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POPSOur Rights Taken Away By Corporations
"He went on to specify how this could happen: direct seed movement by birds, by wind, especially on the prairies, by floods, and through cross-pollination by bees). It doesn’t actually matter how the genetically modified organisms get into an organic farmer’s field or into the fields of a conventional farmer like myself: once there, those seeds and plants become Monsanto’s property.” It was a very startling decision. The judge also ruled that we were not allowed to use our seeds or plants again and that all the seeds and plants that we had developed over 50 years became the property of Monsanto. The judge also ruled that all the profit from my 1998 canola crop was payable to Monsanto. The judge further ruled that even from the land that had no contamination, all profit would be payable to Monsanto because there was a probability that our seed contained some of Monsanto’s GMOs. The really worrying thing is how we can lose our rights and freedoms. The contract from Monsanto, take
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POPSYou Have No Rights An executive order was issued by the president, on the 17th of July, and it said, basically, that if you protest or threaten what he calls “stabilization efforts in Iraq,” your property can be seized and you can be detained. Hmm... long live King George!!
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POPSThe Next Renaissance The next renaissance (if there is one)—the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we're using—the biases of these media—cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center—like a centrally issued currency—the network creates value from the periphery.
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POPS"World needs a vacation from USA" He called for immediate technology transfer from the West to the Third World, to allow development based on clean technology — stressing the need to “reject intellectual property rights”. funds should not be distributed through the World Bank, which was trying to regain legitimacy by portraying itself as a “climate bank” while continuing to push fossil-fuel-driven development. Confronting global poverty and climate change means confronting US power. “I don’t think the world needs US leadership”, he said. “They should be more humble.” Whether the US achieves its goals “is where we, as civil society come in”, Bello said, suggesting that, by making intervention costly for the US, civil society could encourage a “new US isolationism”. The struggle is, he stressed, global. “The world needs a vacation from the messaianism of the US … A few decades of a self-absorbed US would be very good for the world.”
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POPS12 Myths about Hunger More: Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger. Surveying the globe, we see no correlation between hunger and civil liberties. However, one narrow definition of freedom - the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that property however one sees fit - is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. By contrast, a definition of freedom more consistent with our nation's dominant founding vision holds that economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of freedom is essential to ending hunger.
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POPSCensorship in American Universities: Harvard But is it anti-Semitic to ask why the Palestinians should pay the price for the ghastly crime of the Germans? Why were the property rights of the German perpetrators sacrosanct and those of the guiltless Palestinians adjudged an acceptable casualty? In U.S. foreign policy, not all racial groups are guaranteed the same rights and protections. Otherwise, why does the U.S. rightly defend Jewish people’s claims on EU bank accounts, property, and compensation for labour expropriated during the 1930s and 1940s, while quashing the rights of millions of Palestinians refugees to lands, houses, and goods stolen as a condition of Israel’s founding in the late 1940s? As a nation we seem unconscious of the hypocrisy. The convention that persecuted Europeans had the right to safe havens on lands stolen from non-EU was, by the mid-20th century, as outmoded as the Confederacy’s defence of slavery in the mid-19th. ...Harvard Crimson
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POPSCriminalizing the Antiwar Movement IMPEACH!!! "The criminalization of the State is when the sitting President and Vice President use and abuse their authority through executive orders, presidential directives or otherwise to define "who are the criminals" when in fact they they are the criminals." This latest executive order criminalizes the peace movement. It must be viewed in relation to various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation, the gamut of presidential and national security directives, etc., which are ultimately geared towards repealing constitutional government and installing martial law in the event of a "national emergency". The war criminals in high office are intent upon repressing all forms of dissent which question the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. The executive order combined with the existing anti-terrorist legislation is eventually intended to be used against the anti-war and civil rights movements."
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POPSThe Ten Legal Commandments of Photography*
*Charlton Heston not included. :) I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space. II. If you are on public property, you can take pictures of private property. If a building, for example, is visible from the sidewalk, it’s fair game. III. If you are on private property and are asked not to take pictures, you are obligated to honour that request. This includes posted signs. IV. Sensitive government buildings (military bases, nuclear facilities) can prohibit photography if it is deemed a threat to national security. V. People can be photographed if they are in public (without their consent) unless they have secluded themselves and can expect a reasonable degree of privacy. Kids swimming in a fountain? Okay. Somebody entering their PIN at the ATM? Not okay. There's a bit more at the source.
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POPSDowntown business district bans outdoor photography Silver Spring, Md., where I spent a lot of time as a kid, now has a "revitalized" downtown area, where, as it turns out, you are not allowed to take photographs. Why? The main business street, though it was built and paid for with taxpayer money, was "vacated" by the county and leased to a private developer, who now manages the space. This says a lot about the demise of the commons and of public space in the U.S., I think. The photographer in question comments: "I wonder if people know they traded their rights for a Potbelly’s and a Starbucks" (source: http://snipr.com/1nmvg). Also see the discussion at http://flickr.com/groups/dcphotorights/
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POPSAs Adam Smith rolls in his grave... The WTO provides simply the latest example of how far we have drifted from the Capitalism of Adam Smith. Smith was a product of the enlightenment, and clearly envisioned capitalism as practiced by a society of enlightened humanists. The restraint that this would bring serves to vouchsafe the truly free market. When corporate collusion places profit margins ahead of the basic well-being of the people, then who could say this market is truly free? Are we not at their mercy? An economy controlled by corporate elites is no better than one controlled by the state. The Savage Capitalism of the WTO is different from communist or fascist economics in name and execution only. The resultant inequities in society are the same. Is this really the ideal to which we have committed so much blood and treasure?
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POPSDriving through Tenaha, Texas, doesn't pay for some But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly -- and discovered that all but one of them were black. The process apparently is so routine in Tenaha that Guillory discovered pre-signed and pre-notarized police affidavits with blank spaces left for an officer to fill in a description of the property being seized.
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POPSHighway through the building The building has a double core construction, with a circular cross section and special care is taken by providing surrounded structure to the highway to protect the building from noise and vibration. Generally expressways are built underground, and passing through a building is an extremely rare occasion. It dates back to 1983, when the redevelopment of this area was decided upon, "building permits were refused because the highway was already being planned to be built over this land. The property rights' holders refused to give up, and negotiated with the Hanshin Expressway corporation for approximately 5 years to reach the current solution."
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POPSThe Grand Canyon Legally Reverts Back To The Navaho Indians
Now let me get this straight. The Navaho folks, which probably now only number about 45 individuals or so expect me to just hand them over $10 billion in cash?" Nooooo way! You know folks, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. I am categorically gonna go out on a limb here and state for the recorded record that I ain't paying diddly squat. And let me make this point perfectly clear. I want that sumbitch eyesore moved off United States property by October 15. Nobody not even the non-drinking Mormons are gonna mess with the brother here. Cause I am the 'main man' and I have been to hundreds of picnics and there ain't nobody, especially no loincloth wearing folks gonna push around this half African-American boy. The president was so upset that one of his secret service agents had to bring him an L&M cigarette and a Bud Light Beer. President Obama finally calmed down. He called up the Attorney General and told him to draw up the paperwork for a counter offer.
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POPS28 Fundemental Beliefs of the American Founding Fathers Principle 11 - The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. Principle 12 - The United States of America shall be a republic. Principle 13 - A Constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers. Principle 14 - Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure . Principle 15 - The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations. Principle 16 - The government should be separated into three branches . Principle 17 - A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government. Principle 18 - The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written Constitution.
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POPSMore rights for Pakistani women
Women's rights in Pakistan will not be realised until particular Islamic laws and codes are scrapped. This include laws allowing the marriage of girls under sixteen, making a women's testimony equal to half of a man's, excluding female testimony in Hudood cases, and allowing family members to kill women in the name of honour without any fear of criminal penalty. Pakistan may look from outside very progressive in terms of women's rights, especially when one remembers Benazir Bhutto, something not even the United States has managed to accomplish. It is true that women are guaranteed one-third of the seats in national and local-level assemblies and are represented in the cabinet. It is also true that their participation in the labour force is remarkably large with many women holding university degrees and occupying high posts in both public and private institutions, including the army. But this only applies to urban centres, where literacy rates are high and the economy is booming.
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POPSAgenda 21 and Depopulation Codex Alimentarius is planned to go into effect on December 31st, 2009. If you haven't heard of it, or of Agenda 21, you should watch these videos. Please watch the video clipped by LoPhatt too: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/40998E5B-81B4-4513-BCB6-54160CFAFD24/
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POPSLose Your House, Lose Your Vote The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.” One expert questioned the legality of the tactic. “You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Herbert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.” As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Herbert called it, “mean-spirited.”
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POPSMonsanto To Criminalize Organic Farming ? To begin reversing GM contamination will require ending the power biotech companies such as Monsanto exert over our government and through that, over our food. HR 875, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto. The bill is monstrous on level after level - the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international “industrial” standards to independent farms - the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.
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POPSObama calls it WMD: Terror threat seen as 'most serious' since 9/11 attacks Obama admin. says explosives = WMD Iraq had massive amounts of explosives in 2003 Ergo Iraq had WMD The American people get this. The left’s obsession with the rights of terrorists finds no support among sensible citizens. But the issue’s been hijacked by the America-hating zealots who shaped our president’s worldview and by media scoundrels who would rather have their country die for them. I guess we can put the whole "Bush lied, blah blah blah" crap to bed now that Obama's Justice Department has declared high explosives to be weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was, and remains, awash in high explosives. Ipso facto. However when it is shown, absolutely, that Obama lies every time his lips move, liberals do not seem to notice. Some say the left has a double standard. I say they have no standards whatsoever. Probably the fault of the Jews for beaming high intensity radiation at liberal heads. /s
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POPSIsraeli soldiers report abuses in Gaza "We heard about what appeared to be grave incidents, unjustified fire at civilians and vandalism of property," said Danny Zamir, a retired army officer who heads the academy. "But of more concern was the unbridled contempt and reckless disregard for Palestinians." "I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all . . . he did his job according to the orders he was given," the squad leader was quoted as saying. "And the atmosphere in general the lives of Palestinians, let's say, are something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers, so as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way."