The G7 Nations have announced that the aid Haiti has been ‘given’ by them is to be ‘forgiven’. Most aid is in fact a loan with interest. Haiti was buried in debt long before the natural disaster that has buried them in rubble. Even if the G7 ‘forgiveness’ does materialise Haiti will still be indebted to the IMF, Venezuela and Taiwan.
As always the money was stolen by Haiti’s elite and by the ‘donor’ countries that set the terms of the loans*. The poor stayed poor, uneducated and without decent homes. When they ’steal’ what should have been theirs anyway, they are branded looters, criminals and evolutionary simpletons.
* In this post I have not corroborated that statement due to time constraints at this time but I will in the not too distant future write on aid to impoverished countries.
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” … Frederic Bastiat (1801 – 1850)
We call it government!
As socialist I believe government should be a provider of essential services such as health and social services, energy, water, transport, law enforcement and the postal service at very least. But power corrupts and as we know governments i.e. the politicians, waste money on illegal wars, interference in foreign state’s affairs, drug wars and spurious “in-the-public-interest” projects.
They not only waste our money they also eat away at our natural born freedoms. Government is essential but I cannot help but appreciate Le Fred’s words! He wasn’t a socialist and I therefore I choose to value the quoted words in isolation of his creed.
The British General Election will be in May or June. Remember the war-mongers that voted to send our troops to their deaths in the illegal wars – vote them out! Remember the cheats who stole from us with phony expenses (including the Prime Minister!) – vote them out! Remember the MPs who voted our freedoms away – vote them out!
Reprieve is a human rights charitable organization that fights for prisoners who find themselves on death row and prisons like the illegal US concentration camp Guantánamo Bay. They investigate, litigate and educate, and provide legal support to prisoners who do not have the means to pay for it themselves.
Here’s a story first read on the Reprieve web site that is not only disturbing in itself but even more disturbing that it exposes the Obama Administration as being, in it’s approach to openness and transparency at least, just as corrupt as the Bush regime.
President Obama’s Administration has suppressed an investigation of three potential homicides at Guantánamo Bay. The whistleblower, Sergeant Joe Hickman, who was formerly stationed in Guantánamo has provided evidence that three dead prisoners suffered severe interrogations in a secret ‘black site’ away from the main prison just before they died.
The Bush Administration claimed they were suicides and ordered more torture of the prisoners. They also spread poisonous lies about the dead men to defer attention from their criminal actions.
Reprieve’s Secret Prisons Investigator Clara Gutteridge said: “Scott Horton’s investigation indicates that, as usual, Guantánamo’s traumatised prisoners are telling the truth about their treatment. According to our clients, in addition to the secret CIA facility — and another house on the base where some prisoners were taken to be held in solitary confinement — there was also a black site run by US marines on Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It was located outside the main prison, and was known amongst the prisoners as a place where people were taken to be ‘broken.’ When will these prisoner’s testimonies finally be taken seriously? And when will the perpetrators of these terrible crimes finally face justice?”
Reprieve’s Executive Director Clare Algar said: “Under President Bush, ‘enhanced interrogations’ were violent, merciless and covert. From a position of such lawlessness it is no great leap to inadvertent homicide and illegal cover-up. If President Obama is serious about restoring international trust in the USA, he simply must investigate allegations like these.”
The Chilcot inquiry into the illegal war with Iraq has been under way for some time. Today the ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and war criminal Tony Blair gives evidence to the inquiry or to use the more honest term he will lie to the inquiry.
So will every other member of the Government that was involved in the decision to stick their nose up George Bush’s arse and go to war without any justification let alone legality. Below is a link to the BBC story on the subject and I will come back to it once I have considered Blair’s testimony.
For now here are my predictions:
Blair will justify his actions by lying and subterfuge.
Any damning evidence and testimony given by people close to, or consulted by the Government will be ignored.
Chilcot will deliver a white-wash verdict just like Hutton did in the inquiry into the murder of government weapons scientist Dr David Kelly.
If all three of those predictions are wrong I will eat humble pie and bare my arse on YouTube.
No exposing my bum on YouTube yet! Tony Blair wriggled like a chopped up worm. Go here the BBC analysis.
One more reason I reject religion. A 16-year-old girl was raped by a 20-year-old boy from her village. He not only abused her but he made her pregnant.
She was so ashamed of what happened she never reported it. When her parents found out they quickly married her off to a different man. But he found out and promptly divorced her.
If think the story so far is incredible wait till you read this. The Muslim Elders ordered a fatwa on the victim and ordered her to be punished with 101 lashes! The rapist was allowed to go free.
The fatwa and the whipping are illegal but the police have failed to bring the perpetrators including the rapist to justice. The Muslim elders are fanatics and do not represent the vast majority of Muslims but unfortunately it’s the thugs that grab power everywhere.
A combination of religious fanaticism and incompetent, lazy police results in hundreds of incidents of violence against women going unpunished.
I’ve been a bit quiet on the subject of Taser torture, Taser murder and police brutality of late. It’s because it makes me so mad when I see ordinary people abused by ignorant out-of-control cops that I fear my already too high blood pressure may blow a gasket.
But in replying to a comment from somebody who is either one such described above or a self deluded supporter of same low-life, I got to research the subject again. Now I am not suggesting that all cops are ignorant, sadistic low-life. But the more I research, the more I read and almost every time I come into contact with cops (yes, here in England too) even to ask directions I have to conclude that a good cop is an exception.
By researching a reply to this comment from ‘Holbrookite’ I came a across the following video of an innocent, unarmed, disabled and BLIND woman who apparently was a threat to the cops who knocked at her door. Lying sadists!
Did you see the Muppet the Dayton cops used as a spokesman? Sgt. Charles Anderson, was he rolled to out make the usual weak excuses because he was black and their victim, Denise Anderson, was black? Call me cynical but I’d lay odds on it.
Get mad, blow a gasket, protest to your Senators and Representatives get these lethal Tasers banned. Stop police brutality.
Please feel free to comment even if you disagree; just expect a pithy reply if you do. If you don’t see a comments box below click on the heading of this post and it will take you there.
La Oroya high up in the Andes in Peru has been a mining town since the eighteenth century. It has the unenviable reputation of being one of the top 10 most polluted places on the planet. There are so many places that the Capitalists and rogue governments have ruined that it would be difficult to name one as “the dirtiest place on earth’.
La Oroya though takes some beating. It boasts a dirty American-owned smelter that has operated there since 1922. The metal smelter is run by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation and the company has reneged on it’s contractual promises to clean up it’s processes.
As you can see from the photo the city is shrouded in a toxic smog.
Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
“With the acquisition of La Oroya, Doe Run inherited a complicated and partially semi-obsolescent smelter complex. The operation had suffered from disrepair, previous owners had invested little in modernization or clean operations. As a result of years of pollution, the hills immediately around the smelter became completely denuded, the river became more toxic, and the health of area inhabitants suffered. Residents have been found to have alarmingly high concentrations of lead in their blood and in the drinking water, and many have bronchial troubles. A 1999 study (conducted two years after Doe Run’s acquisition) showed high levels of air pollution, with 85 times more arsenic, 41 times more cadmium, and 13 times more lead than amounts generally considered safe.”
In 2007 it was found that the smelter’s polluted emissions have led to dangerously high blood lead levels in 99% of La Oroya’s children. With air pollution at these dangerous levels lung disorders are widespread and there is also a high incident of premature death. Within a very short exposure the dense air stings the eyes and throat.
The hills around the city are denuded of vegetation by acid rain and there is very little farming in the area because of the pollutants saturated soil.
The president of Doe Run Peru, Juan Carlos Huyhua, says the company is doing much to improve the health of workers at the plant and claims their blood lead levels were reduced by 34 percent by 2006. What he didn’t mention was that Doe Run’s lead smelter in the U.S. state of Missouri produces emissions twenty times lower than it’s plant in Peru.
Profit always comes before peoples health and well-being. Doe Run doesn’t give damn about the environment or the people who live in this area. They wouldn’t get away with it in the United States or Europe but in a ‘third-world’ country anything goes. Capitalism has no morality!
Instead of cleaning up the pollution as promised the American billionaire owner, Ira Rennert, used the profits to help build one of the world’s most expensive houses.
January 25, 2010. Report from Al Jazeera’s Tarek Bazley. Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, has been executed in Iraq for crimes against humanity.
Later recognised as one of the president’s most feared military leaders, al-Majid’s rise to power came only after his cousin became president. It was under Saddam that Majid became a general, defence minister and trusted member of the president’s inner circle, and forged a reputation as a strongman.
But it was during the government’s campaign against the Kurds in northern Iraq that Majid’s most notorious crimes took place.
January 25, 2010. Dave Knight. As readers of The Duck Shoot blog already know I am totally opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. It hasn’t always been that way, I once thought that the death penalty should be applied selectively.
Chemical Ali would have been one such exception. He is, without doubt a monster. A cold-blooded killer of innocent men, women and children.
His list of crimes include bombing Kurdish villages with mustard gas, sarin, tabub and VX between 1987 and 1988. It was at this time that up to 5000 Kurds were gassed to death. When the Kurdish resistance continued his troops destroyed thousands of villages and killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds.
In 1983 after an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in the town of Dujail he meted out collective punishment on the townspeople. He had scores of local men killed, deported thousands of inhabitants and had the town razed to the ground.
After Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf war he was tasked with the crushing of opposition from the Shi’ites in the south as well as the Kurds in the north. Many thousands were killed possibly as many as 100,000 Shi’ite Muslims in the south alone.
So why shouldn’t Ali Hassan be executed? The death penalty is barbaric and renders executioners and supporters barbarians as well. The death penalty is morally wrong because it deprives a human being of the ‘right to life’*.
What is more the process of law is not perfect and this has led to an untold number of innocent people being executed. It is this one fact that leads me to oppose the use of the death penalty as punishment, one innocent death is too many and there have been thousands.
You cannot pick and choose who should be executed. Abolition has to be total.
Certainly Chemical Ali should have received a severe sentence for his crimes, but by hanging him the authorities have perpetuated the barbarism.
The Day of Blogging for Justice on December 4, 2009 was a unconditional success. Bloggers from the Americas and Europe joined together to post articles, videos and images of Taser incidents and information. Indisputable evidence of the lethal nature of these instruments of torture and death was posted on Excited-Delirium, Electronic Village and many other blogs that joined the campaign.
The killing hasn’t stopped but thousands more people have been made aware of how lethal these machines are and as a result many more are questioning their use. The alliance of participating bloggers want Tasers banned. Furthermore, The Duck Shoot demands that all deaths that occurred after Taser use should be re-examined and where the Taser was used without just cause the law officers involved be charged with homicide.
There have been deaths wherever Tasers are used but in the United States it is an epidemic. Cops in the US are just plain crazy and because they are never been held accountable they continue to abuse the people they are employed to serve.
The officers of Taser International should be charged with first degree murder too, as against all evidence that there weapons are lethal they continued to promote their use and deny they kill.
Here are the names of the 61 Americans killed by Taser between January 9, 2009 and January 17, 2010.
Jan 9, 2009, Derrick Jones, 17, Black, Martinsville, Virginia
Jan 11, 2009, Rodolfo Lepe, 31, Hispanic, Bakersfield, California
Jan 22, 2009, Roger Redden, 52, Caucasian, Soddy Daisy, Tennessee
Feb 2, 2009, Garrett Jones, 45, Caucasian, Stockton, California
Feb 11, 2009, Richard Lua, 28, Hispanic, San Jose, California
Feb 13, 2009, Rudolph Byrd, 37, Black, Thomasville, Georgia
Feb 13, 2009, Michael Jones, 43, Black, Iberia, Louisiana
Feb 14, 2009, Chenard Kierre Winfield, 32, Black, Los Angeles, California
Feb 28, 2009, Robert Lee Welch, 40, Caucasian, Conroe, Texas
Mar 22, 2009, Brett Elder, 15, Caucasian, Bay City, Michigan
Mar 26, 2009, Marcus D. Moore, 40, Black, Freeport, Illinois
Apr 1, 2009, John J. Meier Jr., 48, Caucasian, Tamarac, Florida
Apr 6, 2009, Ricardo Varela, 41, Hispanic, Fresno, California
Apr 10, 2009, Robert Mitchell, 16, Black, Detroit, Michigan
Apr 13, 2009, Craig Prescott, 38, Black, Modesto, California
Apr 16, 2009, Gary A. Decker, 50, Black, Tuscon, Arizona
Apr 18, 2009, Michael Jacobs Jr., 24, Black, Fort Worth, Texas
Apr 30, 2009, Kevin LaDay, 35, Black, Lumberton, Texas
May 4, 2009, Gilbert Tafoya, 53, Caucasian, Holbrook, Arizona
May 17, 2009, Jamaal Valentine, 27, Black, La Marque, Texas
May 23, 2009, Gregory Rold, 37, Black, Salem, Oregon
Jun 9, 2009, Brian Cardall, 32, Caucasian, Hurricane, Utah
Jun 13, 2009, Dwight Madison, 48, Black, Bel Air, Maryland
Jun 20, 2009, Derrek Kairney, 36, Race, Unknown, South Windsor, Connecticut
Jun 30, 2009, Shawn Iinuma, 37, Race, Unknown, Fontana, California
Jul 2, 2009, Rory McKenzie, 25, Black, Bakersfield, California
Jul 20, 2009, Charles Anthony Torrence, 35, Caucasion, Simi Valley, California
Jul 30, 2009, Johnathan Michael Nelson, 27, Caucasion, Riverside County, California
Aug 9, 2009, Terrace Clifton Smith, 52, Race, Unknown, Moreno Valley, California
Aug 12, 2009, Ernest Ridlehuber, 53, Race, Unknown, Greenville, South Carolina
Aug 14, 2009, Hakim Jackson, 31, Black, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Aug 18, 2009, Ronald Eugene Cobbs, 38, Black, Greensboro, North Carolina
Aug 20, 2009, Francisco Sesate, 36, Hispanic, Mesa, Arizona
Aug 22, 2009, T.J. Nance, 37, Race, Unknown, Arizona City, Arizona
Aug 26, 2009, Miguel Molina, 27, Hispanic, Los Angeles, California
Aug 27, 2009, Manuel Dante Dent, 27, Hispanic, Modesto, California
Sep 3, 2009, Shane Ledbetter, 38, Caucasian, Aurora, Colorado
Sep 16, 2009, Alton Warren Ham, 45, Caucasian, Modesto, California
Sep 19, 2009, Yuceff W. Young II, 21, Black, Brooklyn, Ohio
Sep 21, 2009, Richard Battistata, 44, Hispanic, Laredo, Texas
Sep 28, 2009, Derrick Humbert, 38, Black, Bradenton, Florida
Oct 2, 2009, Rickey Massey, 38, Black, Panama City, Florida
Oct 12, 2009, Christopher John Belknap, 36, Race, Unknown, Ukiah, California
Oct 16, 2009, Frank Cleo Sutphin, 19, Race, Unknown, San Bernadino, California
Oct 27, 2009, Jeffrey Woodward, 33, Race, Unknown, Gallatin, Tennessee
Nov 14, 2009, Darryl Bain, 43, Black, Coram, New York
Nov 16, 2009, Matthew Bolick, 30, Caucasian, East Grand Rapids, Michigan
Nov 19, 2009, Jesus Gillard, 61, Black, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Nov 21, 2009, Ronald Petruney, 49, Race: Unknown, Washington, Pennsylvania
Nov 27, 2009, Eddie Buckner, 53, Caucasian, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Dec 11, 2009, Andrew Grande, 33, Caucasian, Oak County, Florida
Dec 11, 2009, Hatchel Pate Adams III, 36, Black, Hampton, Virginia
Dec 11, 2009, Paul Martin Martinez, 36, Hispanic, Roseville, California
Dec 13, 2009, Douglas Boucher, 39, Caucasian, Mason, Ohio
Dec 14, 2009, Linda Hicks, 62, Black, Toledo, Ohio
Dec 19, 2009, Preston Bussey III, 41, Race: Unknown, Rockledge, Florida
Dec 20, 2009, Michael Hawkins, 39, Caucasian, Springfield, Missouri
Dec 30, 2009, Stephen Palmer, Race: Unknown, Stamford, Connecticut
Jan 6, 2010, Delano Smith, Black, Elkhart, Indiana
Jan 17, 2010, William Bumbrey III, Black, Arlington, Virginia
Later recognised as one of the president’s most feared military leaders, al-Majid’s rise to power came only after his cousin became president. It was under Saddam that Majid became a general, defence minister and trusted member of the president’s inner circle, and forged a reputation as a strongman.
The Day of Blogging for Justice on December 4, 2009 was a unconditional success. Bloggers from the Americas and Europe joined together to post articles, videos and images of Taser incidents and information. Indisputable evidence of the lethal nature of these instruments of torture and death was posted on 
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