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POPSDocumentary Film Highlights Child Trafficking American actress Lucy Liu speaks at a press conference to promote the film "Red Light" which she co-produced and narrated and which concerns children abused in the sex trade in Cambodia, at a hotel in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009. A UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Lucy Liu is in Cairo for the 33rd Cairo International Film Festival, and visited UNICEF-funded anti-human trafficking programs specifically dealing with women and children.
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POPSReactionary anti-women "men's rights" groups go mainstream
More: Toward the end of her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs' domestic violence arguments: Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
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POPSMark Levin (Rally Video)It’s On and IT’S MASSIVE– “Kill the Bill Rally” In DC! … As a crowd of protesters shouted “kill the bill,” House Republicans on Thursday rallied opposition against the Democrats’ health care legislation, decrying the bill on the steps of Congress in a last-ditch bid to derail or at least delay the legislation heading toward a possible vote Saturday. Thousands of protesters arrived by bus for the rally, which the GOP is calling an emergency “House Call.” The event drew the conservative “tea party” activists but unlike past rallies was officially sanctioned by House Republicans. Republicans want those who attend to track down their elected representatives in Congress and put pressure on them to think twice about voting for the more than $1 trillion health care overhaul pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “They’re going to listen,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who originally called for the rally. “The biggest voice in the United States is your voice.”
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POPSNonviolence As Their Weapon "It was 2001. Khatib watched in horror as Israeli soldiers shot an unarmed friend at a checkpoint. Two weeks later, the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a revenge attack on the checkpoint, killing seven soldiers. "My first reaction was 'Good for Al Aqsa!' " Khatib said. Then he realized the dead soldiers belonged to a different unit, not the one on duty when his friend was shot. "It made me wonder: This cycle of death, of violent action and reaction, how we can break it?"
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POPSTea Party Movement's New Target :The GOP
They feel they were had by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who urged them to stomach earmarks for the good of the party; by George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who urged them to stomach a massive expansion of education and Medicare for the good of the party; and by the rest of the Washington gang that collaborated in the largest expansion of government in their lifetime for the good of the party. Erick Erickson, founder and editor of the conservative RedState blog, said grass-roots activists are done listening. “Republicans are going to have to come our way,” he said, before going on to trash NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for backing Scozzafava. Their “level of disingenuousness ... is disgusting,” Erickson said. His influential blog is now calling for Sessions to get the boot from the NRCC as a penalty for mishandling the race. Erickson’s bombast may seem overboard, but it captures the dep
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POPSObama’s FCC, “Media Justice” Mob, and Liberal Churches
* Media change of all kinds must expose and directly confront the mechanics of structural racism and systemic oppression. * Leaders from historically marginalized communities must be developed as effective media activists and strategic movement communicators. * Media policy advocacy and strategic communications are more effective when clearly relevant to the primary justice issues of the movement for racial justice, economic and gender equity, and youth rights. * Compelling communications and media activism campaigns must be both rooted in critical issues and coordinated across issue, sector, and region for national impact. * When justice sectors strengthen communications strategies, center the use of culture as a communications tool, employ winning frames and messages, and strengthen their influence over media rules and rights, the possibilities for transformative change skyrocket. “Transformative change” = a media landscape purged of the Right’s most powerful voices.
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POPSAmerican Evangelicals Role In Uganda Effort To ‘Wipe Out’ Gays This barbaric legislation stifles free speech by threatening anyone who is accused of “promoting” homosexuality with five to seven year prison sentences. Snitching on gay friends and family members is strongly encouraged because “failure to disclose the ‘offence’ within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.” Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’s most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’s, converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (pictured top) to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’s leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’s “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’s conversion:
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POPSSurpised? Not Really. Considering the US is, among the general population, one of the least science savvy in the world, their ignorance over this important issue is expected.
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POPSACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in Philadelphia, PA Part I
posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend, soliciting advice about a possible housing loan from workers in the Philadelphia office of ACORN Housing Corp. Previous videos showed the same pair, also posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend, visiting ACORN offices in other cities. The Philadelphia visit is significant because of a dispute over statements ACORN has made defending what took place when Giles and O'Keefe visited the Philadelphia office last summer. Supporters of O'Keefe and Giles said ACORN has lied about whether the two were thrown out of the Philadelphia office, how much time they spent there and whether they explicitly told ACORN workers that Giles was a prostitute. At a news conference, O'Keefe went through an edited version of what he said was a 32-minute visit to the Philadelphia office. "At no point were we kicked out, at no time were we asked to leave," O'Keefe said after playing the video. http://biggovernment.com/
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POPSTime To Man Up, Barry
The sentence for Kian Tajbakhsh was the longest prison term yet in a mass trial of more than 100 opposition figures, activists and journalists in the post election turmoil. The longest sentence so far, yet news accounts offer no explanation as to what Mr. Tajbakhsh did to deserve arrest, let alone a 12 year sentence. Apparently he was arrested at his home, not at a demonstration. News of his sentence was coupled with reports of lenient treatment given to a Canadian citizen: At the same time, Iran allowed another defendant to leave the country--Canadian-Iranian Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek journalist arrested in the same crackdown who had been freed on bail over the weekend. Bahari joined his British wife, who is in the last days of her pregnancy, in London, Newsweek said on its Web site Tuesday. It could be a coincidence. But news accounts certainly raise a question whether the mullahs are publicly sticking their finger in the Obama administration's eye, letting a Canadian go . .
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POPSMarijuana War Up in Smoke!
California here we come! --- An exodus similar to the Great Depression will soon be heading west. Go West, young person, there you will find a new world. But, seriously....the hypocracy of the nation pushing booze and pills massively on TV everyday, while sending pot smokers to jail, is at a turning point. The turning point is that the U.S. will stop using federal law to arrest individual marijuana consumers. This allows each of the 50-states to set their own laws about it...sort of like the idea of our Constitution and democracy intended -- prior to evil leaders trying to use a "War on Drugs," as as excuse before the "Global War on Terrorism," came along. 14 states have already made personal consumption of marijuana a non-criminal offense (so no need to rush out to northern California...although it's thriving out there, no doubt) These states did this change even though it was moot ---- till now. Now, it's not "moot." - more states (like mine) now seeking ballot init
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POPSArmy Experience Center's Bad Experience: Turns out Training Kids to Kill Not Popular with Public September 12, 2009, a crowd of 250 activists marched to the AEC in opposition to the use of public dollars to teach children--in a quasi-public-space--that killing can be fun, while also recruiting eighteen-year-olds to engage in the real thing. This time, police arrested six protesters and one journalist. The journalist, Cheryl Biren, wasn't with the protesters but was picked out of the crowd, apparently because of her professional camera. Days prior to this long-planned and publicly announced protest, the Army preemptively announced that it would likely close the AEC and not open any others in shopping malls, as had been planned. The reason? Are you ready to hear this? By their own admission, the Army doesn't need any more recruits because the bad economy has driven up recruitment significantly.
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POPSRacist Undertones Of The 'Socialist' Epithet
More From The Article: Take another black leader, another society fraught by racial division. In 1956, Nelson Mandela and 155 other antiapartheid activists were arrested by the South African government under the infamous Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, a law that was used gratuitously to incarcerate anyone who was critical of the government. The treason trial that followed resulted in a 1961 acquittal for all those involved, the government unable to prove any "socialist" intentions. But the political equation of black activists as "communists" would continue up through the 1980s. The Reagan administration egregiously soft-pedaled the issue of apartheid on the basis of the South African government's purported anticommunist stance. Indeed, the South African government itself viewed its policies not as racist, but as anticommunist. Only popular pressure through a global antiapartheid movement persuaded the US to isolate South Africa. It takes the cry of "socialism!" liter
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POPSRape Is Not A Game Recommended Actions Please write to the Japanese government officials below, calling on them to comply with Japan’s obligations under CEDAW, including the recent strong exhortation of the CEDAW Committee to ban games and cartoons that normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls. In your letter to the Minister of Justice ask her also to inquire about the requested investigation into the apparent gang rape video sent by Equality Now to the Tokyo police department, and ask that her office investigates this and other actual rape videos to ensure that all those involved are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Please also continue to write to Illusion Software asking it to withdraw immediately from sale all games which involve rape, stalking or other forms of sexual violence or which otherwise denigrate women.
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POPSWho’s Behind the White House War on Fox News?
Or about the joint White House-ABC News health care reform infomercial that aired earlier this summer. Some “opinion journalism” is more equal than others. Debates about the blurred lines between opinion and journalism are all well and good. But don’t the talking points-crafters in the Oval Office have something better to do than carp about the talking points they don’t like hearing on the one cable network that hasn’t been completely overrun by Obama sycophants? The corruptocrat affiliations of Obama’s communications team are illuminating. His press shop can’t rise above the fray because they’ve been entrenched in the Beltway fray for years. They can’t help themselves. Democratic media consultant Dunn’s claim to fame is her decade-long service as chief strategist for disgraced Democrat and former Senate Majority Leader-turned-health care lobbyist Tom Daschle. She was in the thick of his failed re-election campaign as Daschle asserted a bogus property-tax
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POPSNazi-Democrat Analogies Leaves Jewish Groups Alarmed But the vast majority of instances, as a review of recent of recent news clips shows, have been offered by Republican or conservative figures targeting the president or Democrats. Take, for instance, former Saturday Night Live cast member Victoria Jackson, who warned that Obama - like Hitler - "killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn't like. Hitler also controlled the media." Then there is radio host Rush Limbaugh, who insisted that, "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate," and RedState.com's Erick Erickson, who insisted that the president's health care adviser, Linda Douglass, "really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House Health Care shop."
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POPSMeet Rick Berman-Misinformation's Top Gun For Hire Who is Richard Berman? Richard Berman is a Washington, D.C.-based hired gun who uses front groups to defend his corporate clients against the public interest. Using his lobbying and consulting firm, Berman and Company, as a revenue vehicle for his activities, Berman runs at least 15 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts, and holds 16 "positions" within these various entities.
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POPSObama's Gay Outreach: All Talk, No Action Well, just as I predicted, last night when he the addressed the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, the all but de facto gay auxiliary of the Democratic National Committee, the President got his “standing ovation“.* The “cheering crowd” gave the Democrat a warm welcome even as he acknowledged “some policy changes he promised on the campaign trail are not coming as quickly as they expected.“ Promises, promises, but not a plan. That’s not enough for many gay activists, but it will win over the Washington-based leadership of HRC and other gay groups, ever eager to sing the praises of a politician with a (D) after his name who says the right things to their audiences. Of course, to those activists, with highfalutin language and that (D), it really doesn’t matter what he does. Once again, it was typical Obama, lofty words with little to show for them. Sickening. Wake up gay lefties....wake up.
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POPSDesk-Bound Journalists Blow Hopi and Navajo Green Stories It is sad to see what damage can be done when some journalists take to rewriting company PR. The hard work of Hopi and Navajo people to save their land and heritage is easily overlooked and set back by those who have degrees in journalism process but no on-the-ground knowledge about anything or the gumption to get at all sides of a story.