1pct.com : Underground, mainstream & alternative news.

Did you hear about the slimy Republican operative in Arizona who got a bunch of street people on the Green Party ballot for statewide elections? Yeah, it's a cynical manipulation of the system and possibly exploitative of the people he recruited.

In 1991, Cuba’s economy began to implode. “The Special Period in the Time of Peace” was the government’s euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 years worth of isolation. It began in the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for the Unites States, and continues in part today, under the longest trade embargo in modern history. When Ernesto Oroza, a Cuban-American designer and artist, began studying the technological innovations that have been made during this period, he uncovered a trove of homespun, Frankenstein-like machines that ordinary citizens made for their survival, out of day to day objects.

Reddit, I would like your help in thanking two very awesome people. On Sept. 20th I leave the US and head to England for a Master's program at the University of East Anglia. This last year has been a trying one for me, and there are two people who have made it much easier to manage: my friends, Erik and Keri.

Four months ago, the person I was living with informed me that she was moving to Virginia and that I had two weeks to find a new place to live. Apartment complexes are not too keen on signing a four month lease, and if you live in a place that will allow you to go month to month, it's usually a dump, really expensive, or both. Not knowing what to do, I went to my friends and asked if they could put me up. There was no pause to their reply. As soon as I had asked, they said I was always welcome in their home. I have been staying with them rent free, which has allowed me to buy a laptop for school as well as a very nice DSLR so I can document my trip.

Allow me to tell you a little about them. Keri works as a computer programmer for an engineering and science laboratory and has just started the final semester of her MBA. She will graduate at the top of her class with a 4.0. Her husband, Erik, takes care of their two brilliant children and will start a graduate program when the kids are a little bit older.

I believe that the greatest measure of a person's character and ability is shown by the character and ability of their children. Erik and Keri's two kids are AMAZING. Their son, who is 10, taught himself to read and was reading Harry Potter at the age of 4 1/2 (he's 10 now). Last year he took the advanced placement test for the gifted program and scored 'Superior' in every category. Their daughter (she's 6) is also very intelligent, loves to talk, loves kitties, and loves to talk about kitties.

For the past four months the kids have been sharing a room so I could have a room to myself. On top of everything else, I work the graveyard shift doing tech support for a major hardware manufacturer, so I have to sleep during the day. Neither the kids nor Erik or Keri have ever complained about my schedule. They have taken me into their home and made me feel like part of the family.

I set a list of goals for myself last September, and last night I was able to cross off the very last one. I couldn't have done it without their help.

Erik and Keri, I love you both so much. Thank You!!

Here is a picture of the most awesome, laid back cat in the world. And, trust me, he don't give a fuck about nuthin. http://imgur.com/cKFB8.jpg

[Edit] They both read Reddit. I was hoping you could help me get this post noticed, so everyone can see how awesome my friends are.

[Edit] I can't thank you all enough for your support. We are all sitting in the living room enjoying your comments. The kids think it's awesome that their cats are now famous.

submitted by LazyAtWork to AskReddit
[link] [215 comments]

submitted by autosis to AskReddit
[link] [835 comments]

submitted by BnBFreeman to science
[link] [129 comments]

The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said Wednesday he was determined to go through with his plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite pressure from the White House, religious leaders and others to call it off.

I don’t know how anyone given the task could draw a map of Israel: it is likely the only country in the world with no defined borders, and it actually has worked very hard over many decades to achieve this peculiar state.

It once had borders, but the 1967 war took care of those. It has no intention of ever returning to them because it could have done so at any time in the last forty-three years (an act which would have been the clearest possible declaration of a desire for genuine peace with justice and which would have saved the immense human misery of occupation), but doing so would negate the entire costly effort of the Six Day War whose true purpose was to achieve what we see now in the Palestinian territories.

As far as peace, in the limited sense of the absence of war, Israel already has achieved a kind of rough, de facto peace without any help from the Palestinians. The Palestinians have nothing to offer in the matter of peace if you judge peace by the standards Israel apparently does.

Israel has the peace that comes of infinitely greater power, systematic and ruthless use of that power, the reduction of the people it regards as opponents to squatters on their own land, and a world too intimidated to take any effective action for justice or fairness.

Genuine peace anywhere, as Canadian physicist and Holocaust survivor Ursula Franklin has observed, is best defined by justice prevailing. But you can have many other circumstances inaccurately called peace; for example, the internal peace of a police state or of a brutally-operated colony.

Israel appears to have no interest or need for the kind of peace that the Palestinians can offer. What, then, can the Palestinians give Israel in any negotiation?

There are many “technical” issues to be settled between the Israelis and Palestinians, such as the right of return, compensation for property taken, the continued unwarranted expulsions from East Jerusalem, the Wall and its location largely on Palestinian land, but in a profound sense these are all grounded in the larger concept of genuine peace as Ursula Franklin defined it, something we have no basis for believing Israel is, or ever has been, interested in.

Israel wants recognition, not just as a country like any other, but as “the Jewish state,” whatever that ambiguous term may mean, given the facts both of Israel’s rubbery borders and the definition of Jewish, something which Israelis themselves constantly fight over – reformed, orthodox, ultra-orthodox, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, North African, observant, non-observant, and still other factions and divisions in what is quite a small population.

I very much think that the reasons Israel wants that particular form of recognition are not benevolent: it is the kind of term once put into a contract which opens the future interpretation of the contract to pretty much anything. After all, recognition of Israel as a state is something Arab states have long offered Israel in return for a just settlement, but Israel has never shown the slightest interest.

If recognition of Israel as “the Jewish state” were granted, what would be the status of any non-Jewish person in Israel? I think we can guess, given the awful words of Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, or the even more terrible words of Ovadia Yosef, founder of the Shas Party, a Netanyahu ally, and Israel’s former Chief Rabbi.

After all, about nineteen percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, mainly the descendants of Palestinians who refused to run from the terrors of the Irgun and Stern gangs in 1948. They carry Israeli passports, but are not regarded as citizens in the same sense as Jewish citizens, and there are even laws and restrictions in place creating the kind of deadly distinction George Orwell wrote of in Animal Farm, “Some animals are more equal than others.”

The new talks do not include even the most basic requirement of a legitimate voice to represent the Palestinians, a desirable situation perhaps from Israel’s point of view, one Israel’s secret services have long worked towards with dark ops and assassinations. How do you negotiate with opponents you allow no voice?

Mahmoud Abbas, an almost pitifully shuffling character who is the man supposedly representing Palestinian interests, is now approaching two years of playing president without an election: he has zero legitimacy with the Palestinians and the outside world. Even at that, his assumed authority extends only to parts of the West Bank of the territories.  

Hamas, despite the shortcomings found in any leadership of a heavily oppressed population (after all, it is often forgotten that the African National Congress in South Africa was communist-affiliated), is nevertheless the elected government of Gaza territory, but Israel has pressured the United States — and through it, effectively the world — to regard Hamas as a coven of witches, ready to unleash dark powers if only once Israel relaxes its stranglehold.  

It would be far more accurate to talk of a settlement or an accommodation with the Palestinians than peace, but any reasonable agreement requires intense pressure on Israel, which holds all the cards, pressure which can only come from Washington. Accommodation involves all the difficult “technical” issues Israel has no interest in negotiating — right of return, compensation, the Wall, and East Jerusalem. Israel’s position on all of them is simply “no.”

But we know that Washington is contemptibly weak when it comes to Israel. The Israel Lobby is expert at working the phones and the opinion columns and the campaign donations. It even gets Washington to fight wars for it, as it did in Iraq, and as it now is attempting to do in Iran – surely, the acid test of inordinate influence on policy.

Most American Congressmen live in the same kind of quiet fear of the Israel Lobby as they once did of J.Edgar Hoover’s special files of political and personal secrets. Hoover never even had to openly threaten a Congressman or Cabinet Secretary who was “out of line.” He merely had a brief chat, dropping some ambiguous reference to let the politician know the danger he faced. It was enough to keep Hoover’s influence going for decades.

You never heard a thing in the press about the quiet power Hoover exercised in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, but it was there. Just so, the Israel Lobby today.

So where does the impetus for a fair accommodation come from?

Nowhere. Israel goes right on with its calculatedly-unfair laws taking the homes and farms of others, slowly but surely pushing out the people with whom it does not want to share space.

Anywhere else, this process would be called ethnic-cleansing, but not here, not unless you want to be called a bigot or an anti-Semite.

One says this about the impossibility of a settlement with a reservation. It is possible that the weak Abbas, locked in a room in Washington, could well be browbeaten and bribed into signing some kind of bastard agreement, giving Israel every concession it wants in return for a nominal rump Palestinian state composed of parcels Israel doesn’t want or hasn’t yet absorbed. It wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on, but Israel would then undoubtedly assume its perpetual validity and in future interpret it as it wished.

After all, the history of modern Israel involves agreements divvying up the land of others without their consent, but even those historical divisions — look at the maps attending the Peel Commission (1937) or the UN decision on partition (1947), and you see roughly equally divided territory — today are ignored by Israel or given some very tortured interpretation. So what will have changed?

There simply can be no genuine peace with justice where there is no will for it.

Organized labour in Ontario (Canada) will continue to put forth a weak and ineffective response to attacks from the ruling class as long as it continues to ignore the reality of class struggle. A perfect example is its current response to a proposed two-year wage-freeze that the Dalton McGuinty-led Ontario government plans on imposing on unionized public sector workers. The provincial Liberals would like to save $750 millions per year from a wage freeze, so as to help manage the $19.3 billion budget deficit. Readers need not be reminded that this deficit is the result of the risky financial speculations of the captains of finance, industry and commerce that created the Great Recession of 2007.

But it is the 710,000 unionized members of the working class and 350,000 non-unionized managers and other employees who draw pay cheques from the government1 and the users of state-provided services (and private sector workers) who are being asked to bear the burden of paying for the actions of the corporate sector. At the same time as this attempt to take income from the pockets of government workers, the McGuinty Liberals’ have granted a $4.6 billion tax-cut to the business sector.

The leader of the Ontario New Democrats [a supposedly pro-labor party in Canada -- Ed.], Andrea Howarth, has signaled her support for public sector workers’ acceptance of a pay cut. She asserts, “I’m quite sure when they get to the bargaining table they will do their part like everyone else does … there is a collective bargaining process that has to be respected.”2 Wow! Who said that the working-class needs enemies with “friends” like the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader Andrea Horwarth?

However, it is the tame and even puzzling reaction of some of Ontario’s major labour leaders that should be of concern to workers in the public sector. The government called labour leaders and employers from the broader public sector to “consultation” talks on the wage freeze on July 19, 2010. Coming out of the talks, this was what CUPE-Ontario president Fred Hahn had to say, “This is not like the early ’90s, this is not about sharing the pain. That’s all just not true.”3 He was referring to former NDP premier Bob Rae’s unilateral opening of public sector workers’ contracts and the imposition of public sector wage-cuts accompanied by tax increases for the corporate sector. Was Brother Hahn implying that a wage-freeze would be tolerable, if accompanied by the cancelation of the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cut?

No credible union or union leader should contemplate a zero-wage increase over two years — even if the government rescinds the $4.6 billion tax-cut. There should not have been a tax-cut for the capitalist class. Restoring the tax should not be used as a bargaining chip to escape a wage-freeze on public sector workers.

Not to be outdone was the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union, Warren (Smokey) Thomas. We will leave it to you to decipher the implicit message in the following statement by Smokey Thomas. “Just because he [Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan] wants something doesn’t mean he’s going to get it. It’s not a social contract. He can propose (a wage-freeze) but he has to bargain it. He can’t legislate it. He’ll lose.”3 Is it just us or does that sound like a labour leader who is not really in a fighting spirit and just wants to make a deal?

A simple matter of misguided policy?

However, the critical issue for Ontario’s public sector workers is the extent to which many of our labour leaders seem to be completely unaware of the state and employers’ motives for disciplining labour through wage concessions. Ismael Hossein-zaded of Drake University made the following observation, which is quite applicable to the posturing of labour leaders in Ontario:

Viewing the savage class war of the ruling kleptocracy on the people’s living and working conditions simply as “bad” policy, and hoping to somehow — presumably through smart arguments and sage advice — replace it with the “good” Keynesian policy of deficit spending without a fight, without grassroots‟ involvement and/or pressure, stems from the rather naïve supposition that policy making is a simple matter of technical expertise or the benevolence of policy makers, that is, a matter of choice. The presumed choice is said to be between only two alternatives: between the stimulus or Keynesian deficit spending, on the one hand, and the Neoliberal austerity of cutting social spending, on the other.4

Based on some of the statements coming from labour leaders, they may not have gotten the memo that the attack on the working-class (through the slashing of social programme spending, attacks on private sector pensions and wage freezes) is not about good or bad economic policies. Hossein-Zedad must have been inspired to write his paper after reading the following Keynesian-inspired comment by Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan; “From a policy perspective, it makes no economic sense whatsoever. You’ve got a government saying we need to stimulate the economy. The best way of stimulating the economy is through public-sector workers who spend every single penny of their disposable income in their local communities.”3 But it’s not about the economy, per se. It’s the class struggle, stupid!

Canada’s economic and political elite have clearly given up the ghost of Keynesian economics, which calls on government to either stimulate or restrict the demand for goods and services based on the state of the economy. In the case of the 2007/2008 crisis in capitalism, these neoliberal players felt forced by the magnitude of the impending financial collapse to pump money into the economy. A not-too-insignificant fact was lost on many observers and commentators who gleefully cheered on the capitalist class’ “Road-to-Damascus” moment. The capitalist state in Canada and other imperialist countries will do everything within their power to maintain a business environment that facilitates the accumulation of capital or profit-making, as well as legitimize the system in the eyes of the people. That is all in a day’s work for the state…no surprise here for class conscious trade unionists and other activists!

Labour’s “Response”

We ought to note that the recent crisis in the economy caught organized labour off-guard and ill-prepared to mobilize the working-class against that monumental failure of capitalism. For decades, Western corporations and governments have been force-feeding the public a steady diet of tax-cuts. Lower taxes on businesses, high-income earners and the wealthy, the widespread slashing of social services and income support programmes, a massive reduction in state oversight and regulation of corporations and the enactment of anti-union policies and legislation have been the all rage since corporations and Western governments abandoned their class-collaborationist pact with organized labour in the 1970s. Yet at the very moment when capitalism experienced a crisis of confidence resulting from a set of policies that had been hailed as perfect ingredients for economic and social progress, organized labour was caught with its pants down. Its leaders didn’t have a class struggle alternative to Keynesian economics — an economic tendency that was never intended to be used as a tool to end wage slavery and the minority rule of bankers, industrialists and the managerial and political elite.

Presently, the labour movement is ideologically and operationally ill-prepared to effectively face down the two-year wage-freeze demand from the McGuinty Liberals. Unfortunately, labour’s leaders have, in the main, focused on narrow economic demands rather than seeking to politically develop union activists and their broader membership behind a class struggle labour movement platform. Union members have been politically deskilled and demobilized in favour of a social service model of trade unionism. These labour leaders have failed to use their unions’ courses, workshops, week-long schools, publications and other educational resources to educate members of the fact that they are a part of a distinct class with economic and political interests that are different from that of the rulers of capitalist society.

Even the most casual of observers understand that organized labour’s raison d’être is to champion the material concerns of the working-class. And yet, ideologically-speaking, most labour leaders in Canada have cast their lot with capitalism – albeit for a more Scandinavian version. This is why a coherent critique of capitalism is notably absent from most union-organized workshops and events. It should therefore not come as a surprise that many union members have swallowed the employers and politicians’ message that Canada is a largely middle-class country and that our collective aspiration should be to remain a member of this class. If the labour leaders, academics and the media say that the majority of Canadians are a part of the middle-class, it must be so. The development of a working-class consciousness becomes very difficult (but not impossible) in this kind of political environment.

The great majority of Canadians are members of the working-class. They sell their labour, exercise little to no control over how their work-life is organized, have no say over how the profit from their labour is distributed and are so alienated from work that the aphorism “Thank god it’s Friday” has its own acronym. One should never define middle-class status as one’s ability to purchase consumer trinkets, live in a mortgaged home or even own a summer cottage. Middle-class status ought to be defined by one’s exercise of power and control and/or the possession of high levels of human capital found among administrative/managerial elites in the private and public sectors, academic elites and independent professionals.

Labour’s Credibility Crisis

The narrow economic obsession of labour leaders was on plain display when Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan revealed the March 2010 Budget. When it became known that the McGuinty Liberals would be seeking a two-year wage-freeze from public sector workers, this news was all that consumed the attention of most labour leaders. Many labour functionaries scrambled around in search of external and internal legal opinions, requesting briefs from senior staff on the impact of a wage-freeze on bargaining in specific sectors and sending out correspondence to members assuring them to “just act as if nothing had happened”, because they’re “already covered by a collective agreement.” Many labour union offices’ and unionized workplaces’ anxiety was centred entirely on the desired wage-freeze by the McGuinty Liberals. Nothing else!

But today we hear labour leaders talking about keeping money in workers’ pockets to stimulate the economy and that their primary concern is maintaining public services at adequate levels. Why didn’t organized labour deploy its resources to educate and mobilize the public against the $4.6 billion corporate tax-cuts, slashing of $4 billion in transportation infrastructure spending from Metrolinx’s $9.3 billion budget5 and the scrapping of the special diet allowance that benefitted over 160,000 members of the working-class for the unprincely sum of $250 million per annum and a mere monthly average of $130 per person?6 The provincial government anticipates that the two-year wage-freeze across the public sector will net a savings of $1.5 billion – yet the previous $8.6 billion effectively stolen from the working class failed to push organized labour into action.

The leaders of organized labour did not have the imagination to energize their members and the broader citizenry in alliance with other social movement organizations over the Budget. They could have exposed the class priorities of the McGuinty Liberals. The government’s main concerns clearly have nothing to do with those of us who are poor, live from pay cheque to pay cheque and do not patronize the golf courses where McGuinty and his friends hang out when they are not screwing the public. Listen up public sector labour leaders: the people will not be fooled by your claims to be advocating for the general interest. The broader working-class just have to simply see where you direct the labour movement’s resources and they will clue into the issues that are being prioritized. Take a look at the poor, working-class and/or racialized areas that are likely to be affected by the $4 billion cut to Metrolinx’s budget:

…the austerity moves could affect five planned projects: rapid transit lines for Finch Ave. W., Sheppard Ave. E. and the Scarborough RT, along with the Eglinton Ave. cross-town line and an expansion of York region’s Viva service.7

Are we to believe that a class-struggle and anti-oppression informed public education, organizing and mobilization campaign in defense of public services, the social wage and a livable wage would not have had some level of traction with the people of Ontario?

An alternative economic plan or a different labour movement?

In some quarters of the trade union sector, there are talks of presenting an alternative plan to the slash-and-burn neoliberal policies of the provincial government. But, the presentation of Keynesian economic proposals by labour leaders is useless in a climate where the ruling class doesn’t feel threatened by a politically mobilized population, especially without “compelling grassroots pressure on policy makers.”8 We implied earlier that labour unions have a credibility gap with the broader public if they now assert a desire to “broaden the debate, educate community members and local politicians with a view to engaging in actions that protect public services and build strong communities” as outlined by one union. What would be the purpose of the alternative plans of these labour leaders? The status quo of the 1930s to the 1960s that gave rise to the welfare state is not a transformative option.

There is no such thing as a “contextless” context. Where is the necessary political environment that would force the state to make concessions to the working-class out of fear that they maybe inclined to embrace revolutionary options? When some labour leaders are loosely talking about coming up with an alternative (Keynesian economic plan?) stimulus proposal, they would do well to understand the political implications of the following statement:

Keynesian economists seem to be unmindful of this fundamental relationship between economics and politics. Instead, they view economic policies as the outcome of the battle of ideas, not of class forces or interests. And herein lies one of the principal weaknesses of their argument: viewing the Keynesian/New Deal/Social Democratic reforms of the 1930s through the 1960s as the product of Keynes’ or F.D.R.’s genius, or the goodness of their hearts; not of the compelling pressure exerted by the revolutionary movements of that period on the national policy makers to “implement reform in order to prevent revolution,” as F.D.R. famously put it. This explains why economic policy makers of today are not listening to Keynesian arguments—powerful and elegant as they are—because there would be no Keynesian, New Deal, or Social-Democratic economics without revolutionary pressure from the people.9

However, when labour leaders shy away from speaking openly about class-struggle and the nature of our economic system, we have a serious problem. It means that they are not in a position to facilitate a class-struggle, democracy-from-below and self-organizing form of trade unionism.

In order fight this attack on the working-class of Ontario, the labour movements’ rank-and-file activists, progressive leaders and principled labour socialists must engage in shop-floor education, organizing and mobilizing that is centred on a class-struggle, anti-racist and anti-oppression campaign. This approach to labour activism must be done in alliance with progressive or radical social movement organizations among women, racialized peoples, indigenous peoples, youth, students, LGBT community, climate/environmental justice, independent and revolutionary labour organizations, anti-authoritarian formations, and radical intellectuals. It must be an alliance based on mutual respect, sharing of approaches to emancipation and resources and a commitment to the value that the oppressed are the architect of and the driving force behind the movement for their emancipation. It is essential that organized labour open up and transform its leadership and decision-making structures to accommodate the full inclusion of its membership, in all their diversity.

In most of our unions and locals, this means starting from the beginning and we can use this current crisis to take those first steps. There is a lot of frustration among union members and community activists over the inaction of labour’s leadership in the face of this attack and a desire to do something about it. That frustration and desire can be channeled into building cross-union “fight back committees” that bring together trade union and community activists in a city or town, such as members of the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly have already begun to do in that city. The “fight back committees” can give us a capacity to act independently from organized labour’s leadership. And probably our first acts should be to organize general assemblies in our locals and town hall meetings in our communities to promote a working-class view of the economic crisis and to mobilize our fellow workers and neighbours around militant, grassroots resistance to the McGuinty government and all the forces promoting a new round of austerity for the working-class.

Nothing less than a self-organizing, class-struggle approach to trade unionism will put labour in a position to fight in the here-and-now, while building the road we must travel on our way to the classless and stateless society of the future.

1. Walkom, T. (2010, March 26). Liberals aim at easy targets. Toronto Star.
2. Brennan, R. J. & Talaga, T. (2010, March 26) Hudak cut wages deeper. Toronto Star.
3. Benzie, R. (2010, July 20). Dwight Duncan’s wage-freeze pitch gets frosty reception. Toronto Star.
4. Hossein-zaded, I. (2010, July 23-25). Holes in the Keynesian Arguments against Neoliberal Austerity Policy—Not “Bad” Policy, But Class Policy. Counterpunch.
5. Hume, C. (2010, March 29). Transit still not a priority. Toronto Star.
6. The Canadian Press. (2010 April 1). Ontario asked to restore special diet allowance.
7. Goddard, J., Rider, D. & Kalinoski, (2010, March 26). Miller outraged as budget sideswiped GTA transit. Toronto Star.
8. Hossein-zaded, I, Holes in the Keynesian arguments against neoliberal austerity policy.
9. Hossein-zedad, I. Holes in the Keynesian arguments against neoliberal austerity policy.

Earlier articles explained the June 28, 2009 coup and aftermath, the latest accessed here.

For Hondurans, the event marked a new beginning, not an end to their dark history. Widespread killings and human rights abuses followed and a sham November election, installing Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo Sosa president, a US-friendly stooge heading a fascist regime. The nation’s military is firmly in control against popular resistance, street violence and death squad terror its repressive tools. The Obama administrative stands firmly supportive. It blessed the coup, the new government and provides aid, all for hardline rule, none for popular needs.

Activists and journalists are especially threatened. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries anywhere for those speaking openly about government corruption, human rights abuses, and despotism, the latest casualty — Radio Internacional reporter, Zelaya Diaz, shot dead on August 24 along a rural San Pedro Sula road. According to press reports, he died from two bullet wounds to the head, another in his chest. Like similar past incidents, an investigation, if it occurs, will be whitewashed. No one will be held accountable.

Though not openly threatened, an earlier suspicious fire damaged Diaz’s home, a message perhaps demanding he stop reporting on politics and crime. Since March alone, eight journalists have been killed, a disturbing pattern against others stepping too close to honest reporting about what Hondurans most need to know – the truth about their corrupted, brutal regime.

Despite the UN General Assembly’s June 30, 2009 condemnation of the coup “by acclimation,” 90 nations have now restored diplomatic ties, normalizing relations after the October 30 Tegucigalpa-Jose Accord (the unfulfilled agreement to form a National Unity/ Reconciliation Government) and Lobo’s election — business as usual triumphing over the rule of law and democratic freedoms, Washington always in the lead, pressuring others to go along.

Resistance, however, continues. On August 27, Honduras Resists reported that protests and police repression filled Tegucigalpa streets, the nation’s capital, for the third straight day. Security forces surrounded the National Pedagogic University where teachers, students, unionists, campesinos, and other activists gathered inside demanding social justice.

They were attacked, police using tear gas, then beating some overcome and forced outside. Others were arrested. The previous day, thousands of teachers were assaulted near the Presidential Palace (Casa Presidential), the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) saying a number were wounded, yet Escuela Hospital refused to treat four injured professors. Protests erupted after negotiations with the Lobo government failed.  Security forces responded repressively.

Honduran human and worker rights are consistently denied. As a result, on August 31, the National Front for Popular Resistance (FNRP) called for a September 7 nationwide strike for a living wage and other demands, including keeping the nation’s natural resources public, not privatized.

According to Juan Barahona, President of the United Federation of Workers of Honduras (FUTH), it’s also to “express our rejection of this regime,” its repressive policies and neoliberal model. 

In addition, FNRP wants a National Constituent  Assembly to review and rewrite the Constitution, supported by most Hondurans. It also plans a September 15 national mobilization commemoration on the 187th anniversary of independence from Spain. 

It needs another from Washington, Honduras’ ruling oligarchy, fascist government, and repressive military and police, cracking down brutally against activists, campesinos, and supportive journalists for social justice.

Report from Rights Action (RA)

RA focuses on community development, emergency relief, environmental and human rights issues in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador. It aims to “build north-south alliances and carries out education, political and legal work for global equity and justice,” following a “just development model.”

On August 31, it reported that Honduran repression continues, elaborating on three-days of Tegucigalpa crackdowns. It followed weeks of public school teacher demands for the return of $200 million taken from the National Institute of IMPREMA, an institution managing their pension funds.

The umbrella organization FOMH represents six teachers unions and their 63,000 members nationwide. After the June 2009 coup, they said the new regime took the money they want back.

Students have demands as well, wanting 180 fired workers reinstated and National Autonomous University (UNAH) director, Julieta Castrellano’s resignation. Allied with teachers, they also oppose Lobo’s plan to privatize public education. As a result, it’s been in crisis for months without resolution. Students occupied the university. Police assaulted it repressively.

Peaceful protests continued. Hardline crackdowns followed. Police used water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, brutal beatings, and arrests, in the presence of women and children around the National Pedagogical University. From a black Toyota, a gunman fired a 9-millimeter weapon at protesters, the car belonging to the National Congress.

Besides arrests, “Over 100 people were captured and ‘guarded’ by police against a fence outside the University.” After human rights representatives intervened, they were released. Yet many teachers and students were trapped in classrooms suffering tear gas exposure. Seven or more others were injured, including a Globo TV/Radio journalist.

Earlier in August, security forces brutally beat three union leaders and one teacher, fingered by regime infiltrators in their marches. The corporate-owned media call protesters “instruments of violence,” accusing them of disrupting children’s education. In fact, they’re Hondurans for social justice.

On August 31, the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN), a coalition of US organizations, denounced state repression, saying:

“the recent brutal attacks by government forces against non-violent protests show that there has been no reconciliation after last year’s coup d’etat, and the US government’s policy of support for the current government must be changed. We call for an immediate end to the repression and human rights violations against the opposition movement,” its teachers, students, unionists and other supporters.

HSN spokeswoman Vicki Cervantes said “The United States government continues its support for the oligarchy and Lobo in the form of aid and pressure on other governments in the hemisphere to accept” its legitimacy when, in fact, it has none.

Meanwhile, popular opposition is growing. For the first time since 1954, Honduran trade union federations called a general strike. In addition, nearly one million eligible voters signed letters demanding a National Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution. So far, hardline repression continues, Washington providing  weapons and ammunition.

Campesinos Struggling for Their Rights

They’re ongoing throughout Honduras, including in the northern Valle de Aguan, once the country’s agrarian reform capital, campesinos now contesting their land rights agreed to in a MUCA arranged deal — the Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Agua. 

Signed in December, they agreed to abandon occupied areas in return for 11,000 acres of cultivated and uncultivated land. However, powerful landowners objected, using security forces to intimidate, threaten, and persecute farmers, killing eight or more and arresting others on grounds of “theft and trespassing.”

The Aguan land struggle continues, the Committee in Defense of Human Rights (CODEH), saying “the facts show that the justice system like the Public Ministry and the Police are allied with the landowners of the zone to persecute those who try to challenge their privilege.”

Decades of the country’s dark history under a ruling oligarchy left up to two-thirds of Hondurans impoverished, unable to meet basic needs. Most are landless or have too little, over half unemployed or underemployed, while wealthy landowners control most valued areas and want more, never satisfied with enough.

Despite the 1962 agrarian reform, the 1992 Law for Agrarian Modernization rolled back earlier gains. Thereafter, indigenous movements only marginally restored losses, no match against wealthy oligarchs backed by repressive state forces, enforcing death squad terror. 

Honduras’ class struggle persists in the hemisphere’s second poorest country after Haiti, committed to end decades of repression, injustice and poverty, a growing problem throughout most of the world, dark interests wanting more wealth and power at the expense of easily exploitable people.

Final Comments

In America, the major media suppress the Honduran story — the coup, deep repression, and popular struggle for change. Committed grassroots pressure continues, what’s mostly absent in the United States on a fast track toward despotism, the kind Central America has long experienced, Haitians and Hondurans most affected, yet  persist for their rights against long odds they’re determined one day to overcome.

Imagine our declining pollinators – bees, moths, butterflies and bats – coming upon thousands of acres of toxic trees, genetically engineered so that every cell in the tree exudes pesticide, from crown to root. Imagine a world without pollinators. Without seed dispersers. Without soil microbes.

It would be a silent forest, a killing forest, an alien forest. No wonder Vandana Shiva scoffs at the moniker, biotechnology. “This is not a life technology. It’s a death science.”

Genetically engineered forests are a holocaust on nature. An award-winning documentary, A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees (2005, 46 mins) details the appalling effects. (You can buy the full length film at here.)

Global Justice Ecology Project director, Ann Petermann, defines the issue: “Genetically engineered trees are the greatest threat to the world’s remaining forests since the invention of the chainsaw.”

Jim Hightower calls them, “wildly invasive, explosively flammable, and insatiably thirsty for ground water.”

If planting a sterile, killer forest isn’t freaky enough, some GM trees will be viable and can and will contaminate natural species. Tree pollen can travel over 600 miles, according to a model created by Duke University, reported Petermann in 2006. Another study found pine pollen 400 miles from the nearest pines. This year, a scientist was surprised to find viable seeds 25 miles offshore.

“Sterile trees would also be able to spread their transgenes through vegetative propagation,” notes Petermann. Unlike with animals, being sexually sterile does not preclude reproduction when it comes to plants.

GM contamination occurs around the globe, as documented by GM Watch and the GM Contamination Register (among others). The technology cannot be contained. Genetically modified organisms are dominant over natural species and will forever alter Earth’s natural plants.

By the way, the latest batch of approved GM trees – 200,000 eucalyptus for seven southern states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina) – are engineered to be cold tolerant. A lawsuit has been filed to overturn their approval.

Chemically altering the atmosphere to be cooler

Not only are the powers-that-be genetically altering trees, food crops and animals, they’re also chemically altering the atmosphere. In 1976, the United Nations banned hostile environmental modification, after investigative reporter, Jack Anderson, uncovered its use in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Next month, October 2010, the UN will vote on a resolution to stop all EnMod activities.

While the thought police label chemtrails a “conspiracy theory,” it’s unlikely that the UN scientific body calling for their termination would base such a recommendation on fiction. Those interested in scientific and legal proof can review the sources in my piece on atmospheric geoengineering.

Climate change is still being debated, especially after the University of East Anglia was caught publishing false data showing temperature increases. Significant errors in a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where it also falsely asserted as fact that Himalaya glaciers would melt by 2035, also fuel the debate.

Recently, an independent investigative body told the IPCC to stop lobbying on behalf of global warming programs. Members of the IPCC were also ordered to reveal their financial connections to such programs.

The temperature of the planet is characterized as too warm, and so the wealthy and powerful want to cool down the planet. If they do, those cold-tolerant GM trees will survive.

Altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere

Governments also support altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere. There is still much debate as to whether iron-seeding the oceans can remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet. But, like the Cap and Trade scam, profit can be made so policy makers still support the idea.

Beyond deliberate attempts at geoengineering, we also have industry to blame for doing so. For over a century, humanity has been conned into poisoning the environment with toxic chemicals that end up in our streams, lakes and oceans. “Conventional” agriculture and industrial pollution is killing us.

Corporations profit by this, of course, is enabled and protected by governments. The most recent example, allowing BP to spray at least two million gallons of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, is a case in point. This is after the Earth Day Blowout that released up to 350 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. Those dispersants enable oil to more readily penetrate the bodies of sea life, and they interfere with oil-eating microbes.

They’re destroying an ocean and the US Senate is giving BP a pass. It refuses to grant subpoena power to investigate, let alone criminally prosecute. Forget partisanship, says Dateline Zero, “they are the same party, and they get their money from the same people, they get their orders from the same people — and that includes big oil.”

The actions of the corporations involved and the governmental agencies charged with regulating them have caused an ongoing Extinction Level Event.

This is happening all over the world. Corporations are destroying the planet under the guise of seeking profit. But their ecocidal activities are so horrendous and so ubiquitous that profits seem hardly plausible as authentic motive.

When taken together – chemically altered skies and waters and genetically altered plants and animals – reasonable minds cannot but wonder at the alien transformation of Planet Earth that we are witnessing.

It has become popular to talk about climate change policy in terms of energy security. Rather than saying we need more renewables, efficient building and public transport to meet climate change targets we now say that we need them to achieve energy security.

This trend is likely to continue. In November the British Government will introduce the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill. Eager to influence and improve the Act, development NGOs with climate campaigns and environmental organisations will have to talk about what they want in terms of energy security. If we want to be part of the debate we will have to stop calling for cuts in emissions to protect the world's most vulnerable people. We will have to start saying we must get more energy from renewables to increase energy security.
This might appear no different. Just another way of talking about the same thing. Both could involve investing in renewables, reducing the amount of fossil fuels we burn, building efficient buildings.

But when we talk about security we mean a world of peace and stability. For us security means peace-building. It means resolving conflicts, not military intervention. It means producing our own energy rather than fighting wars to secure oil and gas from other countries. We waved our ‘no war for oil’ placards in the run up to the Iraq war. For us security means addressing the root causes of instability. We mean changing the things that make the world unstable and prone to conflict: climate change, competition over resources, the gap between rich and poor. When we talk to people about energy security we imagine that they share this vision.

But we forget that there are other ways of looking at security. And our vision of security is not the dominant one. The approach that most western governments have to security is the exact opposite. Stability is achieved through the vigorous use of force. ‘Rogue nations’ are contained by military intervention. Insurgents and rebels are contained by special forces. Access to secure supplies of energy is achieved through war. The aim is to keep a lid on instability. Not to question why that instability exists or to do anything about it. The prime example of this approach to security is the ‘War on Terror’.

Perhaps we mistakenly think when we talk to people about energy security they buy into our definition of security. Let's not be naive. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about preventing drought, floods and disappearing islands. There is a reason they didn't listen when we talked about a just deal in Copenhagen, indigenous land rights and living within our environmental means. It’s because all of these things are inconsistent with their approach to security. In a world with a safe climate, economic justice and fair access to natural resources, their approach to security would be irrelevant.

When nowadays we talk about what we want in terms of energy security what we are actually saying is this: our vision for a renewably powered country is consistent with your vision for containing instability using violence. Our vision for energy efficient homes is consistent with your vision for military intervention. Let’s increase energy security by using renewables, but let’s also secure new energy reserves using force. Crucially we say our vision for energy security does not challenge your approach to global security. Our vision for energy security does not require you to do anything about the actually causes of instability and violence.

Without thinking we’ve given our support to an approach to dealing with the world’s problems that goes completely against our values. The situation is likely to get worse in the run up to the Energy Security and Green Economy Bill. In being forced to frame our demands for better climate policy in terms of energy security, our efforts to improve the Bill will unwittingly add force to a broader programme that is completely at odds with what we believe.

So what should we do? We must be explicit about why we want good domestic climate and energy policy. Let’s say that it is needed to achieve peace and stability. Let’s say that climate change and competition for dwindling energy reserves are both causes of instability and violence. We should make it clear that there the other causes of instability and violence - like nuclear proliferation and inequality - need to be dealt with too. Finally let’s be very clear that our vision for renewables and good domestic climate policy is totally inconsistent with the dominant approach to security.

City:  United Kingdom Topics:  Civil society

Latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear activities reaffirms Tehran’s commitment to the agency’s rules, Iranian envoy to the watchdog group says.

Commenting on the report released by IAEA’s Director General Yukiya Amano on Monday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog Ali Asghar Soltanieh said, “After seven years of constant inspections, the report once again confirms the non-diversion of Iran’s nuclear activities towards military and banned objectives.”

“Although the report has tarnished the Agency’s technical credibility by mentioning technical details and quoting some parts of UN Security Council’s resolution, it clearly shows that all of Iran’s nuclear activities, especially the enrichment efforts, have been conducted under the supervision of the agency,” Soltanieh told Mehr News Agency after Amano’s report was published Monday night.

“The report reflects achievements made by the Islamic Republic and its mastery of nuclear technology, especially in the field of enrichment, and clearly indicates Iran’s commitment to IAEA’s Statute and Safeguards Agreement, confirming that all of Iran’s nuclear activities are conducted under the Agency’s supervision,” he added.

Commenting on appeals proclaimed in Amano’s report, Soltanieh reiterated that the UN Security Council (UNSC) demands are not applicable since they have no legal basis and exceed the provisions of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On May 17, Iran, Turkey and Brazil issued a declaration based on which Tehran agreed to exchange the bulk of its low-enriched uranium on Turkish soil with fuel for the Tehran research reactor.

The US and its European allies snubbed the declaration and used their influence on the UNSC to press for fresh sanctions against Iran.

Both Ankara and Brasilia condemned the new sanctions, saying it was a major setback in resolving the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

Following the UNSC resolution, the US and EU also imposed additional unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, targeting the country’s energy and financial sectors.

Iran has criticized the UNSC sanctions arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and an IAEA member it has every right to pursue and benefit from nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Since September 11, 2001, fear has been the main engine of change in the United States.  Who would have thought that across the US, where people boast that it is the home of the free and the land of the brave, people would gladly surrender their freedom and liberty because they so fear terrorism?

Who would have thought that the US would allow, much less pay for, the National Security Agency to intercept and store 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other communications – every single day – and pay for 30,000 people to listen in on phone conversations in the name of fighting the fear of terrorism?

Who would have thought that people across New York City, where people are proud of their diversity, would fear construction of a mosque and community center downtown?

Who would have thought that people across the US, where people argue that they helped bring down the wall that separated East and West Germany, would so fear their neighbors to the South that they support construction of a wall of separation with Mexico?

Who would have thought that some of the highest lawyers in the land would write memos illegally authorizing the torture of people in the name of making the US safe?

Who would have thought that Democrats would compete with Republicans to try to keep the globally shameful Guantanamo prison open so that people inside the US would not have to fear having living near prisons with alleged terrorists in them?

Who would have thought that people in New York City, a place where people admire their own toughness, would fear having criminal trials of alleged terrorists in their city? 

Who would have thought that in the US, where people take pride in the constitutional independence of the judiciary, those judges would turn down the case of Maher Arar, who was captured in the US and flown out to a Syrian prison to be tortured because they fear that even looking at the case would interfere with national security?

Who would have thought that the people of the US would fear to have Uighurs, members of persecuted ethnic minority who struggled for their freedoms against China, allowed to live even temporarily in the US?

Who would have thought that the people of the US would so fear the possibility of the Taliban ruling Afghanistan and the false possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that we would send our sons and daughters to die by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Who would have thought that there once was a US president who said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…”?

You tell me what happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave since September 11, 2001.

Imagine you’re in a room filled with thousand year-old human bones from floor to ceiling, everywhere you turn. Sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel or a horrible nightmare, doesn’t it? Well, actually a place like this does exist

Cable news outlets showed limited interest Tuesday afternoon in a press conference where church leaders from a variety of faiths called for a united front against Koran burning and other aspects of Islamophobia.

Washington - Despite the passions stirred by the Islamic center near ground zero and a plan to burn Korans on Sept. 11, cable news outlets showed limited interest Tuesday afternoon in a press conference where church leaders from a variety of faiths called for a united religious front against perceived examples of Islamophobia.

read more

Security breaches happen every day to nearly everyone -- from banks to small businesses. Here are the Identity Theft Resource Center's findings from their 2010 report.

Legendary American folksinger, backcountry traveler, and wilderness advocate James “Walkin’ Jim” Stoltz passed late Friday night, September 3, 2010, at St. Peter’s Hospital in Helena, Montana.

Stoltz, age 57, a veteran performer for 35 years with 12 CDs, one DVD and several books to his credit, earned his nickname “Walkin’ Jim,” by hiking more than 28,000 miles through wild country in North America.

read more

and make a killing off the book burning morons.

submitted by Prescription_pants to funny
[link] [33 comments]

submitted by CritterM72800 to programming
[link] [487 comments]

A new study says birds are likely dying in Alberta oilsands tailings ponds at a rate that is at least 30 times higher than that suggested by the oil industry.

The results add weight to arguments that depending on the industry to monitor its own environmental impacts isn't working, said Kevin Timoney, an ecologist who co-authored a paper on the subject with Dalhousie University biologist Robert A. Ronconi.

The paper was published Tuesday in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

read more