Japan trying to WEAKEN their currency.

Leave it to Japan to humbly weaken their economy. From NY Times:

TOKYO — Japan took steps on Wednesday to help its economy ride out a surge in the yen, which has battered the country’s export-led economy.

The government announced a $100 billion loan fund to spur Japanese spending on corporate acquisitions and resources overseas, according to a statement released by the Finance Ministry. The ministry also said it would step up monitoring of currency markets by asking financial institutions to report on positions held by their currency dealers.

“Taking into account that there is a lopsided rise in the yen, I felt that swift measures were needed,” Yoshihiko Noda, the finance minister, told reporters.

But the action had little immediate effect on the yen and could underscore just how difficult it might be for the government to sway the huge foreign exchange market. A strong yen hurts Japanese exporters because it makes their goods less competitive and erodes the value of their overseas earnings when repatriated into yen.

Under the loan program, the government will send foreign currency reserves to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which will then make loans to commercial banks so they can help companies with overseas investments. By spending yen for dollars and other currencies, the ministry hopes that the currency will weaken somewhat.

The yen was little changed, with the dollar trading at 76.96 yen late in New York, up slightly from 76.64.

The second part of the government’s action is an effort to curtail speculation that officials think might be contributing to moves in the yen. Mr. Noda has indicated recently that the government will act against speculators seeking short-term profits.

The Bank of Japan issued a statement in support of the measures.

“The Bank of Japan will continue to carefully monitor the effects of developments in the foreign exchange market on the future course of economic activity and prices,” it said.

The government’s announcement came hours after Moody’s Investors Service, the credit ratings agency, lowered Japan’s credit rating, warning that frequent changes in administration, weak prospects for economic growth and its recent natural and nuclear disasters have made it difficult for the government to pare down its huge debt.

Moody’s lowered Japan’s grade by one step to Aa3, the fourth-highest rating, the company said in a statement.

The downgrade brings Moody’s rating for Japan in line with that of Standard & Poor’s, which lowered the country’s grade by one notch to AA– in January, the fourth-highest on its scale. Moody’s had put Japan on review for a downgrade in May.

Charity offers baby as raffle prize.

This is bizarre. How is this legal? From Washington Post:

Games of chance give lucky people the opportunity to win almost anything, from a goldfish at a carnival to millions of dollars. Now a charity in Britain is giving one couple the chance to have a baby.

To Hatch, a charity that offers fertility treatment advice, will sell £20 raffle tickets to couples who want a chance to win £25,000 worth of in vitro fertilization treatments. This controversial lottery, set to launch July 30, has been received with some criticism.

Anyone can enter to the contest and can give the prize to someone else if they win, according to the Telegraph.. If IVF treatments fails, then the charity will offer a surrogate, donor eggs or surgery.

To Hatch founder Camille Strachan said the lottery comes at a time when the National Health Service, Britain’s publicly funded health care system, has undergone budget cuts: “We hope the To Hatch Lottery can ease the burden on the NHS and reduce the stress slightly on some of those who are struggling.”

Josephine Quintavalle, director of the Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told the Telegraph the lottery “demeans the whole nature of human reproduction.” She also questioned the legality of the practice to Sky News.

“This latest initiative, turning the process of reproduction into a buy-your-ticket lottery, is absolutely unacceptable and quite possibly breaks European Law on the commercialization of human tissue,” she said. “It is in this area where an immediate investigation should be demanded. It is surely not legal to pay £20 to have access to another woman’s womb?”

The charity’s Web site was down Wednesday shortly after the announcement went viral. A message on the site read, “To Hatch is currently offline for site-wide maintenance, it will be up and running shortly.” It was later changed to, “Due to overwhelming demand the To Hatch website is currently offline for site-wide maintenance. It will be back up and running as soon as possible.”

Blogger jailed 30 days for saying beef noodles were too salty.

What's even more crazy is that she was right about the cockroaches. From Daily Mail:

A scathing review led to a Taiwanese blogger being sent to prison and ordered to pay compensation to the restaurant she criticised.

The Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday sentenced the blogger, surnamed Liu, to 30 days in detention and two years of probation and handover NT$200,000 for her harsh review of the 'salty beef noodles'.

The blogger writes about a variety of topics, giving her opinion on food, health and interior design, and has received more than 60,000 hits on her website.

After visiting a Taichung beef noodle restaurant in July 2008, where she had dried noodles and side dishes, Liu wrote that the restaurant served food that was too salty, the place was unsanitary because there were cockroaches and that the owner was a 'bully' because he let customers park their cars haphazardly, leading to traffic jams, according to the Taipei Times.

The restaurant’s owner, surnamed Yang, learned about Liu’s blog post from a regular customer, and filed charges against her, accusing her of defamation.

The Taichung District Court ruled that Liu’s criticism of the restaurant exceeded reasonable bounds and sentenced her to 30 days in detention, a ruling that Liu appealed.

The High Court found that Liu’s criticism about cockroaches in the restaurant to be a narration of facts, not intentional slander, the news website reported.

However, the judge also ruled that Liu should not have criticized all the restaurant’s food as too salty because she only had one dish on her single visit.

Health officials who inspected the restaurant did not find conditions to be as unsanitary as Liu had described, so the High Court also ruled that Liu must pay NT$200,000 to the owner for revenues lost as a result of her blog post.

Liu has apologized to the restaurant for the incident.

Yang said he filed the charges because Liu’s negative comments about his restaurant led to many customers calling him to ask if her review was true.

He said he hoped the case would teach her a lesson.

Huang Cheng-lee, a lawyer in Taichung, said that bloggers who post food reviews should remember to be truthful in their commentary and supplement their comments with photographs to protect themselves.

He also said bloggers should be objective and fair in their writing.

Coozer-Bits.

Yipes: Jellyfish invade FL beach, sting 1600 people!

WTF: 12 arrested for feeding the homeless in Orlando.

Lame: Woman-hating Santorum says abortion exception to protect mother's health is "phony."

PSA: Citibank confirms hacking attack.

Science: Periodic table adds two new superheavy elements.

Supreme Court rules to let corporations bar class action suits.

From Huffington Post:

On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court sided with AT&T in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion -- a decision with devastating consequences for consumer protection and civil rights. In essence, AT&T asked the court to allow it to use the fine print of contracts to eliminate class actions, a practice that flouts the laws of 20 states. In a 5-4 decision, the court granted AT&T's request.

The case's potential impact is breathtaking. Corporations can now prevent consumers and small business owners from exercising what is often their only real option for challenging companies that defraud them by millions or even billions of dollars: banding together to file class action lawsuits. The case could be equally devastating to millions of non-union employees, who need class actions to challenge systemic discrimination by their employers. The Supreme Court has given major corporations the green light to engage in nearly limitless wrongdoing against others, so long as they do it in relatively small dollar amounts, which ensures that no one can afford to challenge the misconduct without a class action.

A sudden demise of class actions will shock the markets and the legal system. It will dramatically increase the market power of major corporations over ordinary Americans and small business owners, who are already outmatched. Innumerable laws that protect the public will become irrelevant because few people can enforce them.

Yet for all these far-reaching implications, AT&T's achievement is remarkably ordinary. The company has secured a state of lawlessness similar to the one that allowed banks to foreclose on millions of homeowners without showing evidence that they had the right to do so. It has achieved a deregulatory regime similar to those that tanked the economy and destroyed millions of jobs, devastated the Gulf of Mexico with oil, allow thousands of preventable workplace deaths every year and threaten untold upheaval through climate change. Like the big banks, the oil and coal companies and the mine operators, AT&T simply wants to write its own rules. It's doing just that, through a practice that has become so ordinary we hardly notice the absurdity and injustice anymore: writing one-sided contracts and imposing them on others.

Why corporations are permitted to do anything important through standard-form contracts is somewhat of a mystery. Companies hire armies of lawyers to draft and redraft these contracts, claiming every new advantage they can wring out of legal developments. They secure "consent" by holding our credit cards or cell phones for ransom, saying we must submit to the new terms or immediately stop using them. Some companies even do this with people's jobs, telling employees they must sign new contracts or be fired (never mind that contract law is supposed to be based on mutual consent).

The average American is deluged with hundreds of thousands of fine-print words each year that no one reads and no one understands -- but that everyone is bound by. Avoiding these contracts is impossible unless one eschews most consumer products and services. Courts uphold adhesion contracts with a breeziness that is astonishing, especially since judges themselves don't read the fine print (John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has said he doesn't read it). The effect is nothing short of privatization of the law, with major corporations writing the rules and imposing them on the rest of us.

If recent crises have taught us anything, it's that disaster follows quickly when companies have too little oversight. AT&T is pushing the outer limits of deregulation, seeking a world in which companies can use one-sided contracts to grant themselves immunity from accountability for a vast range of wrongdoing. Concepcion represents a giant leap toward a dystopian legal system that the Supreme Court should have rejected out of hand -- lawlessness for major corporations and corporate-made law for the rest of us.

But the Court rubber-stamped AT&T's scheme, so we need the Congress and administrative agencies to protect us. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gives the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the authority to eliminate abuses like AT&T's within their jurisdictions. The CFPB and SEC should get to work quickly. To solve the problem in every industry, not just financial services, Congress should pass the Arbitration Fairness Act, which Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) plan to introduce next week.

Chiquita banana company sued for murdering over 4,000 Colombians.

Sent in by JenK. Item. And more info here.

Despite some efforts by Chiquita to clean up its act in recent years, its long history of human rights abuses is coming back to haunt the company. Chiquita is being sued by the families of more than 4,000 Colombians murdered by illegal armed groups funded by Chiquita.

More than 100 lawyers have filed the suits for different groups of victims, but are all working together, according to Colombia Reports, to make one giant case against the company.

The Irish Times writes, "The civil cases follow Chiquita's admission in 2007 that it paid $1.7 million (€1.2 million) to the AUC between 1997 and 2004 and acknowledged previous payments to other groups."

That admission was preceded by a secret Justice Department investigation, at which time Chiquita was represented by Eric Holder—yes, the current Attorney General. Chiquita was fined $25 million.

If you paid taxes in 2010, you paid more than GE.

This NY Times article was pointed out by Coozer-Phile Steve. As he puts it:

"In 2010, I paid more in taxes than GE! In fact, anyone who paid anything in taxes last year--even one dollar--paid more than GE (which earned $5.1 BILLION in profits in the United States). They actually received a tax BENEFIT of $3.1 BILLION.

"So, right now our country is slashing all services--federal, state, and local--because we don't have enough revenue--but we're letting giant corporations get away without paying anything? And we're giving them tax breaks?!

"I should have been born rich and connected. We're all royally screwed."

More here.

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Coozer-Bits.

WTF: Nazi books suddenly huge in Britain.

Booze: 14 surprising facts about beer.

Lame: GOP-run House votes to terminate Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

Media: Fox News' union-busting crusade.

Vatican: Priests have been raping nuns to avoid AIDS from prostitutes.

From the Independent (via Coozer-Phile Duff):

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.

Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

The reports said that the cultures in some African countries made it almost impossible for a young woman to disobey an older man, especially one seen as spiritually superior. There were cases of novices who applied to their local priest or bishop for certificates of good Catholic practice that were required for them to pursue their vocation. In return they were made to have sex. Some incidents of sexual abuse allegedly took place almost within the Vatican walls.

Certain unscrupulous clerics took advantage of young nuns who were having trouble finding accommodation, writing their essays and funding their theological studies.

Forced to acknowledge the problem, the Vatican has tried to play down its gravity. In a statement issued yesterday the Pope's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said: "The problem is known and involves a restricted geographical area. Certain negative situations must not overshadow the often heroic faith of the overwhelming majority of religious, nuns and priests".

South Dakota may legalize the murder of abortion doctors.

This is horrifying. These legislators are lunatics. From Alternet, submitted by Coozer-Phile Duff:

We knew the abortion debate was moving to scary extremes, but WHAT? New legislation in South Dakota is being introduced that would make killing abortion doctors a 'justifiable homicide.' Legal. Murder. It's too shocking to comprehend. Mother Jones:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

Originally the bill was meant to clarify language in the state's justifiable homicide laws, but the anti-choicers immediately latched on with the abortion amendment after testimony in support made by representatives of the Family Heritage Alliance, Concerned Women for America, the South Dakota branch of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, and a political action committee called Family Matters in South Dakota.

Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at George Washington University, told Mother Jones, "It takes my breath away. Constitutionally, a state cannot make it a crime to perform a constitutionally lawful act."

US veterans sue Pentagon for ignoring rape victims.

It is shameful, if not downright evil, that our army and government turn a blind eye to this. From Daily Mail:

Fourteen U.S. veterans who say they were raped and abused by their comrades today accused the Pentagon of ignoring their claims.

More than a dozen female and two male current or former service members will launch a legal action today, claiming that servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse.

One woman claimed that two male colleagues raped her in Iraq and videotaped the attack, circulating it around the base.

She was bruised from her shoulders to her elbows from being held down but charges were not filed as the commander said she 'did not struggle enough or act like a rape victim'.

Victims have also claimed that they are often ordered to serve alongside those they say attacked them.

So incensed are some of the victims about the way complaints were handled that several women have waived their anonymity to speak out.

In a federal class-action lawsuit to be filed today, they want an objective third party to handle such complaints because individual commanders have too much say in how allegations are handled.

The alleged attackers in the lawsuit include an Army criminal investigator and an Army National Guard commander. The abuse alleged ranges from obscene verbal abuse to gang rape.

It also specifically names Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld who they say both failed to take aggressive measures to protect women.

In 2009, there were 3,200 sexual assaults reported in the military with fewer than a quarter of those prosecuted, many for lesser charges.

In fact statistics show it is more likely for a woman to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

Panayiota Bertzikis, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and claims she was raped in 2006, said: 'The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it's the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it.

'From survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service, the constant verbal abuse, once a survivor does come forward your entire unit is known to turn their back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed.'

Angry crowd of 1,000 Muslims burn down churches in Indonesia.

From BBC:

More than 1,000 Muslim protesters have stormed a courthouse and burned two churches in central Java, Indonesia.

The attacks in Temanggung happened after a Christian man was sentenced to five years in jail for distributing leaflets deemed insulting to Islam.

Indonesian police said the crowd considered the sentence too lenient and were demanding the death penalty.

The incident came two days after Muslim villagers in western Java killed three members of a minority Islamic sect.

A police spokesman told the BBC that the angry crowd began attacking the court building in Temanggung after the verdict was read out.

The violence spread to surrounding neighbourhoods where two churches were set on fire and a third was damaged.

Police fired warning shots into the air to disperse the crowds.

In a separate development, a video has emerged of Sunday's deadly attack on members of the minority Ahmadiyah Muslim sect.

The footage apparently show how a group of about 20 men were forced by an angry crowd to strip before they were beaten so violently that several died.

The Ahmadiyah sect has been labelled by the government as deviant, but is not banned.

A body which advises the US government on religious freedom has said Indonesia must act against "extremist" attacks.

"Indonesia is a tolerant county that should be more intolerant of extremist groups. It's time the Indonesian government brings them to account for the violence and hatred they spread," said Leonard Leo, chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population but it is a secular nation.

International human rights groups say more hardline fringe groups have been harassing religious minorities in recent years. The Indonesian president has been criticised for not doing enough to protect the rights of all citizens.

Father of murdered children arrives at court in horror clown mask.

This guy's got problems. From Daily Mail:

A father whose cheating allegedly drove his partner to start a fire which killed two of their three children bizarrely arrived at court yesterday wearing a grotesque clown mask.

James Maynard donned the disguise, which stunned onlookers, as he attended the murder trial of his former partner Fiona Adams.

He grinned as he removed the mask before entering the courtroom. He offered no explanation as to why he chose to wear the disguise, which is reminiscent of the red-haired clown in Stephen King's horror novel 'It'.

Ms Adams, 23, is alleged to have started the fire to ‘create a drama’, but the blaze took a ‘rapid and devastating hold’ on the semi-detached home she shared with her family.

Although she managed to escape and throw her youngest son Kiernan, now 18 months, to safety, her daughter Niamh, five, and son Cayden, two, died.

Yesterday Nottingham Crown Court heard that her relationship Mr Maynard, 28, had been ‘volatile’ since they met when she was just 17.

House GOP plan to redefine "rape."

From Mother Jones:

Rape is only really rape if it involves force. So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents wouldn't be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

There used to be a quasi-truce between the pro- and anti-choice forces on the issue of federal funding for abortion. Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used. The Smith bill represents a frontal attack on these long-standing exceptions.

"This bill takes us back to a time when just saying 'no' wasn't enough to qualify as rape," says Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women's Law Center. Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, notes that the new bill's authors are "using language that's not particularly clear, and some people are going to lose protection." Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes. "There are a lot of aspects of rape that are not included," Levenson says.

As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.

The bill hasn't been carefully constructed, Levenson notes. The term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and the bill's authors don't offer their own definition. In some states, there is no legal definition of "forcible rape," making it unclear whether any abortions would be covered by the rape exemption in those jurisdictions.

The main abortion-rights groups despise the Smith bill as a whole, but they are particularly outraged by its rape provisions. Tait Sye, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, calls the proposed changes "unacceptable." Donna Crane, the policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says that making the "already narrow exceptions for public funding of abortion care for rape and incest survivors even more restrictive" is "unbelievably cruel and heartless."

"This bill goes far beyond current law," says Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a co-chair of the congressional pro-choice caucus. The "re-definition" of the rape exception "is only one element" of an "extreme" bill, she adds, citing other provisions in the law that pro-abortion rights groups believe would lead to the end of private health insurance coverage for abortion.

"Somebody needs to look closely at this," Levenson says. "This is a bill that could have a dramatic effect on women, and language is important. It sure sounds like somebody didn't want [the exception to cover] all the different types of rape that are recognized under the law."

Monsanto offering toxic seeds to Haiti.

From Truth Out:

"A fabulous Easter gift," commented Monsanto Director of Development Initiatives Elizabeth Vancil. Nearly 60,000 seed sacks of hybrid corn seeds and other vegetable seeds were donated to post-earthquake Haiti by Monsanto. In observance of World Environment Day, June 4, 2010, roughly 10,000 rural Haitian farmers gathered in Papaye to march seven kilometers to Hinche in celebration of this gift. Upon arrival, these rewarded farmers took their collective Easter baskets of more than 400 tons of vegetable seeds and burned them all.[i] "Long live the native maize seed!" they chanted in unison. "Monsanto's GMO [genetically modified organism] & hybrid seed violate peasant agriculture!"

According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the Papay Peasant Movement (MPP), "there is presently a shortage of seed in Haiti because many rural families used their maize seed to feed refugees."[ii] Like any benevolent disaster capitalist corporation, Monsanto extended a hand in a time of crisis to the 65 percent of the population that survives off of subsistence agriculture. But not just any hand was extended in this time of great need, rather: a fistful of seeds. The extended fist was full of corn seeds, one of Haiti's staple crops, treated with the fungicide Maxim XO. With similar benevolence, not just any tomato seeds were donated to the agrarian peasants, but tomato seeds treated with Thiram, a chemical so toxic the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ruled it too toxic to sell for home garden use, further mandating that any agricultural worker planting these seeds must wear special protective clothing.[iii] Happy Easter! Monsanto's web site's official explanation for this toxic donation is that "fungicidal seed treatments are often applied to seeds prior to planting to protect them from fungal diseases that arise in the soil and hamper the plant's ability to germinate and grow. The treatments also provide protection against diseases the seed might pick up in transfer between countries."[iv] However, according to the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet, "repeated exposure [to Thiram] can affect the kidneys, liver and thyroid gland. High or repeated exposure may damage the nerves."[v] Why would Monsanto be so eager to donate seeds that could potentially compromise the health of so many famished people?

"The Haitian government is using the earthquake to sell the country to the multinationals!" stated Jean-Baptiste. Welcome to the new earthquake.

"[It's] a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left of our environment in Haiti." - Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, executive director of the Peasant Movement of Papay.

Coozer-Bits.

D'oh: Bird-watcher spots his stolen car.

Lame: Supreme Court justice fails to report wife's $680K income from conservative think tanks.

Yipes: Chemical caused nerve damage to military base workers.

Lame: Scalia, Thomas may have had conflicts of interest in landmark case that now allows corporations to sway elections.

WTF: Police refuse to charge drunk teen who terrorized family.

Duh: Facebook blamed for marriage breakups as cheaters are caught online.

University of Texas accused of mutilating animals.

Disturbing if true. From here.

GALVESTON — Dogs, monkeys, sheep and mice were neglected and denied veterinary care and pain relief after being burned, cut open and mutilated in medical experiments at the University of Texas Medical Branch, an unnamed whistle-blower alleges, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Based on the whistle-blower’s statements, Norfolk, Va.-based PETA filed a complaint alleging violations of the Animal Welfare Act with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is charged with enforcing that law.

Medical branch officials declined Wednesday to address specific allegations, but issued this statement:

“As a leading research institution committed to advancing the treatment and prevention of illness and injury, UTMB strives to adhere to the highest ethical standards and to follow all federal, state and campus regulations in every aspect of its research enterprise,” according to the statement.

“Our animal facilities are regularly inspected and approved by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the institution’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.”

Citing fear of retaliation, PETA officials declined to divulge the identity of the whistle-blower, who presumably is or was a medical branch employee.

Among other things, the group said a researcher subjected sheep, pigs and mice to third-degree burns on up to 40 percent of their bodies using a Bunsen burner or a scorching-hot metal rod and forced animals to inhale smoke.

Several sheep and a pig in one laboratory suffered “serious injuries — including a broken leg and an unknown trauma that caused a sheep’s intestines to penetrate her chest cavity and required euthanasia — because husbandry staff forced the animals to jump over gates instead of using ramps to remove them from enclosures,” according to the complaint the animal rights organization filed with federal regulators.

The whistle-blower also contends that medical branch faculty members cut open dogs and surgically implanted tubes into their colons for research on irritable bowel syndrome. The whistle-blower asserts that the researchers did not provide anesthesia to the animals, PETA said.

One dog died during surgery; another suffered in pain following surgery when staff didn’t provide painkillers, PETA said, citing the whistle-blower.

Federal animal welfare regulations require that research facilities establish and maintain programs for adequate veterinary care.

“Being burned and cut open in experiments is upsetting enough, but if animals are also being denied basic care and pain relief, UTMB must answer to the law,” Kathy Guillermo, PETA vice president, said.

The organization is calling for the Department of Agriculture to investigate and hold the medical branch accountable if allegations of animal abuse are borne out, Guillermo said.

Medical branch researchers long have experimented with animals. Of them, 97 percent are rodents, primarily rats, 3 percent are sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs, medical branch officials told The Daily News in 2005.

In 2009, the medical branch faced criticism by The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine for using dogs in trauma training courses. The group, which claims 7,000 medical doctor members, has for years tried to persuade the medical branch and other university medical schools and programs to replace live animals with lifelike human models.

In an interview about the trauma training courses, medical branch spokesman Raul Reyes said the island campus attempted to use as few animals as possible: “All surgery is performed under general anesthesia administered by a certified veterinary anesthesiologist, so they feel no pain.”

Rape victim framed for fake crimes by her attacker, serves 7 months in prison.

From Eyewitness News:

Investigators have arrested three people accused in an elaborate scheme to frame an innocent Far Rockaway woman.

She was accused in May 2010 of impersonating a police officer and robbing victims at gunpoint, but it has turned out to be all a lie.

Within the last week, an informant told the Nassau County DA's office that Seemona Sumasar, 35, had been framed by an ex-boyfriend. Sumasar was being held in the Nassau jail for crimes that never took place, the informant claimed.

After the district attorney's office corroborated the informant's account, Sumasar was released from jail On Thursday.

District Attorney Kathleen Rice said that Jerry Ramrattan, 38, of East Elmhurst, promised to pay off two "witnesses" in Nassau County to lie to authorities that Sumasar, along with a male accomplice, had conducted a number of gunpoint robberies while Sumasar and the accomplice impersonated police officers.

Investigators then questioned each witness, who they say separately confessed that Ramrattan promised to pay them to report false incidents regarding Sumasar. Ramrattan coached the false witnesses to give police partial license plate numbers of cars Sumasar was known to drive and to identify her in a photo array.

The witnesses, Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson were arrested on Wednesday and charged with perjury.

According to Rice, Ramrattan also promised to pay off a witness in Queens to falsely report that Sumasar had robbed him at gunpoint back in September 2009 while in Jamaica, Queens. After corroborating the informant's story, the Nassau County DA's office immediately contacted Sumasar's defense counsel and the Queens County District Attorney's office to coordinate efforts in clearing her of the charges and setting her free.

Sumasar's lawyer says the motive was intimidation. Sumasar has accused Ramrattan of rape and was preparing to testify at his trial at the time of her arrest.

Ramrattan has been charged with two counts of Perjury in the First Degree; two counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree; two counts of Falsely Reporting an Incident in the Third Degree; two counts of Offering False Instrument; two counts of Conspiracy in the Fifth Degree.

He is being held on $1 million bond or $500,000 cash and returns to court on December 7.

In Nassau County, the false accusations targeting Sumasar began on March 2, 2010, when Lovell reported to police that he had been robbed at gunpoint by two suspects while driving in Inwood. He described the suspects as a woman and a man dressed as police officers. Lovell gave a partial license plate number of the getaway car to police.

Sometime in May 2010 police received an anonymous call from a man who claimed to have been the victim of a crime. The caller stated that he had been robbed at gunpoint by a female and male suspect impersonating police officers. The caller told police that he did not want to formally report the incident, but he did give police a full license plate number of the getaway car. Police traced the plate to Sumasar's sister, but when police showed Lovell a photo of the sister, he did not identify her as the person who robbed him in March.

On May 19, Johnson reported to police that she was robbed at gunpoint by two suspects impersonating police officers while she was driving in Inwood. Johnson gave police a full license plate number and also reported that some mail with her New Jersey address, along with a spare car key, had been taken by the suspects during the robbery.

Two days later Johnson called Nassau County Police from her New Jersey home to report that someone driving a black Nissan had attempted to steal her car. She reported the license plate number of the Nissan to police, who traced the car to Devon McDonald, Sumasar's boyfriend. Police believed that Sumasar had a connection to both cars that had been reported being used in the robberies, as well as the attempted car theft in New Jersey involving the black Nissan.

Sumasar was arrested by Nassau County Police on May 21 after police found her driving the black Nissan. Both Johnson and Lovell identified her in a photo array and Sumasar was charged with two counts of Robbery in the First Degree; two counts of Criminal Use of a Firearm and two counts of Criminal Impersonation and Unlawful Wearing of a Body Vest.

More than 1 in 3 South African men admit to rape.

Awful. From Yahoo! News:

JOHANNESBURG – A new survey says more than one in three South African men admit to having committed rape.

A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, home to South Africa's most populous city of Johannesburg, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.

More than 51 percent of the 511 women interviewed said they'd experienced violence from men, and 78 percent of men said they'd committed violence against women.

A quarter of the women interviewed said they'd been raped, but the study says only one in 25 rapes are reported to police.

A survey by the same organization in 2008 found that 28 percent of men in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces said they had raped a woman or girl. Of the men who had committed rape, one third did not feel guilty, said Rachel Jewkes, a lead researcher on both studies.

Two-thirds of the men surveyed in that study said they raped because of a sense of sexual entitlement. Other popular motivating factors included a desire to punish women who rejected or angered them, and raping out of boredom, Jewkes said.

"Rape is completely trivialized by a great number of men. It is seen as a legitimate activity," she said.

Jewkes believes South Africa's history of racial division and associated trauma is part of the reason of the high incidence of sexual violence in the country.

"Apartheid has contributed to culture of impunity surrounding rape in South Africa," said Jewkes. Men who were abused or experienced trauma during their childhood are much more likely to rape, she said, adding that apartheid destroyed family life, fostering violence and anti-social behavior.

The apartheid period also saw very little enforcement of common law, which has contributed to a culture of impunity, said Jewkes.

"We need to start interventions in childhood, focusing on building a more empowering childhood environment in South Africa, especially for boys," she said, "and we need to make it worth their while for women to report sexual violence."

The new study, conducted with a gender rights advocacy body, is the first community-based study of its kind with women in 12 years.

The group hopes to replicate the study across southern Africa.

Rugby star in dog sex scandal.

From News.com.au:

Canberra Raiders and Australian rugby league star Joel Monaghan is under investigation after a photo emerged showing him in a compromising position with a dog.

Monaghan described the incident as a "simulated act" meant to be a prank.

"Joel can't blame anyone but himself for an act of stupidity that will haunt him for the rest of his life," manager Jim Banaghan said in a statement.

"Joel wants to make it clear that he was the one playing a prank on an absent team mate by simulating the act.

"There are no words of explanation that can be offered because none can be appropriate.

"Joel has to now face his family as well as fans and supporters with that shame and has already undergone counselling to help him cope with the consequences of what has happened."

Raiders Chief Executive Officer Don Furner said an investigation was under way.

"If he did it, it is something he will live with for the rest of his life," Furner told a media conference.

"We don't know whether it's authentic but I am as appalled as everyone else.

"If he did do it, I don't know why he would do it."

The incident reportedly happened during the Raiders' Mad Monday celebrations following their finals loss to Wests Tigers.

The NRL says it will await the outcome of the Raiders investigation.

The photo was reportedly posted on the internet on Monday before being taken down by the Melbourne radio station that had put it online.

The action was too late with the image being re-posted through Twitter.