Friends of Trayvon Describe Him as All Around Good Guy. Fox Correspondent Derides the "Hoody"

Apparently, Trayvon Martin was a success as a teen, not someone obsessed with making a million before he was thirty most likely, but a sensible, fun loving, nice kid who had been in a junior football team, and after he became too old for it still helped out in the snack stand. The only school problems noted in an AP report were some tardies leading to a short suspension.

 He and his father seem to have taken good care of each other, and should be an inspiration to all of us. Trayvon's sense of family extended to his father's girlfriends son, described by the AP as a "soon-to-be stepbrother" for whom he was buying the Skittles. See AP Link below this post for more details on Trayvon

While I have some sympathy for George Zimmerman who was probably fighting discrimination himself for his Hispanic looks and who appeared to think if he was tough enough he could gain a middle class wage and respect by becoming a police officer, this case shows off the essence of racism.

 If you look a young person who is not like you and instantly see a threat, no matter how hard you personally have struggled in life, you have a problem with it.

If, like FOX new's, Giraldo Rivera you claim that the big problem is "The Hoody" which many working class people wear because it keeps them warm and one doesn't have to choose which fashion statement to put on today, you have a problem with prejudice. And, BTW Mr Rivera, just because you're one of the few people of ethnicity on FOX News does it mean you aren't a racist.

Those seeking to push middle and working class Americans into a slave class status, love interracial problems since it helps foster their agenda. 

Slain teen's friends say he never picked a fight 

Cenk Uygur Paul Ryan's and the GOP Budget Plan That Would "that would create $4.3 trillion debt in 10 years" through tax cuts to the wealthy

Despite ending Medicare as we know it the plan from the GOP darling (who received Social Security payments as a teen enabling the deal from the Wisconsin Congressman to pay outright for college instead of being entangled in large, often high interest, debt after graduation) would leave the US with even more debt.

If you want to be left with a puny voucher during your last years of desperate medical need vote GOP this year or don't vote at all, because they have the plan perfected, now and are eager to get to passing it through the Congress and getting it signed by a GOP president.

Petitions For Justice on Trayvon Martin Shooting, info on Million Hoodies March in NYC, and Twitter handles of Congressionals:

I decided to look for more petitions calling for the proper prosecution of Trayvon's Martin's killer.  I didn't want to miss one.

I've only found two, right now.  I have to go to work, but will be signing them tonight and looking for others.

Also I found a page that has the Twitter handles of a lot of  Congress members so you can Tweet them, Tweet at them, and just in general nudge them to make sure a proper investigation is done.

Also tell them to stop supporting the NRA's "Stand your Ground" laws that gave George Zimmerman the idea he could kill a teen in cold blood. 

Petition #1 Prosecute the killer of our son, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin

Petition #2  Attorney General Holder: See That Justice is Done

Facebook event:
Million Hoodies March in NYC  6 pm Union Square

They have a link to one of the petitions above too.

You can take a picture of yourself in your in your hoodie and share it at the facebook group's wall.


This guy started the Million Hoodies March

Twitter handles for Congress members here.  (You may get propaganda back from their staff and others, but at least you've told them.) 

Or go to Thomas.loc.gov for email and mail options.  (Though email and other systems often break down at important times, like now.)

Don't let up.  Don't let them hide behind business as usual, especially the Republicans that have promoted the gun laws that let racists kill teens.

Whaling Groups Say "Pay Us To Stop"

Slaughtered Pilot Whales, Hvalba, Faroe Islands

Way to drag your ugly activities into a nice looking picture, dudes.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons and covered by their license for reuse Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

A writer at The Economist says some people are arguing that environmental groups should be paying whalers to cease and desist instead of harassing them.

My comment:

What a great idea.  And we can also pay burglars to not steal stuff out of peoples houses, or Wall Street bankers to not rip off their  clients.

I wouldn't mind if someone paid me to not try to catch the last of a yellow light.

Still the trade off isn't really that static in ways the author notes and misses.

Mr. Babbage tells us to remember that we are paying the whalers to replace the money they would make on the open market, but if whale meat therefore became unavailable because whalers aren't whaling then it would instantly become "scarce"and therefore much more valuable.

Driving spiraling costs to cover the increase or leading to cheating.

Whether or not you want to contribute to the effort to stop whalers, the truth is that, if the whole whaling harassment scheme is dismantled and the payment demands for not whaling escalate to unreasonable levels, we would face the fact that the whole infrastructure of the whaling harassment system would need to be rebuilt. It seems to have taken over 20 years to get good disruptions of the Japanese whaling of in the waters off Antarctic waters built up until it is severely restricting the catch..  Are we going to force them to dismantle it so they can afford payments to whalers and hope it doesn't need to be rebuilt after a few years as "pirate" whalers (probably the same groups that were whaling before) step in to make the precious metal level money that a reimbursed whaling embargo has encouraged for the products of the slaughter?  How long, in fact, until the world gives up and tells the whalers to just go ahead and kill them all?


Then again being able to pay off whalers, sure would put to rest the lies that whaling for modern societies was just a way to keep in touch with their heritage.  But in fact, if the whaling nations are asking to be paid off, that actually does the exact same thing, though I note that you're not likely to learn that from mainstream news sources who are careful not to insult big money sources.


Want some more good news?  I've read evidence that monetary and political support for whaling in at least one nation appears to be a disguised crony payback scheme.   Similar games may be going on in the other nations still promoting whaling.  Does the world believe environmentalists should fund corrupt politicians at ever increasing costs to keep a horrific slaughter from happening?

The Economist (mobile format): Good whale hunting

More news on whales and whaling:

Saboteurs blamed as Japan whale catch falls short
Following an even more disastrous season for the Japanese Whaling fleet this year's catch fell short of 1/3 of it's desired catch.

Rare whale swims up West Coast at 100 miles per day

Yahoo! Gets Heat for Whale and Dolphin Meat Sales

Proof: Restiction of Abortion Kills Women

Grindelwald Valley and Eiger

Yes, that is the Alp featured in "The Eiger Sanction".
I know. It looks so peaceful from here.

Republicans pretend that restricting abortion and contraception is just a way to pretty up life in the United States, but there are ramifications from killing and maiming women to putting religion in charge of our lives.  The Founding Fathers didn't want any of that to happen.

Picture shared using Flickr's native code (found at site)and allowed via Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) Rollover for Flickr name of photographer.

What do the so-called "Right to Life" people have to say about the fact that restricting abortion and safe, affordable contraception through prohibitions or costs kills women? How can they justify denying women what they need to take care of the family they have by forcing them to bear children repeatedly until they can no longer be the best benefit to them and, indeed, may no longer be alive. These women are often times wives, mothers, care givers, and workers. In fact, according to "POVERTY AND HIV/AIDS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA" families most at risk through poverty are often headed by women. And that is true in the United States as well.

But:

 See excerpted abstract from Obstetrics and Gynecology republished by the US Government's NIH: "Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality":

Every year, worldwide, about 42 million women with unintended pregnancies choose abortion, and nearly half of these procedures, 20 million, are unsafe. Some 68,000 women die of unsafe abortion annually, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality (13%). Of the women who survive unsafe abortion, 5 million will suffer long-term health complications. Unsafe abortion is thus a pressing issue. Both of the primary methods for preventing unsafe abortion—less restrictive abortion laws and greater contraceptive use—face social, religious, and political obstacles, particularly in developing nations, where most unsafe abortions (97%) occur. Even where these obstacles are overcome, women and health care providers need to be educated about contraception and the availability of legal and safe abortion, and women need better access to safe abortion and post-abortion services. Otherwise, desperate women, facing the financial burdens and social stigma of unintended pregnancy and believing they have no other option, will continue to risk their lives by undergoing unsafe abortions.

The report also says that in developed countries only 3% of abortions are unsafe, but with the GOP forcing states to make abortion more expensive (through reimbursed ultrasounds) or less available that number will rise. Plus our nation informs others how to treat their women, directly and indirectly.

For example:

During the Bush administration, US money for women's health sources was denied to groups who offered abortion and then even for those who offered hormonal contraception, and groups that offered and recommended the use of condoms for birth and HIV control faced steeper challenges for getting US government dollars as compared to US groups in Africa who pushed the failed practices of  "Abstinence Only" policies putting the lives of African women at risk over and over again.

Do your friends endanger the lives of women?  Explain to them that birth control, condoms for HIV/AIDS and other venereal disease prevention, as well as abortion is essential to healthy families in regions like Africa, South America and other third world nations where women are under the boot of the Catholic Church and other hyper religious groups either as it controls the minds of their government officials (as in South America) or because they are the largest medical benefactors (like in Africa).

Instead of helping the women of  the third world, are we going to allow more women in the US face death because they cannot afford or not allowed to have effective birth control and/or safe abortion?

Think about it.

I know men care about this too.  It affects their quality of life.  When a woman is facing the decision of whether or not she and her partner can afford to raise another child in this world, they have to face any difficulties that are have been thrown in their way.  It is nearly criminal the obstacles  that Republicans in state governments will put in front of a pregnant woman, up to doubling the price of an abortion because they thought they could capture the Evangelical vote by doing so. 

And Mrs. Santorum pretending these state regulations don't matter because her husband won't do anything about contraception and abortion is a slap in the face.  Yeah, Honey, that's exactly what we are saying.  He won't do anything.  He'll let the states and the Church run right over women until they are seeking  unsafe abortions in back alleys, or trying to do it themselves. 

Welcome to the Third World, America.  Even the sputtering economy of the Reagan years,  and the wars the George W. Bush administration started and didn't end, did not bring so many women to the edge where they could lose their lives so easily.  The new crop of Republican leaders may do so.

Zimmerman Called Trayvon Martin "Coon" on 911 Call

Actually the words were "Effin' Coon" only he didn't say "Effin'". He said a word I have trouble using on most days. Turn the sound all the way up and you will hear him say it at c. 2:21 into this video. This was tweeted around last night, and we RT'ed, but wanted to get a permanent record of it here. Later: I see some people didn't learn about this last night. I'm glad I posted it. People should know.

Tennessee Bill To Require Physician's ID, Woman's Medical History To Be Posted Online After Abortions

Will leave doctors open to  harassment and could lead to identification of women and their medical history which is exactly what the haters want it to do.

Tennessee: still backward after ask these years.

See: http://bit.ly/xXmap0

LIMBAUGH: LEFT GROUPS 'ASTROTURF THE BOYCOTT'

Limbaugh has a conspiracy theory that Media Matters for America guy @StopRush is behind all the problems the immense one engendered when he trashed the name of a private citizen for three days on his radio show because she had the temerity to seek to address a Congressional committee about a friend who needed contraception therapy for a medical problem, couldn't afford it, and suffered major health consequences as a result of her Jesuit university's health plan refusing to pay for it.

But the new site belongs to a Twitter user some of us have known about for years, @Shoq.  But don't let that fact get in the way of Rushbo's delusions.

http://bit.ly/GDOiQq

Copyright Troll, Media Company Get Comeuppance Over Claim of Infringement

The Fremont District Troll of Seattle

An altogether nicer guy than a patent/copyright troll.

Picture shared using Flickr's native sharing code and allowed via Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) . Rollover to see name of photographer who has no relationship to this blog or blogger

A company formed to buy the rights to articles in some mainstream media sources and then sue for large amounts of money has been broken, and the media company behind it has failed to make it's case that short excerpts constitute copyright infringement, or that forum owners have responsibility for what their members post.

Though Righthaven, the original suing company  may have gotten some agreements for settlements from some unpaid bloggers and even bigger ones from politically connected Nevada groups (according to reports I read earlier), a finalized case has helped ruin Righthaven and will likely put a damper the ardor of Stephens Media which is connected to the Las Vegas Journal Review and some other newspapers to find other ways to continue suing people, for short excerpts from non paywalled articles.  It seems to us that a question remains about articles that are presented behind a paywall, and if in fact the NYT model can be called a pay-wall since 20 articles can be viewed for free each month by each person (or machine or browser?).

Another thing that is curious (well not really) is that this was action taken against Democratic Underground.   It might be that DU was targeted, or that DU was the source that had the wherewithal to fight this and therefore didn't cave immediately when contacted.

Sharon Angle's Senate campaign ponied up $150, 000 for reprinting an article by the Las  Vegas Journal-Review during her 2010 candidacy, and I believe the Democratic Party of Nevada did the same. Other times bloggers faced the Righthaven juggernaut, with the copyright trolls demanding tens of thousands of dollars to avoid lawsuits.  The examples I saw reports on were generally of the bloggers posting entire articles on blogs with small circulations and no ads.    I'm not sure if those bloggers have paid, are still in litigation, or what has happened.

But as seen in an EFF article, some questions have been settled.    See  Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use.

Mainstream News Claims Victory Over Report On The Tragedy of Chinese Worker Abuse

In New China as in Old China, the worker belongs to the .01%

It has simply become a game in which the .01% has grown, after the elites of other nations saw a path to destroying the economic and political power of their working classes. But don't worry Mainstream News tells us. They are happy to have jobs. (Another source said they get "depressed" working in rice paddies.)

Picture shared using Flickr's native share code and allowed via Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) rollover to see name of photographer who has no relationship to this blog or blogger.

Mainstream news has shot down a report that emerged in the last months on a news story it has spent years mostly ignoring. And, if you look at their arguments, Mainstream is not saying the story is false, just that so and so didn't exactly experience everything he says he did in China, "so now can we just get on with selling you stuff"?

For indeed, the main purpose of  the commercial news media is to sell stuff these days.  There may have been a time in which they were committed to getting news that mattered out, but the selling was the only way to make money and little by little the selling gets to be the reason to keep pushing words out of the pen, the typewriter and these days the computer or phone for the commercial news system. Charging for online subscriptions (as you can see by looking at the actual numbers of subscribers) does nothing to change that fact.

And, though, both major stories broken by non news venues recently have been shot down by mainstream sources, both have not actually been dis-proven but mainstream tells us that  the truth is more complicated or they didn't get their facts the way that mainstream does.  (Funny but Michael Daisey did go to China and interview people at Foxconn and other places -- though not all the ones he "claimed" in his act, and after his performance "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs " on This American Life" most major news sources sent one of their reporters to China to interview people at Foxconn working up simplistic reports that said nothing we didn't already know if they all were like the two I saw.

Mainstream News didn't bring these depressing storier up very often over the years they have known about these issues.

In fact, they had to keep up with the latest gadget being released by the Jobs Factories (Apple) or some other mega company, most of whom purchase goods from Chinese factories, and work up the narrative of what a wonderful new thing that everyone but the economically lower 75% in the US  have to have RIGHT NOW!   (This is not to denigrate Apple products, but producing products for the top 25% of an affluent society (or .01% of the world society) does not qualify one for sainthood, I believe. 

APM (which does a better job than most of Mainstream News) had to get their market news arm "Marketplace" out to help take down the Mike Daisey story, though they acknowledge the truth is that such things are happening in Chinese factories. "This American Life" which aired Daisey's monologue that brought this to the attention of Americans recently is also an APM program.  Marketplace also dutifully reports that Apple has hired the Fair Labor Association (elsewhere described as "a nonprofit organization" but so is every superPac so there is not real guarantee of  lack of bias there).  Liberal sources report the FLA isn't exactly worker friendly..

So basically, Mainstream News, is going over the facts of this controversy in the most perfunctory way possible, and making a big deal of the fact that Mike Daisey did not actually meet the people he said he met, ie people personally poisoned by hexane and child workers.  He met people who had known people poisoned by hexane and had read of child workers, etc.  He put that into an act, Ira Glass apparently saw his show or heard about it and wanted to use it if it was personally researched, and Daisey apparently prevaricated (okay straight out lied) a little.

Thank goodness, because Mainstream News (and in this case I am including tech literature) was horribly uncomfortable reporting on this, since Apple is such a big purchaser of advertising time/ad space for the news media.  Walking that fine line between getting a few spits of news out on the hardship of working in China for America's elite was really grating on their nerves as they are afraid their big benefactors will lose money and/or otherwise not want to pay them millions for ads.

Therefore, no commercial news system ever made a concerted effort to concentrate on keeping this before the eyes of the people.  Meanwhile right wing and business sources continually try to dry up government sources for funding  non profit reporting which you can understand would be the tendency of corrupt news and political systems.

When Mainstream News Media decides to become more interested in protecting political and economic equalities, then they won't have to take down people who try to get the news out that they are ignoring.  Until then they should act a little more respectful of those who will go to extreme lengths as misrepresenting the basis for their reporting when they do bring up the inconvenient truths of American business practices.

Bashir Assad's Father in Law in UK Emailed Advice on Fighting Criticism of Crackdown #syria

Syrian Independence Flag Painted on Walls in Homs

Whether or not the Syrians were manipulated into a disastrous rebellion or not, Assad Father-in-law's advice on the use of propaganda while he is living abroad is the most cynical example of the cult of the wealthy and powerful we may have seen lately

Picture place using native sharing and attributions code supplied by Flickr and allowed via Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0). Rollover picture to see name of photographer/owner who has no relationship to this blog or blogger.

Emails from Bashir al-Assad's wife's dad show cynical manipulation of words from the Assad regime started right in the UK.

This will make you sick.
Report presents in mobile format. It might look funny to computer users, but is much quicker for mobile users.
See Report in : The Guardian: Assad emails: father-in-law gave advice from UK during crackdown

DC Watchdog Group: IRS Should Examin Norquist Group's Returns

CREW says something seems fishy in Norquist led association's filings.

See:
http://bit.ly/wjokAu

US-UK Will Agree on Release of Oil Reserves

Possibly other nations will join.

Oil speculators are likely to be hurt.

Good.
See Reuters report


Later: On Keith Olbermann we learned that officials had denied this report was accurate, but Keith and his guest surmised the Obama and Cameron administrations had released the idea to a Reuters source to quell some of the speculation going on in over fuel prices in the markets. Even oil speculators, who may manipulate markets in the most cynical ways ever imagined don't want to lose their own shirts.

Daylight Savings Time is Not as Good an Idea as It Seems

Thank you Brad Plumer for getting this in the pages of mainstream news media.

Daylight savings doesn't save energy, and may cause automobile fatalities according to writer at Washington Post in Daylight saving time — still mostly a scam

As a blogger noted, in fact the push for DST has deep roots in the retailing business.

Wisconsin Officials Try To Schedule Walker Recall for June To Avoid Student Voting

Allegations are erupting that Wisconsin officials are gaming the recall reelection by scheduling it for June.  Recall advocates are crying fowl on the timing saying that would conveniently set the election after colleges are out for the summer when students are more likely to be be out of state.
See report at link below:
http://bit.ly/yVI9kJ