday, leaders finally agreed to invest more money into marine search and rescue operations – what some nations, particularly Britain and Germany, have been reluctant to do, saying it would only “encourage” more migration to the continent. 
For months, however, citizens across Europe have taken to the streets and spoken out in various ways, demanding that their leaders do more for the thousands of migrants dying at sea. In 2014 alone, 3,000 people drowned in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe, while an additional 1,600 have lost their lives since January of this year alone – a number 30 times higher than the same period last year. 
Though most of the mainstream media has not picked up on these acts of civilian protest, they can be seen on social media through various hashtags like #WelcomeRefugees, #refugeecrisis, #dontletthemdrowm, #SOSEurope, #migrantlivesmatter, #jesuismigrant, #migrantcrisis, among others.
RELATED: How Europe Created Its Own Refugee Crisis

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. 

Selling Hillary Clinton 22


Sonja heeft een nieuwe reactie op je bericht "Selling Hillary Clinton 21" achtergelaten: 

"Ik reconstrueer een werkelijkheid op basis van het relaas van ongeveer tachtig personen en vele andere bronnen. Onvermijdelijk stoot je dan op mythes en halve waarheden. Een daarvan is dat de loterij is opgericht voor de goede doelen; de loterij is in eerste instantie opgericht om een eigen probleem op te lossen, namelijk het jaarlijkse tekort bij het persbureau IPS waar Boudewijn directeur van was. Overigens zegt hij zelf dat IPS een goed doel was, het was een persbureau voor en door de Derde Wereld dat gesteund werd door onder andere Buitenlandse Zaken."
http://media.thepostonline.nl/2015/04/10/postcode-loterij-basis-voor-fortuin-joop-van-den-ende/ 

Sonja heeft een nieuwe reactie op je bericht "Selling Hillary Clinton 21" achtergelaten: 

"Ik reconstrueer een werkelijkheid op basis van het relaas van ongeveer tachtig personen en vele andere bronnen. Onvermijdelijk stoot je dan op mythes en halve waarheden. Een daarvan is dat de loterij is opgericht voor de goede doelen; de loterij is in eerste instantie opgericht om een eigen probleem op te lossen, namelijk het jaarlijkse tekort bij het persbureau IPS waar Boudewijn directeur van was. Overigens zegt hij zelf dat IPS een goed doel was, het was een persbureau voor en door de Derde Wereld dat gesteund werd door onder andere Buitenlandse Zaken."
http://media.thepostonline.nl/2015/04/10/postcode-loterij-basis-voor-fortuin-joop-van-den-ende/ 



Glenn Greenwald 43

THE KEY WAR ON TERROR PROPAGANDA TOOL: ONLY WESTERN VICTIMS ARE ACKNOWLEDGED

Featured photo - The Key War on Terror Propaganda Tool: Only Western Victims Are Acknowledged
In all the years I’ve been writing about Obama’s drone killings, yesterday featured by far the most widespread critical discussion in U.S. establishment journalism circles. This long-suppressed but crucial fact about drones was actually trumpeted as the lead headline on the front page of The New York Times yesterday:
The reason for the unusually intense, largely critical coverage of drone killings yesterday is obvious: the victims of this strike were Western and non-Muslim, and therefore were seen as actually human.
Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents 150 victims of American drones and was twice denied entry to the U.S. to speak about them, told my Intercept colleague Ryan Devereaux how two of his child clients would likely react to Obama’s “apology” yesterday:
“Today, if Nabila or Zubair or many of the civilian victims, if they are watching on TV the president being so remorseful over the killing of a Westerner, what message is that taking?” The answer, he argued, is “that you do not matter, you are children of a lesser God, and I’m only going to mourn if a Westerner is killed.”
The British-Yemeni journalist Abubakr Al-Shamahi put it succinctly: “It makes me angry that non-Western civilian victims of drone strikes are not given the same recognition by the US administration.” The independent journalist Naheed Mustafa said she was “hugely irritated by the ‘drone strikes have killed good Westerners so now we know there are issues with drones’ stories.” The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson this morning observed: “It is all too easy to ignore … the dubious morality of the whole enterprise — until the unfortunate victims happen to be Westerners. Only then does ‘collateral damage’ become big news and an occasion for public sorrow.”
This highlights the ugliest propaganda tactic on which the War on Terror centrally depends, one in which the U.S. media is fully complicit: American and Western victims of violence by Muslims are endlessly mourned, while Muslim victims of American and Western violence are completely disappeared.
When there is an attack by a Muslim on Westerners in Paris, Sydney, Ottawa, Fort Hood or Boston, we are deluged with grief-inducing accounts of the victims. We learn their names and their extinguished life aspirations, see their pictures, hear from their grieving relatives, watch ceremonies honoring their lives and mourning their deaths, launch campaigns to memorialize them. Our side’s victims aren’t just humanized by our media, but are publicly grieved as martyrs.
I happened to be in Canada the week of the shooting at the Parliament in Ottawa, as well as a random attack on two Canadian soldiers days earlier in a parking lot in Southern Quebec, and there was non-stop media coverage of the victims, their families, their lives:
Thousands of mourners packed a church and lined adjacent streets in industrial Hamilton, Ontario, on Tuesday for the funeral of the soldier shot dead in last week’s attack on the nation’s seat of government. … Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told mourners at the church that [Corporal Nathan] Cirillo had inspired and united Canadians. He choked back tears in a rare public display of emotion when addressing Cirillo’s five-year-old son.
AP380678152849
The coffin of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, Oct. 28, 2004. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press/AP)
But as I noted in a speech I gave in Ottawa two days after the Parliament shooting, the victims of Canada’s own violence — in Afghanistan and Iraq — and of its sustained cooperation in the U.S. War on Terror campaign, are completely ignored. While all of Canada knew the name of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, only the most minute fraction of Canadians could name even a single one of the many innocent victims killed by their own government and military. They simply don’t exist.
This is the toxic tribalism that repeats itself over and over throughout the West. Western victims are mourned and humanized, while victims of Western violence are invisible and thus dehumanized. Aside from being repugnant in its own right, this formula, by design, is deeply deceptive as propaganda: It creates the impression among Western populations that we are the victims but not the perpetrators of heinous violence, that terrorism is something done to us but that we never commit ourselves, that “primitive, radical and inhumanely violent” describes the enemy tribe but not our own. (It’s the same tactic that explains why we hear so much about American journalists imprisoned in adversary nations such as Iran and North Korea, but almost nothing about Muslim journalists imprisoned for years without charges by the U.S. government, thus deliberately creating the false impression that only those Bad Countries, but not us, do this.)
To see how systematically the U.S. dehumanizes foreign Muslims, just think about that above-posted New York Times drone headline. The full headline is even more descriptive:
This “uncomfortable truth” has been obvious for so long. So often, the U.S. government shoots missiles at buildings, cars and homes outside of “battlefields” without having any idea who it will kill. Despite this fact — that not even the government itself knows who it is killing — the U.S. media routinely and reflexively describes victims of U.S. drone strikes as “militants.” Democrats and progressives, who to their eternal disgrace overwhelmingly support Obama’s drone killing program, will declare “we are killing The Terrorists!” to justify all of this even though the Obama administration itself, let alone these cheering progressives, have no idea who their government just killed.
How can people killed by the U.S. government regularly be described as “militants” or “terrorists” when nobody has any idea who they are? Part of it is classic authoritarianism: My government says the people they are killing are Terrorists, so therefore, they are Terrorists.
But the deeper, more troubling answer is equally clear: Foreign Muslims are so dehumanized, so invisible, that they are just equated with Evil Threats even when nothing is known about them. Indeed, Obama officially re-defined the term “combatant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.” In other words, as The New York Times reported in 2011, all males between 18 and (roughly) 54 killed by U.S. drones are presumed to be combatants — terrorists — “unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” That mentality is the ultimate in dehumanization.
There are so many heinous stories of U.S. drones blowing up children and innocent adults. Obama used cruise missiles and cluster bombs to kill 14 children and 21 women in a Yemeni village (weeks after winning the Nobel Peace Prize), while a 2012 drone strike attacked a Yemeni wedding convoy and “killed 12 passengers in the vehicle, including three children and a pregnant woman.” Except for those who watch shows like Democracy Now or certain Al Jazeera shows, virtually no Americans ever learn the name of any of those victims, or even hear that they exist at all.
It shouldn’t take the drone-killing of an American citizen to enable a mainstream discussion of how much deceit and recklessness drives these killings. But it does. And that fact, by itself, should cause a serious examination of the mindset behind all of this.
Photo of Mustafa Qadri, a Pakistan researcher at Amnesty International (Susan Walsh/AP) 

Crimes Egyptian Regime

Dutch Lawsuit Charges Crimes Against Humanity During Egyptian Massacres

Global Research, April 23, 2015
the-minister-of-interior-mohamed-ibrahim-egypte-e
On July 3, 2013, the Egyptian military staged a coup d’etat and deposed the democratically elected government of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thousands of Egyptians staged demonstrations throughout Egypt to show support for Morsi.

One month later, the Egyptian army and police carried out several massacres in Cairo, killing hundreds of unarmed protesters. Authorities mounted a military response to largely peaceful protests by supporters of the Brotherhood against the illegitimate Egyptian government. Although aimed primarily at the Brotherhood, the crackdown included other political opposition groups and individuals.
Four Dutch citizens of Egyptian origin, who were present during three of the most brutal massacres in summer 2013, filed a petition in the Netherlands that charged Egyptian Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim with crimes against humanity. In September 2014, the Dutch law firm of Seebregts & Saey submitted a formal request to the Dutch prosecutor to prosecute Ibrahim. Dutch criminal courts have jurisdiction under the International Crimes Act when a Dutch national has been the victim of a crime. Due to head of state immunity, the lawsuit did not name Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who ordered the Rab’a massacre when he was Defense Minister.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) undertook a one-year investigation into the conduct of security forces responding to the demonstrations. In its report titled “All According to Plan: The Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt,” HRW concluded, “police and army forces systematically and intentionally used excessive lethal force in their policing, resulting in killings of protesters on a scale unprecedented in Egypt.” HRW also determined
“the killings not only constituted serious violations of international human rights law, but likely amounted to crimes against humanity, given both their widespread and systematic nature and the evidence suggesting the killings were part of a policy to attack unarmed persons on political grounds.”
Although HRW was able to confirm that some protesters used firearms in a few instances, they did not justify “the grossly disproportionate and premeditated lethal attacks on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters.”
The Rab’a Massacre
There were over 20,000 protesters in Rab’a Square. In what HRW called “the gravest incident of mass protester killings,” Egyptian police, snipers and military personnel opened fire on unarmed demonstrators on August 14, 2013, “killing at least 817 and likely more than 1,000.” Security forces used live ammunition “with hundreds killed by bullets to their heads, necks, and chests.” Snipers fired from helicopters over Rab’a Square.
“Much of the shooting by police appears to have been indiscriminate,” HRW found, “openly firing in the general direction of crowds of demonstrators instead of targeting armed protester gunmen who may have posed a serious threat.”
The Rab’a mosque, which served as a refuge, particularly for women and children, “held so many corpses that it felt like it ‘had turned into a cemetery,’” one protester told HRW. An 18-year-old boy came into the hospital and said his stomach hurt. A doctor noted, “I looked down and his intestines were all out. He had taken several bullets and [later] died.” The doctor also reported that another person “took a bullet in the face, causing his face to open and tongue to fall out . . . He spent 40 minutes looking at me and gesturing for help, but I couldn’t do anything. Surgery was not possible.”
The deaths “amounted to collective punishment of the overwhelming majority of peaceful protesters,” HRW concluded.
One of the petitioners, who was present at the demonstration, was not wounded but people on his left and right were being shot. He was also present when the authorities set fire to the hospital on Rab’a Square, killing about 300 patients who were not able to leave.
Republican Guard Square
On July 7, 2013, about 2,000 Brotherhood supporters began a peaceful sit-in. Shortly before dawn on July 8, police and army units opened fire, targeting those in the protest and others emerging from prayers at the mosque. Authorities killed 61 protesters with live ammunition and injured 435. Most suffered gunshots to the head, neck and chest.
One of the petitioners was hit by a bullet, but survived.
Manassa Memorial
At least 95 protesters were killed on July 27, 2013. A field hospital doctor reported, “From 2 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. it was a steady stream; the bodies kept coming. Most had gunshot wounds in the head, neck or chest. The hospital was overflowing; we were completely over capacity.” Another field house doctor told HRW: “All of the dead were either dead on arrival or died immediately after they arrived, because of where they were hit; if you’re hit in the head or chest, you won’t last very long. The entire hospital floor was covered with injured people. It was beyond imagination.”
The two petitioners who were present at this demonstration were not wounded but were in danger of being hit. Others a short distance away were hit by bullets.
Crimes Against Humanity
Dutch law provides for sentences up to life in prison for convictions of crimes against humanity. The crime is defined as intentional killing or other inhumane acts of a comparable nature which intentionally cause severe suffering or severe physical or psychological damage, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population pursuant to State policy.
HRW found that “security forces systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds . . . in a widespread manner, resulting in the deaths of over 1,150 protesters, in July and August of 2013.”
HRW further concluded, “[t]he manner in which security forces used force to disperse protests appears to reflect policies set by the Egyptian government.” In fact, “the government anticipated and planned for the deaths of several thousand protesters.”
The Rab’a massacre was “executed pursuant to a plan formulated by the Interior Ministry and approved by the Cabinet and National Defense Council after three weeks of preparation,” HRW determined, citing statements of Ibrahim that he anticipated the dispersal would kill large numbers of demonstrators.
Ibrahim made public statements revealing he knew beforehand that many people would die during the police and military actions to end the demonstrations. The day after the Rab’a massacre, Ibrahim said “the dispersal plan succeeded 100 percent,” indicating that it adhered to a plan that had been put in place.
In a televised interview on August 31, 2013, Ibrahim confirmed that the Interior Ministry expected losses of “10 percent of the people,” adding, “you will find thousands lost from their side.”
“Abject politicization of justice’
HRW learned that “[s]ecurity forces detained over 800 protesters on August 14, 2013, some of whom they beat, tortured and in some cases summarily executed.”
On April 11, 2015, 51 Brotherhood supporters were convicted in a mass trial, based on the testimony of a single police officer. HRW said the evidence presented at the trial demonstrated that the men were disseminating news about and organizing peaceful protests in opposition to the military coup and removal of Morsi. Fourteen of the defendants were sentenced to death and the other 37 were given life sentences. According to Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director of HRW, “The fact that people who covered and publicized the mass killings in 2013 could go to prison for life or be executed while the killers walk free captures the abject politicization of justice in Egypt.”
Morsi was convicted of charges including incitement to violence and torture from 2012 demonstrations that resulted in the deaths of 10 people outside the presidential palace. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Dutch lawsuit
The case against Ibrahim is under consideration by the Dutch prosecutor’s office. Should the prosecutor refuse to prosecute Ibrahim, the petitioners can request that the superior court in The Hague order the prosecutor to prosecute.
There has been no legal accountability for the massacres conducted by the Egyptian military government against the largely peaceful protesters. If high government officials in Egypt are permitted to commit crimes against humanity with impunity, it will encourage similar actions in the future – both in Egypt and elsewhere. Since there is little prospect for justice in Egypt itself, the Dutch lawsuit may be the only vehicle for accountability for these most serious crimes.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”



White Minority

So You're About To Become A Minority...

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, white people have another 30 years to enjoy being America's majority race. But come 2045, the white population will make up less than 50 percent of the American population for the first time ever.
So what's a privileged white person to do? Luckily for Caucasians everywhere, "The HuffPost Show" put together a helpful guide to ease the white transition into life as a minority. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/so-youre-about-to-become-a-minority_553011f0e4b04ebb92325daf



Wall Street Parasites

Cities and States Pay Massive Secret Fees to Wall Street 

Posted on Apr 24, 2015
By David Sirota

Drongowski (CC BY 2.0)
California’s report said $440 million. New Jersey’s said $600 million. In Pennsylvania, the tally is $700 million. Those Wall Street fees paid by public workers’ pension systems have kicked off an intensifying debate over whether such expenses are necessary. Now, a report from an industry-friendly source says those huge levies represent only a fraction of the true amounts being raked in by Wall Street firms from state and local governments.
“Less than one-half of the very substantial [private equity] costs incurred by U.S. pension funds are currently being disclosed,” says the report from CEM, whose website says the financial analysis firm “serve(s) over 350 blue-chip corporate and government clients worldwide.”
Currently, about 9 percent—or $270 billion—of America’s $3 trillion public pension fund assets are invested in private equity firms. With the financial industry’s standard 2 percent management fee, that quarter-trillion dollars generates roughly $5.4 billion in annual management fees for the private equity industry—and that’s not including additional “performance” fees paid on investment returns. If CEM’s calculations are applied uniformly, it could mean taxpayers and retirees may actually be paying double—more than $10 billion a year.
Public officials are overseeing this massive payout to Wall Street at the very moment many of those same officials are demanding big cuts to retirees’ promised pension benefits.
“With billions of public worker and taxpayer dollars put at risk in the highest-cost, most opaque investment schemes ever devised by Wall Street for a decade now, investigations that hold Wall Street profiteers accountable are long, long overdue,” said former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Ted Siedle.
Private equity firms have argued that their fees are worth the expense, because they supposedly deliver returns for investors that beat low-fee index funds, which track the broader stock market. But those private equity returns are typically self-reported by the firms over the life of those longer-term investments, meaning there are few ways to verify whether the returns are real. Indeed, a recent study from George Washington University argued that private equity firms are using their self-reporting authority to mislead investors into believing their returns are smoother and more consistent than they actually are.
In a 2014 speech, the SEC’s top examiner, Andrew Bowden, sounded the alarm about undisclosed fees in the private equity industry, saying the agency had discovered “violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time” at firms it had evaluated.
To date, however, the SEC has taken few actions to crack down on the practices, but some states are starting to step up their oversight.
In New Jersey, for instance, pension trustees announced a formal investigation of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration after evidence surfaced suggesting that the Republican administration has not been disclosing all state pension fees paid to financial firms.
In Rhode Island, the new state treasurer, Seth Magaziner, a Democrat, recently published a review of all the fees that state’s beleaguered pension fund has paid. The analysis revealed that the former financial firm of Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo is charging the state’s pension fund the highest fee rate of any firm in its asset class.
In Pennsylvania, the new Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf used his first budget address to call for the state “to stop excessive fees to Wall Street managers.”
These moves are shining a spotlight on one of the most lucrative yet little-noticed Wall Street schemes. With so much money at issue - and with pensioners retirement income on the line—that scrutiny is long overdue.

David Sirota is a senior writer for the International Business Times and the best-selling author of the books “Hostile Takeover,” “The Uprising” and “Back to Our Future.” Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/cities_states_pay_massive_secret_fees_to_wall_street_20150424




Nederlands Palestina Komitee



NPK-info - 25 april 2015
Nederlands Palestina Komitee - www.palestina-komitee.nl
25 april 2015

Op 1 en 5 mei Wake voor Palestina in onder andere Amsterdam (Spui) en Haarlem
1 mei  Oproep om mondiale solidariteit te tonen in Amsterdam , Den Haag, Nijmegen , Rotterdam demonstratie
Woensdag 29 april tot 5 mei Amsterdam ‘Dancing on the Edge’  in de Balie over de politieke verantwoordelijkheid van de kunstenaar ten aanzien van ‘het conflict’: ‘What has art got to do with it?’
Dinsdag 5 tot 7 mei Amsterdam Herengracht 603 : Optredens, discussie en expositie van het Freedom Theatre uit Jenin
Zaterdagmiddag 9 mei 14 tot 16.30 uur Amsterdam De Balie  Nakba-bijeenkomst met Ramzy Baroud   
Ontmoet-Palestina reizen  (28 juli 2015 t/m 5 aug 2015  en   7 aug 2015 t/m 15 aug 2015)             
VOOR  EXACTE DATA, LOCATIE, TOEGANG zie   http://www.palestina-komitee.nl/agenda
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
ACTIE 
Petitie van Amnesty: eerst mensen dan grenzen
Petitie aan de VN 
Samidoun vraagt u de petitie voor vrijlating van Khalida Jarrar te tekenen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEESTIPS
Ramzy Baroud
-Stemmen uit de gevangenis
-De langzame zuivering in Bezet Oost--Jeruzalem
-Via www.propal.nl  of www.dutchturks.nl zijn deze kuffiya’s te bestellen:
-Ook in Palestina wordt de Armeense genocide herdacht en binnenkort herdenken ook zij de Nakba
-On Palestine
-De etikettering 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEO
film by Eran Torbiner | Nabi Samwil 1099-2099, depicting the story of the village is now occupied and surrounded by a fence, cut-off from Jerusalem and the West Bank.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DAGELIJKSE SITUATIE 



De Holocaust Is Geen Rechtvaardiging meer Voor Joodse Nazi's

Eitan Bronstein, bezig de geschiedenis van straten, wijken en steden terug te geven aan Palestijnen en daarmee aan de Joden in Israël. . Zev...