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Today is a "Day of Vigil." We encourage you to make it known that you will not passively accept Georgia's planned killing of Troy Davis at 7pm. Wear a black armband and write "Not in my name!" on it. Tell people about Troy Davis and why we must abolish the death penalty.

If we have not managed to stop the execution by 6pm, gather with others in vigils at the following locations:

If 2,000 Tea Party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street last Saturday. They weren't carrying the banner of the Tea Party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat "Don't Tread on Me". Yet their message was clear: "We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.

One of New York's better-known billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commented on the protests: "You have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs. That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

Riots? Is that really what the Arab Spring and the European protests are about?

Perhaps to the chagrin of Mayor Bloomberg, that is exactly what inspired many who occupied Wall Street. In its most recent communique, the Wall Street protest umbrella group said:

"On Saturday we held a general assembly, two thousand strong. … By 8pm on Monday we still held the plaza, despite constant police presence. … We are building the world that we want to see, based on human need and sustainability, not corporate greed."

"During the last few years, Palestinian olive trees �" a universal symbol of life and peace �" have been systematically destroyed by Israeli settlers.
�oeIt has reached a crescendo. What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land,” stated a spokeswoman for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization monitoring incidents in the West Bank."

"Based on interviews with current and former U.S. military officials with knowledge of the strategic thinking behind the raids, as well as Afghans who have been caught up in the raids, the authors of the study write that large numbers of civilians are being detained for brief periods of time merely to find out what they know about local insurgents �" a practice the authors suggest may violate the Geneva Conventions on warfare."

From the page: As I was waiting for my bags at the airport, I heard a mid-thirties woman talking on the phone. "Yeah, I'm down in New Orleans for the American Legislative Exchange Council meeting. We write legislation, and they pass our ideas. It's the free market."

"Federal law is so weak that there's no law that says they have to do anything to secure their plants," Vice said. "They can write off 'lost' guns as a business expense. They can leave their doors wide open at night if they want to."

Some gun manufacturers, such as Massachusetts-based Kahr Arms, hire drug addicts and others who are likely to have unsavory connections and federal law does not require background checks when entrusting employees with the unstamped guns. The Brady Center's Legal Action Project, representing the family of a man who was killed with one of Kahr's unstamped "lost" guns, won a $600,000 settlement against Kahr for the family in July, the largest damages payment ever against a gun manufacturer charged with negligence.

The Alberta Tar Sands are the largest point source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Producing a barrel of tar sands oil creates three times the greenhouse gas emissions from producing a barrel of conventional oil. Enough natural gas is used in processing the Tar Sands to heat over 3 million Canadian homes. The toxic tailing lakes that result from the water taken from the Athabasca River used to process the tar sands are considered one of the largest man-made structures on Earth and will have a catastrophic impact on the aquatic ecosystems of the Mackenzie River Basin should they fail. The Alberta Tar Sands are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

The film follows Sandra�s thirty-year journey from rejection to acceptance, betrayal to reconciliation, as she struggles to define her place in a changing world �" and triumphs against all odds. Shot in and around Johannesburg at the end of 2007, the film stars Sophie Okonedo as Sandra Laing, Sam Neill as her father Abraham and Alice Krige as her mother Sannie.