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Indian woman dies after being refused abortion in Ireland

Hasan Suroor
The Hindu
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00 UTC
Savita Halappanavar's death has renewed calls for Irish law to be modified to allow termination if mother's life is at risk.

Savita Halappanavar
© The Irish Times
Savita Halappanavar
A woman of Indian origin has died after doctors in Ireland refused to perform an abortion, telling her that "this is a Catholic country", sparking widespread outrage and renewed calls for immediate reforms to the Irish law to allow termination if the life of the mother is at risk.

Savita Halappanavar (31), who was a dentist, was 17 weeks pregnant when she died from septicaemia, according to an autopsy carried out two days after her death on Oct 28. Her family said she asked several times for her termination as she had severe back pain and was miscarrying but doctors at University Hospital Galway refused on the grounds that abortion was illegal in Ireland.

Her husband Praveen Halappanavar said he was certain that his wife would have still been alive if the termination had been allowed.

It was her first pregnancy, he said, and she was "on top of the world" before she started suffering back pain. When the pain persisted, she asked her consultant if she could be "induced" but was told "no".

"They said unfortunately she can't because it's a Catholic country. Savita said to her [consultant] she is not Catholic, she is Hindu, and why impose the law on her. But she said, 'I'm sorry, unfortunately it's a Catholic country,' and it's the law that they can't abort when the foetus is [alive]," he said.

The hospital has launched an internal investigation in addition to a separate inquiry ordered by Ireland's Health Service Executive.
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Ambulance

Colorado shooting suspect hearing postponed after he is reportedly sent to hospital


Fox News
Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00 UTC
james holmes
© unknown
James Holmes
A Thursday hearing for the man charged with the Colorado movie theater killings was postponed Wednesday after his lawyers told a judge James Holmes would be unable to attend because he was sent to a local hospital Tuesday.

Court documents filed Wednesday gave no details of Holmes' condition. The documents said only that it "renders him unable to be present in court for (Thursday's) hearing."

However, the Denver Post reports sources say Holmes injured himself by ramming his head into a wall at the Arapahoe County jail. Other sources tell the paper Holmes received an MRI at the hospital.

Jail officials refused to comment whether Holmes was back in lock up, citing safety and privacy concerns.

Arapahoe County District Judge William B. Sylvester postponed the hearing, which was scheduled to discuss pretrial motions and media requests for information under state open records laws. The hearing will now be held on December 10.
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Question

Woman predicting alien lizard attack on Earth registers a political party

Evgeniya Chaykovskaya
The Moscow News
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:33 UTC
Svetlana Peunova
© RIA Novosti/Vitaliy Belousov
Svetlana Peunova, who predicted that lizards from planet Nibiru will visit Earth, has registered a party called "Volya" (Will in Russian).

The party appeared in a list of political organizations on the Justice Ministry website.

The party's website states that the West is at war with Russia.

"There is an unannounced war against our country," Peunova writes. "It is carefully hidden by the mass propaganda. But the results are obvious: population losses during the reform years are comparable to Russia's losses in the Great Patriotic War [WWII]."

Peunova also wrote that Russia has become a colony.

"We will have to eat genetically modified food that will lead to infertility because those are the terms in the WTO," Peunova wrote in her party program.
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Che Guevara

Petition for Texas to secede from US government gets enough signatures for White House response

JG Vibes
The Intel Hub
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:12 UTC
Image
People everywhere are sick and tired of what the government is doing and have been growing more frustrated by the day.

Along the way it has been fun and interesting to see the kinds of creative things that people do to undermine or peacefully work against the various systems of oppression that we are forced to live under.

This week one such plot made the news, in a situation where 15 people in different areas of the country each filed petitions to secede from the United States government.

One of these petitions has actually reached the threshold needed to be considered for a response from the white house.

Not long after the story hit the news the petition in Texas gained a ton of support and quickly reached the 34,000 signatures that was needed to break the threshold.
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Bullseye

What are you holding on to?


Activist Post
Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:18 UTC
Image
Tell me what actual benefit you receive from living the "normal" lifestyle - a 2-hour commute to work each day, spending 8 hours in a corporate cubicle that removes your individuality and creativity, to receive a paycheck from which the government has taken its huge and undeserved bite from leaving almost enough to cover your bills and expenses - just so that you can live in the kind of house and drive the kind of car that your friends and relatives think you should live in and be driving.

We all must admit that for some strange reason we don't really understand, we feel a profound sense of accomplishment when we get approved for a mortgage, get a new credit card, or get the "big promotion" at work. There is a scene in the movie Brazil, (a version of 1984), in which Michael Palin lifts his mask as he is about to begin torturing Jonathan Pryce and says glibly, "Confess quick - you don't want to ruin your credit rating!"

We strive, we sacrifice health, family, and well-being for the opportunity to be a better slave.
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Stormtrooper

Pinellas Park man describes being blasted with Taser as he fought house fire

Kameel Stanley,
Tampa Bay Times
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:03 UTC
Dan Jensen was trying to stop the spread of a fire
© James Borchuck/Times
911 Dan Jensen was trying to stop the spread of a fire onto his property when police halted his effort with a Taser blast.
Florida - The fire was all around Dan Jensen.

He could see it. He could smell it. He could hear it.

It was close enough to touch. It was burning down his neighbor's house. It was creeping toward Jensen's own fence 10 feet away, and he started spraying the fire with his hose.

Police ordered Jensen to get back, and he complied.

But after a few minutes passed without firefighters arriving, a frustrated Jensen stepped forward and leaned down to grab the skinny gray garden hose once again.

That's when he heard the order.

"Hit 'em! Take him down! Tase him!"

Within moments, Jensen was on the ground. He felt electric.

"It was all over me," Jensen said. "Crawling all over me."
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Black Cat

World famous 'Cat Man' who spent years morphing himself into a tiger may have died by suicide

Christine Hsu
Medical Daily
Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:50 UTC
Cat Man_1
© Medical Daily
Dennis Avner, known as "Cat Man", the Nevada native who spent years trying to morph his body into that of a cat died earlier this month at the age of 54 under unclear circumstances.

Avner, who holds the world record for body modifications, had undergone numerous tattoos, piercings and other cosmetic surgical procedures to look like a female cat.

The veteran of the U.S. Navy, who also had whiskers, cat ears and a mechanical tail, was found dead on Nov.5 in his home located in Tonopah, Nevada.

Avner, who likes to go by his Native American name "Stalking Cat", had become famous for morphing his face to resemble a tiger.

"I am Huron and following a very old tradition have transformed myself into a tiger," he said on his now-defunct website.

He had reportedly felt inspired after a discussion with a Native American chief told him to "follow the ways of the tiger."
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V

The Rolling Jubilee - Why Occupy's plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Charles Eisenstein
The Guardian
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:58 UTC
debt relief rolling jubilee
© KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Feature
The 'Rolling Jubilee' debt relief plan has re-energised the Occupy movement.
Occupy's Rolling Jubilee idea transcends politics and will be difficult for lenders to oppose

A new initiative is re-energising the Occupy movement. Called the Rolling Jubilee, it is a plan to use money from donations to buy distressed consumer debt from lenders at a marked down price, just as debt collection agencies normally would. But instead of hounding debtors for payments, it will simply cancel the debts. The hope is that the liberated debtors will themselves contribute to the fund, "rolling" the jubilee forward.

The Rolling Jubilee is a genius move for several reasons. First, debt relief is a transpartisan message that eludes conventional political categorisation. As such, it returns Occupy to its origins as an advocate for the wellbeing of ordinary people, neither leftwing nor rightwing. The Rolling Jubilee says, non-threateningly, "We just want to help people in this unfair system."

But despite its non-threatening appearance, the Rolling Jubilee has significant transformative potential. Two pillars uphold the present debt regime: the moral legitimacy of debt in society's eyes, ie, the idea that a person "should" pay back what he owes; and the coercive mechanisms that enforce repayment, such as harassment, seizure of assets, garnishment of wages, denial of employment or housing, and even imprisonment. The Rolling Jubilee erodes both. It destigmatises debt by saying, "we're all in this together, we believe your situation is unfair, not shameful, so we're going to help you out". And it lessens the severity of the consequences of default. If defaulting means you might get bailed out, why keep paying?
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Dollars

Big surprise - GOP quashed superb report on income tax rates for the rich

Eliot Spitzer
Slate.com
Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:45 UTC
tax rate reduction
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, left, and Jon Kyl of Arizona. Republicans objected to a Congressional Research Service report that refuted one of the party's tax-cut arguments.
If last week was all about politics, maybe this week we can put ideology and partisanship aside and apply a more objective, scientific approach to some of the tough issues we face. What do history and data suggest might be the best course for our nation to follow? Specifically, what is the impact of increasing the top marginal tax rate on investment and job creation?

If the numbers showed that raising the top tax rate injured job creation, I would reconsider my belief that the wealthy should pay more, because job creation is issue No. 1. On the other hand, if the record established that raising the top marginal rate did not in any way injure investment and job creation, then those who have been unalterably opposed should be forced to reconsider their views. Analysis should trump ideology.

Comment: News the Government doesn't like is still suppressed. The question is why this tidbit was allowed to see the light of day. A little ray of 'hope and change' for the masses maybe, that will of course, not come to pass.

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Light Sabers

Anti-austerity strikes sweep southern Europe

Feliciano Tisera & Daniel Alvarenga
Reuters
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:12 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Hugo Correia
Glass factory workers, wearing vests that read "General strike", stand on a picket line at the entrance of Saint-Gobain Sekurit Portugal in Santa Iria Azoia November 13, 2012.
Spanish and Portuguese workers will stage the first coordinated general strike across the Iberian Peninsula on Wednesday, shutting transport, grounding flights and closing schools to protest against spending cuts and tax hikes.

Unions in Greece and Italy also planned work stoppages and demonstrations on a "European Day of Action and Solidarity" against austerity policies, which labor leaders blame for prolonging and worsening the continent's economic crisis.

The international coordination shows "we are looking at a historic moment in the European Union movement," said Fernando Toxo, head of Spain's biggest union, Comisiones Obreras.

Spain, where one in four workers is unemployed, is now teetering on the brink of calling for a European bailout, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy trying to put off a rescue that could require even more EU-mandated budget cuts.
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