“Where else in cinema or a big film franchise is there a female character that is not just supplementary or additional or the pretty face. She’s a breakthrough, I think. Ron says at the beginning, “I don’t know if we’ll get through a day without Hermione”. She’s like the brains behind the whole operation. And she’s so integral to that trio and to Harry’s success. I think she’s a very important figure.”
(via revealthemagic)
In the first verdict of its kind since former President George W. Bush left office, he and several members of his administration have been successfully convicted in absentia of war crimes in Malaysia.
Yes, this is a BFD.
This past Friday, a five panel tribunal delivered a unanimous guilty verdict after a week long trial that, unsurprisingly, was not covered by American media. The witnesses included several ex-Guantanamo detainees that gave testimony on the conditions and human rights violations that were systematically carried out under orders of the Bush administration.
Former President Bush, Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo that crafted the legal ‘justification’ for torture that basically said, ‘we can if we want to even if it’s illegal’ were the defendants. None were present, of course, but international war crime trials do not require the presence of the accused. The trial was run according to the standards set by the Nuremberg Trials to convict war criminals after World War II.
Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar, who headed the prosecution said, “The tribunal was very careful to adhere scrupulously to the regulations drawn up by the Nuremberg courts and the International Criminal Courts”.
The United States is subject to international law which makes this trial significant beyond the borders of Malaysia. Foreign Policy Journal reports:
President Lamin told a packed courtroom: “As a tribunal of conscience, the tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. The tribunal has no power of enforcement, no power to impose any custodial sentence on any one or more of the 8 convicted persons. What we can do, under Article 31 of Chapter VI of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission to submit this finding of conviction by the tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.
“The Tribunal also recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of all the 8 convicted persons be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicized accordingly.
“The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions if any of these Accused persons may enter their jurisdictions.”
The hope is that other countries will hold trials of their own and the guilty verdicts will mount up. This is not that outlandish an idea as Bush and Cheney have not only brazenly admitted they authorized torture in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention, but bragged about it. Nothing more helpful than having a criminal do all the heavy lifting for the prosecution. If enough of these verdicts are passed on to the international courts, they will have no choice but to hold a trial of their own. While Bush won’t be arrested on American soil, he’ll have a very difficult time leaving the country. Already he’s canceled a trip to Switzerland, due to possible charges of war crimes.
The best possible outcome is that the world court delivers a guilty verdict that sends a clear message to President Obama and his successors that the United States is not above the law, American Exceptional-ism be damned. It’s a lesson we’ve forgotten and need to relearn.
(via historicalslut)
- More than two thirds of all public school districts have a policy to teach sex education. The other 33% of districts leave policy decisions up to individual schools or teachers.
- Of all public school districts, 86% require that abstinence be promoted in their sex ed…
This illustration shows a synapse. When an action potential arrives at a synapse, the positive charge causes the opening of voltage gated calcium channels. Calcium pours into the synaptic button and binds to several proteins, changing their shape. The activated proteins dynamically rearrange the blue cytoskeleton to transport green vesicles filled with yellow neurotransmitters to the synaptic cleft, which is filled with red adhesion proteins. Calcium-activated SNARE proteins bind to both the vesicle and the synaptic membrane, causing the vesicle to fuse with the membrane, turning it inside out and spilling neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft. The neurotransmitters then bind to proteins on the receiving cell. There are several types of yellow-green receptor proteins. Sodium (Na+) channels (excitatory) respond the the neurotransmitter Glutamate. Chloride (Cl-) channels (inhibitory) respond to the neurotransmitter GABA. Dopamine, Serotonin, and Opioids bind to G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) which cause complicated phosphorylation cascades that change the metabolism of the cell.
Artwork by David S. Goodsell
The FBI has been lobbying top internet companies like Yahoo and Google to support a proposal that would force them to provide backdoors for government surveillance, according to CNET.
The Bureau has been quietly meeting with representatives of these companies, as well as Microsoft (which owns Hotmail and Skype), Facebook and others to argue for a legislative proposal, drafted by the FBI, that would require social-networking sites and VoIP, instant messaging and e-mail providers to alter their code to make their products wiretap-friendly.
The FBI has previously complained to Congress about the so-called “Going Dark” problem – the difficulty of doing effective wiretap surveillance as more communications have moved from traditional telephone services to internet service companies.
Under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, passed in 1994, telecommunications providers are required to make their systems wiretap-friendly. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband providers like ISPs and colleges, but web companies are not covered by the law.
