Updates from October, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • InI 08:26 on October 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Fahrenheit 2010: World Cup South Africa, 2010 

    more about “Fahrenheit 2010 TRAILER“, posted with vodpod

    For four action-packed weeks in June and July 2010, the largest international television audience to ever follow a single event will be watching the football World Cup in South Africa. As the clock ticks down, and the nations of the world anticipate the beautiful game’s showpiece, questions are being asked about what will happen after the trophy is lifted, the caravans move on, and the dogs stop barking…

    Fahrenheit 2010 cuts through the hype, with an uncompromising examination of what the World Cup means for South Africans themselves – in particular, who actually stands to benefit from the diversion of millions of dollars to build 21st century sports arenas in a country in which, 15 years after throwing off apartheid’s yoke, millions live in shacks and have no access to water – a South Africa where life expectancy has plummeted beneath that in Ethiopia.

    International heavyweights like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, construction workers, FIFA’s Communications Director, street traders, politicians, and sports celebrities wade into the debate. National pride, corruption and even murder feature in this astonishingly candid film which peels back the glossy media veneer to expose the real concerns of ordinary South Africans: hopes about jobs, the eviction of school children to make way for construction company offices, the removal of an inconvenient community, and what traditional medicine and the influence of the ancestors might mean for the local team…

     

  • InI 07:22 on October 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Capitalism: a love story Reviewed by Harry Feldman 

    cap-moore.jpgRevolutionaries steeped in Marxist theory and the history of class struggle who flog socialist papers on street corners and picket lines, who organise and leaflet for protest marches, play an important part in fomenting revolution. But as everyone knows, ultimately, we are not the ones who are going to overthrow capitalism once and for all and create a new society based on solidarity and cooperation. Cast in that role are the ordinary working grunts who make everything and do everything and comprise the vast majority of the world’s population. It’s no mystery why ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’. Through our collective activity in the process of revolution we learn that we have the capacity to run our society ourselves, in our own interests, without the benefit of bosses, politicians, and clergy. It’s also through this process that we acquire the skills that enable us to organise production and distribution.

    For all the criticism Michael Moore has copped for his latest film, Capitalism: a love story, he manages to address an audience of millions and tens of millions of the very people that revolutionaries can only dream of reaching in ones and twos. So I was keen to see what message he was conveying and whether it was the kind of thing that would provoke people to walk out of the theatre proclaiming,‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore’. A free pass to the preview last night provided the opportunity.

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  • InI 16:49 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Music video: Darcy James Argue's Secret Society 

    Since first putting this up, I’ve immersed myself in this album so I’ve junked some of what I wrote earlier, but as I said I came across this album on my one and only Internet ‘radio’ station, Rootdownfm.com and was blown away by it. The main influences on Argue’s music are to my ear Gil Evans and Charles Mingus, but just when you think you have his music pinned down, Argue comes up with something else! He calls his music steampunk big band. Like Gil Evans he knows how to score the band’s voices, playing them off against each other, building complex tonal patterns and then the music will move into the emotionally charged groove of a Mingus big band score. And this band swings (well it is a New York band). Great trombone work which is the dominant solo instrument (check out the solo on ‘Habeas Corpus’). Beautiful stuff. Five stars from Creative-i.

    Track 4 ‘Redeye’ off Infernal Machines (2009), an 18-piece band from New York directed by composer Darcy James Argue.


     

  • InI 15:54 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Bring ALL British Troops Home By William Gladys 

    27 October, 2009

    Will Prince Harry ever say sorry?

    Democracy is still alive – well only just – in the British Isles.

    Although Prince Harry failed to march with the Anti-War Majority on the streets of London recently, a fearless Peace Seeking Lance Corporal bravely hoisted a Flag of Peace to the mast for the entire world to see. To observe a serving soldier marching in opposition to the Queen’s foreign policy in the Middle-East was heartening to say the least. Perhaps after all there is still hope for this country? Like millions of voters in the British Isles the Lance Corporal is plainly sick to death of the relentless slaughter and body and mind maiming of hundreds of British soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of blameless Muslims: men, women, children and babies.

    The rhetoric that “Monarchical Britain has sent its troops to occupy the Middle East to safeguard the people of Britain” will not wash anymore. It is hypocrisy and poppycock of the very worse kind, and one reason why millions of us want ALL military personnel returned to the British homeland, and not only a highly privileged and pampered Prince Harry, who stated not verbatim, that “he would loyally stay with his men”. This was established when we witnessed this trigger joyful royal on camera disgracefully unleashing killing rounds from his heavy machine gun in the direction of Muslims who were valiantly resisting occupation of THEIR homeland. As we in Britain no doubt would also valiantly resist “with our backs against the White Cliffs of Dover” if need be any foreign troops endeavouring to invade OUR Homeland and intervene in our affairs, our Sovereignty.

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  • InI 15:30 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Pranksters Fixing the World By Mark Engler 

    21 October, 2009 — Foreign Policy In Focus

    yesmen2.jpgOver the past 10 years, the Yes Men have emerged as an infamously daring and creative duo of anti-corporate pranksters. In their new movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (known in their non-activist lives as Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos) explain their methodology: ‘What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like,’ they say. ‘We make fake websites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.’

    When they are invited, the Yes Men pose as spokespeople for companies such as Halliburton and Exxon, or bodies such as the World Trade Organization, and they give presentations that highlight the logic of corporate greed.

    In one instance, on the 20th anniversary of the notorious chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India, Bichlbaum appeared on the BBC as a representative of Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, the company responsible for the 1984 calamity. He announced a $12 billion plan to provide medical care to the 120,000 victims of the disaster and to fully remediate the factory site. The company’s market value dropped $2 billion in 23 minutes before the hoax was discovered and Dow rushed to explain that it was still refusing to meet the victims’ demands for justice.

    The Yes Men Fix the World opened in New York City on October 7 and begins showing in cities around the country on October 23. Shortly after the start of the New York run, the perpetually mischievous Bichlbaum spoke with Foreign Policy In Focus senior analyst Mark Engler.

    MARK ENGLER: How have you felt about the reception of the film so far?

    ANDY BICHLBAUM: Great. People have loved it. They’ve taken to the streets. Every day last week, they left the theater and stormed to a nearby destination. [Laughs.]

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  • InI 14:45 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Pt2 

    27 October, 2009 — The Real News Network

    Wilkerson: From US debt to the geopolitics of oil, the US empire will come to an end

    Bio
    Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled “National Security Decision Making.”

    Watch Part 1 | Watch Part 3

     

  • InI 13:07 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Obama: Manufacturing A Savior A Case Study In Social Engineering – Fabricating Myths, Mantras, Consent and Dissent, for Imperial Mobilization By Zahir Ebrahim 

    27 October, 2009 — Atlantic Free Press

    Edward L. Bernays began his seminal 1928 book, egregiously titled ‘PROPAGANDA’, with these revealing words in the very first chapter ‘ORGANIZING CHAOS’:

    ‘THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

    ‘We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons—a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.’

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  • InI 10:47 on October 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Insanity and the Nobel Peace Prize: Obama and the Rule of Law By Felicity Arbuthnot 

    27 October, 2009 — Global Research

    ‘The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.’ — Edmund Burke, 1729-1797.

    ‘Oh God! That men should put an enemy in their mouths and steal away their brains.’ — Othello, William Shakespeare, 1546-1616.

    Ten months of an Obama Administration seems an eternity away from the hope he had inspired in so many.

    ‘Let’s seek a better world in our time’, said Obama, as he travelled Abraham Lincoln’s path to the January 20th inauguration – coincidentally paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (5th March 1946) where he was introduced by President McClure.

    As the President-to-be headed for Washington, to swear the oath on a bible used by Lincoln, did he ponder on Lincoln’s: ‘With malice toward none; with charity for all’?

    In the inaugural address Barack Hussein Obama vowed: ‘To the Muslim world, we seek a way forward, based on mutual respect.’ The following day, he stated: ‘Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstone of this Presidency.’ On 24th January, the (London) Independent opined: ‘With a stroke of the pen, Mr. Obama halted his predecessors … policy to (bend) the U.S. Constitution and international legal obligations under the Geneva Conventions.’

    Eight days in, he told Al-Arabiya: ‘My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that Americans are not your enemy’ (as he prepared to send thousands more troops to cull humanity in the villages and valleys of Afghanistan.)

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  • InI 20:23 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Dollar Collapse Update: “Obama Demands Pay in Euros!” By Mike Whitney 

    25 October, 2009 — Global Research – Information Clearinghouse

    The “dollar debate” on the Internet has been ferocious and emotionally-charged, but sadly lacking in logic. To oppose the “dollar will crash” theorists is like arguing a woman’s right to choose with the fist-waving throng assembled outside an abortion clinic. The results are equally disappointing. To say that “minds are already made up and the issue is settled”, is an understatement. For many, the dollar’s transition from the world’s reserve currency to a Wiemar era Deutschemark is not a question “if” but only of “when”. One reader summed up the distrust that’s felt for anyone who dares to challenge the prevailing dogma like this:

    “Mike…..Your article on October 19th 2009 titled “The Dollar will NOT crash,” made all of us in this part of the world who respected your views and opinions feel disturbed and appalled….Then my friend explicated and reminded me, “From the time of Chaim Weizmann’s solicitous and guile behavior towards the politicians, the media and the newspersons, the powerful Zionists lobby had perfected the art of falsity and misrepresentation.”

    Uh, okay. So, now opposing the dominant theory not only proves that one is a fool, but also a tool of the “Zionist lobby”?

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  • InI 19:27 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    NIE Reveals Qom Facility Followed 2007 Bush Threats By Gareth Porter 

    23 October, 2009 — IPS ipsnews.net

    WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (IPS) – The Barack Obama administration claims that construction of a second Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Qom began before Tehran’s decision to withdraw from a previous agreement to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in advance of such construction. But the November 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear programme tells a different story.

    The Iranian decision to withdraw from the earlier agreement with the IAEA was prompted, moreover, by the campaign of threats to Iran’s nuclear facilities mounted by the George W. Bush administration in early 2007, as a reconstruction of the sequence of events shows.

    A senior administration official who briefed reporters Sep. 25 said, ‘We know construction of the facility began even before the Iranians unilaterally said they did not feel bound by that [IAEA] obligation.’

    The U.S. intelligence assessment of the period, however, makes it clear that Iran did not begin construction on the Qom enrichment facility until long after its public change of policy on informing the IAEA.

    The published key judgments of the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programme contained a little-noticed statement that the intelligence community judged that Iran’s ‘covert’ uranium conversion and enrichment activity had ‘probably been halted in response to the fall 2003 halt’, and ‘probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007′.

    That clearly implied that U.S. intelligence had found no evidence of any undeclared covert enrichment facility.

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  • InI 14:46 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Real News Network – The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Pt1 

    Larry Wilkerson: The beginning of the American “Imperial Rome” and Eisenhower’s warning

    Watch Part 2 | Watch Part 3

    more about “The Real News Network – The Military-…“, posted with vodpod

    Bio
    Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled “National Security Decision Making.
    This talk by Larry Wilkerson was the keynote speech given at an event sponsored by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, American University History Department, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute on Oct 21,2009 at American University in Washington DC.

    Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence describes itself as “a movement of former CIA colleagues and other associates of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power”.

     

  • InI 13:05 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Martin Sanchez: What Difference Does a Revolution Make in a Global Economic Meltdown? 

    26 October, 2009 — talkingsticktv

    Martin Sanchez, Consul General of Venezuela in San Francisco and Debra Evenson author of “Law and Society in Contemporary Cuba” speaking at the workshop “What Difference Does a Revolution Make in a Global Economic Meltdown?” held October 16, 2009 at the National Lawyers Guild Law of the People 2009 Convention in Seattle.



    more about “Martin Sanchez: What Difference Does …“, posted with vodpod


     

  • InI 10:41 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Little hope for fair trial – Karadzic defense team 

    26 October, 2009 — Russia Today

    As the trial of former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic gets underway at The Hague Tribunal, a member of Karadzic’s defense team, Goran Petronijevic, said in an interview with RT that he has little hope for a fair trial.

     

  • InI 09:04 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Global Research Swine Flu Emergency and the Global Debt Crisis Selected Articles 19-25 October, 2009 

    25 October, 2009 — Global Research

    Don Guttenplan, Quentin Young, Cindy Sheehan, Rick Rozoff, Robert Abele on The Global Research News Hour
    – 2009-10-30

    Swine Flu: Is Meditation the Best Medication?
    – by Richard C. Cook – 2009-10-25

    Dollar Collapse Update: “Obama Demands Pay in Euros!”
    – by Mike Whitney – 2009-10-25

    AARP’s Tradition of Betrayal
    – by Stephen Lendman – 2009-10-25

    US declares swine flu ‘emergency’
    – 2009-10-25

    The Virtues of Deglobalization
    – by Walden Bello – 2009-10-25

    US commander in Afghanistan asks NATO for more 85,000 troops
    – 2009-10-25

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  • InI 07:49 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    America's Phoney War in Afghanistan By F. William Engdahl 

    25 October, 2009 — Global Research

    One of the most remarkable aspects of the Obama Presidential agenda is how little anyone has questioned in the media or elsewhere why at all the United States Pentagon is committed to a military occupation of Afghanistan. There are two basic reasons, neither one of which can be admitted openly to the public at large.

    Behind all the deceptive official debate over how many troops are needed to ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan, whether another 30,000 is sufficient, or whether at least 200000 are needed, the real purpose of US military presence in that pivotal Central Asian country is obscured.

    Even during the 2008 Presidential campaign candidate Obama argued that Afghanistan not Iraq was where the US must wage war. His reason? Because he claimed, that was where the Al Qaeda organization was holed up and that was the ‘real’ threat to US national security. The reasons behind US involvement in Afghanistan is quite another one.

    The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia.

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  • InI 07:17 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    WHO'S AFRAID OF RICHARD GOLDSTONE? By Ronnie Kasrils 

    24 October, 2009

    Address by Ronnie Kasrils to NADEL (National Association of Democratic Lawyers of South Africa):

    Topic “Goldstone Report & The Struggle of the Palestinian People”

    Justice Richard Goldstone is an internationally respected judge of integrity and credibility. Sober, reserved, most prim and proper, his reputation has been built on impeccable credentials. This has included his investigations into the apartheid-era hit-squads and violence; violations of international law in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and in connection with the UN Iraq Oil for Food Programme; and of course his outstanding service with South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

    Whilst it was expected that the apartheid era security services and generals would be afraid of the man, ironically in the aftermath of the release of the UN Report on Gaza, this life-long friend of Israel, a professed Zionist himself, has been vilified by Netenyahu and the Israeli Government; by the Chief Rabbi of South Africa; and in equally hysterical terms by many fellow Jews. It seems that this unlikely candidate for “self-hating Jew” has become top of their list. Without doubt the Israeli Government and Defence Force, and Zionist apologists world-wide, have come to fear and loathe this quiet, genteel, undemonstrative man who strives to serve truth, justice and the rule of law in the best way he can.

    South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, acting like some demented Israeli propagandist has weighed-in to the Goldstone Report on Gaza as “a political strategy for delegitimizing Israel”; alleging that it is “phrased in wild, undisciplined and aggressive language;” and violates the audi alteram partem (right to be heard) rule – injudiciously ignoring the fact that it was Israel that refused to participate and prevented the Goldstone team from setting foot in Israel and the West Bank. (Business Day, 20 October, 2009)

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  • InI 07:11 on October 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    When the Climate Change Center Cannot Hold By Patrick Bond 

    25 October, 2009 — Socialist Project | The Bullet

    On a day that 350.org and thousands of allies are valiantly trying to raise global consciousness about impending catastrophe, we can ask some tough questions about what to do after people depart and the props are packed up. No matter today’s activism, global climate governance is grid-locked and it seems clear that no meaningful deal can be sealed in Copenhagen on December 18.

    The recent Bangkok negotiations of Kyoto Protocol Conference of Parties functionaries confirmed that Northern states and their corporations won’t make an honest effort to get to 350 CO2 parts per million. On the right, Barack Obama’s negotiators seem to feel that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is excessively binding to the North, and leaves out several major polluters of the South, including China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

    Kyoto’s promised 5% emissions cuts (by 2012, from 1990 levels) are impossible now. Obama’s people hope the world will accept 2005 as a new starting date; a 20% reduction by 2020 then only brings the target back to around 5% below 1990 levels. Such pathetically low ambitions, surely Obama knows, guarantee a runaway climate catastrophe – he should shoot for 45%, say the small island nations.

    The other reason Kyoto is ridiculed by serious environmentalists is its provision for carbon trading rackets which allow fake claims of net emissions cuts. Since the advent of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the Chicago exchange, Clean Development Mechanism projects and offsets, vast evidence has accumulated of systemic market failure, scamming and inability to regulate carbon trading (see a website launched today http://www.350reasons.org).

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  • InI 13:53 on October 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    The Real News Network – Ellsberg: From Vietnam to Afghanistan 

    25 October, 2009 — The Real News Network

    Ellsberg: As President Obama decides what to do in Afghanistan he must learn the lessons of Vietnam



    Bio
    Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.


     

  • InI 07:55 on October 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Video: Ska-P, "The Liberator" 

    25 October, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review

    more about “Ska-P, “The Liberator”“, posted with vodpod
    Amidst misery, hunger, and desolation
    Somebody planted a flower in the mud
    A certain Bolívar, they call him the Liberator
    The Liberator

    Shouts for justice, land, and freedom
    Again resonate in South America
    A new revolution has begun
    And this time it’s advancing with conviction

    Agrarian reform and just redistribution
    Health, culture, and good education
    Respect and dignity for the indigenous
    For the indigenous

    Socialize it!
    NO to privatization!
    Better working conditions for workers
    What the land offers belongs to the people
    Against the oligarchy and exploiters

    A media war manipulates the truth
    Bare your teeth in the face of Uncle Sam
    No retreat!

    Adelante, Comandante!
    Take charge, honestly
    It’s a new dawn for Latin America

    A firm step forward
    Be confident
    A people who knows how to organize is
    A wise and free people

    O, o, o
    Far from perfection
    You make way by walking
    When you have an illusion

    O, o, o
    Far from perfection
    You make way by walking
    When you have an illusion

    A media war manipulates the truth
    Bare your teeth in the face of Uncle Sam
    No retreat

    Adelante, Comandante!
    Take charge, honestly
    It’s a new dawn for Latin America

    A firm step forward
    Be confident
    A people who knows how to organize is
    A wise and free people

    O, o, o
    Rebellion in the air
    Rebellion in the air in Latin America

    O, o, o
    Time of transition
    Time of transition in all America

    Adelante, Comandante!
    To the vanguard, Comandante,
    Of Latin America!

    A firm step forward
    Be confident, Comandante,
    O, o, o, in Latin America!

    Ska-P is a ska punk band from the working-class Vallecas neighborhood in Madrid, Spain.  “El libertador” is a song from the band’s seventh album: Lágrimas y Gozos The text above is the English translation of the lyrics of “El libertador” by Yoshie Furuhashi.

     

  • InI 07:25 on October 25, 2009 Permalink | Reply
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    Great Power Confrontation in the Indian Ocean: The Geo-Politics of the Sri Lankan Civil War By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya 

    23 October, 2009 — Global Research

    The support and positions of various foreign governments in regards to the diabolic fighting between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military, which cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, says a great deal about the geo-strategic interests of these foreign governments. The position of the governments of India and a group of states that can collectively be called the Periphery, such as the U.S. and Australia, were in support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers, either overtly or covertly. Many of these governments also provided this support tacitly, so as not to close any future opportunity of co-opting Sri Lanka after the fighting was over.

    In contrast, the governments of a group of states that can jointly be called Eurasia as a collective entity, such as Iran and Russia, supported the Sri Lankan government. The polar nature of the support by Eurasia and the Periphery for the two different combating sides in the Sri Lankan Civil War betrays the scent or odour of a much broader struggle. This is a struugle that extends far beyond the borders of the island of Sri Lanka and its region.

    Why is this so? Much of the answer to such a question has to do with the formation of a growing alliance in the Eurasian landmass against the international domination of the U.S. and its allies. This Eurasian alliance was formed on the basis of the growing cohesion between Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and their allies that has seen the animation of the Primakov Doctrine. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security body with real military dimensions that has been called “the NATO of the East” within some foreign policy circles is a real symbol of this geo-political dynamic. In 2009, the last chapter of the Sri Lankan Civil War was very much a theatre within this process.

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