#Video: #DjangoUnchained - Good, Bad Or Ugly?

from brasschecktv.com: Lots of debate about this film. Bill O'Reilly hates it. Liberals hate it. So there must be something very good about it. What's good about it? No one can walk away from Django without viscerally understanding that all those fine mansions, fancy ladies, and gracious manners were fronts for concentration camps run by legally-enabled sadists. That's a win given that these places are currently tourist destinations people visit in droves to rhapsodize about the "romantic" Old South. Tarantino has spit in that soup in a way viewers of this movie will never be able to recover from.

first shots mark 150 years since start of US civil war

from reuters: In the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday, about two dozen Union Army re-enactors raised a 33-star American flag over Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor.

Soon after, a signal shot from a nearby fort sparkled in the air and cannon fire commenced, just as it did 150 years ago to begin the American Civil War.

The first shots fired on April 12, 1861, marked the start of what would be a defining time in U.S. history. The Civil War took 620,000 American lives and ended the country's institution of slavery.

The National Park Service and the city of Charleston aimed for the sesquicentennial events to be both inclusive and true to history.

"Four million enslaved African Americans saw this as their revolution," said Robert Sutton, chief historian of the National Park Service, whose theme for the sesquicentennial nationwide is "Civil War to Civil Rights."

"Today we commemorate the beginning of the Civil War, but we also celebrate the fact that more people were freed from slavery at that time than at any time in world history."

another suicide at foxconn, 9th this year at chinese iphone firm

from bbc: In China a factory worker has died after falling from a high building, the latest in a string of such deaths at the same plant. The man, who was 19, was employed by Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm also known as Honhai.

The firm makes mobile phones, games consoles and computers for companies like Apple, Hewlett Packard and Sony. Nine people have died after falling off buildings at the factory this year. Two others were seriously injured.

Police are not saying yet whether this was a suicide attempt, a suspicious death or an accident. It happened just one day after Foxconn started playing music to workers on the assembly line to try to ease the pressure on them.

Before this latest incident the company's founder had denied he worked his staff too hard. But he had promised a plan to improve working conditions within a month.

rothschild & freshfields founders had links to slavery, papers reveal

from financial times: Two of the biggest names in the City of London had previously undisclosed links to slavery in the British colonies, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family’s 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery. Far from being a matter of distant history, slavery remains a highly contentious issue in the US, where Rothschild and Freshfields are both active.

Companies alleged to have links to past slave injustices have come under pressure to make restitution.

JPMorgan, the investment bank, set up a $5m scholarship fund for black students studying in Louisiana after apologising in 2005 for the company’s historic links to slavery.

The archival documents have already prompted one of the banks named in the records to take action in the US.

When the FT approached Royal Bank of Scotland with information about its predecessor’s links with slavery, the bank researched the claim, updated its own archives and amended the disclosures of past slave connections that it had previously lodged with the Chicago authorities.

But it is the disclosures about Mr Rothschild and Mr Freshfield that are likely to prompt the biggest stir.

In the case of Mr Rothschild, the documents reveal for the first time that he made personal gains by using slaves as collateral in banking dealings with a slave owner.

flashback: cnbc guest says illuminati behind stock market crash

obamessiah & the apostles of war: abc, nsa, cia & the fly

abc turns 'programming' over to obama*
abc says no to gop ads during obama healthcare special*
abc employees donated heavily to obama*
senate unanimously approves resolution apologizing for slavery*
house health-care proposal adds $600b in taxes*
gays decry obama's stand on gay marriage case*
obama to announce federal benefits for same sex partners*
cia: finding bin laden top US priority*
the secret history: can leon panetta move the cia forward without confronting its past?*
senior dem says obama's czars unconstitutional*
video: the realm of gangster government*
'service' inspector general fired by obama for investigating 'hood corps' mayor kevin johnson?*
video: obama & the fly*

obama ensnared in 'flygate'*
video: aclu says obama not keeping transparency promises*
video: maher on obama: 'my hope is fading'*
obama promised to end 'secret meetings' & make the white house the 'people’s house'*
obama says he can't deliver change because "we don’t want to tilt at windmills"*
video: jeb bush will be gop front-runner for 2012*
cia head says cheney almost wishing US be attacked*
video: obama will keep promise to block detainee abuse photos*
obama blocks access to white house visitor list*
video: white house blocking visitor logs 'insidious'*
obama touts volunteer efforts*
video: colbert wants to join female bohemian grove*
hillary to undergo surgery on broken elbow*
video: nsa spied on bill clinton's email*
video: feinstein says nsa not collecting the contents of emails*
plan targets fallout from mountaintop mining*
obama admin criticised over failure to disclose coal dump locations*
video: dean 'surprised' by obama’s slipping approval ratings*

collateral news: america's next beauty queen? & under the radar

from collateral news: Last Friday Kathie Couric asked Sarah Palin what she thinks about the 700 Billion $ bailout. Her answer ... oh well ! This may not be a very original idea but we couldn't resist.


collateral news: under the radar #1
from collateral news: Here are 3 stories that received little or no press coverage due to the current turmoil. Vote for the one that bugs the most and we'll make it a full length story in the coming weeks.

gap vows action after child labor report

from ap: Clothing retailer Gap Inc. said Sunday that it will convene all of its Indian suppliers to "forcefully reiterate" its prohibition on child labor after a British newspaper found children as young as 10 making Gap clothes at a sweatshop in New Delhi.

The Observer newspaper quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their families in Indian states such as Bihar and West Bengal and would not be allowed to leave until they had repaid that fee.

Some, working as long as 16 hours a day to hand-sew clothing, said they were not being paid because their employer said they were still trainees.

china: shocking child slavery situation

from cryptogon: Mostly shocking because this is where the U.S. is headed. This kind of thing, and much worse, is standard operating procedure in China.

The factory operators must have fallen behind in bribe payments to the local party bosses. Not to worry. The diabolical Chinese regime can be seen as rescuing the children from hell.

from telegraph: Up to a thousand children were sold into a brutal life of slave work in a labour “prison” in China, police have revealed as the shocking racket was exposed today.

The victims endured maiming and brutality in primitive brick kilns, Chinese media have reported amid an expanding scandal about official neglect.

The owners ran the prison-like kilns with fierce dogs and thugs who beat the children at will, state television said. One accidentally killed a child with a shovel and buried the body at night, it said.

An army of 35,000 police in central China had so far rescued 217 people, including 29 children, the official China Daily reported today.

But state television said many more may be trapped, making bricks for little or no pay in brutal conditions in Shanxi and Henan provinces.

As many as 120 suspects had been detained.