Global
The community was out of control — the children, oh my God, the children, were sniffing gasoline and pretty much abandoning any pretense of a future — and the social and criminal-justice systems were just adding to the problem. Nothing was working.
“Our children slammed us against a brick wall,” Burma Bushie said.
This is the story of a culture in shambles. It was the early ’80s. Bushie’s community is called the Hollow Water First Nation Reserve, a village of about 900 people in eastern Manitoba, more or less at the end of the highway. There was one road in and one road out.
They may have felt utterly isolated in their troubles, but what a few of them started to do — in synchronicity with people in other indigenous communities — has spread hope and awareness across the planet. They began reaching beyond the known (i.e., Western) world, deep into their souls and into the roots of a lost way of life, to save their children and the future. Without intending to, they started a movement. And the slow reverberation of change continues to spread.
Maybe it was this line of Dr. King ’s that they don’t like: “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification…”
What is nullification? It’s one of the last-ditch philosophical stands of the slaveholders, the historically disreputable — and thoroughly discredited — concept that a state could “nullify” a federal law by declaring it null and void. The idea of the Slave Power was that the Southern states would “interpose” themselves between the national government and the slaveholders, and prevent our laws from being enforced.
Without a constant national government from 1991 to 2006, Somalia was essentially a modern day example of a stateless society. Between rampant crime and poverty throughout Somalia, chaos became the norm. To correct this nebulous conception of rule the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was created in the middle of 2004. Designed to impose order and crack down on the escalating crime rates and warlord-style governance, the ICU had another crucial element which cannot go overlooked; it meant to enforce Islamic law on the areas that it controlled.
The Koran is available in several Russian translations but a court ruled on Sept. 17 "that the translation by Elmir Kuliyev, published in Saudi Arabia in 2002, violated federal law banning extremist materials," Associated Press reported.
"Russian Muslims were appalled by the neglect of law shown by the court" in the southern Black Sea port of Novorossiysk said Ravil Gainutdin, head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, in an open letter to Putin on Sept. 20.
Gainutdin "said the court's order to destroy the Muslim holy book was particularly outrageous," AP reported.
Muslims perceive the Koran as God's words transmitted in Arabic through the Prophet Muhammad, and forbid the intentional destruction of the holy book, including translations.
I lived in Iraq during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing. On April 1st, about two weeks into the aerial bombardment, a medical doctor who was one of my fellow peace team members urged me to go with her to the Al Kindi Hospital in Baghdad, where she knew she could be of some help. With no medical training, I tried to be unobtrusive, as families raced into the hospital carrying wounded loved ones. At one point, a woman sitting next to me began to weep uncontrollably. “How I tell him?” she asked, in broken English. “What I say?” She was Jamela Abbas, the aunt of a young man, named Ali. Early in the morning on March 31st, U.S. war planes had fired on her family home, while she alone of all her family was outside. Jamela wept as she searched for words to tell Ali that surgeons had amputated both of his badly damaged arms, close to his shoulders. What’s more, she would have to tell him that she was now his sole surviving relative.
David Swanson
On Friday, September 20, former Ohio State Representative Charlie Earl announced that he is running for governor as a Libertarian candidate next year. By Tuesday, Seitz was holding hearings on his new bill that would make it difficult for Earl to stay on the ballot.
Earl ran as the Libertarian candidate for Ohio Secretary of State in 2010 and received nearly 5% of the vote. In his announcement, Earl claimed he had “Tea Party support.”
The bill requires minor parties to get 3% of the presidential vote in order for their party to stay officially on the Ohio ballot. Essentially, minor parties will be removed from the 2014 ballot on the grounds that they did not pass a vote test – that was not in existence – in 2012. Seitz’s bill appears to violate due process by requiring minor parties to undergo this process in 2014. The Ohio Green Party planned to run a gubernatorial candidate in 2014 as well.
Another 25,000 have signed at Roots Action. An independent advisory group of scientists and engineers is also in formation.
The signatures are pouring in from all over the world. By November, they will be delivered to the United Nations.
The corporate media has blacked out meaningful coverage of the most critical threat to global health and safety in decades.
The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled.
Ordinarily I wouldn't be recounting my adventures in geekdom, but recent events force me to come clean.
Trust me, this is one for the books.
A good friend approached me recently with a busted laptop.
I should explain, friends and associates often come to me when they are experiencing computer problems.
I've been building computers for years and fixing them even longer. When people who know me get the “blue screen of death” they come to me. When their ding-busted machine freezes up and starts acting like a Commodor64 with pneumonia, they come to me. When a certain someone had his motherboard fried by the detectives trying to mine his hard drive for child pornography, and he wanted to retrieve those actually mild images, he came to me. And I'll tell you, I have a hell of a batting average.
So there's my bona fides, such as they are.
This past weekend, September 20-22, the Greater Columbus Convention Center was host to what is now known as Ohio Comic Con, formerly Mid-Ohio Con. The list of Featured Guests for the show is an impressive who's-who of pop culture, including Star Trek's William Shatner, The Lord of the Rings' Sean Astin, Ghostbusters' Ernie Hudson, and even some WWE professional wrestlers. If you look through the whole list you might actually find the one Featured Guest who has ever had anything to do with creating a comic book: Stan Lee, who has the co-creation of most of the Marvel Universe to his name.
And while Stan Lee, who more recently has been known for cameos in every movie based on Marvel's characters, is quite an impressive draw, the fact that he's the only comic creator among the top-billed guests is a sign of something that's become a chronic problem at comic book conventions across the country: A focus on celebrities who have nothing to do with comic books.