Every year over 21 million shipping pallets end up in a landfill. Used worldwide to ship goods of all kinds in mass quantities, a Brooklyn-based design firm looked past the intended use of a pallet and saw a versatile, recyclable, sustainable and inexpensive building material that could be used to address another issue: improving housing quality for refugees.
The inspiration behind I-Beam design firm’s Pallet House Project came from a mind-boggling statistic that 84 percent of the world’s refugees could be housed with a year’s worth of repurposed American pallets.
A pallet is the perfect material to provide a better standard of living — they are readily available in most countries and they can be used first to carry aid to displaced people in the form of clothing, food and medical supplies (to name but a few) and then recycled into shelters.
The average refugee stays in a refugee camp for seven years, and the Pallet House (a 250 square-foot structure composed of 100 reused pallets), is a sturdier alternative to the tent shelters most common in refugee camps. Additionally, it can be easily converted from a temporary or emergency shelter to a permanent residence with the addition of more sturdy construction materials found in the area.
The houses are easy to assemble: once the pallets arrive, it only takes four to five people to nail together the house, and it can be built in less than a week. At first, when more standard construction materials are less available, the structures can be put together with the help of temporary supplies like tarps to keep the inside dry until materials from the surrounding area can make a more solid roof.
As time passes, pallets can be fitted with add-ons like insulation or plywood for the interiors(this can all be done prior to shipping as well), and stucco and plaster or roofing tiles for the exterior, if/when the materials become available. Due to the flexibility of the design, each occupant can build a shelter that fits their specific needs.
Though the Pallet House was originally conceived as a temporary transitional shelter for refugees making their way back to Kosovo, and has since been used to house people uprooted by natural disasters, famines and wars, I-Beam has widened the scope of the Pallet House to include a much bigger population by using the module as a pre-fab solution to affordable housing everywhere.
An estimated one billion people live in substandard housing, and I-Beam believes that the Pallet House could help to provide better conditions for people in need around the world.
The Pallet House has already turned many heads for its innovative take on temporary housing, and it took home the Architecture for Humanity Award in 1999. I-Beam has built Pallet structures in New York, Indiana, and the Architecture Triennial in Milan and have been active recently in Haiti and Pakistan.
Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR) have acknowledged that eight members of the US Army 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group served as interns in their news divisions and other areas during the Kosovo war. PSYOPS is a highly specialized unit of the military whose personnel are trained in the production and dissemination of USgovernment propaganda, including on television and radio programs.
According to CNN executives and military officials, the intern program began last June and ended in March. A total of five PSYOPS sergeants were assigned to the network’s Atlanta headquarters. These included two at the Southeast bureau, two at CNNRadio and one at the satellite department.
Three PSYOPS personnel also worked at the Washington DC headquarters of NPR, a publicly-funded radio network. They worked for periods ranging from six weeks to four months from September 1998 through May 1999 on such programs as All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
On March 29 top CNN officials acknowledged the presence of the military personnel in a written reply to the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), which had issued a media alert two days before, entitled “Why were government propaganda experts working on news at CNN?”
In her response to FAIR, Sue Binford, CNN executive vice president for public relations, claimed that while the interns were present “no government or military expert has ever worked on news at CNN.” She said that the five interns were among hundreds who spend a few weeks at CNN and like all interns “observe under the supervision of CNN staff and have no influence over what CNN reports or how CNN reports it.”
An NPR spokesperson said the interns performed minor tasks and “had no influence on our news coverage.”
The issue was first raised in the mediaFebruary 17 when the French publication Intelligence Newsletter published a report of a military symposium held in Arlington, Virginia early in February. At the symposium, Colonel Christopher St. John, Commander of PSYOPS whose 1,200 soldiers and officers are stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, said the cooperation between the army and CNN was a textbook example of the kind of ties the US Army wants with the Americanmedia.
According to the article, St. John said rather than use outright military censorship as was done in the Gulf War, NATO tried to use more subtle means to regulate the flow of information where they could spread selected information while suppressing unfavorable information. Rear Admiral Thomas Steffens of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) said at the symposium that the military should have the capacity to gain control over commercial news satellites to bring an “informational cone of silence” over areas where special operations are taking place. (Indeed, one of the PSYOPS officers worked in CNN‘s satellite division.)
Colonel Romeo Morrissey, also of SOCOM, said in his report that NATO should have taken out the Serbian radio station B-92. The Internet web site of B-92 became an independent source of coverage of the bombing in Serbia for journalists looking for information other than that presented at press conferences held by NATO in Brussels.
The information in Intelligence Newsletter was brought to a wider audience when it was published by the Netherlands daily newspaper Trouw on February 21. The magazine interviewed Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service, who acknowledged the interns worked at CNN as part of the army’s “Training With Industry” program. Collins stated, “They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news.”
The story was first reported in the US by such web sites as emperors-clothes.com and on CounterPunch by its coeditor Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for The Nation. In its response to CNN‘s denial that military personnel ever “worked on the news,” FAIR said this was “essentially a semantic quibble” and pointed to the comments of Major Collins. It also pointed out that CNN only acknowledged that the presence of PSYOPS personnel in the newsroom was “inappropriate” after this was revealed in Trouw. NPR officials also waited until the exposure of the intern program to remove them.
Top CNN officials have also claimed that they were unaware of the PSYOPS intern program, and would never have approved of it. Instead, they say, such decisions must have been made by lower-level human resource managers. But according to an article in TV Guide, several unnamed sources at CNN told the magazine that a network programming executive who left the network months before the intern program became public signed off on the internships. Moreover, CNN and military sources acknowledged that the interns never concealed their identity at work.
In its original action alert FAIR stated: “What makes the CNNstory especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army’s covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN‘s operations. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence mission against CNN itself?”
These revelations are only the latest concerning CNN‘s relations with the US military, particularly during the Kosovo war. On July 2, 1999 the Independent newspaper in Britain published an article entitled “Taken in by the NATO Line.” The article suggested that major media outlets went beyond the usual unethical and dishonest news practices to outright collusion with NATO.
Belgrade war correspondent Robert Fisk wrote: “Two days before NATO bombed the Serb Television headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities from the premises at once, which they did.
“A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early for make-up.
“Vucic was late—which was just as well for him since NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes to two. The first one exploded in the make-up room where the young Serb assistant was burned to death. CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the Larry King show, put out by the entertainment division, did not know of the news department’s instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade building.”
Also during this period, CNN fired its Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Peter Arnett from his 18-year career as an international journalist for CNN. He was fired April 20, 1999 after calling a press conference to protest CNN‘s refusal to assign him to cover the war from Belgrade. Arnett had been sidelined since June 7, 1998 when CNN aired his investigative report “Valley of Death”. In the joint production by CNN and Time magazine Arnett gave compelling evidence that US commandos had used deadly sarin gas to kill American soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam. After intense pressure from the military, the co-producers of the production, April Oliver and Jack Smith, were fired when they refused to disavow the report.
In the 1990s it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR). The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its “Training with Industry” program. The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:
The U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press inFebruary of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.
Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France’s Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN‘s Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.
In the U.S. media, so far only Alexander Cockburn, columnist for The Nation and co-editor of the newsletter CounterPunch, has picked up on the story. Cockburn’s column on the subject is available at www.counterpunch.org.
The story is disturbing. In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council’s Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration’s Central America policies.
A senior US official described OPD as a “vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory.” (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in “prohibited, covert propaganda activities,” and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.
CNN has always maintained a close relationship with the Pentagon. Getting access to top military officials is a necessity for a network that stakes its reputation on being first on the ground during wars and other military operations.
What makes the CNNstory especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army’s covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN‘s operations. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against CNN itself?
For instance, one PSYOPS officer worked in CNN‘s satellite division. According to Intelligence Newsletter, rear admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert in the Special Operations Command, recently told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to “gain control” over commercial news satellites to help bring down an “informational cone of silence” over regions where special operations were taking place.
An unofficial strategy paper published by the U.S. Naval War College in 1996 and written by an Army officer (“Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier”) urged military commanders to find ways to “leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate” for the purposes of “communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection.”
Legendary comic Carlin comes back to the Beacon theater to angrily rant about airportsecurity, germs, cigars, angels, children and parents, men, names, religion, god, advertising, Bill Jeff and minorities. This is George Carlin’s 1999HBO Special (from The Beacon Theater New York). It is George Carlin’s 11th HBOComedy Special.
George Carlin shows his comedy has changed in the years since he started 43 years ago with this special. Here, anger fuels his comedy more than ever before, and it helps alot. Here, he attacks Children and parents, cigars, angels, theme restaurants, advertising (ironically), religion, god, airportsecurity and germs. With this, he brings a whole new type of stylish comedy that makes Richard Pryor look like Carrot Top. At 61, George comes back with his best, and wins. Best comedy special of the year. A++
Well for the purpose of this article, there are two types, Sodium Fluoride and Calcium Fluoride
Calcium Fluoride appears naturally in underground water sources and even seawater.
Sodium Fluoride is a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminium, and phosphate fertilizer industries. This fluoride has an amazing capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials. The sodium fluoride obtained from industrial waste and added to water supplies is also already contaminated with lead, aluminum, and cadmium. It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, possibly leading to cancer, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and performs as a Trojan Horse to carry aluminum across the blood brain barrier. The latter is recognized as a source of the notorious “dumbing down” with lower IQ’s and Alzheimer’s effects of fluoride. Various permutations of Sodium Fluoride are also in many insecticides for homes and pesticides for crops. Sometimes it is even added to baby foods and bottled waters. If you live in a water fluoridated area, purchase commercially grown fruits, especially grapes, and vegetables that are chemically sprayed and grown areas irrigated by fluoridated water, you are getting a triple whammy! Better skip that fluoridated toothpaste! – source
Besides tap water, what else is Sodium Fluoride found in?
1. Toothpaste – As of April 7th, 1997, the United States FDA (Food & Drug Administration) has required that all fluoride toothpastes sold in the U.S. carry a poison warning on the label. The warning cautions toothpaste users to:“WARNING: Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional help or contact a poison control center immediately.”For data on how much fluoride children ingest from toothpaste, click here .
2. Infant Formula – For further information on fluoride exposure from infant formula, click here
3. Processed Cereals – “During manufacturing, infant dry cereals are processed in a slurry and placed in a revolving drying drum. The water from the slurry evaporates, and the fluoride from the water remains in the cereal. Thus, the fluoride concentration of the water used during processing can substantially affect the final fluoride concentration… Infants who eat large quantities of dry infant cereals reconstituted with fluoridated water could ingest substantial quantities of fluoride from this source.” – Heilman JR, et al. (1997). Fluoride concentrations of infant foods. Journal of the American Dental Association 128(7):857-63.
4. Juices – “Our data suggest that young children who regularly or frequently drink substantial quantities of [juice] possibly should not receive dietary fluoride supplements, since they might be at increased risk of developing dental fluorosis.” – Kiritsy MC, et al. (1996). Assessing fluoride concentrations of juices and juice-flavored drinks. Journal of the American Dental Association 127(7):895-902.
5. Soda – “Seventy-one percent of the [sodas] had fluoride levels exceeding 0.60 ppm, which is considered to contain sufficient fluoride so that dietary fluoride supplements are contraindicated.”- Heilman JR, et al. (1999). Assessing fluoride levels of carbonated soft drinks. Journal of the American Dental Association 130(11):1593-9.
6. Wine – “Analyses of nineteen California wines revealed fluoride concentrations ranging from 0.23 to 2.80 ppm (mean 1.02 ppm, with seven samples above the international limit of 1 ppm).” – Burgstahler AW, et al. (1997). Fluoride in California wines and raisins. Fluoride 30: 142-146.
7. Beer – “Soda and beer bottled with fluoridated water contain 0.7 to 1 ppm fluoride; consumption of these beverages is almost certainly more variable among individuals than consumption of water… If beer contains 0.7 ppm fluoride, heavy beer-drinkers may ingest more than 4 mg daily from beer alone.” – Groth, E. (1973), Two Issues of Science and Public Policy: Air Pollution Control in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Fluoridation of Community Water Supplies. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, May 1973.
8. Teflon Pans – “Teflon-lined cookware contributes to the fluoride ingested by humans. Full and Parkins boiled fluoridated water at a moderate rate until a one-third or one-half reduction in volume was attained, then determined the fluoride content of the residual water… In Teflon-coated ware, the concentration of fluoride ion increased to nearly 3 ppm.
9. Rat Poison – Since the 1800s, fluoride has been a key component in rat poison and insecticides. When mixed into grain or other food, rats will readily consume the poison and die
10. PROZAC! – Part of the main ingredient in Prozac is fluoride. Talk about dumbing down society.
The below countries have made a stand against fluoridation of their drinking water.
Germany: “Generally, in Germany fluoridation of drinking water is forbidden. The relevant German law allows exceptions to the fluoridation ban on application. The argumentation of the Federal Ministry of Health against a general permission of fluoridation of drinking water is the problematic nature of compuls[ory] medication.”999). www.fluoridealert.org/Germany.jpeg
France: “Fluoride chemicals are not included in the list [of 'chemicals for drinking water treatment']. This is due to ethical as well as medical considerations.”000). www.fluoridealert.org/France.jpeg
Belgium: “This water treatment has never been of use in Belgium and will never be (we hope so) into the future. The main reason for that is the fundamental position of the drinking water sector that it is not its task to deliver medicinal treatment to people. This is the sole responsibility of health services.” 000). www.fluoridation.com/c-belgium.htm
Luxembourg: “Fluoride has never been added to the public water supplies in Luxembourg. In our views, the drinking water isn’t the suitable way for medicinal treatment and that people needing an addition of fluoride can decide by their own to use the most appropriate way, like the intake of fluoride tablets, to cover their [daily] needs.”000). www.fluoridealert.org/luxembourg.jpeg
Sweden: “Drinking water fluoridation is not allowed in Sweden…New scientific documentation or changes in dental health situation that could alter the conclusions of the Commission have not been shown.” 000). www.fluoridation.com/c-sweden.htm
Denmark: “We are pleased to inform you that according to the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy, toxic fluorides have never been added to the public water supplies. Consequently, no Danish city has ever been fluoridated.” 999). www.fluoridation.com/c-denmark.htm
Norway: “In Norway we had a rather intense discussion on this subject some 20 years ago, and the conclusion was that drinking water should not be fluoridated.” 000). www.fluoridation.com/c-norway.htm
Finland: “We do not favor or recommend fluoridation of drinking water. There are better ways of providing the fluoride our teeth need.” 000). www.fluoridation.com/c-finland.htm
Northern Ireland: “The water supply in Northern Ireland has never been artificially fluoridated except in 2 small localities where fluoride was added to the water for about 30 years up to last year. Fluoridation ceased at these locations for operational reasons. At this time, there are no plans to commence fluoridation of water supplies in Northern Ireland.” 000). www.fluoridealert.org/northern-ireland.jpeg
As of 26th May 2011, 3692 medical professionals have signed the statement calling for the end of water fluoridation. Full details can be found here
• 651 Nurses (RN, MSN, BSN, ARNP, APRN, LNC, RGON)
• 539 DC’s (Doctor of Chiropractic, includes M Chiro)
• 457 PhD’s – includes DSc, Doctor of Science; EdD (Doctor of Education); DrPH (Doctor of Public Health)
• 398 MD’s (includes MBBS)
• 313 Dentists (DDS, DMD, BDS)
• 155 ND’s (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine)
• 83 Lawyers (JD, LLB, Avvocato)
• 82 Pharmacists (Pharm.D, B. Pharm, DPh, RPH)
• 79 RDHs (Registered Dental Hygienist); also DH, RDHAP, EFDA, RDAEF, and RDN
• 59 Acupuncturists (LAc – Licensed Acupuncturist, and, MAc -Master Acupuncturist)
• 35 DO’s (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine)
• 25 Veterinarians (DMV, VMD, BVMS)
• 17 OD (Doctor of Optometry)
• 15 PA-C (Physician Assistant – Certified); also MPAS and RPA-C
So it is apparent that fluoride is a poisonous by-product of industry. If fluoride is a main ingredient in Procaz, are governments that allow water fluoridation attempting to dumb their people down? Are we more malleable as a society when fluoride is present? I would say Yes and Yes!!
[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED:
Text version below transcribed directly from audio.]
Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of
Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends:
Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young
Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from
Goethe’s beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald.
He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never
would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their
rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always
be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did
not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know –
that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.
And now, I stand before you, Mr. President — Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands
of others — and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people. “Gratitude” is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines
the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary, or Mrs.
Clinton, for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the
world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny
and society. And I thank all of you for being here.
We are on the threshold of a new
century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be?
How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and
judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast
a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless
chain of assassinations (Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat,
Rabin), bloodbaths in Cambodia and Algeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and
Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag
and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz
and Treblinka. So much violence; so much indifference.
What is indifference? Etymologically,
the word means “no difference.” A strange and unnatural state in which the lines
blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty
and compassion, good and evil. What are its courses and inescapable
consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference
conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at
times to practice it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine
meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing
upheavals?
Of course, indifference can be tempting
– more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It
is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our
hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another
person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her
neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless.
Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the
Other to an abstraction.
Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz,
the most tragic of all prisoners were the “Muselmanner,” as
they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the
ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were –
strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They
feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.
Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt
that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be
abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than
an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to
be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God — not outside God. God is
wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.
In a way, to be indifferent to that
suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is
more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes
a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of
humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But
indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You
fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.
Indifference elicits no response.
Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end.
And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits
the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels
forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless
refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by
offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying
their humanity, we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin,
it is a punishment.
And this is one of the most important
lessons of this outgoing century’s wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.
In the place that I come from, society
was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the
bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps –
and I’m glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that
event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance — but then, we
felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.
And our only miserable consolation was
that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that
the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black
gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews
that Hitler’s armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the
Allies. If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven
and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and
conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the
railways, just once.
And now we knew, we learned, we
discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the
illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader — and I
say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking
his death — Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945. So he is
very much present to me and to us. No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized
the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and
thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight
dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle.
And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history — I must say it — his image in
Jewish history is flawed.
The depressing tale of the St. Louis is
a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo — nearly 1,000 Jews –
was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht,
after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed,
synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that
ship, which was already in the shores of the United States, was sent back. I
don’t understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those
who needed help. Why didn’t he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand
people — in America, the great country, the greatest democracy, the most
generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don’t
understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the
victims?
But then, there were human beings who
were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we call
the “Righteous
Gentiles,” whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith.
Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after
the war than to save their victims during the war? Why did some of America‘s
largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler’s Germany until 1942?
It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have
conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How
is one to explain their indifference?
And yet, my friends, good things have
also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of
communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel‘s peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us
remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat
that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will
never forget it.
And then, of course, the joint decision
of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims,
those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man, whom I believe that because of
his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity.
But this time, the world was not silent.
This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.
Does it mean that we have learned from
the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less
indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we
less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of
injustices in places near and far? Is today’s justified intervention in Kosovo,
led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the
deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents, be allowed
anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do
the same?
What about the children? Oh, we see them
on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken
heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we
feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease,
violence, famine.
Some of them — so many of them — could
be saved.
And so, once again, I think of the young
Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have
become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk
towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary
hope.
When Britain lost control of Egypt in 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden said he wanted the nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser “destroyed … murdered … I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt”. Those insolent Arabs, Winston Churchill had urged in 1951, should be driven “into the gutter from which they should never have emerged”.
The language of colonialism may have been modified; the spirit and the hypocrisy are unchanged. A new imperial phase is unfolding in direct response to the Arab uprising that began in January and has shocked Washington and Europe, causing an Eden-style panic. The loss of the Egyptian tyrant Mubarak was grievous, though not irretrievable; an American-backed counter-revolution is under way as the military regime in Cairo is seduced with new bribes and power shifting from the street to political groups that did not initiate the revolution. The western aim, as ever, is to stop authentic democracy and reclaim control.
Libya is the immediate opportunity. The Nato attack on Libya, with the UN Security Council assigned to mandate a bogus “no fly zone” to “protect civilians”, is strikingly similar to the final destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999. There was no UN cover for the bombing of Serbia and the “rescue” of Kosovo, yet the propaganda echoes today. Like Slobodan Milosevic, Muammar Gaddafi is a “new Hitler”, plotting “genocide” against his people. There is no evidence of this, as there was no genocide in Kosovo. In Libya there is a tribal civil war; and the armed uprising against Gaddafi has long been appropriated by the Americans, French and British, their planes attacking residential Tripoli with uranium- (more…)
John Boyd is a man on a mission. Beginning Thursday, the founder and head of the National Black Farmers Association can be seen driving a spluttering tractor called “Justice” around Capitol Hill, pressing political leaders to provide funds to settle a discrimination case involving minority farmers.
Boyd, a fourth-generation black farmer himself, tells CNN that he wants Congress and the Obama administration to “step up” and deliver the money needed to fund the settlement. “We’ve been waiting for years,” he said. “And when we entered into this settlement agreement back in February, the administration announced it like it was a done deal.”
“They put out in the media that they were ‘turning the page’ at the USDA,” Boyd continued. “But the bottom line is that the black farmers don’t have the money.”
The 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Department of Agriculture claimed that black farmers were systematically denied government farm loans and support from federal programs because of the color of their skin. Eleven years ago it was settled out of court.
Under a federal judge’s terms dating to 1999, qualified farmers could receive $50,000 each to settle claims of racial bias. But tens of thousands of farmers missed the filing deadline to submit claims.
I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER SAY THIS, BUT I THINK HOWARD STERN WAS RIGHT….EMINEM MIGHT’VE BEEN ABLE TO AVOID THIS IF HE HAD GONE TO THERAPY BACK THEN…BUT THEN THE CRAZY EMINEM WE LIKE TO LISTEN TO WOULDNT EXIST SO… *KANYE SHRUG*
Here’s an 11 year old audio recording of Eminem on Howard Stern’s show from 1999, which happened right after “My Name Is…” took off.
Paul Guzyk and Daniel Sherwood are computer geeks who co-founded 3Prong Power, a Berkeley business that transforms standard Toyota Priuses into all-electric green machines.
In 1999, Guzyk moved to California and rediscovered an old passion for cars after tinkering with a Prius. He found that in many ways the Toyota hybrid was more like a computer than an automobile. Notably, it ran on recognizable computer standards similar to those found in an office network.
“I found that modifying the Prius is like getting your computer to do what you want it to do,” says Guzyk. (more…)
Sophia Stewart an African American who claimed to be the author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work, as the copyright case is finally settled in court.
A six-year dispute has ended which involved Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Sophia Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were well received and completely acknowledged by the Central District of California, where the Judge Margaret Morrow was presiding.
Sophie Stewart had filed her copyright infringement case 10 years ago, in 1999, after viewing the acclaimed movie Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an advertisement placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works, which could be later made into a movie.
According to court documentation, “an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers (more…)
Every year over 21 million shipping pallets end up in a landfill. Used worldwide to ship goods of all kinds in mass quantities, a Brooklyn-based design firm looked past the intended use of a pallet and saw a versatile, recyclable, sustainable and inexpensive building material that could be used to address another issue: improving housing quality for refugees.
