BREAKING: Harper Lies Exposed:
Afghanistan 'Mission' to Exceed 2011 Withdrawal "Deadline"
by C. L. Cook
The man whose friends need more than a little help from Canadian taxpayers, (already in the hole on the Afghanistan adventure to the tune of billions of dollars, albeit Canadian dollars, with no clear accounting discernible) now says the 2011 "withdrawal" agreement hammered out in the parliament is as illusory as the caves of Osama bin Laden.
State broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC online) is today doing service for the "New Government of Canada," sending media trial balloons o'er the Autumnal Canadian skies declaring a redefinition of what they meant those long months ago when intoning the words "mission" and "withdrawal."
Quoting the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) spokesperson, Dimitri Soudas, the CBC reveals there will in fact be Canadian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan beyond the parliament mandated expiry date of late 2011. Soudas adds though a caveat, saying there will be "fewer."
"I would caution you against saying dozens or hundreds or a thousand, there will be exponentially fewer. Whether there's 20 or 60 or 80 or 100, they will not be conducting combat operations."
So much for parliament.
Of course, like Osama and the cave-dwelling masterminds of 9/11, Harper's promise of an end finally for Canadian entanglements within benighted Afghanistan is just so much shadow-play on the walls; to be shared for public consumption, and not to be taken seriously.
Plainly and simply, all said so far are lies told to incrementally continue Canada's relentless march towards a permanent state of militarization in union, (or harmonization) with the United States and the rest of the desperate West. Between the lines of the latest communique from his bunker in Ottawa, Harper asks us to keep faith in 'The Mission' and its missionary's position saying laying atop the people of Afghanistan with boots and bayonets will usher forth the birth of democracy, and all that prostituted term stands for.
How Many Bodies, How Many Billions?
"When we have men and women in uniform, diplomats and development workers who are putting their lives on the line, the government will spend what is necessary to make sure they are safe and successful."
"Well, let me be very clear …Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011."
— Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Some in parliament that voted in 2008 to extend Canada's participation in Quagmiristan past the originally past due date of 2009 are squawking now about the New Government's shifting position-through redefinition. The CBC cites befuddled New Democrat foreign affairs critic, Paul Dewar begging, before the latest pronouncement for clarity, saying;
"We have one minister, minister MacKay, saying we're going to be there after 2011, there will be a role for the military. We have the prime minister and other ministers — minister [Lawrence] Cannon — getting up and saying, it's all over in 2011. What do you say to the men and women [serving there]? And what do you say to Canadians? And, finally, what do you say to our allies?"
Despite enjoying the political immunity low expectations confer, and confident it will likely never form a government within living potentiality, the NDP has still sat on the fence on the Afghanistan file. While NDP leader, Jack Layton has been the most forceful among the three national parties (the Bloc Quebecois being the most outspoken) against the war and continued occupation, he has consistently fallen short of calling for immediate withdrawal. That reluctance may be coming to an end, with Dewar demanding;
"We should be putting our allies on notice in written form that we are out and the date. If we don't do that, we're not being responsible to our allies, we're not being responsible to the men and women who are serving, and we're not being accountable to Canadians."
As of writing, 131 soldiers, two aid workers, and one Canadian diplomat are officially listed as killed in Afghanistan. Numbers of physically and emotionally wounded are more difficult to come by, but as with every war, the tally can never reflect the true costs to the individuals and their families, or to the nation. Canada does not release, if indeed it records, the estimated numbers of locals and fighters killed and maimed through its actions.
With two years left on the parliamentary "mandate" yet to run, the prime minister added his murky comments to the muddied waters of Canada's future intentions, saying;
"We set out some time-lines there for training and for exit and the government has no intention of asking for an extension of that mission. By the time we reach 2011, we will have been in Afghanistan longer than we will have been in both world wars combined, so I think it is time to transform that mission towards development and humanitarian efforts."
That Depends on the Definition of "That"
Though it's difficult to imagine Stephen Harper having had sexual relations with that mission, the "that" qualifier twice appearing in his parting statement are pure meal. Harper's sleight of hand and sidling into legalese regarding the nature of this mission and that is, in the opinion of one cynical reader, merely another slap in the face of parliament and the vaunted democratic process Harper and his allies repeatedly claim to wish for the people of Afghanistan.
It's also a bare-faced rebuke to the majority of Canadians who continue now to oppose Canada's involvement in this disastrous misadventure as they have from the beginning. And, if Mr. Harper's latest statement is to be believed, it means a coming of full circle too for how "The Mission" was first presented to Canadians as a humanitarian effort so long, and too many lives, ago.
Chris Cook is managing editor at www.pacificfreepress.com and broad/webcasts Gorilla Radio from the studios of CFUV Radio at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Dumb Intel
On the Unintelligent Uses of Intelligence
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 02 October 2009
I urge you most strenuously to repair immediately to Arthur Silber's site, and there set yourself to school on the dangerously unintelligent uses of "intelligence" – not only by ever-deceitful regimes and their sycophantic courtiers, but also, most grievously, by staunch opponents of the imperial system as well: "Fools for Empire (II): The Inescapable Pervasiveness of the Ruling Class Paradigm."
The essay is eloquent, cogent, deeply informed, insightful – and important. In addition to his own unique insights, Silber mines wisdom from such trenchant observers as Chalmers Johnson, Ray McGovern, Barbara Tuchman and Gabriel Kolko to give the lie to the corrosive belief that any output from the "intelligence" agencies can or should be relied upon – and the accompanying lie that our leaders and their spies possess super-secret knowledge which we peons must defer to. As Silber notes, the historical facts demonstrate overwhelmingly and irrefutably that "intelligence" always has been – and, more importantly, cannot avoid being – manipulated, incompetent, corrupted and wrong. Thus his observation:
This is why I maintain that you must always argue the policy, and that you must never argue about the intelligence. To the extent you argue the intelligence, you are doing the ruling class's bidding. They can change the intelligence quickly enough when they think doing so is necessary, as they have done in the past and as they will again. If you grant the legitimacy and accuracy of intelligence assessments on even one occasion, and if you utilize those assessments in making your own arguments, you're making your own work that much harder, and your future arguments will be far less convincing than they would be otherwise.
But a brief excerpt risks doing the post an injustice. You should head over there now, and read the whole thing.
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 02 October 2009
I urge you most strenuously to repair immediately to Arthur Silber's site, and there set yourself to school on the dangerously unintelligent uses of "intelligence" – not only by ever-deceitful regimes and their sycophantic courtiers, but also, most grievously, by staunch opponents of the imperial system as well: "Fools for Empire (II): The Inescapable Pervasiveness of the Ruling Class Paradigm."
The essay is eloquent, cogent, deeply informed, insightful – and important. In addition to his own unique insights, Silber mines wisdom from such trenchant observers as Chalmers Johnson, Ray McGovern, Barbara Tuchman and Gabriel Kolko to give the lie to the corrosive belief that any output from the "intelligence" agencies can or should be relied upon – and the accompanying lie that our leaders and their spies possess super-secret knowledge which we peons must defer to. As Silber notes, the historical facts demonstrate overwhelmingly and irrefutably that "intelligence" always has been – and, more importantly, cannot avoid being – manipulated, incompetent, corrupted and wrong. Thus his observation:
This is why I maintain that you must always argue the policy, and that you must never argue about the intelligence. To the extent you argue the intelligence, you are doing the ruling class's bidding. They can change the intelligence quickly enough when they think doing so is necessary, as they have done in the past and as they will again. If you grant the legitimacy and accuracy of intelligence assessments on even one occasion, and if you utilize those assessments in making your own arguments, you're making your own work that much harder, and your future arguments will be far less convincing than they would be otherwise.
But a brief excerpt risks doing the post an injustice. You should head over there now, and read the whole thing.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
GR 05-19
101.9 FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'
Monday September 28, 2009
5:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc. It's well known, empires and civilizations rise and fall. In between that inevitable ebb and flow, societies go through several identifiable stages. One of those stages, one near civilization's end, is the age of corruption, deceit, and treachery.
One of the hallmarks of the end days is tyranny; the rich pray upon the poor, government turns on the citizenry, and the armies of empire return home to practice the brutality perfected abroad on the people who sent them.
If any of this sounds like something limited to antiquity, you must have missed the footage of the police riots attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh over the weekend.
If you think the age of tyranny is something limited to the United States, you missed the last eight years of Gordon Campbell's destructive reign in B.C. The latest outrage the B.C. Liberals plan for the hard-bitten citizens is the sudden adoption of the HST, an unrepresentative and regressive tax hike against all who spend money, coming at a time when there is markedly less money to spend.
Brad Slade is a long-time, Victoria-based labour activist who thought his skills could be useful mobilizing opposition to the HST. He's now the Victoria organizer for FightHST.com and played a principal role organizing last week's first Victoria protest against the proposed tax. Brad Slade in the first half.
And; what connects we here in out of the way Victoria with the police rioters in Pennsylvania, or the imperial guards of the garrisons in Afghanistan, and Iraq? What happens to us individually and collectively when we allow military conquest be the agency of our promised prosperity? The death of democracy in three short acts in the second half.
And Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour for a view of what's new on your city's streets. But first, Brad Slade and singing out of tune with Gordo and Stephen's harmonized tax grab.
5:03:00 22:00 Discussion w/ Brad Slade
"Welcome to the program, Brad; what is the HST?"
5:25:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:26:00 11:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:37:00 5:00 Music (The Fire This Time) #4 Get Thee Behind Me
5:42:00 5:00 Diatribe (Fascist Attacks for Those Who Remain)
The world order George Bush the elder intoned after America's first military engagement with Saddam Hussein is not really new. In one form or another, the operatives of the rulers of the world have been with us forever. CUE Whether the brutish centurions of the latter day Roman empire, or the banal little grey men who merely followed orders, the mass of humanity has always been subject to the pathological impulse to power of a dedicated and ruthless minority. There can be no final victory over this evil, it is a part of us that cannot be removed, but we can resist. In Pittsburgh this weekend, a few people braved the Hydra headed beast, insisting democracy be saved.
5:47:00 5:15 Music (TFTT) #10 Church Bells
5:52:00 7:00 Music (Midival Punditz - repeat) #1 under Bill Quigley
It's been remarked before, the evils of empire always come home to roost. Over these last few years we've witnessed a hardening of attitudes by police and government against the people they profess to represent. We've witnessed police killings, both in custody and on the streets balloon, even as the arsenals of those serving and protecting us have swelled with exotic devices promised to spare unnecessarily fatal encounters with citizens.
We've witnessed an impunity after the fact of crimes and deadly actions committed by law enforcement, and an apparent immunity to criticism. There is now an impervious air about these fractured pillar institutions whose perverse function seemingly seeks first to only serve and protect its own.
American human rights lawyer, Bill Quigley has borne witness to the deterioration of his country's stated principles. He has reported on the human rights abuses of Canada, America, and the United Nations' mission in Haiti, and he was in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He writes of the police riots in Pittsburgh: Quigley piece at PFP.
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to Brad Slade, J9; Bill Quigley; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Republicans beaver yet
Republicans at work
by William Davies
If management rhetoric is anything to go by, the post-industrial workplace should be a pristine model of participative democracy. Strict, Taylorist routine has been has been out of favour, both economically and culturally, for well over thirty years now. It has been replaced by an emphasis on ‘teamwork', ‘the psychological contract', ‘dialogue' and ‘participation'.
William Davies is a Demos Associate and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, Said Business School. He blogs at potlatch.org.uk
Earlier this year, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned David MacLeod, a management guru, to carry out a review of ‘employee engagement' as a necessary factor in Britain's future prosperity. Again, the case for flatter, more interactive relationships was made.
But what does any of this have to do with democracy or dispersal of power? The republican agenda, advanced by theorists such as Stuart White, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, stresses the need to tackle forms of domination and restraint on positive freedoms, in all facets of society. The workplace can not be exempt from this sort of political critique. And yet a common assumption about the status of firms in society suggests that they sit in a political vacuum, allowing their decisions and structures to be only evaluated in terms of economic efficiency.
The problem with the managerial ‘participation' rhetoric is that it only values human autonomy to the extent that it contributes to productivity and business performance. Hence a growing feeling of irony pervades our workplaces, as described eloquently in the sociology of Richard Sennett, and conveyed brilliantly in the BBC sit-com, The Office.
We no longer mean the words we speak to each other at work. The rhetoric of equality and power appears to exert no friction on the dominant, Anglo-Saxon capitalist model, in which management power is unchallenged, so long as value is constantly returned to external shareholders. Some recent studies have shown a gradual decline in the number of employees who feel they have considerable control over their work.
The republican agenda privileges a distinctly political form of autonomy, and demands to see it within firms just as much as anywhere else. What is truly radical - and potentially disruptive - about this is that there will be cases in which political autonomy and democratic empowerment is privileged over economic autonomy and productive empowerment. There may be cases where workforce representation and consultation should exist, regardless of any discernible economic benefit.
Co-operative structures, in which labour hires capital rather than vice versa, are one institutional form that republicans such as White and Nien-He Hsieh, have celebrated. The original meaning of ‘profit-sharing' is also worth returning to: the notion is that, once both capital and labour have received their ‘wage', that any remaining surpluses should be split equally between the two. Companies that were organised to uphold this principle would still be capitalist and profit-making, but they would not be profit-maximising. This represents a positive departure from the neo-liberal, shareholder value-oriented model of the firm.
Yet these are difficult arguments to mobilise in a policy culture that still seeks to diagnose all social ills using neo-classical economics and its derivations. Management theorists are perhaps even harder to reason with, given that many of them falsely believe that they are already committed workplace democrats.
Perhaps, then, a more plausible political-economic agenda for the firm would be to define a concept of employee autonomy that could deliver or balance empowerment as both a political good and an economic good. New Labour's obsession with the ‘win-win' option has left many critics jaded, once it emerges that the interests of capital are never in practiced compromised. But there are sincere opportunities.
Various forms of mutualism and employee ownership deliver exactly this balance between political and economic goods. They demonstrate that a private sector organisation can be high-performing, well managed and profitable, while offering employees tangible forms of control over their working lives and environments. Ownership, as republicans frequently argue, brings with it political freedoms as well as economic rights. Virtuous circles are possible, in which the higher levels of deliberation and responsibility within companies spills over into higher levels of employee commitment and knowledge-sharing.
In an age when declarations that ‘our staff are our number one asset' are met with cynicism, a whole new ownership model is needed if workplace democracy is to be taken seriously once again.
William Davies's report Reinventing the Firm is published by Demos
source
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/william_davies/republicans_at_work
by William Davies
If management rhetoric is anything to go by, the post-industrial workplace should be a pristine model of participative democracy. Strict, Taylorist routine has been has been out of favour, both economically and culturally, for well over thirty years now. It has been replaced by an emphasis on ‘teamwork', ‘the psychological contract', ‘dialogue' and ‘participation'.
William Davies is a Demos Associate and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation & Society, Said Business School. He blogs at potlatch.org.uk
Earlier this year, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned David MacLeod, a management guru, to carry out a review of ‘employee engagement' as a necessary factor in Britain's future prosperity. Again, the case for flatter, more interactive relationships was made.
But what does any of this have to do with democracy or dispersal of power? The republican agenda, advanced by theorists such as Stuart White, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, stresses the need to tackle forms of domination and restraint on positive freedoms, in all facets of society. The workplace can not be exempt from this sort of political critique. And yet a common assumption about the status of firms in society suggests that they sit in a political vacuum, allowing their decisions and structures to be only evaluated in terms of economic efficiency.
The problem with the managerial ‘participation' rhetoric is that it only values human autonomy to the extent that it contributes to productivity and business performance. Hence a growing feeling of irony pervades our workplaces, as described eloquently in the sociology of Richard Sennett, and conveyed brilliantly in the BBC sit-com, The Office.
We no longer mean the words we speak to each other at work. The rhetoric of equality and power appears to exert no friction on the dominant, Anglo-Saxon capitalist model, in which management power is unchallenged, so long as value is constantly returned to external shareholders. Some recent studies have shown a gradual decline in the number of employees who feel they have considerable control over their work.
The republican agenda privileges a distinctly political form of autonomy, and demands to see it within firms just as much as anywhere else. What is truly radical - and potentially disruptive - about this is that there will be cases in which political autonomy and democratic empowerment is privileged over economic autonomy and productive empowerment. There may be cases where workforce representation and consultation should exist, regardless of any discernible economic benefit.
Co-operative structures, in which labour hires capital rather than vice versa, are one institutional form that republicans such as White and Nien-He Hsieh, have celebrated. The original meaning of ‘profit-sharing' is also worth returning to: the notion is that, once both capital and labour have received their ‘wage', that any remaining surpluses should be split equally between the two. Companies that were organised to uphold this principle would still be capitalist and profit-making, but they would not be profit-maximising. This represents a positive departure from the neo-liberal, shareholder value-oriented model of the firm.
Yet these are difficult arguments to mobilise in a policy culture that still seeks to diagnose all social ills using neo-classical economics and its derivations. Management theorists are perhaps even harder to reason with, given that many of them falsely believe that they are already committed workplace democrats.
Perhaps, then, a more plausible political-economic agenda for the firm would be to define a concept of employee autonomy that could deliver or balance empowerment as both a political good and an economic good. New Labour's obsession with the ‘win-win' option has left many critics jaded, once it emerges that the interests of capital are never in practiced compromised. But there are sincere opportunities.
Various forms of mutualism and employee ownership deliver exactly this balance between political and economic goods. They demonstrate that a private sector organisation can be high-performing, well managed and profitable, while offering employees tangible forms of control over their working lives and environments. Ownership, as republicans frequently argue, brings with it political freedoms as well as economic rights. Virtuous circles are possible, in which the higher levels of deliberation and responsibility within companies spills over into higher levels of employee commitment and knowledge-sharing.
In an age when declarations that ‘our staff are our number one asset' are met with cynicism, a whole new ownership model is needed if workplace democracy is to be taken seriously once again.
William Davies's report Reinventing the Firm is published by Demos
source
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/william_davies/republicans_at_work
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Canada's Draconian Bill C-6
Bill C-6 returns Bill C-52, after 40th Elections.
Cannabis & Codex: evil legalized lies
2009
Bill C-6
The Standing Committee on Health (HESA) Report tabled in the House of Commons, June 8, 2009.
The Senate gave it first reading on June 16, 2009.
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&Chamber=N&StartList=A&EndList=Z&Session=22&Type=0&Scope=I&query=5655&List=stat
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?List=ls&Query=5655&Session=22&Language=e
40th Parliament - 2nd Session
Legislative Summary of Bill C-6:
An Act respecting the safety of consumer products
WITH LINKS THROUGH TO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION THERE.
As with Bill C-15, the only apparent hope is that there might be the 41st general elections called in the Fall of 2009, before Bill C-6 becomes law.
Right now, it is still
Code Red for Natural Health Industry:
The Bill C-6 Missile has been launched!
Protect Your Constitutional Rights
Health Canada Needs Checks and Balances
Government has introduced Bill C-6 which is a repackaged Bill C-52.
At present, the government has not yet re-introduced Bill C-51, perhaps because there was too much resistance against Bill C-51, thanks to the hard work of thousands of Canadians who understood the importance of having a separate and distinct Act for natural health products.
Contrary to what politicians may be telling you, Bill C-6 certainly is not there to increase our access or to increase public safety with regards to natural health products. We have already lost tens of thousands of safe natural health products from health food store shelves. It is evident that our government is marching to the drum beat of the multi-national drug corporations.
Bill C-6 is being introduced in the name of "public safety," however, it paves the way for our government to have foreign regulations brought in simply under regulation changes without the scrutiny of parliament (we the people), thus eroding our rights and freedoms as sovereign beings.
Schedule 1 of Bill C-6 specifically EXEMPTS both "drugs" and "foods". "Natural Health Products" are not specifically mentioned in Schedule 1.
NHPs are treated for regulatory purposes as a sub-category of "drugs;" however, one wonders if the omission from Schedule 1 may be a deliberate semantic loophole? In order to avoid confusion, we must insist that Natural Health Products be specifically named in Schedule 1. Failing to do so, could further jeopardize and eliminate thousands more natural health products.
Bill C-6 gives powers to inspectors to stop the importation or sale of a product and to seize property and documents, based entirely on the inspector’s "belief" that a product may be harmful. There is no requirement for the inspector to produce any documented proof nor scientific evidence of harm. There is a requirement to get a warrant if the goods and evidence to be seized are in a personal dwelling; however, such warrant could be issued over the telephone by a judge who would base his decision entirely on the unsubstantiated "belief" of the inspector.
Fines are exorbitant:
up to $5,000,000 and/or imprisonment for 2 years.
Bill C-6 gives Health Canada the power to levy criminal penalties for what are nothing more than alleged violations of departmental regulations. All a person has to do to commit a "violation" is to contravene a bureaucratic "order". It does not matter if the violation was unintentional, if no one was harmed, if there was no intention to harm, if there was no victim and no crime. Inspectors are also given the right to enforce "on the spot" fines much like parking tickets. Picture this newly formed army of inspectors running around handing out $5000 fines for even minor infractions. All appeals are handled by the Minister as opposed to the Courts.
Learn more:
www.freedomcanada.com
http://nhppa.org/?page_id=70
http://www.billc6.com/www/stopc6/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_0HlCwb8A
PART 1 Restricting Our Freedoms - Shawn Buckley About Bill C-6
For BACKGROUND, see this 40 minute video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634&hl=en-CA
Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
from Rima Laibow MD:
Or this hour and a half video from 2007
Codex Alimentarius
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518&hl=en
For another overview from Dr. Rath, see:
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/thebigpicture.php
Or, watch the "We become Silent" - Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOOMwOyBSCU
http://www.rense.com/general87/codex.htm
"On December 31, 2009, Codex standards will be globally mandated unless legal challenges prevent it."
Bill C-6 is merely one more step that implements the overall agenda of the banks, and the corporations around them, taking more complete control of every aspect of life, to extract profits, while nobody will be left that could effectively resist. That is an imminent danger! Everything that enables the established money system to control Canada today, (through our already corrupted political processes) continues to enable enormous global corporations taking control of every aspect of how Canadians will live.
Unfortunately, about the only things left you can do is to try to beg big political parties that serve the banks and big corporations to do something different.
Write to YOUR Members of Parliament?
No stamp is necessary.
Link to your local MP offices info:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html
Write to other Members of Parliament?
The Prime Minister,
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper,
80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
Harper.S@parl.gc.ca or pm@pm.gc.ca
Fax 613-941 6900
The Minister of Health;
The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq,
House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6,
Telephone: 613-992-2848,
Fax: 613-996-9764,
Email: Aglukkaq.L@parl.gc.ca
Even a significant group of Conservative MPs
are getting enough pressure from their people
to put some pressure upon the Health Minister?
Without adequate action from concerned citizens,
these laws might become the law inside Canada.
You may lose your access to dietary supplements.
More importantly, each of these kinds
of laws are steps to advance agendas.
Things keep on coming around, so that
the worst accomplished in one country
then becomes the next standard down,
in insane races towards the bottom ...
There is a clear warning to Canadians that vitamin consumers globally may be affected by the European Food Safety Authority, combined with the European Commission, that will be unleashing more regulations from hell.
Those regulations from hell may make their way into the Codex Alimentarius because the EU seems to politically dominate that Codex.
The worst restrictions anywhere tend to become
the worst restrictions applied everywhere else ...
There may be ’Maximum Safe Upper Levels’
that will be only slight multiples above RDA.
Vitamins may become less available & more expensive.
Another example of worse legislation in the USA:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-bills-being-rushe-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090217-758.html
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/
For an example of the USA FDA administration, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html
These American laws are now already passing through their Congress.
Every additional step on that agenda
advances lies backed up by coercion,
& long-term results are
collapses and genocide.
International trade treaties are being used to advance the profits of corporations, against the interests of most other people. The realities these kinds of laws create will be more steps towards enabling international regulations to control what kinds of vitamins and herbs Canadians can consume. This will ultimately be done to benefit private profit, although those laws will be be promoted by professional liars hypocritically promoting "public health and safety."
Protecting the public against bad products is a typical excuse used to implement controls and regulations that force people to abide by inferior products that profit some, while superior products, that would not have been as profitable, tended to be discredited or destroyed by government/corporation propaganda/regulation campaigns.
Relentless pressures from the people with the most money to campaign for their interests set in motion measures that will ensure they will make the greatest amount of profits, by making their products the preferred ones, while others are discriminated against.
Generally, "trade treaties" are for the benefit of investors to obtain profits through their corporations.
Overall, agribusiness is interested in profits, and the power to control culture to maximize profits for the owners of those businesses. It does not care about the health of consumers, nor any other aspect of the long-term future. The strategy of the agribusinesses and pharmaceutical companies etc. is to maximize short-term profits, regardless of any other consequences. Controlling people to benefit shareholders is their primary purpose. Some of the profit made has been systematically used to corrupt the political process, and every aspect of food and drug law has been corrupted by that funding of the political process, driving vicious spirals of money and political power.
Each controlling law or regulation will tend to be another step down that spiral staircase of political corruption, taken by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites to actually accomplish the opposite of what they claim they are doing.
Step by step, all controls over foods and drugs are being directed to benefit the pyramidion people at the top of the social pyramid’s fascist plutocracy, while harming everyone else more and more. That fascist plutocracy already controls Canada, and Canada is already integrated as a small component of the global fascist plutocracy.
In a sense, cannabis laws were the most
extreme examples of the overall pattern
of political facts demonstrated by Codex.
Unfortunately, there IS a real pattern.
Canada is NOT some genuinely
"free and democratic society."
Canada is a fascist plutocracy.
That is true everywhere one looks,
and the people who controlled all
of the governmental regulations
have a relentless agenda going.
An overview of evolution of North American diets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YkNkscBEp0
How the Food Industry is Deceiving You Part 01:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXAZ_7JO7EA
Why Economics Drives Most Food Options You Have:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/05/why-economics-drives-most-food-options-you-have.aspx
7 minute video on the Price-Pottenger story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPCOGSnjP5w
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/02/Do-You-Really-Know-Where-Your-Food-Comes-From.aspx
Dr. Mercola on the increasing insanity of established agribusiness.
Larger overview of what is legal and what is not:
What agribusinesses systems DO allow,
while at the same time they also want
to limit all access to natural herbs etc.:
http://www.meat.org/
http://www.themeatrix.com/
What truly controls our food supply
is private profit for a tiny minority.
Every other consideration has been
systematically defeated by the long
history of corrupted political funding.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_windsor_food.html
THE MOST EXTREME EXAMPLE IS CANNABIS!
Cannabis should be food first.
Hemp seeds are the single best source
of protein, and oil, for human diets ...
However, we all are now actually living inside of a
Bizarro Mirror World, where things are backwards.
In principle, plant-based protein sources might about
10 to 20 times cheaper to produce than animal ones.
That makes one have to wonder what is the BIZARRE
cultural history, that has ended up inverting us all???
It makes one realize how, again and again,
the triumphs of lies and coercions control
how cultures have developed in society.
Cannabis should be food first, & the way
that cannabis food was criminalized is the
most extreme example of general patterns.
The ways people live inside North American civilization
ARE controlled by triumphs of dishonesty, backed up
with violence, & EVERYTHING about how they live
has become integrated aspects of that evil whole.
The lifestyles of the vast majority of people
are due to triumphs of political corruptions.
The single best plant source
for protein and oil IS hemp!
However, hemp was made totally illegal for decades,
and hemp is still suffering from insane restrictions
applied against marijuana to limit growing hemp.
That fits inside of an overall pattern of agribusiness. Everything that the global fascist plutocracy got away with doing to cannabis, it intends, and is now prepared to do, to all other herbs and nutrients. The total package of perversity that is exemplified in the case of cannabis is set to be systematically applied to all other food stuffs and drug substances. The same ways that the truth about cannabis has never made any difference to cannabis laws, because those laws were always based on huge lies, backed up with coercion, those patterns of abuse are now in the pipeline to be applied to everything else. The same ways as that inferior products were promoted, by wiping out cannabis as a competitor, are going to be repeated throughout every other domain of food and drugs.
There is already set up to be an almost total triumph of the global forces of evil over the lives of all Canadians. At the present time, it looks just as probable that Canadians will be as idiotic and incompetent to stop these developments from impacting on every aspect of food and drugs in their lives, as they were unable to prevent or fix the insane situations created by cannabis laws. The path we are on now seems to be for the total triumph of legalized lies, backed up with legalized coercions, to be applied against Canadians, while most of those Canadians will be brainwashed to believe in the bullshit that this is being done for reasons of “public health and safety.” Everything we have seen in decade after decade of pot prohibition is set to be repeated on an enormous scale, as applied to all other foods and drugs.
The familiar patterns of social facts which
worked to make cannabis criminal are
set up to be repeatedly applied to
everything else that is similar.
The same patterns of the uselessness of the political processes, already controlled by the corrupted big political parties, is set up to be repeated, to make protests fail to work to prevent these evil things the wealthy elites are planning to implement. The same ways that we are stuck in a vicious spiral of mass media promoted propaganda, and biased editing of the news, are likely going to be repeated again, & again, in every other similar domain. The same ways as the vast majority of Canadians will continue to have NO way to organize to resist that actually works will probably replay itself with respect to all other food stuffs and drug substances. At the present time, there are no reasonable grounds not to expect everything will continue to get worse and worse, faster and faster, while Canadians will continue to NOT find any effective ways to be able to respond to resist. Everything that enables the banks and enormous corporations to control the political processes, by controlling the mass media, etc., which determines electoral success, which delivers political power only, and almost totally, to the big political parties, which then can continue to use that power to make the political processes even more unfair and slanted in favour of them, and against any real opposition, will likely continue to unfold. All alternatives will probably continue to be fragmented, and unsuccessfully squabble, while the agenda that divides and conquers them runs amok. Thus, there is currently a deep connection between Bill C-6 and Bill C-15. The ONLY hope now is for a snap election before they become law. Otherwise, all the same reasons why cannabis will get even more criminalized, with relatively trivial exceptions, will soon also be applied in similar ways to other foods and drug substances. All the problems manifested in pot politics are likely to repeat themselves again, on an astronomically larger scale.
All the reasons why we have failed to stop criminalizing cannabis are probably going to reoccur as we fail to stop Codex Alimentarius effectively criminalizing all good foods and drug substances, while it enables the inferior products to be promoted and sold for greater profits. Thus, the vicious spirals of money and political power will feedback into themselves. Thus, there will probably not be any effective opposition possible, since only the big, more mainstream, political parties, that are dependent on the established banking and other corporate powers for their continued electoral success, will maintain their systems, run by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, as our civilization declines and falls, from too much "success" from the triumphs of lies, backed up with coercions, as we saw developed against cannabis, and now, more & more, we are seeing the same methods applied against everything else that are foods or drug containing substances.
There is clearly a war against consciousness going on, and the vast majority of people are clearly losing that war. Indeed, they are losing so badly that most of them do not even know that they are already the victims of that war.
Some steps inside the cycle use food as a weapon,
since controlling the food controls people, while
controlling money then controls food & people.
Social facts that cultivating cannabis was criminalized
illustrate these overall patterns of political corruption
where a variety of natural alternatives were systematically
discredited and destroyed, in order to make sure that other
inferior products, that could be patented, and monopolized,
were promoted, & given every possible advantage by the
biased systems of the governmental laws and regulations.
The pattern of government subsidies for food production
is an inverted pyramid where the more healthy the food,
the less likely that kind of food is going to be subsidized.
While the less healthy any ‘food’ may be,
the more likely that was to be subsidized.
Prohibition of pot merely takes that trend
to the logical extreme, in the Bizarro Land.
The single best food for people was criminalized!
Lies and hypocrisy about "safety and public health"
where employed to justify all the legislation which
had mostly opposite effects upon the public health.
The profits made from deceitful monopolies
then return as more political corruption ...
enabling funding of the political processes
to take another turn towards corruption.
http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html
We treat food animals in immoral & inhumane ways.
Animals that we eat for food are now raised
in industrial production places, where they
are fed things that governments prop up.
Factory farms have destroyed family farms.
We should apply more science and technology to food.
However, we should not have the decisions about how
to apply science and technology to food supplies be
controlled by the imperatives of fascist plutocracy.
All together, we end up with very low quality animal food,
that have their unreasonably low price in the supermarket.
People are eating too much animal protein,
due to some systematic political corruption
that has distorted the entire food system.
In general, people could become healthier
IF they ate more plants, and that applies
to eating more plant-based protein & oil.
But, inside a Bizarro Mirror World “reality,”
everything has been perverted / inverted.
Boiling it down to an over-simplistic statement:
THE WORLD IS BEING CONTROLLED BY
TRILLIONAIRE MASS MURDERS!!!!!!
The most important things are
death control and debt control,
or murder and money systems.
Science and technology tend to be applied
to enable greater dishonesty and robbery.
That is not inherent in science itself,
but rather, inherent in the structure of
the social pyramid systems we have now.
That is illustrated everywhere one looks!
“Health Canada” deliberately created
an extremely bad medical marijuana
access program, & they would likely
to do that to other herbs, and so on.
“Health Canada” is really concerned with
the ‘health’ of the corporate bottom line.
The phrase "Health Canada" is Orwellian Newspeak.
Make no mistake that private profits
for the big corporations is the main
thing which shall guide new laws.
It is the same pattern everywhere one looks!
The unethical treatment of human beings
goes around & around to cause more of
the unethical treatment of all animals.
That entire system is getting sicker ...
We need better human ecology,
and an industrial ecology, to be
able to save natural ecology.
However, the entire political debate is
dominated by the big bullies’ bullshit.
Criminalization of cannabis
is the single worst example.
But, criminalizing chamomile,
and so on and so forth, may be
on an agenda for the real system.
Governments had gotten away with
huge lies that marijuana was almost
as bad as murder, and therefore, our
cannabis cultivation was criminalized,
for sixty years in Canada, and thereby
the single best food source became
unavailable, and is still now expensive,
and of inferior quality, due to it being
restricted by marijuana law madness.
IT ALREADY DID HAPPEN THAT
THE SINGLE BEST PLANT FOR
HUMAN FOOD WAS ILLEGAL!
We ARE living in a runaway fascist plutocracy.
BE WORRIED THAT PATTERN SHALL
REPEAT ITSELF, AGAIN AND AGAIN!
All current political debates are hypocritical.
We need solutions to chronic political problems.
We should democratize the death controls more.
That possibly sustains more democratic debt controls.
However, at present, with all potential laws like C-6
there is almost total triumph of egregious hypocrisy.
Everything that is being done
is a total opposite of excuses
given for why it is being done.
Orwellian Newspeak is rampant throughout Parliament.
What they say law should do
is not what is really intended.
Every aspect of our society was dominated
by a worsening runaway fascist plutocracy.
The best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites
control the government to implement this evil agenda.
The long-term consequences will be extremely tragic ...
Codex Alimentarius Commission
Cannabis & Codex: evil legalized lies
2009
Bill C-6
The Standing Committee on Health (HESA) Report tabled in the House of Commons, June 8, 2009.
The Senate gave it first reading on June 16, 2009.
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&Chamber=N&StartList=A&EndList=Z&Session=22&Type=0&Scope=I&query=5655&List=stat
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Sites/LOP/LEGISINFO/index.asp?List=ls&Query=5655&Session=22&Language=e
40th Parliament - 2nd Session
Legislative Summary of Bill C-6:
An Act respecting the safety of consumer products
WITH LINKS THROUGH TO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION THERE.
As with Bill C-15, the only apparent hope is that there might be the 41st general elections called in the Fall of 2009, before Bill C-6 becomes law.
Right now, it is still
Code Red for Natural Health Industry:
The Bill C-6 Missile has been launched!
Protect Your Constitutional Rights
Health Canada Needs Checks and Balances
Government has introduced Bill C-6 which is a repackaged Bill C-52.
At present, the government has not yet re-introduced Bill C-51, perhaps because there was too much resistance against Bill C-51, thanks to the hard work of thousands of Canadians who understood the importance of having a separate and distinct Act for natural health products.
Contrary to what politicians may be telling you, Bill C-6 certainly is not there to increase our access or to increase public safety with regards to natural health products. We have already lost tens of thousands of safe natural health products from health food store shelves. It is evident that our government is marching to the drum beat of the multi-national drug corporations.
Bill C-6 is being introduced in the name of "public safety," however, it paves the way for our government to have foreign regulations brought in simply under regulation changes without the scrutiny of parliament (we the people), thus eroding our rights and freedoms as sovereign beings.
Schedule 1 of Bill C-6 specifically EXEMPTS both "drugs" and "foods". "Natural Health Products" are not specifically mentioned in Schedule 1.
NHPs are treated for regulatory purposes as a sub-category of "drugs;" however, one wonders if the omission from Schedule 1 may be a deliberate semantic loophole? In order to avoid confusion, we must insist that Natural Health Products be specifically named in Schedule 1. Failing to do so, could further jeopardize and eliminate thousands more natural health products.
Bill C-6 gives powers to inspectors to stop the importation or sale of a product and to seize property and documents, based entirely on the inspector’s "belief" that a product may be harmful. There is no requirement for the inspector to produce any documented proof nor scientific evidence of harm. There is a requirement to get a warrant if the goods and evidence to be seized are in a personal dwelling; however, such warrant could be issued over the telephone by a judge who would base his decision entirely on the unsubstantiated "belief" of the inspector.
Fines are exorbitant:
up to $5,000,000 and/or imprisonment for 2 years.
Bill C-6 gives Health Canada the power to levy criminal penalties for what are nothing more than alleged violations of departmental regulations. All a person has to do to commit a "violation" is to contravene a bureaucratic "order". It does not matter if the violation was unintentional, if no one was harmed, if there was no intention to harm, if there was no victim and no crime. Inspectors are also given the right to enforce "on the spot" fines much like parking tickets. Picture this newly formed army of inspectors running around handing out $5000 fines for even minor infractions. All appeals are handled by the Minister as opposed to the Courts.
Learn more:
www.freedomcanada.com
http://nhppa.org/?page_id=70
http://www.billc6.com/www/stopc6/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_0HlCwb8A
PART 1 Restricting Our Freedoms - Shawn Buckley About Bill C-6
For BACKGROUND, see this 40 minute video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5266884912495233634&hl=en-CA
Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
from Rima Laibow MD:
Or this hour and a half video from 2007
Codex Alimentarius
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5800206429960925518&hl=en
For another overview from Dr. Rath, see:
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/thebigpicture.php
Or, watch the "We become Silent" - Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOOMwOyBSCU
http://www.rense.com/general87/codex.htm
"On December 31, 2009, Codex standards will be globally mandated unless legal challenges prevent it."
Bill C-6 is merely one more step that implements the overall agenda of the banks, and the corporations around them, taking more complete control of every aspect of life, to extract profits, while nobody will be left that could effectively resist. That is an imminent danger! Everything that enables the established money system to control Canada today, (through our already corrupted political processes) continues to enable enormous global corporations taking control of every aspect of how Canadians will live.
Unfortunately, about the only things left you can do is to try to beg big political parties that serve the banks and big corporations to do something different.
Write to YOUR Members of Parliament?
No stamp is necessary.
Link to your local MP offices info:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html
Write to other Members of Parliament?
The Prime Minister,
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper,
80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
Harper.S@parl.gc.ca or pm@pm.gc.ca
Fax 613-941 6900
The Minister of Health;
The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq,
House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6,
Telephone: 613-992-2848,
Fax: 613-996-9764,
Email: Aglukkaq.L@parl.gc.ca
Even a significant group of Conservative MPs
are getting enough pressure from their people
to put some pressure upon the Health Minister?
Without adequate action from concerned citizens,
these laws might become the law inside Canada.
You may lose your access to dietary supplements.
More importantly, each of these kinds
of laws are steps to advance agendas.
Things keep on coming around, so that
the worst accomplished in one country
then becomes the next standard down,
in insane races towards the bottom ...
There is a clear warning to Canadians that vitamin consumers globally may be affected by the European Food Safety Authority, combined with the European Commission, that will be unleashing more regulations from hell.
Those regulations from hell may make their way into the Codex Alimentarius because the EU seems to politically dominate that Codex.
The worst restrictions anywhere tend to become
the worst restrictions applied everywhere else ...
There may be ’Maximum Safe Upper Levels’
that will be only slight multiples above RDA.
Vitamins may become less available & more expensive.
Another example of worse legislation in the USA:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-bills-being-rushe-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090217-758.html
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/
For an example of the USA FDA administration, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/youre-appointing-who-plea_b_243810.html
These American laws are now already passing through their Congress.
Every additional step on that agenda
advances lies backed up by coercion,
& long-term results are
collapses and genocide.
International trade treaties are being used to advance the profits of corporations, against the interests of most other people. The realities these kinds of laws create will be more steps towards enabling international regulations to control what kinds of vitamins and herbs Canadians can consume. This will ultimately be done to benefit private profit, although those laws will be be promoted by professional liars hypocritically promoting "public health and safety."
Protecting the public against bad products is a typical excuse used to implement controls and regulations that force people to abide by inferior products that profit some, while superior products, that would not have been as profitable, tended to be discredited or destroyed by government/corporation propaganda/regulation campaigns.
Relentless pressures from the people with the most money to campaign for their interests set in motion measures that will ensure they will make the greatest amount of profits, by making their products the preferred ones, while others are discriminated against.
Generally, "trade treaties" are for the benefit of investors to obtain profits through their corporations.
Overall, agribusiness is interested in profits, and the power to control culture to maximize profits for the owners of those businesses. It does not care about the health of consumers, nor any other aspect of the long-term future. The strategy of the agribusinesses and pharmaceutical companies etc. is to maximize short-term profits, regardless of any other consequences. Controlling people to benefit shareholders is their primary purpose. Some of the profit made has been systematically used to corrupt the political process, and every aspect of food and drug law has been corrupted by that funding of the political process, driving vicious spirals of money and political power.
Each controlling law or regulation will tend to be another step down that spiral staircase of political corruption, taken by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites to actually accomplish the opposite of what they claim they are doing.
Step by step, all controls over foods and drugs are being directed to benefit the pyramidion people at the top of the social pyramid’s fascist plutocracy, while harming everyone else more and more. That fascist plutocracy already controls Canada, and Canada is already integrated as a small component of the global fascist plutocracy.
In a sense, cannabis laws were the most
extreme examples of the overall pattern
of political facts demonstrated by Codex.
Unfortunately, there IS a real pattern.
Canada is NOT some genuinely
"free and democratic society."
Canada is a fascist plutocracy.
That is true everywhere one looks,
and the people who controlled all
of the governmental regulations
have a relentless agenda going.
An overview of evolution of North American diets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YkNkscBEp0
How the Food Industry is Deceiving You Part 01:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXAZ_7JO7EA
Why Economics Drives Most Food Options You Have:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/05/why-economics-drives-most-food-options-you-have.aspx
7 minute video on the Price-Pottenger story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPCOGSnjP5w
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/02/Do-You-Really-Know-Where-Your-Food-Comes-From.aspx
Dr. Mercola on the increasing insanity of established agribusiness.
Larger overview of what is legal and what is not:
What agribusinesses systems DO allow,
while at the same time they also want
to limit all access to natural herbs etc.:
http://www.meat.org/
http://www.themeatrix.com/
What truly controls our food supply
is private profit for a tiny minority.
Every other consideration has been
systematically defeated by the long
history of corrupted political funding.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_windsor_food.html
THE MOST EXTREME EXAMPLE IS CANNABIS!
Cannabis should be food first.
Hemp seeds are the single best source
of protein, and oil, for human diets ...
However, we all are now actually living inside of a
Bizarro Mirror World, where things are backwards.
In principle, plant-based protein sources might about
10 to 20 times cheaper to produce than animal ones.
That makes one have to wonder what is the BIZARRE
cultural history, that has ended up inverting us all???
It makes one realize how, again and again,
the triumphs of lies and coercions control
how cultures have developed in society.
Cannabis should be food first, & the way
that cannabis food was criminalized is the
most extreme example of general patterns.
The ways people live inside North American civilization
ARE controlled by triumphs of dishonesty, backed up
with violence, & EVERYTHING about how they live
has become integrated aspects of that evil whole.
The lifestyles of the vast majority of people
are due to triumphs of political corruptions.
The single best plant source
for protein and oil IS hemp!
However, hemp was made totally illegal for decades,
and hemp is still suffering from insane restrictions
applied against marijuana to limit growing hemp.
That fits inside of an overall pattern of agribusiness. Everything that the global fascist plutocracy got away with doing to cannabis, it intends, and is now prepared to do, to all other herbs and nutrients. The total package of perversity that is exemplified in the case of cannabis is set to be systematically applied to all other food stuffs and drug substances. The same ways that the truth about cannabis has never made any difference to cannabis laws, because those laws were always based on huge lies, backed up with coercion, those patterns of abuse are now in the pipeline to be applied to everything else. The same ways as that inferior products were promoted, by wiping out cannabis as a competitor, are going to be repeated throughout every other domain of food and drugs.
There is already set up to be an almost total triumph of the global forces of evil over the lives of all Canadians. At the present time, it looks just as probable that Canadians will be as idiotic and incompetent to stop these developments from impacting on every aspect of food and drugs in their lives, as they were unable to prevent or fix the insane situations created by cannabis laws. The path we are on now seems to be for the total triumph of legalized lies, backed up with legalized coercions, to be applied against Canadians, while most of those Canadians will be brainwashed to believe in the bullshit that this is being done for reasons of “public health and safety.” Everything we have seen in decade after decade of pot prohibition is set to be repeated on an enormous scale, as applied to all other foods and drugs.
The familiar patterns of social facts which
worked to make cannabis criminal are
set up to be repeatedly applied to
everything else that is similar.
The same patterns of the uselessness of the political processes, already controlled by the corrupted big political parties, is set up to be repeated, to make protests fail to work to prevent these evil things the wealthy elites are planning to implement. The same ways that we are stuck in a vicious spiral of mass media promoted propaganda, and biased editing of the news, are likely going to be repeated again, & again, in every other similar domain. The same ways as the vast majority of Canadians will continue to have NO way to organize to resist that actually works will probably replay itself with respect to all other food stuffs and drug substances. At the present time, there are no reasonable grounds not to expect everything will continue to get worse and worse, faster and faster, while Canadians will continue to NOT find any effective ways to be able to respond to resist. Everything that enables the banks and enormous corporations to control the political processes, by controlling the mass media, etc., which determines electoral success, which delivers political power only, and almost totally, to the big political parties, which then can continue to use that power to make the political processes even more unfair and slanted in favour of them, and against any real opposition, will likely continue to unfold. All alternatives will probably continue to be fragmented, and unsuccessfully squabble, while the agenda that divides and conquers them runs amok. Thus, there is currently a deep connection between Bill C-6 and Bill C-15. The ONLY hope now is for a snap election before they become law. Otherwise, all the same reasons why cannabis will get even more criminalized, with relatively trivial exceptions, will soon also be applied in similar ways to other foods and drug substances. All the problems manifested in pot politics are likely to repeat themselves again, on an astronomically larger scale.
All the reasons why we have failed to stop criminalizing cannabis are probably going to reoccur as we fail to stop Codex Alimentarius effectively criminalizing all good foods and drug substances, while it enables the inferior products to be promoted and sold for greater profits. Thus, the vicious spirals of money and political power will feedback into themselves. Thus, there will probably not be any effective opposition possible, since only the big, more mainstream, political parties, that are dependent on the established banking and other corporate powers for their continued electoral success, will maintain their systems, run by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, as our civilization declines and falls, from too much "success" from the triumphs of lies, backed up with coercions, as we saw developed against cannabis, and now, more & more, we are seeing the same methods applied against everything else that are foods or drug containing substances.
There is clearly a war against consciousness going on, and the vast majority of people are clearly losing that war. Indeed, they are losing so badly that most of them do not even know that they are already the victims of that war.
Some steps inside the cycle use food as a weapon,
since controlling the food controls people, while
controlling money then controls food & people.
Social facts that cultivating cannabis was criminalized
illustrate these overall patterns of political corruption
where a variety of natural alternatives were systematically
discredited and destroyed, in order to make sure that other
inferior products, that could be patented, and monopolized,
were promoted, & given every possible advantage by the
biased systems of the governmental laws and regulations.
The pattern of government subsidies for food production
is an inverted pyramid where the more healthy the food,
the less likely that kind of food is going to be subsidized.
While the less healthy any ‘food’ may be,
the more likely that was to be subsidized.
Prohibition of pot merely takes that trend
to the logical extreme, in the Bizarro Land.
The single best food for people was criminalized!
Lies and hypocrisy about "safety and public health"
where employed to justify all the legislation which
had mostly opposite effects upon the public health.
The profits made from deceitful monopolies
then return as more political corruption ...
enabling funding of the political processes
to take another turn towards corruption.
http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html
We treat food animals in immoral & inhumane ways.
Animals that we eat for food are now raised
in industrial production places, where they
are fed things that governments prop up.
Factory farms have destroyed family farms.
We should apply more science and technology to food.
However, we should not have the decisions about how
to apply science and technology to food supplies be
controlled by the imperatives of fascist plutocracy.
All together, we end up with very low quality animal food,
that have their unreasonably low price in the supermarket.
People are eating too much animal protein,
due to some systematic political corruption
that has distorted the entire food system.
In general, people could become healthier
IF they ate more plants, and that applies
to eating more plant-based protein & oil.
But, inside a Bizarro Mirror World “reality,”
everything has been perverted / inverted.
Boiling it down to an over-simplistic statement:
THE WORLD IS BEING CONTROLLED BY
TRILLIONAIRE MASS MURDERS!!!!!!
The most important things are
death control and debt control,
or murder and money systems.
Science and technology tend to be applied
to enable greater dishonesty and robbery.
That is not inherent in science itself,
but rather, inherent in the structure of
the social pyramid systems we have now.
That is illustrated everywhere one looks!
“Health Canada” deliberately created
an extremely bad medical marijuana
access program, & they would likely
to do that to other herbs, and so on.
“Health Canada” is really concerned with
the ‘health’ of the corporate bottom line.
The phrase "Health Canada" is Orwellian Newspeak.
Make no mistake that private profits
for the big corporations is the main
thing which shall guide new laws.
It is the same pattern everywhere one looks!
The unethical treatment of human beings
goes around & around to cause more of
the unethical treatment of all animals.
That entire system is getting sicker ...
We need better human ecology,
and an industrial ecology, to be
able to save natural ecology.
However, the entire political debate is
dominated by the big bullies’ bullshit.
Criminalization of cannabis
is the single worst example.
But, criminalizing chamomile,
and so on and so forth, may be
on an agenda for the real system.
Governments had gotten away with
huge lies that marijuana was almost
as bad as murder, and therefore, our
cannabis cultivation was criminalized,
for sixty years in Canada, and thereby
the single best food source became
unavailable, and is still now expensive,
and of inferior quality, due to it being
restricted by marijuana law madness.
IT ALREADY DID HAPPEN THAT
THE SINGLE BEST PLANT FOR
HUMAN FOOD WAS ILLEGAL!
We ARE living in a runaway fascist plutocracy.
BE WORRIED THAT PATTERN SHALL
REPEAT ITSELF, AGAIN AND AGAIN!
All current political debates are hypocritical.
We need solutions to chronic political problems.
We should democratize the death controls more.
That possibly sustains more democratic debt controls.
However, at present, with all potential laws like C-6
there is almost total triumph of egregious hypocrisy.
Everything that is being done
is a total opposite of excuses
given for why it is being done.
Orwellian Newspeak is rampant throughout Parliament.
What they say law should do
is not what is really intended.
Every aspect of our society was dominated
by a worsening runaway fascist plutocracy.
The best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites
control the government to implement this evil agenda.
The long-term consequences will be extremely tragic ...
Codex Alimentarius Commission
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Zoe Blunt, David Swanson, Janine Bandcroft Sept. 14, 2009
This Week on GR
by C. L. Cook
This week: Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-area based environmental and rights defender, independent journalist, and one of the principals behind the website, WTF? Langford, the closest watchdog of the ongoing Bear Mountain development (visible from Victoria as the scabrous scar in the heart of the Sooke Hills). She and her colleagues are currently focused on the coming games and the attendant abuses of the ostensible tenants of Canadian society it demands. Zoe Blunt in the first half.
David Swanson is an American political activist without peer. He is a former journalist, press secretary for one of Dennis Kucinich's presidential runs, creator of numerous activist websites and campaigns and the author of the recently released book, 'Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.' David Swanson and putting We the People back in the political drivers seat in America in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to keep us current with some of the goings on from the streets of our fair city.
But first, Zoe Blunt and "talking about: the biggest circus of corporate pimping, police harassment, wasted tax money, military exhibitionism, and winter sports - the 2010 Olympics and the Torch Relay", slated to start here in Victoria."
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com
As the Olympics draws nearer, nervous police intelligence operatives are nosing around, poking into to the lives of citizens on the record as opposing the infamous "five ring circus." Evidently, uninvited police visits to law-abiding Canadians is not illegal, otherwise they wouldn't continue despite the objections of civil rights organizations, right?
Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-area based environmental and rights defender, independent journalist, and one of the principals behind the website, WTF? Langford, the closest watchdog of the ongoing Bear Mountain development (visible from Victoria as the scabrous scar in the heart of the Sooke Hills). She and her colleagues are currently focused on the coming games and the attendant abuses of the ostensible tenants of Canadian society it demands. Zoe Blunt in the first half.
And; last November, millions across United States believed the gathering gloom the eight years of ruinous rule by the George Bush regime represented was finally giving way to the sunrise of a new American era. The election of Barack Obama, and the winning of control of both houses of Congress by the Democrats, made the hope of that bright new future seem a slam dunk; but since taking office, the Obama administration has done little to validate the trust progressives put in him.
David Swanson is an American political activist without peer. He is a former journalist, press secretary for one of Dennis Kucinich's presidential runs, creator of numerous activist websites and campaign and the author of the recently released book, 'Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.' David Swanson and putting We the People back in the political drivers seat in America in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to keep us current with some of the goings on from the streets of our fair city. But first, Zoe Blunt and "talking about: the biggest circus of corporate pimping, police harassment, wasted tax money, military exhibitionism, and winter sports - the 2010 Olympics and the Torch Relay", slated to start here in Victoria."
G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing
a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.
Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Rhoda Berenson, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Murray Dobbin, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Glen Ford, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Brewster Kneen, Betty Krawczyk, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Wayne Madsen, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, David Orchard, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Lila Rajiva, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, David Robb, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, David Rovics, Danny Schechter, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Honduran Resistance Leader Chavez Seized
by IFCO / Pastors for Peace
René Chavez, a leader of the resistance movement against the coup d'etat in Honduras, was captured and jailed on Friday, September 11.
Chavez is the former president of the Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), a leading Honduran teachers' union. He also is currently a candidate for deputy to the National Assembly from the Atlantic Coast region of Honduras. He has been a coordinator in the Atlantic Coast region of the Frente Nacional, the national front against the coup.
Chavez was captured yesterday and taken to the Central Penitentiary of the Barrio Inglés in La Ceiba. He was taken to court today for an immediate trial, was charged with organizing illegal demonstrations, and was taken back to prison.
Dr Luther Castillo, communications secretary for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat, said;
"We are very concerned about this dangerous situation, because once he's in jail, they can do anything to him, including paying someone to kill him. We are asking for solidarity from international organizations to demand his immediate freedom."
*****
IFCO / Pastors for Peace
An ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination
MEDIA ADVISORY
from the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat in Honduras
(version en español sigue abajo)
September 12, 2009 --- for immediate release
CONTACT: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902
NOTA DE PRENSA
del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado en Honduras
12 Septiembre 2009 -- para difusion inmediata
Contacto: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902
REPRESION CRECIENDO EN HONDURAS:
LIDER DE RESISTENCIA CAPTURADO Y ENCARCELADO
Rene Chavez, un lider del movimiento de resistencia contra el golpe de estado en Honduras,
fue capturado y encarcelado el viernes 11 septiembre.
Chavez es ex-presidente del Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), un sindicato Hondureño de maestros.
Tambien es candidato actual para diputado a la asamblea nacional desde la region de la Costa Atlantica de Honduras.
Ha estado coordinador por la region de la Costa Atlantica para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado.
Fue capturado ayer y llevado a la Penitentiaria Central del Barrio Inglés de La Ceiba.
Fue llevado al corte hoy para un juicio inmediato, cargado con organizar manifestaciones ilegales,
y devuelto al carcel.
Dr Luther Castillo, secretaria de comunicaciones para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado,
dijo, "Estamos muy preocupados por esta situacion peligrosa, porque mientras esté encarcelado,
se le pueden hacer cualquier cosa, hasta pagar alguien para matarle.
Estamos pidiendo la solidaridad de las organizaciones internacionales para exigir su liberacion inmediata."
http://pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4684-honduran-resistance-leader-chavez-seized.html
René Chavez, a leader of the resistance movement against the coup d'etat in Honduras, was captured and jailed on Friday, September 11.
Chavez is the former president of the Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), a leading Honduran teachers' union. He also is currently a candidate for deputy to the National Assembly from the Atlantic Coast region of Honduras. He has been a coordinator in the Atlantic Coast region of the Frente Nacional, the national front against the coup.
Chavez was captured yesterday and taken to the Central Penitentiary of the Barrio Inglés in La Ceiba. He was taken to court today for an immediate trial, was charged with organizing illegal demonstrations, and was taken back to prison.
Dr Luther Castillo, communications secretary for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat, said;
"We are very concerned about this dangerous situation, because once he's in jail, they can do anything to him, including paying someone to kill him. We are asking for solidarity from international organizations to demand his immediate freedom."
*****
IFCO / Pastors for Peace
An ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination
MEDIA ADVISORY
from the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat in Honduras
(version en español sigue abajo)
September 12, 2009 --- for immediate release
CONTACT: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902
NOTA DE PRENSA
del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado en Honduras
12 Septiembre 2009 -- para difusion inmediata
Contacto: Ellen Bernstein: 646/319-5902
REPRESION CRECIENDO EN HONDURAS:
LIDER DE RESISTENCIA CAPTURADO Y ENCARCELADO
Rene Chavez, un lider del movimiento de resistencia contra el golpe de estado en Honduras,
fue capturado y encarcelado el viernes 11 septiembre.
Chavez es ex-presidente del Primer Colegio Magisterial de Honduras (PRICMA), un sindicato Hondureño de maestros.
Tambien es candidato actual para diputado a la asamblea nacional desde la region de la Costa Atlantica de Honduras.
Ha estado coordinador por la region de la Costa Atlantica para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado.
Fue capturado ayer y llevado a la Penitentiaria Central del Barrio Inglés de La Ceiba.
Fue llevado al corte hoy para un juicio inmediato, cargado con organizar manifestaciones ilegales,
y devuelto al carcel.
Dr Luther Castillo, secretaria de comunicaciones para el Frente Nacional de Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado,
dijo, "Estamos muy preocupados por esta situacion peligrosa, porque mientras esté encarcelado,
se le pueden hacer cualquier cosa, hasta pagar alguien para matarle.
Estamos pidiendo la solidaridad de las organizaciones internacionales para exigir su liberacion inmediata."
http://pacificfreepress.com/news/1/4684-honduran-resistance-leader-chavez-seized.html
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Barack and Bibi
Has Bibi Won the First Round?
by Patrick Seale
On two key issues of Barack Obama’s foreign policy -- Palestinian statehood and reconciliation with Iran -- Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has chosen to fight the American President. He has refused to bend to Obama’s will, and is instead seeking to outwit and defeat him.
Thus, to save his right-wing coalition -- and his own job -- Netanyahu has not hesitated to offend Obama and even put at risk Israel’s vital relationship with the United States. The fact that he has done so suggests that he thinks he can win the present battle of wills. Indeed, Netanyahu may already have won the first round.
The evidence is fragmentary, but seems to be there nevertheless. If a State Department spokesman is to be believed, the United States is softening somewhat its demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can begin. Washington also seems to have embraced Israeli demands for tougher sanctions against Iran, if it refuses to halt uranium enrichment by a September deadline. Obama had earlier mentioned September as a tentative date when the situation would have to be reassessed.
These apparent concessions to Israeli demands may be only tactical. In squeezing Netanyahu, Obama has proceeded with great caution. The American president has not yet revealed his own battle plan. It is as if he has wanted the Israelis to reach certain conclusions by themselves, rather than be pushed.
To Netanyahu’s way of thinking, however, it is Obama who is beleaguered -- not himself. After all, from Netanyahu’s standpoint, Obama has committed the cardinal sin of daring to equate Israeli and Palestinian interests, and of reaching out a hand of friendship to Iran, a country Israel has long identified as a dangerous rival. Netanyahu wants Iran struck down, much as Israel and its friends pressed the United States to strike down Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for seeming to pose a long-term strategic threat to the Jewish state.
It is now clear that Netanyahu has no intention whatsoever of ending the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, or of conceding Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense. Regarding Iran, he has spared no effort to press the international community to punish Iran with paralysing sanctions, while hinting that Israel would itself strike Iran, with or without America’s green light, if Tehran did not put an end to its nuclear programme.
These are arrogant and short-sighted positions. They point to a lack of fresh security thinking in Israel. It is as if Netanyahu and his civilian and military colleagues were blind to the evolution of international (including American) opinion regarding Israel, and to the looming changes in Israel’s strategic environment.
Indeed, it is as if Israeli leaders remained persuaded that harsh and brutal methods -- the continued seizure and settlement of Palestinian land, the repeated assaults on Israel’s neighbours, the political assassination of Arab opponents -- would continue to work in the future as they have done in the past. In other words, that Israel would always be able to dominate the entire region militarily, and would therefore have no need to make concessions.
Netanyahu was in Europe this past week. After meeting Britain’s Gordon Brown and Germany’s Angela Merkel, he declared that no settlement freeze had been agreed; and that he would certainly not accept a freeze in East Jerusalem, where building has, in fact, been speeded up. Meanwhile Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad that Israel would not tolerate him declaring a de facto Palestinian state by 2011, if negotiations had not progressed by then.
Netanyahu may indeed have boxed himself into a corner, lulled by the fact that Obama has not yet published his peace plan. There is talk of a tripartite meeting between Obama, Netanyahu and Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, in New York at the end of September.
This may be when Netanyahu could face some real heat. To outside observers, Obama has not retreated an inch from the position he outlined in Cairo on June 4. “Israelis must acknowledge,” he then declared, “that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
Obama might have added that Israel’s land grab must not only be stopped, but put into reverse. For the conflict to be resolved, settlements will have to be evacuated; borders defined; Jerusalem shared; and a solution agreed for the refugees. To focus on Israel’s security alone, as Netanyahu evidently prefers, would be to elude and fudge other key problems which will need to be addressed.
Netanyahu will need to be persuaded that it is dangerous for him to subvert the central planks of Obama’s Middle East policy; dangerous to take on a regional power such as Iran, with its prickly nationalism, ancient civilization, a population ten times that of Israel, and a land area vastly bigger; dangerous to reject the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which is still on the table (but for how long?); dangerous to keep building in Arab East Jerusalem; dangerous to seek to destroy Hamas by the pitiless siege of Gaza; dangerous to delay liberating Gilad Shalit by a prisoner exchange; above all, dangerous to keep on piling up hate against Israel by a callous indifference to Arab interests and to Arab life.
However difficult it may seem, the time for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict has arrived. Barack Obama is the one world leader -- indeed the only one in our lifetime -- who has a chance of pulling it off. He knows that it holds the key to America’s future relations with the Arab and Muslim world, and that it is the only way to exorcise the curse of terrorism, which is spreading like an epidemic.
A comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would stabilise the region, introduce a new era of prosperity, guarantee Israel’s long-term security, bring Iran into the circle of friendly nations, and even allow Washington, with the enhanced authority of a successful peace-maker, to bring an honourable end to its costly and misguided war in Afghanistan.
Netanyahu may have won an early round against Barack Obama, but he has by no means won the war. We have seen only skirmishes so far. The real battle is yet to come.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
by Patrick Seale
On two key issues of Barack Obama’s foreign policy -- Palestinian statehood and reconciliation with Iran -- Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has chosen to fight the American President. He has refused to bend to Obama’s will, and is instead seeking to outwit and defeat him.
Thus, to save his right-wing coalition -- and his own job -- Netanyahu has not hesitated to offend Obama and even put at risk Israel’s vital relationship with the United States. The fact that he has done so suggests that he thinks he can win the present battle of wills. Indeed, Netanyahu may already have won the first round.
The evidence is fragmentary, but seems to be there nevertheless. If a State Department spokesman is to be believed, the United States is softening somewhat its demand for a total Israeli settlement freeze before Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can begin. Washington also seems to have embraced Israeli demands for tougher sanctions against Iran, if it refuses to halt uranium enrichment by a September deadline. Obama had earlier mentioned September as a tentative date when the situation would have to be reassessed.
These apparent concessions to Israeli demands may be only tactical. In squeezing Netanyahu, Obama has proceeded with great caution. The American president has not yet revealed his own battle plan. It is as if he has wanted the Israelis to reach certain conclusions by themselves, rather than be pushed.
To Netanyahu’s way of thinking, however, it is Obama who is beleaguered -- not himself. After all, from Netanyahu’s standpoint, Obama has committed the cardinal sin of daring to equate Israeli and Palestinian interests, and of reaching out a hand of friendship to Iran, a country Israel has long identified as a dangerous rival. Netanyahu wants Iran struck down, much as Israel and its friends pressed the United States to strike down Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for seeming to pose a long-term strategic threat to the Jewish state.
It is now clear that Netanyahu has no intention whatsoever of ending the occupation and settlement of the West Bank, or of conceding Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense. Regarding Iran, he has spared no effort to press the international community to punish Iran with paralysing sanctions, while hinting that Israel would itself strike Iran, with or without America’s green light, if Tehran did not put an end to its nuclear programme.
These are arrogant and short-sighted positions. They point to a lack of fresh security thinking in Israel. It is as if Netanyahu and his civilian and military colleagues were blind to the evolution of international (including American) opinion regarding Israel, and to the looming changes in Israel’s strategic environment.
Indeed, it is as if Israeli leaders remained persuaded that harsh and brutal methods -- the continued seizure and settlement of Palestinian land, the repeated assaults on Israel’s neighbours, the political assassination of Arab opponents -- would continue to work in the future as they have done in the past. In other words, that Israel would always be able to dominate the entire region militarily, and would therefore have no need to make concessions.
Netanyahu was in Europe this past week. After meeting Britain’s Gordon Brown and Germany’s Angela Merkel, he declared that no settlement freeze had been agreed; and that he would certainly not accept a freeze in East Jerusalem, where building has, in fact, been speeded up. Meanwhile Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad that Israel would not tolerate him declaring a de facto Palestinian state by 2011, if negotiations had not progressed by then.
Netanyahu may indeed have boxed himself into a corner, lulled by the fact that Obama has not yet published his peace plan. There is talk of a tripartite meeting between Obama, Netanyahu and Mahmud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, in New York at the end of September.
This may be when Netanyahu could face some real heat. To outside observers, Obama has not retreated an inch from the position he outlined in Cairo on June 4. “Israelis must acknowledge,” he then declared, “that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
Obama might have added that Israel’s land grab must not only be stopped, but put into reverse. For the conflict to be resolved, settlements will have to be evacuated; borders defined; Jerusalem shared; and a solution agreed for the refugees. To focus on Israel’s security alone, as Netanyahu evidently prefers, would be to elude and fudge other key problems which will need to be addressed.
Netanyahu will need to be persuaded that it is dangerous for him to subvert the central planks of Obama’s Middle East policy; dangerous to take on a regional power such as Iran, with its prickly nationalism, ancient civilization, a population ten times that of Israel, and a land area vastly bigger; dangerous to reject the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which is still on the table (but for how long?); dangerous to keep building in Arab East Jerusalem; dangerous to seek to destroy Hamas by the pitiless siege of Gaza; dangerous to delay liberating Gilad Shalit by a prisoner exchange; above all, dangerous to keep on piling up hate against Israel by a callous indifference to Arab interests and to Arab life.
However difficult it may seem, the time for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict has arrived. Barack Obama is the one world leader -- indeed the only one in our lifetime -- who has a chance of pulling it off. He knows that it holds the key to America’s future relations with the Arab and Muslim world, and that it is the only way to exorcise the curse of terrorism, which is spreading like an epidemic.
A comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would stabilise the region, introduce a new era of prosperity, guarantee Israel’s long-term security, bring Iran into the circle of friendly nations, and even allow Washington, with the enhanced authority of a successful peace-maker, to bring an honourable end to its costly and misguided war in Afghanistan.
Netanyahu may have won an early round against Barack Obama, but he has by no means won the war. We have seen only skirmishes so far. The real battle is yet to come.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Funeral of Muhammad Nayef
Israeli troops kill West Bank boy
Nayef was buried in the Jalazun refugee camp where he lived
A Palestinian youth, 15, has been shot dead by Israeli forces in an incident outside a settlement near the West Bank town of Ramallah.
The Israeli military said Muhammad Riad Nayef was among a group of youths that troops fired on after they hurled firebombs at a guard post.
But Palestinian police quoted witnesses who said stones and firebombs were only thrown after the boy was shot.
The incident comes amid moves to restart peace talks later this months.
The wounded teenager was transferred to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, where he later died.
Palestinian medical sources said another four people, three youths and one ambulance driver, were injured in the incident at the Jalazun refugee camp, near the settlement of Beit El.
West Bank map
The death comes as the US is pushing to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israel's largely ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, said on Monday that US President Barack Obama may chair a proposed meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in September.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September, Mr Peres told Fox News.
The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he expected "some kind of statement, some kind of proposal" on fresh negotiations around that time.
The US and Israel have been trying to reach agreement over Palestinian demands for a complete halt to building in settlements in the occupied West Bank, before they will restart peace talks.
Israel wants to keep building to allow what it calls the "natural growth" of settler communities, and has refused to stop building in East Jerusalem.
But Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian prime minister and a senior member of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement, said the Palestinians would reject calls to negotiate if Israel only implemented a limited freeze.
"I would say, Mr Obama, we love you... but I am sorry this is not enough to bring us to the peace process."
He said a freeze must include all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and must last until a final peace agreement was reached.
At least 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
source
Nayef was buried in the Jalazun refugee camp where he lived
A Palestinian youth, 15, has been shot dead by Israeli forces in an incident outside a settlement near the West Bank town of Ramallah.
The Israeli military said Muhammad Riad Nayef was among a group of youths that troops fired on after they hurled firebombs at a guard post.
But Palestinian police quoted witnesses who said stones and firebombs were only thrown after the boy was shot.
The incident comes amid moves to restart peace talks later this months.
The wounded teenager was transferred to an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem, where he later died.
Palestinian medical sources said another four people, three youths and one ambulance driver, were injured in the incident at the Jalazun refugee camp, near the settlement of Beit El.
West Bank map
The death comes as the US is pushing to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israel's largely ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, said on Monday that US President Barack Obama may chair a proposed meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in September.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September, Mr Peres told Fox News.
The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he expected "some kind of statement, some kind of proposal" on fresh negotiations around that time.
The US and Israel have been trying to reach agreement over Palestinian demands for a complete halt to building in settlements in the occupied West Bank, before they will restart peace talks.
Israel wants to keep building to allow what it calls the "natural growth" of settler communities, and has refused to stop building in East Jerusalem.
But Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian prime minister and a senior member of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement, said the Palestinians would reject calls to negotiate if Israel only implemented a limited freeze.
"I would say, Mr Obama, we love you... but I am sorry this is not enough to bring us to the peace process."
He said a freeze must include all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and must last until a final peace agreement was reached.
At least 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
source
Bear Mountain Monies Misappropriated by Barrie Accountants Charge
Barrie accused of misusing funds
Report claims Lightning co-owner misappropriated monies from Bear Mountain Resort, using $2.5-million to buy his share of NHL team
David Shoalts
Globe and Mail ??http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/barrie-accused-of-misusing-funds/article1271363/
Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009
A report by the former auditor of Bear Mountain Resort (a massive golf, hotel and commercial and residential project near Victoria headed by Canadian Len Barrie) has accused the Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner and other senior members of the complex's management team of misappropriating funds.
The Victoria accounting firm of Norgaard Neale Camden Ltd. made the report to Bear Mountain?s executive committee last January and then resigned as the auditor on April 15 because it felt some financial transactions were illegal and because Bear Mountain's directors did not take action.
Some of those transactions, according to the report, involved at least $2.5-million that Mr. Barrie, a former NHL-player-turned-owner, used to pay for his part of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The report raised questions about more than $25.8-million paid to Mr. Barrie or companies under his control going back at least two years by the partnership that owns Bear Mountain.
"We brought to your attention a number of instances where senior members of [Bear Mountain] management had engaged in a number of activities that, in our view, were improper and, in some cases, illegal," the auditor stated in its resignation letter, which was signed by Allan Neale, a partner in Norgaard Neale Camden.
Report claims Lightning co-owner misappropriated monies from Bear Mountain Resort, using $2.5-million to buy his share of NHL team
David Shoalts
Globe and Mail ??http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/barrie-accused-of-misusing-funds/article1271363/
Tuesday, Sep. 01, 2009
A report by the former auditor of Bear Mountain Resort (a massive golf, hotel and commercial and residential project near Victoria headed by Canadian Len Barrie) has accused the Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner and other senior members of the complex's management team of misappropriating funds.
The Victoria accounting firm of Norgaard Neale Camden Ltd. made the report to Bear Mountain?s executive committee last January and then resigned as the auditor on April 15 because it felt some financial transactions were illegal and because Bear Mountain's directors did not take action.
Some of those transactions, according to the report, involved at least $2.5-million that Mr. Barrie, a former NHL-player-turned-owner, used to pay for his part of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The report raised questions about more than $25.8-million paid to Mr. Barrie or companies under his control going back at least two years by the partnership that owns Bear Mountain.
"We brought to your attention a number of instances where senior members of [Bear Mountain] management had engaged in a number of activities that, in our view, were improper and, in some cases, illegal," the auditor stated in its resignation letter, which was signed by Allan Neale, a partner in Norgaard Neale Camden.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Katrina's Hard Choices
Comments on 'Deadly Choices at Memorial'
by Arthur Caldicott
That is an engulfing story, Delores. Thanks for posting it.
No fault to find with anyone in those extreme circumstances - exhausted, in a 100 degree hospital without power or water or virtually any necessary resources, left to fend for themselves in a dreadful situation, and well-intentioned to the end, the actions of all of them seem heroic. The extraordinary behaviour of these people, shines through the awfulness.
Until the attorney-general opened investigations 14 days after Katrina. Then it gets ugly, as lawyers and medical investigators start trying to uncover evidence, performing autopsies on rotting corpses.
I followed the link to the two YouTube videos of Sheri Fink talking about the story.
In the second part, starting at about 3:27 she is asked about the details she amassed in her research and interviews and what was left in and what was left out in the final edit. Her response to the question made me smile and feel right at home.
Part I. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmLY6K7gAUk
Part II. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1iG_dsElhs
Arthur
by Arthur Caldicott
That is an engulfing story, Delores. Thanks for posting it.
No fault to find with anyone in those extreme circumstances - exhausted, in a 100 degree hospital without power or water or virtually any necessary resources, left to fend for themselves in a dreadful situation, and well-intentioned to the end, the actions of all of them seem heroic. The extraordinary behaviour of these people, shines through the awfulness.
Until the attorney-general opened investigations 14 days after Katrina. Then it gets ugly, as lawyers and medical investigators start trying to uncover evidence, performing autopsies on rotting corpses.
I followed the link to the two YouTube videos of Sheri Fink talking about the story.
In the second part, starting at about 3:27 she is asked about the details she amassed in her research and interviews and what was left in and what was left out in the final edit. Her response to the question made me smile and feel right at home.
Part I. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmLY6K7gAUk
Part II. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1iG_dsElhs
Arthur
Noam Does Caracas
Noam Chomsky in Venezuela: 'A better world is being created'
By James Suggett | August 28, 2009
U.S. author, dissident intellectual, and Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky met for the first time with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas and analyzed hemispheric politics during a nationally televised forum on Monday.
Chomsky is well known in Venezuela for his critiques of U.S. imperialism and support for the progressive political changes underway in Venezuela and other Latin American countries in recent years. President Chavez regularly references Chomsky in speeches and makes widely publicized recommendations of Chomsky's 2003 book, Hegemony or
Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.
"Hegemony or survival; we opt for survival," said Chavez in a press conference to welcome Chomsky. He compared Chomsky's thesis to that of German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in the early 1900s, "Socialism or Barbarism," and referred to Chomsky as "one of the greatest defenders of peace, one of the greatest pioneers of a better world."
Through an interpreter, Chomsky responded, "I write about peace and criticize the barriers to peace; that's easy. What's harder is to create a better world... and what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."
During Monday's forum, which was broadcast on the state television station VTV, Chomsky pointed out that the ongoing coup in Honduras, which began on June 28th, is the third coup the United States has supported in Latin America so far this century, following the coup against Chavez in 2002 and Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
The nearly finalized deal to allow the U.S. to increase its military presence on Colombian bases "is only part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for intervention," said Chomsky.
According to Chomsky, the region has the capacity to unite and form a "peace zone" in which foreign militaries are forbidden to operate. "Venezuela can help to advance this proposal, but it cannot do it alone," he said.
"The transformations that Venezuela is making toward the creation of another socio-economic model could have a global impact if these projects are successfully carried out," said the renowned author.
Aporrea.org, a popular Venezuelan news and pro-revolution analysis website, described Chomsky as oriented toward "libertarian socialism" and "vehemently anti-Stalinist" in an introduction to a recent interview in which Chomsky said U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy will be similar to that of the second administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.
Chomsky addressed this issue during Monday's conference as well, commenting that Obama "could have much to offer Latin America if he wanted to, but hasn't given any signals that he does." He cited the U.S.'s indecisive posture toward the coup in Honduras as evidence.
Chomsky also addressed the media and freedom of expression in the U.S.
"In the United States the socio-economic system is designed so that the control over the media is in the hands of a minority who own large corporations... and the result is that the financial interests of those groups are always behind the so-called freedom of expression," he said.
Chomsky said the growing disappointment with the Obama administration in the U.S. was predictable because the corporate media marketed Obama's presidential candidacy on the slogan of "Change We Can Believe In" but omitted concrete proposals for effective changes, and the Obama administration has since shown an incapacity to institute such changes.
James Suggett is a Melman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a writer for venezuelanalysis.com.
Stocks Controlled by Select Few
World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few
By Lauren Schenkman, Inside Science News Service
Study Says World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few
Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power.
Aug 25, 2009
By Lauren Schenkman
Inside Science News Service
Calculator Generic
View full-size image
WASHINGTON -- A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.
A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.
"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to ... unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."
The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.
“If you would look at this locally, it's always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it's the same guys, [which] is not something you'd expect from the local view.”
Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston's approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.
"It's clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. "Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there's some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there's a big difference between having an impression and actually having ... more explicit numbers to put behind it."
Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership -- owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company -- in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market.
The results raise questions of where and when a company could choose to exert this influence, but Glattfelder and Battiston are reluctant to speculate.
"In this kind of science, complex systems, you're not aiming at making predictions [like] ... where the tennis ball will be at given place in given time," Battiston said. “What you're trying to estimate is … the potential influence that [an investor] has."
Glattfelder added that the internationalism of these powerful companies makes it difficult to gauge their economic influence. "[With] new company structures which are so big and spanning the globe, it's hard to see what they're up to and what they're doing,” he said. Large, sparse networks dominated by a few major companies could also be more vulnerable, he said. "In network speak, if those nodes fail, that has a big effect on the network."
The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review E.
source
By Lauren Schenkman, Inside Science News Service
Study Says World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few
Companies from US, UK and Australia have the most concentrated financial power.
Aug 25, 2009
By Lauren Schenkman
Inside Science News Service
Calculator Generic
View full-size image
WASHINGTON -- A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.
A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.
"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to ... unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."
The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.
“If you would look at this locally, it's always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it's the same guys, [which] is not something you'd expect from the local view.”
Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston's approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.
"It's clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. "Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there's some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there's a big difference between having an impression and actually having ... more explicit numbers to put behind it."
Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership -- owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company -- in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market.
The results raise questions of where and when a company could choose to exert this influence, but Glattfelder and Battiston are reluctant to speculate.
"In this kind of science, complex systems, you're not aiming at making predictions [like] ... where the tennis ball will be at given place in given time," Battiston said. “What you're trying to estimate is … the potential influence that [an investor] has."
Glattfelder added that the internationalism of these powerful companies makes it difficult to gauge their economic influence. "[With] new company structures which are so big and spanning the globe, it's hard to see what they're up to and what they're doing,” he said. Large, sparse networks dominated by a few major companies could also be more vulnerable, he said. "In network speak, if those nodes fail, that has a big effect on the network."
The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review E.
source
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Cicero and the Great Law
CICERO AND THE GREAT LAW
by Mohawk News Network
History repeats itself. As Cicero said [106-43 BC], "A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less dangerous, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the people. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor doesn't appear like a traitor. They speak in the accents familiar to their victims. They wear their face and their clothes and appeal to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of their people. They rot the soul of a nation. They work secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a community. They infect the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."
Sounds like the colonial band and tribal council system set up by the invaders, which violates the Great Law, our constitution and philosophy. The only legal national governments on Great Turtle Island are those of the Indigenous Peoples. Those band or tribal councilors secretly negotiating with these pirates are committing treason [Great Law, Wampum 58].
At the near empty U.S. border crossing on the south shore a few trucks sit while cars cross the bridge.
The Canadian border mobsters have left Akwesasne for good. The temporary checkpoint tent set up by the Canadian Border Services Agency CBSA sits on a small sliver of Akwesasne land. These robber barons sit around waiting to pounce on passers-by to confiscate money and favors.
The old abandoned Canada customs house in the middle of Kawenoke on Cornwall Island rests empty, boarded up like those foreclosed homes and businesses caused by capitalist corruption. It has a lonely sign telling us to proceed slowly. Spiders, raccoons, ants, birds, bats, coyotes, foxes and mice are sniffing around waiting to start making permanent homes. Vines and natural growth are already starting to envelope the buildings. As time goes on, this and other imperial neo-con infra structures will crumble and mother nature will take over. Great Turtle Island will once again look like a garden burying colonial ghosts. The portable checkpoint looks like those quickie cardboard stolen goods salestables on the sidewalks of Time Square.
This posse wants us to come across from the US side of Akwesasne, drive over the bridge, go through Kawenoke and over the bridge to Cornwall. Then they want us to check in with them so they can extort something and let us cross the bridge back to our homes in Kawenoke. Few actually do it. Everybody knows the checkpoints of these two invading entities are legal. Our law predominates on Great Turtle Island. [Read the Mohawk Manifesto].
On August 13th at the Canadian border tent eight Mohawks were pulled over, handcuffed and arrested. One was charged with running the port in a previous lifetime. They were kept in a compound without food or water. One was seven months pregnant. One managed to use his cell phone, "They're detaining us", he yelled.
The goons got angry at the detainees for speaking Mohawk. They supposedly had just finished taking cultural sensitivity training, which seems to be making them oversensitive to us. They could learn to politely say SEGO, ONEN and NIA:WEN? They probably want a law making Mohawk at the border a criminal offence.
A group of elders and people went over to see what was going on. The border goons refused to let them see the detainees. Natalie the Liar came out and told us, "Believe me, believe me", two have been sent to Ottawa, two to the RCMP holding station and two to Cornwall. It wasn't true.
Eventually the detainees were charged with "hindrance", or not smiling or something, and released at 1 am, except for the one who supposedly ran the imaginary line.
In the North Shore Claim Mohawks want the land back and refuse money. The Canadian band council puppets want money. CBSA knows they will soon have to break camp and move again.
Trying to confuse the issue are a few people who declare themselves to be natural human beings, not Mohawks. These hippie types are flashing around Egyptian symbols. They say we signed the preposterous Camel Hair Treaty of 409 AD that brought down the Roman Empire!! They even carry new age camel hair identity cards. Shouldn't they be on stone tablets? They tell us the Moors were here before us. A few of our people are being recruited to become mindless flakes to eliminate Ongwehonwe thinking. These preachers gave up and incite others to give up.
We Mohawks have a responsibility to assert our inherent relationship on Great Turtle Island and to uphold the Great Law. Those adhering to foreign doctrines are committing espionage, conspiracy and treason.
Our birthright cannot be blurred by cult followers or anyone else. Such false prophets and their illusions might be sent in to disrupt, demoralize and confuse us. We should rely on ourselves, our own laws, our language and our relationships that we can substantiate.
These foreign fantasies are trying to overshadow what we know, touch, feel and see. It's meant to stop us from working in harmony with each other, the natural world and the Great Law.
To stop the CBSA from coming in, we need to keep our fire going and to erect a building. To help, please contact akwpeoplesfire@bell.net 613-937-1813.
Kahentinetha MNN Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnews.com kahentinetha2@yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations by check or money order to "MNN Mohawk Nation News", Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Or go to PayPal on website. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN "BORDER" and "AKWESASNE" categories for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois
[1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions - US novelist (1922 - 2007)- ed.]
Hurricane Katrina's Lingering Shadows
The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina
by James Ridgeway
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude -- a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.
But there's an even harsher truth, some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.
It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce -- but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering
masses left behind. According to Jeremy Scahill's reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.
When asked what authority they were operating under, Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.' Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, 'He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.' The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.'"
The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."
Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), "New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers." The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn't "apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles."
Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from "black gangbangers" near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men "unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. 'After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.'"
Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or "insurgents." African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.
In July, the local television station WDSU released a home video, taken shortly after the storm hit, of a local man, Paul Gleason, who bragged to two police officers about shooting looters in the Algiers section of New Orleans.
"Did you have any problems with looters," [sic] asked an officer.
"Not anymore," said Gleason.
"Not anymore?"
"They're all dead," said Gleason.
The officer asked, "What happened?"
"We shot them," said Gleason.
"How many did you shoot?
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight people? What did you do with the bodies?"
"We gave them to the Coast Guard," said Gleason.
Gleason told his story with a cup of red wine in one hand and riding a tractor from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.
Although the government's aid efforts were in chaos, those involved in the self-generated community rescue and relief efforts were often seen as a threat. Even so, Common Ground eventually managed to serve more than half a million people, operating feeding stations, opening free health and legal clinics, and later rebuilding homes and planting trees. But they "never got a dime" from the federal
government, says Rahim. The feds did, however, recruit one of Common Ground's founders, Brandon Darby, as an informant, later using him to infiltrate groups planning actions at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.
Burl Cain, the warden of the notorious Angola Prison, a former slave plantation that's now home to 5,000 inmates, was rushed down to the city to oversee "Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal.
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons and was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station -- complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop."
In the virtual martial law imposed in New Orleans after Katrina, the war on the poor sometimes even spilled over into the war on terror. In his latest book, Zeitoun, published in July, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview with Salon, Eggers said:
Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.
Through all the time that the federal and local governments, in concert with wealthy New Orleanians, were pitching their battle, there was virtually no one fighting on the other side. Reviewing the "available evidence" a month after Katrina, the New York Times concluded that "the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations."
The reports of residents firing at National Guard helicopters, of tourists being robbed and raped on Bourbon Street, and of murderous rampages in the Superdome -- all turned out to be false.
Since then it has become increasingly clear that the truth of what happened in New Orleans -- vigilantism and racially tinged violence, a military response that supplanted a humanitarian one -- is equally sinister.
Veteran reporter James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent for Mother Jones magazine.
Copyright © 2009 Mother Jones -- distributed by Agence Global
by James Ridgeway
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude -- a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.
But there's an even harsher truth, some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.
It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce -- but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering
masses left behind. According to Jeremy Scahill's reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.
When asked what authority they were operating under, Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.' Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, 'He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.' The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.'"
The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."
Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), "New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers." The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn't "apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles."
Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from "black gangbangers" near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men "unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. 'After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.'"
Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or "insurgents." African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.
In July, the local television station WDSU released a home video, taken shortly after the storm hit, of a local man, Paul Gleason, who bragged to two police officers about shooting looters in the Algiers section of New Orleans.
"Did you have any problems with looters," [sic] asked an officer.
"Not anymore," said Gleason.
"Not anymore?"
"They're all dead," said Gleason.
The officer asked, "What happened?"
"We shot them," said Gleason.
"How many did you shoot?
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight people? What did you do with the bodies?"
"We gave them to the Coast Guard," said Gleason.
Gleason told his story with a cup of red wine in one hand and riding a tractor from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.
Although the government's aid efforts were in chaos, those involved in the self-generated community rescue and relief efforts were often seen as a threat. Even so, Common Ground eventually managed to serve more than half a million people, operating feeding stations, opening free health and legal clinics, and later rebuilding homes and planting trees. But they "never got a dime" from the federal
government, says Rahim. The feds did, however, recruit one of Common Ground's founders, Brandon Darby, as an informant, later using him to infiltrate groups planning actions at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.
Burl Cain, the warden of the notorious Angola Prison, a former slave plantation that's now home to 5,000 inmates, was rushed down to the city to oversee "Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal.
According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons and was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station -- complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop."
In the virtual martial law imposed in New Orleans after Katrina, the war on the poor sometimes even spilled over into the war on terror. In his latest book, Zeitoun, published in July, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview with Salon, Eggers said:
Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.
Through all the time that the federal and local governments, in concert with wealthy New Orleanians, were pitching their battle, there was virtually no one fighting on the other side. Reviewing the "available evidence" a month after Katrina, the New York Times concluded that "the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations."
The reports of residents firing at National Guard helicopters, of tourists being robbed and raped on Bourbon Street, and of murderous rampages in the Superdome -- all turned out to be false.
Since then it has become increasingly clear that the truth of what happened in New Orleans -- vigilantism and racially tinged violence, a military response that supplanted a humanitarian one -- is equally sinister.
Veteran reporter James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent for Mother Jones magazine.
Copyright © 2009 Mother Jones -- distributed by Agence Global
Thursday, August 27, 2009
plundered for their organs
Our sons plundered for their organs
By Donald Boström
You could call me a “matchmaker,” said Levy Yitzhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed. Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10,000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160,000 dollars. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.
On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: “Quite a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5-6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.
Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.
Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”
Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business - on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).
In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be operated on in Israel.
While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.
Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.
I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza - meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Ahmed Ghanan.
It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone - not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.
As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys - they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.
On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected by the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.
Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.
A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. “Captain Yahya is the worst of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.
Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.
The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Mahmud and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.
- Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted? Nafes’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.
The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Ahmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home et cetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians - of which the army spokesperson was talking - has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.
We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.
It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.
Donald Boström
THIS IS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
By Donald Boström
You could call me a “matchmaker,” said Levy Yitzhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed. Rosenbaum’s matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10,000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160,000 dollars. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News.
On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: “Quite a lot. And I have never failed,” he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation’s Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5-6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world’s kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici.
Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.
Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”
Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business - on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).
In the summer of 1992, Ehud Olmert, then minister of health, tried to address the issue of organ shortage by launching a big campaign aimed at having the Israeli public register for postmortal organ donation. Half a million pamphlets were spread in local newspapers. Ehud Olmert himself was the first person to sign up. A couple of weeks later the Jerusalem Post reported that the campaign was a success. No fewer than 35,000 people had signed up. Prior to the campaign it would have been 500 in a normal month. In the same article, however, Judy Siegel, the reporter, wrote that the gap between supply and demand was still large. 500 people were in line for a kidney transplant, but only 124 transplants could be performed. Of 45 people in need of a new liver, only three could be operated on in Israel.
While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.
Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.
I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza - meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Ahmed Ghanan.
It was close to midnight when the motor roar from an Israeli military column sounded from the outskirts of Imatin, a small village in the northern parts of the West Bank. The two thousand inhabitants were awake. They were still, waiting, like silent shadows in the dark, some lying upon roofs, others hiding behind curtains, walls, or trees that provided protection during the curfew but still offered a full view toward what would become the grave for the first martyr of the village. The military had interrupted the electricity and the area was now a closed-off military zone - not even a cat could move outdoors without risking its life. The overpowering silence of the dark night was only interrupted by quiet sobbing. I don’t remember if our shivering was due to the cold or to the tension. Five days earlier, on May 13, 1992, an Israeli special force had used the village’s carpentry workshop for an ambush. The person they were assigned to put out of action was Bilal Ahmed Ghanan, one of the stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters who made life difficult for the Israeli soldiers.
As one of the leading stone-throwers Bilal Ghanan had been wanted by the military for a couple of years. Together with other stone-throwing boys he hid in the Nablus mountains, with no roof over his head. Getting caught meant torture and death for these boys - they had to stay in the mountains at all costs.
On May 13 Bilal made an exception, when for some reason, he walked unprotected by the carpentry workshop. Not even Talal, his older brother, knows why he took this risk. Maybe the boys were out of food and needed to restock.
Everything went according to plan for the Israeli special force. The soldiers stubbed their cigarettes, put away their cans of Coca-Cola, and calmly aimed through the broken window. When Bilal was close enough they needed only to pull the triggers. The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair. Villagers say that people from both the UN and the Red Crescent were close by, heard the discharge and came to look for wounded people in need of care. Some arguing took place as to who should take care of the victim. Discussions ended with Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family. Five days later he came back, dead and wrapped in green hospital fabric.
A villager recognized Captain Yahya, the leader of the military column who had transported Bilal from the postmortem center Abu Kabir, outside of Tel Aviv, to the place for his final rest. “Captain Yahya is the worst of them all,” the villager whispered in my ear. After Yahya had unloaded the body and changed the green fabric for a light cotton one, some male relatives of the victim were chosen by the soldiers to do the job of digging and mixing cement.
Together with the sharp noises from the shovels we could hear laughter from the soldiers who, as they waited to go home, exchanged some jokes. As Bilal was put in the grave his chest was uncovered. Suddenly it became clear to the few people present just what kind of abuse the boy had been exposed to. Bilal was not by far the first young Palestinian to be buried with a slit from his abdomen up to his chin.
The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Mahmud and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.
- Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted? Nafes’s uncle was upset and he had a lot of questions.
The relatives of the dead Palestinians no longer harbored any doubts as to the reasons for the killings, but the spokesperson for the Israeli army claimed that the allegations of organ theft were lies. All the Palestinian victims go through autopsy on a routine basis, he said. Bilal Ahmed Ghanem was one of 133 Palestinians killed in various ways that year. According to the Palestinian statistics the causes of death were: shot in the street, explosion, tear gas, deliberately run over, hanged in prison, shot in school, killed at home et cetera. The 133 people killed were between four months to 88 years old. Only half of them, 69 victims, went through postmortem examination. The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians - of which the army spokesperson was talking - has no bearing on the reality in the occupied territories. The questions remain.
We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.
It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.
Donald Boström
THIS IS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
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