adailyriot:

South Dakota Seizes 5000 Lakota Children

One afternoon in 2008, Janice Howe—a Dakota Indian—waited at the bus stop for her grandchildren to come home from school. They never arrived.

That afternoon, a social worker had taken Janice’s grandchildren. They were driven to a white foster facility hundreds of miles away. The reason stated in the case file: a “rumor” that Janice’s daughter, Erin Yellow Robe, had been using drugs. She hadn’t. To this day, Janice’s daughter hasn’t been charged or arrested for drugs—or anything else.

For the next year and a half, Janice fought to get her grandchildren back. She called the state’s Director of Social Services. She wrote letters to the Governor. Finally, she convinced her tribe’s Council to threaten the state with kidnapping. A few weeks later, her grandchildren were returned…on a “trial basis.”

Recently, Janice’s story was told in an NPR investigative-series by award-winning journalist Laura Sullivan. If you haven’t listened to the story, it’s a must hear.

Since 2005, the Lakota People’s Law Project has been working with hundreds of families who share Janice’s story. But they haven’t all been so lucky. Over the past decade, the State Department of Social Services has taken more than 5,000 Native American children from their homes. It’s easy to see why—for every Lakota child in state-sponsored care, South Dakota receives thousands of dollars a year in federal monies.

What’s the good news? We can do something about it!

The Lakota People’s Law Project is currently compiling court-admissible evidence and preparing a federal civil rights action on behalf of South Dakota’s Native families. Recently, we helped Janice Howe host a forum to teach parents and relatives about their rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act. More than 160 Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota attended the meeting.

To be successful in this work, we need to build a chorus of support across the country. We hope that you will add your voice to this effort.

You can start by signing a letter of support to Janice Howe and all the other grandmothers like her.

Please forward this email to your friends and share Janice’s story to help us grow a strong network of people who care.

Together, we can help the Lakota reclaim their rights and get their children back!

As we say in Lakota—pilamaya—thank you.
Sara Nelson
Executive Director

Madonna Thunder Hawk
Organizer and Tribal Liaison

lgbtlaughs:

Today, it came to the fore that a user had been listing the addresses of LGBTQ people with the threat of outing them to their parents/peers. Some people reported them to tumblr, and tumblr sent a standard response saying they can’t remove the content due to “free speech” despite such action breaking their TOS (which they’ve just updated, you’ll note). It was pretty clear they didn’t even read the complaint before deciding it was a “free speech” matter.

The blog in question is now gone, whether by tumblr’s hand or not. But the likelihood that the person who made is has been IP-banned is very slim. If you receive any word that any such blog begins operating again, spread the word so mass-reporting (support@tumblr.com) can take place. It is the only method that seems to make tumblr pay attention.

Tumblr must do more to protect minority communities on tumblr who use this space. It is in the interest of their business, and in the interest of basic human decency to tackle threats of outing, violence, or hate speech. Hate speech is not free speech. Outing people is not free speech.

Please do not ask me to explain the detail of what happened, you can read about it at these links (and follow the reblog strings from there for more commentary): one, two.

It is clear that we have to demand that tumblr support actually supports us.

Related note: signal boost for POCharassed, a new blog that documents racist abuse and harassment that tumblr support isn’t tackling.

bookofstars:

Something -worse- than ACTA? Yes, it is: TTP.

stormofthunder:

“From what I can tell it’s even LESS known than ACTA. I haven’t even been able to find any YouTube videos on it.

Here are two lovely quotes I think you will find interesting:

“A leaked version of the February 2011 draft U.S. TPP Intellectual Property Rights Chapter indicates that U.S. negotiators are pushing for the adoption of copyright measures far more restrictive than currently required by international treaties, including the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

“The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is pursuing a TPP agreement that will require signatory counties to adopt heightened copyright protection that advances the agenda of the U.S. entertainment and pharmaceutical industries, but omits the flexibilities and exceptions that protect Internet users and technology innovators.”

Yep, more restrictive than ACTA.

Countries will be forced to rewrite their copyright laws and adopt this agreement’s (beyond sucky) laws.

I don’t really know much about this myself, but here are a few points summarized from the article:
-Temporary reproductions of copyrighted works without permission will count as infringement. (So I’m guessing you can’t put your music on an external drive if you’re getting a new computer?)
-Countries can’t import legitimate goods without copyright owner approval. (So basically Japan could say that USA is no longer allowed to import anime.)
-Extend the Life+70 years copyright in individual work, and the 95 years after publication/120 years for corporation stuff.
-Ban circumvention of digital locks. (DMCA is a whole host of issues in and of itself.)
-“Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without a commercial motivation.” (Pretty self-explanatory there.)
-“Adopt the U.S. DMCA Internet Intermediaries copyright safe harbor regime in its entirety. This would require Chile to rewrite its forward-looking 2010 copyright law that currently provides for a judicial notice and takedown regime, which provides greater protection to Internet users’ expression and privacy than the DMCA’s copyright safe harbor regime.” (Couldn’t have said it better myself.)” - WindieDragon

Mother of fucking god, I am seriously getting tired of the fucking US continuously fucking trying to fuck shit up by making so much fucking shit and caring so fucking much about fucking copyright and fucking intellectual fucking property fucking problems when there are so many other fucking much more fucking important fucking problems that have to be fucking taken fucking care of. Fuck.

I don’t fucking care if this will fucking fill my fucking fuck quota of the fucking month, holy fucking shit balls on a dick.

I don’t fucking even fucking FUCK.

Just spread this shit. Just fucking do it.

#do you guys realize how fucked up the pharmaceutical industry is #like i love medicine and i need it to be alive #but the fucking industry is a fucking NIGHTMARE #companies perpetually trying to shut down and stop generics from being made bcs then people won’t buy their outrageously expensive brands #nvm that for lots of people the generics are all they can afford #these companies would rather hold medications hostage for money than actually do what they’re supposed to do - help people live

ghostdrive:

15 of the Deadliest Corporations

somerset:

stay-human:

These corporations, if they were individual human beings, would be locked up for life. Instead, they continue raking in the big bucks. Human rights abuses, murder, war, eco disasters, and animal exploitation keep these evil companies raking in the green. Prepare to be disgusted.

I don’t think the list is in any particular order. Even if you don’t agree with all of them (eg. the cigarette company) most of them are legit horrible. I’m posting a summary but I recommend reading the full article: http://brainz.org/15-deadliest-us-corporations/

1. Chevron : (then Texaco) discharged 18 billion gallons of toxic water into the rain forests of Ecuador without any remediation, destroying the livelihoods of local farmers and sickening indigenous populations. Chevron was responsible for the death of several Nigerians who protested the company’s polluting, exploiting presence in the Nigerian Delta. Chevron paid the local militia, known for its human rights abuses, to squash the protests, and even supplied them with choppers and boats. The military opened fire on the protesters, then burned their villages to the ground.  
2. DeBeers : was knowingly funding violent guerrilla movements in Angola, Sierra Nevada, and the Congo with its diamond purchases. In Botswana, DeBeers has been blamed for the “clearing” of land to be mined for diamonds — including the forcible removal of indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years. The government allegedly cut off the tribe’s water supplies, threatened, tortured and even hanged resisters.
3. Tyson : Even if you don’t care about the horrendous animal abuse that has been documented in Tyson’s factory farms, you have to flinch at Tyson’s appalling environmental abuses and workers’ rights violation- Tyson has allowed e coli tainted beef to enter the food supply. A recent study showed that Tyson’s chickens were the most salmonella-and-campylobactor filled poultry of all the major suppliers and has even been accused of human trafficking to supply themselves with cheap labor.  
4. Smith & Wesson : In a study of the top ten guns involved in crime in the U.S., the first was the Smith & Wesson .38 Special.
5. Phillip Morris : is the largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the U.S.
6. Haliburton : is a huge “oilfield services” company, profited big time from the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq when Cheney called in his boys to quell burning oil wells — and to “help” the Iraq oil ministry pump and distribute oil. Haliburton has also been implicated in countless oil spills, including the BP disaster of 2010. 
7. Coca Cola : corporation has wrought devastation in India, where its factories use up to one million liters of water per day, leaving tens of thousands of nearby residents dry during the drought months. Then the factories dispose of the wastewater improperly, contaminating whatever water is left.  A lawsuit in 2001 accused Coca Cola of hiring paramilitaries in Columbia which suppressed unionization in the cola plant there through intimidation, torture and murder.
8. Pfizer : the largest pharmaceutical corporation in the U.S., pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest health care fraud in U.S. history. Pfizer decided to use Nigerian children as guinea pigs. In 1996, Pfizer traveled to Kano, Nigeria to try out an experimental antibiotic on third-world diseases such as measles, cholera, and bacterial meningitis. They gave trovafloxacin to approximately 200 children. Dozens of them died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities. According to the EPA, Pfizer can also proudly claim to be among the top ten companies in America causing the most air pollution.
9. ExxonMobil : is perhaps best known for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill which resulted in 11 million gallons of oil contaminating Prince William Sound. But they have also been responsible for a huge oil spill in Brooklyn and for aiding in the decline of Russia’s critically endangered grey whale because of drilling in its habitat. The Political Economy Research Institute ranks ExxonMobil sixth among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States.
10. Caterpillar : supplies the Israeli army with bulldozers which are used to demolish Palestinian homes — sometimes with the people still inside. In 2003 a Caterpillar bulldozer ran over and killed Rachel Corrie, an American protesting in Gaza who stood in front of the tractor to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home.
11. Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily : “The Cruelest Show on Earth” is famous for its abuse of wild animals.
12. Monsanto : Monsanto’s list of evils includes creating the “terminator” seed which creates plants which never fruit or flower so that farmers must purchase them anew yearly, lobbying to have “hormone-free” labels removed from the labels of milk and infant milk replacer (through bovine growth hormone is believed to be a cancer-accelerator) as well as a wide range of environmental and human health violations associated with use of Monsanto’s poisons — most notably “Agent Orange.”
13. Nestle : crimes against man and nature include massive deforestation in Borneo — the habitat of the critically endangered orangutan — to grow palm oil, and buying milk from farms illegally-seized by a despot in Zimbabwe. Nestle attracted worldwide boycott efforts for urging mothers in third-world countries to use their infant milk replacer instead of breastfeeding, without warning them of the possible negative effects. Supposedly, Nestle hired women to dress as nurses to hand out free infant formula, which was frequently mixed with contaminated water, or the children starved when the formula ran out and their mothers could not afford more and their breast milk had already dried up from disuse.
14. British Petroleum : Who can forget 2010’s oil rig explosion in the Gulf Coast which killed 11 workers and thousands of birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other animals, effectively destroying the fishing and tourism industry in the region? This was not BP’s first crime against nature. In fact, between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for a whopping 104 oil spills.
15. Dyncorp : is best known for its brutality in impoverished countries, for trafficking in child sex slaves, for slaughtering civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training rebels in Haiti. This privatized military company is often hired by the U.S. government to protect American interests overseas — and so the government can claim no responsibility for Dyncorp’s actions. 

So yeah.

IT’S OK EVERYBODY THEY GOT MEGAUPLOAD.

littleliesl:

Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote…

Republicans usually don’t want to acknowledge that their purpose is to turn away voters, especially when race is involved, so they invented an explanation, claiming that stricter ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In fact, there is almost no voter fraud in America to prevent.

William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience. “Voting as a liberal,” he said, “that’s what kids do.” And that’s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O’Brien favored.

Many students have taken advantage of Election Day registration laws, which is one reason Maine Republicans passed a law eliminating the practice. Voters restored it last month, but Republican lawmakers there are already trying new ways to restrict voting. The secretary of state said he was investigating students who are registered to vote in the state but pay out-of-state tuition.

[read more]

Vote with your feelings? I thought voting was based off what you “feel” is the right thing to do.

lecorbeau:

thetatteredendsofautumn:

We’re All Stories in the End: list of Internet Service Providers that are blocking http://www.americancensorship.org

youranonnews:

list of Internet Service Providers that are blocking http://www.americancensorship.org

Link to Google’s cache of americancensorship.org/

***WILL STAY UPDATED***

Time Warner Cable

Cablevision

Shaw

O2

sympatico

bell

Charter Communications

Orange UK

Verizon should be added.

nextian:

by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith

We are published authors who co-wrote a post-apocalyptic young adult novel. When we set out to find an agent for it, we expected to get some rejections. But we never expected to be offered representation… on the condition that we make a gay character straight, or cut him out altogether.

Our novel, Stranger, has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki’s romance, like the heterosexual ones in the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.

An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.

Yep.