Outrage as Haditha Massacre Trial Ends In No Jail Time for Accused

The last of the U.S. marines charged in the 2005 Haditha massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, received no jail time after he pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and avoiding charges of involuntary manslaughter. Under his sentencing, Wuterich now faces a maximum penalty of a demotion to the rank of private. The victims, including women and children, were killed when the marines burst into their homes and shot them dead in their nightclothes. Wuterich allegedly led the Haditha massacre and was the last defendant to face charges.





Six other marines have had their charges dropped or dismissed, while another soldier was acquitted. "[Iraqi] outrage is perfectly understandable," says Tim McGirk, the Time magazine reporter who broke the story on the Haditha massacre. "Here is a case where so many Iraqis were killed, women and children, old men, and yet, what’s happened? Most of the charges have been dismissed, and Wuterich was basically given a slap on the wrist."

more on Haditha by Sarah Meyer
Brussel Tribunal

SOPA: Anti-Piracy or Censorship?

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales vs. Copyright Alliance’s Sandra Aistars

Congressional support for a pair of anti-piracy bills is weakening after Wednesday’s historic online protest in which thousands of websites went dark for 24 hours. Hollywood film studios, music publishers and major broadcasters support the anti-piracy legislation, saying it aims to stop the piracy of copyrighted material over the internet on websites based outside the United States. "We’re talking about sites that are operated and dedicated to piracy and that are really preventing individual creators across the country from having an economic livelihood from their creative pursuits," says Sandra Aistars, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, whose members include the Motion Picture Association of America, NBCUniversal, Time Warner, Viacom, ASCAP and BMI. But critics say the bills could profoundly change the internet by stifling innovation and investment, hallmarks of the free, open internet. "Wikipedia could be defined as a search engine under these [bills]," says Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. "That would mean that it would be illegal for Wikipedia to link to a site, even if we’re writing an encyclopedia article explaining to the public what is The Pirate Bay, what is going on here, and we want to send you there so you can go and take a look for yourself. That would become illegal. This is outrageous, and it’s just not acceptable under the First Amendment." [includes rush transcript]

Currency Wars - Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

Currency Wars - Iran Banned From Trading Gold and Silver

Reuters report that the EU has agreed to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank and ban all trade in gold and other precious metals with the Iranian Central Bank and other public bodies in Iran. According to IMF data, at the last official count (in 1996), Iran had reserves of just over 168 tonnes of gold. The FT reported in March 2011 that Iran has bought large amounts of bullion on the international market to diversify away from the dollar, citing a senior Bank of England official. Currency wars continue and are deepening. Many Asian markets are closed for the Lunar New Year holiday which has led to lower volumes. Of note was there was an unusual burst of gold futures buying on the TOCOM in Japan, which has helped the cash market to breach resistance at $1,666 an ounce. Investors are also waiting for euro zone finance ministers to decide the terms of a Greek debt restructuring later today. This would be the second bailout package for Greece...

more from Zero Hedge

more from Wall Street Journal

China Continues to buy gold in preparation of the end of the global dollar based ecosystem.

THE CHINA MONEY REPORT

We are all living in the last decade of global U.S. Dollar dominance. If you don’t understand that by now….you better wake up. China-Japan currency swap agreements, Central Banks across the world buying Gold, and now China…slowly…step by step converting their $3.2 Trillion FX horde into Gold. The have only 2% of their reserves in Gold and will be on a Gold buying rampage for the next decade.The U.S. has 78% of their global reserves in Gold.

For our CMR subscribers, we have a 5 page report on Gold buying in China in our January Newsletter. You should not miss this.

The news just out….Mainland China’s imports from Hong Kong surged to 102,779kg/oz from 86,299kg/oz in October. This is a 20% increase from the already high number seen in October and a 483% y/y increase.

Isao HASHIMOTO - A Time-Lapse Map of Nuclear Explosions 1945-1998

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/



Multimedia artwork
"2053" - This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.*
Profile of the artist: Isao HASHIMOTO
Born in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan in 1959.
Worked for 17 years in financial industry as a foreign exchange dealer. Studied at Department of Arts, Policy and Management of Musashino Art University, Tokyo.
Currently working for Lalique Museum, Hakone, Japan as a curator.
Created artwork series expressing, in the artist's view, "the fear and the folly of nuclear weapons":
"1945-1998" © 2003
"Overkilled"
"The Names of Experiments"
About "1945-1998" ©2003
"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world."
Contact the artist:
Should you have any query regarding this artwork, please contact e-mail address below:
hashi123@amy.hi-ho.ne.jp
* The number excludes both tests by North Korea (October 2006 and May 2009).

The Hollywood Cartel vs The Net SOPA special

In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss copyright and how Hollywood cons Congress by using Wall Street accounting. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Amir Taaki about hackers, piracy, technology and bitcoin. A long-time contributor to free software, he advocates total data freedom.^[11] Taaki has labeled censorship policies as being a wedge towards ever-increasing censorship.^[12] He proposes a shift away from specialist thinking towards a creative society of generalist knowledge workers.^[13]

CNN censors vet's ron paul support

blackbird die

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