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zeitgeist movie, part II - addendum
posted online today october 3rd http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912
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Zeitgeist: Addendum (we are slaves to money)
We the human race, the people of the earth, have everything we need to live in a society free from currency, slavery, and debt.
Our society only functions because of debt that can and will never be payed back. It is a cycle where the amount of money available in our society in no where near equivalent to the amount of debt we owe.
This movie shows how our society is controlled not by the government, but by the privately owned companies that control the currency.
This video is relevant to what we are seeing now with how we have fallen into this Financial Crisis.
If you ever wanted to know how our Financial system really works this is the video to watch.
VIDEO: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=706520527769592... We the human race, the people of the earth, have everything we need to live in a society free from currency, slavery, and debt. ... more -
China in Africa: Slavery or Development?
Peter Hitchens describes his first hand experiences of the unsavoury practices of Chinese businesses in Africa. BUT at the same time, he asks the question if all the aid and good intensions in the world have not helped in the past forty decades, maybe the "Chinese" approach might... Peter Hitchens describes his first hand experiences of the unsavoury practices of Chinese businesses in Africa. BUT at the same time, ... more
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Chuck D's Influence
Beastie Boy Adam Yauch reflects on the influence of Chuck D on his perception of race in America, as well as shares his assessment of how things are going in the present with regard to black-white race issues. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch reflects on the influence of Chuck D on his perception of race in America, as well as shares his assessment of ... more
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Africa's New Slave Empire
A report by Peter Hitchens gives dramatic and worrying insight into the lives of laborers in Zambia and the DRC who work for Chinese companies.
"These poor, hopeless, angry people exist by grubbing for scraps of cobalt and copper ore in the filth and dust of abandoned copper mines in Congo, sinking perilous 80ft shafts by hand, washing their finds in cholera-infected streams full of human filth, then pushing enormous two-hundredweight loads uphill on ancient bicycles to the nearby town of Likasi where middlemen buy them to sell on, mainly to Chinese businessmen hungry for these vital metals.
[...] Many perish as their primitive mines collapse on them, or are horribly injured without hope of medical treatment. Many are little more than children. On a good day they may earn $3, which just supports a meagre existence in diseased, malarial slums…
Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines - the basic raw materials of modern life."
[see site for link to full version]
Can this justifiably be called a 'slave empire'? What can the world and governments do about it? A report by Peter Hitchens gives dramatic and worrying insight into the lives of laborers in Zambia and the DRC who work for Chinese c... more -
PETER HITCHENS: How China has created a new slave empire in Africa
I think I am probably going to die any minute now. An inflamed, deceived mob of about 50 desperate men are crowding round the car, some trying to turn it over, others beating at it with large rocks, all yelling insults and curses.
They have just started to smash the windows. Next, they will pull us out and, well, let's not think about that ...
I am trying not to meet their eyes, but they are staring at me and my companions with rage and hatred such as I haven't seen in a human face before. Those companions, Barbara Jones and Richard van Ryneveld, are - like me - quite helpless in the back seats.
If we get out, we will certainly be beaten to death. If we stay where we are, we will probably be beaten to death.
Our two African companions have - crazily in our view - got out of the car to try to reason with the crowd. It is clear to us that you might as well preach non-violence to a tornado.[more] I think I am probably going to die any minute now. An inflamed, deceived mob of about 50 desperate men are crowding round the car, som... more -
Exploited workers, Canada's 'slave trade'
It was 5:30 in the morning when Edwin Canilang realized he had been bought and sold.
Crowded in the back of a van heading north of Toronto with four other Filipino men last summer, the skilled welder faced another unpaid day on a cleanup detail at a bottling plant.
He thought of his wife, who had just given birth to their third child back home in San Carlos, a five-hour drive north of Manila.
He thought of the promises that lured him to Canada – $23 an hour, plus overtime, food and lodging, to help build two icebreakers for the Canadian Arctic.
He thought of his first week in Canada, eight men in the basement of a Toronto house sleeping four to a bed, their passports taken from them. Then they were trucked north to their new home – a filthy, abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.
Now, bumping down a dirt road in August 2007, Canilang mustered the nerve to ask Bob De Rosa, his labour boss, when the first paycheque was coming.
"Don't you guys know that I spent $4,000 to get you?" De Rosa snapped back.
What Canilang experienced last summer is an all too-common situation – foreign workers brought to Canada under false pretences and exploited. Federal officials call it the "modern-day slave trade" and warn of "People for Sale in Canada" in a poster campaign in 17 languages, distributed through Canadian missions around the globe.
At least 800 workers are trafficked into Canada yearly and another 1,000 or more pass through Canada and into the United States, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Settling back in his seat, Canilang seethed. De Rosa headed east from Elmvale to deliver his workers – welders and plumbers – to job sites in Barrie and Orillia.
Some were pressed into service at a water bottling plant, run by De Rosa's family. Others dug ditches or picked up garbage around a large rural estate where De Rosa lives. The workers, threatened with deportation, did every menial job thrown at them. None of the work involved welding and plumbing, the trades that brought them here.
Their ordeal ended six weeks later when welder Eric Martinez, fed up with the squalid living conditions, long hours and no pay, bolted while on a work detail near Hamilton.
Eventually, Martinez managed to contact Philippine embassy officials who alerted ambassador Jose Brillantes to the deplorable situation. Days later, the men were rescued by Filipino consular staff. It was 5:30 in the morning when Edwin Canilang realized he had been bought and sold. ... more -
Opening our eyes to horrors of Worldwide Slavery
This crime is "so painful we tend to close our eyes to it," a Scottish peer, surgeon and humanitarian told his audience at Mercer University on Sept. 16. He proceeded to hold before their mental and emotional eyes what has long been "hidden in plain sight," to use a Washington official's phrase.
The crime is "Human Trafficking - A Worldwide Problem"; the speaker was Lord McColl of Dulwich and the occasion was the 8th annual John E. James Distinguished Lecture at Mercer's Walter F. George School of Law. Attorneys, judges, faculty members, students and their guests filled the law school's moot courtroom to listen.
Human trafficking reaps profits from forced and slave labor - often sexual servitude. Such slavery exists in our country. In every country.
Fraud often precedes force. While some trafficked victims are simply kidnapped, others are promised work in a wealthier country or an opportunity to travel. Some are sold by impoverished parents or uprooted by natural disasters or war.
Once isolated and trapped, victims may be held or silenced through physical abuse, death threats, forced alcohol or drug intake, fear of deportation or shame.
Warning: The following facts provided by Lord McColl may (and should) sicken you.
• Worldwide, human trafficking produces annual revenues of $42 billion. The world's second largest criminal industry is victimizing 12 million people today, many of them as sex workers.
• Eighty percent of the trafficked are female, 50 percent children, mostly from the poorest of countries and families.
• Annually, from 600,000 to 800,000 children are trafficked - one every 30 seconds. In the United Kingdom, each trafficked child yields an average revenue of $250,000 a year - high profit at low risk for organized crime.
• California is the top U.S. destination for females forced into prostitution. Immigration agents raiding San Francisco brothels determined that most of the sex workers had been forced into the trade. Children young as nine were involved.
• Use of prostitutes has increased to about 10 percent of men, said Lord McColl. With that, trafficking has increased. Eighty-one percent of women in London brothels are trafficked.
The speaker said, "It should be obvious to clients" in such places that often their partners "are under duress, but they choose to ignore it." There's a need to "educate and shame" those who "use the services of trafficked people." Accordingly, anti-trafficking posters in London read, "Walk in a client and walk out a rapist." This crime is "so painful we tend to close our eyes to it," a Scottish peer, surgeon and humanitarian told his audience at M... more -
Portion of slave burial ground saved
A portion of a 250-year-old burial ground for slaves and freed Blacks that now lies beneath a parking lot will be preserved and recognized as part of the city’s effort to confront its slave-trading history.
The 50-by-100-foot section of the former “Burial Ground for Negroes” had been destined to continue as a parking lot under the ownership of Virginia Commonwealth University.
However, VCU, which earlier this summer faced protests over its failure to recognize the burial ground, has changed its mind. VCU recently announced an agreement with the Richmond Slave Trail Commission to preserve that section of its parking lot for a future memorial and quit parking cars in that area. The university has blocked off the portion of the parking lot identified with the burial ground, but is parking cars on the rest of the acre-property at 1554 E. Broad St. that it bought earlier this year. No timetable has been given for development of the memorial. The commission is taking charge of that effort.
Council Vice President Delores L. McQuinn, who chairs the commission, praised VCU for its cooperation. She said she plans to hold at least three public hearings during the fall to gain citizen views on “creating a fitting memorial for this sacred ground.”
The city-created panel is developing a series of historic stops to illustrate Richmond’s robust role in the slave trade and this would be one. Between 1808 and 1865, the city was the second largest slave auction site in the nation. The burial ground lies just north of the former site of Lumpkin’s Slave Jail, which is part of the trail and where the commission is undertaking an archaeological dig.
Before the Civil War, the jail, dubbed the Devil’s Half-Acre, was the largest holding pen for slaves. After the war, Lumpkin’s became the initial site for a school for newly freed slaves that eventually became Virginia Union University. The site lies south of Broad Street near 15th street.
Kathleen S. Kilpatrick, director of the state Department of Historic Resources, which has played a key role in identifying the burial ground’s location, said, “We now have a commitment that will help the community ... do what is right by those people who lie nearby.”
The burial ground was used from around 1750 to around 1812, after which the city approved a new cemetery for Black Richmond residents further north. According to the state history agency, Interstate 95 was built over the main portion of the burial grounds, while the asphalt parking lot seals 10 feet or more of fill that has accumulated since the last person was interred. Dr. Christopher Stevenson, a state archaeologist, used historic maps, documents and other research to confirm the location of the burial grounds. A city gallows stood near the burial grounds, and slave revolt leader Gabriel Prosser met his death there.
Gabriel, as he was commonly known, planned an insurrection in August 1800 before Gov. James Monroe was tipped about the plot. It was snuffed out, leading to the execution of Gabriel and more than 20 other slaves. The insurgency has become known as simply Gabriel’s Rebellion, and is memorialized by a state history marker that now stands beside the parking lot. Philip Schwarz, a VCU professor emeritus whose scholarship includes Southern slavery, said the burial grounds could contain Gabriel’s remains.
“Is Gabriel there? Maybe,” he said.
.--CONTINUES A portion of a 250-year-old burial ground for slaves and freed Blacks that now lies beneath a parking lot will be preserved and recogn... more -
200 years of freedom?
Africa - poverty, war, corruption, slavery... when will the injustice end?
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Global slavery at a high, but reasons for hope
Some 27 million people labor as slaves – more than ever before – but those on the front lines of the antislavery movement see signs that human bondage is becoming increasingly unacceptable to the public and to a growing number of governments and businesses. Some 27 million people labor as slaves – more than ever before – but those on the front lines of the antislavery movement see signs th... more
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Nepal abolishes legalised slavery
Nepal's Maoist-led coalition government has abolished the Haliya system, a slavery-like condition, by freeing about 20,000 poor people from the hands of moneylenders and landlords, a cabinet minister said on Sunday.
Under the system, prevalent for decades in nine districts in western Nepal, moneylenders force poor villagers who borrow money from them to plough their land until they repay their debt.
They are offered low wages which are never enough to feed their families, let alone repay the loan, as labourers get trapped in the vicious cycle of debt. Nepal's Maoist-led coalition government has abolished the Haliya system, a slavery-like condition, by freeing about 20,000 poor p... more -
Mexican court rules against Wal-Mart
Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that Wal-Mart de México, the country’s top retailer, violated the Constitution by paying a worker in part with store cards usable only in Wal-Mart stores.
Wal-Mart de México, which is also known as Walmex and is a unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., gives employees electronic store cards as part of their salaries. The court said the practice harked back to exploitative wage schemes of a century ago. Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that Wal-Mart de México, the country’s top retailer, violated the Constitution by paying a worker ... more -
Florida tomato agribusiness giants plead guilty to enslaving Mexican and Guatamala...
"The successful prosecution of five Immokalee residents on slavery charges is satisfying, but the brutal details of their treatment of farm workers show how warped the agricultural labor system is...
This is among six slavery cases the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has helped prosecute, freeing more than 1,000 people. Coalition member Gerardo Reyes asked Tuesday, "How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never - ever - occur again in the produce that ends up on America's tables?"
Also, click here to read the US Department of Justice press release announcing the convictions.
UPDATE #1: US Sen. Bernie Sanders issues a statement on the convictions! Here's an excerpt:
"... I applaud U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy and his staff for successfully prosecuting this case. I also want to congratulate the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for their on-going efforts to protect some of the most exploited workers in our country...
... As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee I intend to introduce legislation in the very near future which will end a loophole in current law which enables growers to avoid taking responsibility for what happens on their fields when workers are being enslaved.”
September 3, 2008: Yesterday, at federal court in Ft. Myers, FL, farm bosses from Immokalee pleaded guilty to "numerous charges of enslaving Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants, brutalizing them and forcing them to work in farm fields." ("Five to plead guilty on charges of enslaving immigrant laborers," Ft. Myers News Press, 9/2/08).
According to the News-Press report:
"The 17-count indictment in the case -- one of the largest slavery prosecutions Southwest Florida has ever seen -- was released in January. It alleges that for two years, Cesar Navarrete and Geovanni Navarrete beat agricultural laborers, chained them up, locked them in boxes and trucks on the family property while keeping them in ever-increasing debt.
Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy has called it "slavery, plain and simple."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What words are there in the English language or any language to describe the disgust for this? This is America? I am very disturbed at not knowing what has transpired to get food to my table!
The CIW issued the following statement to press about the convictions:
"The facts that have been reported in this case are beyond outrageous -- workers being beaten, tied to posts, and chained and locked into trucks to prevent them from leaving their boss. How many more workers have to be held against their will before the food industry steps up to the plate and demands that this never -- ever -- occur again in the produce that ends up on America's tables?"
"What's most frustrating is that there is a solution. As US Senator Bernie Sanders said when he visited Immokale, 'Slavery is the extreme. The norm is a disaster.' If we can improve the norm -- guarantee fair wages and humane conditions for all Florida farmworkers -- then we can eliminate the extreme. And there are now several retail food industry leaders who have agreed to do their part to promote social responsibility in Florida agriculture. Yet the leaders of Florida's tomato industry -- who are holding their annual meeting this week at the Ritz Carlton in Naples -- continue to stand in the way of progress. The FTGE needs to start working with Yum Brands, McDonald's, Burger King, and the other major tomato buyers who want to put an end to exploitation in Florida's fields."
Unconscienable... but do Americans on the whole care? "The successful prosecution of five Immokalee residents on slavery charges is satisfying, but the brutal details of their treatme... more -
Politics? Global warming? Mind Control Hate Propaganda, Hate Speech & Crimes, ...
This is a little long... but interesting in these political times.
This is about how mind control, hate, propaganda, etc. is used in politics, genocide and war.
My purpose for posting it is simply so that people can be aware that in politics, and other areas, people are paid to pull our strings and make us react.
For example the writers of political speeches have desired outcomes.
The more charismatic the speaker the greater the outcome.
the question is...
How much do you feel and think is a result of how someone else tells you how to feel and think?
In the end... what is it truly yours?
With the violence reported from the crowds at the DNC and now at the RNC (monday) I wonder... what are these people thinking?
Please don't dissect political candidates here. That's not what it's about. I simply wanted to highlight that other people often pull OUR strings. And make us aware.
It's amazing how this is used.
Hate speech and propaganda are protected under our bill of rights. This is a little long... but interesting in these political times. ... more -
Vatican warns of growing "Christianophobia"
"Christianophobia" is a growing problem around the world and it must be fought with the same determination as anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, the Vatican said on Friday.
Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, spoke in the wake of attacks against Christians in India that have left at least 13 people dead this week.
Mamberti, addressing a conference in northern Italy, said religious freedom was a vital part of international relations and human dignity.
"In order to promote this dignity in an integral way, so-called 'Christianophobia' should be combated as decisively as 'Islamophobia' and anti-Semitism," he said.
This week in eastern India, thousands of people, most of them Christians, have sought shelter in makeshift government camps, driven from their homes by religious violence.
Hindu mobs burnt more than a dozen churches and attacked Christians after a Hindu leader was killed.
Mamberti said the events in India made the issue of religious liberty today all the more pressing.
While Hindu groups accuse Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to change their faith, the Christians say lower-caste Hindus convert willingly to escape a complex caste system.
Pope Benedict has condemned the violence against Christians in Orissa but also deplored the killing of the Hindu leader.
Italy's foreign ministry said it would summon India's ambassador to demand "incisive action" to prevent further attacks against Christians.
Mamberti said 21 Catholic missionaries were killed in the world in 2007 and lamented that the Christian population of Iraq was now down to about 500,000 from about one million before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Last month, Pope Benedict told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that minority Christians in Iraq needed more protection.
The Archbishop of Mosul of Iraq's largest Christian denomination, the Chaldean Catholics, was kidnapped in February and found dead two weeks later.
The Vatican has often expressed concern that conflicts in the Middle East are greatly diminishing the Christian population in the areas of the religion's birth.
from: Reuters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKLT61932620080... "Christianophobia" is a growing problem around the world and it must be fought with the same determination as anti-Semitism ... more -
India Woman Burned To Death In Anti Christian Violence; Churches Destroyed
In another forum I was shocked at the Anti-Christian attitude from posters here in America even.
The title above was confirmed 8/28/2008 by BBC News.
In this century more Christians have died for their faith than in the other nearly 2k years combined. Let that sink in.
First of all. These people were only Jesus Freaks in the light that they died for their faith. Most did not own a bible, although that is a cherished and protected item that some, not many house churches have access to. They often share bibles among many. In most of the countries owning a Bible is punishable by death or indefinite imprisonment.
Now think about that for one moment. Death for owning a Bible. We cannot comprehend that here in the United States. This is common especially under "Islamic States" where Islam is the mandatory religion. And is also common in communist and we are seeing other governments doing the same.
These people lived in fear and knowing that death is often the consequence of believing in God and Jesus.
Did they go around making condescending comments? Hell no . Did they quietly worship in secret? Yes.
So before the politically correct brainwashes and blinds you to the plight of even Christians around the world...
Below are examples of stuff that happened THIS WEEK.
(sorry to take up space, but this is continued below.) In another forum I was shocked at the Anti-Christian attitude from posters here in America even. ... more -
Slavery in America TODAY
On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.
This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American. On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fiel... more -
The Price Of Sugar: Haitians exploited by Dominican sugar growers
A fiery Spanish Priest risks his life to confront modern-day slavery on the sugarcane plantations of the Dominican Republic
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96 Indigenous Slaves Freed in Congo
A three-month campaign in by the World Peasants/Indigenous Organization (WPIO) has resulted in the release of 96 people who had been held as slaves in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
During the "Ten for One Peace Campaign," 50 people who were working as forced miners for companies in Lulimba were freed, along with 46 people from 12 indigenous families who had been enslaved for generations.
The son of a pygmy* man owned by a mining company, Burhabale Cisangani was born into slavery.
Orphaned at age 7, he was forced to do hard labor in the Lulimba area of Congo for masters who made him work even when sick and forbade him to marry. For 28 years, this was the only life he knew.
But this spring, Mr Cisangani became a free man, thanks to the courageous efforts of the World Peasants/Indigenous Organization (WPIO), a partner of The Advocacy Project (AP) based in Uganda.
Earlier this year, a team of twenty-five WPIO activists spent three months visiting 240 families and a number of companies in five territories in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during their "Ten for One Peace Campaign." The campaign resulted in the release of almost 100 people who had been held as slaves.
"Victims of slavery have been routinely destroyed by sexual exploitation and other human rights abuses," WPIO Director Freddy Wangabo wrote in a recent release of the campaign's results. "More collective sacrifices and responsibility are needed for the interest of humankind to protect pygmies... and the other poorest communities in the country."
In some areas of the DRC, wealthy people and traditional leaders (mwami) are known to capture pygmies and other poor, indigenous people and force them into slavery. The captured people are known as badja and are considered the property of their masters. According to the WPIO, the tradition of enslaving pygmies goes back many years and is linked to a social hierarchy that treats pygmies as "animals without tails."
In this context, the traditional human rights advocacy strategy of shaming the perpetrators has proved ineffective, because pygmies are not valued by the rest of society. Instead, the Ten for One Peace Campaign uses teams of influential locals, including teachers and religious leaders, to intensively lobby individual slave-owners one at a time.
In the course of a week during the campaign, ten people speak to a slave-owner, with the final speaker being a WPIO representative who asks for the badja's release. At the same time, WPIO staff and volunteers speak to the badja, informing them that they are supposed to be paid for their work, that they are allowed to send their children to school, that they can own cows and livestock and work for themselves. *continues* A three-month campaign in by the World Peasants/Indigenous Organization (WPIO) has resulted in the release of 96 people who had been h... more
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