VIDEO: When polar bears attack… Sarah Palin

On Friday October 10th, Polar Bears Against Palin – organized by Voices For Animals of Western PA – called on a White Bloc to support them in solidarity with the Alaskan environment and wildlife that Sarah Palin has wreaked damage on in her two years of governorship, joining over 300 other protesters in a near-spontaneous event in downtown Pittsburgh.

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news: The Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters

Jeremy Scahill at Counterpunch writes:

[O]n Oct. 20, a group of about 50 activists gathered outside Blackwater’s gates in Moyock, N.C. There, they reenacted the Nisour Square shooting and staged a “die-in,” involving a vehicle painted with bullet marks and blood. The activists stained their clothing with fake blood and dramatized the deadly shooting spree. Some of the demonstrators marked Blackwater’s large welcome sign — with the company’s bear claw in a sniper scope logo — with red hand prints. The demonstrators believed these “would be a much more appropriate logo for Blackwater,” according to Baggarly. “We’re all responsible for what is happening in Iraq. We all have bloody hands.” It took only moments for the local police to respond to the protest, the first ever at Blackwater’s headquarters. In the end, seven were arrested.

The symbolism was stark: Re-enact a Blackwater massacre, go to jail. Commit a massacre, walk around freely and perhaps never go to jail. All seven were charged with criminal trespassing, six of them with an additional charge of resisting arrest and one with another charge of injury to real property. “We feel like Blackwater is trespassing in Iraq,” Baggarly later said. “And as for injuring property, they injure men, women and children every day.” The activists were jailed for five days and eventually released pending trial.

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news: Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

[read the rest: here.]

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news: Norman Mailer, the writer as Writer

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Sat Nov 10, 3:40 PM ET

NEW YORK – His friends all tell similar stories: Norman Mailer at a dinner party, awards ceremony or afternoon gathering, hobbling on canes up or down a few steps or a flight of stairs, short of breath, as if getting from one place to another was a struggle even greater than finding the right word to finish a paragraph.

Then, he would be seated, and was himself again.

“We would talk about everything,” novelist William Kennedy said of Mailer, who died Saturday at age 84 after spending more than two months in and out of hospitals. “He knew he wasn’t going to live very much longer, but he would still talk of taking on the greatest subjects. He always was working on something.”

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news: Bush administration OKs demolition of New Orleans public housing complexes

Despite the severe shortage of housing affordable to low-income residents of the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday approved a plan by the Housing Authority of New Orleans to raze four public housing complexes with a total of 4,500 units and redevelop them as mixed-income housing, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The developments targeted for tear-downs are C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte. The demolition work is expected to begin in the next two or three months, according to the paper.

Read the rest of this article: here.

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audio: Hiroshima survivor speaks in Pittsburgh

Yuko Nakamura was only 13 when the atomic bomb fell on her hometown of Hiroshima. She remembers a huge, dark cloud, then black rain… A Hiroshima native recounts bombing at anniversary vigil.

more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/pp/07220/807713.stm

audio of her talk: http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=24180

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news: Baghdad Heat, Dangerous Relief

Against a backdrop of mortar fire, families in Baghdad play at Abu Niwas Gardens, finding a dangerous solution to coping in the 120-degree heat: here.

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news: U.S. Military Overwhelmingly Supports … Ron Paul

Wonkette points out:

Anti-war constitution-loving weirdo Ron Paul is getting financial support from the same bunch of anti-American nerds who always rally around such libtards: active-duty military and veterans.

The Q2 fundraising numbers reveal 23,465 individual cash donations to RP’s campaign from current and former Army, Navy and Air Force people. John “But I Was Tortured” McCain only picked up donations from 15,825 current or retired military, while draft-dodging Manhattan dandy Rudy Giuliani only collected 2,320 military donations.

Ron Paul Is the U.S. Military’s No. 1 Choice [Students for RP]

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news: Giant badgers terrorise Iraqi port city

The (UK) Sunday Telegraph reports:

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra’s veterinary hospital, has inspected the corpses of several badgers and tries to reassure Iraqis that the animals are not a new post-war arrival in the region.

“These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta,” he told AFP. “Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific.”

Not everybody is convinced.

“I believe this animal appeared following a raid to the region by the British forces,” said Ali Mohsen, a farmer in his 40s from Karmat Ali, near the air base used by the multinational force.

“As we are close to the airport, they probably released this animal into the area.”

British troops have been based in Basra since the 2003 US-led invasion overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, and the 5500 that remain still face the threat of Shiite militias battling for the region’s oil resources.

They also have to battle the Iraqi rumour mill, as locals are quick to blame them for almost any calamity that befalls the area – including an apparent plague of vicious badgers with long claws and powerful jaws.

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NEWS, CMU: Web Photos Now Have Zero Credibility

from Technovelgy.com

Well-meaning researchers from Carnegie Mellon University destroyed the credibility of all photos on the web today. Alexiei Efros, assistant professor of computer science and robotics lead the team that created two related systems that, together, will do what governments and corporations could only dream of (until now).

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