'I spend my days preparing for life, not for death'

The Guardian

Oct 25, 2007

 

The former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent 25 years on death row
in the United States - despite strong evidence that he is innocent. In
his first British interview, he talks to Laura Smith about life in
solitary, how he has remained politically active, and why the Panthers
are still relevant today.

by Laura Smith

...In Abu-Jamal's company, it is easy to forget that you are inside prison
walls. As he talks, one is pulled into a world of urgent work that needs
doing, of debates to be thrashed out, of injustices to be tackled. With
characteristic eloquence, he calls Hurricane Katrina "a rude awakening
from an illusion", watching television "a profoundly ignorising
experience" and observes that much commercial hip-hop contains "no
distinction, except in beat and tone, to a Chrysler advert". "If the
message is, I am cool because I am rich, and if you get rich, you can be
cool like me, that's a pretty fucked-up message." On American politics,
he is damning. "You would think that a country that goes to war
allegedly to spread democracy would practice it in its own country."

Born Wesley Cook in the Philadelphia projects, he adopted the name Mumia
as a 14-year-old (later adding Abu-Jamal - "father of Jamal" in Arabic -
when his first son was born). The following year, aged just 15, he
helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther party after
being handed a copy of their newspaper in the street. "I was like,
whoah," he says. "It just thrilled me. I was like, this is heaven. This
is great. Everything. It was the truth. Uncut, unalloyed. It was
everything. It fit me."

He spent long days helping with party activities, which included free
children's breakfast programmes and the monitoring of police, whose
corruption at that time has since become notorious (at least a third of
the officers involved in Abu-Jamal's investigations have since been
found to have engaged in corrupt activities, including the fabrication
of evidence to frame suspects).

Mostly, as the party's lieutenant of information, he wrote, gathering
stories for The Black Panther, the party's newsletter. "It was great
fun," he remembers now. "You worked six and seven days a week and 18
hours a day for no pay ... When I tell young people that now they are
like, what was that last part? Are you crazy, man? But because we were
socialists we didn't want pay. We wanted to serve our people, free our
people, stop the homicide and make revolution. We thought about the
party morning, noon and night. It was a very busy but fulfilling life
for thousands of people across the country. We were serving our people
and what could be better than that?"

Subject to relentless disruption by the FBI's Counter Intelligence
Programme, which targeted radical and progressive organisations, and
riven by internal disagreements, the Black Panthers imploded in the
early 1970s. For Abu-Jamal it was a personal tragedy. "Despair," he
says when asked how it felt. "A profound despair."...

Full article >>

socially responsible investing

ABC News

By DAVID McPHERSON
Oct. 24, 2007

 

By one estimate from the Social Investment Forum, socially responsible funds held about $179 billion as of 2005. That was up more than tenfold from a decade earlier, according to the organization. But still it represents a sliver of the $9 trillion overall held in mutual funds at that time.

The socially responsible investing segment includes more than 200 mutual funds, the Social Investment Forum says, and it continues to expand with the introduction of exchange traded funds geared toward this investing audience.

Typically, socially responsible investing has been associated with liberal causes, such as human rights and the environment. But it also includes religious-oriented funds, many of which feature a conservative focus. These are sometimes referred to as examples of morally responsible investing, or MRI.

The LKCM Aquinas Funds, for example, seek to promote Catholic values by following investment guidelines set by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Aquinas Funds screen investments for policies on issues such as abortion, contraceptives, human rights, gender and race discrimination and fair employment practices. The fund managers say they will try to influence a company's practices to reflect the bishops' guidelines, and if unsuccessful they may sell the investment.

[ ... ]

Once a person has settled on general principles to follow, an investor should not get too hung up on exact screening procedures for broadly screened social mutual funds.

"They're all a little bit different in their criteria. It's not that big a deal unless you have some belief you want to be strict about," Wheat said.

Once done with that process, Wheat says they should consider the same factors as with other mutual funds, such as performance.

In general, socially responsible funds are higher cost than otherwise comparable funds, according to Morningstar. That is partly because of the expenses associated with the screening process and partly because many of the funds are run by smaller investment firms.

As a whole, such funds do just as well as other mutual funds over the long term, says Morningstar.

Full article >>

Energy Futures Jump After the Government Reports Surprise Drop in Crude, Gasoline Supplies

Oil Prices Surge on Inventory Report
Wednesday October 24, 6:08 pm ET
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures surged Wednesday after the government's latest inventory report revealed large and unexpected declines in crude and gasoline inventories.

Crude supplies fell last week by 5.3 million barrels, the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said. Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, on average, had been expecting supplies to increase by 300,000 barrels.

"We haven't missed like this in a long time," said James Cordier, president of Liberty Treading Group in Tampa, Fla.

Analysts said the decline was particularly surprising because refineries are shutting down for seasonal maintenance, processing less crude. Refinery activity fell during the week ended Oct. 19 by 0.2 percentage point to 87.1 percent of capacity. Analysts had expected an increase of 0.3 percentage point...   Full article >>

Merrill Lynch posted losses are its largest on record

chicagotribune.com
EARNINGS
Merrill's loss its biggest ever

October 25, 2007

Merrill Lynch & Co. on Wednesday reported its first quarterly loss in
six years and the biggest in its 93-year history after the summer's
credit crisis triggered a larger-than-expected $8.4 billion in write-
downs.

The report sent the company's shares skidding $3.90, or 5.8 percent,
to $63.22, on the New York Stock Exchange.

The world's largest brokerage reported a third-quarter loss after
paying preferred dividends of $2.31 billion, or $2.82 a share,
compared with a profit of $3 billion, or $3.50 a share, a year
earlier. Wall Street expected a loss of 45 cents a share, according to
Thomson Financial, and the results were worse than the loss of 50
cents a share Merrill forecast earlier this month.

Merrill's write-down exceeded Citigroup Inc.'s $6.5 billion, and
increased to more than $30 billion the total third-quarter cost for
bad loans and trading losses reported by the world's biggest
securities firms and banks.

"It's safe to say this is the largest write-down" by a U.S. securities
firm, said Charles Geisst, a finance professor at Manhattan College in
Riverdale, N.Y., and author of "100 Years of Wall Street."

"The only other time we had such big losses was the Third World debt
crisis in the 1980s. Even then, the losses didn't match this one." ...

 

Read full article >>

Russian nuclear dump could rival Chernobyl

The Independent

10 June 2007

 

Worse than Chernobyl: 'dirty timebomb' ticking in a rusting Russian nuclear dump threatens Europe

20,000 discarded uranium fuel rods stored in the Arctic Circle are corroding. The possible result? Detonation of a massive radioactive bomb experts say could rival the 1986 disaster. By Rachel Shields

A decaying Russian nuclear dump inside the Arctic Circle is threatening to catch fire or explode, turning it into a "dirty bomb" that could impact the whole of northern Europe, including the British Isles.

Experts are warning that sea water and intense cold are corroding a storage facility at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk. It contains more than 20,000 discarded fuel rods from nuclear submarines and some nuclear-powered icebreakers. A Norwegian environmental group, Bellona, says it has obtained a copy of a secret report by the Russian nuclear agency, Rosatom, which speaks of an "uncontrolled nuclear reaction".

John Large, an independent British nuclear consultant who has visited the site, told The Independent on Sunday: "The nuclear rods are fixed to the roof and encased in metal to keep them apart and prevent any reactions from occurring. However, sea water has eroded them at their base, and they are falling to the floor of the tanks, where inches of saltwater have collected.

"This water will begin to corrode the rods, a reaction that releases hydrogen, a gas that is highly explosive and could be ignited by any spark. When another rod falls to the floor and generates such a spark, an enormous explosion could occur, scattering radioactive material for hundreds of kilometres."

Mr Large, who was decorated by Russia's President Vladimir Putin for his role in the salvage operation that retrieved nuclear material from the Kursk submarine in 2000, added: "This wouldn't be a thermonuclear or atomic explosion, as in a bomb, but the outcome is just as bad. Remember Chernobyl? If you had the right weather conditions and wind pattern, this would mean a radioactive cloud drifting over the UK."

The three storage tanks contain more than 32 tons of radioactive material. But the Kola Peninsula is littered with relics of Soviet nuclear facilities, housing more than 100 tons of nuclear waste - the largest concentration in the world.

Experts predict that a major explosion at Andreeva Bay could destroy all life in a 32-mile radius, including Murmansk and a sliver of Norway, whose border is only 28 miles away. But a much wider area of Norway, north-west Russia and Finland would be rendered uninhabitable for at least 20 years, and huge quantities of radioactive material would be dumped into the Barents Sea...  Full article >>

cool link

http://www.soilandhealth.org/index.html

Cure for dengue fever

Cure for Dengue - Papaya Juice

" ... I would like to share this interesting discovery from a classmate's son who has just recovered from dengue fever. Apparently, his son was in the critical stage when his pallet counts dropped to 15 after15 liters of blood transfusion.

 

His father was so worried that he sought another friend's recommendation which saved the life of his son. He told that he gave his son raw juice of the papaya leaves. From a pallet count of 45 after 20 liters of blood transfusion, and after drinking the raw papaya leaf juice, his pallet count jumps instantly to 135. Even the doctors were surprised. After the second day he was discharged. He asked me to pass this good news around.

Take tow pieces of raw papaya leaves (no stem or sap), clean, pound and squeeze them with filter cloth getting just about one tablespoon per leaf. Serve two tablespoon once a day. Do not boil, cook or rinse with hot water as it may lose its strength.

It is very bitter and you have to swallow it like Won Low Kat. But it works.

You may have heard this elsewhere but if not I am glad to inform you that papaya juice is a natural cure for dengue fever that is rampant these days and reported death toll is rising in Lahore after Karachi and Peshawar. ... "

 

~ Link ~

back to the future all over again (2)

An interesting post at the Controversies in History blog:

 

Myth of Ancient Nuclear War

Was the ancient indian war of mahabharatha a nuclear war?? Did ancient indians use weapons if mass destruction (WMD) while in the west humans were still in their primitive settlements?

Oppenheimer

The architect of modern atomic bomb who was in charge of the manhattan project was asked by a student after the manhattan explosion, “How do you feel after having exploded the first atomic bomb on earth”. Oppenheimer’s reply for the question was , “not first atomic bomb, but first atomic bomb in modern times”. He strongly believed that nukes were used in ancient india. what made oppenheimer believe that it was a nuclear war was the accurate descriptions of the weapons used in the mahabharatha war in the epic which match with that of modern nuclear weapons. Video

Mohenjadaro and Harappa

Scientists Davenport and Vincenti put forward a theory saying the ruins were of a nuclear blast as they found big stratums of clay and green glass. High temperature melted clay and sand and they hardened immediately afterwards. Similar stratums of green glass can also found in Nevada deserts after every nuclear explosion.

Radio Active Ash

A layer of radioactive ash was found in Rajasthan, India. It covered a three-square mile area, ten miles west of Jodhpur. The research occurred after a very high rate of birth defects and cancer was discovered in the area. The levels of radiation registered so high on investigators’ gauges that the Indian government cordoned off the region. Scientists then apparently unearthed an ancient city where they found evidence of an atomic blast dating back thousands of years: from 8,000 to 12,000 years.

The blast was said to have destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people.
Archeologist Francis Taylor stated that etchings in some nearby temples he translated suggested that they prayed to be spared from the great light that was coming to lay ruin to the city.

 

Crater Near Bombay

Another curious sign of an ancient nuclear war in India is a giant crater near Bombay. The nearly circular 2,154-metre-diameter Lonar crater (left image), located 400 kilometers northeast of Bombay and aged at less than 50,000 years old, could be related to nuclear warfare of antiquity. No trace of any meteoric material, etc., has been found at the site or in the vicinity, and this is the world’s only known “impact” crater in basalt...  Full post >>