Forget Big Brother. Companies and countries are discovering that algorithms programmed to scour vast quantities of data can be much more powerful. They can predict your next purchase, forecast car thefts and maybe even help cure cancer. But there is a down side … //

On balmy spring evenings, Hamburg’s Köhlbrand Bridge offers an idyllic postcard view of the city’s harbor. The Elbe River shimmers in the reddish glow of sunset, forklifts, cranes and trucks seem to move in slow motion, and occasionally a container ship glides by. But from the standpoint of Sebastian Saxe, the area is primarily an equation with many variables. For the past four-and-a-half years, the 57-year-old mathematician has been working on his trickiest computing task yet at the behest of the company that manages the Hamburg port.

The port covers an area of 7,200 hectares (about 28 square miles). Roughly 200 trains a day traverse its 300-kilometer (186-mile) network of rails and its 130 bridges to transport goods that have arrived by ship. Saxe, as chief information officer of the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), faces the enormous task of optimizing this logistical nightmare.

The amount of land is finite, and further expansion is not possible. Nevertheless, the Hamburg Senate has announced its goal of almost tripling container transshipment volumes in the city by 2025. This will only work if Saxe and his 60-member IT team manage to optimally exploit another resource: data. He certainly has plenty of it.

The port is already filled with sensors today. Trucks and freight trains are constantly transmitting their positions while incoming container ships report their location and speed. Sensors that constantly monitor port traffic are built into the Köhlbrand Bridge … //

… Turning Data into Dollars:

• Google and Facebook are pure, unadulterated Big Data. Their business models are based on collecting, analyzing and marketing information about their users, through advertising tailored as closely as possible to the individual. This gigantic database and the notion of what can be done with more than a billion individual profiles in the age of Big Data was worth at least $100 billion (€78 billion) to Facebook investors.
• The prospect of turning their treasure troves of data into dollars is now fueling the fantasies of businesses in many industries, from supermarkets to the automobile industry, and from aviation to banks and insurance companies. According to figures published by industry association Bitkom, global sales related to Big Data applications amounted to €4.6 billion in 2012. That number is expected to increase to about €16 billion by 2016.
• Countless Big Data applications are also being tested in medicine and science. Even the public sector, especially police departments and security agencies, not always the most progressive when it comes to IT, have recognized the potential benefits in their fields.
• What captivates so many people is the promise of gazing into the future, thanks to the lightning speed at which massive amounts of data can be analyzed. In fact, algorithms allow for astonishingly precise predictions of human behavior, be it in front of supermarket shelves, in traffic or when it comes to credit-card payment patterns.
• In 2010, Google predicted a wave of flu outbreaks on the basis of user searches. American data specialist Nate Silver predicted the outcome of the last US presidential election well in advance and more precisely than all demographers.

The End of Chance:

• Some cities even predict the probability of crimes in certain neighborhoods. The method, known as “predictive policing,” seems like something straight out of a Hollywood film, and in fact it is. In Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” perpetrators were arrested for crimes they hadn’t even committed yet.
• Finding the presumed delinquents also doesn’t seem to present a problem. Scientists have figured out that, with the help of our mobile phone geolocation and address book data, they can predict with some certainty where we will be tomorrow or at a certain time a year from now.
• The increasing accuracy of such forecasts have led American tech guru Chris Anderson to proclaim that we are arriving at the “end of theory.” Austrian media executive Rudi Klausnitzer, who has just written a book on the subject called “Das Ende des Zufalls” (”The End of Chance”), has reached a similar conclusion.
• It is a prospect that is not altogether appealing to some. But many already rely on the prognostic ability of soulless algorithms in the most intimate spheres of life. The extensive questionnaires used by online dating agencies are fed into algorithms designed to increase the probability of finding a compatible partner.
• A gold rush of sorts is taking shape in companies, research laboratories and some government agencies. In many places, the mantra of data is extolled as the new “oil” or “gold” of the 21st century. Some people are already benefiting financially: statisticians, physicists and so-called data scientists or data miners, who advise companies on Big Data applications. As with the classic American gold rush in the 19th century, most of the money is being made by those who sell equipment, tools and expertise, Big Data specialists like Blue Yonder, a company with 85 employees.

(full text).

• Part 2: How Data Revolutionizes the Economy;
• Part 3: An Electronic Brain to Defeat Cancer;
• Part 4: The Algorithm Builder;
• Part 5: The End of Inspector Chance;
• Part 6: The Database;
• Part 7: A Tyranny of Data?

Links:

the Köhlbrand Bridge: on Google Images-search; on en.wikipedia; on structurae, the World of Structures;

the Elbe River in hamburg: on Google Images-search; on en.wikipedia;

September-Impressions in de.Hamburg;

Hamburg: on harbour’s old and new constructions.

RT discusses the stand-off with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, who’s now the Director of the Cageprisoners activist group, Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, the legal representative of 8 Guantanamo detainees, military attorney Lt. Col Barry Wingard on the line from the detention camp, and Col. Morris Davis, former Chief Prosecutor for the Terrorism Trials at Guantanamo Bay. RT LIVE …;  

related Links to Gitmo hunger strike:

• Political football: Gitmo detainees abandoned by US government, on RT, May 16, 2013;
• Hunger strikers won’t stop until they get a fair trial – former Gitmo inmate, on RT, May 16, 2013;
• Only way to end Gitmo strike fairly is to set cleared inmates free, on RT, May 16, 2013;
• We could end this strike in a week – Gitmo attorney, on RT, May 16, 2013;
• Worse than death row: Gitmo hunger strike reaches Day 100, on RT, May 16, 2013;
• Hunger games: Critical health fears as Gitmo strike marks Day 100, on RT, May 16, 2013.

If you happen to follow the American and international labor scene, and want to kill a leisurely hour, an entertaining way of doing that is to visit the Department of Labor’s (DOL) official website.  It offers a wide selection of labor tidbits, explanations of bureaucratic procedures, helpful tips, advice for retirees and disabled workers, and summaries of the DOL’s most recent compliance victories.  

Ever since Hilda Solis (President Obama’s first-term Secretary of Labor) resigned the position, Seth Harris has been filling in as acting Secretary, pending confirmation of Thomas Perez, President Obama’s hand-picked nominee.  If this were the 1970s, Perez’s confirmation would be a foregone conclusion.  After all, the man has exemplary qualifications; there would be no reason to oppose him.

But because the right-wing has so effectively hijacked the political middle, and has built up an impressive head of steam, the Perez hearings could get very ugly.  In fact, the only thing standing in the way of an aggressive, full-court press by congressional Republicans is their understandable fear of alienating the Latino vote in 2016.  If they get too nasty with Mr. Perez, 2016 could turn out to be Romney Redux.

Bearing the Department of Labor’s official seal, the DOL site is a combination of office newsletter (chatty, helpful, people-oriented) and standard business “mission statement” (a no-nonsense reminder of what the organization is all about).  One of its features is an explanation of the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), the law that established the federal minimum wage (which, today, stands at $7.25 per hour).

For decades there has been an outcry from conservative lobbyists (e.g., U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, etc.) and their Republican minions, demanding repeal of the minimum wage, arguing that it impedes growth, contributes to unemployment, and results in hundreds of small businesses—the backbone of the U.S. economy—going belly-up each year.   While that claim makes for good propaganda, the numbers don’t support it … //

… My one beef with the DOL is its unwillingness to give credit to the only institutional organization in the history of the U.S. dedicated exclusively to improving the economic lives of working people; i.e., labor unions.  Indeed, you hardly ever see any mention of unions on their website.

While the DOL is clearly pro-worker, pro-disabled, pro-minority, and pro-international rights, they’re terrified of the political backlash that would likely result were they to give a well-earned shout-out to organized labor.  Say again?  Bureaucrats lacking the moral courage to speak the truth to power?  Shocking.
(full text).

(David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), was a former union rep. He can be reached here. Read other articles by David).

Links:

Maischberger: Der Millionär hats schwer, Reiche zur Kasse, 74.24 min, von TWMusicBerlin am 22. August 2012 hochgeladen.

BELIZE CITY — A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize’s largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.  

“It’s a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe said. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”

Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.

“These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s just bloody laziness”, Awe said … //

… Robert Rosenswig, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Albany, described the difficult and heartbreaking work of trying to salvage information at the nearby site of San Estevan following similar destruction around 2005.

“Bulldozing damage at San Estevan is extensive and the site is littered with Classic period potsherds,” he wrote in an academic paper describing the scene. “We spent a number of days at the beginning of the 2005 season trying to figure out the extent of the damage … after scratching our heads for many days, a bulldozer showed up and we realized that what appear to be mounds, when overgrown with chest-high vegetation, are actually recently bulldozed garbage piles.”

However small the compensation, bulldozing pyramids is one very brutal way of revealing the inner cores of the structures, which were often built up in periodic stages of construction.

“The one advantage of this massive destruction, to the core site, is that the remains of early domestic activity are now visible on the surface,” Rosenswig wrote.
(full text).

Links:

The Maya site Nohmul in Belize is largely destroyed by contractors seeking building materials for nearby road construction, on wikipedia/homepage-news of May 15, 2013;

Fresh photos about Nohmul or Noh Mul on Google Images-search;

on en.wikipedia: Nohmul; Maya civilization; Belize.

• Ríos Montt Convicted;
• Former Dictator Sentenced to 80 Years for Crimes Against Humanity;
• Historic Judgment by Guatemalan Court.   

National Security Agency Tasked with Targeting Adversaries’ Computers for Attack Since Early 1997, According to Declassified Document
published on the National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 424 (with Documents 1 – 11), by Jeffrey T. Richelson, April 26, 2013:

• “The Future of Warfare Is Warfare in Cyberspace,” NSA Declared;
• “Cyberspace and U.S. National Security” – New Archive Posting Explores Wide Range of U.S. Cyber Concerns, Experiences and Counter-Activities.

China May Have Helped Pakistan Nuclear Weapons Design, Newly Declassified Intelligence Indicates
published on the National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 423 (with Documents 1 – 92), by William Burr, April 23, 2013:

• CIA in 1977 Correctly Estimated South Africa Could Produce Enough Weapons-Grade Uranium “to Make Several Nuclear Devices Per Year”;
• Report on the Libyan Nuclear Program Found that “Serious Deficiencies,” “Poor Leadership” and Lack of “Coherent Planning” Made it “Highly Unlikely to Achieve a Nuclear Weapons Capability “Within the Next 10 years”;
• Intelligence Estimates on Argentina and Brazil Raised Questions About Their Nuclear Programs and Whether they Sought a Weapons Capability.

Links:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Switzerland: “We appreciate our cooperation very much”: Press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter on 12 April in Neuchâtel, on Current Concerns, May 6, 2013;

Switzerland and Russia share a long history, on Current Concerns, May 6, 2013;

Shackles, masks and nasal tubes: Gitmo revises force-feeding techniques (PHOTOS), on Russia Today RT, May 13, 2013 (with links to related articles);

Asian acrimony: … the ramifications of the Malaysian and Pakistani elections and … the implications of social unrest in Bangladesh, on Al-Ahram, by Gamal Nkrumah, May 8, 2013.

Over the last several years I have watched the rise of an important new intellect on the American scene. Ron Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, has demonstrated time and again the extraordinary ability to reexamine settled issues and show that the accepted conclusion was incorrect. One of his early achievements was to dispose of the myth of immigrant crime by demonstrating that “Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age and gender.” You can imagine the uproar, but Unz won the debate.  

Unz provoked and prevailed in another controversy when he concluded that Mexican-Americans have approximately the same innate intelligence as whites, with their lower IQs being due to transitory socio-economic deprivation … //

… Unz’s latest article, Our American Pravda, is a striking account of the failure of media, regulatory, and national security organizations and subsequent cover-ups that leave the public deceived. Unz uses the Iraq war as one example:

• “The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs [sic] posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
• “True facts were easily available to anyone paying attention in the years after 2001, but most Americans do not bother and simply draw their understanding of the world from what they are told by the major media, which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backed the case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV created our reality. Prominent journalists across the liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published the most ridiculous lies and distortions passed on to them by anonymous sources, and stampeded Congress down the path to war.
• “The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom rightly called the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history.” American forces suffered tens of thousands of needless deaths and injuries, while our country took a huge step toward national bankruptcy [and a police state]. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have estimated that with interest the total long-term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as $5 or $6 trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile, economist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Recession and its aftermath cut the personal net worth of the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 from a figure nearly twice as high three years earlier. Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see that the American middle class now hovers on the brink of insolvency, with the cost of our foreign wars being a leading cause.
• “But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suffered any serious consequences, and most of the same prominent politicians and highly paid media figures who were responsible remain just as prominent and highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is whatever our media organs tell us, and since these have largely ignored the facts and adverse consequences of our wars in recent years, the American people have similarly forgotten. Recent polls show that only half the public today believes that the Iraq War was a mistake.”

Unz covers a number of cases of criminality, treason, and cover-ups at high levels of government and points out that “these dramatic, well-documented accounts have been ignored by our national media.” One reason for “this wall of uninterest” is that both parties are complicit and thus equally eager to bury the facts … //

… (full long text).

(Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, “Wirtschaft am Abgrund” (Economies In Collapse) has just been published. His home page is Paul Craig Roberts.org).

Links:

Ron Unz’ External Links on en.wikipedia;

UNZ.org: a free website for periodicals, books, and videos;

State of the Union: American Pravda, Reality Television, by Ron Unz, May 6, 2013;

Don’t shoot, organize, on Intrepid Report, by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, May 13, 2013.

The rise of corporate-owned social media raises many flags about our online security and the future of the digital commons. The solution, says theorist Michael Albert, is a different kind of network altogether … //

… But here’s the good news. It doesn’t have to be like this. There’s no law of nature that social media need to be run by giant corporations or that users need to put up with government spying and manipulative advertising. So, what’s the alternative?  

Michael Albert, social theorist and co-editor of Z Magazine, has come up with one solution—and it’s worth taking a close look at. It’s called FaceLeft, and it embodies the very best of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, but emphatically without the spying, concision, and commercialization users have long put up with. Ad-free, substantive, and as open or private as users want to make it, FaceLeft is the first social network designed by and for activists—or anyone who feels uncomfortable with corporate-owned social media.

“Can social networking itself better reflect and address needs of people who are trying to improve the world?” Albert asked in an email exchange. “I think the answer is of course it can.” It’s just a matter of creating an alternative space, one that “allows brevity but emphasizes substance, that rejects ads but enhances mutual aid, that protects privacy and of course also seeks to subvert spying.”

For a first time user, the site may look and feel a lot like Facebook. Users can set up profiles, connect with others, join groups, and follow stories through a news feed. There are also spaces for events and easy ways to share photos, videos, and links from other sites.

But that’s where the similarities end. In countless ways, FaceLeft delivers more substance and more genuine interaction than a typical social network. News feeds include your contacts’ updates, but also RSS feeds from media outlets like Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera. Groups are built around actions and topics like Food Not Bombs and Indigenous Activism, and facilitate informed discussions that would be unthinkable on a more typical social media platform. Users are encouraged not only to interact and comment, but to stay informed and ask deep questions.

Even more importantly, with FaceLeft, there’s no hidden agenda. The site’s hosts won’t catalogue your private information and sell it to advertisers, or allow the government to spy on its users. To that end, users are asked to subscribe to the site for no more than $3 per month. The idea, says Albert, is to be upfront about how the site tackles operating expenses, as opposed to a “free” site where users pay with their private data.

At the same time, FaceLeft is by no means meant to compete with sites like Twitter or Facebook. Rather, it’s about creating more diversity in an increasingly homogenous internet. When the web started, Albert recalls, users relied on platforms like America Online to do pretty much everything. But within a few years more people figured out how to navigate for themselves and the internet began to blossom. With low costs and few barriers, users created a uniquely free landscape to interact and share information.

The problem with sites like Facebook and Twitter, Albert says, is that they’re “trying to get everyone back under one umbrella,” meaning Facebook and Twitter. And they’re succeeding. Countless organizations, from local restaurants to immigrant rights groups “now see their most important web presence as their activity on and within the confines of Facebook.” What this means is that more and more of the web is being mediated by private, commercial hands. It’s as if the web itself has been suburbanized: Where once friends and colleagues could meet in fairly public spaces—chatrooms, message boards, independent sites and blogs—now the most important online meeting place is the equivalent of a digital shopping mall.

“The issue is, do we want our own ways of doing important things,” Albert asks, “or do we want to settle for what we can eek out of corporate offerings?” It’s an idea that’s starting to take off. Already Utne Reader, Z Magazine, and the widely popular Greek party Syriza have created their own sub-networks on the site (where users can create a profile and join the larger FaceLeft system)—and Albert hopes there will be many more. For now, it’s worth considering the potential of a social media alternative, of a more public online space.

(full text).

Links:

The Life of a Patterned Skull, on UTNE, by Suzanne Lindgren, April 24, 2013;

The Trouble with Tough Guys, on UTNE, by Christian Williams, Feb 26, 2013;

Labor Gets Militant, on UTNE, by Sam Ross-Brown, Feb 22, 2013.

My good friend, a Chinese Indonesian lady, recently got grabbed and assaulted, in the middle of Jakarta, in broad daylight.

When it happened, I was in Japan and we exchanged several messages, and emails. This was not the first time such a thing had happened to her and she felt humiliated, defeated, and thoroughly vulnerable.

“I wish I would be born as someone else – not as a Chinese. I wish I would look like everyone else”, she wrote.  

I spent half a day convincing her that there was nothing wrong with being Chinese, or belonging to any other ethnic group. It was Indonesia that had failed her; the country that, since 1965, performed three genocides fully backed by the West, the country, which has been using sexual violence in order to paralyze its own population with fear.

I asked my friend to write, to give me 3 stories, one of her own, and two of others. I asked her for three simple examples. “I will put them into context”, I promised.

She said ‘yes’ and she delivered. And I combined their simple but symbolic stories with a much bigger and terrible story that has never been told: one with unimaginable sexual violence that Indonesian women have had to suffer since 1965.

This story was always taboo here, but finally, I realized it has to be told, without doublespeak and in plain language … //

… Anna is not the real name of my friend. Almost none of the Indonesian victims of harassment, molestation, even rape, would ever dare to identify themselves.

After all, Indonesia is the country where sexual terror against women has been something entirely usual, biasa, since the days of the Western-backed coup of 1965.

Daughters who have been molested do not confide in their parents; female victims who become targets of rape do not report the crime to the police, which itself is notorious for molesting, harassing, and raping women.

In Indonesia, to be violated is to become kotor, dirty. Victims are taught not to feel any outrage. Instead they feel shame; they are used to hiding instead of coming forward and fighting for themselves and for the others. There are some exceptions, but extremely few.

There are no mass movements and protests of outraged women as in India. There are no powerful films exposing sexual violence, like the brilliant recent award-winning Egyptian one called Cairo 678.

The victims of the 1965 genocide, victims of the East Timor genocide, victims of the on-going Papua genocide; victims of racism and religious discrimination, victims of sexual violence; all those victims have been successfully frightened into silence … //

… In and after 1965, rape and sexual torture were used in the most beastly ways. Many women belonging to left-wing organizations, including Gerwani, had their breasts and genitals ‘amputated’. That was biasa, or ‘normal’, too.

The military, religious cadres, and also millions of ‘common Indonesian citizens’ took part in the most appalling acts. Entire myths justifying their participation in the slaughter and rapes were created and perfected. Between 800,000 and 3 million people: leftists, PKI, intellectuals, teachers, atheists, and members of Chinese minority, had been systematically liquidated.

All the legends were thoroughly grotesque, but they served as foundations for the twisted logic, from which post-1965 Indonesia has been constructed.

Almost all the myths had a sexual undertone, like those that spoke of wild orgies thrown by PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) and its women’s organization Gerwani. It was said that women belonging to the left castrated Indonesian army generals. Such myths were deliberately created in order to justify the gruesome sexual violence that followed … //

… Indonesia is one of only five countries on earth that I know, where I do not dare to walk down the street looking straight ahead. I am trying to avoid insulting grimaces, aggressively pointed fingers and shouts like bule (albino, anyone of lighter skin). The other 4 countries (and I have worked in a total of 150 of them, on all continents) are war-torn and post-genocidal sub-Saharan states of DR Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, and (only in rural areas and slums), Kenya.

But true horror is reserved for foreigners with dark skin, particularly those coming from Africa. I spoke to one former Kenyan MP and one Ethiopian UN expert, both having decided to explore Indonesia after attending official meetings for several days.

“Do you know what is monyet?” Asked my good African friend.

“Monkey”, I replied. “Why?”

“This was the most commonly heard word I encountered in Indonesia.”

“Did you go to zoo?” I was surprised.

“No”, he looked down. “I was just trying to walk down the street.”

Bules can leave, and most of them already have. Just compare the numbers of foreigners in Indonesian malls (the only ‘social gathering’ places left in the country where all public places were ‘privatized’) and those of Bangkok, Hanoi, or Kuala Lumpur.

But most of the local Chinese and Papuan people do not have such luxury.

Stripped of their culture, language and identity, forced to bear Indonesian names, to behave like Indonesians, to think like Indonesians, they are still insulted, humiliated, and violated.

Suharto and his military and religious cohorts had a clever plan: they murdered countless members of Chinese minority, raped their wives and daughters, and inflicted such terror that people could hardly move, and then they handpicked several Chinese businessmen to serve as their economic lieutenants. It is because they knew that after such a terrible bloodbath, Chinese people would never dare to rebel. Otherwise an encore was always behind the corner.

Indonesia adopted perverse philosophical and moral codes. Perpetrators, murderers, torturers and rapists have been walking tall, proud. Victims who were molested, raped, and humiliated, felt shame: ‘dirty’.

I have a friend. She has a son. She is Chinese Indonesian. Once she told me that she was raped and her son is a product of that ‘shameful’ night.

Another friend of mine was molested as a child. She was assaulted in her own home by two young men from her neighborhood — men that ‘did not like Chinese’. They had sexually abused her, for hours. “I felt terrible shame”, she said. “And the following days when we were playing outdoors, they kept giving me those looks…” “Playing outdoors?” I thought I misunderstood. Those people would surely be in detention, facing charges and soon on trial? But no, they were free and still insulting her. She didn’t tell anybody, not even her parents. Nothing bad ever happened to her tormentors … //

… (full long long text).

(André Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker, and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His critically acclaimed political revolutionary novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalism is called
Indonesia: The Archipelago of Fear. He just completed a feature documentary Rwanda Gambit about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website. Read other articles by Andre).

Links:

Nuclear Headache: Task of Decommissioning Plants Is Herculean, on Spiegel Online International, by Gerald Traufetter, May 10, 2013: The dismantling of Germany’s nuclear power plants will be one of the greatest tasks of the century as the country moves to phase out atomic energy. It will take at least until 2080 to complete the job. But what happens if energy utility companies who own the facilities go bust before the work is done? …;

Guardian Sustainable Business Awards honouring blacklist company, on Socialist Unity, by Andy Newman, May 9, 2013;

North London Rally for the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, on Socialist Unity, by SU Editorial Team, May 9, 2013.

Links:

• Modern Slavery 101, on end slavery now/resources;
• ILO’s resource site on Child Labour and Responses in South Asia, including India;
• UNICEF’s resources and suggestions for Combating Child Labour in India;
• Child protection – A UNICEF database and library of publication on child labour;

more items on en.wikipedia:  

• Child trafficking in India, on en.wikipedia with it’s External Links;
• Street children in India;
• Child labour in India;
• Human trafficking in India;
• Human trafficking in Nepal;

on Google Web-search:

• Initiatives towards Elimination of Child Labour in India;
• child trafficking india: Facts;
• child trafficking india: NGOs;

.

In the summer of 2011, I travelled to Denmark, where my reporting resulted in a series of articles about the Danish welfare state and political system. Like most American visitors, I was struck by the high level of social solidarity and broad support for the country’s free education and health care systems, robust safety net, and, yes — high taxes. I spoke with business leaders; I spoke with conservative politicians. Nobody seemed to think that it would be a good idea to abandon the Danish model for a U.S.-style system.  

So I was surprised to read recently — in a front-page New York Times article called “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault,” by Suzanne Daley — that the Danish welfare state is slated for the scrapheap.

The Times article focused on a media frenzy in Denmark that erupted from a right-wing politician’s visit to a single mother named Carina who had been living on social assistance since she was 16 and received about $2,700 a month:

In past years, Danes might have shrugged off the case, finding Carina more pitiable than anything else. But even before her story was in the headlines 16 months ago, they were deeply engaged in a debate about whether their beloved welfare state, perhaps Europe’s most generous, had become too rich, undermining the country’s work ethic. Carina helped tip the scales.

That Danes had concluded that their “beloved welfare state” has become “too rich” would certainly be big news, so I decided to check in with some of my Danish contacts. Most of them agreed that it had elements of a gripping story; the only problem, they said, is that it isn’t true.

Rumors of the death of the Danish welfare state have been greatly exaggerated.

“I can assure you, the Danish welfare state is alive and well, it has wide public support, and it isn’t going anywhere,” said Ove Kaj Pedersen, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School. “Every so often you will see a story like this about how it is collapsing. Usually they are based on a kind of cartoon version of the welfare state in Denmark.”

That isn’t to say that there haven’t been some legislative changes since the financial crisis, and that some of them haven’t been significant. In 2011, the duration for which Danes are eligible to receive unemployment benefits was lowered to two years from four years — it remains the longest period in the world — and an agreement was made to raise the retirement age in 2027 to 67, and index it thereafter to life expectancy (this is perhaps the most significant reform and is discussed further in our Story Repair) … //

… The Times article then proceeded to argue that the problem in Denmark is that, because so many people are on welfare, there are not enough people working to sustain the welfare state. While it’s true that the aim of many of the recent reforms is to get as many people as possible into the workforce, there is also broad agreement that Denmark does not face any crisis on account of the proportion of people who are not working.

“I can assure you, the Danish welfare state is alive and well, it has wide public support, and it isn’t going anywhere.” — Ove Kaj Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School
According to Dean Baker, economist and the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank in Washington, D.C., Denmark actually has one of the highest employment-to-population ratios in the world, significantly higher than that of the United States.

However, we are told, comparisons to other countries “are misleading, since many Danes work short hours and enjoy perks like long vacations and lengthy paid maternity leaves, not to mention a de facto minimum wage approaching $20 an hour.”

But, according to Baker and other economists, the fact that Danes work shorter hours is simply a reflection of a choice they have made to take more of their compensation in leisure time than in wages. “There’s nothing scary about that,” Baker said. “In the U.S. we have higher incomes and in Denmark they have longer vacations. That doesn’t have any bearing on the sustainability of the welfare state.”

Finally, the article implies that a new consensus has emerged in Denmark about the unsustainability of the welfare state. In fact, even the modest recent changes to the social assistance and student allowance systems have produced a significant backlash. The two main governing parties — the Social Democrats and the Socialist People’s Party — have seen a dramatic 20-point drop in the polls, while the two parties that have staked out positions against the cuts have seen a 10-point spike.

All of those facts put quite a dent in the Time’s big story. According to Kaj Pedersen of the Copenhagen Business School, the temptation to imagine the decline of the welfare state reflects a general discomfort with the idea that an economy can simultaneously be competitive and provide high levels of economic security and low levels of inequality. “It defies American logic,” he said.

Not only is this narrative mistaken, but by indulging in it, we are missing a huge opportunity to learn the lessons that Denmark might offer us.

(full text including hyper links).

… From May 5-10, The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC is hosting Bonding Through Bars, an international roundtable bringing together delegates from five continents to explore the health and human rights of incarcerated women and their children. The state of Canada’s prison, legal and child welfare system will be at the forefront of this international dialogue aimed at initiating change towards more equitable laws, policies and programs.  

“It’s extremely important to know that more then two-thirds of the women in Canadian prisons are mothers and the majority of them are the sole providers for their children who are directly impacted when they are incarcerated,” says Kim Pate, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

While there is a dearth of national research on this topic in Canada, studies in the U.S. have shown that when a man goes to jail, 90 per cent of the time his children end up in the care of a family member, contrasted with when a woman is incarcerated only 10 per cent of the time do her children end up in the care of family … //

… Korchinski was incarcerated at a time when the mother and baby program was running at Alouette Correctional Centre for Women in Maple Ridge, B.C. “When I walked out of those gates I didn’t have anything to look forward to except to go back to my old life, because I didn’t have my kids. It is devastating not to know where your child is.”

After her release, Korchinski was reunited with her children, the younger of whom had been told she was dead. Today is she a proud grandmother, filmmaker and author who works to advocate for others through Women in2 Healing, a community-based research project.

“I get calls from women who are terrified inside. They are pregnant and worried about what will happen. No one wants to deliver a baby and then four hours later have to leave your child and be back in jail. It’s sadism. The conditions are inhumane, being in labour while you are handcuffed and shackled. There was one woman who was told her r

Korchinski dedicates herself to helping other women behind bars, adding, “Yes, politicians can dictate what happens in prison, but if the public knew what goes on, things would change. We don’t have to run things the way we are.”

Granger-Brown agrees, “Decisions are made by those who have social power, and fear is often what drives policy creation. I want to see value placed on the people who have lived experience; creating programing and settings where people can do the healing work they need to do.”

The mother and baby program at Alouette ran successfully from 2005-2008. It was cancelled abruptly and it’s closing was protested by many including Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s representative for Children and Youth who highlighted a baby’s right to the enormous health benefits associated with breastfeeding and strong maternal attachment. Granger-Brown worked as a recreational therapist at Alouette and resigned after the new warden announced the closure of the program, “I could not watch as they pulled apart everything that we knew was helpful.”

There is currently a case before the B.C. Supreme Court, Inglis v. British Columbia (Minister of Public Safety), 2012 BCSC 1023, which seeks to establish that both mothers and infants have constitutional rights to remain together during the incarceration of the mothers in the provincial corrections system.

The hurt of mother and child being separated is one understood universally. “My experience with incarcerated mothers and their children has been stories of pain, suffering and rejection,” explains Mary Kamau, who works in prison ministry and is Head of Nursing at the Presbyterian University of East Africa.

Kamau has travelled from Kenya to attend Bonding Through Bars, which will seek to find solutions by pulling at the roots of inequities that undermine the health of generations.  “There is a great need to change the current scenario in which the stigma attached to imprisoned mothers is highly traumatizing, especially to the children who most of the time are innocent and find themselves the victims of circumstances. Something needs to be done, and the time is now.”
(full long time).

(Samantha Sarra is a journalist and activist and one of the co-principal investigators for Bonding Through Bars. There will be a free panel discussion open to the public on Wednesday May 8th, at 8pm at 5350 Baillie Street in Vancouver).

Links:

Bonding Through Bars Roundtable, May 5-10, 2013: purpose, contact;

CREATING CHOICES: THE REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON FEDERALLY SENTENCED WOMEN;

Women in2 Healing;

Too many First Nations women ending up in jail, on rabble.ca, by REDEYE COLLECTIVE, October 21, 2012 ;

Women raise their voices beyond the bars: Women’s music in prison, on rabble.ca, by STARK RAVEN MEDIA COLLECTIVE, LEAH ABRAMSON, August 9, 2011;

The Stark Raven Media Collective:

• on rabble.ca;
• on Vancouver Community Network;
• on MP3 Search & Free Mp3 Downloads;
• on iTunes – Podcasts: Stark Raven/Prison Justice, by Unknown (6 items);
• on Google Web-search.

DALARNA, Sweden—The word ‘surreal’ was the first which came to my mind, what I witnessed during the last third of April indeed seeming best described by it. Of course, too much has too long been overblown, the strongest of adjectives too frequently employed to mask the weakest of circumstances; but, in this instance the word ‘surreal’ seems appropriate, although what brings it to mind are events that indeed seem ‘overblown … //

… Defense spending, NATO, and a game:

Good Friday was 29 March, and while the Russian maneuvers received relatively little media attention globally, such events being considered by many as ‘non-events,’ public perceptions can change when virtually every media outlet in a country carries the story, especially if threats to security are suggested. However, some might arguably say such an event would mark the highest order of ‘political theatre,’ especially if defense spending and NATO membership were items of current political interest.

Fortunately, not every Swedish journalist was smitten with ‘Bear Fever,’ and one respected commentator, Göran Greider, vividly explained his perception of “The need for fear of the Russians” Behovet av rysskräck. He observed that fear of the Russians was useful for pushing Sweden further towards NATO membership, not to mention helping defense spending. And so, not everyone here is being entertained by the ongoing show, a Riksdag (Swedish Parliament) source telling this journalist that the ‘scare’ was needed to justify 43 Billion Kroner in defense spending, plus aiding additions to that.

Consider how folks in the States would react if every major print, radio and TV network ran simultaneous coverage suggesting an alleged Russian threat. I’ll add that after this coverage, the majority of those Swedes I spoke with had some degree of concern regarding Russia. I won’t add that the fact such coverage could occur makes an interesting comment upon mainstream Swedish media. But, highlighting some remarkable politics here, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, has downplayed the incident from the start, essentially dismissing the incident as nothing that even demanded explanation from Russia, and an opposition Green MP on the Riksdag’s Defense Committee seems to agree with him.

“It is ordinary training for the Russian side . . . all was correct,” observed MP Peter Rådberg for this journalist, adding that the “Russian training wasn’t special.” When I then queried Rådberg as to whether the attention that the incident was getting reflected the desire of some to promote more defense spending and NATO membership, he quite candidly responded, “Yes, it’s a game.”

Fear and months of heated debate: … //

… Military-industrial complex:

Since this ‘episode’ started, and especially after some foreign media began echoing questions of a ‘Russian threat,’ I’ve speculated upon why more hasn’t been done to pop this balloon, dispel all the hot air that’s filled it. Of course, there are those here that want Sweden in NATO, but, I personally see something more.

Here, in Sweden, at the moment all I can think of is something former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his farewell address. It is something which some might argue is particularly relevant for explaining ‘Bear Fever,’ and perhaps even suggesting its cure . . .”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
(full text with many hyper-links).

(Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist living in Sweden. His work has appeared fairly widely, including in America’s Christian Science Monitor, Spain’s El Mundo, Sweden’s Aftonbladet, Austria’s Wiener Zeitung, and a number of other global media outlets).

Links:

Find Ritt Goldstein on en.wikipedia’s Operation TIPS/2nd paragraph;

The grand charade, on Intrepid Report, by Philip A Farruggio, May 7, 2013: We are living in an empire that ‘takes no prisoners‘. Sadly, the majority of we working stiffs still follow the hypocrites, thieves and liars like lemmings. These so called leaders play their magic flutes and hypnotize us with hype and false hope, as we fall over the cliff of reason …;

The financial press: A disinformation machine, on Intrepid Report, by Paul Craig Roberts, May 7, 2013.

As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Tunisia, 2013, we are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of peoples of Maghreb-Mashrek (from North Africa to the Middle East), in the construction of human civilization.

We affirm that decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance.  

Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we come together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We have built a common history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America, where we have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create several alternatives for just development that truly honors nature.

Together, the peoples of all the continents are fighting to oppose the domination of capital, hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and the illusion of political stability.

Crossroads: … //

… We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic crisis and that there is no solution inside the capitalist system! Here, in Tunis, we reaffirm our commitment to come together to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against capitalism. This is why we, social movements, struggle:

* Against transnational corporations and the financial system (IMF, WB and WTO),

• who are the main agents of the capitalist system, privatizing life, public services and common goods such as water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources, promoting wars and violations of human rights. Transnational corporations reproduce extractionist practices endangering life and nature, grabbing our lands and developing genetically modified seeds and food, taking away the people’s right to food and destroying biodiversity.
• We fight for the cancellation of illegitimate and odious debt which today is a global instrument of domination, repression and economic and financial strangulation of people. We reject free trade agreements that are imposed by States and transnational corporations and we affirm that it is possible to build another kind of globalization, made from and by the people, based on solidarity and on freedom of movement for all the human beings.

* For climate justice and food sovereignty,

• because we know that global climate change is a product of the capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. Transnational corporations, international financial institutions and governments serving them do not want to reduce greenhouse gases. We denounce “green economy” and refuse false solutions to the climate crisis such as biofuels, genetically modified organisms and mechanisms of the carbon market like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which ensnare impoverished peoples with false promises of progress while privatizing and commodifying the forests and territories where these peoples have been living for thousands of years.
• We defend the food sovereignty and support sustainable peasant agriculture which is the true solution to the food and climate crises and includes access to land for all who work on it. Because of this, we call for a mass mobilization to stop the land grab and support local peasants struggles.

* Against violence against women,

• often conducted in militarily occupied territories, but also violence affecting women who are criminalized for taking part in social struggles. We fight against domestic and sexual violence perpetrated on women because they are considered objects or goods, because the sovereignty of their bodies and minds is not acknowledged. We fight against the traffic of women, girls and boys.
• We defend sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination and we oppose all homophobia and sexist violence.

* For peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and the militarization of our lands.

• We denounce the false discourse of human rights defense and fight against fundamentalism, that often justify these military occupations such as in Haiti, Líbya, Mali and Syria. We defend the right to people’s sovereignty and self-determination such as in Palestine, Western Sahara and Kurdistan.
• We denounce the installation of foreign military bases to instigate conflicts, to control and ransack natural resources, and to foster dictatorships in several countries.
• We struggle for the freedom of organization in trade unions, social movements, associations and other forms of peaceful resistance. Let’s strengthen our tools of solidarity among peoples such as boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel and the struggle against NATO and to ban all nuclear weapons.

* For democratization of mass media and building alternative media,

• that are fundamental to overthrow the capitalist logic.

Inspired by the history of our struggles and by the strength of people on the streets, the Social Movements Assembly call upon all people to mobilize and develop actions – coordinated at world level – in a global Day of mobilization on the  … (day to be decided)

Social movements of the world, let us advance toward a global unity to shatter the capitalist system!

No more exploitation, no more patriarchy, racism and colonialism! Viva la revolution! Long live the people’s struggle.
(full text).

SPP on en.wikipedia with it’s External Links.

Steve Kraske of The Kansas City Star recently interviewed me for a piece about austerity.  The story ran in today’s paper. It doesn’t provide much depth (unlike bloggers, journalists have strict space constraints!), so I followed up with a few comments on the Star’s website.  I thought I’d share them here, since I’m always trying to improve the way I communicate these ideas with non-economists.  So here’s my best effort to make the anti-austerity case in simple terms:

• 1. When we allow our economy to operate below full employment (as now), we are sacrificing trillions of dollars in lost output and income each year. We can never go back and recover it.  It is gone forever.  You’ve seen the debt clock?  Here’s the lost output clock.  
• 2. Capitalism runs on sales. In survey after survey, we find that the Number One reason businesses are slow to hire and invest in new plant & equipment is a lack of demand for the things they produce.  Businesses hire and invest when they’re swamped with customers.  See this story in The Wall Street Journal.
• 3. The two decades after WWII certainly aren’t the only time that robust growth reduced the DEBT/GDP ratio.  During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy grew at an above average clip.  Unemployment fell to 3.7%.  Inflation remained modest.  There was a job vacancy for every job seeker in America — genuine full employment.  Because people were working, there was less spending to support the unemployed (food stamps, unemployment compensation, etc.) and more people paying income taxes. The deficit disappeared, and the national debt fell to around 40% of GDP.  So you do not need post-WWII conditions to support the argument that economic growth is the way to reduce the debt.
• 4. The debt/GDP ratio falls when the denominator grows faster than the numerator.  Right now, just about everyone is fixated on using austerity (raising taxes and slashing spending) to reduce the numerator (DEBT).  The problem, as Europe has kindly shown us for years, is that austerity “works” by crushing incomes, which in turn crush sales (or what we call GDP).  So instead of bringing the ratio down, austerity hampers growth, which causes deficits and debt loads to rise

… // …

• 8. We have a serious infrastructure problem in this country.  The American Society of Civil Engineers just released its 2013 Report Card, and it is ugly. Our ports, roads, waterways, etc. are in serious disrepair.  This makes it more expensive for businesses to produce/ship goods, which raises U.S. prices and reduces our global competitiveness.  Meanwhile, we have millions of out-of-work construction workers and manufacturing workers — the people with exactly the kinds of skills that are needed to repair and rebuild our national infrastructure.  So we have useful work that needs to be done, millions of people who want to contribute and policymakers with no plan to connect the two.
• 9. What holds us back?  Fear of the Chinese? Fear of bond vigilantes?  Fear of the ratings agencies?  Fear of becoming the next Greece?  Fear of turning into Zimbabwe?  Fear of sticking our grandchildren with a huge tax bill?  This is what they tell us as they impose austerity.  None of it — I repeat — none of it has the slightest bearing on our reality.
• 10.  Final (and most important) point: The United States of America has sovereign money.  The US dollar comes from the US government.  It cannot come from anywhere else.  We can never run out of dollars or be forced into default like Greece, which does not have its own currency.  We do not need to borrow from the Chinese to do the things that we decide to do for our economy.  As long as the real resources (labor, raw materials, factory capacity) are available, the financial resources (money) can always be there.    This can be done without causing inflation as long as the additional spending does not outstrip the economy’s capacity to produce.  We can afford to cut taxes and spend more money to improve our infrastructure without burdening the next generation.  Failing to get the economy back to full employment will burden us all for years to come.

(full text).

Links:

Plutocracy on en.wikipedia: …  also known as plutonomy or plutarchy, is rule by the wealthy. Its first known use was in 1652.[1] Unlike systems such as democracy or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy and has no formal advocates. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense …;

plummeting at a scorching rate: U.S. Deficit Shrinking At Fastest Pace Since WWII, Before Fiscal Cliff;

The Golden Rule: Theirs and Ours, on ZNet, by Paul Street, April 05, 2013;

Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History;

The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power;

America: Republic vs. Democracy, on Global Economic Intersection, by Frank Li, January 10, 2013;

Debt Versus Democracy: A Battle for the Future, on truthout, by Marisa Holmes, January 2, 2013;

Capitalism versus democracy, on Socialist Review, by John Molyneux, January 2012;

Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule, with video: You, Me, and the SPP, 90.14 min, on Top Documentary Films, 2009.

… April is usually a cheerful month in New England, with the first signs of spring, and the harsh winter at last receding. Not this year.

There are few in Boston who were not touched in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week that followed. Several friends of mine were at the finish line when the bombs went off. Others live close to where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, was captured. The young police officer Sean Collier was murdered right outside my office building.  

It’s rare for privileged Westerners to see, graphically, what many others experience daily – for example, in a remote village in Yemen, the same week as the marathon bombings.

On April 23, Yemeni activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, who had studied at an American high school, testified before a US Senate committee that right after the marathon bombings, a drone strike in his home village in Yemen killed its target.

The strike terrorized the villagers, turning them into enemies of the United States – something that years of jihadi propaganda had failed to accomplish … //

… There is a long and highly instructive history showing the willingness of state authorities to risk the fate of their populations, sometimes severely, for the sake of their policy objectives, not least the most powerful state in the world. We ignore it at our peril.

There is no need to ignore it right now. A remedy is investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill’s just-published “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battleground.”

In chilling detail, Scahill describes the effects on the ground of US military operations, terror strikes from the air (drones), and the exploits of the secret army of the executive branch, the Joint Special Operations Command, which rapidly expanded under President George W. Bush, then became a weapon of choice for President Obama.

We should bear in mind an astute observation by the author and activist Fred Branfman, who almost single-handedly exposed the true horrors of the US “secret wars” in Laos in the 1960s, and their extensions beyond.

Considering today’s JSOC-CIA-drones/killing machines, Branfman reminds us about the Senate testimony in 1969 of Monteagle Stearns, US deputy chief of mission in Laos from 1969 to 1972.

Asked why the US rapidly escalated its bombing after President Johnson had ordered a halt over North Vietnam in November 1968, Stearns said, “Well, we had all those planes sitting around and couldn’t just let them stay there with nothing to do.” So we can use them to drive poor peasants in remote villages of northern Laos into caves to survive, even penetrating within the caves with our advanced technology.

JSOC and the drones are a self-generating terror machine that will grow and expand, meanwhile creating new potential targets as they sweep much of the world. And the executive won’t want them just “sitting around.”

It wouldn’t hurt to contemplate another slice of history, at the dawn of the 20th century.

In his book “Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State,” the historian Alfred McCoy explores in depth the US pacification of the Philippines after an invasion that killed hundreds of thousands through savagery and torture.

The conquerors established a sophisticated surveillance and control system, using the most advanced technology of the day to ensure obedience, with consequences for the Philippines that reach to the present.

And as McCoy demonstrates, it wasn’t long before the successes found their way home, where such methods were employed to control the domestic population – in softer ways to be sure, but not very attractive ones.

We can expect the same. The dangers of unexamined and unregulated monopoly power, particularly in the state executive, are hardly news. The right reaction is not passive acquiescence.
(full text).

Links:

German eurozone exit what Berlin and bloc needs, on Russia Today RT, May 3, 2013: The ECB’s move to cut refinancing rates to a new record low will not solve the eurozone’s problems, believes Robert Oulds, chairman of the Bruges Group. A radical change of policy within the EU is needed to bring about economic growth, he told RT …;

Real ‘price tag’ for gold and silver manipulation by Wall Street, on Russia Today RT, May 2, 2013: … Focusing on gold and silver: the way it works is this, whenever real cash buyers emerge for gold and silver in India, Russia, China, and amongst hard money advocates in the West – Wall St. and the City of London dump hundreds of tons of ‘naked-shorts’ on various futures exchanges (counterfeit futures contracts) that kills the price in the short term …;

Recession à la Russe, on Russia Today RT, May 3, 2013.

PM Cameron’s cabinet is considering offering ‘really generous’ packages to Afghan interpreters working with British troops, who would not seek asylum in UK and would stay in Afghanistan after the 2014 pullout, risking reprisals from the Taliban.

There are some 450 Afghans working as interpreters for the British troops left in the country. Some politicians and military in the UK call have been calling to treat those people similarly to Iraqis, who used to work with the British deployed there. The Iraqis were offered either one-off financial packages or asylum in Britain, with some 900 of the interpreters opting for the latter … //  

… Taliban threatened to cut our heads off:

One of the interpreters, Rafi Karimi, who talked to RT from Kabul, is sure that staying in Afghanistan would be a death sentence for the interpreters as the Taliban won’t forgive them for assisting the NATO troops.

“Those people, who worked with any foreign army in Afghanistan – they’ll lose their life if the Taliban would catch them,” the translator said. “The UK can’t do anything in here for us. They can’t make a checkpoint by our house or give us bodyguards. It is impossible to save the lives of interpreters here in Afghanistan.”

Karimi, who was hired by the British military to translate for Denmark’s contingent in Afghanistan, said that financial support from the UK won’t solve the issue as no sum would be enough to provide security.

“The money can’t protect our lives,” he explained. “Even if I had $5 million here in Afghanistan – what should I do with this money if I won’t be alive? I want to move to another country. I should save the life of myself and the life of my family.”

According to the interpreter, the Taliban will have little problem in identifying him and other Afghans, who worked with NATO forces, as the militants have their photos and have already threatened to kill them in the past.

“I got two warning phone calls from them and so did my colleagues. They said: ‘You have to stop this. We’ll kill you. One day we’ll come, we should catch you and cut off your head,’” he said.

Karimi believes that the only way for him to stay alive is to flee Afghanistan and find a new home in the West.

“My life will be saved only if I go to UK or any other country, like Canada or Australia,” he said.
(full text, many comments and links to related articles).

Links:

What’s the Department Of Homeland Security going to do with 450 million bullets? on Intrepid Report, by Jerry Mazza, May 3, 2013;

Hagel: US administration mulls arming Syrian rebels, on Russia Today RT, May 3, 2013.

.

Prominent scientist and political commentator Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy speaks to Dawn.com about the upcoming general elections, the performance of the previous government, minority and sectarian issues, and secularism, following a meeting with members of Pakistan’s expatriate community in Las Vegas: … //

… Relatively speaking what is the biggest deception that we live under as a nation, as a people, as a society, and what is that one thing we can practically change with personal introspection to evolve as a whole?  

• We deceive ourselves that Pakistan can thrive as a religious state. At best it can survive and that too for the short term. When the state stands silent to the murder of its citizens just because their particular variant of Islam is not that of the majority, it is the beginning of the end.  The military is calmly watching Shia neighborhoods being devastated by suicide attacks, and men identified by Shia names are dragged from buses and executed Gestapo style. The police shrug aside the murder of Ahmadis, or when their graveyards are dug up and desecrated by the local powers-that-be. Although Sindh was traditionally much more tolerant than Punjab, Hindus have fled Sind en masse. We are witnesses to religious fascism, plain and simple.
• Is there a solution? Yes, we need to redefine Pakistan. The Two-Nation Theory brought the country into existence, but it cannot hold the country together, not any more. What we need now is a constitution that gives exactly the same rights and opportunities to all of its citizens independent of their ethnicity or religious affiliation, and a mechanism that can enforce the laws that matter most, those of life and personal security to its citizens.
• This equality of rights and opportunities is so attractive that, although most are strongly against secularism, almost every Pakistani wants a visa or green card to go to the United States. The late Qazi Husain Ahmad would fulminate against America but his family lives in the US, and during a visit to the Brookings Institution in WashingtonDC in 2000 he declared that “I feel that I’ve come to my own country.” Search it up on Youtube. Why did he say it? Because although he opposed giving Pakistani non-Muslims the same rights that Muslims possess, he was treated respectfully and equally by the Americans, and the truth is that equal treatment appeals to everyone’s sense of natural justice. Therefore we must have equality for all in Pakistan.

You are a man of science. The fundamentals of religion and science address two entirely different principles. What role can secularism play in aiding to heal a religiously extremist society into progressing without creating conflict, while also integrating science and belief into answering the questions of the universe. As individuals is it possible for us to carry both burdens without a personal struggle?

• But all Muslim countries are not living in the past. To give an example, Iran has a superior educational system that actually works. Pakistan has seen numerous absurd attempts to marry science with Islam, but Ayatollah Khomeini was quite content with keeping the two separate. He once remarked that there is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. Nor did he take a position against Darwinism, as we have in Pakistan. In fact Iran is one of the few Muslim countries where the theory of evolution is taught. Moreover, it is a front-runner in stem-cell research, a concept George W. Bush and his neo-conservative administration had sought to ban in the United States.
• But all Muslim countries are not living in the past. To give an example, Iran has a superior educational system that actually works. Pakistan has seen numerous absurd attempts to marry science with Islam, but Ayatollah Khomeini was quite content with keeping the two separate. He once remarked that there is no such thing as Islamic mathematics. Nor did he take a position against Darwinism, as we have in Pakistan. In fact Iran is one of the few Muslim countries where the theory of evolution is taught. Moreover, it is a front-runner in stem-cell research, a concept George W. Bush and his neo-conservative administration had sought to ban in the United States.

As an intellectual observer and commentator you hold a vision for a 21st century Pakistan. What responsibility does our generation have towards the youth of Pakistan, and what is that one thing that the Pakistani diaspora can collaborate on with local Pakistanis that may benefit in evolving the thought process of youth, resulting in a progressive Pakistan?

• The Pakistani diaspora has been content with doing charity work such as financing schools and hospitals, sending relief materials to disaster hit areas, and so forth, but it does not address Pakistan’s need to cure itself of a xenophobic, conspiracy driven mindset. The local Pakistanis are convinced that the Western world is against Islam and Muslims, and that all issues in Pakistan can be traced back to some Western conspiracy. A prominent Pakistani scientist Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, claimed that the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the 2010 floods were caused by America through its scientific facility called HAARP. A huge number of Pakistanis think that Muslims in the West are fiercely discriminated against. This absolute untruth must be challenged and rejected by those members of the Pakistanis diaspora who benefit from their adoptive homes in countless ways.
• Of course nothing is perfect. So, for example, the bombing of the Boston marathon race last week had some American Muslims concerned that they might be needlessly investigated. These are legitimate fears and hint at discrimination that must be challenged. But what would Muslims have done to Hindus or Christians if something similar had happened in Pakistan? After 9/11, I’m told that Americans went to various mosques to assure Muslims that they had nothing to fear, and even though President George W. Bush was preparing for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, ordinary Americans were evolved in understanding the plight of the Muslim Americans.
• Compare this with what happened a couple of months ago where a mob of 2000 Muslims went on a rampage against Christians in Lahore after one young Christian man allegedly said something blasphemous. They burned down a hundred or more houses. Similarly, in Gojra the mob destroyed 50 houses and burnt 7 Christians to death, including women and children. The entire village of Shantinagar had been destroyed by a Muslim mob in 1997… and recently a Christian man had been beaten to death in Gujranwala for eating at a restaurant in spite of a   No Christians Allowed sign displayed outside the establishment. What is tragic is the silence of the local Muslims and the Pakistani diaspora, since in a protest demonstration by Christians against the recent massacre I am told there were no Muslims protesters.
• It is also deeply troubling that the Pakistani diaspora remains silent as we burn churches and blow up mandirs in Pakistan. Every American Muslim witnesses that mosques are flourishing in America and that their numbers have dramatically increased. Do we ever reflect on how differently we behave? Speak on it?

For democracy to flourish all citizens must vote. One’s ideological and political views may be entirely in conflict, or somewhat different with the manifesto of parties presented, but if you had to pick a side who would you support in the upcoming Pakistani elections, and why?

• This is a tough question since none of the parties running in this election seek to build a Pakistan that treats all its citizens in exactly the same way. Some parties emphasize their brand of religion, while others are built around ethnic origins. Therefore when voting next month, I shall measure which local candidate is relatively the least corrupt and dishonest, and then vote for the lesser evil. If nothing else I’m decisive on not voting for any pro-Taliban party candidate belonging to Imran Khan’s PTI, Jamaat-e-Islami, and PML-N.

(full interview text).

Film pamphlet, systématique et grinçant, ce court métrage brésilien réalisé par Jorge Furtado en 1989 dénonce la sous-humanité qu’entraîne l’économie de marché et les 13 millions de Brésiliens sous-alimentés.
Version complète HQ de 12 min; le temps durant lequel nous suivons le parcours d’une tomate, depuis sa production dans la plantation de M. Suzuki, jusqu’à son point d’arrivée à la décharge publique de l’île aux Fleurs.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Tuesday that he would recommit himself to closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, a goal that he all but abandoned in the face of Congressional opposition in his first term and that faces steep challenges now.

“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “The notion that we’re going to keep 100 individuals in no man’s land in perpetuity,” he added, makes no sense. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?”  

Describing the prison in Cuba as a waste of taxpayer money that has had a damaging effect on American foreign policy, Mr. Obama said he would try again to persuade Congress to lift restrictions on transferring inmates. He also said he had ordered a review of “everything that we can do administratively.”

But there is no indication that Mr. Obama’s proposal to close the prison, as he vowed to do upon taking office in 2009 after criticizing it during the presidential campaign, has become any more popular. Mr. Obama remarked that “it’s a hard case to make” because “it’s easy to demagogue the issue.”

The plan for Guantánamo he proposed – moving any remaining prisoners to a Supermax-style prison in Illinois – was blocked by Congress, which barred any further transfers of detainees onto domestic soil. A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and one of the leading opponents of closing the prison, said on Tuesday that “there is wide, bipartisan opposition in Congress to the president’s goal of moving those terrorists to American cities and towns.”

Mr. Obama made his remarks following the arrival at the prison of more than three dozen Navy nurses, corpsmen and specialists to help deal with a mass hunger strike by inmates, many of whom have been held for over 11 years without trial. As of Tuesday, 100 of the 166 prisoners were officially deemed to be participating, with 21 now being force-fed a nutritional supplement through tubes inserted in their noses.

“I don’t want these individuals to die,” Mr. Obama said … //

… The military’s response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups that say doctors should not force-feed prisoners who decide not to eat, reviving a similar clash over Guantánamo detainees from the Bush administration.

Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”

“Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” Dr. Lazarus wrote.

Ramzi Kassem, a City University of New York law professor who represents several detainees, said he had talked last week to a Yemeni client, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, who said a guard had shot him with rubber-coated pellets at close range during the raid.

Since then, Mr. Kassem said he had been told, the prisoners have been denied soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and their legal papers. A client told him, he said, that he had not eaten in 80 days and that he had stopped drinking after the raid and was now being force-fed twice a day after being tied to a restraint chair.

He quoted Mr. Alwi as saying: “I do not want to kill myself. My religion prohibits suicide. But I will not eat or drink until I die, if necessary, to protest the injustice of this place. We want to get out of this place.”

Mr. Obama’s remarks about the prison came in an otherwise sedate news conference, and at times he appeared almost anguished.

“This is a lingering problem that is not going to get better,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to fester.”
(full text including hyper links).

Links:

Obama renews vow to close Guantanamo detention camp, on Reuters, by Matt Spetalnick, May 1, 2013;

President Obama must make closing Guantanamo a priority, on Washington Post, by Editorial Board, May 1, 2013.

… Since many social and political groupings fit under the progressivist umbrella, there are bound to be some disagreements on some of the tenets of progressivism, but on core tenets progressivists find common ground to solidarize. Thus, even libertarianism might be considered for inclusion under the progressivist banner. In general, all these ideologies are more or less in opposition to unfettered capitalism and the capitalist-spawned agendas espoused by movements that occupy the right wing of the political spectrum. Even though capitalists do not sincerely reside within leftist political groupings, it cannot be assumed that political affiliation alone implies an individual is of progressivist persuasion or even, for that matter, steadfast leftism.  

The right-wing agendas (for example, corporate globalization, neoliberalism, imperialism, and warring) have wormed their way into the fabric of most societies, abetted by the fact that right-wingers have gained preponderant control of the political processes in the major industrialized economies. Right-wingers promote policies that prioritize “freeing up” the economy for carrying out business. Since such policies cater to the interests of the owners of the means of production, there is a collusion of interests among capitalists and other elements of the Right. This collusion of interests has enabled the Right to be able to define (1) which parties constitute viable political choices, and (2) what constitutes Center, Right, and Left on the political spectrum, as per a uni-dimensional definition. More importantly, the Right has been able to define what constitutes extreme Right and extreme Left.

Parties such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, the Democratic Party in the United States, and the Liberal Party in Canada — all of which are considered by progressives to be parties subservient to the corporate-capitalist model; hence, they are right-wing parties — are usually labeled by monopoly media as centrist or even left-of-center. The corporate media marginalization of progressivist views allows it to designate the Center as a point located toward the right of the political spectrum, where lesser-evilism thrives.1 In this simplistic one-dimensional representation of political ideologies, casual followers of the political order are prone to view leftist political groups as extreme by dint of their perceived distance from the Center.

Through manipulating the perceived locus of political parties, the establishment of an arbitrary Center on a continuum derives importance. It is important because people tend to eschew extremes and conform to popular opinion.2 Given that the political scenario defined as viable by the corporate media is bereft of progressives, marginalized progressives face an uphill battle to disseminate their ideas … //

… War is the bane of humanity, spurred by ignoble attributes, such as hate, greed, and ignorance. It is unique to humans.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one which gathers his brethren and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pleasure to exterminate his own kind.
– Mark Twain7

War is inegalitarianism at its apex. The troops are mostly drawn from the lower socio-economic class (As the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die.”8 ); the rigid hierarchical command structure is anathema to equality; the troops face enemy fire while the commanders are ensconced luxuriously away from the fighting.

Imperialist troops follow the cowardly example of their leaders and wreak violence at a great distance from their foes, largely unseen. This poses a challenge to free thinkers in their quest for understanding. They must challenge the great myth which pervasively and glowingly depicts the homeland’s own forces as steeped in courageous exploits and the enemy country’s people as heathens, barbarians, savages, and terrorists deserving of military conquest.

Progressivism is a panoply of interests united in a loose movement; it is not monolithic. Some progressives take a sympathetic line toward the troops — many of who are compliant if not willing victims. Author and media critic, Norman Solomon, contends, “We support the troops; we want them to stop killing and being killed. We want them to come home.”9 [italics added] It is not always possible to talk about a “we” among progressives. Crucial is that a diverse progressivist movement unites and agrees to a set of common or shared principles.

A leading intellectual critic of US imperialism, Noam Chomsky also shows compassion for the troops. In an interview with Dutch radio, Chomsky said:

I have plenty of correspondence with soldiers in Iraq and all you can do is offer them your sympathy. You hope that they make it safely and that their leaders will get them out of there. The same kind of advice you would’ve given to Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. You have to sympathize with them; it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of their commanders. I don’t mean their military commanders, I mean the civilians in the Pentagon, in the White House and their counterparts in England.10

While Chomsky offered sympathy for the US soldiers, he offered none in the interview for the massively outgunned Iraqi resistance engaged in the legitimate struggle for the sovereignty of their homeland. He even used the pejorative terms “terrorist” and “insurgents” to describe some Iraqis, without mentioning that such Iraqis likely became what they are as a result of terror unleashed upon them by US-UK aggressors.11 He mentioned concern for the safe return home of the US occupation fighters but did not at the same time balance this statement with similar sentiments for the Iraqi victims of occupation troops. Yes, the US military rank-and-file are also victims — victims of the capitalist-imperialist overlords. But that does not absolve the soldier of responsibility for his own actions. While the civilian command structure bears the ultimate responsibility, compassion for the victim-soldier must be tempered by outrage at the lack of compassion and outright disdain that soldiers show their victims.

While many American antiwar types decry their troops’ atrocities, many still maintain support for the troops. As long as the troops can rely on such support, they are weakly constrained in their lethal actions because they will suffer few legal consequences for their war crimes. Troops, and more so the commanders, that violate rules of warfare must be denounced and held accountable for such violations. A society that does not demand a minimum of respect for human rights and dignity from its troops collaborates in their crimes. The supportive American public, consequently, finds itself complicit in the myriad crimes committed by its troops and their collaborators. Support for the troops must be limited. Conscientious objectors must be supported; troops who refuse to kill under immoral or unlawful conditions must be supported. However, blanket support to killers must be refused.

It is easy to denounce an abstraction like war. But war is waged by humans. War would not exist without the warriors. Warring must not be occluded by focusing on the actions and ignoring the actors. To denounce the war and exculpate its actors is folly. How does one meaningfully differentiate between the actions and the perpetrators of the actions?

Can progressives genuinely support the military personnel who drop cluster bombs, 2,000-pound bombs, napalm, and “depleted” uranium-laced shells on civilian women and children in Fallujah? Can progressives genuinely support imperialist troops killing, raping, and torturing prisoners in the US, Zionist, and other gulags around the world? Can progressives support soldiers who carry out orders that serially violate the Geneva Conventions (laws of war that should protect them if they fall into a precarious situation with the “enemy”) in what amounts to open scorn for the rules of war. Can progressives support soldiers who, with the flick of a joystick, launch drone strikes from thousands of kilometers away on unsuspecting, unindicted victims (victims who normally would be granted the presumption of innocence under US jurisprudence until proven guilty in a court of law).

Consequently, one wonders about expressions of sympathy for men and women who have dedicated a part of their lives to becoming human-killing machines.12

Whether or not the killing has been wanton, the soldier must be held accountable. Where war crimes have been committed, then all must be accountable before the law — both the defeated and the victorious, for victory outside the bounds of human dignity is a hollow victory.

War is futile and demeaning of people. It has no place in a progressive cosmos. Under progressivism, there will be no need for the profession of trained killers.

Many citizens consider it their patriotic duty to fight for the state in times of war. But what is the state? Is it really worth killing and dying for? When one’s country is being attacked, resistance is understandable. War that is not in self-defense, however, is usually brought upon the citizenry by the political leadership. Some maintain that patriotism involves asking the citizenry to be trusting of leadership and to be convinced in the inherent goodness of the homeland and the evilness of the designated enemy. This is an appeal to faith. If people love their country, then they will ponder the ramifications of leadership decisions in this light. Logically, patriotism demands that the good of the country — as defined by its people — is paramount before obedience to the dictates of leadership. It is especially in times of war that people should question their government and their leaders.

Leaders exploit the patriotic sentiment inculcated in the citizenry. Critical thinking and open-minded skepticism are qualities that protect people from demagoguery.

Open-mindedness and constructive skepticism require unimpeded access to information. A progressivist society demands an independent media, whose reporters and journalists are free to pursue and publish stories that they determine to be newsworthy. Internet aside, this type of media does not exist, except at the peripheries, in western societies. In addition to selectively informing, the corporate media play an immense role in indoctrinating, propagandizing, and disseminating disinformation to influence the public consciousness. As such, the corporate media have culpability for the crimes that are committed with their encouragement.13

Often contrary to critical thinking, religion must be respected for its influence on world peace and wars. Progressives uphold the right of people to choose to express their spirituality in a way that does not impose itself on the similar right of other people. Unfortunately, intolerance for the diversity of religious beliefs held by others does manifest itself. Exhortations to inter-religious conflict should undermine the religious leadership and, perhaps, the religion itself.

There is no right to disinform and it must be prohibited. To equip people with the tools to recognize disinformation, progressives encourage questioning, critical thinking, skepticism, and openness to dialogue. Critical thinkers reject close-mindedness, passive acceptance of information, and personalized attacks.

A progressivist society supports openness to inquiry. Principled freedoms are to be cherished and protected. One freedom that is particularly under attack, in many quarters, is the right to freedom of speech. Free speech, while not an absolute right, must be a cornerstone of progressivism, especially for views held to be repugnant to progressives. As an example, unwavering opposition to racism is a principle embraced by progressives, but if progressives start agreeing to restrictions on the freedom of speech based on what is deemed to be racist or hate speech, where is the line to be drawn? Who is to decide what constitutes hate speech? What if the factual content of detested speech is, indeed, true? Once a limit on free-speech precedent has been established, what is to stop further encroachment upon free speech rights? Should not the marketplace of freely expressed ideas be sufficient to defeat regressivist ideas?

As well as the right to an open and independent media, also important is the right to freely access information. Along with these rights must be the right of equal access to education. Progressivism holds that education must be accessible to all citizens. As well, the conditions conducive to effective learning must be provided for all citizens. Education should guide and aid students in their quest to explore, find, contemplate, and formulate their own opinions on the content of information, as well as on the source of the information.

Freedom of speech and expression is twined with the freedom to choose. If the members of society are to select representatives that set priorities for the society, a mechanism is needed to express such preferences. Typically, people refer to this mechanism as democracy. “Democracy” is lauded in many western societies, but it needs to be properly defined; its actual existence, or the extent of its existence, is probably highly dubious. Progressives value genuine democracy highly as a principle, although they have different views about what democracy is and how it may be achieved … //

… (full long text and notes 1 to 13) … (other parts of this long article are published already on February 3, 2013 on Economy and Society).

Glyphosate was first introduced in 1974 and has become the world’s most dominant herbicide. It’s now generic, so there are many brands and formulations. As a result, it’s virtually ubiquitous, found nearly everywhere on earth.

Further driving its use are genetically modified (GM) crops, which were first developed for the purpose of creating glyphosate-tolerant plants, usually known as Roundup Ready. These have resulted in ever-more blatant and free use, especially in the wake of glyphosate-resistant superweeds. Estimates put glyphosate-tolerant GM crops at 90% of all transgene crops … //

… Increasing Limits on Glyphosate Use:

Governments have failed to control use of glyphosate. The precautionary principle has not been in evidence anywhere. The drive to use it has increased as the use of glyphosate on Roundup Ready crops, which has driven development of noxious superweeds. Therefore, Agribusiness in the forms of chemical and biotech industries have demanded increased limits on glyphosate residue.

In 1999, the EU and UK, where no GM crops are currently grown for human consumption, increased the limit for soy from 0.1 parts per million to 20 ppm—a 200-fold increase! The US limit for soy is currently the same.

Pressure is now on to increase levels even more. In the EU, industry is pressing for an increase of at least 100 times current residue levels in lentils from 0.1 ppm to 10 ppm, or even 15 ppm. Safety isn’t factored in. Approval levels are based solely on anticipated use, and glyphosate use is being driven massively higher by the noxious superweeds that exist only because of it.

The residue limits for food animals are even worse, and by a huge amount. Animal-feed grass is allowed glyphosate residues of 300 ppm, and animal-feed corn can have glyphosate residues of 400 ppm!

Glyphosate’s Toxicity: … //

… Glyphosate: A Trajectory of Human Misery:

The proven and probable effects of glyphosate are manifold. The meteoric rise in chronic diseases and metabolic disorders has occurred during the same time period that glyphosate was introduced, and has followed a trajectory much like that of the herbicide’s massive increase in use.

At some point, officials in power must take their heads out of the sand and address the evidence that ties glyphosate to the epidemic of chronic diseases. Samsel and Seneff have now collected, sorted, and logically extrapolated on evidence from studies, and they leave little question that there must be an association between the herbicide and the phenomenon of mass ill health.

Samsel and Seneff do not oversell their findings. They clarify that glyphosate is not the only toxin in today’s world. Nonetheless, its known effects on some of the human body’s most basic functions—disruption of gut bacteria, impairment of sulphate transport, and interference with CYP enzyme activity—indicate that, at the very least, glyphosate must have a synergistic effect with other environmental toxins.

It is, therefore, imperative that—at the very least—a moratorium be declared on the use of glyphosate until and unless it can be demonstrated to be safe. Surely it’s long past time to apply the precautionary principle to glyphosate and its partner in synergy, Roundup. The toll in human suffering, not to mention costs to society and economic losses, cannot be allowed to continue.

Surely civilization cannot be maintained when the average person is irrevocably ill. This trajectory of human misery must come to an end.
(full text).

Part 1, Glyphosate: Chronic Disease Degeneration, on GAIA health: Glyphosate is assumed to be safe for humans. As a result, it’s become the world’s best-selling herbicide. However, a groundbreaking study documents that it may actually be fueling the plague of chronic & immune diseases, including cancer and autism. This study documents the underlying systemic damage produced by glyphosate, then discusses how that damage leads to specific diseases;

Part 2, Glyphosate: Disease Creator, on GAIA health: A new study has demonstrated glyphosate’s ability to interfere with gut biota and underlying metabolic functions. The conclusion that glyphosate is a major factor in nearly all modern chronic diseases is inescapable. Here’s how those disturbed metabolic functions are associated with conditions like autism, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Links:

Glyphosate on en.wikipedia (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses known to compete with commercial crops grown around the globe. It was discovered to be a herbicide by Monsanto chemist John E. Franz in 1970.[3] Monsanto brought it to market in the 1970s under the trade name Roundup, and Monsanto’s last commercially relevant United States patent expired in 2000 …;

We Don’t Need Genetically Engineered Bananas For Iron Deficiency, on ZNet, by Vandana Shiva, April 27, 2013;

Boycott Monsanto: A Simple List of Companies to Avoid, on Fractured Paradigm, by FRACTURED PARADIGM, APRIL 2, 2013.

• Irish Music with Irish artist and Andre Rieu and orchesstra, 2.17 min, uploaded by Ediklll, May 11, 2006;
• Orthodox Celts: Star Of The County Down, 2.23 min, uploaded by mamasaid, Sept 16, 2006: Belgrade’s most popular Irish & Celtic music band playing an Irish traditional, arranged by Ana Djokic (the violin player in the video) …;
• The corrs and the chieftains, 5.46 min, uploaded by Ozuisko, Dec 5, 2006;
• Ceili Irish Music – The Kilkenny’s, 3.26 min, uploaded by Cathal Lynch, May 5, 2009;
• Irish song flute music, 4.16 min, uploaded by ramroy007, August 15, 2008;
• The Chieftains & Sinead O’Connor: The Foggy Dew, 4.49 min, uploaded by Manuel perez de castro, Dec 6, 2008; 

Audios:

• THE CHIEFTAINS WITH SINEAD O’ CONNOR: THE FOGGY DEW, 5.35 min, uploaded by CELTIC JAZZ, August 1, 2010;
• Irish tavern music, 11.38 min, uploaded by Kleko Winter, Nov 14, 2011;
• THE CELTS: 3 great songs, 9.59 min, uploaded by batlady2, July 24, 2009;
• Peter Sterling: Lady Of The Lake, 7.05 min, uploaded by batlady2, April 13, 2013;
• UNA HORA DE MUSICA CELTA RELAJANTE CON ARPA TERCERA PARTE, 60.47 min, uploaded by sergiocalu (el canal del relax), Jan 15, 2013;
• Music Session 1, Traditional Folk Music HD: Medley /Celtic Fiddle Festival, 14.27 min, uploaded by sunddresslady,  May 8, 2012.