Unspeakable grief and horror
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Know them by their fruit:
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Unspeakable grief and horror
Know them by their fruit: |
While CIA planes loaded with cocaine from Uribe's Columbia crash periodically, the last we know of just months past, there is this horror: |
March 5, 2008
The Raid on Ecuador
By FIDEL CASTRO
Underestimating Rafael Correa |
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I remember when Rafael Correa visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador.
He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador.
He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation.
There were good relations between our two governments.
A while earlier Correa had resigned from the Ministry of the Economy.
He was unhappy with what he called administrative corruption instigated by Oxy, a foreign company that explored and invested important sums of money, but was holding on to four out of every five barrels of oil that it extracted.
He didn't talk about nationalization, but about taxing them heavily; these taxes would be assigned in advance to specific social investments.
He had already approved the measures and a judge had declared them to be valid.
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Since the word "nationalize" had not been mentioned, I thought he felt apprehensive about the concept.
It didn't surprise me because he had graduated as an economist with much acclaim from a well-known U.S. university.
I didn't bother getting into much depth; I bombarded him with questions from the arsenal accumulated in the struggle against the Latin American foreign debt in 1985 and of Cuba's own experience.
There are high-risk investments that use sophisticated technology and that no small nation like Cuba or Ecuador could take on.
Since this was already in 2006 and we were determined to promote the energy revolution — ours was the first country on the planet to proclaim this as a vital issue for humankind — I had dealt with the subject particularly emphatically.
But I halted, as I understood one of his reasons.
I related to him the conversation I had had a while ago with the president of REPSOL, a Spanish company.
This company, associated with other international companies, would undertake an expensive operation to drill the ocean floor, more than 2000 meters down, using sophisticated technology, in Cuba's jurisdictional waters.
I asked the head of the Spanish company: How much is an exploratory well worth?
I ask you this because we would like to participate, even if it is for one percent of the total cost and we would like to know what you want to do with our oil.
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Oil policies verged on treason against the country
Correa, for his part, had told me that for every one hundred dollars taken out by the companies, only twenty remained in the country; it didn't even get into the budget, he said; it was left in a separate fund for just about anything other than improving the living conditions of the people.
I abolished the fund, he told me, and directed 40 percent towards education and health, technological and highway development, and the rest towards buying back the debt if the price was favorable, and if not, investing it in something more useful.
Before, every year we had to buy a portion of that debt which was becoming more expensive.
In the case of Ecuador he added oil policies verged on treason against the country.
Why do they do it? I asked him.
Is it because they are afraid of the Yankees or due to unbearable pressure?
He answered: If they have a Minister of the Economy who tells them privatization would improve efficiency, you can just imagine. I didn't do that.
I encourage him to go on and he calmly explains.
The foreign company Oxy is one that has broken its contract and according to Ecuadorian law it requires an expiration date.
Because of Yankee pressure the government does not dare
It means that the oil field operated by this company must go over to the State, but because of Yankee pressure the government does not dare to occupy it; a situation is created which is not contemplated by the legislation.
The law just states that an expiration date must be set, and nothing more.
The judge at the court of first instance at that moment was the president of PETROECUADOR and he made it happen.
I was a member of PETROECUADOR and they called an emergency meeting to expel him from his position.
I didn't attend and they couldn't fire him.
The judge declared the expiration date.
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What did the Yankees want? I asked him.
They wanted a fine, he quickly replied.
Listening to him I realized that I had underestimated him.
I was in a hurry because of a great number of commitments. I invited him to sit in on a meeting with a large group of highly qualified Cuban professionals who were leaving for Bolivia to be part of the Medical Brigade; it had staff for more than 30 hospitals including 19 surgical positions that could do more than 130 thousand ophthalmologic operations per year; all in the manner of free cooperation.
Ecuador possesses three similar centers with six ophthalmologic positions.
Dinner with the Ecuadorian economist took place into the morning hours of February 9, 2006.
There were scarcely any view points that I didn't cover.
I even spoke to him about the very harmful mercury that modern industry scatters throughout the planet's oceans.
Consumerism was of course a subject that I emphasized:
The high cost of the kilowatt/hour in the thermoelectric plants
The differences between socialist and communist forms of distribution.
The role of money, the trillions spent on advertising which people had no choice but to pay for in the prices of goods.
And the studies made by university social brigades who discovered, among the 500 thousand families in the capital, the number of elderly folk lived alone.
I explained the stage of university courses for all that we were involved in.
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Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador
We became friends even though he perhaps received the impression that I was self-sufficient.
If that happened, it was truly not my intention.
Since that time I have observed his every step: the electoral process, focusing on the concrete problems of Ecuadorians and the people's victory over the oligarchy.
In the history of our peoples there are many things that bring us together.
Sucre was always a highly admired figure, along with The Liberator Bolivar; as Marti said, what he hasn't done in America remains to be done, and as Neruda exclaimed, Bolivar awakens every hundred years.
Imperialism has just committed a monstrous crime in Ecuador.
Deadly bombs were dropped in the early morning hours on a group of men and women who, almost without exception, were asleep.
That has been deduced by all the official reports right from the beginning.
Any concrete accusations against that group of human beings do not justify that action.
Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites
They were Yankee bombs, guided by Yankee satellites.
Absolutely no one has the right to kill in cold blood.
If we accept that imperial method of warfare and barbarism, Yankee bombs directed by satellites could fall on any group of Latin American men and women, in the territory of any country, war or no war.
The fact that this happened on undisputed Ecuadorian territory is an aggravating circumstance.
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We are not an enemy of Colombia.
Previous reflections and exchanges demonstrate how much of an effort we have made, both the current President of the Council of State of Cuba and I, to abide by a declared policy of principles and peace, proclaimed years ago in our relations with the rest of the Latin American states.
Today, with everything at risk, we have not been transformed into belligerent people.
We are determined supporters of that unity among peoples which Marti named Our America.
If we keep quiet we shall become accomplices.
Today they would like to have our friend, the economist and President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, seated in the dock.
This is something we couldn't even conceive that morning of February 9, 2006.
At that time it seemed that my imagination was capable of embracing all kinds of dreams and risks.
But never anything like what has occurred in the early morning of Saturday March 1, 2008.
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Correa has in his hands the few survivors and the rest of the bodies.
The two which are missing prove that Ecuadorian territory was occupied by troops that crossed the border.
Now he can cry out like Emile Zola:
J'accuse! |
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Meanwhile the CIA aircraft loaded with cocaine from Uribe's Columbia continue to crash, and will do so until people decide to save the West from the
demons
now controlling, demons now visibly destroying everything, yes, everything in our Western Countries, and attempting to destroy as much as they are able of the rest of the world |
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Obama Statement on Recent Events near Colombia’s Borders - March 03, 2008
“The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The recent targeted killing of a senior FARC leader must not be used as a pretense to ratchet up tensions or to threaten the stability of the region. The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have a responsibility to ensure that events not spiral out of control, and to peacefully address any disputes through active diplomacy with the help of international actors.”
Statement from Hillary Clinton - 3/3/2008
“Hugo Chavez’s order yesterday to send ten battalions to the Colombian border is unwarranted and dangerous. The Colombian state has every right to defend itself against drug trafficking terrorist organizations that have kidnapped innocent civilians, including American citizens. By praising and supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Chavez is openly siding with terrorists that threaten Colombian democracy and the peace and security of the region. Rather than criticizing Colombia’s actions in combating terrorist groups in the border regions, Venezuela and Ecuador should work with their neighbor to ensure that their territories no longer serve as safe havens for terrorist groups. After reviewing this situation, I am hopeful that the government of Ecuador will determine that its interests lie in closer cooperation with Colombia on this issue. Hugo Chavez must call a halt to this provocative action. As president, I will work with our partners in the region and the OAS to support democracy, promote an end to conflict, and to press Chavez to change course.” |
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The West is in for a lot of grief
You do understand, don't you!
You and your children |
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'In 20 years, I think actual tax havens that advocate secrecy will be extremely limited.'
Is that when the elite have absolute control of the world?
I don't think we have to wait 20 years.
Smoke and Mirrors
Mirrors and Smoke
Serfdom slavery to engulf Western Nation people on this beleaguered planet.
Kewe — TheWE.biz |
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Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Is time running out for tax havens? By Ray Furlong
BBC News, Vaduz
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The bankers in their grey suits and silk shirts looked a bit bemused.
The annual press conference of LGT, the Liechtenstein bank at the centre of the tax evasion controversy, is usually a dull and dry affair.
But it wasn't this year. The room was packed.
And every question was about the scandal in which German intelligence purchased a data disc stolen from the bank, filled with details of Germans who allegedly tried to evade paying tax back home.
Fourteen other countries, including Britain, are conducting inquiries into their own citizens on the disc for tax evasion.
The head of the LGT, His Serene Highness Prince Max von und zu Liechtenstein, is a member of the principality's ruling family.
Speaking afterwards, when I pressed him on the £100m Britain expects to get back from UK taxpayers who used LGT to evade paying tax, he told me Liechtenstein was being treated unfairly — and that Britain, too, was a keen player on offshore finance markets.
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"There is tax competition going on on a global basis. The British have positioned themselves very well in a number of areas — not only in their [dependent] territories, but also in the UK," he said.
The British government says it is keen to clamp down on people using other havens to hide their money.
But other critics also say Britain is being inconsistent, with tax havens such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands operating from British dependent territories.
"Because of the number of places that the UK allows to operate as tax havens, our role in providing the secrecy spaces that these locations provide, which harbour crime, is greater than Liechtenstein's," says Richard Murphy, a campaigner on tax issues.
"We're the biggest tax haven operator in the world. They've been seen as useful. They've brought money into London, Switzerland and other financial centres, and for that reason, London has tolerated them."
EU tensions
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Whatever Britain chooses to do, it will be in conjunction with other European Union countries.
The last time they took action, they produced something called the European Savings Tax Directive, which levies a withholding tax on anonymous bank accounts.
But a senior figure at those negotiations has told me that Gordon Brown, who was chancellor at the time, was instrumental in watering the directive down — something the Treasury denies.
A Treasury spokesman said: "Tax evaders should not be able to hide behind banking secrecy laws.
"We need clear pressure from [the EU council of finance ministers] Ecofin and the Commission on Liechtenstein to provide more information to make sure people are not acting illegally to evade their tax obligations.
"The EU Savings Directive has already led to a big increase in transparency and co-operation across borders to prevent tax evasion.
"The UK supports the Commission's proposals to bring forward the timing of the review into the Savings Directive."
Under pressure
But Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, is also sceptical about the government's record on tax havens. He is tabling a series of parliamentary questions this week on the Liechtenstein investigation.
"We need assurances that if criminal acts have been committed, the necessary action will be taken in terms of prosecution," he says.
"I certainly doubt the enthusiasm of the British authorities. There are difficulties. Paying informers has ethical difficulties.
"It's rumoured, and I've no basis whatever for knowing this, that there are some important figures in British society that have been named. And I sincerely hope that doesn't inhibit the UK government in prosecuting."
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Offshore locations around the world are watching closely — and some are sniffing a genuine change of mood.
Robert Kirkby is technical director at Jersey Finance, which promotes the island as an international finance centre.
"In 20 years, I think actual tax havens that advocate secrecy etc will be extremely limited. There will probably be one or two, if any, left," he says.
"As the world becomes more sophisticated, things like transparency actually increase. So I do believe things will evolve rapidly from now, especially with things such as Liechtenstein which only serve to catalyse further action."
That's not a message they're happy with here in Vaduz, Liechtenstein's sleepy capital. Aside from some Japanese tourists ambling through the pedestrian zone, there is hardly anyone around.
Banking makes up 30% of the economy here, and Prince Max is defiant when I ask him whether Liechtenstein will have to back down and abandon banking secrecy.
"Liechtenstein has existed for hundreds of years and weathered many storms," he says. "We will survive this one too."
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The last time they took action, they produced something called the European Savings Tax Directive, which levies a withholding tax on anonymous bank accounts.
But a senior figure at those negotiations has told me that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was chancellor at the time, was instrumental in watering the directive down — something the UK Treasury denies. |
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'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.biz
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 Archives only for We The People Radio Network |
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Listen to PNAC radio
Matt Conner, Jon Roberts, Matt Dayton — the finance lords — and the rest of those lovable PNAC's
We The People Radio Network
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9/11
By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
Film: 9/11 Revisited
September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
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For Film: 9/11 Revisited
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
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For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Mysteries
90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics. How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
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'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.biz
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A new study completed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) on effects of the mobile phone radiation on human skin strengthens the results of the human cell line analyses: living tissue responds to mobile phone radiation. |
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Thursday, 28 February 2008
Cuba's aid programme in Bolivia By Hugh O'Shaughnessy
BBC News, Bolivia
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Though the facts are not widely reported around the world, Cuba supplies aid to a number of countries and one of the biggest aid schemes is in Bolivia.
"There is usually a love interest behind it all, if you ask me," says Dr Maria de los Angeles.
A sparky woman from Guines, not far from Havana, she is the director of the Cuban-Venezuelan eye hospital at El Alto, 13,000 feet up (3,962m) in the High Andes.
It serves La Paz, the main city of Bolivia, which lies in a canyon 1,000 feet (305m) below us.
We are discussing why a very small number of the 2,000 Cuban medical personnel sent to Bolivia from the island over the past two years have jumped ship and gone home.
Her colleague Dr Mabel, an attractive young eye surgeon from Pinar del Rio, the western-most province of Cuba, agrees.
"There's no pack of parties here," she murmurs contentedly.
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At the same time, both women fiercely agree about the worth of what they are doing, attending without charge to the sight of thousands of poor Bolivians, who otherwise would not be able to see.
"Nothing could be more rewarding," says Mabel, who is on her first overseas posting, or "mission" as the Cubans call it.
They add that it is not a bad career deal either.
"We get our salaries paid in Cuba, our food and lodging is paid here, and we get some pocket money," says her colleague.
Immense benefits
We walk around her scrupulously clean premises with its well-stocked pharmacy, neat rows of free Chinese-made spectacles, and an occasional Che Guevara poster.
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Maria de los Angeles reflects on her time and on the years she spent among the indigenous peoples of Guatemala.
"Until I went from Cuba to Guatemala and Bolivia, I didn't know what real poverty was," she says.
The two surgeons are part of an ambitious medical and literacy programme here, and in many other countries around the world.
It has brought the Cuban government immense benefits in terms of gratitude from beneficiaries and foreign governments alike.
What Cuba has done in Bolivia alone is staggering.
In a score of general hospitals built mainly with Venezuelan money over the past two years, 2,000 Cuban medical staff including 1,300 qualified doctors have been at work.
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They have provided more than nine million consultations.
In particular, Maria de los Angeles, Mabel, and her colleagues have carried out 200,000 operations in ophthalmological units up and down Bolivia.
So popular are they, that the units built on the frontiers with Peru and Argentina have treated more Peruvians and Argentines than Bolivians.
"We treat anyone who walks in, and we do it for nothing," says Maria de los Angeles.
Literacy programme
In the other Cuban hospitals in this country, services go from preventative medicine — which has pushed down infant mortality and pushed up life expectancy — to general healthcare and emergency operations.
Then there is the joint Cuban-Venezuelan literacy programme. One hundred and eighteen Cuban and 18 Venezuelan trainers backed with texts and television sets have taught Bolivian teachers the best ways of getting people to read and write.
At the Cuban embassy, the ambassador Rafael Dauza explains the diplomacy behind the scheme.
"We give our services free, bring our own supplies and equipment, and don't take any patients from the Bolivian doctors. Our staff have been accused by those who object to our presence here of being careless and unqualified. But they have never been able to stand their objections up," he says.
"And it is very difficult to attack a country that is giving free health care and education. One provincial governor who had opposed our presence here ended up having his life saved at one of our hospitals," adds Mr Dauza, with no hint of a grin.
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All of this has done nothing to calm fears at the US embassy, which looks askance at the Cuban and Venezuelan presence in Bolivia.
A few days ago, the US ambassador Philip Goldberg had to apologise to Bolivia.
It was established that an embassy official, Vincent Cooper, had tried to persuade a young US volunteer worker in the Peace Corps to spy on the Cubans and Venezuelans he came across.
"That was a lamentable mistake," says Mr Goldberg.
But Bolivian president Evo Morales declared Mr Cooper persona non grata.
He has left for the US and will not be allowed back.
For the Cubans, the recent Cooper affair was all part of a US strategy to tempt Cuban doctors to desert.
US regulations allow Cuban citizens to enter the country with a false passport, or no passport at all.
"We are the only people on earth with that privilege," says Dauza with a wry smile.
Back at the hospital, the two eye surgeons were relaxed about the occasional defaulter.
"Some of them drift back home to Cuba anyway," says Mabel.
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Killed by US military attack on fishing village in Philippines
Eight people killed including an off-duty US soldier on vacation
Two children
Two teenagers
Narsiya Ben aged 28 and her husband Ben aged 33
Alnalyn Kira aged 21
Sernalyn Kimar just ready for first year school, also killed
All killings paid for by US taxpayers |
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US Troops Out Now!
Mindanao Coalition |
Mindanao rallies call for ouster of US troops and GMA
Thousands of people in Mindanao march in key cities to protest the opening of the US-RP Balikatan exercises and denounc the Arroyo government’s puppetry to US interests.
February 25, 2008
Beverly Musni, Philippines. Cagayan de Oro became a central point of the Mindanao anti-Balikatan protest, as 5,000 people joined the Peoples’ March for Sovereignty, Peace and Justice including contingents from Zamboanga, Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte, Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon, and Caraga. Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo and Gabriela Women Party representative Liza Maza joined the march and later in the rally called for the unity of Mindanao people to oust the US troops and President Arroyo. Moro, Lumad and Christian groups led by the US Troops Out Now! Mindanao and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) convened the caravan. Rallies in Cotabato City and Pikit, North Cotabato gathered around 10,000 people. Davao City 3,000 protesters led a rally and a cultural program. In General Santos City, 500 protesters marched in the streets after negotiating with police to allow their rally to push through. |
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“Along with our call for the ouster of US troops, let us also call for the ouster of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her puppetry to US interest,” said Ocampo, referring to the growing protest against Arroyo in Manila following the ZTE broadband exposé of Rodolfo Lozada.
Ocampo and Maza threw support to the resolution by some Mindanao congressmen to suspend the Balikatan, citing the February 4 incident in Sulu where US troops were alleged to be behind the killing of eight civilians in a military operation.
Amirah Ali Lidasan, vice president of Suara Bangsamoro, said the US troops have “turned the Moro people into live fire targets of their military exercises.”
She cited various Moro civilians in Sulu and Basilan who have been killed or wounded during Balikatan war games. She said US troops were found to be joining ground operations with the AFP, in clear violation of our national sovereignty.
Lidasan challenged local government officials in the ARMM to side with the people and oppose the Balikatan over the grave human rights abuses of the US military against the Moro people.
Lidasan also lashed against the so-called ‘humanitarian missions’, saying that “US troops give us aid with their right hand, but their left hand is brandishing firearms that kill us.”
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Groups such as the Sisters’ Association in Mindanao (Samin), Ranao Crescent Against Balikatan Exercises (Racabe) of Lanao del Sur, Kusog sa Katawhang Lumad sa Mindanao (Kalumaran), and Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao joined the rallies.
Samin executive secretary Sr. Elsa Compuesto, MSM, said that with the Visiting Forces Agreement, “the US perpetrates an unequal relation with the Philippines where we become dependent on their aid, while they secure resources for their own economic interests.”
Kalumaran and Racabe called for the unity of Lumads and Moro to defend their land against the entry of the American troops, which will pave the way for “development aggression.”
Atty. Frederico Gapuz, chair of UPLM, a long-time anti-bases activist, shared a personal challenge to the protesters: “I’ve been fighting US military intervention for fifty years.
It’s been that long, but are we ready to ensure that in our lifetime we can drive them away?”
The protesters responded with a resounding yes.
The march rally in Cagayan de Oro ended with the protesters burning the US flag and an effigy of Arroyo.
The peoples’ march was preceded by activities set by the Out Now! Mindanao coalition in various cities, including forums and rallies.
In Marawi, protesters threw stones at US military vehicles in protest of their presence.#
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Killed by US military attack on fishing village in Philippines
Eight people killed including an off-duty US soldier on vacation
Two children
Two teenagers
Narsiya Ben aged 28 and her husband Ben aged 33
Alnalyn Kira aged 21
Sernalyn Kimar just ready for first year school, also killed
All killings paid for by US taxpayers |
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twenty twenty
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Watching the Dinosaurs Fall
By David Glenn Cox The motivation for this comes from an article written by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and he told the truth, mainly. |
I won’t dispute a single fact or figure but in his article, “America’s economy risks mother of all meltdowns” he comes to us as a prognosticator, predicting the future of the things that will be.
He wants to be the ghost of Christmas future when in fact he is the ghost of Christmas present.
Come then, touch the hem of my raiment, let me take you to the far away land of Atlanta.
Once the fastest growing city in America and then on to Cobb County the fastest growing county in America.
Money once flowed in the streets, jobs were once plentiful.
No one dared stand at the interstate exits with signs saying, “Will work for food? For they would have been picked up and put to work almost immediately.
Look now as the mist clears, before us, a brand new shopping development, finished in September 2007 all 14 units stand empty.
Five months and not one unit rented, maybe it was the demise of the Ford assembly plant or maybe it was the demise of the Chevrolet assembly plant.
Maybe it’s the doubling of the price of fuel because government figures explain to us that unemployment has moved almost imperceptibly to a moderate 5%.
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Like Scrooge they ignore Tiny Tim’s limp and crutch, but the truth is that they measure with a fisherman’s ruler.
If they admit to 5 its more like 10 and probably more like 15%.
They have more ways to explain away unemployment than Marley’s ghost’s chain has links.
The Ford and Chevy workers aren’t unemployed at all they’re just laid off from factories permanently padlocked.
When their unemployment benefits run out they will become discouraged workers, dropped from the ranks of unemployment figures graduating on to stealth workers category, there but not counted.
Then of course the thousands of students graduating form Georgia Tech and Georgia Southern and a host of other schools that aren’t unemployed either, they can’t be, it’s not possible!
According to government rules, you must first have a job before you can be counted among the unemployed.
Such scheming and planning warms Scoorge’s heart more than a lump of coal in the stove.
The government figures project 4 million American homeowners will be ejected out into the street from last year until the end of this year.
Yet the pundit’s predict that we have only seen the first half of the mortgage woes, these specters will not be removed from our eyes despite our pleas to the spirits, 200,000 in Georgia alone.
Will Rogers observed during the last great depression that “American’s were the first people in history to drive to the poor house in a new car.”
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Today American’s will be the first people in history thrown from their new homes and out into the street by the millions because of 5% unemployment.
All while the brand new shopping centers stand idle, just down the road they’ve broken ground on another new one.
Just down the road from that one another one still, catty corner from where they are breaking ground today the new shopping center that was completed in December also stands idle.
Now the fella that prints up the For Sale signs, he is doing quite well.
Likewise the repo tow truck drivers, as they complain of over work. Collection agencies are hiring for all shifts “Must be able to squeeze blood from a stone.”
Credit card defaults rates are nearing all time highs, as are car loans, but why spirit?
Are these things that must be?
Is there no other way?
Craig’s list in Atlanta advertises for foreclosure movers, talk about your tough jobs!
I had a friend that took a job in a slaughterhouse once, “You get used to the sights but you never get over the smell” he advised.
If I were foreclosure mover I doubt that I could get used to either one.
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How the world changes at 5% unemployment, derelict shopping centers both old and new, empty houses, for sale and for rent.
Tell me spirit, where did all those people go?
The answer was drown out by the roar of the giant mechanical dinosaurs pawing up the ground, the gnashing of their mechanical teeth, the ripping of greenery from red clay.
They pause, but only momentarily to look upon the dark clouds as they begin to obscure the sun’s rays.
They were stupid beasts that had grown fat and lazy on the luxuriant environment.
It was beyond their capacity to adapt or change, they could only do the things that dinosaurs do, gnash at the trees and paw at the Earth.
They couldn’t conceive of a meteor bringing their world to an end.
It couldn’t, they protest acknowledging, well, maybe 5%, maybe.
They would watch the horizon just to be on the safe side looking for the meteor that has already struck.
The simple mindedness of the prognosticators who ignore the meteor because it didn’t land in their back yard.
But to millions of Americans who have lost good paying, insurance providing, retirement enabling jobs they’ve felt the blast and been burnt by the heat.
The foliage has fallen from their trees and they struggle just to survive.
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Living on the roughage of dollar store jobs and moving with the heard for protection.
For myself as well, I can see only Cobb County once the fastest growing county in America and the city of Atlanta once one of the fastest growing cities in America.
I see the setting in of decay and rot of empty storefronts and home foreclosure signs, empty car lots next to glittering new empty shopping centers with signs advising, “Space Available.”
But it is the hollow hungry dinosaur’s last roar, more a plea than a threat.
But today as I drove by something new, blue and white pennants flutter across the sky!
Advertising for a new subdivision being built behind the empty abandoned glittering new shopping center.
Ignorant of its own certain and eventual environmental obsolescence it lays eggs.
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February 21, 2008
Look Out Florida, Here They Come!
By Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela |
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L ast week, the Los Angeles Times gleefully reported that a crowd in Sabaneta, Venezuela, had looted a food warehouse belonging to the state-owned Mercal grocery-store chain.
Mercal sells its food to the poor at reduced prices The LAT found it amusing that Sabaneta is President Hugo Chávez's hometown.
The newspaper claimed that recent food shortages are the result of governmental price controls.
The government claims the shortages are the result of illegal hoarding by distributors and the increased buying power of the nation's poorest citizens.
This event quickly lost its comedic value at the LAT when Indecu, Venezuela's consumer protection agency, discovered half a ton of powdered milk and an equal amount of chicken that a private health clinic in Caracas had diverted from delivery to Mercal.
Jesus Benavides, an administrator for Indecu, didn't find this example of illegal hoarding all that funny.
He hopes to collect steep fines from the "upscale Caracas Policlinica Metropolitana" health clinic. (Reuters, Feb. 18, 2008)
Although food shortages in Venezuela sometimes occur at Mercal stores, they don't necessarily occur in other grocery stores at the same time.
In an article that appeared in the Guardian Unlimited on February 17, Calvin Tucker said that he recently arrived in Caracas, where he shopped at a "typical Caracas supermarket in an upmarket part of town.
The only product we could not find was milk, which is being hoarded and illegally exported to Colombia by producers and distributors in an attempt to bust government price controls on basic foodstuffs."
The food in that store would sell at prices higher than one would find in a Mercal store.
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When Chevez took office fifty-five percent of the people in Venezuela lived in poverty, and the country imported 70 percent of its food.
When Hugo Chávez took office after his election in 1998, his government inherited two fundamental problems related to food production and distribution.
Fifty-five percent of the people lived in poverty, and the country imported 70 percent of its food.
Since those early days, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution has reduced the number of impoverished citizens from 55 to 34 percent, thereby increasing the demand for food.
The national government has also dealt aggressively with the problem of food shortages.
Because previous governments had relied on food imports, President Chávez had to continue that policy while also setting out to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Anyone who lives in the United States will find it almost impossible to learn anything about these efforts in the mainstream press.
After reporting the latest heartbreak in Hollywood, our newspapers and television news programs have no space or time to report on a new irrigation system in one part of Venezuela or an improved milk-processing plant in another.
New irrigation system in the state of Guarico
To learn about events like these, you have to find a news source such as Venezuelanalysis.com, a website operated by five individuals who hope to make their site "the primary resource for information and analysis on Venezuela in the English language."
It may be safe to say that this group does not have a budget anything like that of the Los Angeles Times.
On January 14 of this year, Venezuelanalysis.com reported that President Chávez had inaugurated the first stage of a new irrigation system in the state of Guarico.
"The day will come when Venezuela reaches total agricultural independence," Chávez said.
The new system now irrigates 9,900 acres.
Once it has been fully constructed, the total number of acres irrigated will rise to 79,000.
Local farmers will produce food crops for their own consumption and for sale to city dwellers.
The reservoir will also benefit "local fishermen who fish in the reservoir that supplies the irrigation system."
This type of small-scale commercial fishing will provide another way in which Venezuela can achieve food independence.
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On January 21, President Chávez inaugurated a milk-processing plant and an agro-industrial plant. Together, these will help Venezuela attain self-sufficiency in milk and meat production.
By themselves, these projects will not relieve the country of its need to import food.
But these are not the only projects.
Dozens of others are going into production all over Venezuela.
One of the many problems that now limits food soverignty in Venezuela is the unused farmland on the country's large plantations.
Many of these feudal remnants of Spanish colonialism have been handed down from generation to generation for 400 years.
Other large estates were purchased more recently by wealthy immigrant families from Cuba, Spain, and Portugal.
These plantations create at least two problems related to food shortages.
They encourage one-crop agriculture, and they let good farmland lie fallow for decades.
For estates that match these characteristics, the government supports land reform that benefits a landless peasantry living in poverty throughout rural Venezuela.
New York Times spinning its tales
The twin goals of land reform are to reduce poverty and increase food production.
Simon Romero of the New York Times gave this account of how land reform occurs in the state of Yaracuy:
The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes.
Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.
The reader quickly sees that the old plantation is nothing like it used to be.
In the vocabulary of Simon Romero, the rural poor are not farmers or even peasants.
They're 'squatters,' a term that reduces them to the level of human society that justifies any evil you want to inflict.
The worst evil recently inflicted is murder.
Romero says the number of 'squatters' recently murdered throughout Venezuela totals 160.
Eight wealthy landowners, he says, have been killed in Yaracuy.
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For those who have survived the violence of the feudal barons, the Chávez government has built farm villages for peasants who have never before enjoyed the luxury of decent housing.
The people of the villages have schools, libraries, radio stations, free Internet service, and other amenities. (New York Times, May 17, 2007)
New York Times doesn't mention everyone has free healthcare — not important to you who live in U.S.
Although Romero doesn't mention it, everyone has free healthcare, often provided by Cuban-trained doctors.
The peasants who manage to acquire land without getting killed are free to produce corn, manioe, beans, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, livestock, or whatever else is appropriate to their soil and climate.
They can put aside what they need for their families and sell the surplus to fill the grocery stores of the cities.
The government avoids land reform for those owners who farm the land in ways that benefit society.
One-crop agriculture is not one of those ways.
In Yaracuy State, most of the plantation owners instruct their farmhands to plant and harvest only sugar cane.
Sugar is a cash crop.
The object of this kind of agriculture is to make money, lots of it.
Planting vegetables don't make land barons any money
The idea of planting vegetables strikes these land barons as useless.
They want cash, not tomatoes.
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If they don't like the the amount they get for their sugar, they can simply take some or all of their land out of production for as long as they wish.
Unused farmland will never reduce food shortages.
This type of agriculture depletes the soil of nutrients and requires the yearly application of expensive fertilizer.
In the past, the sugar was sold on the open market, which meant that it might go to Caracas, or it might go to a foreign country.
Single-crop agriculture is one of the reasons why countries like Venezuela have food shortages.
Clever newspaper reporters for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are unlikely to ever understand or report this.
Once the peasants have obtained land, they require credit in order to buy seed, machinery, and other items needed to plant their crops.
Venezuelan banks have traditionally resisted the idea of granting loans to people with small-farm operations.
To solve this problem, the Venezuelan government pressured local banks until they agreed to make loans available to peasant farmers.
And what happens to the old land barons who lose their feudal estates?
What about those who left Cuba and bought sugar plantations in Venezuela?
Don't worry.
They all managed to put enough money in bank accounts somewhere.
Where will they go?
Where do they always go?
Almost 200,000 rich Venezuelans have already moved there.
Watch out, Florida. |
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Sunday, 24 February 2008
Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean By Martin Redfern
Rothera Research Station, Antarctica
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UK scientists working in Antarctica have found some of the clearest evidence yet of instabilities in the ice of part of West Antarctica.
If the trend continues, they say, it could lead to a significant rise in global sea level.
The new evidence comes from a group of glaciers covering an area the size of Texas, in a remote and seldom visited part of West Antarctica.
The "rivers of ice" have surged sharply in speed towards the ocean.
David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, explained: "It has been called the weak underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and the reason for that is that this is the area where the bed beneath the ice sheet dips down steepest towards the interior.
"If there is a feedback mechanism to make the ice sheet unstable, it will be most unstable in this region."
There is good reason to be concerned.
Satellite measurements have shown that three huge glaciers here have been speeding up for more than a decade.
The biggest of the glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is causing the most concern.
Inhospitable conditions
Julian Scott has just returned from there.
He told the BBC: "This is a very important glacier; it's putting more ice into the sea than any other glacier in Antarctica.
"It's a couple of kilometres thick, its 30km wide and it's moving at 3.5km per year, so it's putting a lot of ice into the ocean."
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It is a very remote and inhospitable region.
It was visited briefly in 1961 by American scientists but no one had returned until this season when Julian Scott and Rob Bingham and colleagues from the British Antarctic survey spent 97 days camping on the flat, white ice.
At times, the temperature got down to minus 30C and strong winds made work impossible.
At one point, the scientists were confined to their tent continuously for eight days.
"The wind really makes the way you feel incredibly colder, so just motivating yourself to go out in the wind is a really big deal," Rob Bingham told BBC News.
When the weather improved, the researchers spent most of their time driving skidoos across the flat, featureless ice.
"We drove skidoos over it for something like 2,500km each and we didn't see a single piece of topography."
Long drag
Rob Bingham was towing a radar on a 100m-long line and detecting reflections from within the ice using a receiver another 100m behind that.
The signals are revealing ancient flow lines in the ice.
The hope is to reconstruct how it moved in the past.
Julian Scott was performing seismic studies, using pressurised hot water to drill holes 20m or so into the ice and place explosive charges in them.
He used arrays of geophones strung out across the ice to detect reflections, looking, among other things, for signs of soft sediments beneath the ice that might be lubricating its flow.
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He also placed recorders linked to the global positioning system (GPS) satellites on the ice to track the glacier's motion, recording its position every 10 seconds.
Throughout the 1990s, according to satellite measurements, the glacier was accelerating by around 1% a year.
Julian Scott's sensational finding this season is that it now seems to have accelerated by 7% in a single season, sending more and more ice into the ocean.
"The measurements from last season seem to show an incredible acceleration, a rate of up to 7%. That is far greater than the accelerations they were getting excited about in the 1990s."
The reason does not seem to be warming in the surrounding air.
One possible culprit could be a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier.
There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow.
Ongoing monitoring
Julian Scott, however, thinks there may be other forces at work as well.
Much higher up the course of the glacier there is evidence of a volcano that erupted through the ice about 2,000 years ago and the whole region could be volcanically active, releasing geothermal heat to melt the base of the ice and help its slide towards the sea.
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David Vaughan believes that the risk of a major collapse of this section of the West Antarctic ice sheet should be taken seriously.
"There has been the expectation that this could be a vulnerable area," he said.
"Now we have the data to show that this is the area that is changing. So the two things coinciding are actually quite worrying."
The big question now is whether what has been recorded is an exceptional surge or whether it heralds a major collapse of the ice. Julian Scott hopes to find out.
"It is extraordinary and we've left a GPS there over winter to see if it is going to continue this trend."
If the glacier does continue to surge and discharge most of it ice into the sea, say the researchers, the Pine Island Glacier alone could raise global sea level by 25cm.
That might take decades or a century, but neighbouring glaciers are accelerating too and if the entire region were to lose its ice, the sea would rise by 1.5m worldwide.
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Antarctic Ice Shelves Melting Ice shelves act as huge conveyer belts taking the continent’s snow cover out to the surrounding seas |
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It so happened that, hours before, another Palestinian man had used that mafia term as we wove through scrolls of barbed wire, checkpoints, walls, and Galil/M-16 toting Occupation men as Jewish settlers/occupiers zipped through the West Bank on ethnically/religiously segregated superhighways.
ALLAN NAIRN — Mafia Rules in the Middle East |
Humankind as we know it at the 'End Point'
Don't forget:
Behind it all is the desire for depopulation — by those rich enough to have their islands for temporary residence while depopulation takes place.
Doesn't matter if it is killing in the fight for food when the trucks no longer arrive at your local supermarket.
Doesn't matter if it is tribe against tribe.
Or thermobaric bombs — environmentally friendly compared to nuclear. Bombs that send ultra-sonic shock waves and searing fireballs to destroy everything in their dropping wake.
Or those special bombs that do not destroy the infrastructure — kill only you and those you love.
You are in the way, folks!
There are too many of you!
This is the plan.
Kewe |
Venezuela 2008 Planting vegetables don't make land barons any money |
Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations |
The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget Fascinating and lucrative Black Budget? What Black Budget? |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues... | |||
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Liechtenstein has existed for hundreds of years and weathered many storms
