Mexico 'opens its arms' to immigrants
31 October, 2009 — Real News Network
Mexico has taken steps to allow foreigners whether legally or illegally, to apply for citizenship
Updates from October, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor: Time Up, Time Down
31 October, 2009 — The Wolf Report: Nonconfidential analysis for the anti-investor
An Agreement Was Reached
Big surprise… an agreement was reached between… different sections, different agents of the same ruling class. And on what did these different clowns in the same circus agree? They agreed on a charade. A pantomime. A folie a deux.
Said Alphonse to Gaston, ‘After you.’ Said Gaston to Alphonse, ‘Oh no, after you. I insist.’
Said Micheletti to US assistant secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Thomas Shannon, ‘I’ll pretend to agree to recognize that Zelaya might return to office four weeks prior to new elections, with no control over the military, with no agitation for a constituent assembly, with no penalty to coup-iers.’
Said Zelaya to Shannon, ‘I’ll pretend that I’m actually returning to office, with no control over the military, with no constituent assembly, with no penalty to coup-iers, and proclaim a great victory.’
Said Tom to Hillary, channeling the former president, ‘Mission accomplished.’
This agreement is an attempt at misdirection, at disorientation of the resistance to the coup, which of course, is more than a resistance to the coup but the initial eruption of a revolutionary struggle.
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Alexander MEZYAEV Karadzic Trial Opened
29 October, 2009 — Strategic Culture Foundation
The trial of President of the Serb Republic in Bosnia Radovan Karadzic started on October 26. Karadzic was not present he refused to attend, and this was due to serious reasons. Though the prosecution started putting the indictment together 14 years ago, it kept tailoring the document throughout the term. The most recent changes were introduced on October 19, leaving Karadzic just 7 days to prepare his defense, which is outrageous even for the Hague Tribunal.
Over the past years mass media have spent unbelievable amounts of black paint on Karadzic. The charges in the final version of the indictment include deportations, persecution, killings, terror against civilian population, hostage-taking, and, of course, genocide. The alleged crime sites span half the territory of Bosnia, but for the most part the focus is on Sarajevo and Srebrenica. Karadzic is charged with planning and implementing the genocide against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. To support allegations that Karadzic was open about his genocide plans, Prosecutor A. Tiger cited him as addressing the Bosnians with the following statement: Don’t you understand that you are going to perish? A lot of us will die, but none of you will survive! A. Tiger failed to mention, however, that Karadzic was talking about the Bosnians’ plan to start a war and the words were a warning, not an indication of the existence of some mythical genocide plan.
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Goldstone challenges US over Gaza report Pt 2
31 October, 2009 — Real News Network
Justice Richard Goldstone challenges US government to justify its claims that his findings are flawed
Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi talks to Judge Richard Goldstone about the investigation into the Gaza war. He travelled to the United Nations in New York to find out if the war on Gaza has transformed Richard Goldstone from a sober jurist into a man on a mission to discredit Israel on an international stage.
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Did Richard Goldstone Hide More Sinister Crimes in Gaza? Part 2 – DIME and Uranium Weapons By Peter Eyre
30 October, 2009 Gaza —http://www.uruknet.info
(Pal Telegraph) – Again we see a classic example of a UN investigation that only plays with the periphery of War Crimes committed by Israel whilst at the same time ignoring the more important horrific crimes carried out by the IDF.Goldstone brushed aside the use of White Phosphorus and Flechette weapons and only touched briefly on DIME weapons. He totally ignored weapons containing Uranium components such as the four weapons shown in this photograph.
So let’s look at DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) and how it works:
DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated ‘micro-shrapnel’ of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA. It cuts through victims with ease and for those lucky enough to survive such an attack the outlook is fairly grim. The fragments from such a weapon once embedded in the flesh of its victim will lead to cancer and can result in death as early as three months.
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Did Richard Goldstone hide more sinister crimes in Gaza? – Part 1: White Phosphorus and Flechettes By Peter Eyre
28 October, 2009 — Palestine Telegraph
There was much praise for the UN investigations into war crimes committed in Gaza, led by Richard Goldstone. However, I feel that this report did not go far enough to investigate some other more serious allegations that were made.There is a sense of urgency to bring this investigation forward and to put those responsible on trial but one must understand that something much more sinister did not even get a mention and has since been swept under the carpet.
Let’s take a closer look at some aspects of this report which certainly showed a distinct weakness in the team’s ability to understand what constitutes a breach of the Geneva Convention.
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Goldstone's Detailed Response to the Berman- Ros-Lehtinen Resolution Criticizing the Report
30 October, 2009 — The Magnes Zionist
The Honorable Howard Berman
Chairman, House Committee on Foreign AffairsThe Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign AffairsOctober 29, 2009
Dear Chairman Berman and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen,
It has come to my attention that a resolution has been introduced in the Unites States House of Representatives regarding the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which I led earlier this year.
I fully respect the right of the US Congress to examine and judge my mission and the resulting report, as well as to make its recommendations to the US Executive branch of government. However, I have strong reservations about the text of the resolution in question – text that includes serious factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context.
I undertook this fact-finding mission in good faith, just as I undertook my responsibilities vis à vis the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, the International War Crimes Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina, the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and the Volker Committee investigation into the UN’s Iraq oil-for-food program in 2004/5.
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Chomsky on Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework
29 October, 2009 — Political Philosophy Society
Time: 14:00
Location: Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way
Speakers:
Prof. Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus in Linguistics at MIT; world renowned author and leading intellectual
Tariq Ali – Historian, Author and well known political commentatorThe Imperial College Political Philosophy Society, in association with Palestine societies at UCL, SOAS, Goldsmiths, LSE, Imperial and Kings, proudly present one of the greatest political philosophers of all time: MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, for what could be his last trip to London.
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Mike Whitney, "Is Capitalism Really on Its Last Legs?" Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff
31 October, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review
Mike Whitney: In your new book, The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know, you allude to right-wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a ‘free market’ ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public opinion about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis?Michael D. Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid- to late-1970s, when it became apparent that the post-World War Two ‘Golden Age’ of U.S. capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them was ideological, that is, a struggle for ‘hearts and minds,’ to use a military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation. Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could be tied to simple clichés, like ‘get the government off our backs,’ ‘the unions have gotten too powerful’ (with always a hint that they are too radical thrown into the argument), and ‘welfare queens’ (with that always popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.
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Economic Death Squad Funds Cluster Bombs: Goldman Sachs Earns $589 Million on Controversial Civilian Killing WMD By Nick Mathiason
30 October, 2009 — The Guardian
The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world’s biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn (£12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them.
HSBC, led by ordained Anglican priest Stephen Green, has profited more than any other institution from companies that manufacture cluster bombs. The British bank, based at Canary Wharf, has earned a total of £657.3m in fees arranging bonds and share offerings for Textron, which makes cluster munitions described by the US company as ‘leaving a clean battlefield’.
Campaigners maintain the deadly weapons can explode years after combat, killing or maiming innocent people.
HSBC will face protests outside its London headquarters today. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan and UK-based Barclays Bank are also named among the worst banks in a detailed 126-page report by Dutch and Belgian campaign groups IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen.
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Negative spacemen By Alan Simpson MP
30 October, 2009 — The Morning Star Online
Sometimes in politics what is absent is more revealing than what is present
Negative space is a concept that artists are more familiar with than either politicians or the BBC. This is the space between objects that helps to define the objects themselves. Often what is absent is far more intriguing and revealing that what is present.
This is the notion that has stayed with me long after the BBC’s inclusion of British National Party leader Nick Griffin on its Question Time panel.
The law and not the BBC will ultimately decide whether the BNP is a legitimate political party or not.
The recent court ruling that its constitution is racist will test whether the party’s desire for a platform will override its more visceral appeal to ignorance and prejudice.
What the BBC decided, however, was that the BNP was both legitimate and significant.
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Obama Administration Launches Deceptive Swine Flu Propaganda Blitz To Counter Growing Criticism from Scientific and Medical Community By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null
29 October, 2009 — Global Research – Progressive Radio Network – 2009-10-26
President Obama and his top health officials are engaging in a major public relations effort to divert attention away from whether its swine flu vaccine is effective and safe – to whether there is enough of it to go around. And the media, as always, is cooperating fully. This echoes the way media debate was manipulated during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. Instead of debating whether we should even be fighting those wars, the media debated only whether we were using the correct military strategy.
Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors are issuing harsh criticisms of the Government’s plan to vaccinate (forcibly if necessary) virtually the entire U.S. population with what they claim is a poorly tested vaccine that is not only ineffective against swine flu, but could cripple and even kill many more people than it helps.
The CDC’s public relations campaign has been running “scare” ads that portray swine flu as a full-blown “pandemic” responsible for snuffing out countless lives, and which, unless stopped by universal vaccination, could kill millions of American citizens. But scientists and health officials throughout the world have called the governments claims unjustified and deliberately misleading.
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Organizing for the poor Pt.2
30 October, 2009 — Real News Network
Williams: Articulating demands and needs of working class people is what’s required from the movement
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Organizing for the poor Pt.3
30 October, 2009 — Real News Network
Williams: Over the last several years the left has been suffering from demoralization and demobilization
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The clock is ticking in Honduras By Al Giordano
30 October, 2009— Real News Network
Al Giordano: A month before elections, coup regime that once sought to kill time is now running out of it
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HOUSMANS Radical Books, London – Newsletter of events November 2009
NEWS
1. Peace House 50th Anniversary Celebration and Benefit
2. Housmans Peace Diary 2010
3. End of the decade sale!EVENTS
4. ‘What is Psychogeography Today?’ with Rich Cochrane
5. ‘Bob Dylan & Babylon: Together through Life’ with John Gibbens
6. ‘People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity’ with Howard Clark
7. ‘Songs of the Land’ with Leslie Ray
8. ‘Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops’ with Graham Jones
9. ‘The Chomsky Effect’ with Robert F Barsky
10. Forthcoming EventsBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
11. ‘Listening To Grasshoppers’ by Arundhati Roy
12. ‘Angels Of Anarchy’ by Patricia Allmer -
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Former CIA Detainee Moazzem Begg Testifies at War Crimes Tribunal
30 October, 2009 — Mathaba.net
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Mathaba) – In a very compelling and eloquent testimony in answer to questions by Commission members of the War Crimes Tribunal which is taking place here.
After years of isolation and unjust imprisonment in Afghanistan and Guantanamo by the U.S. and British intelligence agencies and military, the testimony of Moazzam Begg, a young British Asian Muslim, is almost a miracle, given his sanity and eloquence after his ordeals, which is a testimony to his strength of character and faith.
He gave very detailed testimonies which are clear to observers and psychologists, can only be born of truth and a willingness to answer all questions and give testimony in complete openness and honesty. He said that seeking justice is something everybody wants.
In Britain, Mr Begg has a case against the British intelligence for violation of his human rights. He said that places such as this commission, are the only places that the victims of torture and extraordinary rendition have as recourse and that this offers hope of justice for those victims.
Judges of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal who will hear the cases that pass the commission of inquiry, are Dato’ Abdul Kadir Sulaiman, a retired Malaysian Federal Court judge, Tunku Sofiah Jewa, Mr Francis A. Boyle, Prof. Salleh Buang, Prof. Niloufer Bhagwat, Mr Alfred L Webre and Prof. Emeritus Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi.
The Commission Deliberations which opened this morning will include testimonies of 7 witnesses and is to continue all day today. Tomorrow October 31st the Hearing of Application for an Advisory Opinion is to be filed by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission.
In testimonies given by Moazzam Begg it is clear that British Intelligence were heavily involved in the interrogation of prisoners and abductees, including at Guantanemo Bay, the U.S. base in U.S. occupied Cuban territory.
He said that he can produce for the Commission details of his case against the British government, in answer to a question about the involvement of the British in the horrific human rights abuses that took place in U.S. custody.
92% of people captured were not involved with Taliban or Al-Qaidah or any battle field, 2% were accused to have something to do with Al-Qaidah and 8% involvement with the Taliban. The vast majority of the 92% were handed over as a result of people wanting to claim the bounties offered by the U.S. for any foreigners given to them within Afghanistan.”
See also:
Sudanese Former CIA Detainee Jazeera Journalist Sami Hajj Testifies at War Crimes Tribunal
Former British CIA Detainee Rahul Ahmed Testifies at War Crimes Tribunal
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UK/USA made use of Uzbek torture Craig Murray
Former Brit ambassador Craig Murray says UK and USA sent prisoners to Uzbek to be tortured
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Are you listening yet, Mr Crozier? By Paul Haste on the picket line
29 October 2009 — Morning Star Online
DEFIANCE: Strikers on the picket lines are fed up of management attacks.Post workers have continued their offensive with a third national strike against bosses’ threats to cut thousands of Royal Mail jobs.
More than 43,000 workers at huge mail centres and trucking depots across Britain defied management and refused to take out the post, in protest against Royal Mail executives’ attempts to tear up union agreements protecting their jobs.
Mail sorters, long-distance drivers and engineers set up picket lines before dawn after last-minute talks at the TUC between the workers’ union and post bosses were derailed by what CWU deputy leader Dave Ward described as ‘Royal Mail’s lack of sincerity in wanting an agreement.’
Standing in solidarity with striking post workers on the picket line at central London’s huge Mount Pleasant mail centre, Mr Ward explained that ‘post workers have already lost 60,000 jobs and another 60,000 are at risk, while the remaining full-time workers fear being forced to accept part-time positions.’
But Royal Mail’s negotiators ‘walk away every time we get close to a deal,’ he charged.
CWU general secretary Billy Hayes responded to management’s hard line, declaring: ‘I can see the strike action increasing now, because I don’t think we’re going to put up with this messing about.’
And referring to Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier’s demand that post workers should ‘shut up,’ Mr Hayes asserted: ‘Our people are not going to shut up – our people are very angry.’
Strikers on the picket lines pledged defiance in the face of management attacks.
CWU Wales rep Amarjit Singh insisted that post workers ‘have been put in this position through no fault of their own.
‘Our members don’t want to strike, they don’t want to lose money, but their terms and conditions and job security are on the line,’ he stressed.
Newcastle CWU rep John Frazer emphasised that ‘no-one has broken the strike – it has completely held up.’
And Birmingham union rep Steve Reid added that workers were prepared to begin an ‘indefinite strike’ to oppose management’s offensive.
‘It’s our jobs, our livelihoods that are on the line, but it’s not only that – it’s a public service, the customers’ post that’s at risk,’ he declared.
Workers on the picket line at the Nine Elms mail centre in south London urged the union to step up pressure on the government to force Royal Mail to back down.
Striker Paul Cotes said: ‘Labour should take notice because this is an important fight that could last to the election and it will define the future of our members – whether we stay full or part time, or even employed at all.’
Fellow picket Mr Patel pointed out that CWU members in London had recently voted by 96 per cent to call on the union to disaffiliate from Labour because of the party’s failure to protect the publicly owned mail service.
‘Dave Ward has said, that as a union, we can’t go on supporting a party that is attacking us,’ Mr Patel recalled.
‘So it is vital that the union wins this dispute to show that we can fight for our jobs,’ he added.
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Cuba's Sugarcane Ethanol Potential: Cuba, Raul Castro, and the Return of King Sugar to the Island
29 October, 2009 — COHA
“Central America and the Caribbean, historical sugar-producing economies where the sugar-ethanol infrastructure already has a foundation, labor costs are low, and the political conditions are more or less stable– offers the best near-term potential for large-scale sugarcane ethanol production. This is a market opportunity which Cuba, with the longest experience of sugar–ethanol and sugarcane derivates production in the region, is positioned to take advantage of.”
– Sugarcane Energy Use: The Cuban Case, Alonso-Pippo Walfrido, University of Havana, 2008As the result of a precipitous contraction in the Cuban economy, Cubans have recently experienced crippling energy cutbacks and other shortfalls that are reminiscent of the devastating hardships of the “Special Period,” and industries have continued to falter due to the evaporation of credit and investment flows which largely dried up after the break-up of the Soviet empire. In the first half of 2009, the Obama Administration launched a series of modest initiatives aimed at normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations, most recently exemplified by the loosening of restrictions on travel by Cuba-Americans, lifting controls on remittances, and giving the nod to U.S. telecommunication investments on the island. Though President Obama recently renewed the Trading With the Enemy Act, policy mitigations have prompted speculation that a greater volume of trade and investment is likely to be permitted in the future. These factors, coupled with the current 28-year high in sugar prices and the delicate health of Fidel Castro, lead to the question: would Cuba benefit from, and does it possess the technological and infrastructural means and political will to expand and modernize its sugar and sugarcane ethanol industries to take advantage of the unique developments now taking place around the globe? Based on the following assessment, despite the precipitous collapse of Cuba’s sugar industry beginning in the early 1990s, the country’s economy would benefit from opening its markets to foreign investment and revitalizing its tattered sugar industry for the production of raw sugar, ethanol and electricity.
