Zapatismos

"When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real."

-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Alleged ballot box stuffing filmed at Russian polling station

A web camera video appears to show several men feeding dozens of ballot papers into an electronic ballot box at a polling station in the Russian province of Dagestan amid claims of widespread election fraud in the country's presidential elections.

4:08PM GMT 05 Mar 2012 - The Telegraph.co.uk



Numerous videos of the incident taken from the official polling station web cam have been posted online.

The Russian Central Elections Commission said it had cancelled the results from the polling station in the Tarumov district but denied any electoral fraud, instead blaming officials of mistakes.

"This was not a case of ballot stuffing, it was a mistake, a fateful error of the district election officials," the country's Central Elections Commission Chairman, Vladimir Churov said.

Mr Churov explained that officals had added postal votes to the electronic ballot machines before the polling station had closed and counting had started.

Vassilis Palaiokostas letter to the media
31/01/2010 rioter.info

Vassilis Palaiokostas is on the run, after his escape with a helicopter from Korydallos prison, on Feb. 22/2009, accused for robbing banks and kidnapping industrialists. It is worth to say, he has never harmed human life, not even cop lives to avoid an arrest.

“On the occasion of the upcoming jury on the kidnapping of the industrialist G. Mylonas, that begins on Tuesday February 2, I would like to clarify certain issues.

Through different periods of my life I have been a first line fugitive, nearly 12 years in total an escapee (I hope there’s more of that coming) and 8 years a prisoner.

All those years that I had been and even now that Iam still hunted by the official state, there wasn’t found even one snitch to deliver me to the hands of my prosecutors. Even though, during my first escape, in August 1991, there was also a large reward for that, from the -generous to snitches- Greek state. On the contrary, I met people with troth, honor in their words, and dignity. People that opened their door for me, provided cover and help, often without even minding the risk they took for themselves. People that helped me in hard times for me (as in a prison escape) endangering their own lives, people that prove that in this country there aren’t only resigned, submissive fellows, but also many (so many I am surprised) people that honor the traditions of honor and solidarity to the hunted. Pride people that despise snitching, servitude and the constable.

I publicly express my gratitude to all those remarkable persons for their valuable help and for giving me the joy of having met them.

Two of them are Vaggelis Chrisohoides and Polys Georgiades, each one of them stood by me in his own way, at the time I needed them, without expecting personal gains, but only acted upon their conscience.

Declaring my solidarity to this two young men, the state strangles everyday knowing their only “crime” was their solidarity to the hunted, I would expect to see for once the magnitude the Republic of Greece takes prides in. Because for its petiness, I consider myself more than competent to describe: It’s an Abyss.

I will say nothing more. I only adress to those that care to retain some pleas of justice and dignity. And everyone should do what his sense of honor and his conscience tells him to do.

On 4/14/09, afternoon around 20:00 while driving on the central coastal road of Alepohori, suddenly three cars blocked my way and another two stuck on the back of my own car. Among them was a black Audi A4, a Peugot Rally and an Opel Athens Taxi. Each one of them with three persons (15 in total), all in plain clothes. All of them got instantaneously out, pointing at me, the drivers with H&K MP5 sub-machine guns with double cartridge, nad the other with Glock and H&K U.S.P semi-automatic handguns. I instantly understood these armed mercenaries of the Greek state where on a prowl for blood.

This same moment on my right, through an invisible from the main road, alley, comes another car with the driver standing aghast and stopping on the crossroad with the main road. Without second though I turned the wheels right and let it rip. Slightly hitting the other car (given the alley could barely take my jeap), I got right in the alley without knowing where it gets to. From my initial speeding to getting 20-30 meters in the alley, bullets where dancing on my car’s cabin. Those guys opened fire with their machine guns and handguns aiming right at me (the only thing undamaged was my car’s tires).

From my μeasurable experience in intense conditions, I am more than certain that they shot more than 150 bullets in 15 seconds (the whole scene didn’t last any longer). Most probably, some of them also found the unwary civilian’s car, while he was inside it.

These unscrupulous, blind shooters of EL.AS [transl: the Greek police] where determined to carry out fully the order they had take from their natural and political leaders. Find and kill.

In this case, they can blame their bad luck, since luck is female and cares for the daring. [transl. see latin: "Fortuna Favet Fortubus"]

The reason I refer to this incident is to show the contemptible way the Mass Media report such cases. The car I was riding and left 100 meters from the scene, because the alley was a dead-end, was full of bullets. This fact was not reported and the car never appeared anywhere, it magically disappeared. Just like the other car (hit and possibly with bullet holes), together with its misfortunate owner, the only witness that actually took part in the scene, withous his will ofcourse, watching the whole thing from the begining to the end.

So, instead of inquiring all these important facts to show what exactly happened in that scene, the daring and ingenious reporters of the Greek Mass Media gathered inside the room I was living in, and in exclusive reporting were waving around my unwashed underpants, informing screaming of tension the weak, ignorant, speachless tv-viewer.

This fact reveals clearly the “journalist community’s” compliance to keep silent, essentialy consenting to the criminal activity of EL.AS’ desperados and their head responsibles, in full cooperation with them. “We will allow you to enter the house for an exclusive report, but you ‘ll keep your mouth shut about everything else”. Such was the filthy deal between the two sides. The media would get their money, since underpants worth more in their stockmarket of values than the life of their owner. As long as he is “notorious”. And finally, who cares about how the police acts? If the police and their leadership believe a man just because he is wanted is to be killed, why should we disagree? Whenever we [the Media] needed some information, the police’s head officer provided it -they actually brag about it-. While, the hunted man has no phone. And even if he has one, it will be turned off or without a signal.

This is the way our daring and independant journalists think.

My congratulations, the future belongs to you. May I suggest the two organizations, police and media, could even integrate in own, for functional reasons. It’s both innovative and carries many advantages. Then, it won’t be for nothing that you elected a police correspondent as president of ESIEA (journalists-editors union).

If these ingenious reporters, with the same eagerness the show on mine and not only, underpants, cared to carry a constant control, denouncing to the Greek citizens that:

* 13.000 humans are in a state of captivity (under the pretext of illegality), living a total exploitation of themselves and their families, from the official state. That after passing the symplegades [transl: mythical deadly clashing rock of the argonaut campain] of a corrupt police and an even worst justice system, end up with heavy penalties in medieval conditions, by which this rotten system strives to control and then annihilate whatever dares to make a mockery of it.

* The armed guardians of the Greek state killing in cold-blood citizens (preferably the young) in the middle of the street, in front of the citizen’s own eyes. Humiliating and torturing to death people in the police stations. Setting up wilfully indictments sending “guilty” humans in jail for years. Setting a whole network of criminal activities not controlled by anyone.

* If they really cared to exercise some control over the modern Pirates of the political system, that helped by the gimmickery of the election system and the blessings of the Mass Media take over the Parliament, turning it into the headquarters of full domination on their voters citizens. Into a nest of intertwining interests, dealing transactions, bribes. Into a “terrorist hideout” where the loots from pillaging are divided around. A loot every citizen dares to question, becoming an obstacle in their plans will feel upon him the brutal democratic violence of a blood-thirsty repressive organization. He will feel the revengefulness, the revanchism, and the deep hatred the Greek state has for all those that rejected the status of an obidient citizen that understand his personal liberty as a necessity to do what he’s told to, but remain human with free will and claim an opinion on what’s going on around them with their own actions.

* If they revealed the great responsibility of this criminal organization for the establishment of a police state in Greece, through which they exercise an unbearable psychological violence to the citizen with hundreds of road blocks with cops armed-to-the-teeth with “survivor”-style weaponry, and the same menacing, numb look they had back in the junta days. The thousands of policemen one faces wherever he turns the eye (not to count the undercover ones). The dozens of head-hunters that prowl the mountains acting on their own taste, reminding of the begining of the 20th century, though with a modern name.

* If they denounce these and innumerable other things that de facto cancel the “social state” and “justice state” notions, as their role supposes, then today’s regime, they eagerly guard and name democracy, would be incomparably more humain, qualitative, and certainly more just.

You ‘d now say I am not the most adequate person to give recommendations, even less for matters of the regime.

That’s correct. In the place democracy was born, they can do whatever with her, even burry her if they wish so. It’s a good thing to die where in the place you where born. But, they shouldn’t go hard to the kids when they throw stones to her. They see her old and rotten, it’s stones she’s gonna get.

These insticts are primitive, though inerrable.

Because the kids are more honest and upstanding than the grown-ups.

Nobody would want to grow up just to find a dead body in the closed his parents have been hiding there to eat of her pension. They desire something more than a body in formol, and be sure they ‘re gonna get it, no matter how many dreads you put in their street.

On what concerns me, it is my absolute belief and surely of thousands others conscious people, that the damage caused to the social body by one shiny tv-presenter in one and only news bulletin (preferably the 8 o’ clock one), I can’t make it, even if they give me 10 lives to spare.

What’s the damage my drop-fire gun [transl. use of an old term for light arm guns of the mountain thieves and left-wing insurgents in Greece]. I have never turned it to an other human, much less to an other human’s mind.

Now, why am I with this drop-fire the prosecuted one that risks his life by any enraged death-squad, and those with their lucrative superweapons degenerate and devitalise the spirit of a whole people, leading them to mental necrosis, become my judges and my hunters, is my question too.

On second thoughts maybe the law on weapons should change. Whoever holds a fire-drop gun should be prosecuted for a capital offence!!!

Now, since it’s the first time I intervene with a public statement, I wouldn’t want it to end in a dispiriting way. So, let me add an allegoric enigma-quiz, I find it won’t trouble you much to solve.

What is the name, of a deputy sheriff of some mountainous and remote village of Utah, USA, overjoyed to his award winning by the FBI, for heroically and always risking his life arrested and gave to justice some dangerous elements to the order of his village? Who, apart of that precious award, also fed the ambition to have his triumphous achievement turn into a big Hollywood move, with George Clooney acting as him, something that pissed off his american patrons so that they exiled him, reducing him to the ranks of minister of “Citizens Protection” of some independent Balkan state. Who, to my exclusive information keeps fantacising about and anxiously sweeping for new “troublemakers”!

To make it even easier for you, I can also add some of his favorite words: Democracy, Revolutionary Fund, Ghetto, Communicating Vessels, Destabilization, Zero Tolerance, Organized Crime, They will be arrested and prosevuted.

He is also a devoted fan of snitching and loves “rats” and his hobbies include setting prices for the heads of wanted.

Keeping in mind though, that one of his many qualities is revanchism, I come to clarify that any similarity to real person or events is totally unintended.

Every police reporter that solves the quiz, enters a lottary for an exclusive interview.

My militant regards to all those that don’t surrender the weapons the chose to fight with, for the life they dream of.

PS. Some oil guys, they do rust.”

Vassilis Palaiokostas

Three Pussy Riot members are currently imprisoned and awaiting trial on hooliganism charges, after they performed wearing bright-colored homemade ski masks, inside Moscow's historic Christ the Savior Cathedral in late February and belted out a protest song against church leaders' support for then candidate Vladimir Putin.


Pussy Riot : Statement in Response to Patriarch's Speech on 24/03/2012
26/03/2012

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Your Holiness, Patriarch-

A fervent and sincere prayer can never be a mockery, no matter in what form it occurs, therefore it cannot be said that we jeered at, or mocked, the shrine.

We are plagued by the thought that the very shrine, which you consider so defiled, is inseparably linked to Putin, who in very words, brought it back to the Church. And because the of our prayer, asking our Holy Mother to drive out those who defile the brightest ideals of human life in Russia and all possible precepts of the Orthodox Faith, you are perceived as a mockery of the sacred.

In prayer it is evoked that , as millions of Christians were seriously grieved that you allowed the Church to become a weapon in a dirty campaign of dirty intrigues, urging the faithful to vote for a man whose crimes are infinitely far from God's Truth. We simply cannot believe the representative of the Heavenly Father if he acts contrary to the values for which Christ was crucified on the cross. As said by Pushkin, “ It is impossible to pray for King Herod; the Mother of God forbids it.”

You were endlessly wrong in saying in your sermon that we do not believe in the power of prayer. Without belief in the power of prayer and of words, we would never have offered our prayers so desperately and fervently, in anticipation of the serve persecution that could be dealt to us and our loved ones. The repressive powers that simply waited for the right moment to take revenge on our group for our tough Civic positions we have taken with our art. The power and truth of our prayer did not shame the Faithful, for surely the faith of a true believer, as the feelings of Christ, are too deep and universal -too filled with love- to be shamed. Our prayer shamed only Putin and his henchmen, and now three women have been thrown in prison, taken away from their young children, and now daily calls for arrests and punishments are issued forth from the higher bureaucracies. It It is Putin -not a believer- who, through domination and division, needs to keep the women in jail.

You say that we believe only in propaganda, the media, lies and slander, money and weapons, but we don't have faith in any of those things, as we have no faith in anything entity equal the brute powers of King Herod. You encouraged the Russian people to vote and pray for these powers, in whose name you have tried to link with prosperity of the Russian land.
First the pervasive and false propaganda on state television wrested from the people a victory for Putin. Now, through outright falsehood opposition and detractors at least is trying to assure the people that women with young children should be kept in the custody for "for violation of the laws of the Church.” On whose side are propaganda, media, lies and slander? On whose side is the belief in money? On which side are the performers of Pussy Riot, whose lives are close to the asceticism necessary for any creative thinking? Or is the belief in money on the side of those who invested the empty values of unprecedented governmental luxury in the code of conduct for any high-ranking man? Who has faith in weapons? Perhaps those who call for the killing in the name of religious feelings? On whose side were the dozens of armed men who, shouting and wielding their weapons, commanded a raid on March 3rd, having been sent to arrest two women suspected to have been in the temple- suspected of having asked Mother of God, loudly, get rid of Putin?

Pussy Riot




Pussy Riot, offshoot of Russian anarchist art group Voina, pisses off both church and state
--deathandtaxesmag.com--
By DJ Pangburn 4 days ago


Over the last few years, Voina, a Russian anarchist art collective, has been rather busy. They’ve painted a cock on a draw bridge; thrown cats inside a Moscow McDonald’s; had an un-simulated “fuck action” in a Russian museum; and overturned cop cars. Such is their reputation that the mysterious street artist Banksy himself bailed out members Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev.

More recently, an all-female Riot Grrrl offshoot of Voina, Pussy Riot, has been playing impromptu, Dada-esque punk rock shows in various public locations: Red Square, subway stations, a ritzy boutique, amongst others. But it is Pussy Riot’s most recent stunt that is attracting the most attention for the feminist group, recalling the type of response that could only come from heathen-hating Christians.

The group played inside Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral, in an area usually reserved for priests, calling on the Virgin Mary to chase Vladimir Putin away. Deacon Andrei Kurayev, whose response to the group was at once enlightened and condescending, drew the wrath of the more radical, reactionary strains of Christendom, with one member of a Christian foundation calling for “those bitches” to burn in hell. Divine.

Pussy Riot’s response? They called the church “a tool in dirty electoral intrigues,” while member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova allegedly invited the Orthodox Church spokesman Vsyevolod Chaplin to visit her in jail to debate the group’s actions.

One, of course, has to situate Voina and Pussy Riot within the context of Russia’s so-called democracy. While many artists are politically-neutered or spade, so to speak, Voina and Pussy Riot put their lives on the line with their radical art and calls for liberty. Their work preceded both the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and one could seriously argue they helped give birth to a new radical sentiment in Russia. It’s art at it’s finest: something worthy of early 20th century art movements like Dada, Surrealism and Futurism.

Meanwhile, the group’s supporters are protesting the detainment of and possible charges against two group members, Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, with signs emblazoned with the beautiful double-entendre, “Free Pussy Riot.”

For radical art and politics, the means of communication could not be any more sublime. And I’ll be damned if Pussy Riot isn’t the most interesting band in all the world. Not one American band would have the, well… ovaries to do this work.

Lynnae Williams: The CIA Spy Who Tweets
by Eli Lake (/contributors/eli-lake.html) March 29, 2012 12:20 PM EDT

Lynnae Williams has a beef with the CIA—and she’s using her Twitter account to tell the world about it. In the process, Eli Lake reports, she may be disclosing a few details the agency would rather not publicize.


The Twitter feed belonging to Lynnae Williams (https://twitter.com/#%21/wlynnae) at first glance looks like most Twitter feeds. There are tweets about what she is reading (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Madame Bovary); tweets about politics (leans toward the Occupy movement); and tweets about food (tuna casserole, carrot-cake muffins).

But on closer inspection, the feed features something rare for Twitter and even the Internet: detailed disclosures about the CIA. On Tuesday for example, Williams tweeted, “The #Farm is #CIA's training center near #Williamsburg, Virginia. I think it's the Kisevalter Center or something.”

In other tweets, Williams, who in 2009 spent nearly four months training to be a CIA spy, details her own experiences with CIA case officers, psychiatrists, and the special security division of the agency that serves as the CIA’s police force. In short, Williams since late February has been disclosing details of her brief CIA career in 140 characters or less.

I caught up with the 35-year-old would-be spy on Wednesday at the Washington mission for the Palestine Liberation Organization. She was interviewing for a job there in government and press relations. “The interview went well,” she said, even though “I don’t have substantial knowledge in the area. I don’t speak the language.” Williams, who does speak Japanese, added, “I don’t know enough about the [Arab-Israeli] conflict, but I hope they resolve it.”

Williams says she began tweeting because she wanted an outlet to tell the world about her disputes with the CIA and what she calls a pattern of corruption at the agency. She also publishes a blog called CIA corrupt (http://ciacorrupt.blogspot.com) . “I wanted to start the Twitter account with my blog to get out my message,” she says.

A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment for this story. Another U.S. intelligence officer, who was not authorized to speak to the press, told The Daily Beast that the agency is aware of the Twitter feed and that Williams is a hot topic on classified social networking, such as the classified intelligence community version of Facebook known as A-Space. Williams has disclosed her official medical records on her blog and other personal documents related to her time in the intelligence community.

Williams’s main grievance with the agency revolves around her termination. Williams says that as a trainee in the agency’s national clandestine service, she was sent to Dominion Hospital, a public mental-health facility in northern Virginia. Williams referred to the hospital in the interview and her Twitter feed as the CIA’s “psychological prison.” She said the place had white walls and inedible food, and that doctors there urged her to take Risperdal, a drug commonly prescribed to schizophrenics and Lithium, a drug prescribed to manic depressives.

Williams says she refused and eventually her parents drove up from Atlanta and discharged her. “They wanted to keep me for observation,” she said. “It’s not a nice place, it’s dilapidated. It’s called a hospital, but it’s a prison, you can’t get out unless they let you out.”

All told, by Williams’s account, she spent one night at Dominion Hospital in 2009 and then another five days in the hospital's outpatient program.

Melissa Ozmar, a spokeswoman for Dominion Hospital said, “We’re not going to disclose information about what patients we see that work for certain agencies. Given the proximity of our facility, it is not unrealistic to think that employees and their families for some agencies would seek help from our hospital.”

Ozmar declined to discuss Williams or her stay at Dominion. “It’s not our practice to discuss anything about our patients,” she said. When asked if she agreed that the hospital was like a prison, Ozmar said, “ For patient safety we do have restricted access. But the hospital could not in anyway be compared to a prison.”

Williams say she first applied to work at the CIA in 2006, while she was earning her master's degree at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She landed a job instead at the Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst. At first, Williams says, she worked on counterterrorism projects, then on studies of China’s leadership. In 2007, she says, she was shipped out to a clandestine facility in Iraq, where she worked as an Arabian Peninsula analyst.

In July 2009, Williams says she was transferred to the CIA’s national clandestine service training program, where she took the “field tradecraft course.” Williams says her life changed permanently on Oct. 27, 2009, when a colleague reported her to CIA security for what she says was "bizarre and inappropriate behavior," such as looking on classified computers for information about herself and telling colleagues that she was being followed. She had a meeting with a CIA psychiatrist that day, who ordered her to take a medical exam, with urine samples, and inquired about her self-acknowledged attention deficit disorder. “She asked me about my family’s mental-health history,” Williams says of the CIA psychiatrist. “My aunt has schizophrenia—I did not tell her that.” Later that evening, Williams had an auto accident and says she was cited by Washington, D.C., police for leaving the scene. After that, Williams says, the CIA ordered her to Dominion Hospital.

Since her time there, Williams has been fighting a largely losing battle with the agency. In 2010, she says, her security clearance was suspended and the agency stopped paying her salary. She is pursuing legal redress against the CIA for wrongful termination, but her odds don’t look good. On Wednesday, Williams posted on Twitter a response from the American Civil Liberties Union declining to take up her case.

Mark Zaid, a national-security attorney who regularly represents intelligence officers in legal actions against the U.S. intelligence community, said, “Based on the current state of the law, unfortunately the judiciary will not adjudicate adverse clearance decisions, no matter how abusive, incorrect, or absurd they may have been."

Zaid says that medical issues at the CIA can at times “be used as weapons,” adding “I have had CIA clients sent to alcohol and drug treatment. The agency has spent thousands of dollars for people to get treatment and then they fire them, which doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Without a security clearance, Williams will not likely be able to find employment with intelligence contractors, as many retired intelligence officers do. Nonetheless, she says she will continue to apply for jobs in foreign affairs. She also intends to continue tweeting. “I did not think of myself as a whistleblower.” But on further reflection, Williams acknowledges, “I suppose it would be an appropriate term.”

"Dispatches: Mark Thomas on Coca-Cola" a British Channel 4 documentary. Political activist and journalist Mark Thomas travels to South America, India and the US to investigate the way in which Coca-Cola and its suppliers operate and the extent to which they upholds moral and ethical obligations.

"The Cost of a Coke Revisited" a documentary by Matt Beard. Since 1990, 8 Colombian union workers have been murdered in Coca-Cola bottling plants. This film investigates why schools around the world have kicked Coke off of their campuses and labeled Coke as the drink of the death squads. Co-sponsored by the Drexel Theater, Central Ohio Green Education Fund, and the Film Council of Columbus.


--Coca Cola uses Death Squads--

Science of Spying- 1965 CIA Propoganda

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ... "

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter sent to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut.

Secret Government- A Constitution In Crisis

"I’m not saying that Caylee Anthony’s death is less horrible because so many other children are killed by the adults in their short, brutal lives. But I am saying that all children who are murdered deserve attention, not just certain children."

Why I Won’t Follow The Casey Anthony Trial
Jun. 28 2011 - 6:21 pm --forbes.com--
By KIRI BLAKELEY

I admit I know virtually nothing about the trial of Casey Anthony, who is accused of killing her almost three-year-old toddler, Caylee. I find the media and the public’s obsessive preoccupation with this murder trial to be morbid, just as it was with the 1996 Jon Benet Ramsey murder case.

But, most of all, I just find it—put it politely— selective. Virtually every month in New York City a young child is murdered either by his or her mother or the mother’s boyfriend or the adult responsible for the child—and hardly any of them ever gets the kind of national round-the-clock media coverage that Caylee Anthony’s death is receiving.

In September of last year, four-year-old Marchella Brett-Pierce was found beaten and starved to death in her Brooklyn home. She’d been tied to her bed and weighed only 18 pounds. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, her grandmother, and even two child welfare workers who had falsified visitation documents were all arrested. Katie Couric did a small piece on it for CBS News, but there was no national outcry along the lines of what Caylee Anthony is getting.

In March, 18-month-old Louis Dewayne Mosely was beaten to death while in foster care in Brooklyn. I bet you’re asking, who? No People magazine cover for Louis like there was for Caylee. In June, 5-year-old Jamar Johnson was beaten to death by his mother for breaking the television set. She actually watched him writhe in agonizing pain for five days before he died. There will be no long lines to get into the trial of Jamar Johnson’s mother, if there ever is one, like the lines that form for the Casey Anthony trial. The New York Times even wrote on Sunday about how the trial has become a tourist destination, with people from all over the country traveling to see it.

Have I mentioned that Marchella, Louis and Jamar were all black?

I’m not saying that Caylee Anthony’s death is less horrible because so many other children are killed by the adults in their short, brutal lives. But I am saying that all children who are murdered deserve attention, not just certain children.

Kiri Blakeley writes about women, entertainment, and media. Follow her on Twitter.

Is Clarence Thomas's Humble Georgia Museum a Huge Ethics Issue?
06/25/11 03:04 AM ET --ARTinfo---

A quaint historical museum in Pin Point, Georgia, that is set to open this fall has become the target of an exhaustive ethics examination by the New York Times. Why would the Times devote almost 3,000 words to a community heritage museum? Pin Point, as it turns out, is also the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and it was Thomas who introduced Pin Point residents to his friend Harlan Crow, a Dallas real-estate tycoon and major conservative donor, who would ultimately fund the museum. According to some legal analysts, Thomas's role in Crow's decision to donate may have troubling ethical implications.

Pin Point lies along the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor designated by Congress, a passage of coastal fishing towns settled by the descendants of slaves. Algernon Varn, whose father ran the fishing cannery there, long hoped to save the site from development, but it wasn't until he bumped into Thomas, who was in town promoting his memoir, that the project began to move forward. Thomas introduced Varn to Crow, a longtime friend. Through an exhaustive paper trail review, the Times confirmed that Crow is the anonymous donor behind the $1.3 million restoration of the property and forthcoming museum project. Varn was told to keep Crow's identity anonymous.

The question of ethics violations comes down to whether Thomas misused "the prestige of office" to persuade Crow to take on the project, said Raymond J. McKoski, a retired state judge in Illinois. (Supreme Court justices are not explicitly bound to the complex code of conduct for federal judges because it is enforced by lower ranking judges. That's right, they are literally above the law -- though the Times points to several justices who said they adhere to it regardless.) "Some of it depends on the conversations that took place," McKoski told the Times of the ethical quandary. "Who brought up the idea? How willing was Mr. Crow to do it? What exact questions were asked by Justice Thomas?"

This isn't the first time Crow has donated to projects directly or indirectly honoring Thomas. (According to the federal ethics code, judges are not supposed to know who makes a donation in their honor.) The Times gathers an exhaustive list of shady gifts and donations, including Mr. Crow's financing of a Savannah library dedicated to Justice Thomas and his gift of a bible that once belonged to Frederick Douglass. Thomas also received a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln from a group affiliated with Crow.

So, after all this commotion, what will the museum actually look like? The modest, almost astonishingly unglamorous-sounding Pin Point Heritage Museum will be housed in the A.S. Varn & Son Factory, a former seafood cannery that was the economic backbone of Pin Point -- and where Thomas's mother worked as a crab picker -- until it closed in 1985.

Each structure on the property -- including the oyster factory, can storage building, and marshfront dock -- will be stabilized and restored. A patio area will host live demonstrations of crabbing, canning, and shrimp net making. Inside, 3,000 square feet of exhibition space -- modest by museum standards -- will house educational exhibits, live demonstrations, interactive displays, and a 30-minute documentary film, all devoted to the generations of residents in Pin Point.

Friendship of Justice and Magnate Puts Focus on Ethics
By MIKE McINTIRE
6/18/2011 --NYtimes.com--

PIN POINT, Ga. — Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.

The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.

In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow’s largess provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.

Although the Supreme Court is not bound by the code, justices have said they adhere to it. Legal ethicists differed on whether Justice Thomas’s dealings with Mr. Crow pose a problem under the code. But they agreed that one facet of the relationship was both unusual and important in weighing any ethical implications: Justice Thomas’s role in Mr. Crow’s donation for the museum.

The code says judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of concern that donors might feel pressured to give or entitled to favorable treatment from the judge. In addition, judges are not even supposed to know who donates to projects honoring them.

While the nonprofit Pin Point museum is not intended to honor Justice Thomas, people involved in the project said his role in the community’s history would inevitably be part of it, and he participated in a documentary film that is to accompany the exhibits.

Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor who has called for stricter ethics rules for Supreme Court justices, said Justice Thomas “should not be directly involved in fund-raising activities, no matter how worthy they are or whether he’s being centrally honored by the museum.”

On the other hand, the restriction on fund-raising is primarily meant to deter judges from using their position to pressure donors, as opposed to relying on “a rich friend” like Mr. Crow, said Ronald D. Rotunda, who teaches legal ethics at Chapman University in California.

“I don’t think I could say it’s unethical,” he said. “It’s just a very peculiar situation.”

Justice Thomas, through a Supreme Court spokeswoman, declined to respond to a detailed set of questions submitted by The New York Times. Mr. Crow also would not comment.

Supreme Court ethics have been under increasing scrutiny, largely because of the activities of Justice Thomas and Ms. Thomas, whose group, Liberty Central, opposed President Obama’s health care overhaul — an issue likely to wind up before the court. Mr. Crow’s donation to Liberty Central was reported by Politico.

In January, the liberal advocacy organization Common Cause asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have recused themselves from last year’s Citizens United campaign finance case because they had attended a political retreat organized by the billionaire Koch brothers, who support groups that stood to benefit from the court’s decision.

A month later, more than 100 law professors asked Congress to extend to Supreme Court justices the ethics code that applies to other federal judges, and a bill addressing the issue was introduced.

It is not unusual for justices to accept gifts or take part in outside activities, some with political overtones.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has attended Renaissance Weekend, a retreat for politicians, artists and media personalities that is a favorite of Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in a symposium sponsored by the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, and a philanthropic foundation once tried to give her a $100,000 achievement award. She instructed that the money be given to charity.

But in the case of Justice Thomas and his dealings with Mr. Crow, the ethical complications appear more complex.

Conservative Ties

Mr. Crow, 61, manages the real estate and investment businesses founded by his late father, Trammell Crow, once the largest landlord in the United States. The Crow family portfolio is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes investments in hotels, medical facilities, public equities and hedge funds.

A friend of the Bush family, Mr. Crow is a trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation and has donated close to $5 million to Republican campaigns and conservative groups. Among his contributions were $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group formed to attack the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and $500,000 to an organization that ran advertisements urging the confirmation of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.

The institute’s Project on Fair Representation later filed briefs in several cases, and in 2006 the project brought a lawsuit challenging federal voting rights laws, a case in which Justice Thomas filed a lone dissent, embracing the project’s arguments. The project director, an institute fellow named Edward Blum, said the institute supported his research but did not finance the brief filings or the Texas suit, which was litigated pro bono by a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.

“When it came time to file a lawsuit,” he said, “A.E.I. had no role in doing that.”

Coming Up With a Plan

In addition to his interest in politics and policy, Mr. Crow is well known for his keen devotion to history.

A backyard garden at his $24 million Dallas residence is dominated by old statues of dictators he has collected from fallen regimes, including Lenin and Stalin. His private library is packed with 8,000 rare books and artifacts, including a Senate roll call sheet from Justice Thomas’s confirmation and a “thank you” letter from the justice, according to local news reports.

There are a number of reasons Justice Thomas might be thankful to Mr. Crow. In addition to giving him the Douglass Bible, valued 10 years ago at $19,000, Mr. Crow has hosted the justice aboard his private jet and his 161-foot yacht, at the exclusive Bohemian Grove retreat in California and at his grand Adirondacks summer estate called Topridge, a 105-acre spread that once belonged to Marjorie Merriweather Post, the cereal heiress.

Christopher Shaw, a folk singer who said he had been invited several times to perform at Topridge, recalled seeing Justice Thomas and his family “on one or two occasions.” They were among about two dozen guests who included other prominent Republicans — last summer, the younger Mr. Bush stopped by.

“There would be guys puffing on cigars,” Mr. Shaw said. “Clarence just kind of melted in with everyone else. We got introduced at dinner. He sat at Harlan’s table.”

Mr. Crow’s $175,000 donation to the library in Savannah in 2001 started out anonymous, but it was eventually made public amid opposition to the project by some local black leaders who did not like Justice Thomas’s politics. Similarly, Mr. Crow sought to keep his role in the museum quiet.

At first glance the Pin Point Heritage Museum, scheduled to open this fall, would seem an unlikely catalyst for an ethical quandary. That Pin Point’s history is worthy of preservation is not in dispute.

Part of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor designated by Congress, it is representative of tight-knit Southern coastal settlements that trace their roots to freed slaves and were often based around fishing. In Pin Point, the Varn crab and oyster cannery, founded in the 1920s, was a primary source of jobs until it closed in 1985.

Mr. Varn and his wife, Sharon, said they had long hoped the property could be saved from commercial development but had little success coming up with a plan. That changed after their chance encounter with Justice Thomas, who was visiting his childhood home with a television news crew.

Justice Thomas, 62, was born and raised near the cannery overlooking the Moon River, where it was not uncommon for babies to rock in bassinets made of crab baskets while their mothers shucked oysters. He sympathized with the Varns’ wishes and said he had a friend who could help, Mr. Varn said.

The Varns eventually sold their property in April 2008. During a recent interview at their home near the cannery, they made it clear that they were “not supposed to say” who the buyer was, and a news release issued last November by a Savannah public relations firm said the museum was being “privately funded by an anonymous donor.”

But the paper trail leads back to Mr. Crow, and in interviews at the project site, people working on it acknowledged that he was financing it. Property records show a company called HKJRS/Pinpoint bought the land for $1.5 million, and incorporation records say the company is controlled by a Dallas-based partnership run by Mr. Crow.

Project documents reviewed by The Times show a preliminary construction budget of $1.3 million, but it is unclear if that includes expenses related to the content and design of the museum.

Justice Thomas remains closely involved with the project. Emily Owens, a museum spokeswoman who works for Mr. Crow’s company, said the justice “played a big part” in creating a video documentary that will be part of the museum experience. He hosted a design team from Dallas for a four-hour meeting at his Supreme Court offices in February.

And he has had a role in picking people to help with the museum. Barbara Fertig, a history professor at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, said that she was asked to meet with Justice Thomas last spring and that “by the end of the meeting, he said he would like me to work on this project.”

She said she had “never been particularly curious” about why Mr. Crow is financing it, adding that costly preservation projects are often possible only because of philanthropy motivated by friendships. Justice Thomas and Mr. Crow would seem to fall into that category, Ms. Fertig said.

“I’ve been in the company of the two of them together,” she said, “and they certainly really are friends.”

The Code of Conduct

That friendship is important to determining whether Justice Thomas’s interactions with Mr. Crow conflict with the code, said Raymond J. McKoski, a retired state judge in Illinois who wrote a law review article on charitable fund-raising by judges. If Justice Thomas did not “misuse the prestige of office” in getting Mr. Crow to take on the project, it should not be a concern, he said.

“Some of it depends on the conversations that took place,” Mr. McKoski said. “Who brought up the idea? How willing was Mr. Crow to do it? What exact questions were asked by Justice Thomas?”

Beyond the admonition against fund-raising, the code generally discourages judges from partaking in any off-the-bench behavior that could create even the perception of partiality. It acknowledges the value in judges’ being engaged with their communities, lecturing on the law and doing charitable work, but draws a line where those activities might cause a reasonable person to worry that a judge is indebted to or influenced by someone.

“The code of conduct is quite clear that judges are not supposed to be soliciting money for their pet projects or charities, period,” said Arn Pearson, a lawyer with Common Cause. “If any other federal judge was doing it, he could face disciplinary action.”

The justices are not bound by the federal judiciary’s conduct code, because it is enforced by a committee of judges who rank below the justices. Even so, Justices Breyer and Anthony M. Kennedy said in testimony before Congress in April that the justices followed the code.

Beyond the code, the justices must comply with laws applying to all federal officials that prohibit conflicts of interest and require disclosure of gifts. Justice Thomas’s gift acceptances drew attention in 2004, when The Los Angeles Times reported that he had accumulated gifts totaling $42,200 in the previous six years — far more than any of the other justices.

Since 2004, Justice Thomas has never reported another gift. He has continued to disclose travel costs paid by schools and organizations he has visited for speeches and teaching, but he has not reported that any travel was provided by Mr. Crow.

Travel records for Mr. Crow’s planes and yacht, however, suggest that Justice Thomas may have used them in recent years.

In April 2008, not long after Mr. Crow bought the Pin Point property, one of his private planes flew from Washington to Savannah, where his yacht, the Michaela Rose, was docked.

That same week, an item appeared in a South Carolina lawyers’ publication noting that Justice Thomas was arriving aboard the Michaela Rose in Charleston, a couple of hours north of Savannah, where the Crow family owns luxury vacation properties. The author was a prominent lawyer who said she knew of the visit because of a family connection to Mr. Crow.

Justice Thomas reported no gifts of travel that month in his 2008 disclosure. And there are other instances in which Justice Thomas’s travels correspond to flights taken by Mr. Crow’s planes.

On Jan. 4, 2010, when Justice Thomas was in Savannah for the dedication of a building in his honor, Mr. Crow’s plane flew from Washington to Savannah and returned to Washington the next day. Justice Thomas reported in his financial disclosure that his travel had been paid for by the Savannah College of Art and Design, which owned the building.

In his 2009 financial disclosure, Justice Thomas reported that Southern Methodist University in Dallas — Trammell Crow’s alma mater — had provided his travel for a speech there on Sept. 30. Flight records show that Mr. Crow’s plane flew from Washington to Dallas that day.

Among the questions The Times submitted to Justice Thomas was whether he was on any of those flights, and if so, whether the colleges reimbursed him or Mr. Crow. The colleges declined to comment.

One item not required to be reported in Justice Thomas’s financial disclosures is the millions of dollars Mr. Crow is spending on the museum. That is because the money is not being given to the justice as a gift.

For Algernon and Sharon Varn, who said they were thrilled to see a cherished piece of local history being restored, the museum is a gift to the community. While it is about more than Justice Thomas, they said, he deserves credit for putting them together with someone who had the money and the interest to make the project a reality.

“He was instrumental in getting the process started, because he wanted it preserved to show that no matter where you came from, you can go where you want,” Mr. Varn said. “He had a meager existence, and yet look where he is today. It’s a great American story.”

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Not because it was ugly but because it showed his terrible flaw so clear: reminding him it was not Moldweorp he hated so much as a perverse idea of what is clean; not the girl he sympathized with so much a her humanity. Fate, it occured to him then, chooses weird agents.-- Thomas Pynchon, Under the Rose

Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America --marxist.org--
Written: by Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, November 7, 1865;

Sir:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, "slavery" on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding "the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution", and maintained slavery to be "a beneficent institution", indeed, the old solution of the great problem of "the relation of capital to labor", and cynically proclaimed property in man "the cornerstone of the new edifice" — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. [B]

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen's Association, the Central Council:

Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.

18 Greek Street, Soho.

The Flavius Factor, strength, be prepared for war and you wont have to fight one.....

Engineer immolates self for Sri Lankan Tamils' cause
--thehindu--
April 19, 2011 23:25 IST | Updated: April 19, 2011 23:31 IST TIRUNELVELI, April 19, 2011

A young engineer from a poor family of a sleepy hamlet in Tirunelveli district immolated himself on Monday, apparently as an expression of sympathy to Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Though 23-year-old R. Krishnamurthy, an electrical and electronics engineer from Sundaresapuram under Kuruvikulam police station limits, had not discussed anything about the Sri Lankan issue with his friends, according to his cousin Suresh, also an engineer, he was very disturbed after coming to his birthplace from Rajasthan, where he works.

Suicide note

The suicide note stated that the Tamils, who were tortured by the Sinhalese, should be compensated adequately.

“The new government in Tamil Nadu should not assume office until a separate State for Sri Lankan Tamils is ensured.”

The letter admired the “valour” of Muthukumar, who killed himself in Chennai in protest against the killing of Sri Lankan Tamils.

According to Krishnamurthy's mother R. Subbulakshmi, her son asked her to prepare tea around 5 a.m. Even as she was preparing it, Krishnamurthy poured petrol and immolated himself. She tried to save her son and suffered burns.

“Even after sustaining serious burns all over the body, my son was saying that the Tamils in Tamil Nadu should do something to save the Sri Lankan Tamils,” she said.

Arrangement for mother's treatment

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Vaiko, who met the bereaved family at Seegampatti on Tuesday morning, made immediate arrangements for taking Ms. Subbulakshmi to a Madurai-based multi-specialty hospital.