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Shakespeare expelled from Tucson, Arizona schools

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First schools try to let the colored and whites get their educatin’ together. Then they want to teach the “theory” of evolution.

Shakespeare: playwright and public enemy number one in Tucson

Sick of liberal institutions of learnin’? Move to Arizona, where the school board has voted to ban Shakespeare from classroom bookshelves.

Bigwigs among the school board in Tucson, Arizona have released a list of banned books on Friday, and among those, in addition to text books and collections of essay, is The Tempest, the 500-year-old play penned by William Shakespeare. The barring of the bevy of books comes after a state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies was put in place, which in turn yielded an end to the Mexican American history program taught in the Tucson Unified School District.

A recent ruling by Judge Lewis D Kowal established that the Mexican American program would go against an earlier ban specifically prohibiting classes which are aimed at ethnic groups or promotes “resentment toward a race or class of people.” In June 2011, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction deemed the Tucson district to be in violation by offering the program in question. Six months later, students and instructors were forced by state mandate to end the academic agenda. Now that the plug has been pulled on the Mexican American program, the district has determined that The Tempest is among a handful of books that break state law.

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Anti-brothel striptease: Topless activists target Indian embassy (VIDEO)

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Four FEMEN activists have undressed at the Indian embassy in Kiev in protest against the country’s plan to block young Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakh women from entering India as part of a national anti-prostitution campaign.

The topless activists, partially clad in Indian clothes, used a ladder to climb the Indian embassy’s balcony and unfurled banners saying “Ukrainians are not prostitutes!”, “Delhi, close your brothels,” and “We demand apologies.”
The protesters waved Indian flags and knocked on the embassy’s doors and windows – until detained by security guards and taken away by the police.

The demo was sparked after the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered its embassies to take extra care checking visa applications from women aged 15-40, who are blamed for the country’s prostitution boom.
FEMEN’s blog says that by issuing such an order, India has gravely insulted the women of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.

“Indian prostitution is directly connected with impunity of the country’s criminal business,” the blog states. “Blaming it on women is a shame for the heirs of such a rich and old culture.”

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Wikipedia Goes Dark Over Anti-Piracy Bill

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Wikipedia, the popular community-edited online encyclopedia, will black out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed U.S. anti-piracy legislation that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said threatens the future of the Internet.

The service will be the highest profile name to join a growing campaign starting at midnight Eastern Time on Wednesday that will see it black out its page so that visitors will only see information about the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

The information will urge Wikipedia readers to contact their local congressman to vote against the bills. Other smaller sites leading the campaign include Reddit.com and Cheezeburger.

“This is a quite clumsily drafted legislation which is dangerous for an open Internet,” said Wales in an interview.

The decision to black out the site was decided by voting within the Wikipedia community of writers and editors who manage the free service, Wales said. The English language Wikipedia receives more than 25 million average daily visitors from around the world, according to comScore data.

The bills pit technology companies like Google Inc and Facebook against the bill’s supporters, including Hollywood studios and music labels, which say the legislation is needed to protect intellectual property and jobs.

The SOPA legislation under consideration in the House of Representatives aims to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing Internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates U.S. copyright laws. Supporters argue the bill is unlikely to have an impact on U.S.-based websites.

U.S. advertising networks could also be required to stop online ads, and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites found to be distributing pirated goods.

Google has repeatedly said the bill goes too far and could hurt investment. Along with other Internet companies such as Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, it has run advertisements in major newspapers urging Washington lawmakers to rethink their approach.

White House officials raised concerns on Saturday about SOPA saying they believe it could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.

“We’re happy to see opposition is building and that the White House has started to pay attention,” said Wales.

News of the White House’s comments prompted a prominent supporter of the bill, News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, to slam the Obama administration.

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” he posted on his personal Twitter account Saturday. News Corp owns a vast array of media properties from Fox TV, the Wall Street Journal to Twentieth Century Fox studios.

Wales said the bill in its current form was too broad and could make it difficult for a site like Wikipedia, which he said relies on open exchange of information. He said the bill also places the burden of proof on the distributor of content in the case of any dispute over copyright ownership.

“I do think copyright holders have legitimate issues, but there are ways of approaching the issue that don’t involve censorship,” Wales said.

“Bain Capitalism”: Mitt’s Frankenstein Is a Politically-Created Monster

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Richard (RJ) Eskow~

Bain Capital must seem like a Frankenstein’s monster to Mitt Romney’s campaign Like Mary Shelley’s creature, it’s stalking its creator just as he’s about to claim the thing he loves most. But Bain Capital — and Bain Capitalism — isn’t Mitt’s creation. It was sewed together from the corpses of dead ideals and shocked into life in Washington’s political laboratories.

Mitt’s monster was created by a broken political process that’s allowed politicians in both parties to create an artificial, destructive and exploitative form of pseudo-capitalism — and often to get rich from it. Romney’s campaign will probably survive, but the monster will go on destroying lives and dreams.

Conservatives and self-described “centrists” speak about “Bain Capitalism” — aka “vulture capitalism” — as if it were the inevitable result of immutable economic laws. But it’s only been around for thirty years or so, after government policies in taxation and bank regulation made it possible. That’s right: Government, not free enterprise, made Bain Capitalism.

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The Failure of Our “Free” Press

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"The ideal of freedom of the press, so crucial to democracy, is upheld only when its practitioners willingly challenge the so-called ‘facts’ of the powerful.”

By William Astore~

Do we have a truly free press, one that is willing to challenge the powerful and to serve the people?

A recent editorial by Arthur S. Brisbane at the New York Times suggests that our press is more lapdog than watchdog.

A truly free press needs guts. It needs to be willing to say, “I accuse.” Yet as Glenn Greenwald points out, our mainstream media today willingly acts as “stenographers” to the high and mighty, as if established elites need more support and more privileges.

The other day I ran across a passage in Arthur Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms that has much to say about freedom of the press as well as the perils of source anonymity. In full it reads:

“Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety-valve is to the steam engine: every discontent is by means of it immediately relieved in words–indeed, unless this discontent is very considerable, it exhausts itself in this way. If, however, it is very considerable, it is as well to know of it in time, so as to redress it.

Car stolen, quick bust by Desert Hot Springs Police

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Our great Police Chief Pat Williams DHSPD

On Monday, January 16, 2012, at approximately 0654 hours, officers from the Desert Hot Springs Police Department were called to investigate the theft of a motor vehicle. Officers learned that the vehicle was taken from in front of the location sometime during the night.

While on patrol, at approximately 11:00 PM, officers located the stolen vehicle in the area of Mission Lakes Blvd and Vista Del Valle. At the time, it was occupied by four suspects.

Officers conducted a stolen vehicle investigation stop on the vehicle. The suspects were arrested and booked for vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, drug possession and outstanding warrant charges. Suspects Amaro, Sadoski, and Sawdey were transported to Banning Jail. Jackson was cited and released.

Any information regarding this press release should be directed to Desert Hot Springs Police Detective Eddie Cole at 760.329.6411 x294.