@dustcircleNews - HEADLINES: Government and CISPA, Stop Isolating Gaza, Unmarried Women Struggling, Orwellian Warfare State, US Militarism, Hacker Threats, Practice of Torture, 10 Million Working US Poor, Rights of Immigrants, God and Mental Illness, Constitution Project, Paul Revere Trivia, Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders Explode, Dinosaur Egg Study, American CEOs' Pay, Zionism and Congress, more.

It has come to my attention that some of the VIDEO digests don't show some of the videos in the mailings. These are accessible on the website. The Video-related content I send out will have a link to the website so you can view the videos, instead of seeing just a list: http://www.dustcircle.com

Government Has Already Fooled Us More Than Once On Privacy; History Belies How CISPA Will Be Used

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130417/10212122743/government-has-already-fooled-us-more-than-once-privacy-history-belies-how-cispa-will-be-used.shtml

Israel: Stop Isolating Gaza
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/israel-stop-isolating-gaza/

Unmarried Women Are Desperately Struggling in Our Failed Economy
http://www.alternet.org/unmarried-women-are-desperately-struggling-our-failed-economy

The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/17

What Has US Militarism Wrought?
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/04/what-has-us-militarism-wrought/

The Greatest Trick The Government Ever Pulled Was Convincing The Public The 'Hacker Threat' Exists
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130408/17093022626/greatest-trick-government-ever-pulled-was-convincing-public-hacker-threat-exists.shtml

United States Engaged in the Practice of Torture: Report
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34640.htm

Perverting the Constitution for Power
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/03/perverting-the-constitution-for-power/

More Than 10 Million Americans Among the Working Poor
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34649.htm

Al-Jazeera And Feminism,The Rights Of Immigrants And The Stateless?
http://www.countercurrents.org/fenley170413.htm

Study: Belief in an angry God associated with variety of mental illnesses
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/17/study-belief-in-an-angry-god-associated-with-variety-of-mental-illnesses/

Constitution Project’s Report on Detainee Treatment
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/16/world/16torture-report.html

11 Things You May Not Know About Paul Revere
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/11-things-you-may-not-know-about-paul-revere

Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders Explode at GOP Panelists Over the Economy and the Environment
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/viewvideo/76020

Dinosaur egg study supports evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs
http://machineslikeus.com/news/dinosaur-egg-study-supports-evolutionary-link-between-birds-and-dinosaurs

Why American CEOs Get Paid Way More Than CEOs Anywhere Else (Hint: It's Not Performance Based)
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-american-ceos-get-paid-way-more-ceos-anywhere-else-hint-its-not-performance

Zionism and the United States Congress
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/zionism-and-the-united-states-congress-by-william-james-martin/

@dustcirclenews - 9 DOCUMENTARIES: Wikileaks, John Wayne Gacy, Through the Wormhole, NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity, Growing Up with Gadgets, Fear Anger and Politics, Edible City, Prisoner X, Stigma

WIKILEAKS: THE FORGOTTEN MAN
While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange battles to avoid extradition from the United Kingdom to Sweden, on the other side of the Atlantic Bradley Manning is facing a court martial. If found guilty Manning could spend the rest of his life in prison.

JOHN WAYNE GACY
John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (March 17, 1942 May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer. Between 1972 and 1978, the year he was arrested, Gacy raped and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Although some of his victims’ bodies were found in the Des Plaines River, he buried 26 of them in the small crawl space underneath the basement of his home and three more elsewhere on his property. He became known as Killer Clown because of the popular block parties he would throw for his friends and neighbors, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup as Pogo the Clown.

Through the Wormhole: Is There Really a Parallel Universe?One cosmologist from MIT firmly believes that multiple personas of one person exist. He believes that our cosmic doppelgangers exist in realm that is beyond our reach. He further points out that studies have shown that the universe is massive and has no finite end. This means that at one point in time, there can be a universe besides ours. More disturbingly so, there can be a being that looks exactly like you in that separate universe. This cosmologist has even calculated the number of light years that one should travel to possibly find his or her doppelganger.

NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity’s First Major Discovery
Here are the details of Curiosity’s discovery of ancient conditions in Yellowknife Bay in Mars’ Gale Crater, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. That’s what the Mars Curiosity turned up in its first major discovery. Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — some of the key chemical ingredients for life — in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.


Growing Up with Gadgets
Modern technology is often blamed for a wide range of learning problems in today’s children. But are modern gadgets themselves at fault, or is it simply the way they are being used that needs to be addressed?

Fear, Anger and Politics
In this two-part documentary, Al Jazeera follows the stories of some of those caught up in the anti-terrorist crackdown that followed 9/11 as they speak out about the injustices they have endured and their fears of a rising Islamophobia.



















Edible City: Grow the Revolution
Inspirational, down-to-earth and a little bit quirky, Edible City captures the spirit of a movement that’s making real change and doing something truly revolutionary: growing the model for a healthy, sustainable local food system.

Prisoner X
In early 2010 a man was escorted to arguably the most secure prison cell in Israel. The guards taking him there had no idea who he was or what he’d done.
“It is simply a person without a name and without an identity who is placed in complete and absolute isolation from the outside world. There is confidentiality surrounding the detainee in every respect” a prison official stated. 

Stigma

While some prejudice stems from religious beliefs, much of the stigma is simply passed down from generation to generation. This has allowed a once biblical illness, often referred to as the world’s oldest and most misunderstood disease, to continue to affect hundreds of thousands each year, right up into the twenty-first century – even though this disease is completely curable.

19.Oct.2012 - Get Your Free Book! Democracy Now Expands the Debate, Clean Water Act, Defense of Marriage Act, Overturn Citizens United, More Cyber-security Mandates, Biodiversity for Food Security, Training of Soldiers, U.S. Imperialism Unleashed, Afghanistan and U.S. Once Were Friends, Translation of Rachel Corrie Judgment, Who Are the None's?

This month, we are giving away a FREE copy of The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Simply go to our Facebook page, and start sharing our posts. The person or organization that shares the most DH posts by Halloween wins the book!  

 

You are viewing this from http://www.dustcircle.com. Also, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for exclusive content.

‘Democracy Now!’ Expands the Debate

Marking the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act By Protecting It

Statement from Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/10/18-1

Court of Appeals Strikes Down Defense of Marriage Act

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, the federally imposed ban on same-sex marriage passed into law in 1996, saying the legislation grossly violates the equal protection clause found in the US Constitution's fourteenth amendment.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/18-2

New Jersey Becomes Ninth State to Back Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United

The state assembly signed the resolution Thursday afternoon that "Expresses strong opposition to U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission; calls upon Congress to propose amending U.S. Constitution."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/18-7

Should Industry Face More Cybersecurity Mandates?

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has warned that the United States faces a possible “cyber-Pearl Harbor” attack by foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation’s power grid, transportation system, financial networks and government. But in August, Senate Republicans, siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce blocked legislation that would have required new standards at critical private-sector facilities, saying such rules would be too burdensome for businesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/10/17/should-industry-face-more-cybersecurity-mandates

Biodiversity Is Key In The Road Map To Food Security With No Role For GM Crops

There has been much talk around biological diversity and biosafety in the country as India was host to the eleventh meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity (COP-11) and the sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (COP-MOP6) in Hyderabad. 

http://www.countercurrents.org/saigal181012.htm

The Training Of Soldiers

Within individual countries, murder is rightly considered to be the worst of crimes. But the institution of war tries to convince us that if a soldier murders someone from another country, whom the politicians have designated as an “enemy”, it is no longer a crime, no longer a violation of the common bonds of humanity. It is “heroic”.

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery181012.htm

Approximately 50 % Of World’s Wetlands Lost During The 20th Century

How many of us have ever bothered about the wetlands of the world? To the common man a wetland is just a waste of ‘good’ land, and we never understood what the real use of wetlands are and how important it is to protect them. Unfortunately we humans sit up and take notice of issues with our planet only if we are affected by a problem and after we have destroyed a lot of the ecosystem.

http://www.countercurrents.org/nazareth181012.htm

Get the military out of our public schools

In 1966, when I was a senior at Fortuna High, military recruiters were a fixture at our school. They made regular appearances in their dress uniforms with all their pleats and flaps and brass buttons and medals. And they would give us their best speech. “You'll be heading off to Vietnam,” they told us. “You'll see plenty of action and come back heroes with a chest full of medals because you fought for the most powerful army in the world. And you'll be better for the experience.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32789.htm

Has the US Banned the Autobiography of a Former Guantanamo Prisoner?
People might remember the name David Hicks. He is an Australian who was held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay from 2001 until 2007. In 2010 he published an autobiography entitled Guantanamo: My Journey. Reportedly the book details the years of torture he underwent while in the custody of the US military. Sounds like a book you might want to read. But strangely, it does not seem to be for sale in the U.S. Barnes and Noble does not list it at all. Amazon, conversely,does list it for sale— at its Kindle Store —but at the very spot on the page where we’d expect to see the “Buy Now” button, we find instead a notice reading, “This title is not available for customers from: United States.” Amazon also has a used hardcovercopy for sale—only one—but it is available at the outrageous price of $105.15. 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32787.htm

Toward Barbarism: US Imperialism Unleashed

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.  Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32786.htm

Turkey Leads US-sponsored Military Encirclement of Syria

Despite widely reported concerns of blowback in Syria due to the arming of jihadist groups, a military build-up on Syria’s borders is proceeding apace.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32785.htm

Does Anyone Remember That Our 'Enemies' in Afghanistan Were Once Friends and Allies of America?

It's all to easy for the media to forget.

http://www.alternet.org/world/does-anyone-remember-our-enemies-afghanistan-were-once-friends-and-allies-america

Future Jobs Depend on a Science-Based Economy
The next administration must prime the true growth engine

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=future-jobs-depend-on-a-science-based-economy&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20121018

English translation of the Rachel Corrie judgment

You can download the translation here (PDF) and it is also reproduced after the break below. I should emphasise that this is not an official translation, but it does appear to me to be a very good effort indeed.

http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2012/10/18/ask-and-you-shall-receive-finally-an-english-translation-of-the-rachel-corrie-judgment/

Who are the ‘Nones’?

More than 13 million atheists and agnostics and nearly 33 million claim no particular affiliation. About 20 percent of U.S. adults say they had no religious affiliation, an increase from two decades ago when about 8 percent of people were deemed so-called “nones,” according to a new study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. The group will be the subject of an upcoming PBS miniseries this month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/who-are-the-nones/2012/10/09/e3669952-1238-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_blog.html

Bryan Fischer of AFA Claims Jesus Wants Women Out Of The Political Arena

Six Arrested in Illinois Protesting Bain Capital’s Plan to Close Sensata Plant, Move Jobs to China

DOWNLOAD:  VIDEOAUDIOGET CD/DVDMORE FORMATS

Greg Palast on "Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps"

DOWNLOAD:  VIDEOAUDIOGET CD/DVDMORE FORMATS

Minnesota Anti-Gay Constitutional Amendment Fuels National Battle over Marriage Equality

DOWNLOAD:  VIDEOAUDIOGET CD/DVDMORE FORMATS

Al Jazeera to Air Opposition Presidential Debate Amidst US Black-out

When: Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 8:00pm CSTWhere: University Club of Chicago – Chicago, IllinoisDebate Organizer: Free and Equal Elections FoundationMedia Coverage: The debate will be broadcast live at www.freeandequal.org/live, and Al Jazeera.

In Conference Call, Romney Urged Businesses To Tell Their Employees How to Vote

Will Rising Poverty Affect the US Election?

 

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Published on Monday, July 30, 2012 by Al-Jazeera

There is more evidence of the growing wealth gap in the US: A new report says that the number of people living in poverty could be at its highest level in nearly half a century. So how can the US government help its least fortunate?

In 2010, one in six Americans were considered poor. That is more than 47 million people living on less than $10,500 per year.

The official government numbers on poverty in 2011 will be released just weeks ahead of the November presidential elections.

But an associated press survey of economists and think tanks says that the number of poor Americans could reach 15.7 per cent, making it the highest level since the 1960's.

The US already has more poor people than any other developed country. Analysts say it will be years before the US starts to see poverty drop below the rate it was before the so-called 2008 Great Recession.

And on Friday, the US government announced that the economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2012.

The economy is by far the most important issue for the November presidential elections. But do either President Barack Obama, or his presumptive opponent, Republican Mitt Romney, have any real plans to help America's least fortunate?

How will the debate affect the US presidential election? And is there a political will to improve the lives of America's poor?

To discuss this we are joined by Rocky Anderson, a US presidential candidate for the Justice Party; Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the book Nickel and Dimed; and Stan Veuger, an economist and research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

"The politicians will remain stuck on the middle class, because poor people for the most part don't vote in their mind. And second, both are tied to Wall Street, and Wall Street has a classic indifference when it comes to the most poor people. We Americans should be ashamed when we look at the level of poverty among our fellow citizens ... But poverty has always been high in America .... That means not that we've lost our soul, that means we want to able to do something about it but our political system is so broken that the will of the people cannot filter through. It's dominated by big money, big banks and big corporations who have their way. So I don't give up on the American people, I just uphold the sleep-walking among the American people and I uphold the greed among so many people at the top."

Cornel West, an author and professor at Princeton University

POVERTY IN THE US:

• The US is set to release the latest figures on poverty in the country
• Poverty levels in the US have risen to the highest level in 50 years
• The poverty rate is likely to climb as high as 15.7 per cent from 15.1 percent in 2010
• The US' lowest poverty rate was 11.1 per cent in 1973
• Analysts say there were 47 million people living in poverty in 2010
• The highest recorded US poverty rate was 22.4 per cent in 1959
• Analysts say child poverty is to increase from 2010 level of 22 per cent
• 42 per cent of US single-mothers live below the poverty line
• 27 per cent of Latinos and African Americans live below the poverty line
• 26 per cent of native Americans live below the poverty line
• Mitt Romney told US News Network that he didn't care about the very poor
• Romney: 1960's welfare programme has created a "Culture of poverty"
• Romney says he is not concerned with the poor becaue of the social 'safety net'
• Romney says he is focused on creating new jobs
• Obama expanded the children's health insurance programme in 2009
• Obama made the healthcare reform a central issue for his presidency
• Obama said welfare does not do enough to lift people from poverty
• In 2010, Obama called for a rise in the minimum wage
• Obama expanded food assistance via Recovery and Reinvestment Act
• Obama increased pell grant money for college students
• Obama extended 'Making work pay' tax credit to working families

© 2012 Al-Jazeera

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Policing in the US: Increasingly Militarized?

Extreme police tactics are not a new phenomenon in the United States. But in the age of social media, police violence, such as the shooting of unarmed people, the use of pepper spray and taser guns are being documented for the world to see.

The Occupy protesters throughout the country felt the full force of police tactics - many were subject to violent arrest.

Perhaps the most controversial example was at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) where peaceful protesters were pepper sprayed last November.

© 2012 Al-Jazeera

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‘Religious Freedom’ for Atheists

• By AUSTIN DACEY
• • • COMMENTS (25) 
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• 
  Image: Copyright 2012 by Tai's Tees.
• Austin Dacey
  Austin Dacey is a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union and author ofThe Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights(Continuum, March 29, 2012).
• It is hard to imagine a less hateful person than Alexander Aan. Mild and soft-spoken, the 30-year-old Indonesian bureaucrat recently told Al Jazeera, in an interview conducted just outside his jail cell, “As a democracy and part of the global community, because we are not isolated from the outside world, I think we should be more tolerant. Nobody hurts anyone simply because he has different ideas.” And yet Aan is facing up to 11 years in prison for blasphemy and inciting religious hatred because he voiced his skepticism about Islam on Facebook.
  In the West, the paradigms of blasphemy are fair-haired Danish cartoonists drawing the Prophet and Richard Dawkins badmouthing Yahweh. The public debate is about how to balance freedom of speech with respect for religious belief. But Alexander Aan’s case, playing out in the world’s most populous Muslim country, represents a much different global reality. Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it.
  Aan was arrested in a small town in West Sumatra on January 18 after a number of local residents assaulted him at work in an act of self-styled vigilantism. They were reacting to some of his postings on a Facebook page devoted to atheism: a note entitled “the Prophet Muhammad was attracted to his own daughter-in-law”; a comic suggesting the Prophet slept with his wife’s maid; and a status update reading, “If you believe in god, then please show him to me.”
  Prosecutors have charged Aan under the Electronic Information and Transaction Law, which prohibits inciting hatred or enmity of a religious group, and under the country’s blasphemy provision, Article 156a, which criminalizes “hostility, hatred or contempt” and “disgracing” of a religion. Article 156a also prohibits attempts to persuade others to leave their religion and embrace atheism.
  Aan’s small, pro bono legal team is not optimistic. The Indonesian legal system is designed for unequal treatment of unbelievers. The constitution officially recognizes the religions of Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism, and stipulates that every citizen must believe in a supreme being.
  Desecrating Secularism
  As the Indonesian activist Karl Karnadi points out, the persecution of Alexander Aan comes in the context of broader trends of “increasing religious intolerance in Indonesia which has victimized minority Ahmadiyya Muslims, Shia, Christians, Buddhists.” Indonesia’s Minister of Religious Affairs has recently called Shia Islam a “heresy” and publicly backed provincial bans on the Ahmadiyya, who consider themselves Muslims but differ from mainstream Islam on the finality of the Prophet.
  Viewed in this context, atheists’ conversations on the internet should be seen as one end of a continuum of manifestations of conscience, exercises of the capacity to grapple with ultimate questions of meaning, value, and morality. From a moral perspective, there is an important symmetry between the attitude of the believer who reserves special reverence for a deity, saint, or prophet, and the attitude of the secularist who asserts that every person is equally holy. Neither of these beliefs is uniquely deserving of being labeled a spiritual commitment, relegating the other to mere “speech” against that commitment. Alexander Aan has no less moral ground to claim that monotheism insults his sense of what is and what is not sacred. In my book The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights (Continuum, 2012), I call this “The Symmetry Thesis.”
  A government that singles out some citizens’ conceptions of the sacred for official protection is guilty of a gross failure of equal treatment. This principle of equality is supported by recent developments in international human rights law. Last summer the United Nations Human Rights Committee commented that laws restricting blasphemy are inherently discriminatory because they give to traditional believers a legal protection that is not available to the religiously heterodox or secular.
  The same inequality can be found in the criminalization of “hatred” and “enmity” towards a religion. The problem is not confined to Indonesia but can be found in most of the hate speech statutes throughout secular democratic Europe. Article 226b of the Danish Penal Code, for instance, singles out for protection—among other categories—groups of people who “on account of their faith” are threatened, insult or degraded. It does not single out people, regardless of their affiliation, on account of their convictions of conscience.
  Know Thy Enmity
  The most principled motivation for hate speech laws can be found in the principle of equal respect for citizens. And yet, in the final analysis the principle of equality undermines their legitimacy. What is morally objectionable about hate speech is its attack on the standing of a group of citizens, a denial or denigration of their entitlement to equal concern and respect. Laws against group insult or group defamation, as Jeremy Waldron maintains, are intended to protect vulnerable minorities by exhibiting the state’s commitment to their equal dignity and equal standing in the face of bigots. Surely we all have a duty to work towards a society in which all citizens enjoy equal standing. The difficult question is what the state legitimately may do to promote this end.
  If the state is to intervene on behalf of the reputation and standing of “Muslims,” or any other faith community, it must first decide on whose behalf it is intervening. It must lend its official approval to some idea of what counts as a “real” or “authentic” member of such groups. Were Aan’s expressions hateful or abusive towards Muslims? That depends on whether we assume that a Muslim is by definition one who believes in the moral perfection of the Prophet. Without this assumption, talk of Muhammad’s sexual indiscretions cannot be construed as inherently insulting to “Muslims.”
  As the American constitutional scholar Robert Post has argued, the identities of such communities are not scientific facts but social categories that are open to moral contestation and re-negotiation. It would not do to take a poll of all of the self-identified members of the group to determine what they believe. For some will believe it, and others will not.
  The question now becomes, which of the various understandings of the identity is most genuine, authentic, or warranted. And that question is not subject to a statistical proof. It is a normative question. Typically it is the most vulnerable or marginalized within the community who have the most urgent stake in contesting and re-negotiating the meaning of the identity. In a just society, such questions are not to be decided by the state but are to be left to individuals to work out in the public and cultural space.
  Clashes over blasphemy and so-called religious hatred are not about free speech versus belief, or atheism versus faith. They are about equal treatment for all persons of conscience. As with attempts to stop blasphemy, a state that attempts to use the force of law to stop defamation or insult of religious groups must select certain identities for protection to the exclusion of other identities. The very same value that underlies the protection of the traditionally religious believer—equal respect for freedom of conscience—also underlies the protection of the secularist and atheist alongside the heterodox, dissident believer. As goes Alexander Aan, so go we all.

• TAGS al jazeera, alexander aan, atheism, blasphemy, facebook, free speech, human rights, indonesia, islam