by Heinrich Buecker, OpEd News
Spectacular Support for Yukihisa Fujita (April 2009)
http://www.911video.de/news/fujita/fu-en.htm
Major 9/11 Breakthrough in Japan
Spectacular Support for Yukihisa Fujita
Massive Support For New 9/11 Investigation
VIDEO OF YUKIHISA FUJITA´S EFFORTS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28OYA85Q7e4
Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Launched
The organization is being supported by a former US governor, a former US senator, former US representatives, and former and present members of the British, German, Japanese, Norwegian, and European parliaments.
45 Political Leaders so far have signed the petition
http://www.pl911truth.com
"Questioning 9/11 Terror at the National Diet - Can Obama Change the USA?"
On April 8 there was a formal reception on the ocassion of the publishing Mr. Fujita's book at the Tokyo Dome Hotel.
The event was organized by a group including the Chairman of the daily newspaper Japan Times, several leading representatives of the Democratic Party and several business excecutives. They hosted the event in honour of Mr. Fujita.
Councilor Fujita is a current member and former director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense. In this function he questioned 9/11 three times in parliament. Fujita claims that 9/11 as the main reason for the "War on Terror" needs to be newly investigated in order to find peaceful solutions.
During the second part of the event formal greetings to Mr. Fujita were presented by the following speakers:
Tadashi Inuzuka, Member of Parliament, member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence
Hideaki Seo, director of Sundai School , chair of Fujita's Political and Economic Forum
Yukio Hatoyama, Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Japan
Kazuo Tanikawa, former Defense Minister and Justice Minister for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party
Yasushi Kurokouchi, fomer ambassador to Switzerland, Nigeria and Tanzania
Haruhiro Shiratori, father of a 9/11 victim.
Yasuo Onuki, former chief of the NHK office in Europe and the US. NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, is Japan's national public broadcasting organization.
Hiroshi Yamada, former chief correspondent for Japan's daily newspaper “Yomiuri” in the US and Europe
Kyoji Takei, chairman of the National Printing Bureau labor union.
http://www.pl911truth.com
http://www.y-fujita.com
http://www.youtube.com/yukihisafujita
http://www2.y-fujita.com/cgi-bin/911/
http://www.election.ne.jp/10870/72795.html
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Pakistanis find success in fetish business - NYTimes
In Pakistan, a flogger is known only as the Taliban’s choice whip for beating those who defy their strict codes of Islam.
But deep in the nation’s commercial capital, just next door to a mosque and the offices of a radical Islamic organization, in an unmarked house two Pakistani brothers have discovered a more liberal and lucrative use for the scourge: the $3 billion fetish and bondage industry in the West.
Their mom-and-pop-style garment business, AQTH, earns more than $1 million a year manufacturing 2,000 fetish and bondage products, including the Mistress Flogger, and exporting them to the United States and Europe.
The Qadeer brothers, Adnan, 34, and Rizwan, 32, have made the business into an improbable success story in a country where bars are illegal and the poor are often bound to a lifetime in poverty.
If the bondage business seems an unlikely pursuit for two button-down, slightly awkward, decidedly deadpan lower-class Pakistanis, it is. But then, discretion has been their byword. The brothers have taken extreme measures to conceal a business that in this deeply conservative Muslim country is as risky as it is risqué.
It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.
“If our mom knew, she would disown us,” said Adnan, seated on a leopard-print fabric covering his desk chair.
“Due to cultural barriers and religion, people don’t discuss these things openly,” Rizwan said. “We have to hide this information.”
Even customs officials were perplexed at how to tax the items, not quite sure what they were, they said.
Recently, when a curious employee inquired about the purpose of the sleep sack, a sleeping bag-like product used in certain kinds of bondage, she was told it was a body bag for the American military in Iraq.
Adnan Ahmed, a former air traffic controller who is now AQTH’s chief operating officer, said the items were undergarments. When asked if he considered a red-hot puppy mask an undergarment, he had a straightforward, but honest reply: “No. It’s just for joking.”
~ more... ~
But deep in the nation’s commercial capital, just next door to a mosque and the offices of a radical Islamic organization, in an unmarked house two Pakistani brothers have discovered a more liberal and lucrative use for the scourge: the $3 billion fetish and bondage industry in the West.
Their mom-and-pop-style garment business, AQTH, earns more than $1 million a year manufacturing 2,000 fetish and bondage products, including the Mistress Flogger, and exporting them to the United States and Europe.
The Qadeer brothers, Adnan, 34, and Rizwan, 32, have made the business into an improbable success story in a country where bars are illegal and the poor are often bound to a lifetime in poverty.
If the bondage business seems an unlikely pursuit for two button-down, slightly awkward, decidedly deadpan lower-class Pakistanis, it is. But then, discretion has been their byword. The brothers have taken extreme measures to conceal a business that in this deeply conservative Muslim country is as risky as it is risqué.
It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.
“If our mom knew, she would disown us,” said Adnan, seated on a leopard-print fabric covering his desk chair.
“Due to cultural barriers and religion, people don’t discuss these things openly,” Rizwan said. “We have to hide this information.”
Even customs officials were perplexed at how to tax the items, not quite sure what they were, they said.
Recently, when a curious employee inquired about the purpose of the sleep sack, a sleeping bag-like product used in certain kinds of bondage, she was told it was a body bag for the American military in Iraq.
Adnan Ahmed, a former air traffic controller who is now AQTH’s chief operating officer, said the items were undergarments. When asked if he considered a red-hot puppy mask an undergarment, he had a straightforward, but honest reply: “No. It’s just for joking.”
~ more... ~
Fetishism goes pop culture: Sweden’s latest social trend
BDSM is more widespread now in Sweden than most people realize, thanks in part to many symbolic sado-masochist references in pop culture and internet networking.
The spread of exhibitionist clubs as well as political lobbying among have also played a role, according to Anna Bäsén, a medical journalist at the Expressen newspaper and co-author of the sold out book “Pervers – Sex utöver det vanliga” ('Perversion – sex that's out of the ordinary').
“It is not unusual to see Madonna or Britney Spears sporting SM clothes and dragging tied up men on their video clips on TV,” she said, noting this was not the norm a decade or two ago.
“We noticed that there is little informative literature about this culture in Sweden or Europe.”
Bäsén's book, co-written by researcher Niklas Långström, looks into most kinks and fetishist preferences within the BDSM culture in Sweden from a medical, social, legal and psychological point of view.
“During the last five years or so, the internet has made it a lot easier for people who have different preferences to meet others who share their preferences, especially sexual interests,” Bäsén explains.
“The club scene has become bigger: there are clubs like Dekadance, Whipclub, Swedish Leather Men – SLM, Lash, Club Sade, Club Sunrise and many more. However, people also arrange private parties.”
She noted that from a legal point of view, private parties enable people to enjoy their sexual preferences without breaking the law – for example, being dressed in German SS Army uniforms, or flashing sexual organs to people who appreciate that kind of “classical exhibitionism.”
Swedish society has also become more accepting of such alternative lifestyles, she says.
This trend was marked officially at the beginning of 2009, when the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) removed Fetishism, Transvestism, and Sadomasochism from its lists of symptoms and sicknesses.
“There are men who feel like going to work dressed in women clothes, and that should not be regarded as sick or illegal,” says Bäsén.
“Nobody rings the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) to get their sick leave benefits because they can't make it to work when they are feeling a little bit sadomasochistic.”
~ more... ~
The spread of exhibitionist clubs as well as political lobbying among have also played a role, according to Anna Bäsén, a medical journalist at the Expressen newspaper and co-author of the sold out book “Pervers – Sex utöver det vanliga” ('Perversion – sex that's out of the ordinary').
“It is not unusual to see Madonna or Britney Spears sporting SM clothes and dragging tied up men on their video clips on TV,” she said, noting this was not the norm a decade or two ago.
“We noticed that there is little informative literature about this culture in Sweden or Europe.”
Bäsén's book, co-written by researcher Niklas Långström, looks into most kinks and fetishist preferences within the BDSM culture in Sweden from a medical, social, legal and psychological point of view.
“During the last five years or so, the internet has made it a lot easier for people who have different preferences to meet others who share their preferences, especially sexual interests,” Bäsén explains.
“The club scene has become bigger: there are clubs like Dekadance, Whipclub, Swedish Leather Men – SLM, Lash, Club Sade, Club Sunrise and many more. However, people also arrange private parties.”
She noted that from a legal point of view, private parties enable people to enjoy their sexual preferences without breaking the law – for example, being dressed in German SS Army uniforms, or flashing sexual organs to people who appreciate that kind of “classical exhibitionism.”
Swedish society has also become more accepting of such alternative lifestyles, she says.
This trend was marked officially at the beginning of 2009, when the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) removed Fetishism, Transvestism, and Sadomasochism from its lists of symptoms and sicknesses.
“There are men who feel like going to work dressed in women clothes, and that should not be regarded as sick or illegal,” says Bäsén.
“Nobody rings the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) to get their sick leave benefits because they can't make it to work when they are feeling a little bit sadomasochistic.”
~ more... ~
Swine flu fiasco
President Ford had been told by his health advisers that there was going to be a huge epidemic of 'swine flu', that this could kill may thousands and the only way to prevent this catastrophe was to vaccinate the entire population of America – every man woman and child - with a specific vaccine.
So the vaccine was manufactured and the biggest vaccination campaign in history was begun. I was concerned because the vaccine could not be properly tested in a short period. None of the recipients would know anything about what they were being injected with and the chances were that many would die suddenly. Furthermore, it was extremely unlikely that an epidemic of swine flu would occur. So I spoke out. At first the newspapers got hold of what I said and headlined, 'Australian Physician Call It Mass Murder'. Then I appeared on Kathy Crosby's television program.
Watching that was a man in New York who did not like a gentleman named Gambino the Mafia boss. Gambino was about 70 years old and had a history of heart problems. It was a simple matter to get someone to persuade Gambino to have the flu shot and Gambino obliged by dropping dead. The newspapers got it right when they stated, 'Mafia Flu Jab Conspiracy'.
People were dropping dead in the buildings where they received their shots. Others became paralyzed. The whole program ground to a halt.
President Ford decided to settle the matter quickly. In front of the whole world, on television, he rolled up his sleeve and 'had his shot'. I claimed at the time that he was given a 'dud' shot and I am certain that this was actually done. Then President Ford invited all the news media men and women who were milling around to line up and have their shots. Only one man volunteered and he happened to be the White House press secretary. All the others refused the invitation.
~ more... ~
So the vaccine was manufactured and the biggest vaccination campaign in history was begun. I was concerned because the vaccine could not be properly tested in a short period. None of the recipients would know anything about what they were being injected with and the chances were that many would die suddenly. Furthermore, it was extremely unlikely that an epidemic of swine flu would occur. So I spoke out. At first the newspapers got hold of what I said and headlined, 'Australian Physician Call It Mass Murder'. Then I appeared on Kathy Crosby's television program.
Watching that was a man in New York who did not like a gentleman named Gambino the Mafia boss. Gambino was about 70 years old and had a history of heart problems. It was a simple matter to get someone to persuade Gambino to have the flu shot and Gambino obliged by dropping dead. The newspapers got it right when they stated, 'Mafia Flu Jab Conspiracy'.
People were dropping dead in the buildings where they received their shots. Others became paralyzed. The whole program ground to a halt.
President Ford decided to settle the matter quickly. In front of the whole world, on television, he rolled up his sleeve and 'had his shot'. I claimed at the time that he was given a 'dud' shot and I am certain that this was actually done. Then President Ford invited all the news media men and women who were milling around to line up and have their shots. Only one man volunteered and he happened to be the White House press secretary. All the others refused the invitation.
~ more... ~
Transhumanism and the limits of democracy
A paper presented by Ronald Bailey at the Workshop on Transhumanism and Democracy
28 Apr, 2009
The workshop addressed such questions as how does the enhancement of human beings through biotechnology, information technology, and applied cognitive sciences affect our understandings of autonomy, personhood, responsibility and free will? And how much and what type of societal control should be exercised over the use of enhancement technologies?
What is transhumanism? A pretty good definition is offered by bioethicist and transhumanist James Hughes who states that transhumanism is "the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition."[i] Specifically, transhumanists welcome the development of intimate technologies that will enable people to boost their life spans, enhance their intellectual capacities, augment their athletic abilities, and choose their preferred emotional states. What's particularly noteworthy is that Hughes argues that democratic decision-making is central to the task of guiding humanity into the transhuman future.
I will argue that where Hughes and others go wrong is in fetishizing democratic decision-making over the protection of minority rights. Second, I will argue that transhumanism should be accepted as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine and, as such, that it should be tolerated in liberal societies by those who disagree with its goals. Third, I will illustrate the problems of democratic authoritarianism by detailing some of the history of legal interference with reproductive rights. And then, I will briefly outline and analyze various arguments used by opponents of human enhancement which they hope will sway a majority into essentially outlawing the transhumanist enterprise.
Hughes and other would-be democratizers fail to recognize that the Enlightenment project that spawned modern liberal democracies sought to keep certain questions about the transcendent out of the public sphere. To keep the social peace and allow various visions of the human to flourish along side of one another, questions about the ultimate meaning and destiny of humanity were deemed to be private concerns.
Similarly, hostility to biotechnological progress must not to be used as an excuse to breach the Enlightenment understanding of what belongs in the private sphere and what belongs in the public. Technologies dealing with birth, death, and the meaning of life need protection from meddling—even democratic meddling—by those who want to control them as a way to force their visions of right and wrong on the rest of us. One's fellow citizens shouldn't get to vote on with whom you have sex, what recreational drugs you ingest, what you read and watch on TV and so forth. Hughes understands that democratic authoritarianism is possible, but discounts the possibility that the majority may well vote to ban the technologies that he believes promise a better world.
In fact, Hughes extols social democracy as the best guarantor of our future biotechnological liberty, while ignoring the fact that it is precisely those social democracies that he praises—Germany, France, Sweden, and Britain—which now, not in the future, outlaw germinal choice, genetic modification, reproductive and therapeutic cloning, and stem cell research. For example, Germany, Austria and Norway ban the creation of human embryonic stem cell lines. Britain outlaws various types of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to enable parents to choose among embryos. (Despite worrisome political agitation against this type of biotech research, in the United States, private research in these areas remains legal. More recently, President Barack Obama directed the National Institutes of Health to begin formulating guidelines under which embryonic stem cell research might receive federal funding.)
This ideal of political equality arose from the Enlightenment's insistence that since no one has access to absolute truth, no one has a moral right to impose his or her values and beliefs on others. Or to put it another way, I may or may not have access to some absolute transcendent truth, but I'm pretty damned sure that you don't.
Under constitutional liberalism, there are questions that should not and cannot be decided by a majority vote. As James Madison eloquently explained in Federalist 51, "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure."[ii] Alexis De Toqueville made the same point when he asked, "If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach?"[iii]
John Rawls updated and extended the arguments supporting these Enlightenment ideals in his Political Liberalism, where he made the case for a limited conception of politics that could reconcile and tolerate diverse "reasonable comprehensive doctrines." According to Rawls, a reasonable comprehensive doctrine has three features: it deals with the major religious, philosophical, and moral aspects of human life in a coherent and consistent fashion; it recognizes certain values as significant, and by giving some primacy of some values over others expresses an intelligible view of the world; and it is not unchanging, but generally evolves slowly over time in light of what its adherents see as good and sufficient reasons.
~ more... ~
28 Apr, 2009
The workshop addressed such questions as how does the enhancement of human beings through biotechnology, information technology, and applied cognitive sciences affect our understandings of autonomy, personhood, responsibility and free will? And how much and what type of societal control should be exercised over the use of enhancement technologies?
What is transhumanism? A pretty good definition is offered by bioethicist and transhumanist James Hughes who states that transhumanism is "the idea that humans can use reason to transcend the limitation of the human condition."[i] Specifically, transhumanists welcome the development of intimate technologies that will enable people to boost their life spans, enhance their intellectual capacities, augment their athletic abilities, and choose their preferred emotional states. What's particularly noteworthy is that Hughes argues that democratic decision-making is central to the task of guiding humanity into the transhuman future.
I will argue that where Hughes and others go wrong is in fetishizing democratic decision-making over the protection of minority rights. Second, I will argue that transhumanism should be accepted as a reasonable comprehensive doctrine and, as such, that it should be tolerated in liberal societies by those who disagree with its goals. Third, I will illustrate the problems of democratic authoritarianism by detailing some of the history of legal interference with reproductive rights. And then, I will briefly outline and analyze various arguments used by opponents of human enhancement which they hope will sway a majority into essentially outlawing the transhumanist enterprise.
Hughes and other would-be democratizers fail to recognize that the Enlightenment project that spawned modern liberal democracies sought to keep certain questions about the transcendent out of the public sphere. To keep the social peace and allow various visions of the human to flourish along side of one another, questions about the ultimate meaning and destiny of humanity were deemed to be private concerns.
Similarly, hostility to biotechnological progress must not to be used as an excuse to breach the Enlightenment understanding of what belongs in the private sphere and what belongs in the public. Technologies dealing with birth, death, and the meaning of life need protection from meddling—even democratic meddling—by those who want to control them as a way to force their visions of right and wrong on the rest of us. One's fellow citizens shouldn't get to vote on with whom you have sex, what recreational drugs you ingest, what you read and watch on TV and so forth. Hughes understands that democratic authoritarianism is possible, but discounts the possibility that the majority may well vote to ban the technologies that he believes promise a better world.
In fact, Hughes extols social democracy as the best guarantor of our future biotechnological liberty, while ignoring the fact that it is precisely those social democracies that he praises—Germany, France, Sweden, and Britain—which now, not in the future, outlaw germinal choice, genetic modification, reproductive and therapeutic cloning, and stem cell research. For example, Germany, Austria and Norway ban the creation of human embryonic stem cell lines. Britain outlaws various types of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to enable parents to choose among embryos. (Despite worrisome political agitation against this type of biotech research, in the United States, private research in these areas remains legal. More recently, President Barack Obama directed the National Institutes of Health to begin formulating guidelines under which embryonic stem cell research might receive federal funding.)
This ideal of political equality arose from the Enlightenment's insistence that since no one has access to absolute truth, no one has a moral right to impose his or her values and beliefs on others. Or to put it another way, I may or may not have access to some absolute transcendent truth, but I'm pretty damned sure that you don't.
Under constitutional liberalism, there are questions that should not and cannot be decided by a majority vote. As James Madison eloquently explained in Federalist 51, "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure."[ii] Alexis De Toqueville made the same point when he asked, "If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach?"[iii]
John Rawls updated and extended the arguments supporting these Enlightenment ideals in his Political Liberalism, where he made the case for a limited conception of politics that could reconcile and tolerate diverse "reasonable comprehensive doctrines." According to Rawls, a reasonable comprehensive doctrine has three features: it deals with the major religious, philosophical, and moral aspects of human life in a coherent and consistent fashion; it recognizes certain values as significant, and by giving some primacy of some values over others expresses an intelligible view of the world; and it is not unchanging, but generally evolves slowly over time in light of what its adherents see as good and sufficient reasons.
~ more... ~
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Pirates: A terrorist-styled hoax, or more "endless war"?
From RobertsCourt.com :
...The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't?
In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o' nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”...
~ more... ~
...The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't?
In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o' nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”...
~ more... ~
qwx - show ur lingua
Our medium is our message!
errorist wanted
"With a single glance at the underside of my tongue the teacher would control if I had spoken the forbidden language at home. When I was a child I still spoke my native tongue“ H.K., Diyarbakir
To stick out your tongue is more than a universal sign of disobedience.
The Errorist project is centred on the search for failures. Its art project „qwx - show ur lingua“ aims to counter the politics which homogenise the subjectivity of people living within the boundaries of Turkey, people who have a variety of ethnic and cultural identities. By prompting people to upload images of their tongues sticking out „qwx - show ur lingua“ aims to create a space of resistance.
Within Turkish society subjects who resist and who live in opposition to the politics of homogenisation are regarded as traitors and are demonised by the Turkish state and by society at large. This demonization is not only a recourse to a mythical being to shape the political and historical perception of the other but also a symbol embedded into everyday language that invokes the unknown, the threatening, and the unintelligible.
Sticking out your tongue deforms the submissive and pleasing expression power and authority expects to see. The face that sticks out its tongue disrespects power and authority by breaking codes of communication that are accepted socially. It provides the demonised other with the means to adopt an image attributed to him/herself and to re-signify it in a way that makes visible its internal other.
Our medium is our message!
The aim of the project is to combine the universal meaning of sticking out your tongue, disobedience, with the demands of the subjects which do not identify themselves as Turks and whose native tongues are not the official language. Those demands are the recognition of their difference and the right to education in their own languages.
~ more... ~
Mexican flu outbreak 2009: Special report by Dr Leonard Horowitz
This unprecedented H1N1-H5N1 flu outbreak implicates the Ango-American Vaccine Pipeline, says world leading consumer health protector, Dr. Leonard Horowitz
Consider the skyrocketing stock values of Novavax, Inc., precipitated by dozens of alleged flu deaths in Mexico. Then investigate the leading Anglo-American network of genetic engineers manipulating, mutating, and distributing these viruses. The evidence compels you, for the benefit of public health and safety to seriously consider, even decree, a conspiracy to commit genocide, according to this Harvard trained expert in emerging diseases.
Here, Dr. Horowitz urges an investigation of Dr. James S. Robertson, Englands leading bioengineer of flu viruses for the vaccine industry, and avid promoter of U.S. Government funding for lucrative biodefense contracts, along with collaborators at the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). These suspects helped Novavax, Inc., in Bethesda, Maryland, produce genetically-modified recombinants of the avian, swine, and Spanish flu viruses, H5N1 and H1N1, nearly identical to the unprecedented Mexican virus that is allegedly spreading to the United States at the time of this posting. The outbreak was precisely timed to promote the companys new research and huge vaccine stockpiling contracts.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are implicated through collaborations and publications involving private contracts with Novavax, a company that obtains its biosimulars through CDC Influenza Branch director, Ruben O. Donis, and Dr. Rick Bright, previously working with Donis at the CDC, now Novavaxs Vice President of Global Influenza Programs.
Descriptions of this virus is pathognomonic, or diagnostic, of a virus that came from Robertsons circle of friends, Dr. Horowitz charges. No other group in the world takes H5N1 Asian flu infected chickens, brings them to Europe, extracts their DNA, combines their proteins with H1N1 viruses from the 1918 Spanish flu isolate, additionally mixes in swine flu genes from pigs, then reverse engineers them to infect humans. The end product could only have ended up in Mexico via the United States from Britain in care of the CDC. The CDC had to have sent them to Novavax, where Rick Brights team is now implicated in a conspiracy to commit genocide—the mass killing of people for profit.
Farbrausch - FR-019: Poem to a Horse
"This 'demo in 64 kilobytes' and winner of the demoparty Mekka-Symposium 2002 is with no doubt a must see when you are interested in computer art. After the 6 minutes you'll probably ask yourself how they put all that stuff in just 64k? But since the appearance of Conspiracy we know that even more is possible ;) "
More than money - What is "the good life"? parable
New York Times bestselling author Mark Albion's 3-minute animated movie "The Good Life" produced with Free Range Studios (The Story of Stuff; The Meatrix) and based on Mark's new book, More Than Money.
"The Good Life" takes you to a chance meeting between an MBA and a fisherman on a small island. As the MBA tries to teach the fisherman about business, the fisherman teaches him about life.
Drug War repression hits Zapatistas and the other campaign
Military Intelligence Leads to Eight Men Detained, Tortured, Charged with Organized Crime in Disputed Agua Azul Region
In an operation that bears all the marks of drug war-style repression, state and federal police detained six adherents to the Other Campaign, one Zapatista, and one unaffiliated man in Agua Azul, Chiapas. The military was also involved; it shot six warning shots into the air with live ammunition at a protest blockade, and it provided military intelligence that Chiapas state officials say was used to detain the men.
The Agua Azul region is an area that in recent years has been the site of violent attacks against Zapatistas perpetrated by members of the paramilitary Organization For Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC). OPDDIC members allegedly participated in the operation.
The state government reports that it intends to charge the detained men with aggravated robbery, assault, and organized crime. Additionally, the government intends to charge the man without organizational affiliation, Juan Alfredo Gomez Moreno, with the kidnapping of a Guerrero senator. The senator, David Jimenez Rumbo, wrote a letter to the national daily La Jornada explaining that he was never kidnapped and that he never filed any charges to that effect.
Troubles began on April 13 when an Other Campaign adherent from San Sebastian Bachajon in the Agua Azul region, Jerónimo Gómez Saragos, went to the city of Ocosingo with five other residents from his ejido (communally owned land) to run errands. The group agreed to meet up at the Caballo Negro store in Ocosingo to leave for their community together. Jerónimo never arrived. At 4pm fellow edijadatario Carlos Hernández Bilchis informed the group that he saw state police grab Jerónimo.
That night, a commission made up of Antonio Gómez Saragos, Miguel Demeza Jiménez, Sebastián Demeza Deara, Pedro Demeza Deara, and Gerónimo Moreno Deara (also referred to as Jeronimo Deara Junto) set out from the Bachajon ejido to investigate Jerónimo's arrest. According to ejido authorities, state police pulled them over in Temó (Chilón municipality), severely beat the five men, and took them to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez where some of them were tortured.
Once the men were in Tuxtla, the state government announced that it had detained a gang of robbers that operated along the highway between the Palenque and Agua Azul tourist destinations. The men, the government claims, stopped busses and robbed passengers at gunpoint.
In paid inserts designed to look like newspaper articles, the government printed large pictures of the detained men and the "weapons" it claims it confiscated from them: pliers, balaclavas, machetes, a walkie-talkie (there is no phone service available in many indigenous communities), and car keys. The paid inserts, which appeared in the national daily La Jornada and the Chiapas newspaper Cuarto Poder, were designed to look like newspaper articles announcing the detention of drug barons.
It is worth noting that the government has not announced the decommission of the guns it claims the men used in the robberies: .9mm and .38 caliber pistols.
Torture
In President Felipe Calderon's fight against organized crime, "organized crime" is commonly assumed to refer to Mexico's notorious drug trafficking organizations. However, as documented in the Narco News article "Regime of Exception: Mexico's Two-Track Justice System," Mexico's legal system distinguishes between organized crime and other crimes, ceding significantly fewer rights to the former. Human rights organizations have criticized the system, saying that a two-track justice system that separates suspects into citizens with rights and supercriminals without rights leaves everyone at risk for violations of internationally consensed-upon due process and human rights.
Because the six men have been accused (though not formally charged) with organized crime, the government has put them under arraigo, or pre-charge detention, for a period of 30 days. The Chiapas-based Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) says that it has "repeatedly denounced that the State Attorney General's Office systematically uses arraigo as an instrument of subjugation and torture in order to extract confessions, not only against members of organized crime, but also against social organizations and movements." Under Mexico's recent judicial reform, which has yet to be fully implemented, arraigo is reserved for people accused of organized crime, rape, homicide, kidnapping, violent crimes, and crimes against national security.
Jerónimo Gómez Saragos told Frayba that his torture begin the moment he was detained. He said that when the state police grabbed him, they punched him in the throat and back. They also planted a cell phone and a camera in his pants pocket (presumably to accuse him of having robbed them from a bus). After the police took him to Tuxtla Gutierrez, they blindfolded him. Utilizing a torture method that sounds strikingly similar to waterboarding, they put a wet towel over his nose and put a bag filled with water over his head. When the government finally permitted human rights observers to see Jerónimo, he had difficulty moving his left arm and he walked with a limp. He says government agents forced him to sign a confession that they didn't read to him. Jerónimo's first language is Tseltal, and he doesn't speak Spanish well. The government says that the confession Jerónimo signed says he participated in at least 20 highway robberies.
~ more... ~
In an operation that bears all the marks of drug war-style repression, state and federal police detained six adherents to the Other Campaign, one Zapatista, and one unaffiliated man in Agua Azul, Chiapas. The military was also involved; it shot six warning shots into the air with live ammunition at a protest blockade, and it provided military intelligence that Chiapas state officials say was used to detain the men.
The Agua Azul region is an area that in recent years has been the site of violent attacks against Zapatistas perpetrated by members of the paramilitary Organization For Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC). OPDDIC members allegedly participated in the operation.
The state government reports that it intends to charge the detained men with aggravated robbery, assault, and organized crime. Additionally, the government intends to charge the man without organizational affiliation, Juan Alfredo Gomez Moreno, with the kidnapping of a Guerrero senator. The senator, David Jimenez Rumbo, wrote a letter to the national daily La Jornada explaining that he was never kidnapped and that he never filed any charges to that effect.
Troubles began on April 13 when an Other Campaign adherent from San Sebastian Bachajon in the Agua Azul region, Jerónimo Gómez Saragos, went to the city of Ocosingo with five other residents from his ejido (communally owned land) to run errands. The group agreed to meet up at the Caballo Negro store in Ocosingo to leave for their community together. Jerónimo never arrived. At 4pm fellow edijadatario Carlos Hernández Bilchis informed the group that he saw state police grab Jerónimo.
That night, a commission made up of Antonio Gómez Saragos, Miguel Demeza Jiménez, Sebastián Demeza Deara, Pedro Demeza Deara, and Gerónimo Moreno Deara (also referred to as Jeronimo Deara Junto) set out from the Bachajon ejido to investigate Jerónimo's arrest. According to ejido authorities, state police pulled them over in Temó (Chilón municipality), severely beat the five men, and took them to the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez where some of them were tortured.
Once the men were in Tuxtla, the state government announced that it had detained a gang of robbers that operated along the highway between the Palenque and Agua Azul tourist destinations. The men, the government claims, stopped busses and robbed passengers at gunpoint.
In paid inserts designed to look like newspaper articles, the government printed large pictures of the detained men and the "weapons" it claims it confiscated from them: pliers, balaclavas, machetes, a walkie-talkie (there is no phone service available in many indigenous communities), and car keys. The paid inserts, which appeared in the national daily La Jornada and the Chiapas newspaper Cuarto Poder, were designed to look like newspaper articles announcing the detention of drug barons.
It is worth noting that the government has not announced the decommission of the guns it claims the men used in the robberies: .9mm and .38 caliber pistols.
Torture
In President Felipe Calderon's fight against organized crime, "organized crime" is commonly assumed to refer to Mexico's notorious drug trafficking organizations. However, as documented in the Narco News article "Regime of Exception: Mexico's Two-Track Justice System," Mexico's legal system distinguishes between organized crime and other crimes, ceding significantly fewer rights to the former. Human rights organizations have criticized the system, saying that a two-track justice system that separates suspects into citizens with rights and supercriminals without rights leaves everyone at risk for violations of internationally consensed-upon due process and human rights.
Because the six men have been accused (though not formally charged) with organized crime, the government has put them under arraigo, or pre-charge detention, for a period of 30 days. The Chiapas-based Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) says that it has "repeatedly denounced that the State Attorney General's Office systematically uses arraigo as an instrument of subjugation and torture in order to extract confessions, not only against members of organized crime, but also against social organizations and movements." Under Mexico's recent judicial reform, which has yet to be fully implemented, arraigo is reserved for people accused of organized crime, rape, homicide, kidnapping, violent crimes, and crimes against national security.
Jerónimo Gómez Saragos told Frayba that his torture begin the moment he was detained. He said that when the state police grabbed him, they punched him in the throat and back. They also planted a cell phone and a camera in his pants pocket (presumably to accuse him of having robbed them from a bus). After the police took him to Tuxtla Gutierrez, they blindfolded him. Utilizing a torture method that sounds strikingly similar to waterboarding, they put a wet towel over his nose and put a bag filled with water over his head. When the government finally permitted human rights observers to see Jerónimo, he had difficulty moving his left arm and he walked with a limp. He says government agents forced him to sign a confession that they didn't read to him. Jerónimo's first language is Tseltal, and he doesn't speak Spanish well. The government says that the confession Jerónimo signed says he participated in at least 20 highway robberies.
~ more... ~
"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom"
From Miracles of Life: J.G. Ballard's pre-posthumous memoir by Mark Dery :
Still, shrinks abound in Ballard's work, many of them poker-faced mouthpieces for the author's ironic polemics: Dr. Wilder Penrose in Super-Cannes (2001), arguing that “a perverse sexual act can liberate the visionary self in even the dullest soul”; Dr. David Markham in Millennium People (2003), coolly observing that in Blair's England “a vicious boredom ruled the world for the first time in human history, interrupted by meaningless acts of violence”; Dr. Tony Maxted in Kingdom Come (2006), opining that psychopathy is “the only guarantee of freedom from all the cant and bullshit and sales commercials fed to us by politicians, bishops and academics.”
Illustration by Kyle T. Webster
In a very real sense, Ballard did become a psychiatrist, albeit a dryly ironic one, at ease with his philosophical bipolar disorder — now profoundly moralistic, now exuberantly amoral, now both. All of his dystopias are in truth pathological utopias; Ballard rejoices in the breakdown of bourgeois morality and the Return of the Repressed. Like the Freud of Civilization and Its Discontents, he can always hear the scrabbling of our sublimated instinctual drives behind Western society's liberal-humanist facade. But unlike Freud, and like R.D. Laing, Norman O. Brown and other radical Freudians of the '60s, Ballard is equally wary of the soft fascism of our master-planned, socially engineered age, with its megamalls and Club Meds, its gated communities and New Urbanist retrovilles. “In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom” is a copyrighted Ballard quote.
Ballard's genius lies in his metaphoric use of scientific jargon and an antiseptic tone, somewhere between the dissecting table and the psychopathic ward, to psychoanalyze postmodernity. Long before deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida were slinging around references to the “decentered” self, Ballard is talking, in his trenchant introduction to Crash (1973), about “the most terrifying casualty of the century: the death of affect” and about “the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods.” Before postmodernists like Jean Baudrillard were announcing the Death of the Real and its unsettling replacement by uncannily convincing media simulations, Ballard is claiming that “we live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind” — advertising, “politics conducted as a branch of advertising,” P.R. “pseudo-events,” et al. — where “Freud's classic distinction between the latent and manifest content of a dream, between the apparent and the real, now needs to be applied to the external world of so-called reality.” And before neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson and Mike Davis were pondering the deeper meanings of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Frank Gehry's Hollywood library, Ballard is pondering the psycho-spatial effects of the built environment: the experience of swooping around a freeway cloverleaf; of walking through a cavernous, empty multistory parking garage; of waiting, alone, in an airport departure lounge; of walking the privately policed streets of an obsessively manicured exurban community. How, Ballard wonders, is our sense of our selves as social beings and moral actors — our very understanding of what it means to be a self — being transformed (deformed?) by the whip-lashing hyperacceleration of technology and the media, the blurring of the distinction between real and fake? Ballard was the first to ask how we became posthuman.
~ more... ~
Still, shrinks abound in Ballard's work, many of them poker-faced mouthpieces for the author's ironic polemics: Dr. Wilder Penrose in Super-Cannes (2001), arguing that “a perverse sexual act can liberate the visionary self in even the dullest soul”; Dr. David Markham in Millennium People (2003), coolly observing that in Blair's England “a vicious boredom ruled the world for the first time in human history, interrupted by meaningless acts of violence”; Dr. Tony Maxted in Kingdom Come (2006), opining that psychopathy is “the only guarantee of freedom from all the cant and bullshit and sales commercials fed to us by politicians, bishops and academics.”
Illustration by Kyle T. WebsterIn a very real sense, Ballard did become a psychiatrist, albeit a dryly ironic one, at ease with his philosophical bipolar disorder — now profoundly moralistic, now exuberantly amoral, now both. All of his dystopias are in truth pathological utopias; Ballard rejoices in the breakdown of bourgeois morality and the Return of the Repressed. Like the Freud of Civilization and Its Discontents, he can always hear the scrabbling of our sublimated instinctual drives behind Western society's liberal-humanist facade. But unlike Freud, and like R.D. Laing, Norman O. Brown and other radical Freudians of the '60s, Ballard is equally wary of the soft fascism of our master-planned, socially engineered age, with its megamalls and Club Meds, its gated communities and New Urbanist retrovilles. “In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom” is a copyrighted Ballard quote.
Ballard's genius lies in his metaphoric use of scientific jargon and an antiseptic tone, somewhere between the dissecting table and the psychopathic ward, to psychoanalyze postmodernity. Long before deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida were slinging around references to the “decentered” self, Ballard is talking, in his trenchant introduction to Crash (1973), about “the most terrifying casualty of the century: the death of affect” and about “the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods.” Before postmodernists like Jean Baudrillard were announcing the Death of the Real and its unsettling replacement by uncannily convincing media simulations, Ballard is claiming that “we live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind” — advertising, “politics conducted as a branch of advertising,” P.R. “pseudo-events,” et al. — where “Freud's classic distinction between the latent and manifest content of a dream, between the apparent and the real, now needs to be applied to the external world of so-called reality.” And before neo-Marxists like Fredric Jameson and Mike Davis were pondering the deeper meanings of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Frank Gehry's Hollywood library, Ballard is pondering the psycho-spatial effects of the built environment: the experience of swooping around a freeway cloverleaf; of walking through a cavernous, empty multistory parking garage; of waiting, alone, in an airport departure lounge; of walking the privately policed streets of an obsessively manicured exurban community. How, Ballard wonders, is our sense of our selves as social beings and moral actors — our very understanding of what it means to be a self — being transformed (deformed?) by the whip-lashing hyperacceleration of technology and the media, the blurring of the distinction between real and fake? Ballard was the first to ask how we became posthuman.
~ more... ~
Australia must urgently develop a "Bill Of Rights"
Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 2:11 pm
Press Release: Rajan Zed
Hindus Ask Australia To Urgently Develop A “Bill Of Rights”
Hindus have asked Australia to create a “bill of rights” as a high-priority.
Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Australia was one of the few Western countries that did not have a charter of rights.
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, says that although Australia does have a National Action Plan for Human Rights, but according to a report of Australia Human Rights Commission (AHRC), a statutory organization that reports to the federal Parliament, this “plan however does not adequately identify positive, forward-looking measures to address the human rights issues…”
Rajan Zed argues that Australia human rights framework needs urgent reform. A recent report by AHRC highlights “a lack of constitutional protection against racial discrimination in Australia” and talks about “absence of any entrenched guarantee against racial discrimination that would override the law of the Commonwealth”.
AHRC report further says, “There is currently no requirement that the legislative, executive or judicial arms of the Australian state take human rights into consideration in the exercise of their respective powers… There is no Federal law to address religious discrimination or vilification… Serious acts of racial hatred or incitement to racial hatred are not criminal offences under federal law… Racial Discrimination Act 1975 does not contain a duty on government agencies to promote equality… Without effective control over proposed developments native title and land rights remain a sham… ethnic minority groups are targeted as an obstacle to social cohesion and stability…etc.”
~ more... ~
Press Release: Rajan Zed
Hindus Ask Australia To Urgently Develop A “Bill Of Rights”
Hindus have asked Australia to create a “bill of rights” as a high-priority.
Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Australia was one of the few Western countries that did not have a charter of rights.
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, says that although Australia does have a National Action Plan for Human Rights, but according to a report of Australia Human Rights Commission (AHRC), a statutory organization that reports to the federal Parliament, this “plan however does not adequately identify positive, forward-looking measures to address the human rights issues…”
Rajan Zed argues that Australia human rights framework needs urgent reform. A recent report by AHRC highlights “a lack of constitutional protection against racial discrimination in Australia” and talks about “absence of any entrenched guarantee against racial discrimination that would override the law of the Commonwealth”.
AHRC report further says, “There is currently no requirement that the legislative, executive or judicial arms of the Australian state take human rights into consideration in the exercise of their respective powers… There is no Federal law to address religious discrimination or vilification… Serious acts of racial hatred or incitement to racial hatred are not criminal offences under federal law… Racial Discrimination Act 1975 does not contain a duty on government agencies to promote equality… Without effective control over proposed developments native title and land rights remain a sham… ethnic minority groups are targeted as an obstacle to social cohesion and stability…etc.”
~ more... ~
Bad Bank of America
Bank of America reported its fiscal first quarter 2009 earnings today in a fraudulent sham and spectacle rigged to exaggerate profits while hiding losses. It was an old page torn from the remarkably thin play book called Masters Shaft the Universe. Once again, America's decrepit financial sector has proved that it's better to have weak competition than good business practices.
The bank reported that it earned $4.2 billion net income — or 44 cents per share after preferred dividends, including $402 million to the U.S. government — in Q1-2009. By earning more in the first quarter than in all of fiscal 2008, the bank sent the clear and false message that the worst of the credit crisis was past and it was safe to throw your money at Bank of America again. It was roughly the sort of thing that had always worked in days of credit bubbles past, but now a large public investor class shredded by the shock wave of the bubble burst would have none of it. They immediately seized upon the fact that the gains were nothing of substance or sustainability, and once it was laid bare, the balance sheet was simply bad.
BofA reported better than expected earnings today, but a quick glance at the income statement shows those profits aren't related to its core banking operations. Strip out trading and the company's pretax profit disappears
BofA reported profit of 44¢ per share. Analysts had been expecting 4¢. But if you back out trading profits, earnings were a paltry 2¢ per share.
…, keeping in mind that it may be impossible to trust the company's calculation of TCE, tangible leverage did improve slightly compared with last quarter, to 43x from 48x.*That's still remarkably high. It means BofA still has a tiny cushion to absorb losses from the asset side of the balance sheet. Assets need only decline 2.3% in order to wipe out what's left of tangible common equity…
What the profits are related to is one time trading gains, proceeds from costly and divisive acquisitions of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial. The bank dumped $2 billion worth of its holding in China Construction Bank, Countrywide contributed mortgage refinancing volume and Merrill Lynch tacked on another $2 billion by seeing the value of it's structured notes take a beating.
But Bank of America's results were helped by some one-time items that analysts said pushed results into positive territory from break-even. Those included a $1.9 billion pretax gain on the sale of shares in China Construction Bank shares, in which the bank continues to hold about a 17 percent stake.
Bank of America also benefited from changed valuations of some investments. In particular, it gained $2.2 billion from an adjustment to the value of structured notes at Merrill, and a benefit of about $1.5 billion in its trading books.
And as those structured notes burn on the balance sheet, management hopes the stench will blow away when the smoke lifts from the accounting forgery, but don't count on it.
Accounting rules enable Bank of America to book the gain on the expectation that it will eventually repurchase the debt at a lower price.
The accounting rule that permits this kind of fraud is SFAS 157. It says the bank can't lose for losing, but even at the Bank of America they know better.
The provision for credit losses of $13.4 billion rose from $8.5 billion in the fourth quarter and included a $6.4 billion net addition to the allowance for loan and lease losses. Reserves were added across most consumer portfolios reflecting increasing economic stress on consumers. Reserves were also increased on commercial portfolios. Nonperforming assets were $25.7 billion compared with $18.2 billion at December 31, 2008 and $7.8 billion at March 31, 2008, reflecting the continued deterioration in portfolios tied to housing. The 2009 coverage ratios and amounts shown in the following table include Merrill Lynch.
The $6.4 billion build up in loan loss reserves speaks louder than any talk of recovery. The build up accompanied a $7 billion write-down on non-performing loans, up 20 percent from the fourth quarter.
~ more... ~
More from the swine flu smoking gun
From Citizens for Legitimate Government :
KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M
By Katherine Hunt
Last update: 12:19 p.m. EST Jan. 24, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co., said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.
Quarantine decision will be left to the locals
Involuntary isolation an option if swine flu explodes into major epidemic
By Linda Carroll
msnbc.com contributor
updated 5:33 p.m. ET April 28, 2009
Quarantine may seem the stuff of mediocre melodramas, but if the swine flu explodes into an epidemic, involuntary isolation could become a reality for more than a few unlucky Americans.
So far the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 68 documented cases of swine flu in the United States, with at least seven people hospitalized. And New York Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden announced that "many hundreds" of New York City schoolchildren are sick with suspected cases of swine flu. Across the country, in Los Angeles, the coroner's office is investigating two possible deaths.
But states say they are ready to protect the public if the infection intensifies.
~ more... ~
KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M
By Katherine Hunt
Last update: 12:19 p.m. EST Jan. 24, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co., said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.
Quarantine decision will be left to the locals
Involuntary isolation an option if swine flu explodes into major epidemic
By Linda Carroll
msnbc.com contributor
updated 5:33 p.m. ET April 28, 2009
Quarantine may seem the stuff of mediocre melodramas, but if the swine flu explodes into an epidemic, involuntary isolation could become a reality for more than a few unlucky Americans.
So far the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 68 documented cases of swine flu in the United States, with at least seven people hospitalized. And New York Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden announced that "many hundreds" of New York City schoolchildren are sick with suspected cases of swine flu. Across the country, in Los Angeles, the coroner's office is investigating two possible deaths.
But states say they are ready to protect the public if the infection intensifies.
~ more... ~
Show of strength from Athens squatters, cops
A very successful protest march in support of squats yesterday afternoon brought out many (estimated between 2,500-4,500) anarchists, leftists and other supporters. Ordinary passersby and shopkeepers along the way were very supportive, as was a trolley driver who refused to stop as commanded by the police when a young man threw a bottle at them from the public vehicle. Street and bank surveillance cameras were trashed.
The police were piqued and came out in force, gathering at various points armed to the teeth (witnessed fingers on machine guns in many cases).
Later in the night a squad protecting the old offices of the PASOK socialist party headquarters was attacked with firebombs so the cops put up a show of force along the perimeter of the anarchist quarter. The newly formed 'Delta Force' bike squad - best known for getting group illegal parking tickets while out on a quest for frappe lattes - gave a mass display of their riding skills.
It looks like this will be an interesting May Day celebration.
*** photo from Athens IMC
The police were piqued and came out in force, gathering at various points armed to the teeth (witnessed fingers on machine guns in many cases).
Later in the night a squad protecting the old offices of the PASOK socialist party headquarters was attacked with firebombs so the cops put up a show of force along the perimeter of the anarchist quarter. The newly formed 'Delta Force' bike squad - best known for getting group illegal parking tickets while out on a quest for frappe lattes - gave a mass display of their riding skills.
It looks like this will be an interesting May Day celebration.
*** photo from Athens IMC
From Thomas a Kempis to Buckaroo Banzai
Great minds think alike, come up with same quote: "Wherever you go, there you are."
According to the Buckaro Banzai FAQ Home Page, it is also attributable to:
According to Karl Williamson, "I heard this in the '70s from the People's Guide to Mexico. I have a '76 edition, but the first edition is shown as 12/72. I've always thought that this quote came from Carl Franz, author of the book.
According to Chris Abalo, it is the title of a song by Luka Bloom
According to Joseph Savitski, The quote "Where ever you go, there you are" is used in the opening pages of P.J. O'Rourke's political commentary book "Give War a Chance", published in 1992.
According to Charlie English : My father, whom is now dead, used to use the subject phrase, "Just remember wherever you go, there you are". When I was an 11 year old boy, I told him the phrase when he was about to leave on a road trip. This would have been in 1959. My father really got a kick out of the comment (phrase) and started saying it. Dad was involved in early TV and created what became TV Guide, then known as TV Weekly. He loved Art Linkletter, Arthur Godfrey, and others and their crazy things kids say and would talk it up around channels 2-4-5 in Salt Lake in the late 50's. My dad added to the phrase and said: " And if you don't watch out...you'll get there." As an adult, I've said this expanded phrase to countless contacts in my sales work. I was telling someone in our office the phrase, and he remembered your version and your website. He wanted me to relay the story to you. Many people have the same thoughts I guess. At eleven, I didn't really know what I was saying but to tease my father who was leaving on another extended road trip. My father passed it on. He died when I was 19 and I've passed it on for 43 years since I uttered it. Anyway, I told my colleague I would write your site to tell my version of your famous phrase, "No matter where...". Enjoy.
According to Chuck Henderson aka Superchuck : On the B-52's 1986 album entitled Cosmic Thing there is a song called The Girl From Imponema goes to Greenland. Towards the end of the song they sing a line that goes: "Remember whereever you go, there you are." Great album, great song and when I first heard it I said, "Hey, those chicks just quoted Buckeroo!, pretty cool, I wonder if they are gonna open for the Cavilers on the next tour." It never happened to my knowledge but I bet it would still be a great show.
Thanks,
According to Crose61514: "I believe that the quote "wherever you go, there you are" is originally a Zen Buddhist ideal, whch seems natural, giving that Buckaroo's father was Japanese."
According to Brian Kelly : "In the beginning of the video for Vertical Horizon's "Everything You Want", the lead singer is in a taxi. There's a sticker on the divider that says "Wherever you go, there you are."
According to RT Gault : "I was reading your faq and came to the section about the line "No matter where you go, there you are" This is a variation of the final line from Lord Buckley's monologue known as "Jonah and the Whale" which dates from the 1050s. It goes:
"Which only goes to prove, as Confushi said, 'If you get to it, and you can't do it....? There you jolly well are, aren't you!'
See: (http://www.columbia.edu/~tdk3/jonah.html)
Richard "Lord" Buckley (1906-1960) was a big cult fav among beatniks and hippies and the line has been borrowed, redressed, and recycled many times over the years. I believe than many of the examples sited on the faq page are really paraphrases of Buckley rather than paraphrases from the Buckeroo."
According to E : "I actually first saw the qoute in a book titled "Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball", by Paul Zindel. Imagine my surprise when I happened to pick up Buckaroo and he quoted my favorite line!"
According to Jeffrey S. Legg : "The saying "No matter where you go, there you are" was said by the character, PigKiller, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."
According to Sam Dingman : "It's right at the start when Arnold goes into Recall for a vacation and the salesman says something like (I was gonna check exactly, but I can't seem to find my copy of Total Recall) (to Arnold) "What's the same thing about every vacation you've ever been on?" Arnold looks confused, then the sales man says "You! ..... No matter where you go, there you are!" then procedes to give a little schpiel about how fun it would be to have a vacation as someone else."
[ ... ]According to Mike : "In Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Felicity and Austin say "No matter where we go, there we are."
[ ... ]According to the Buckaroo Banzai Trivia and References Page (http://kumo.swcp.com/synth/text/bb.references/) maintained by by Vince Mora : "(All info obtained from Denise Tathwell, director of the now-defunct Buckaroo Banzai Fan Club at 20th Century Fox.)
In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the starship Excelsior's bridge dedication plaque bore the motto "No matter where you go, there you are."
In Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, one of the characters uses the line "No matter where you go ... there you are ..."
According to Katie : "A Very Brady Sequel was on the same night that I saw BB for the first time. I flipped channels right after Pa Brady said, "and remember kids, a very wise man once said, 'wherever you go, there you are.'"
Scott Tate had the following correction to the above information : "In regards to your newly-added question about references to the oft-quoted "No matter where you go" line, I have a correction.
Katie cites an occurance in A Very Brady Sequel. I suspect this was a slip of the tongue and she meant to cite 1995's The Brady Bunch Movie, not 1996's A Very Brady Sequel. The always-useful Internet Movie Database corroborates this and, additionally, that particular clip of dialogue is available on the Brady Bunch Movie soundtrack."
According to Aaron Zimlich : "No matter where you go, there we are." That is the new slogan for Nations Bank. Coincidence?? Nahhh!
The global threat from hunger
24 Apr, 2009
More and more countries invest in foreign agriculture to build 'food security' at home. Feeding the rich might end up starving the poor as foreign-owned farms threaten the livelihood of native farmers, says Patrick Seale.
Over one billion people go hungry every day -- that is to say, one sixth of the world's population of 6.5 billion. They are not just hungry from time to time. They are chronicallyhungry. They can never find enough food to feed their children or meet their own needs. Their number is growing.
What is the world doing about it? The answer is: very little.
The problem is too big, too widespread and -- and also, in a sense, too slow moving -- for rich countries to give it the priority it deserves. World hunger did not feature among the top concerns of the G-20 at their recent summit meeting in London.
Yet, it is beginning to be realised that food insecurity poses a threat to global stability. Meeting in Italy last weekend, agriculture ministers of the G8 industrialised countries recognised the extent of the problem. They pledged to continue fighting hunger. But beyond calling for increased public and private investment in agriculture, the final communiqué was short on fresh proposals. The only good news was the announcement by the Obama Administration that it would double US aid to agriculture in poor countries to $1bn next year.
The ministers were given a report by the Italian presidency which warned that, if widespread starvation was to be avoided, global agricultural output had to double by 2050 -- when the world's population would reach a staggering 9 billion. The report called for “immediate interventions.” But nothing immediate was suggested.
When prices of agricultural commodities surged in 2007-2008, some thirty countries -- from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh -- were shaken by food riots. Illegal migration to Europe increased from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. Piracy off the Somali coast captured the world's attention, but few were prepared to recognise that its roots lay in poverty.
Many diverse factors lie behind the world-wide increase in hunger. They include a soaring world population, which is said to be increasing by 80 million a year; a shortage of water and arable land, notably in the dry Middle East; highly volatile food prices; financial constraints which prevent some governments from continuing to subsidise food prices at former levels; a flight of young people from the land; and -- that new and terrifying imponderable -- climate change.
The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that an injection of 30 billion Euros a year into family farming across the world could hold hunger in check, and even reverse it. But the FAO appeal has largely fallen on deaf ears.
As collective action by world powers is unlikely, countries with the means to do so are outsourcing the problem of food security by buying or leasing vast tracts of arable land outside their borders.
Saudi Arabia, for example, has already secured 1.6 million hectares of agricultural land in Indonesia. As it is phasing out its own wheat production to conserve finite water resources, it is planning to invest heavily in agricultural projects abroad. A state-owned organisation -- the Saudi Company for Agricultural Investment and Animal Production, with an initial capital of $800m – is trying to interest private Saudi investors in foreign farm projects by providing credit and by negotiating deals with Australia and Argentina, as well as with countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Many such contracts have been concluded or are in prospect. Something like a world-wide scramble for land is taking place. The United Arab Emirates has secured 1.3 million hectares overseas, mainly in Sudan and Pakistan. Indeed Pakistan, according to a Reuters report this week, has offered to sell or lease large tracts of farmland to countries anxious to secure their food supplies. Qatar has land holdings in Indonesia; Kuwait has similar holdings in Burma; while Libya is about to sign a large contract for farmland in Ukraine. Jordan has set its sights on Sudan.
South Korea -- a resource-poor but heavily populated country -- has acquired over one million hectares in Sudan, Mongolia, Indonesia and Argentina. Just last week, the Financial Times reported that a South Korean company, Hyundai Heavy Industries, planned to lease 50,000 hectares of farmland in Russia's far-east.
China, too, has long been interested in the undeveloped lands of Russia's far-east. According to the French daily Le Monde, between 400,000 and 700,000 Chinese peasants have already settled permanently in that Russian region, which is geographically closer to Beijing than to Moscow. It is also estimated that a million Chinese peasants might find their way to Africa over the next year or two.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, China feeds 20 per cent of the world's population with just 10 per cent of the world's agricultural land and about six per cent of the world's water resources.
One of the problems of these new semi-colonial plantations is that much of the food produced there will not be consumed on the spot but will be exported to the countries that put up the money -- to China, South Korea and the Arab world. This might actually increase food scarcity in the host countries. Foreign-owned farms could also threaten the lives of native farmers. Often without title to ownership, they face the threat of expulsion by the newcomers.
Feeding the rich might end up starving the poor.
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.
~ Middle East Online ~
More and more countries invest in foreign agriculture to build 'food security' at home. Feeding the rich might end up starving the poor as foreign-owned farms threaten the livelihood of native farmers, says Patrick Seale.
Over one billion people go hungry every day -- that is to say, one sixth of the world's population of 6.5 billion. They are not just hungry from time to time. They are chronicallyhungry. They can never find enough food to feed their children or meet their own needs. Their number is growing.
What is the world doing about it? The answer is: very little.
The problem is too big, too widespread and -- and also, in a sense, too slow moving -- for rich countries to give it the priority it deserves. World hunger did not feature among the top concerns of the G-20 at their recent summit meeting in London.
Yet, it is beginning to be realised that food insecurity poses a threat to global stability. Meeting in Italy last weekend, agriculture ministers of the G8 industrialised countries recognised the extent of the problem. They pledged to continue fighting hunger. But beyond calling for increased public and private investment in agriculture, the final communiqué was short on fresh proposals. The only good news was the announcement by the Obama Administration that it would double US aid to agriculture in poor countries to $1bn next year.
The ministers were given a report by the Italian presidency which warned that, if widespread starvation was to be avoided, global agricultural output had to double by 2050 -- when the world's population would reach a staggering 9 billion. The report called for “immediate interventions.” But nothing immediate was suggested.
When prices of agricultural commodities surged in 2007-2008, some thirty countries -- from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh -- were shaken by food riots. Illegal migration to Europe increased from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. Piracy off the Somali coast captured the world's attention, but few were prepared to recognise that its roots lay in poverty.
Many diverse factors lie behind the world-wide increase in hunger. They include a soaring world population, which is said to be increasing by 80 million a year; a shortage of water and arable land, notably in the dry Middle East; highly volatile food prices; financial constraints which prevent some governments from continuing to subsidise food prices at former levels; a flight of young people from the land; and -- that new and terrifying imponderable -- climate change.
The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that an injection of 30 billion Euros a year into family farming across the world could hold hunger in check, and even reverse it. But the FAO appeal has largely fallen on deaf ears.
As collective action by world powers is unlikely, countries with the means to do so are outsourcing the problem of food security by buying or leasing vast tracts of arable land outside their borders.
Saudi Arabia, for example, has already secured 1.6 million hectares of agricultural land in Indonesia. As it is phasing out its own wheat production to conserve finite water resources, it is planning to invest heavily in agricultural projects abroad. A state-owned organisation -- the Saudi Company for Agricultural Investment and Animal Production, with an initial capital of $800m – is trying to interest private Saudi investors in foreign farm projects by providing credit and by negotiating deals with Australia and Argentina, as well as with countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
Many such contracts have been concluded or are in prospect. Something like a world-wide scramble for land is taking place. The United Arab Emirates has secured 1.3 million hectares overseas, mainly in Sudan and Pakistan. Indeed Pakistan, according to a Reuters report this week, has offered to sell or lease large tracts of farmland to countries anxious to secure their food supplies. Qatar has land holdings in Indonesia; Kuwait has similar holdings in Burma; while Libya is about to sign a large contract for farmland in Ukraine. Jordan has set its sights on Sudan.
South Korea -- a resource-poor but heavily populated country -- has acquired over one million hectares in Sudan, Mongolia, Indonesia and Argentina. Just last week, the Financial Times reported that a South Korean company, Hyundai Heavy Industries, planned to lease 50,000 hectares of farmland in Russia's far-east.
China, too, has long been interested in the undeveloped lands of Russia's far-east. According to the French daily Le Monde, between 400,000 and 700,000 Chinese peasants have already settled permanently in that Russian region, which is geographically closer to Beijing than to Moscow. It is also estimated that a million Chinese peasants might find their way to Africa over the next year or two.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, China feeds 20 per cent of the world's population with just 10 per cent of the world's agricultural land and about six per cent of the world's water resources.
One of the problems of these new semi-colonial plantations is that much of the food produced there will not be consumed on the spot but will be exported to the countries that put up the money -- to China, South Korea and the Arab world. This might actually increase food scarcity in the host countries. Foreign-owned farms could also threaten the lives of native farmers. Often without title to ownership, they face the threat of expulsion by the newcomers.
Feeding the rich might end up starving the poor.
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.
~ Middle East Online ~
How long will world hunger persist?
Why are people still dying of starvation in this world when there are mountains of food rotting in warehouses?
Unfortunately, the Food Mountains of which I speak are in one place, and the starving people are in another. Perishable food is just that, so it cannot be transported anywhere. Some of it can be dehydrated and sent to areas where it is needed but this costs money for the processing, packages, transport and distribution. Although some companies may give away their extra food, others may not have the funds available to do all this.
It is not only third world countries that have this problem. Even in a country with as much abundant resources as the United States, people of all ages go days without eating. In this country especially, one would think that there is enough food to go around for everyone. I guess it does not matter that the food is out there if the poor cannot afford to buy it, and there is no money to be made in giving food away, right?
[ ... ]
Globally, between 13 and 18 million people die each year from malnourishment or starvation-related causes. This means that there are nearly as many people dying each day as Americans who died in the entire Vietnam War. In today's world, starvation should no longer be an issue.
~ more... ~
Unfortunately, the Food Mountains of which I speak are in one place, and the starving people are in another. Perishable food is just that, so it cannot be transported anywhere. Some of it can be dehydrated and sent to areas where it is needed but this costs money for the processing, packages, transport and distribution. Although some companies may give away their extra food, others may not have the funds available to do all this.
It is not only third world countries that have this problem. Even in a country with as much abundant resources as the United States, people of all ages go days without eating. In this country especially, one would think that there is enough food to go around for everyone. I guess it does not matter that the food is out there if the poor cannot afford to buy it, and there is no money to be made in giving food away, right?
[ ... ]
Globally, between 13 and 18 million people die each year from malnourishment or starvation-related causes. This means that there are nearly as many people dying each day as Americans who died in the entire Vietnam War. In today's world, starvation should no longer be an issue.
~ more... ~
What 'The Biggest Loser' and the Bush administration have in common
A footnote that was included as part of the Bush torture memos uses this justification for starvation techniques employed for the purpose of information gathering: “. . . we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1,000 kcal/day for sustained periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision. While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”
This quote is a flawless example of two things: One, the way the Bush Administration viewed torture, and two, the way our society has been conditioned to think about dieting.
First – and this seems strikingly obvious – people do a lot of things voluntarily that could hurt their bodies, and do it without medical supervision. They shoot heroin, they inflict self-harm in the form of cutting, they have unprotected sex, they go to tanning beds and fry their skin. Does this mean raping prisoners, injecting them with drugs, forcing them into casket-like devices and blasting them with UV rays is an ethical way to torture, too? Voluntary self-harm is problematic in its own way in terms of one's mental health and well-being, but when detainees are forced into it, another dimension is added that cannot be overlooked.
The Bush Administration hoped to trivialize their torture techniques by looking to commercial diet plans, but such a comparison also leads one to consider that, because 1,000 calories a day was employed as a means of torture, the human body will suffer if it is subjected to such methods, even if voluntarily. Mentally, it's not the same as being forced to starve. But physically, the effects are likely quite similar. And yet we do it all the time. In fact, fat people are told that if they don't do it, then they are killing themselves, or at least “letting themselves go.”
~ more... ~
This quote is a flawless example of two things: One, the way the Bush Administration viewed torture, and two, the way our society has been conditioned to think about dieting.
First – and this seems strikingly obvious – people do a lot of things voluntarily that could hurt their bodies, and do it without medical supervision. They shoot heroin, they inflict self-harm in the form of cutting, they have unprotected sex, they go to tanning beds and fry their skin. Does this mean raping prisoners, injecting them with drugs, forcing them into casket-like devices and blasting them with UV rays is an ethical way to torture, too? Voluntary self-harm is problematic in its own way in terms of one's mental health and well-being, but when detainees are forced into it, another dimension is added that cannot be overlooked.
The Bush Administration hoped to trivialize their torture techniques by looking to commercial diet plans, but such a comparison also leads one to consider that, because 1,000 calories a day was employed as a means of torture, the human body will suffer if it is subjected to such methods, even if voluntarily. Mentally, it's not the same as being forced to starve. But physically, the effects are likely quite similar. And yet we do it all the time. In fact, fat people are told that if they don't do it, then they are killing themselves, or at least “letting themselves go.”
~ more... ~
The hidden hunger behind India's huge success
UJALA is starving to death. She is four months old but weighs only 1.5 kilograms, about a third of what the World Health Organisation says is normal for her age.
The sagging skin on her tiny limbs and her grossly distended stomach are signs of acute malnutrition. Her hip bones protrude like gross deformities and her face winces with a hacking cough.
It is an image often associated with famine in Africa. But Ujala is not from Africa but India, a nation destined to be an economic and political super power. For some years India has been one of the fastest growing economies and average incomes have risen steadily.
Economic reforms initiated in the early 1990s have been good to the rich. The 2009 Forbes Rich List, released this month, named two Indians among the world's 10 wealthiest individuals. India also has a rapidly expanding middle class. According to some estimates more than 200 million Indians now have spending power to rival that of consumers in developed countries such as Australia and the US.
But India is also home to a quarter of the world's hungry - about 230 million people - according to a World Food Program report released last month. More than 455 million Indians survive on $US1.25 a day or less, compared with 420 million in 1981.
A towering symbol of these two Indias is adjacent to Ujala's village in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India - a telecommunications antenna. So while Ujala wastes away, her family's mud hut has perfect mobile reception and wireless internet access.
Despite the economic boom, progress in reducing child malnutrition has been slow. About 42 per cent of children under five are underweight compared with 7 per cent in China, India's neighbour.
The Washington thinktank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, says almost a fifth of India's population is "food insecure".
In Ujala's state about 60 per cent of children under five are malnourished and almost one in 10 infants die before they reach the age of five. That ranks Madhya Pradesh alongside Chad and Ethiopia for child malnutrition, the institute says.
~ more... ~
The sagging skin on her tiny limbs and her grossly distended stomach are signs of acute malnutrition. Her hip bones protrude like gross deformities and her face winces with a hacking cough.
It is an image often associated with famine in Africa. But Ujala is not from Africa but India, a nation destined to be an economic and political super power. For some years India has been one of the fastest growing economies and average incomes have risen steadily.
Economic reforms initiated in the early 1990s have been good to the rich. The 2009 Forbes Rich List, released this month, named two Indians among the world's 10 wealthiest individuals. India also has a rapidly expanding middle class. According to some estimates more than 200 million Indians now have spending power to rival that of consumers in developed countries such as Australia and the US.
But India is also home to a quarter of the world's hungry - about 230 million people - according to a World Food Program report released last month. More than 455 million Indians survive on $US1.25 a day or less, compared with 420 million in 1981.
A towering symbol of these two Indias is adjacent to Ujala's village in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India - a telecommunications antenna. So while Ujala wastes away, her family's mud hut has perfect mobile reception and wireless internet access.
Despite the economic boom, progress in reducing child malnutrition has been slow. About 42 per cent of children under five are underweight compared with 7 per cent in China, India's neighbour.
The Washington thinktank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, says almost a fifth of India's population is "food insecure".
In Ujala's state about 60 per cent of children under five are malnourished and almost one in 10 infants die before they reach the age of five. That ranks Madhya Pradesh alongside Chad and Ethiopia for child malnutrition, the institute says.
~ more... ~
Dealing with the hidden hunger of our children
New Delhi : A recent article in the New York Times by Somini Sengupta points out that despite galloping economic growth in India, we have one of the worst malnutrition rates in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa, which conjures up images of famines and emaciated babies, has almost half our percentage of underweight children.
So why is there little discussion in the Indian media on the whole issue of malnutrition? When you speak of malnutrition, the response is often glazed eyes and a bored look. In journalism slang, subjects which excite a reader's attention instantly are termed "sexy", those which do not evoke immediate interest are termed "turnoffs". For instance, people respond immediately when they read about starvation deaths during famines and disasters. But it is less easy to evoke sympathy and support when the plight of the victims does not hit you squarely in the face. Ninety per cent of malnutrition cases in India are of the chronically undernourished, where there are not necessarily obvious outward symptoms. Nevertheless this malnutrition doubles our infant mortality rate, making the child twice as susceptible to disease because of lowered immunity.
In India, we suffer largely from "hidden hunger" which does not always manifest itself in an emaciated appearance. It is a hunger caused by the constant or recurrent lack of food of sufficient quality and quantity. It is the deprivation of vitamins and minerals, essential micronutrients which are necessary for proper growth, physical fitness and mental development. Seventy per cent of Indian children suffer from anaemia (iron deficiency) and over 50 per cent suffer from serious vitamin A deficiency.
If hidden hunger is a not a sexy subject, debates on how to fight this malady are even more of a turnoff. This perhaps explains why articles on nutrition programmes in India focus generally on the only sexy solution, the need for hot cooked meals. There is a tendency to look with suspicion on other nutrition initiatives, acceptable worldwide, to combat malnutrition. Sometimes writers even hint darkly that other initiatives promoted by reputed international bodies are simply conspiracies to favour corrupt contractors or business interests.
~ more... ~
So why is there little discussion in the Indian media on the whole issue of malnutrition? When you speak of malnutrition, the response is often glazed eyes and a bored look. In journalism slang, subjects which excite a reader's attention instantly are termed "sexy", those which do not evoke immediate interest are termed "turnoffs". For instance, people respond immediately when they read about starvation deaths during famines and disasters. But it is less easy to evoke sympathy and support when the plight of the victims does not hit you squarely in the face. Ninety per cent of malnutrition cases in India are of the chronically undernourished, where there are not necessarily obvious outward symptoms. Nevertheless this malnutrition doubles our infant mortality rate, making the child twice as susceptible to disease because of lowered immunity.
In India, we suffer largely from "hidden hunger" which does not always manifest itself in an emaciated appearance. It is a hunger caused by the constant or recurrent lack of food of sufficient quality and quantity. It is the deprivation of vitamins and minerals, essential micronutrients which are necessary for proper growth, physical fitness and mental development. Seventy per cent of Indian children suffer from anaemia (iron deficiency) and over 50 per cent suffer from serious vitamin A deficiency.
If hidden hunger is a not a sexy subject, debates on how to fight this malady are even more of a turnoff. This perhaps explains why articles on nutrition programmes in India focus generally on the only sexy solution, the need for hot cooked meals. There is a tendency to look with suspicion on other nutrition initiatives, acceptable worldwide, to combat malnutrition. Sometimes writers even hint darkly that other initiatives promoted by reputed international bodies are simply conspiracies to favour corrupt contractors or business interests.
~ more... ~
`Very ugly silence' broken as MPPs come together to mark Ukraine famine
...Levac (L–Brant), Klees (PC–Newmarket-Aurora) and DiNovo (NDP–Parkdale-High Park) come from three different parties, so their collaboration was as novel as it was uplifting. Together, they had drafted the province's first-ever tri-sponsored private members' bill. And it had just passed third reading to establish the fourth Saturday in November each year as Holodomor Memorial Day.
The memorial day, Levac said, will provide an opportunity to reflect on and to educate the public about crimes against humanity that occurred in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 under the Stalin regime, when as many as 10 million people perished in a man-made famine and genocide.
In winning passage of the bill, there was, Levac said, a compelling human imperative at play – an obligation to "speak of the unspeakable."
There was no better bill than this to have produced such historic collaboration, DiNovo has said.
"A very ugly silence has been broken," she said. Voices have been raised around the world now in Ontario to say "This happened."
During debate on the bill, DiNovo told of how a member of the Toronto congregation at which she was pastor once came to her and asked: "Do you think God will forgive me?
"I couldn't imagine what this sweet little old lady had ever done," DiNovo said. "And she said, `I would ask forgiveness for having tasted, having eaten, human flesh.'
"Because it was during the Holodomor that families who were trying to keep their children alive had to," DiNovo told the House. "They were driven to engage in cannibalism of those who had dropped by the wayside.
"Imagine being confronted by that," she said. "What I don't think God would understand is if we keep silent about it, if we do nothing about it.
"The very bones of the victims cry out for this day to be acknowledged, for this genocide to be named."
The name speaks for itself, based on two Ukrainian words — "holod," meaning hunger, starvation, famine; and "moryty," to induce suffering, to kill.
Klees said a tragedy in which, at its worst, 25,000 people died every single day in a region considered the Soviet Union's breadbasket, traumatized a nation, leaving its people "with deep social, psychological, political" scars.
To be sure, famine wounds a people's soul forever. Nothing, not even massacre, says the writer Thomas Keneally, has the effect on the folk memory that famine does.
The memory of hunger, he said, might be worse than the memory of terror. Generations on, the fear of it echoes down ancestral lines, those who've heard the stories never confident the worst of losses won't recur. Memories of African famines of contemporary times will last, Keneally predicted, "into the 22nd century."...
~ more... ~
The memorial day, Levac said, will provide an opportunity to reflect on and to educate the public about crimes against humanity that occurred in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 under the Stalin regime, when as many as 10 million people perished in a man-made famine and genocide.
In winning passage of the bill, there was, Levac said, a compelling human imperative at play – an obligation to "speak of the unspeakable."
There was no better bill than this to have produced such historic collaboration, DiNovo has said.
"A very ugly silence has been broken," she said. Voices have been raised around the world now in Ontario to say "This happened."
During debate on the bill, DiNovo told of how a member of the Toronto congregation at which she was pastor once came to her and asked: "Do you think God will forgive me?
"I couldn't imagine what this sweet little old lady had ever done," DiNovo said. "And she said, `I would ask forgiveness for having tasted, having eaten, human flesh.'
"Because it was during the Holodomor that families who were trying to keep their children alive had to," DiNovo told the House. "They were driven to engage in cannibalism of those who had dropped by the wayside.
"Imagine being confronted by that," she said. "What I don't think God would understand is if we keep silent about it, if we do nothing about it.
"The very bones of the victims cry out for this day to be acknowledged, for this genocide to be named."
The name speaks for itself, based on two Ukrainian words — "holod," meaning hunger, starvation, famine; and "moryty," to induce suffering, to kill.
Klees said a tragedy in which, at its worst, 25,000 people died every single day in a region considered the Soviet Union's breadbasket, traumatized a nation, leaving its people "with deep social, psychological, political" scars.
To be sure, famine wounds a people's soul forever. Nothing, not even massacre, says the writer Thomas Keneally, has the effect on the folk memory that famine does.
The memory of hunger, he said, might be worse than the memory of terror. Generations on, the fear of it echoes down ancestral lines, those who've heard the stories never confident the worst of losses won't recur. Memories of African famines of contemporary times will last, Keneally predicted, "into the 22nd century."...
~ more... ~
Rolls-Royce anger over China copy
Rolls-Royce is consulting its lawyers after Chinese carmaker Geely unveiled a copycat version of the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
With its monumental proportions, vast classical radiator and with a Flying Lady figure on top, the Chinese version looks exactly like the luxurious British car. But its price of just £30,000 is a fraction of the £250,000 of the original.
~ Independent.ie ~
With its monumental proportions, vast classical radiator and with a Flying Lady figure on top, the Chinese version looks exactly like the luxurious British car. But its price of just £30,000 is a fraction of the £250,000 of the original.
~ Independent.ie ~
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Arpan (Ravi Shankar for George Harrison)
"Anoushka Shankar and a 16-piece orchestra performing a composition especially written by her father, Ravi Shankar for George Harrison. Eric Clapton also played the guitar at the end.
Beautiful piece..."
Baxter working on vaccine to stop swine flu, though admitted sending live pandemic flu viruses to subcontractor
By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org
26 Apr 2009
Permanent URL for this page: http://www.legitgov.org/baxter_flu_vaccine_260409.html
26 Apr 2009
The OMFG moment of the century: Illinois-based Baxter working on vaccine to 'stop' swine flu outbreak in Mexico 25 Apr 2009 Specialty drug maker Baxter International Inc. will work with the World Health Organization to develop a vaccine that could stem [foment] an outbreak of a deadly swine flu strain in Mexico. Baxter spokesman Christopher Bona said Saturday that the Deerfield, Ill.-based company has asked the WHO for a sample of the flu strain. He says Baxter has patented technology that allows the company to develop vaccines in half the time it usually takes -- about 13 weeks instead of 26. [Is Baxter International taking a page from the Blackwater playbook? Just as Blackwater/Xe keep on killing to justify their multi-billion dollar contracts to provide 'security' in Iraq and Afghanistan, Baxter International is poised to make *billions* to vaccinate people against their pandemic.]
Are you ready? Wait for it...
Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic [Uh, it apparently f*cking *did.*] 06 Mar 2009 It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab [the Austrian branch of US vaccine company, Baxter] last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
'This was infected with a bird flu virus.' Viral Pandemic H5N1 flu threat: Illinois-based Baxter contaminates European labs by error 25 Feb 2009 According to the scientific network PROMED, Baxter International Inc. in Austria "unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease". As PROMED reports, the contamination has been discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. "The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview", the network-alert-system is quoting. "This was infected with a bird flu virus," Rosenberger said. "There were some people from the company who handled it."
'That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.' Baxter admits sending live avian flu viruses to subcontractor --People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled [!] in the Orth-Donau facility. 27 Feb 2009 The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses. And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria. [Source: The Canadian Press]
Spectre of pandemic 26 Apr 2009 The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of Mexico's dead were young, healthy adults, and none was aged older than 60 or or younger than three, the World Health Organisation said. This has alarmed health officials... Pandemic flus - like the 1918 Spanish flu and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics - often strike young, healthy people the hardest. Mexican officials promised a huge immunisation campaign in the capital this week. [The deadly vaccine program *ensures* a pandemic!]
CLG: Flu Kills The Torture Memos --In a 'Holy convenience, Batman!' moment, a 'unique' flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects. By Lori Price 26 April 2009 Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That's right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population -- backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from the flu -- but from the *vaccine.* [See compendium of key flu articles here.]
Sanofi Aventis Invests 100 Million Euros In New Facility In Mexico to Produce Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Vaccine 19 Mar 2009 Sanofi-aventis, announced the signing of an agreement with the Mexican authorities to build a 100 million euro facility to manufacture influenza vaccine in Mexico. The announcement was made during a ceremony attended by Felipe Calderon, [unelected] President of Mexico, and Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, who was in Mexico City for a State visit. "By building this new facility, sanofi-aventis is proud to contribute to the strengthening of Mexico's health infrastructure and is eager to support Mexico's exemplary commitment to public health through influenza immunization and pandemic readiness", said Chris Viehbacher, Chief Executive Officer of sanofiaventis. [Now, that's what I call foresight!]
DoD to 'augment civilian law' during pandemic or bioterror attack
Permanent URL for this page: http://www.legitgov.org/baxter_flu_vaccine_260409.html
Open letter of Antinazi Initiative to the democrats in Greece and in Europe
From the Antinazi Initiative :
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A GREEK COURT LEGALIZES THE CALL FOR THE EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS
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THIS HORRIFYING DECISION IS COVERED BY THE OFFICIAL POLITICAL WORLD
Don't let Greece turn into the first racist state in the European Union
On March 27, 2009 the Appeal Court of Athens acquitted the nazi and racist Kostas Plevris for his book “The Jews: The whole Truth”. The book is an unprecedented praise of the Third Reich, Hitler, the SS and the racist war they launched against the peoples. In this K. Plevris tries to establish the reasons for which Greece and the whole Europe should get rid of the “sub-human” and “treacherous” Jews!!! The book as a whole and in every page is the most exemplary and vociferous case for the enforcement of the antiracist Law 927/79, for the violation of which the nazi was committed for trial in September 2007 on charges brought against him for “incitement to racial hatred” and for “offensive speech against a group of people”, specifically the Jews on the grounds of their ethnic, racial or religious identity.
Yet, the Appeals Court acquitted him overturning the first-degree decision for his conviction, ruling that extracts of the book as the following are not calls for violence and incitement to hatred against the Jews, nor insults against them!!!
- “That's what the Jews deserve. For it's the only way they understand: firing squad within 24 hours...”
- “Wake up, the treacherous Jews are digging a pit for the Nations. Wake up and throw them in, for they deserve it...”
- “The civilized world is to blame that tolerates those international pests called Judeans... the time of retaliation has come...”
- “The Jew (in religion) and the human being are contradicting terms, that is the one excludes the other”
- “The criminal behaviour of the Jews explains the Nazis' deeds against them, and more than that, it justifies them”.
- «The history of the humankind will hold Adolph Hitler responsible for the following: He did not rid Europe from the Jews while he could» etc.
- “We despise the Jews for their morality, for their religion, for their deeds, which all prove that they are sub-humans”.
- (Underneath Auschwitz photo): “They rightly preserve the camp (Auschwitz) at a good condition, because nobody knows what might happen in the future”
- “I cannot bear to see the murderers, bandits, rapists, oppressors, pests, corruptors, sappers of the ruffian Jewry, slandering the superior National-Socialists...”
- «The ΖΥKLON B was nothing more than a poisonous gas that was used to clear the concentration camps from insects… all the rest are fairytales of propaganda»
- «The Jewish talking of corpses in the case of Auschwitz was proved absolutely false from the beginning»
- «Get rid of the Jewish propaganda, that deceives you with concentration camps, gas chambers, «ovens» and other fairytales of the pseudo-holocaust...» ,
(You can find all the extracts included in the indictment at the website of ANI, “www.antinazi.gr”).
The Appeals Court of Athens with such a decision – taken with votes four to one 1- not only trampled the antiracist law and the international anti-racism Convention ratified by Greece, but also validated the legitimacy of any call for murderous violence against the Jewish citizens and their expulsion from our country and from the whole Europe. If such a call was finally legitimated, that would be a raw and outrageous infringement of the constitution and of any foundation of democratism, as well as encouragement of any racist attitude and act in Greece. But such a legitimacy would also mean that in one corner of Europe, is initiated the revision of the whole social, political, ethical and legal civilization upon which the construction of the postwar institutions of each separate European country and of the European Union as a system of democratic and voluntary state union is founded. Since it is not difficult for anyone to understand that to recognize the right to propagate a racist genocide, is as far away from the right to commit a racist genocide as the psychological and moral preparation of any crime is far away from committing it.
We attribute to this decision an historically decisive and ominous character because it is not an isolated decision of a certain court and of certain judges, but because it comes as a capping of a series of anti-Semitic positions expressed from several judges who participated to the judicial proceedings from the beginning, as well as of a crucial mistrial resulting from the fact that the counsels for the complainants were ousted from the trial. Yet, the most important and the most worrying is that this judicial attitude and this ruling were possible, because there was a general political encouragement, either indirectly or directly, from all parliamentary parties, from all trade union leaderships, from all television channels, and also from all the official human rights organizations.
For this unprecedented and deep violation of any sense of democratism, we believe that it is worthwhile to make widely known all the concrete circumstances under which this trial was held.
The anti-Semitic positions from judges and the mistrial
We will limit our reference here only in the most evident cases of judicial infringement of the spirit and of the letter of the antiracist law within a long procedure of 18 months, a procedure full of postponements, and during which the composition of the court changed four times (twice at the first degree and twice at the second degree).
The first and most crucial act of violation of the legitimacy of the procedure was the court's decision to oust the counsels for the complainants!!! The ousting of the counsels of the complainants was confirmed by new rulings from all different subsequent court's compositions in all the trials that followed in the first and in the second degree.
The irony is that the ousting of counsels of the complainants was decided on the grounds that the state, in specific the court, could defend the injured part, that is the Jews against any kind of racist speech that placed them under threat. Therefore the Jews, supposedly, did not need to be represented by their own counsels in the trial.
Nevertheless in the first phase of the trial, the public prosecutor who suggested the ousting of the counsels for the complainants2 passionately defended this racist book, as “a scientific writing”. At the same time during the hearing he made an unconscionable attack to the witnesses for the prosecution of the Antinazi Initiative (ANI). At a point the public prosecutor defending the freedom of expression asked the witness of ANI: «Would you like to be judged and convicted by a nazi court;» thus recognizing that such a court could make justice (!!!). Finally he threatened to arrest her, saying to her «The court tolerates you. I cannot tolerate you. If you go on like this I will have you arrested…».
At the same trial the witness referred to a phrase of the book interpreting it as a call for new extermination of the Jews, that is the phrase “they do well and they keep Auschwitch in good condition because no one knows what could happen in the future”. At that the presiding judge replied ironically “So what, they can build a new one, can't they?”
(We note that Antinazi Initiative denounced the above mentioned public prosecutor to the competent judicial bodies submitting a detailed report but until this day no reply has been received).
The result was that the witnesses for the prosecution, Jews and non-Jews 3, were examined in each trial under the constant persistent attacks of the nazi defendant and his counsels who were trying, often tolerated by the bench, to demean them with political even personal accusations irrelative to the indictment. At the same time, during the judicial proceedings the religion of Jewish witnesses for the prosecution was targeted as criminal and put on trial in front of the bench that was either tolerant or participating, while they were asked to define their relation with the state of Israel. In other words the witnesses for the prosecution found themselves in the place of defendants who nevertheless had no right to have their own counsels in the courtroom for their defense as happens in any other trial.
The trials did not evolve as a political and legal monologue of one side, only because the witnesses for the prosecution showed strength and determination demolishing the arguments of the nazi's defense.
Besides the procedure, it was the content of a series of critical judicial positions which signaled the negative atmosphere that prevailed in the courtroom. These judicial positions not only were left unchallenged since there were not any contrary positions from other judges and prosecutors – with an exception or two - but also the witnesses of ANI received a fierce attack from the bench during the last Appeals Court trial because they dared to denounce the above positions in the press.
In the meantime, a disciplinary preliminary investigation (!) was ordered against the public prosecutor who brought charges against K. Plevris4, following a legal recourse made by the nazi who alleged that the prosecutor brought him to trial without legal reasons. The competent prosecutor of the Appeals Court5 held this preliminary investigation. In his concluding report, he explained in length why his colleague should not have brought the nazi to trial and rebutted almost all the major charges included in the indictment.
Among others this prosecutor mentioned the following in his report: «From the study of the writing in question (of Plevris book) it is concluded that the unfavorable opinions stated for the Jews are mostly result of historical research (underlined by us) with detailed reference to relative historical facts and opinions of third historical personalities specifically against a certain category of Jews, those called in the writing as Jew-Zionists… It is obvious that the generalization of the application of Law 927/79 (the antiracist law) abolishes the articles 14 and 16 of the constitution in force that establish the freedom of expression, of science and research (underlined by us) and specifically the same generalization forbids the historical research abolishing the provisions of the corresponding article of European Convention for Human Rights (ECHR)».
In other words, the Appeals Court public prosecutor of a European country considers the most monstrous text of Holocaust denial as «the result of historical research» and its legalization as a demand of “science and research”. As for the term of Jew-Zionism, this is used from the nazi in the book in order to escape the blame that he propagandizes violence against the Jews in general. Each judicial text, and each closing statement of the public prosecutors through the whole judicial procedure, aiming to exculpate the nazi from the charge that he propagandizes violence against the Jews, included the argument that whenever the word Jew appears in the book, the true meaning is «Jew-Zionist», an argument that is directly against the letter and spirit of the book.
There are even more horrifying references: In the «writing» of Plevris there is a caption included also in the indictment, below a photo of little children in Auschwitz. In this caption the nazi mocking the children facing death he writes: «Jewish kids: We can see that they are very fat». The same prosecutor acknowledges this sarcasm with the following remark: «here it is simply commented that the Jewish kids are in a good physical condition». Elsewhere he remarks that, among others, one of the so-called “objects of historical research” of Plevris, is considered to be «the international purposes of the Jew-Zionists as they appear in various of their own texts (like the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion» (underlined by us). What concerns us at this point is not that the prosecutor characterizes the Christian Old Testament as a text of “Jew-Zionists”, but that he considers as an existent and historical text of the “Jew-Zionists” the basic ideological tool of the nazi extermination, namely the czarist fabrication of the «Protocols of the Elders of Zion».
Along the exact same lines with the above Public Prosecution of the Appeals Court but on a much more advanced and systematic basis, the Appeals Court Judge who was outvoted in the first-degree decision wrote her reasoning 6 (with this decision K. Plevris was condemned to 14 months imprisonment on December 2007). There, she also insists against any grammar and logical rule and against the spirit and connotations of the whole book, that whenever Plevris turns against the Jews, he turns against the «Jew-Zionists» and finally against the policy of the state of Israel and not against the Jews.
Let us see how the judge “acquits” the writer for the following extract of the book:
«I mostly challenge you, my readers, to discuss about Talmud and the Jewish religion. It is you that I challenge the most, for you are the victims. Wake up, the treacherous Jews are digging a pit for the Nations. Wake up and throw them in, for they deserve it... (…) The study of Talmud leads us as per logical and moral necessity to the conclusion that the Jews should be dealt with as enemies of the humankind. Therefore, I accuse the German Nazis of not clearing our Europe of the Jew-Zionism, even though they could. The answer to the question, on whether it was right that the Germans concentrated the Jews to transport them to Madagascar, is obvious: Considering what the Jews teach and seek, what the Germans did wasn't right. They shouldn't have sent them to Madagascar, but to their Jehovah to read the Talmud all together standing up”.
This extract is commented by the Appeals Court judge as follows:
«In this extract the writer based on the unquestionably intolerant and antichristian references of Talmud (holy books of the Jews), (underlined by us) for which he claims that until this day they keep teaching them in their synagogues, he challenges his readers to wake up and see the danger which according to his opinion, the Jews Zionists hold for them. They are the ones he mentions and condemns and not the Jews in general, as nation and race. It is nevertheless noteworthy that also the Jews in religion…witnesses Veniamin Albala and Abraam Reitan, after taking an oath on the Holy Bible, speaking of Talmud, with evasive expressions, avoided to declare expressly if they condemn or not above teachings» !!! (underlined by us).
In other words the judge not only adopts the authenticity of the extracts of the Talmud cited by the anti-Semite and not only adopts his accusations against Talmud but also blames the Jewish witnesses in the trial for not disapproving it. This is de facto anti-Semitism and is revealed as such in the following extract of the indictment which incriminates as no other his writer for the offence of racist insult:
«Jew (in religion) and human are contradicting terms, that is, the one excludes the other. According to their standard tactic, the Jews conceal their origin, which usually is identical to their religion».
The judge writes in relation to this extract: «It is obvious that the writer refers to the citations from the holy books of Talmud as analyzed previously in his writing, which unquestionably include intolerant and antichristian teachings, against any sense of humanism and therefore he notes justifiably, that the Jew who adopts them, obviously is deprived of humanism» (!!) (underlined by us).
Commenting on the following repulsive praises of the nazi for Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and the SS, included in the book and in the indictment: «ADOLPH HITLER (1889-1945): The tragic leader of the Third German Reich is absolutely the most impressive leading feature of modern age... The history of humankind will charge Hitler with the following: 1. He didn't got rid of the Jews in Europe though he could. 2. He didn't use the special chemical weapons which only Germany possessed in order to win... As a result of Germany's defeat, the White Race and Europe are now in danger... The day will come when the Europeans will either prevail or be destroyed. In both cases they will admit that Hitler was right”... “JOSEPH GOEBBELS (1897-1945): One of the brightest minds of the century. A philosopher and fighter with a deep understanding of mass psychology, on every battlefield he vanquished Jewish Bolshevism and headed his country's all out war”.
The judge of a European court 60 years after the most cannibalistic and genocidal war of all times writes:
«The above views of the writer, even if they are considered extreme (underlined by us), still voice his own political belief and world theoretical view on the historical political systems of democracy and national socialism, as well as his opinion for the historical persons who were the protagonists of World War II».
In other words according to the judge it is possible that such ultra-racist and nazi “views” may not be considered extreme while the national socialism, that is nazism, namely the worst racism-cannibalism has the repute of an historical political system such as democracy!
It is characteristic that commenting on this call made in the book: «Messrs Jews go to your Country and relieve us of your presence ...The White Race want no Semites in Europe, because its biological interest dictates that», the judge claims that the writer here simply «adopts the political view of the Nazis, without having aim of insult or provocation to acts of violence, that the White Race does not want Semites in Europe».
In accordance with the “historical political system of racism”, surely it would not be an insult or provocation to acts of violence to call for the expulsion of the Jews from Europe. All the above were stated by the judge while at the same time not a word was included in the text to disapprove the pro-Hitler positions of the writer not only commenting the above citations but all the horrifying extracts.
Therefore it is finally inevitable that the judge supports the defendant also regarding the extracts of the indictment referring to denial of the Holocaust which the judge questions as she writes:
«The above also voice the political positions of the writer, who attempts with documents described in detail in his book, to question the extent of the Holocaust, which, he claims concerns only 66,000 to 350,000 Jews, according to the official data of the International Red Cross and not 6,000,000 as the Zionist movement, invokes for reasons of interest. His above views even though they are not completely accurate (underlined by us), in any case it is not proved that the writer knowingly cites inaccurate events and data and therefore they do not bear penal consequence since they refer clearly to political beliefs and to narrative of historical facts, under the influence and under the prism of the world view of the writer».
If these «views» are not “completely accurate” then they are definitely “relatively accurate”. In other words according to the judge, the 6,000,000 dead of the Holocaust are not an indisputable historical fact.
At that, let's see what the judge replies to the following cynical extracts of the nazi included in the indictment:
“The concentration camps, the “ovens”, the “soap”, and the tortures were and still remain the most favorite themes used by the anti-nazi propaganda...”, “You get affected and impressed by movies, such as the “holocaust”, by the so-called “tortures” the Jews went through 60 years ago...” (underlined by us)
The judge answers: «In these extracts it is obvious that the writer, irrespectively of the issue if he questions the Holocaust or not, supporting his opinion with references to historical sources (underlined by us), according to which, there were presented different each time versions of the number of the Jews killed, in the World War II, who were estimated to be from 60,000,000 to 350,000 (in accordance to data of the International Red Cross, see pages 1382-1383 of the book in question), what he wants to highlight is that although the Jews claim being victims of the war and the Nazis, the same today commit the same crimes in Palestine, which is not far from the truth (!) (underlined by us), and the citation of such extracts is not made with intention of insult and provocation to acts of violence against the Jewish people, solely for reasons related to their national and racial origin, but with the intention of historical substantiation of the views of the writer » (!)
The allegation that the Hitlerians committed the same crimes with these of Israel against the Palestinians is the most condensed way of demeaning and relativization of the extent and quality of hitlerian crimes, especially having to do with the reversal of the roles of Perpetrator-Victim, used by all the pro-nazi and anti-Semites worldwide today.
Towards the end of the text summarizing her conclusions the judge writes:
«All above extracts of the book in question are supported by historical resources of the specific period …which the writer mentions in his book in detail), showing the required, for the scientist historian, diligence» (underlined by us).
We cannot publish all the judgments of the judge for this monstrous book but there are more of them, which all show a diligent effort not only to acquit his writer from penal charges but even worse to embellish his positions and to clear him politically and morally.
The witnesses of ANI who denounced with their announcements the positions of the judges and public prosecutors received fierce criticism from the Presiding Judge of the bench, during the last trial of the Appeals Court (that resulted to the nazi's acquittal). In fact, the bench pressed unbearably the President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) to condemn ANI for the above announcements, which he refused to do. It is finally characteristic how the bench was tolerant to the constant provocations of the nazi even when he had the audacity to tell the witnesses for the prosecution: «if Hitler is risen from the grave he will take care of you!!!».
Therefore, we can see that the acquittal decision did not fall suddenly from the sky but was the subsequent result of a judicial perception –we hope it is not prevailing- that nevertheless has been calmly crystallized during the 18 months that the whole judicial procedure lasted.
From the above we conclude that whichever might be the final official reasoning of the acquittal, this could only have been based either on a conscious misinterpretation of the book, either on a “tenderness” for its content, or on a blatant infringement of antiracist law. 7
The political climate is accountable for the judicial attitude
In any democratic country, such a scandalously anti-democratic and anti-constitutional attitude of a court would be inconceivable if there wasn't total cover-up of this attitude by the entirety of political authority, and especially by the entirety of the country's political parties, whether big or small (with the exception of a non-parliamentary one). For if at least one small parliamentary party wanted to differentiate itself from those judicial attitudes, positions, proceedings, and decisions could have easily done it with ensured publicity because all parliamentary parties have the right to express their positions on every matter they consider important every day at the news broadcasts of every TV channel.
As a result, the great majority of the Greek public opinion has not been informed at all for this trial as no TV channel out of the 9 TV Channels of national range ever mentioned anything about the trial, anything about the initial sentence, anything about the nazi's acquittal by the court of appeal at its news broadcast.
In order to justify their stance to the most concerned people, the political parties that kept silent, have spread the notion that the trial is about a “marginal” person and that it would be better if no charge was brought against him, or at least no sentence, so as to prevent the “marginal” being turned into a hero.
A book that so brutally praises the most murderous and racist war the Mankind has ever lived, is circulated by the country's most central bookstores in thousands of copies, cannot be a marginal event, and therefore its writer cannot be marginal either. Especially he can't be marginal in the only EU country where the open nazis are completely legal. We refer to the rather massive murderous “Chrysi Avgi” (“Golden Dawn”) nazi gang. Most of all, this couldn't be the case so long as the “marginal” and his book are directly linked to a political party of the parliament and the European parliament, the anti-Semitic LAOS (Popular Orthodox Rally).
The nazi Plevris, a well-known cadre of the Greek junta and political ancestor of the post-war fascism and nazism in Greece, was a founding member of LAOS. This party later removed him from its ranks, so as not to be irreparably exposed to the accusations for pro-nazism, but did it “quietly” and without ever denouncing him. However, the two most prevalent MPs and parliamentary spokesmen of LAOS have directly or indirectly supported the book. The first one is Adonis Georgiadis, who for a long time advertised this book on TV, by saying that “this is my favorite book”. The second one is Th. Plevris, son of K. Plevris, who was his counsel in the trial and demanded acquittal for the nazi, saying that a Greek citizen cannot be refused the right to demand the extermination of any people or to demand that the Auschwitz reopens (!) The LAOS youth organization has also presented the book at its website, while an article by its leader Karatzaferis published in the official party's newspaper, “A1”, at the final phase of the trial, came to the conclusion: that “the Jew smells blood”.
Those tremendous manifestations of fascism that would have caused a political earthquake in any democratic country have been smothered here by all the mass media (the press included) and no comment was made by any party. As a result LAOS entered the parliament, while Th. Plevris has now been appointed member of a high defacto judicial authority: the preliminary investigation commission that judges the members of the Greek parliament!!!
Anyone is entitled to his own opinion regarding the reason for which, the call for anti-Semitic violence as well as the legal status of neo-nazi gangs have political shielding in a country of the EU. We simply note that the same political shielding is observed in Russia and at the same time the most powerful leading political fractions of the two countries all the more identify in all major regional and international affairs.
Irrespectively of the interpretation of the phenomenon of political shielding of anti-Semitism and neo-nazism in Greece, it is certain that only such as shielding could explain why, with the exception of a handful of reactions from some democratically minded journalists, all the collective factors and the personalities who ought to react, remained silent.
So, the stance of silence did not only apply for the TV channels. All the trade unions having leaderships controlled by political parties, the church – as expected because it has huge part of responsibility for the growth of anti-Semitism in the country during the recent years. Almost all the human rights, anti-racist and pro-immigrants organizations remained silent as well, with the exception of ANI and GHM (Greek Helsinki Monitor). At that, shortly before the initial verdict of guilt, the chairman8 of the largest, the most institutionally official organization, that is the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, published a text in favor of the nazi's acquittal, which the public prosecutor in this trial upheld enthusiastically in order to justify her acquittal proposal.
We must resist! The decision must be reversed.
Dear friends, democrats in Greece and Europe.
Please forgive us for the length of this letter, but it wasn't easy for us to portray more briefly the great danger we see hovering over our country and the causes of the suffocation we are suffering. We regard this judicial decision as a landmark in the general sociopolitical evolution in Greece. At that we consider the judicial attitude and the decision as more alarming than the book itself, and the cover-up of the book and of the judicial attitudes by the political regime as the most alarming of all.
The murderous anti-Semitism is not basically a matter that concerns Jews. It concerns the great, the huge majorities of the population that every nazism seeks to subjugate. Besides, we as Antinazi Initiative, who participated in this trial with all our forces and drafted the petition for the nazi's committal, are not Jews. But being conscious of the fact that in our country in the last 15 years, the typical nazis have made their appearance again noticeable without been hindered under the banner of the same murderous anti-Semitism, we considered that we shouldn't repeat the old mistake of leaving the Jews alone and then waiting for the nazi beast to hit the democrats in general. Because the beast would become irresistible if it were left to consolidate anti-Semitism within the people, because anti-Semitism is the nazi “interpretation of the world” and, in this world, the extermination of the Jew is the opium given to the poor and wretched people supposedly in order to relieve them from his problems. But if the poor and wretched sought to find relief in an unspeakable and irrational murder, then no racist murder and no irrationality would be foreign to them.
For many people, this brutality is impossible to repeat, as today there are not many open anti-Semites. However, most anti-Semites today appear as “anti-Zionists”, because the classic anti-Semitism has made a very bad reputation with hitlerism. According to “anti-Zionism” of the anti-semitic type, the state of Israel has the supernatural power to conspiratorially lead every other state and to cause every sort of exploitation and pain in the globe. That's why Israel is the only state the anti-Semites wish to wipe out from the map and the only state due to which all the people who are linked to it having the same religion or ethnic origin and who refuse to condemn it, are considered to be worthy of punishment, while such demands are never being formulated by anti-Semites against very big states that even perpetrate mass genocidal massacres.
Therefore the attempt to legitimate the call for extermination of the Jewish citizens in Greece through their identification with any war held by another state must resolutely be condemned.
For those reasons the whole democratic Greece, the whole democratic Europe, the whole world must react to the March 27 decision of the Athens Court of Appeals.
In this phase, the legal recourse that may lead to a new trial and overturn the acquittal decision is its cassation by the Supreme Court public prosecutor.
In order to pave the way for this cassation, the Greek and European democrats should demand mainly from the government but also from all political parties of Greece to publicly condemn this acquittal decision that brutally offends the Greek people and all peoples of Europe and ask that they take all necessary measures for its reversal.9 In the context of such an effort the Antinazi Initiative proposes that a letter be sent to the Prime minister of Greece, to which we refer in our introductory note.
Athens, April 24, 2009
Footnotes
1. The decision was taken with 4 votes in favor of the acquittal and 1 against, only for one part of the indictment, that is, for the incitement to racist violence and hate. For the second part, this of insulting ideas against the Jews, the decision was unanimous in favor of the acquittal.
2. Public Prosecutor L. Lazarakos
3. The witnesses for the prosecutor were: From Antinazi Initiative: Anna Stai, Irene Koutelou, Lambis Katsiapis. From the Central Board of Jewish Communities (KIS): Moysis Konstantinis (President), Veniamin Albala, Abraam Reitan, Leon Gabriilides. From the Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) the representative Panagiotis Dimitras.
4. Public Prosecutor Sp. Mouzakitis
5. Public Prosecutor P. Matzounis
6. Appeals Court Judge M. Pagouteli
7: The reasoning of the acquittal decision of the court has not yet been issued.
8: President of National Commission for Human Rights, K. Papaioannou
9: The press representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, G. Koumoutsakos replying to a question of a journalist for the international criticism against our country, condemned the “extreme views” of Plevris, yet he did not condemn the decision for his acquittal.