Is Little Barbados Leading the Charge to Disrupt Global Financing?

Posted on June 23, 2023 by David

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The following is a Press Release issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – Blogmaster

The Government of Barbados Forms a Coalition of Multilateral Banks to Develop Resilient Infrastructure and to Drive New Social and Nature Capital Investments, Building on Its Resilience and Sustainability Facility at the IMF

June 23, 2023

Washington, DC: The Government of Barbados announced at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris an integrated package of innovative initiatives to accelerate its transition to net zero, boost resilience, enfranchise workers, and draw in private sector investment while prudently managing public debt levels. These initiatives build on the ongoing climate policy reforms, supported by the Resilience and Sustainability Facility with the International Monetary Fund, which are expected to play a catalytic role in mobilizing private and public sector financing for climate projects.

This package of initiatives reflects unprecedented cooperation and a new “system approach” between the Government, its Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Barbados’ long-standing financing partners; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), World Bank Group (WBG), Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), European Investment Bank (EIB), and Green Climate Fund (GCF).

Barbados is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and it needs to invest heavily to protect its citizens from hurricanes, flooding and droughts, and to preserve its natural capital. It is committed to achieving sustainable public debt levels, meaning that the government has limited borrowing capacity for public investments. To meet these challenges, it has identified four complementary approaches together with its financing partners.

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Israeli Palestinian Conflict – How many more…?

Posted on April 8, 2023 by David

It is ironic one of the important Christian festivals on the calendar is being celebrated this weekend against the background of continuing conflict in the Middle East. It is reported Christianity started with a small group of Jewish origin in Judea. Ironic because Judea was located in the space occupied by Israel and Palestine; an area of decades of conflict. Many believers AND non-believers will justifiably ask – why has a region anchored in Christianity been unable to resolve decades of man made conflict that has resulted in the deaths and injury to hundreds of thousand of men, women, children?

Source: drill_josh (@Josh Drill)

As if the Israel/PLO conflicts is not enough, political instability in Israel has not made it easy with years of coalition governments comprised of Conservatives, Liberals, Right-wing, Zionists to name a few feeding a polarizing environment.

When will it end …?

Barbados watch out, another global financial crisis on the horizon

Posted on March 21, 2023 by David

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Another global financial crisis seems set to engulf the world with the collapse of banks in the United States and Europe, two of the major financial markets in the world. Attempts by regulators and big banks to intervene by bail ins and other means have failed to calm unease in the markets. Banking and other financial stocks have seen declines which reflects a lack of confidence by investors.

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BRICS: THE OPPONENT OF THE WEST

Posted on February 27, 2023 by David

Curriculum vitae Isidoros Karderinis was born in Athens in 1967. He is a novelist, poet and columnist. He has studied economics and has completed postgraduate studies in the tourism economy. His articles have been published in newspapers, magazines and sites worldwide. His poems have been translated into English, French and Spanish and published in poetry anthologies, in literary magazines and literary sections of newspapers. He has published seven poetry books and three novels. His books have been published in USA, Great Britain, Spain and Italy. Email: skarderinis@hotmail.gr Facebook: Karderinis Isidoros Twitter: isidoros Karderinis — Submitted by Karderinis Isidoros

Brazil, Russia, India and China originally formed the bloc in 2009 after a series of meetings and understandings. The first BRIC Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16 of the same year, where the heads of states in question agreed to strengthen dialogue and cooperation between them.

The following year, in Brasilia, Brazil in April 2010, the second Summit was held, where the leaders of these countries emphasized the necessity of a multidimensional global intergovernmental system.

Then, at their third meeting in New York in September 2010, the BRICs agreed on the entry of South Africa. South Africa managed to join after a strong effort as a result of its active foreign policy, this coalition of states changing it from “BRIC” to “BRICS”.

At the Fourth Summit in March 2012 in New Delhi, India, a first announcement was made of the establishment of a New Development Bank (NDB), which was formalized at their Fifth Summit in Durban, South Africa in 2013, with the clear intention of independence of BRICS by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the US and the European Union. The agreement for its establishment, after resolving disputes over organizational issues, was finally reached in 2014, during the sixth BRICS meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil.

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US Midterm Elections is Close

Aside

A close race in the 2022 US midterm elections. The forecast was for a red wave given Biden’s unpopular rating. What does the possible outcome mean for the rest of the world?

Follow @nytimes.com

Putin’s Choice. Your Choice?

Posted on October 1, 2022 by David

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Submitted by Steven Kaszab

Every Super Power that exists and existed previously is obligated to pursue certain obligations to itself and its people.

A nation needs to be either allied to another nation supplier or have its own supply of essential products such as fuel, food. The necessities.
Every national government pursues and nurtures an ability to unite its people. Unity is far better than chaos.
Most national administrations study future developments, the possibilities of what could and would happen that can effect their nation.
Self sufficiency in all things has often been the milestone of national governments.National Governments are obligated to nurture their youth, and ensure future generations are well educated, creative and ambitious.
When in doubt, all national governments will support every endeavour to make the nation more successful, and greater then the previous administration.6. A Leader, no matter the political stripe, will work towards leaving their mark on their nations politics and history.

President Putin is presently playing the same cards that every so called democracy in existence has played. How did America become such a power house economically and militarily? By annexing, conquering and buying their land masses. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium to name a few were colonial powers that raped the African, Latin American, Asian and Caribbean continents. India still feels the effects of British Colonialism to this very day. India’s move towards Religious Fascism today is directly influenced by British political management, playing one race or religion against the other. If the people are not united, they will certainly fall. Distorting and manipulating a peoples national quest allows nationalist elites to rule the day.

President Putin’s adventure has not been a failure as so many wish you to think. Like so many other super powers before him, Putin is taking his nations vast riches and capabilities and throwing them against the wall, hoping that something will stick. Once a great powerful empire, Russia’s fear of those that surround and threatens Russia continues to effect policy, even if it is an illusion. If your nation has become the majority supplier of all energy to the EU, why not inject political adventure into the equation? America does it all the time, as do other super powers. Russia’s economic engine needs a reason to modernise and grow. Simple capitalistic greed is not enough. Pride in the nations accomplishments, its conquests, its power must be quenched. The Ukraine belonged to the Russian soviet federation,as too the Imperial Russian Empire.Then western forces assisted elites within the Ukraine to force separation from Russia. If Hawaii decided on its own accord to declare independence from America, what do you think mainland America would do? Who is this war good for? The super powers armament industry and suppliers, that’s who. Billions sent to Ukraine to fight off Russian aggression. And will Ukrainians return to a democratic government once this war is over? A process of rebuilding can be an oppressive moment in a nations life.

Perhaps not. And will the Ukraine have to pay back all those weapons? The weapons are not free. Loans that will hang over the Ukrainian People for generations to come. The economic and political speed bumps these people will have to endure maybe unachievable. All this time the super powers and their allies show up for photo ops, gathering to bad mouth the Russian leader, who they had no problem dealing with a year ago. The world claims Putin is illegally claiming 4 regions of the Ukraine. If you know anything about history, you’d know what National Governments have put their people through. War, lots of war. The invention of modern slavery came from the imaginations of Portuguese and Spanish entrepreneurs. The British perfected it in the Caribbean. The super powers polluted their own land masses through uncontrolled capitalism, and when their fellow citizens complain, so these fellows established their toxic manufacturing plans and processes in third world nations.

I guess all I am saying is the “free world” is calling one of their best natural recourse suppliers names, all because President Putin did not follow the rules. What is good for the goose is good for the gander right? The wealthy get wealthier, the rest of humanity suffers now and in times to come. Now I am not a promoter for Putin or anything Russian. My family came from Hungary, who experienced Soviet Russian aggression, and every time I hear someone talking in Russian I go on guard unintentionally. I am suspicious of anything Russian, except for their food, most filling:)

Super Powers play high and mighty with each other, and the lowly citizen suffers. How long must this be allowed to happen? History repeats itself as a time honoured process.

Is a Global Food Shortage Coming?

Posted on May 17, 2022 by David

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Submitted by Melissa Martin, Ph.D. – author, columnist, educator living in the USA

Rumblings around the globe are predicting a food shortage, but can the citizens believe the power-driven politicians and the lying leaders? Even leaders of sovereign nations are known to manipulate and spew falsehoods. Why? Because they can – especially when the mainstream media is in their back pocket and their front pocket.

Is it more a matter of supply chain issues, inflation and the cost of food products, ongoing effects from the coronavirus pandemic, or the recent war between Russia and the Ukraine?

It depends on what the controlling globalists want you to believe. It depends on what the leaders of the Great Reset (aka New World Order) pass on to mainstream media for headlines. Don’t bother reading USA Today, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Don’t bother watching CNN or MSNBC. And the owner of FOX limits information.

Watch the documentary “Monopoly, Who Owns the World?” by Tim Gielen and find out what companies own what mainstream media news outlets: television, newspapers, magazines, websites. Find out what companies own the food factories. Peruse the shareholders – Blackrock and Vanguard are major players.

“President Biden on Thursday warned of global food shortages as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine — predicting that the war would upend global wheat supplies,” according to a March 24, 2022 article in the New York Post. But President of the U.S. Biden is onboard with the New World Order as he recently stated.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s largest humanitarian organization. The WFP is governed by the WFP Executive Board, which consists of 36 Member States and provides intergovernmental support, direction and supervision of WFP’s activities.

The United Nations signed a contract with Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum. So, the UN is onboard with the New World Order. “You will own nothing and you’ll be happy,” says Schwab. Bill Gates is pushing humans to eat plant-based diets, synthetic meats, and bugs. Trusting the members of the New World Order is like allowing a weasel into the henhouse.

Read the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It rings with utopian bliss. The UN rhetoric reads like a savior that is coming to save the planet and humanity. But a false savior has to first create a false problem – so they can ride in to save the day with a false solution.

In other words, the United Nations will ask/request/demand that all citizens of all nations give up all money, property, and possessions for the sake of feeding humanity. It’s called global communism. Say farewell to freedom, democracy, and liberty. While the elites at the top of the pyramid wine and dine – the servants at the bottom obey orders.

“14 ways to PREPARE for food shortages around the world,” is a 2022 article by Glenn Beck.

Visit https://www.glennbeck.com/radio/14-ways-to-prepare-for-food-shortages-around-the-world.

Citizens, as you stock up on canned food and staples, buy some extra to share with your neighbors – if and when, a food shortage arrives.

Is Russia Ukraine Conflict a Concern?

Posted on January 28, 2022 by David

It is not surprising to hear anti-Russia sentiment being spouted in the Barbados space. Individuals will form opinions based on how they have been indoctrinated. In this part of the world our people are bombarded with western news streams particularly from USA and UK sources. Again, it is not surprising the anti-Eastern sentiment baked into our world view.

In previous blogs the relationship between superpower USA and Israel has been exhaustively discussed. It is no secret the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for too long with no resolution in sight. It may surprise many under a Black President Barack Obama, US aid to Israel increased to compare with previous administrations. In this space we also discussed the perceived threat by the USA of a Russian presence in the Caribbean or South America. The point is: foreign policy positions of countries is based on geopolitical factors i.e. geographic, demographic, economic, political, defense-security, regional, global and scientific programs (study.com). Countries like the USA, UK, Russia, Germany, Iran including small countries pursue foreign policy positions in the narrow interest. What is being interpreted as Russia’s military aggression on Ukraine’s border must therefore be contextualized.

The Ukraine was part of the former Soviet Union and is strategically located in Europe if one factors that former Soviet republics Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and a few others became full members of the National Alliance Treaty Organization (NATO). A key concern for Russia’s President Putin is- if Ukraine were to become a full member of NATO it will represent a military threat to Russia because the USA via its alliance with NATO will be too close for comfort. There is also legacy concerns which Russia still harbors from the Cold War period of being one people; one language, heritage etc.

Does Russia have valid concerns? NATO’s policy is that independent European states are eligible to join NATO. On the other side of the issue for Putin, it is in the geopolitical interest of Russia to block NATO’s expansion in Europe especially on its border. The NATO alliance of which USA is a member, guarantees that if any member is militarily attacked, NATO will be forced to respond. To complicate matters there is the Warsaw Pact created before the breakup of the Soviet Union intended to balance power in that region in response to NATO. The spirit of that agreement in the opinion of the blogmaster is alive and well in the Kremlin.

There is also a view President Biden is perceived as weak by world leaders. China has adopted an aggressive posture to Hong Kong and Taiwan, North Korea recently fired two ballistic missiles to force the USA back to the negotiating table. After years of military build up in Afghanistan and thousands of lifes loss that country has reverted to Taliban rule after Biden honoured a commitment to withdraw US troops. How can Biden justify deploying troops to the Russian border? How will Americans respond to Biden administration with midterm elections coming up?

There is also the economic considerations. One example is US threatening to prevent opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which took years and billions to build with prominent players from the West. If sanctions were to be imposed by the US it will negatively impact Russia but also Western players. There is also evidence since the Crimean episode, Russia has developed alternative systems to buffer the imposition of sanctions.

The blogmaster is not taking sides, just asking for a fair representation of the issues at play which are complicated and should not be dismissed based on inflated rhetoric influenced by propaganda shaped by one sided geopolitical interest. Russia and Ukraine have been exchanging ‘fire’ since 2015. In simple a view Ukraine is at the centre of Putin’s ‘sphere of interest’, this matter will not go away anytime soon.

Say No to New US attacks on Cuba’s Independence

Posted on November 13, 2021 by David

Submitted by Caribbean Network for Solidarity with Cuba (CNSC)

It is now clear, beyond any doubt, that that the government of the USA and its spy
agencies are planning a new attack on Cuba’s independence which is intended to
instigate violence and insecurity in that country on Monday 15 November. US
lawmakers and government officials, including Brian Nichols, the Assistant Secretary
of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Senator Marco Rubio, Juan Gonzalez, the
National Security Council Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere and many
others, have been at the forefront of pushing for their supporters to launch
‘demonstrations’ in Cuba on 15 November in open defiance of the Cuban
constitution and Cuban law. As part of its historic effort to destabilise Cuba, the
USAID has so far distributed over $6.6 billion to organisations dedicated to
destroying Cuba’s independence and facilitating US regime change in that country.

A central part of the planned US assault on Cuba on 15 November is a wide ranging
and sophisticated information warfare campaign which employs not only the
traditional print and visual media but also social media platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter. From the slick marketing of the planned provocation as ‘15N’ to the
promotion of systematic talking points, this information warfare campaign is designed
to pollute the public information space with lies and disinformation so as to sow
confusion about events as they unfold in Cuba on that day. One of the key talking
points that has already been identified is consistently describing as ‘peaceful
protesters’ those who have been mobilised by the US and its spy agencies to carry
out acts of violence against individuals and property. Connected to this is describing
all law enforcement activities carried out by the Cuban police on that day as
‘repression against peaceful protesters’. A further talking point is that the planned
provocation on November 15 is part of an effort to gain, ‘democracy and human
rights in Cuba’ or to ‘oppose racism against Cubans of African descent’. The real
aims of the US for the 15 November provocation are very different from these
propaganda talking points.

As a country which was born in genocide against the First Peoples and enslavement
of millions of Africans and which has never deviated from adherence to those
practices, the US government is in no position to define for humanity what
democracy is, to preach about human rights to any country or to present itself as a
fighter against racism. In any event, the relentless US efforts to carry out regime
change in Cuba is an open violation of international law and the right of the Cuban
people to choose their own political and economic system without foreign
interference. In reality, the US government and its spy agencies couldn’t care less
about democracy, human rights or racism in Cuba, or anywhere else for that matter.
Their real aim is to destroy Cuba’s independence and return that country to its
position before the Cuban revolution, when it existed as a US colony run for the
benefit of the US corporations and organised crime. This goal persists regardless of
the administration in Washington. Hence, the current Biden administration has
maintained all the sanctions imposed by his predecessor Trump and, in fact, it is the
Biden administration which is organising the 15 November provocation.

Despite over 60 years of US bullying, harassment and economic suffocation, Cuba
has proved itself time and again to be a reliable and supportive member of the
Caribbean family of nations. Working within its limited resources as a result of the
US blockade, Cuba has trained hundreds of Caribbean professionals, especially
doctors, engineers and sports specialists. It has provided free eye care to thousands
of people across the region and it has sent volunteers throughout the Caribbean to
help with the provision of health care and education, and most recently, in the
struggle against Covid 19. As Caribbean people, we cannot remain silent in the face
of this US persecution of a fellow Caribbean nation and we cannot remain silent in
the face of the new attack on Cuba’s independence that the US is planning for 15
November. Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.

The Caribbean Network for Solidarity with Cuba (CNSC) strongly condemns the
planned efforts of the US and its spy agencies to instigate violence and insecurity in
Cuba on 15 November and demand that the US government end its over 60 year-
long campaign of persecution against that country. We call on individuals, social,
religious and political organisations, trade unions, governments and regional
organisations across the Caribbean to join us in this call and stand in solidarity with
the people of our sister island.

No to the new US attacks on Cuba’s independence on 15 November!
Lift the blockade and let Cuba live!

https://www.facebook.com/networkforsolidaritywithCuba/

@networkforsolidaritywithCuba

Pandora Papers – Greed, a Deadly Sin

Posted on October 21, 2021 by David

We have seen the transformation of the Barbados economy to service based in the 80’s and 90’s. We are now a small island developing state that depends on tourism, upwards to 60% direct and indirect to GDP and the offshore sector estimated to directly contribute about 10% to GDP.

In 2016 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) posted to a public website 11.5 million leaked documents labelled The Panama Papers. Earlier this month an additional 11.9 million leaked documents were posted with the label The Pandora Papers. The leaked documents reminded the world the lengths rich and prominent individuals are prepared to go to open offshore accounts- in order to avoid paying taxes and or to secrete ill gotten gains. The Papers exposed the who’s who of the global community- former presidents, billionaires, celebrities, corporate players et al.

One may reasonably conclude that many rich people across across geographies see benefits to taking advantage of opportunities tax havens and tax shelters offer. Not every offshore account is illegal, however, persons have been prosecuted as a result of the leaked documents.

Why should Barbadians believe we do not have our share of tax dodgers and other shady characters operating questionable accounts in murky offshore jurisdictions across the globe? When BU leaked the Cahill documents there was evidence of accounts opened in Guernsey to support the transaction.

The incarceration in the USA of former minister Donville Inniss for money laundering is believed to be the tip of the iceberg. There is enough fire and smoke to suggest that that local rich and prominent individuals are no less inclined to manipulate the system to siphon money to accounts ‘off grid’.

Here is a question churning in the mind of the blogmaster addressed to whom it may concern – for the avoidance of doubt – individuals like @markmaloney @kyffinsimpson @miamottley @peterodle @halgollop @paulaltman @etal – what is in your outside pocket?

Relevant Link to ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database

THE THIRST FOR THE LIBERATION OF ALL OF PALESTINE

Posted on May 18, 2021 by David

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Submitted by Pachamama

Those who have determined that the position ante be returned to are merely requiring of the Palestinians the continuation of dying in silence. Again, the Zionists are killing a high percentage of women and children as war crimes are committed with impunity.

This is a Western imposed silence about the genocide of the Palestinian peoples by an Apartheid regime for seventy-three years since the Nakba, or Catastrophe, of 1948. Genocide binds the regime in Washington to its agents in occupied Palestine.

The illegal Zionist regime could not exist for these many decades, in the middle of the Islamic world, without the sustained support of the United States of America principally, western European countries and others.

Amongst these is Germany – the country which committed all manner of atrocities against the Jewish peoples, and others, during World War Two. One dark day has long been replaced by another, this time in Palestine, as the historic suffering of Jews is imposed on Palestinians, though with less directness.

Successive German governments, after World War Two, have bent over backwards to appease the Zionist state with the widest range of support. Even to the extent of suborning a second genocide against the Palestinians in what Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Jewish human rights organization B’Tselem of Israel have both independently deemed to be an Apartheid state.

Since the 1990s Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and other icons of the former South African Apartheid state have long told us what HRW and B’Tselem have only recently seemed to have discovered. Only the Zionists have this unique ability to bemuse us into such cognitive dissonance.

The Palestinians have determined, across all factions, whether in the 1948 territories (now euphemistically called Israel); in the cantons of the West Bank; within the refugee camps in several neighboring countries; or in the largest outdoor prison camp on earth – Gaza, that this is a struggle which must be won. Whether Hamas, Fatah or Islamic Jihad it is generally felt that there is no choice but to seek liberation by deploying all necessary forms of resistance. We urge all Islamic countries to rally to their side.

For the Palestinians, and their supporters, the nebulous language well-rehearsed and coming from Western capitals is irrelevant. For us this is not a conflict which requires protestations from the usual suspects and the associated self-serving demands that hostilities must end, well-timed to give the Zionists adequate opportunities to ‘mow the grass’ (meaning killing Palestinians in their thousands) to dampen the resistance, as ever growing. The United States has thrice blocked UNSC resolutions in the past week, following a highly predictable pattern.

It’s not the time to issue staid edits that the occupier has some right to defend itself. Bullshit!

For in international law an occupying power has no rights at all, only responsibilities. This is the legal framework developed and led by the United States itself after World Wars One & Two but for over more than fifty (50) years America feints ignorance about the laws of war which were brought into being with it as the principal interlocker.

Blinken, as Secretary of State, knows full well that the Oslo Accords promising the Palestinians a Two-State solution has been long dead. Certainly, Blinken cannot believe that that misguidance of a deal, as given to Yasser Arafat thirty (30) years ago, could have any resonance with Palestinians today, not after Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ gave everything to Israel, breaking international law and leaving nothing for the Palestinians to even consider. Trump and Netanyahu, the Zionists-fascists and the Christian-Zionists have sown the wind. Now is the time to reap the Whirlwind.

Only the settler occupation regime in Palestine, serving as America’s cat’s paw in Western Asia, enjoys carte blanche to violate any and all international laws with such impunity. Even its own racist domestic laws are no refuge for Palestinians living in Sheikh Jarrah since the 1967 war. Families who were dispossessed once must be again, as a function of Zionist ambitions, constant expansionism.

Could you imagine any world leader, except Netanyahu, sending an army to raid the third most holy place in Christendom? Far less using smoke bombs and deploying incendiary devices as Christians prayed on Easter Sunday. Far from attracting condemnation from the United Nations Security Council as a lawful captive of American and Western imperialism it would have been casus belli for war.

All of this is happening at a time when the Zionist state is coming under a continuing existential threats. The Boycott and Divestment Movement has shone a bright light on its criminal nature. It remains deeply concerned about what it calls a ‘demographic threat’, not unlike the far-right in the United States of America.

In response, Zionist forces in many governments have acted in unison to delegitimize the censorship of Israel by the international community. Jeremy Corbyn was called an anti-Semite and was run out of the British Labour Party for failing to bow low enough to Pax-Judaica.

There are many others falling prey to the Zionist thought police. In academia, there is the illogical ‘understanding’ which erects an artificial distinction, without any real difference, between the meanings of Jew and Zionist. While the academy tries to maintain this flimsiest of excuses Palestinians are being subjected to a long-winded genocide while academicians irreligiously avoid being labelled an anti-Semite. All this nonsense while Palestinians are, in reality, more Semitic than any other people

Given these circumstances, it is but right to resist the occupation regime in Palestine. That resistance must endure until all the displaced Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere are restored to that which was illegally taken from them in an act of war during 1948, 1967, 1971 and all other displacements since. International law makes it wholly illegal to acquire territory through wars of aggression like the Zionists have, supported by Britain and America.

THE CHAUVIN TRIAL – IS THE FIX IN?

Posted on April 20, 2021 by David

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Submitted by Pachamama

As the jury takes the murder case against Derek Chauvin for taking the life of George Floyd it has been disclosed that the kraken Chauvin was a highly-trained martial artist.

It’s amazing how both the prosecution and the defense attorneys, as officers of the court, seemed to have conspired to avoid letting the jury, and the public, know about the existence of this highly important factoid, the murder weapon. Such information should have been at the heart of a first degree murder charge, against Chauvin. But it never once came up!

Neither was the jury nor the public told that Derek Chauvin had as many as nineteen (19) complaints against him, in his police file. Yet the American injustice system is held up as a ‘paragon of virtue’, fit for wall to wall coverage on all networks.

These are the central problems with modern judicial systems. These are the structures which insist that the protection of official corruption itself is paramount.

How else can an injustice system maintain itself if it starts to convict police officers as the main protectors of that same wicked system if it starts putting on trial policemen for first degree murder like should have been the case in the death of George Floyd?

The lodge, that is a law courts, demands that both prosecutors and defense attorneys pledge allegiance to the court and not to the client or the people, with regard to public prosecutors.

Both sides managed to speak endlessly about 9 minutes and 29 seconds and other mundane issues but this central piece of information was never once told to the jury.

This occurs in a case where we were treated to any number of police officers paraded by the State of Wisconsin, including the Police Commissioner himself.

And as if to speak in code, or under the direction of unknown third parties, every prosecution or police witness made inert statements about the restraint (martial arts hold) which Chauvin used on George Floyd.

The commissioner himself said words to the effect that Chauvin’s restraint technique was not part of police training, so did several other policemen/women. The obvious question should have been, then where did it come from? But we were not to know this, certainly not the jury.

As a martial artist Chauvin ought to have known or certainly would have known that the restraint technique applied to George Floyd’s neck was certain to kill him. This qualifies as intent. This was a central requirement for first degree murder charges. Are these the workings of a Black man called Keith Ellison, the state attorney general?

Indeed, it is well known that as a martial artist one’s being is considered a deadly weapon. Either as policemen or martial artist or both the chokehold represents murder in the first degree with intentionality and as such should not escape the death penalty, if found guilty.

Given these circumstances, we are now to ask a number of wider questions. Those questions are pregnant with meanings and fall within the inalterable decay of the American judicial system and empire itself.

We need to ask, why was there such an unusual haste to pay-off the family of George Floyd with about 27 million pieces of silver just a few days before the trial started?

Was this smoking gun evidence, just coming to light, part of the financial settlement or blood money as negotiated by the family lawyers?

Was it agreed beforehand that this show trial, we’ve witnessed for the last three weeks, should be no more than that?

What were the roles of the ambulance-chasing family attorneys like Benjamin Crump, family members, people such as Al Sharpton – the sidekick of Crump, media prostitutes on the networks, public officials and others in covering up the magnitude of this modern day lynching of the late George Floyd?

When all the systems around us are so corrupted or corruptible the patina of justice only serves to galvanize and propagandize global opinion around an unjust trial for the blood of a sacrificial lamb led to the slaughter in the maw of empire.

Regional Response Required to Extradition Requests for Caribbean Nationals

Posted on January 3, 2021 by David

Submitted by Caleb Pilgrim

Honourable Blogmaster:

Re the narrow extradition issue, raised by some bloggers, will you not kindly use your good offices to prevail upon P.M Mottley, Her A.G, and the Barbados Ambassador to CARICOM, that there is need for a comprehensive regional response to all demands to extradite Caribbean nationals?

This issue ought to be seriously debated and resolved by the next CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting. In fact, CARICOM’s model law initiative should already have had among its drafts – if this has not already been done – a draft stipulating that “Notwithstanding any treaty, law, diplomatic request for extradition, to the contrary, no Caribbean national shall be extradited etc, etc, etc”. (I fully understand that this may take another 10 years minimum, as with the CARICOM Administrative Tribunal inaugurated last year, some ten years or more after I first raised the issue).

You may also have to seek some derogation from existing treaty obligations as you seek to exercise your sovereignty in this area.

The Caribbean national, I believe, should as a general rule be tried in his home state, or somewhere else in the Caribbean, especially if there is a genuine fear that he or she cannot receive a fair trial in his/her particular, local jurisdiction, or where there is a substantial threat that the criminal defendant(s) might seek to further torpedo the local justice system.

WE SHOULD NOT OUTSOURCE OUR CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS TO THE USA or any other state. To do so is unnecessarily shabby, insulting and demeaning.

Also, what exactly lies behind the US decision to prosecute Inniss for the crimes he was charged with (amounting to a mere US $36,000). The jurisdiction in federal, civil court cases, I believe, is US $75,000.

Election results should never constitute a Thieves’ Charter allowing for crimes of opportunity for any stooge or stoolie. But, so long as Caribbean politicians continue empty palaver about “good governance”, while doing their usual sheit, what can we expect?

2020 US Presidential Election

Posted on November 3, 2020 by David

If the late great Gladston Holder were alive he would take the opportunity to remind us that it does not matter who is elected to the White House, it the wealthiest families in the USA where the power is located- the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers et al. That said many will agree party colours aside, Trump’s legacy will be remembered as being one of the most bigoted and divisive.

Let it be no secret this blogmaster cannot wait to see the back of the man. He has disgraced the office of president of the USA and by extension the human race.

Discuss for 2 marks.

Revisiting CUBANA 455

Posted on May 25, 2020 by David

Submitted Caleb Pilgrim

Assassins and murderers ply their craft every day. Motive, means and opportunity vary, but from the victims’ perspective, the outcome is usually the same.

May 23, 2020, would have been two years since the passing of a certain Luis Posada Carriles in Hollywood, Florida, USA.

Perhaps a younger generation might not know, far less care, who he was, and any possible practical relevance he might have had to Barbados’ history. Nor will they know of his comrade in arms the late paediatrician, Dr. Orlando Bosch. Nor will their passing have been noticed this Memorial Day by patriots in these United States, except perhaps for some extremist fringe elements in the Cuban expatriate community in the US.

Their undisputed relevance, however, lies in the bombing of the Cubana 455, and the murder of the 73 souls on board as the plane left Barbados in the afternoon of October 6, 1976; reportedly the most destructive act of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, before 9/11.

Some say that “every man has his price”. One of Posada’s henchmen, Freddy Lugo, I believe, indicated that he and his accomplice, Hernan Ricardo Lozano, were each paid US $25K to blow up the Cubana Airline with the 73 persons on board. They had allegedly used a tube of Colgate toothpaste filled with explosives and detonated shortly after the plane’s departure.

But, which “normal person” blows up a civilian airline for US $25K, or for that matter, for any sum of money, whatsoever? And how does a paediatrician, like Dr. Bosch, come to engage in such atrocities? Such atrocities endanger us all.

In the final analysis, therefore, there appears to have been nothing heroic or redeeming in any of these gentlemen. Rather, based on their actions, they appear a certain species of lowlife naturally inclined to acts of intolerable barbarism and unnatural perfidy, despite their being given “sanctuary” under various US administrations notwithstanding their classification as “terrorists” by the C.I.A and the U.S Government. (But, then again we would routinely deny the rights of some – states and churches – to grant sanctuary to those who flee murderous violence and poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, etc).

In the words of one eye witness manning his small ski boat in the vicinity of the downed Cubana aircraft, that evening, “I was with two other chaps, and we went to see if there were any survivors. Unfortunately there were none”, he said. Surrounded by a strong smell of fuel, “I saw suitcases seats and personal effects. I saw bodies: only one or two of them intact. The others were not full bodies”…. “they were suspended at the level of the sea. Perhaps the seatbelts cut them off, I could not tell. It was just striking that two or three of the bodies were perpendicular under the sea. Trousers, but no top. Top, but no bottom”.

And then there was little Sabrina, a 9 year old Guyanese child, travelling to Cuba with her family. (See “Murder in Paradise”, by Jose Pertierra, October 11, 2011).

The forensic report prepared by the Barbadian coroner described the condition of her body “Brain missing, only facial bones, scalp, and hair remaining. Lung and heart destroyed. Liver and intestines shattered. Buttocks missing on the right lower limb. Compound fracture of tibia and fibula” …

Understand that I do not enter an apology for all actions by the Cuban Government since 1959. But, perhaps some ever errant freedom croaker can explain the inexplicable, in their ramblings. What crimes did young Sabrina commit? Ditto, the athletes and students on board?

The position of Dr. Bosch, the paediatrician, was that innocent people are killed in war. His hatred for the Castro Regime blinded him from distinguishing between deliberately targeting innocent civilians (he called them “dogs”) versus the more impersonal, incidental “collateral damage”, as former U.S Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld termed it. What desperation, what disappointment, led a paediatrician to countenance and condone such atrocities? How did he come to so deviate from the path of all rectitude? How did he become so abominably corrupt and depraved, and indifferent to human life, despite the Hippocratic Oath he once swore to “do no harm”?

Suffice it that there are solid reasons why The Rules of International Civil Aviation clearly prohibit all such bombings of civilian aircraft. We fly routinely. We take the relative safety of civil aviation as a given. We expect to arrive safely at our journey’s end. Terrorists such as Posada Carriles and Bosch are enemies of all of us and all mankind.

It is today the case that few still deny U.S complicity in the Cubana Bombing. They were, Posada Carriles and Bosch, on the C.I.A’s payroll for decades. Many reports detail their relationship and activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Per sundry reports, Dr. Kissinger’s Office had been made aware of the plans to bomb the Cubana airline. (See The National Security Archives; also the works of others such as the late Christopher Hitchens, and John Pilger, the journalist).

Similarly, George Herbert Walker Bush, erstwhile Head of the C.I.A, Congressman, Senator, Ambassador to China, PRUN, a Yale man, must also have been privy to these plans to blow up the Cubana … perhaps difficult to reconcile with “the ethos of dignified service” that the Wall Street Journal wrote about in December 2018. (“George Bush was the last true WASP in the White House”). The only questions would have been what did he know, and when exactly did he know it.

Small wonder that Carriles would have been selectively prosecuted then acquitted by a Texas District Court on a minor charge of lying to U.S Immigration. He was not prosecuted in the U.S for his role in planning and executing the destruction of Cubana 455 and the related mass killings.

Arguably, terrorism might be defended on a basis of self-defence; on the basis of the pursuit of a legitimate right to self-determination (Algeria, Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, South Africa); and even as a reprisal. However, as a general rule, the Slaughter of Innocents is never justified. (“In Defence of the Partisans: Terrorism in National and International Law”; Penn State Law Review, Winter 1990).

But, what gives anyone – say a Posada Carriles and his henchman, Dr. Bosch – the moral right to pluck John Citizen as he goes about his daily business, and sacrifice him on the altar of their particular political conviction(s)?

A “democratic” society does not have to commit suicide. We might therefore compare the late Israeli P.M’s Golda Meier’s “Operation: Wrath of God”, wherein Meier, and the Mossad, over a period of 25 to 35 years, as reprisal, went about eliminating members of Black September and other PLO members suspected of involvement in the Massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September, 1972.

It is left to others to determine the extent to which the PLO and Black September, unlike dissidents like Carriles and Bosch, lacked a powerful patron state.

The idea that there is no wrong without a remedy is standard legal fiction. Just ask any Jew imprisoned in the concentration camps and those Nazi camp guards who escaped justice for decades. Ask any relatives of the fallen, those who perished on October 6, 1976. Thus, political expediency saved Carriles and Bosch – they lived to a ripe old age – rather than any principled respect for Human Rights and the Rule of Law.

911 Story Continues – WTC #7

Posted on April 23, 2020 by David

Hello Barbados Underground, GreenMonkey here.

The forwarded email below the first four paragraphs contains a link to a two minute video preview of an upcoming documentary on the 47 story skyscraper WTC #7’s rapid collapse on the evening of 9/11/2001 and the recently issued final report of a privately funded 4 year investigation into the cause of the collapse. This 4 year study was conducted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) by a team consisting of 2 PhD candidates in civil engineering (each since awarded their PhD) and headed up by UAF’s Civil Engineering Professor Leroy Hulsey PhD.

Professor Hulsey has recently issued his final peer reviewed, written report on his investigation concluding that the official US government authorized investigators from the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) had made significant errors in their assumptions and calculations in concluding that office fires (seen burning in a couple of floors of the building on the day of 9/11) could have been responsible for causing the rapid and total collapse and destruction of the building.

WTC #7 fell symmetrically, mostly into its own footprint and at a very high rate of downward acceleration reaching absolute freefall for 2.5 seconds of the approximately 7 second collapse sequence. Professor Hulsey’s team used computer modeling to examine various collapse scenarios and found the only way they could mimic the building collapse as seen in the videos of the event was by simulating the removal of support from all structural steel columns in the building almost simultaneously. This is something that a few isolated, office fires could not possibly accomplish. His report can be downloaded here: https://www.ae911truth.org/nist (page down until you see the headline “Downloads”). You can also view a video presentation by Professor Hulsey on his team’s findings presented in the UAF’s auditorium here: https://youtu.be/RYV33LKDY8k .

On 9/11/2001, I was residing overseas and noticed how all the US mainstream media TV channels replayed over and over the collapses of the two main WTC towers in the three or four days immediately following 9/11. However, the sudden and total collapse of WTC 7 was ignored and never rebroadcast on mainstream media after the initial event. Knowledge of this unusual event was only kept alive and propagated by “conspiracy theorists” on the internet. Take from that what you will.

The link to the two minute documentary preview is below:

Coronavirus Declared Global Emergency

Posted on January 30, 2020 by David

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Statement on the second meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

30 January 2020

Geneva, Switzerland

The second meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV in the People’s Republic of China, with exportations to other countries, took place on Thursday, 30 January 2020, from 13:30 to 18:35 Geneva time (CEST). The Committee’s role is to give advice to the Director-General, who makes the final decision on the determination of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The Committee also provides public health advice or suggests formal Temporary Recommendations as appropriate.

Proceedings of the meeting

Members and advisors of the Emergency Committee were convened by teleconference.

The Director-General welcomed the Committee and thanked them for their support. He turned the meeting over to the Chair, Professor Didier Houssin.

Professor Houssin also welcomed the Committee and gave the floor to the Secretariat.

A representative of the department of Compliance, Risk management, and Ethics briefed the Committee members on their roles and responsibilities.

Committee members were reminded of their duty of confidentiality and their responsibility to disclose personal, financial, or professional connections that might be seen to constitute a conflict of interest. Each member who was present was surveyed and no conflicts of interest were judged to be relevant to the meeting. There were no changes since the previous meeting.

The Chair then reviewed the agenda for the meeting and introduced the presenters.

Representatives of the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China reported on the current situation and the public health measures being taken. There are now 7711 confirmed and 12167 suspected cases throughout the country. Of the confirmed cases, 1370 are severe and 170 people have died. 124 people have recovered and been discharged from hospital.

The WHO Secretariat provided an overview of the situation in other countries. There are now 82 cases in 18 countries. Of these, only 7 had no history of travel in China. There has been human-to-human transmission in 3 countries outside China. One of these cases is severe and there have been no deaths.

At its first meeting, the Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should continue its meeting on the next day, when it reached the same conclusion.

This second meeting takes place in view of significant increases in numbers of cases and additional countries reporting confirmed cases.

Conclusions and advice

The Committee welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of Chinese government authorities, their commitment to transparency, and the efforts made to investigate and contain the current outbreak. China quickly identified the virus and shared its sequence, so that other countries could diagnose it quickly and protect themselves, which has resulted in the rapid development of diagnostic tools.

The very strong measures the country has taken include daily contact with WHO and comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to prevent further spread. It has also taken public health measures in other cities and provinces; is conducting studies on the severity and transmissibility of the virus and sharing data and biological material. The country has also agreed to work with other countries who need their support. The measures China has taken are good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world.

The Committee acknowledged the leading role of WHO and its partners.

The Committee also acknowledged that there are still many unknowns, cases have now been reported in five WHO regions in one month, and human-to-human transmission has occurred outside Wuhan and outside China.

The Committee believes that it is still possible to interrupt virus spread, provided that countries put in place strong measures to detect disease early, isolate and treat cases, trace contacts, and promote social distancing measures commensurate with the risk. It is important to note that as the situation continues to evolve, so will the strategic goals and measures to prevent and reduce spread of the infection. The Committee agreed that the outbreak now meets the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and proposed the following advice to be issued as Temporary Recommendations.

The Committee emphasized that the declaration of a PHEIC should be seen in the spirit of support and appreciation for China, its people, and the actions China has taken on the frontlines of this outbreak, with transparency, and, it is to be hoped, with success. In line with the need for global solidarity, the committee felt that a global coordinated effort is needed to enhance preparedness in other regions of the world that may need additional support for that.

Advice to WHO

The Committee welcomed a forthcoming WHO multidisciplinary technical mission to China, including national experts. The mission should review and support efforts to investigate the animal source of the outbreak, the clinical spectrum of the disease and its severity, the extent of human-to-human transmission in the community and in healthcare facilities, and efforts to control the outbreak. This mission will provide information to the international community to aid in understanding the situation and its impact and enable sharing of experience and successful measures.

The Committee wished to re-emphasize the importance of studying the possible source, to rule out ongoing hidden transmission.

The Committee also emphasized the need for enhanced surveillance in regions outside Hubei, including pathogen genomic sequencing, to understand whether local cycles of transmission are occurring.

The Committee would welcome strong leadership to engage in the discussion about proportionality in control measures, particularly with regard to potentially damaging travel and trade restrictions.

WHO should continue to use its networks of technical experts to assess how best this outbreak can be contained globally.

WHO should provide intensified support for preparation and response, especially in vulnerable countries and regions.

Measures to ensure rapid development and access to potential vaccines, diagnostics, antiviral medicines and other therapeutics for low- and middle-income countries should be developed.

WHO should continue to provide all necessary technical and operational support to respond to this outbreak, including with its extensive networks of partners and collaborating institutions, to implement a comprehensive risk communication strategy, and to allow for the advancement of research and scientific developments in relation to this novel coronavirus.

WHO should continue to explore the advisability of creating an intermediate level of alert between the binary possibilities of PHEIC or no PHEIC, in a way that does not require reopening negotiations on the text of the IHR (2005).

The Director-General declared that the outbreak of 2019-nCoV constitutes a PHEIC, accepted the Committee’s advice and issued this advice as Temporary Recommendations under the IHR (2005).

To the People’s Republic of China

Continue to:

Implement a comprehensive risk communication strategy to regularly inform the population on the evolution of the outbreak, the prevention and protection measures for the population, and the response measures taken for its containment.

Enhance rational public health measures for containment of the current outbreak.

Ensure the resilience of the health system and protect the health workforce.

Enhance surveillance and active case finding across China.

Collaborate with WHO and partners to conduct investigations to understand the epidemiology and the evolution of this outbreak and measures to contain it.

Share full data on all human cases.

Strengthen the efforts to identify a zoonotic source of the outbreak, and particularly the potential for ongoing circulation with WHO as soon as it becomes available.

Conduct exit screening at international airports and ports, with the aim of early detection of symptomatic travelers for further evaluation and treatment, while minimizing interference with international traffic.

To all countries

It is expected that further international exportation of cases may appear in any country. Thus, all countries should be prepared for containment, including active surveillance, early detection, isolation and case management, contact tracing and prevention of onward spread of 2019-nCoV infection, and to share full data with WHO. Technical advice is available on the WHO website.

Countries are reminded that they are legally required to share information with WHO under the IHR (2005).

Countries should place particular emphasis on reducing human infection, prevention of secondary transmission and international spread, and contributing to the international response though multi-sectoral communication and collaboration and active participation in increasing knowledge on the virus and the disease, as well as advancing research.

The Committee acknowledged that, in general, evidence has shown that restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies may be ineffective and may divert resources from other interventions. Further, restrictions may interrupt needed aid and technical support, may disrupt businesses, and may have negative effects on the economies of countries affected by the emergencies.

However, in certain specific circumstances, measures that restrict the movement of people may prove temporarily useful, such as in settings with limited response capacities and capabilities, or where there is high intensity of transmission among vulnerable populations.

In such situations, countries should perform risk and cost-benefit analyses before implementing such restrictions to assess whether the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks. Countries must inform WHO about any travel measures taken, as required by the IHR. Countries are cautioned against actions that promote stigma or discrimination, in line with the principles of Article 3 of the IHR.

The Committee asked the Director-General to provide further advice on these matters and, if necessary, to make new case-by-case recommendations, in view of this rapidly evolving situation.

To the global community

As this is a new coronavirus, and it has been previously shown that similar coronaviruses required substantial efforts to enable regular information sharing and research, the global community should continue to demonstrate solidarity and cooperation, in compliance with Article 44 of the IHR (2005), in supporting each other on the identification of the source of this new virus, its full potential for human-to-human transmission, preparedness for potential importation of cases, and research for developing necessary treatment.

Provide support to low- and middle-income countries to enable their response to this event, as well as to facilitate access to diagnostics, potential vaccines and therapeutics.

Under Article 43 of the IHR, States Parties implementing additional health measures that significantly interfere with international traffic (refusal of entry or departure of international travellers, baggage, cargo, containers, conveyances, goods, and the like, or their delay, for more than 24 hours) are obliged to send to WHO the public health rationale and justification within 48 hours of their implementation. WHO will review the justification and may request countries to reconsider their measures. WHO is required to share with other States Parties the information about measures and the justification received.

The Emergency Committee will be reconvened within three months or earlier, at the discretion of the Director-General.

The Director-General thanked the Committee for its work.

Impeached – Donald Trump TRUMPED

Posted on December 18, 2019 by David

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President Donald Trump has suffered the ignominy of being the third President of the United States to be impeached by the House of Congress. The vote was along party lines – when the matter is kicked to the Republican controlled Senate the Articles of the Resolution to impeach is anticipated to be rejected.

What cannot be refuted is that Donald J Trump is now recorded in history as the third president of the United States to be impeached.

Donald Trump you are fired!

Boris and Conservatives Win BIG

Posted on December 12, 2019 by David

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For members of the BU family who are not confined to navel gazing and would cast eyes across the pond.

Projection of Seats: Conservatives 368 Labour 191 SNP 55 LD 13 – Majority of 86

Warning to Caricom Leaders – Downside to Citizen By Investment (CBI) Sale

Posted on December 1, 2019 by David

Several Caribbean islands have gone the route of CBI to shore up government revenues. However, as the video alludes, there is a downside to selling ones birthright for pieces of silver. Whether the report is true or NOT there is the negative publicity which does untold harm. The Barbados passport occupies a rung high on the global passport power ranking. A word to the wise should be enough.

Source: Al Jazeera investigation (YouTube)

Read the following report left to right.

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Trump Then Boris

Posted on September 7, 2019 by David

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It never fails to amuse the blogmaster when following international news- as his his wont[- to wonder how two buffoons were able to attain the heights of political office in their respective lands. Perhaps somethings are not meant to be understood and should be dismissed as the improbable made possible.

Smallest Nations Lead the Way to World’s Largest Ocean Preserve

Posted on August 5, 2019 by David

August 5, 2019 – For Immediate Release (Parvati.org)

While most countries turn a blind eye to the unprecedented global crisis of the loss of Arctic ice, small island nations are leading the way to protect it through supporting MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary. MAPS transforms the entire Arctic Ocean into the world’s largest preservation area, stopping all activities harmful to the ice, the Earth’s air conditioner. Other nations must follow their lead now, while there is still time.

What is happening in the Arctic is affecting all life everywhere. Few people realize that the Arctic sea ice reflects the sun’s heat away from the planet and ensures everyone has the food and water needed to survive. But it’s melting fast, while global mega powers seek to profit off its thaw, putting life everywhere at risk. Though small island nations like the Cook Islands have contributed the least to the environmental and humanitarian crisis unfolding in our world today, they face some of the most severe effects, with disappearing coastlines, ravaging storms and rising food instability. The loss of our Arctic sea ice, and its devastating effects around the world, are an underreported global emergency.

Everyone has the right to know that the problem is massive. But there is more than hope. There is MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary. MAPS not only turns the Arctic Ocean above the Arctic Circle into the biggest peace sanctuary the world has ever known, free from exploitation, shipping traffic and military activity; it compels a global shift to sustainability on all levels. By taking Arctic seabed oil off the table for good, it catalyzes our pivot to renewable energies. In a time of widespread strife, MAPS unites the world as one Earth family—giving voice to all nations and people equally, regardless of their wealth or political influence. It bypasses bureaucratic red tape to create the protection we urgently need at the necessary speed. And it takes the priority away from short-term gain for a few to where it belongs: the long-term good of all.

Inspired by a world in need, the all-volunteer Parvati.org, founded and led by the award-winning Canadian musician and author Parvati, took the unprecedented step to create the MAPS Treaty as an addendum to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This powerful expression of love in action has been translated into all six official languages of the UN, distributed to all 193 member states, and brought every year since 2015 to UN Climate Conferences by volunteers at their own expense. It enters into force with the signatures of 99 states members of the UN or any of the specialized agencies. The Arctic sea ice is a gift of life for the entire world. Protecting it is everyone’s birthright.

Though small island nations are far from the Arctic, they understand this, and have been leading the way for MAPS. Prime Minister Henry Puna, who has signed the MAPS Treaty on behalf of the people of the Cook Islands, says:

As a global citizen, the Cook Islands recognises that climate change and its impacts knows no boundaries and affects us all.

We say we are on the front lines, we will be impacted first, we are most vulnerable. But in reality, what happens in the Arctic, what happens with the pack ice, and what happens as our seas warm, we are all going to bear the brunt of these effects.

This is why the Cook Islands are going to sign up to and support the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary Treaty. The time for bold action is now, and while my country has already started, we support others to do the same.

Prime Minister Puna joins Samoa Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi who was the first signatory to the MAPS Treaty. “We owe sincere gratitude and respect to the small island developing states who are courageously leading the call to protect our world,” says Parvati. “They understand that the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary does not just protect the Arctic Ocean. It protects all of life. Let’s join them wholeheartedly in standing up for a healthy world.”

Visit Parvati.org, sign the petition for MAPS and tell your government to follow the Cook Islands and Samoa by signing the MAPS Treaty now.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Vandana Erin Ryder

General Counsel, Parvati.org

1-778-839-3231

vandana@parvati.org

BACKGROUNDER: FAQ

Who is Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org is an international, non-profit organization dedicated to a healthy planet.

– We are volunteers from around the world.

– We are committed to the immediate realization of the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) to protect all life.

– Our long-term vision is to create a Global Peace Sanctuary, to address poverty and hunger around the world.

Who founded Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org was founded in 2014 by the Canadian musician, author and activist Parvati, who gave the northernmost musical performance ever to raise awareness of the melting polar ice.

What is MAPS?

– MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary, declares the entire Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle an ocean preserve.

– It stops all activity in the Arctic Ocean that harms this vulnerable ecosystem.

– MAPS is the largest ocean preserve in history, representing approximately 3% of the world’s oceans. This fits naturally with the United Nations’ commitment to protect 10% of our oceans by 2020.

– Leading biologists call for us to protect 50% of the entire planet immediately to prevent mass extinction.

– MAPS is not an end goal, but a baseline necessity.

What does MAPS do?

– By making Arctic seabed oil and gas unavailable for extraction and exploitation, MAPS will accelerate a global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

– As countries come together to sign the Treaty, our world moves from short-term individual gain to long-term collective good.

– MAPS is practical. It’s effective. And it’s immediately achievable.

Why do we need MAPS?

– The Arctic Ocean ice is our planet’s air conditioning system. It balances weather patterns globally so that we have the food and resources we need to survive.

– The white ice reflects 50% of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere. But it is melting fast. – There is now 75% less summer ice in the Arctic Ocean than there was 50 years ago. The open ocean absorbs 90% of the sun’s rays, and today parts of the Arctic Ocean are now 4º C too hot.

– The Arctic Ocean is under threat as never before by corporations and governments that seek to profit from the unprecedented loss of ice.

-We are inherently and inescapably interconnected. What happens in the Arctic Ocean affects all life on Earth. We must act now to protect it.

Why MAPS now?

– All life on Earth depends on healthy, robust sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. But it’s in more danger than ever.

– As the ice melts at a staggering rate, businesses and governments are moving to take advantage of the Arctic Ocean’s resources for short-term gain for a few, instead of protecting this vulnerable, climate-regulating region for the benefit of all. This is a deadly error.

We must realize MAPS now to lead the way to a healthy and safe future for all.

How is MAPS realized?

– MAPS is being realized through the MAPS Treaty, an addendum to the UN Law of the Sea.

Under MAPS, the entire Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle will become an international peace park, free from exploitation of all kinds.

-The MAPS Treaty enters into force with the signatures of 99 world leaders, including those of the Arctic nations.

-Two nations to date have signed the MAPS Treaty and more signatures are expected soon.

Why did a nonprofit organization draft an international treaty?

– It needed to be done. We no longer live in an era when we have the luxury to consider one isolated region as if it were separate from the whole.

– Parvati.org has no political or religious affiliation and no financial interests in MAPS. Our interest is humanitarian.

– We know that all life everywhere has the fundamental right to be free from suffering, misery and lack.

Is Parvati.org supporting efforts for peace and sustainability, other than MAPS?

– Our sole focus at this time is MAPS because of its urgent role in protecting all life everywhere. It is the most powerful way to make a difference in the entire world.

– Hunger, natural disasters and mass migration are all factors in violent conflict. MAPS mitigates them all.

– Once MAPS is realized, we will broaden our focus to GPS: Global Peace Sanctuary.

Do you have any political affiliation?

– Parvati.org takes no political stance. The planet must be a healthy and safe home for all living creatures equally.

Does your organization have financial interest in MAPS in any way?

– No. The members of this not-for-profit are are all volunteers.

– Our interest is in our collective survival.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson Promises to BREXIT!

Posted on July 24, 2019 by David

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Boris Johnson to chair first cabinet on Thursday

That finishes our coverage of Boris Johnson’s first day as prime minister.
It came with the biggest ever clear out of cabinet without a change of party in power.
BBC political editor Laura Kuensberg said it was “not a reshuffle it’s a new government”.
Tomorrow, Mr Johnson chairs his first cabinet meeting and faces the House of Commons. And of course we’ll bring you full coverage of that across the BBC.

BBC

Protect the Arctic Ocean to Help Prevent Impending Global Disaster

Posted on July 8, 2019 by David

For Immediate Release from Parvati.org

The largest ecological and humanitarian crisis in history is at our doorstep. According to Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, hundreds of millions face impoverishment, widespread displacement and hunger, with the most severe impact in poor countries and regions that have contributed the least to the crisis. The sheer scale of the impending disaster calls us to step out of our status quo mindset and meet the needs of the moment with compassion, courage and forward thinking. MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary, is an immediate and effective response, one the whole world needs now more than ever.

MAPS establishes all ocean waters north of the Arctic Circle as an international marine protected area free from natural resource exploitation, commercialization and militarization, promoting a peaceful and healthy Arctic Ocean ecosystem for the benefit of the entire world. The Arctic Ocean ice is our planet’s air conditioning system. Its ice balances weather patterns globally so that we have the food and resources we need to survive. But it is melting fast. With 75% less summer ice than just half a century ago, and the open ocean absorbing 90% of the sun’s rays, parts of the Arctic Ocean are now 4C/7F too hot.

The implications of such dramatic changes are enormous. A melted Arctic Ocean cannot maintain the Earth’s climate equilibrium, resulting in more frequent and intense weather events, threatened food production and water supply, poverty, disease, more climate refugees and ever-increasing suffering. Yet, instead of recognizing the loss of the Arctic sea ice as the global emergency that it is, corporations and governments are lining up to take advantage of the newly open waters.

Led by its founder and CEO, the award-winning musician, author and activist Parvati, the all-volunteer international non-profit organization Parvati.org created the international Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) Treaty to protect this key and vulnerable region by transforming it into the world’s largest preservation area. The MAPS Treaty has been translated into all official UN languages, provided to all 193 UN member states, and shared with officials at major UN conferences since 2015. MAPS stops Arctic exploitation while compelling a global shift to renewables, protecting remaining sea ice from destruction and befoulment caused by commercial and military traffic. With signatures from 99 countries, the MAPS Treaty enters into force, protecting all life on Earth for generations to come. It has already been signed by Samoa and the Cook Islands.

At this pivotal moment in human history, we no longer have time for anything but bold and decisive action to protect our shared future. That’s why Parvati.org is now finalizing an innovative global education strategy (GES) that harnesses the exponential power of modern media to cool minds, lighten footprints, and awaken an inevitable call for MAPS. Everyone has the right to know a healthy world is possible, so they can put pressure on their leaders to sign the MAPS Treaty immediately.

“There is no safe place on Earth if the vulnerable Arctic Ocean is exploited,” says Parvati. “We must speak up now for our common good and call for immediate protection of the Arctic sea ice, our planet’s air conditioner. The ice isn’t waiting, and neither can we.”

Citizens of all nations are urged to sign and share the MAPS petition at https://parvati.org, and to call on their world leaders to sign the MAPS Treaty.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Vandana Erin Ryder

General Counsel, Parvati.org

1-778-839-3231

vandana@parvati.org

BACKGROUNDER: FAQ

Who is Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org is an international, non-profit organization dedicated to a healthy planet.

– We are volunteers from around the world.

– We are committed to the immediate realization of the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) to protect all life.

– Our long-term vision is to create a Global Peace Sanctuary, to address poverty and hunger around the world.

Who founded Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org was founded in 2014 by the Canadian musician, author and activist Parvati, who gave the northernmost musical performance ever to raise awareness of the melting polar ice.

What is MAPS?

– MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary, declares the entire Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle an ocean preserve.

– It stops all activity in the Arctic Ocean that harms this vulnerable ecosystem.

– MAPS is the largest ocean preserve in history, representing approximately 3% of the world’s oceans. This fits naturally with the United Nations’ commitment to protect 10% of our oceans by 2020.

– Leading biologists call for us to protect 50% of the entire planet immediately to prevent mass extinction.

– MAPS is not an end goal, but a baseline necessity.

What does MAPS do?

– By making Arctic seabed oil and gas unavailable for extraction and exploitation, MAPS will accelerate a global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

– As countries come together to sign the Treaty, our world moves from short-term individual gain to long-term collective good.

– MAPS is practical. It’s effective. And it’s immediately achievable.

Why do we need MAPS?

– The Arctic Ocean ice is our planet’s air conditioning system. It balances weather patterns globally so that we have the food and resources we need to survive.

– The white ice reflects 50% of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere. But it is melting fast. – There is now 75% less summer ice in the Arctic Ocean than there was 50 years ago. The open ocean absorbs 90% of the sun’s rays, and today parts of the Arctic Ocean are now 4º C too hot.

– The Arctic Ocean is under threat as never before by corporations and governments that seek to profit from the unprecedented loss of ice.

-We are inherently and inescapably interconnected. What happens in the Arctic Ocean affects all life on Earth. We must act now to protect it.

Why MAPS now?

– All life on Earth depends on healthy, robust sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. But it’s in more danger than ever.

– As the ice melts at a staggering rate, businesses and governments are moving to take advantage of the Arctic Ocean’s resources for short-term gain for a few, instead of protecting this vulnerable, climate-regulating region for the benefit of all. This is a deadly error.

We must realize MAPS now to lead the way to a healthy and safe future for all.

How is MAPS realized?

– MAPS is being realized through the MAPS Treaty, an addendum to the UN Law of the Sea.

Under MAPS, the entire Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle will become an international peace park, free from exploitation of all kinds.

-The MAPS Treaty enters into force with the signatures of 99 world leaders, including those of the Arctic nations.

-Two nations to date have signed the MAPS Treaty and more signatures are expected soon.

Why did a nonprofit organization draft an international treaty?

– It needed to be done. We no longer live in an era when we have the luxury to consider one isolated region as if it were separate from the whole.

– Parvati.org has no political or religious affiliation and no financial interests in MAPS. Our interest is humanitarian.

– We know that all life everywhere has the fundamental right to be free from suffering, misery and lack.

Is Parvati.org supporting efforts for peace and sustainability, other than MAPS?

– Our sole focus at this time is MAPS because of its urgent role in protecting all life everywhere. It is the most powerful way to make a difference in the entire world.

– Hunger, natural disasters and mass migration are all factors in violent conflict. MAPS mitigates them all.

– Once MAPS is realized, we will broaden our focus to GPS: Global Peace Sanctuary.

Do you have any political affiliation?

– Parvati.org takes no political stance. The planet must be a healthy and safe home for all living creatures equally.

Does your organization have financial interest in MAPS in any way?

– No. The members of this not-for-profit are are all volunteers.

– Our interest is in our collective survival.

THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA – A COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A REVOLUTION

Posted on July 5, 2019 by David

284

Submitted by Pachamama

The preeminent American historian, Gerald Horne, has argued persuasively that the events of 1776 were not what the preponderance of historical narratives suggest. They were the exact opposite he contends! In more recent times, Professor Horne has bookended his first assertion by further contending that the emergence of a Donald J. Trump was anathema to these imposed and popular historical accounts. This professional historian boldly calls for a truthful rewriting of the entire historical accounts of the United States of north America.

On this 4th of July, American empire fashioned as a counter to the Glorious Revolution of Great Britain (1688-1689) finds itself in existential peril. For alas, it is titularly headed by a Caligula type figure reminiscent of that period in Roman history when a horse (Incitatus) could have been chief counsel to the emperor.

As we watch the descent of this new Rome under Donald J Trump, his family, the people around him – in the cabinet, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the pantomime passing for Democratic Party ‘debates’, the media whores expert at disinformation, other world leaders, the peoples of the world, most importantly the American peoples themselves and judge the interrelationships between and among these forces, it is difficult to avoid a range of obvious conclusions.

Donald Trump does not even project the pretense that he maintains any abiding interest in the day-to-day management of an empire which boasted, for all those years, to be that ‘exceptional’ ‘city on the hill’. It seems pellucid that this Trump is totally satisfied to continue to play the game of faux master marketer/manipulator/negotiator as every domestic and foreign encounter is primarily predicated on the advancement of the ‘family’ business. This is what oligarchy has come to. And everybody now knows that American foreign and domestic policies can be bought and by not necessarily the highest bidder either. Empire has degenerated into no more than a cheap whore! After 40 wars and the deaths of 20 million since WW2 alone, Trump gives us a military parade, dictator-style, at the centre of the blackened heart of empire.

Not even big Don has any illusions about the lack of mental capacity of little Don. So big Don looks to Jerad Kushner, the son-in-law, as brain trust in the White House, but there is no there, there either. And the recent debacle with his Deal of the Century is proof positive. Ivana Trump, we guess, is seen by some as attractive, we presume, but we would be hard-pressed to understand why this empty-header, snotty-nosed, president’s daughter could be made to believe that she has a role rubbing shoulders with the likes of Angela Merkel at the G20, a woman of immense substance, a formidable figure and the political cache to go with it.

There has never been a president who has assembled a cabinet exclusively of oligarchs – millionaires and billionaires; all with very narrow interests. All of whom are using government to enrich themselves, in the light of day. And no institution within the American government can do anything about such decadence. A decadence not dissimilar to the ethos of bulling brought by Obama. There is no time for what use to be called ‘the people’s businesses’. There is not one member of this mafioso-styled Joint Commission (Cabinet) who has any pretense of serving the broader American public. To the contrary, only people who believe that the nature of government is not to serve the masses but the very privileged alone need apply. This is your America of 2019 – ‘the home of the oligarchs, the land of the unfree.’

The most obvious sign of imperial decadence must be the fecklessness of a Congress unable to bring a walking talking lawbreaker to heel. Donald Trump breaks more laws before breakfast than all the criminals in America’s dungeons have for decades. Yet, the so-called checks and balances which were supposed to be hoe and basket of this Congress have been no countermeasure to this normalized culture of high crimes and misdemeanors, even treason, in every government department. Trump makes the criminal Bill Clinton look like a Sunday school choir boy in comparison.

The Supreme Court has historically been the institution to reinforce the thinking of the long-dead slavers – the so-called founding fathers. In trying to understand the future through the eyes of the most regressive human beings of all times they have legislated the most perverse form of fascism in the United States of north America. It is a court at the apex of a system which is deeply political, racist, corporatist and anything but just.

Over the past two (2) weeks we have seen a few ‘public gatherings’ of leading ‘democrats’ that some have referred to as ‘debates’. If we didn’t know better or feared being labeled a ‘conspiracy analyst’ we would have concluded that these congregations were aimed at securing a second term for Trump. These useless Democrats, and the progressives in their ranks, could only approach issues like reparations, universal health care, the demilitarization of the economy and free education for university students when made to stare into the abyss of four (4) more years of Adolf Hitler reborn. Should this backward party of Nancy Pelosi manage to escape this political bullet, normal service will certainly be resumed, immediately. We will continue to see a Democratic Party with its mindless progressives ignoring their most loyal supporters – African Americans. But, they will not! The re-election of Trump will guarantee the present trajectory.

We must remember that Donald Trump is primarily a media creation. They gave Trump the equivalent of four (4) billion dollars in free promotion. Thinking it would have been a win-win as they gamed a Clinton v Trump contest as an easy win for Clinton while they make their billions and still get their Clintons. The defeat of Sanders in the primaries baked-in, of course. Those same media, the so-called progressives, are at it again as they try to impose a Biden on the American people to supposedly erase the Trump legacy from the body politic. Not so fast, to do such to a political system is no different than trying to take the wet out of water. And then we have some other people playing games with the American people. Not even Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, the ‘progressive’ criminal prosecutor, well-known for incarcerating Black people without mercy, or the two or more that are making limited political sense, can redirect the arc of empire from the burning house which MLK so eloquently prophesied.

Other world leaders smell blood and are fixing to consume the carcass of empire. We always find it necessary to remind readers that there is nothing normal about the existence of empires. That during the last century maybe 20 empires collapsed. In fact, empires are inherently unstable and fall all the time. Therefore, China, India, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Germany and other are fielding at first slip, waiting for the edge. How’s that empire!

Some peoples of the world are coming to recognize a new and emerging reality. A lot of people are laughing at America in the same way they laughed at the madman Nero nearing the end of the old Rome. The thinking people of the United States of north America themselves have spent centuries marching; voting; pleading with elected officials; calling congressional offices; being fooled by district, city, state and federal elected officials; letter writing; complaining on call-in programs; investing trust in the democratic and republican parties; relying on a ‘misleadership class’. None of this has worked in avoiding the fascism America has always supported in foreign lands from coming home to ruse. We judge that the American people, unlike the peoples of France or Sudan, who are in open rebellion, are tired, dumb down and lack the will to confront Trumpism in the streets and deliver the real revolution this country never had. Nevertheless, with or without a revolution empire dies anyway. And maybe, just maybe, that’s a good thing.

Open Letter to Donald Trump from Ireland’s Emigration Museum

Posted on June 1, 2019 by David

Submitted by Mervyn Greene, Managing Director, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum

Thursday, 30th May

County Clare, Ireland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPEN LETTER INVITES TRUMP TO CHANGE HIS VIEWS ON IMMIGRATION.

Ireland’s Emigration Museum offers the US President the opportunity to see immigration from a different angle.

President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration is well documented and debated, so when EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum heard about the POTUS visiting Irish shores, they felt a responsibility to extend an invitation. Through a full page open letter, they asked him to visit and reframe his views on immigration.

Over 10 million people emigrated from Ireland over the centuries – in many cases escaping famine, political unrest and civil war, others seeking opportunity and change. They settled all over the world as immigrants, and EPIC documents the stories of the impact they’ve had.

“EPIC represents an alternative voice on the global movement of people. We have documented the positive impact that Irish emigration has had on the world, and we think it’s time the conversation on emigration changed. This invitation goes out to President Trump with sincerity – come experience a different viewpoint on immigration and it might just change your perspective” says Mervyn Greene, Managing and Museum Director of EPIC.

The letter asks the President to consider his family’s own emigration story from Germany, and points out a number of examples of how Ireland’s emigrant stories have impacted his own life.

An excerpt from the letter:

“Allow us to share a few of our stories that might hit close to home for you. Irish emigrants played a huge part in shaping the Manhattan skyline. Descendants of Irish emigrants have held your very position in the Oval Office. The White House itself was designed by James Hoban, an Irish architect. Your Vice President Mike Pence is the grandson of an Irish emigrant who escaped war and poverty in 1923. You might even come across descendants of his great-grandmother, who hailed from Doonbeg.“

EPIC’s open letter was placed in the Clare Champion Newspaper, the biggest newspaper in County Clare, where President Trump will be staying at his family-owned golf club in Doonbeg during his visit to Ireland. As a final enticement to the President, the letter suggests his visit would take less time than a round of golf.

EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum is a state-of-the-art interactive experience located in the beautiful vaults of the 1820 Custom House Quarter building in Dublin’s Docklands, the original departure point for so many of Ireland’s emigrants. Featuring personal stories of love, triumph, adventure and adversity, it highlights and celebrates the positive impact and influence of Irish emigrants around the world. https://epicchq.com/

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP

Dear President Trump,

We’d like to extend an invitation to visit EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum during your upcoming visit.

We know your itinerary isn’t as flexible as most, but hear us out.

Your stance on immigration is well documented. As one of the world’s only museums dedicated to the emigrant experience, we’d like to offer a different point of view. At EPIC, the positive impact emigrants have had on the world is told through an Irish lens; it’s a narrative we’re proud to share with countless other countries.

Allow us to share a few of our stories that might hit close to home for you. Irish emigrants played a huge part in shaping the Manhattan skyline. Descendants of Irish emigrants have held your very position in the Oval Office. The White House itself was designed by James Hoban, an Irish architect. Your Vice President Mike Pence is the grandson of an Irish emigrant who escaped war and poverty in 1923. You might even come across descendants of his great- grandmother, who hailed from Doonbeg.

Your own family story has been shaped by emigration, when your grandfather Friedrich left Germany at age 16 to pursue opportunity in a new land. And the First Lady is another example of how a recent immigrant has made the most of a new opportunity to one day become FLOTUS. Needless to say, our invitation is open to Melania as well.

What we’re saying is that everyone has a connection to the story of emigration, and people often change their perspective once they see it told from many angles, both past and present.

We know you’ll have a busy presidential itinerary, but we promise you an enlightening experience in less time than it takes to play a round of golf.

Sincerely,

Mervyn Greene,

Managing Director,

EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum

Italy Must Leave the Eurozone

Posted on May 26, 2019 by David

Submitted by Karderinis Isidoros

Italy must return to the lira because joining the euro has been disastrous and sticking with it would be suicidal.

Italy joined the eurozone in 1999 under the leadership of Prime Minister Massimo d’Alema of the “Democratic Left” party. This fateful participation, which entailed the complete loss of independent monetary policy, is undoubtedly the main cause of the disappointing performance of the Italian economy.

Italy’s GDP currently stands at $1.94 trillion and its growth rate is extremely anemic. In January, the country’s central bank estimated that the economy would grow just 0.6% this year. Between 1969 and 1998, Italy’s real per capita GDP increased by 104%. During this time, Italy had domestic monetary policy autonomy thanks to the lira, which it devalued frequently.

Since joining the euro, the devaluation option has been off the table. Italy’s monetary policy is set by the European Central Bank. During the period, 1999-2016 Italy’s real per capita GDP fell by 0.75%. During the same period, Germany’s real per capita GDP grew by 26.1%. While Italians have lost out, Germans have gained since the launch of the euro.

THE ECONOMY IS A MESS

Even as the Italian economy has shrunk, its debt has grown. It now has the third largest state debt in the world after the US and Japan. The debt mountain of $2.7 trillion at 132% of the GDP is far too high. The rescue of the Italian economy is impossible, since it exceeds the capabilities of European states.

Since 1999, the Italian economy has gone steeply downhill in all aspects. Fiat has ceased to dominate the European car market and the country has lost its leading position as a producer of white household appliances. Many factories shut down and several large businesses have relocated to other countries.

Labor market problems, low public and private investment in research and development, a large and inefficient bureaucracy, a dysfunctional, costly and slow-moving justice system, and high levels of corruption and tax evasion are among some of Italy’s intractable problems. With devaluation no longer an option, Italians have unable to put their house in order and kickstart their economy.

Unemployment is at about 11%, the fourth highest in the European Union after Greece, Spain and Cyprus. At the same time, unemployment among young people aged between 15 and 24 amounts to an alarming 30.8%. Poverty has risen to its highest level since 2005. The latest figures reveal five million people living in absolute poverty as of 2017. The figure includes 6.9% of Italian households.

As a result, a deep economic and social crisis is sweep through this Mediterranean country of the European South like a hurricane.

Even as debt, unemployment and poverty rise, Italy has the maximum bank branches per inhabitant in Europe. These branches survive mainly by giving interest and corporate loans, a poor and short-sighted business model. Given that the interest rates in the eurozone are zero, banks are making losses. Their liabilities have are reaching $290 billion, about 15% of Italian GDP. Italian banks are in deep trouble, spelling more trouble for the economy ahead.

The Italian economy is the third largest in Eurozone. In this badly designed monetary union, it is like a tired horse, loaded with bad debts, that is finding it difficult to breathe as it marches uphill on the stones and puddles of an incredibly rigid Eurozone system.

THE EURO IS ADDING TO THE MESS

The eurozone today is nothing else but a combination of conflicting interests among the member countries that make up it. What is of great interest to Italy is not of interest to Germany. What is of value to France does not matter to Greece. And the reconciliation of interests in the era of the common currency has proved to be impossible. This is because Germany, the dominant economic power of the eurozone, has managed to rule and dominate. It is using the euro for its benefit and other countries, instead of resisting or objecting, are bowing and obeying.

The time has come for Italy to leave the Eurozone. So far, Italian politicians have feared short-term negative effects of such an exit. Yet the cost of delaying Italy’s exit from the eurozone will ultimately prove to be far greater than the cost of rupture because of an imminent and impending economic crisis.

The first decision by the coalition government of the Five Star Movement and the Lega to submit a 2019 budget with a deficit of 2.4% defying Brussels was clearly in the right direction. Italian policymakers need to reinforce the economy by strengthening domestic demand and safeguarding the prosperity of the people. In a crisis, they cannot follow Brussels’s strict fiscal regulations that have been authored by Germany.

Italy must at last cease to dance to Berlin’s commands and bid adieu to the euro. By returning to the lira, Italy will regain its political, economic and institutional sovereignty. Despite current problems, Italy still has the second largest industrial capability after Germany in the eurozone at 19% at GDP. The country produces aircraft, cars, weapons, electronic systems, perfumes, shoes and clothes. Its export potential still remains high.

There is another reason to leave the euro. Italy needs energy in the form of cheap oil and gas. By leaving the euro, it could get oil from Libya and gas from Gazprom. This would lower its production costs. Combine that with a flexible national currency and the Italian economy would become extremely competitive.

To sum up, Italy is sailing into the turbulent eurozone sea where powerful winds will sink it. However, if its political leadership decides to change course and return to its national coin, Italy could still save itself.

The Mueller Investigation

Posted on May 11, 2019 by David

Received from a US correspondent – David, blogmaster

There are not too many individuals in the USA space who have commanded media attention to match President Donald Trump. One person that qualifies is Robert Mueller, special counsel to oversee the department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Return the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius

Posted on March 21, 2019 by David

Press Release submitted by Colonialism Reparation

Colonialism Reparation welcomes that the International Court of Justice has decided that the process of decolonization of Mauritius has not been lawfully completed and that the United Kingdom has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago and requests that the United Kingdom present apologies and compensations for the deportation of the original inhabitants and the whole period of British colonial rule.

On February 25, 2019 the International Court of Justice has delivered the advisory opinion Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 requested on June 22, 2017 by the United Nations General Assembly.

The Court considers that “as a result of the Chagos Archipelago’s unlawful detachment and its incorporation into a new colony, known as the [British Indian Ocean Territory] BIOT, the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when Mauritius acceded to independence in 1968”.

For this reason “the United Kingdom has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible and that all Member States must co-operate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius”. As regards the resettlement on the Chagos Archipelago of Mauritian nationals, including those of Chagossian origin, the Court was of the view that this is an issue relating to the protection of the human rights of those concerned, which should be addressed by the General Assembly during the completion of the decolonization of Mauritius.

The decision was taken as a full court with thirteen votes in favour and only one against and was immediately welcomed by the United Nations, the African Union, Mauritius, the associations Groupe réfugiés Chagos and UK Chagos Support, the United Kingdom’s Leader of the Opposition and also by Cyprus, which could start a similar path for Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Argentine and Comoros.

Colonialism Reparation welcomes that the International Court of Justice has decided that the process of decolonization of Mauritius has not been lawfully completed when Mauritius acceded to independence and that the United Kingdom has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible and requests that the United Kingdom, besides returning the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, present apologies and compensations for the deportation of the original inhabitants and the whole period of British colonial rule.

For further information, inquiries and interviews:

Colonialism Reparation http://www.colonialismreparation.org/
Press Office: media@colonialismreparation.org

Colonialism Reparation is part of the movement for the condemnation, the reconciliation, the apologies and the compensation for colonialism.

Colonialism Reparation promotes, supports and spreads non-violent activities aimed to create awareness of the current world situation and thereby to encourage the achievement of its objective

that the colonizing nations condemn their colonial past recognizing it as a crime against humanity and that the colonized nations exert pressure to make it happen

that the colonizing nations reconcile with their past, permanently distancing themselves from it by officially apologizing the colonized nations

that the colonizing nations compensate the colonized nations for the atrocities and abuses committed thus allowing an improvement in their socio-economic conditions.

The contribution of every person who recognizes the importance of this activity to the creation of a climate of friendship and cooperation between peoples is necessary and appreciated. This contribution will create an extremely positive precedent in international relations as well, promoting the supremacy of the “force of law” on the “law of force”.

VENEZUELA VERSUS THE CRIMINAL, NEO-FASCIST REGIME IN WASHINGTON – NEXUS FOR THE END OF AMERICAN GLOBAL FINANCIAL SUPREMACY AND IMPERIUM

Posted on February 23, 2019 by David

232

Submitted by Pachamama

For decades we in the Caribbean, misguidedly so, have been living under a false presumption that our here and dear homeland was ‘a zone of peace’. We well remember those homilies as oft repeated by generations of the political elites, as if mantra, but not at all well-based in truism. These thinly-veiled falsities have been laid bare by the existential realities of our time. Enter, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela!

As Wilpert has argued, the Pink-Tide governments currently facing serial reversals in the wider region always had Venezuela as their epicenter. Thus, the internal logic employed by Washington was not to be limited to the rollbacks in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Guatemala for Venezuela was always the main target. Of course, Cuba and Nicaragua remain firmly within the bullseye of empire as well. Mexico under its new left-leaning president will soon, more openly, also attract empire’s ire. Under this global financial hegemony no deviations to the established orthodoxy shall be permitted, they posture.

Imperialism has gone through at least three (3) distinct phases. Classical imperialism meant you outright stole other peoples’ things at the point of a sword. Colonial imperialism has meant that one was committed to bearing the costs of administrative control, or management on the ground directing the theft of resources, thereby reducing the net margin of surpluses extracted. The colonial extraction of surpluses by financial imperialism is the purest and most efficient formation thus removing up to 95% of surplus production from the ‘host’ directly to the German bankers or ‘parasites’, as in the recent case of Greece.

In the case of the militarized financial colonialism, which seeks to re-impose itself on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the adversary is seeking to create conditions on the ground aimed at the renewal of historical patterns of extraction by pressuring the country with a contrived humanitarian crisis. By paying off its national debt and kicking out the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Hugo Chavez denied the money-changers the rentier economy most efficient in extracting surpluses. This is a long-planned artificial crisis to which they are presenting the faux but ready-made solution, of course!

The United States has, for many years now, deployed dollar supremacy to create artificial scarcities in Venezuela, primarily through financial manipulation and employing other petroleum producers to sink the price of crude. Such a scenario unduly pressurizes the population; suggest that the military should be disloyal and commit treason; aims to set up a rival government in Venezuela; is portentous for a civil war; locates the Caribbean well within a final war scenarios. But America should try to avoid a hot war for it has lost every conflict, except Grenada, in more than one hundred (100) years. However, civil confusion, fictitious claims to governmental authority and disaster capitalism are also in America’s immediate interests, like in Syria and contrary to popular claims. Claims just as propagandistic as those about ‘zones of peace’ anywhere.

The USA has set up financial companies in Colombia to invite holders of US dollars to remove them from the country (Venezuela), mainly the wealthy Venezuelans left behind. They have set up financial services companies in Miami whose sole role are to act to drive down the parity for the bolivar, creating inflation of more than a million percent in a year. Then they blame Chavez and Maduro for ‘mismanagement’ and they own the media to often repeat their memes, lies. They have insisted, for years, that Venezuela was not to borrow in US dollars from anywhere. They have demanded that American companies operating in Venezuela were to repatriate their reserves of US dollars. And more!

More recently we have seen the weaponization of international finance taken to a new and worrying level. It’s worrying for Russia, China, Turkey and others. The United States has contravened the well-established understanding of international law what sovereign statism means when removing the legal protections the government of Venezuela has had viz a viz its US dollar reserve holdings in American banks and its holdings of bullion in London institutions. We are witnessing a global colonial conspiracy with obvious extraterritorial implications. It is or should be intolerable to all world nations. The grapes of globalization, you say!

What connects the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the dirty looks of American empire is the three (3) letter word which has been, since its discovery, been the bane of all countries of the South. What’s worse, is that imperial (American) control of oil, we say control not necessarily ownership, not that Trump and those currently in the White House care much about the differentiation any more, for they are gangsters. But crude oil is the single strategic mineral, which has, since 1971, could have acted to impose a perceived value on a fiat American ‘currency’ through ‘forced-demand’ market conditions as imposed by empire. Without which, the paper-tiger of an American empire falls, tomorrow morning!

These are the orders of magnitude the present illegal and aggressive ‘humanitarian’ war against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela represents for the Caribbean, the wider region and the very existence of live on our Mother, Earth. These scenarios make nonsense of quaint notions about ‘zones of peace’ anywhere. For Russia, China, Iran and others will not be forever dominated by American fiat currency control mechanisms, for resistance must come, sooner or later. And if Venezuela is to be the battle ground no pretenses about the Caribbean as a ‘zone of peace’ can contain these configurations of forces.

We are endeavouring to ignore the bellicose mouthings of Trump and company. Beyond that, all the other international indicators suggest the end of imperium. All the forces within the United States of America, itself, also point to an unescapable collapse, and very soon too. War with Venezuela, as urged by the Deep State or permanent American government and particularly the bankers running the Federal Reserve, remains the last flicker of hope for maintaining or extending American global hegemony. For they have failed to control Russian oil, Iranian crude, Central Asian resources, so Venezuela seems a necessary but insufficient target. They should expect millions of freedom fighters from Venezuela and elsewhere to deliver a righteous resistance, in several neighbouring countries as well. Venezuela represent another miscalculation for the internal and external constellations are working against the continuation of American hegemony and are well-disposed to denying empire any lifeline.

The very existence of America has always been about global hegemony. We simply have to look to see where its nearly 1000 military bases are located. We’ll discover that they are primarily situated near oil fields, to protect oil shipping lanes and other strategic minerals. The oil majors have always acted as instruments for imperial power starting with Iran (1953) as British Petroleum, as successor, acted with the CIA and British Intelligence (MI6) to remove Mohammad Mosadegh, a duly elected leader, who nationalized Iranian oil. By these, the oil majors, on whose behalf the United States military has always been praetorian guard. Of course, they enlist their partners in crime to assist in the policing of the world’s resources. France’s hegemonic relationships with its former colonies still represent the most perverse contradiction from the country which continues to claim to have given us ‘liberty’.

Why the increased recklessness at this time? Well, major countries are coming to realize that the fiat dollar has been used to threaten them, wage wars against them, impose sanctions against them, subjected them to intractable poverty, been extractive of real wealth owned by them, subjected them to more and more irrational American demands, the rising list of demands never seems ends. Strengths also present weaknesses and the growing weakness of empire also presents the Achilles Heel as a point of attack. So we have a number of countries establishing systems which seek to bypass the US dollar as global reserve currency and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIF) system used for its transfer.

Venezuela, just last years and in its own defense, decided to price its oil in the yuan, or petro-yuan, the currency of China. This military response by Trump and his gang in the White House is not dissimilar to what happened to Maumar Khadafy when he decided to sell Iraqi oil solely in the gold dinar. Meaning, buyers had to hold gold to buy Libyan crude oil. No such competition is ever to be given to the Devil’s dollar. The same fate met Saddam Hussien of Iraq, who deciding to price Iraqi crude similarly. They are many other countries facing this colonial reprisal. We will do well to remember that our region has never been a stranger to American backed wars, subversions and intrigues.

Contrary to the predictions of Trump we expect the American empire to collapse long before his wish for ‘socialism’, as an organizing principle, to have a chance in the heart of imperium. The truth is that America has many aspects of what he calls, derisively, as ‘socialism’. Indeed, Trump himself is a product of statist or corporate socialism through the privatization of surpluses and the socialization of debt, his many unpaid debt from several bankruptcies.

As we approach the weekend we now see the British billionaire, Richard Branson, bringing a threatening humanitarian live aide type concerts to Venezuela’s borders. This is the threatening behavior of the humanitarian war hawks and Venezuela should have a prepared counter-measure for any kinds of forces threatening it. Branson, an acolyte of Obama must also be an agent for empire. Venezuela, a country is not starving as they would wish us to believe. Why can’t this man Branson, who got his billions through the thief of public assets, not encourage the aggressive countries for which he acts as agent, to deliver the resources of the Bolivarian Republic, instead?

Everything here proves that it was a ‘mistake’ for Hugo Chavez to expect to launch a real structural revolution to liberate the masses of the Venezuelan peoples while at the same time leaving the capitalist structures in place. These capitalists have always been the agent of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and now financial imperialism. They are the ones who, like the Americans, always believed that all the resources of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela were theirs and theirs alone, even as they served their White masters from abroad.

TRUMP – A MAN CORNERED ON ALL SIDES – A DEAD MAN WALKING

Posted on February 5, 2019 by David

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Submitted by Pachamama

As Donald Trump enters the lion’s den this night all bets are off that he could escape with no further damage to his already tenuous hold on power. Indeed, if there was ever a textbook case as to how not to run a country Trump has thusly so provided.

In these short notes we will show that on all sides Donald Trump is a cornered beast. We will demonstrate this on the political, the economic, the social, the technological, the physical environment, the legal, the military, trade, intelligence and the diplomatic. We will argue that anybody able to avoid this, a certain fate waiting, would be rightfully deemed the political Houdini of all times.

The speech itself, and this was news to Trump, could have only have been scheduled, in the first place, with the acquiescence of the Speaker. This ‘detail’ needed to make Trump’s acquaintance. Recall though, that Trump’s political problems extend well beyond mere scheduling difficulties.

Even while he held control of all the levers of government he was unable to secure funding for his signature promise – the wall. In addition, his approval ratings have been stagnant at best and he has not been able to hire or retain the critical number of competent senior level aides to bring the required competence to his administration.

In economy, it was also news to Trump that he was not in dominant control of the Federal Reserve. As a result of this duality we had the Fed implementing a policy which his administration suggested was inappropriate. More worrying for Trump is that leading economic figures are now joining the bandwagon of those who have suggested a recession this year. This has implications for his political fortunes in 2020, should he run.

Trump is also encumbered by the social environment. His intelligence briefings would no doubt include the dislocations occurring in France – the Yellow Vest demonstrations and the disquiet in the UK which may lead to riots depending on the outcome of the Brexit imbroglio. These may be coming to a city near him sooner than later as the economic situation within the USA is far worse than the erroneous government statistics are leading on. Expect contagion! Riots in the land, you say!

On the technological front, Trump has created problems or found difficulties with which he has not been able to show any measurable progress in last two (2) years. These relate to the rights of subscribers. Whether companies like Facebook, Google and others should be public utilities.

Of course, on the legal side, we already know the world of hurt he has been in. We also presume that Mueller is likely to bring down some more indictments in the coming months – landing not too far from his cold heart. These to add to a growing number of Trump acolytes already ensnared in a dragnet intended to only allow the small fry and the cooperators to escape.

Maybe Trump entered the White House with the expectation that on the military front he could deploy America’s might to frighten the nation’s foes into easy concessions. Thus far, there have been no thunderous breakthroughs with the DPRK, Syria, Iran, Russian or anybody else. In all circumstances, conditions are far worse than when Trump entered 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The master negotiator he has not been!

As one of the first orders of business was the exit from the Climate Accords. Since then there has been no American sponsored successor agreement. This action still seems like an anti-Obama reaction with no intension whatsoever to offer another plan.

To say diplomacy is not Trump’s or his senior official’s forte would be an understatement. But when you add Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo and Kushner to the jambalaya you have a recipe for a Venezuela, another Vietnam, a murder in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey. The UN sponsored JCPOA with Iran was also unceremoniously dispensed with. All of America’s ‘former’ allies under Trumpism have been strained. Trump and statements relating to America’s exceptionalism have been laughed at by hundreds of world countries at the UN.

Even on another thorny issue – trade. Trump has not made any breakthroughs with China or Europe or anybody else. All he’s done this far is to make minor changes to the agreement with Canada and Mexico. And Mexico is not paying for his wall as promised, by him.

Again, nobody was looking for too much ‘intelligence’ from Trump. But a war with the Deep State apparatus can never be won. Kennedy knew that. Even if you could win, you still come out the loser. In this environment Trump is in multiple wars with the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and all the other 17 alphabet-soup of spy agencies.

Of course, Donald Trump has never been known to pay much attention to all of these concentric circles of analysis. Therefore, is most likely to wing-it in the vain hope that somehow he, the master-salesman, could deliver this horrible situation to his wider audience with a PR victory. However, we are getting the feeling that a critical mass has now seen the ‘con which has always been Don’ and that additional damage, to his position, will be inflicted this night.

There may well be several books in this presidency that could withstand the vagaries of time and political science. However, if there were to be a single case study in how not to run an administration that may be the monograph which could be the one to be well-compared with that classical work by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), this would be it.

Venezuela – The Caribbean Emerges At The Centre Of Our Worlds

Posted on January 29, 2019 by David

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Submitted by Pachamama

It took a Don-Don to trump all other minor Dons, a Rubio that is little Marco, a Bolton who was always a Johnny and a real criminal called Elliott to engineer what could be the inflection point or (A)bram/s to launch the Caribbean into the geo-political stratosphere as elements of the racist power structure in Washington side with their kindred spirits in Caracas.

What we are witnessing is a real global criminal conspiracy, in broad daylight, to steal the largest oil resources in the world, by far – 300 billion barrels. It happens to be under the feet of the peoples of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Therein lies the most bothersome question for imperialism, for capitalism. The question for the Americans has always been – how do we get ‘our’ oil from under other peoples’ feet?

Those on BU who would want to contend that the USA has become a leading exporter of crude in recent years consistently miss the point. The point is strategic not tactical. It is about control of the tap and denial of access to others. The point was always about connecting real resources to paper currency. These are how the peoples of the world are really robbed! These are the critical questions. Not the puerile BS constantly propagated on the networks. Even the Johnny, that is Bolton, is making crystal clear for the idiots. This is to be a war of conquest. The Conquistadores are still in place, both in Caracas and Washington.

Maybe the point that the Chinese have recently invested 50 billion dollars in a joint venture with the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its President Nicolas Maduro represented, to the Americans, ‘a clear and present national security threat’ pushing the Americans to up the ante – illegal sanctions as war by other means. Economic warfare, if you will.

That reading of events is one which is quite common for Uncle Sam and his progenitors. In these circumstances, the threat of war had to take centre-stage because all other attempts to remove the legitimate government of Venezuela, over 20 years, including assassinations, had limited affect. Notwithstanding, the great Hugo Chavez had contended that he was given a ‘cancer serum’ and so were several other leftist-leaning leaders of Central and South American countries over recent years, he continued. But who amongst us will see the Americans as the murderers that they have always been!

In addition, the ‘Yankees’ are fearful that a growing and wider alliance between non-dollar trading countries, spawning the rise of the potentially-deadly ‘petro-yuan’, as the currency of choice, will hasten the end of American imperium. And they are quite right! Of course, Venezuela, and the wider Caribbean, has had a long and sordid history of American interventionism, the doctrine of former president Monroe still rules these lands.

This is the classical story of how militarism is deployed in the service of corporations, oil companies and big money-men like Donald John Trump. Trump, who has no qualms about ‘taking other people oil’ at the point of a gun, in true American presidential gangster-style, especially if that gun could be cloaked in all manner of pseudo-legalisms, as have been long practiced by every American president and administration, including bulling-Obama. This is a merely game for this overgrown child (Trump). A game, he will most certainly lose, if he has the guts to try, for Pachamama has ordained it!

So we are made to endure the illegal meetings at the United Nations. Other illegal meetings were held of the Organization of American States (OAS) as part of this criminal conspiracy. All aimed at giving a patina of legitimacy to an illegal destabilization and possible invasion of a sovereign state and rendering a death blow to the Geneva Conventions. An invasion not unlike what was conducted in Syria, in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Panama, to name a few.

Of course, the ‘Don of all Dons’ is seeking a large payday on demitting office. We would estimate Trump could expect north of 15 billion dollars personally, after leaving office, impeachment or not, should this master caper, be successful.

Anglo-Caribbeans should note that neither Canada nor Britain has shown any hesitation in inviting war to our sacred region. Theresa May, ‘the hunchback of London’ and her foreign secretary, as a matter of course, dutifully and as pre-planned, gave the Americans the public nod to embark on this racist, Christian, crusade in our region. Theresa May’s husband is a notorious arms dealer, selling weapons to kill children in Yemen. Why not the Caribbean? Is he being promised piece of the war materiel action?

You would have thought that we had good relationships with Canada. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, as the boy scared of the big bad wolf south of him, could not be the son of a man who four (4) former Caribbean prime ministers were once committed to, as he sought to shift the hemispheric, geo-political, equation, fundamentally. This determination should make us re-consider things that too many of us take for granted. We still have titularly Black people talking shiiite about their Scottish blood, etc. We have to stop expecting that the ‘mother country’ or historical trading partners are to be bound to understandings that some special dispensations are to be given us.

At the OAS meeting it was inspiring to see that some small Caribbean states had the gumption to vote against the imperialists, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonzales, is especially worthy of note. There was a similar number also abstaining, leading to the massive defeat of the America construction of an artificial ‘casus belli’, not dissimilar to the lies around the Invasion of Iraq (2003).

You could rely on the mendicancy of the Mottley regime in Barbados to abstain. But even that could get them in trouble with Trump. A no-vote would have been a monumental surprise. Notwithstanding, it would be too much to expect the likes of David Comissiong, ‘the moral compass for decency’ as venerated in Bridgetown, by some, to be resigning anytime soon. This path to war by Trump should cause Comissiong to rethink his empty rhetoric about regional unity etc. For it has always been highly misconceived!

We doubt it! You see, American policymakers are so drunken by imperial hubris, so intoxicated by a faux exceptionalism, that is seems impossible for any significant faction of elite forces to prevent another Iraq, another Afghanistan, any imperial excesses at all. Not at a time when everybody in America wants to get fabulously rich, and real quick. But maybe, the fate of the USA has been written in the stars. How could it be otherwise possible to elect a modern-day Nero, a modern-day Caligula, advance a neo-Nazi global state where wealth is highly consolidated and not expect the dominance of the madness as foretold, being a lived reality!

Those here on BU, misguided and supportive of the musings of the ‘humanitarian’ interventionists in Washington should remember Libya or Puerto Rico after two hurricanes, one after the other. Is this the same Trump presenting that he now cares about Venezuelans? Should there not be a wall to prevent these kinds of people from ‘shithole’ countries coming to America? Or maybe, the honorary Whites of Venezuela and those living in Miami, prepared, as they are, to sell out their country to neo-Nazis are truly exceptional idiots.

Yesterday Colombia was saying that its territory will not be used in any aggression against the Bolivarian Republic. Today, the Americans are announcing that their troops are deployed in Colombia. But Russia has a battalion (up to 800) stationed in Venezuela and they come with the whole arsenal of the defenses of the Russian Federation. And Venezuela has other friends in the world. These include the peoples of Cuba and those of Haiti. Internally, many supporters of the revolution are willing to die for this just cause. They also have contacts with several popular forces which have resoundingly defeated the Yankees, many times over. Did a president of the United States not ordered the leader of Syria to leave office in a manner not dissimilar to the present idiot? And is Assad not still in office, and dominantly so? So too will be Maduro many moons after Trump resides in the dustbin of history! We remain less certain about the American neo-Nazi state.
Donald John Trump is a coward! His band of armchair generals has but a solitary military success in over a hundred years – poor Grenada. They have been beaten or failed to meet their targets in every military adventure. These include WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Korea and all others. Recently the Iranians, the Syrians, the Russians, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban have either defeated America and/or its proxies, in hot and/or cold confrontations, sometimes more than once, within a short period of time. The truth is that nobody is afraid of America. In military matters when once a belligerent has lost the spectre of invincibility, it can never be regained. The Zionist state is a perfect example. Such is the American imperium as it seeks its long-awaited death in the swaps of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Long live the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as inspired by Hugo Chavez Frias, long live!

Collusion a Crime – Judge in Mueller Case Upholds Legal Theory

Posted on November 24, 2018 by David

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Is collusion a crime? Since the beginning of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, allegations of “collusion” have dominated the debate. President Trump regularly claims there was “no collusion” with the Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election. His attorneys and other supporters also have repeatedly argued that even if collusion took place, that would not be criminal. But last week, in a case brought by Mueller, a federal judge upheld the legal theory under which “collusion” may indeed be a crime.

I’m not sure how the term “collusion” became so central to discussions of the Mueller investigation. It really should be banned altogether. (I know, I know — this from the guy who just wrote a blog post with “collusion” in the title, right? But hey, I can’t unilaterally disarm.) All it does is breed confusion and lead to diversionary arguments about whether collusion is criminal.

It’s true there is no criminal statute titled “collusion.” But as I’ve noted in several places (here and here, for example) the relevant crime is conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 371. Collusion refers to an agreement with others to achieve some improper end. In criminal law, we call that a conspiracy – a partnership in crime. And the breadth of the federal conspiracy statute makes it particularly well-suited for cases like Mueller’s probe of Russian interference with the election.

Read full text – COLLUSION / MUELLER INVESTIGATION

TRUMP the PEACEMAKER, NOT!

Posted on October 29, 2018 by David

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“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” – Matthew 5:9 New International Version (NIV)

It is amazing the more educated we have become the more the beatitudes that should inform Christian behaviour and values are seemingly forgotten. For the evangelicals and the Conservatives Donald Trump is right because he conforms with the pro-life view and has aligned the SCOTUS to achieve this end, he ‘supports’ the Jews reflected in his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Other examples abound.

Does it matter that President Trump is a card carrying adulterer?

That his imperfections have been recorded for world citizens to hear AND see?

His blatant disrespect for women?

His mocking of the differently able and on it goes. Clearly he is a man and therefore not perfect. What is missing from these so called Christians that support Trump is the unwillingness to hold him accountable for his behaviour that contradicts Christian teachings.

Given the influence Trump has as president of the USA domestically and geopolitically, the blogmaster as a world citizen worries how it will all translate in time to come. The latest news about the unexploded bombs addressed to prominent actors who are critics of Trump AND the shooting of Jews worshipping in a Pittsburg synagogue support a reasonable conclusion that words uttered by Trump matter.

Monitoring the two stories in the US media over the last couple of days it seems political commentators are reluctant to blame Trump as the person who must bear some blame for Cesar Altier Sayoc and the other nut job for feelign emboldened to terrorize the US space.The blogmaster is not so inhibited. He has been an immature, incompetent and bombastic political leader who has done nothing to improving the lot of mankind given the influence of the USA on world affairs.

Trump should watch the following interview with Rabbi Jeffrey Myers and by guided.

Our Self Respect Demands We Act Against ALMAGRO!

Posted on September 16, 2018 by David

Submitted by EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, CLEMENT PAYNE MOVEMENT (BARBADOS)

Under the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), when the General Secretary of the OAS speaks he speaks for and on behalf of the Organization and its Member States, including the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Haiti, Grenada, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia.

And last Friday (the 13th of September 2018) — at a Press Conference held in Cucuta, Colombia — OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro spoke as follows :-

“With respect to a MILITARY INTERVENTION to OVERTHROW Nicolas Maduro’s regime, I don’t think any option should be ruled out ……….. Diplomatic action should be the first priority but we shouldn’t rule out any action.”

Thus, speaking for ALL 34 Member States of the OAS, Luis Almagro has declared that the constitutionally legitimate, democratically elected Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (a Member State of the OAS) is to be OVERTHROWN either by “diplomatic action” or by “military intervention”.

Needless-to-say, Almagro’s enunciation constitutes a gross VIOLATION of virtually all of the fundamental principles contained in the Charter of the OAS, namely — Chapter 1 (Nature and Purposes), Chapter 2 (Principles), Chapter 4 (Fundamental Rights and Duties of States), Chapter 5 (Pacific Settlement of Disputes), and Chapter 7 (Integral Development) — all of which commit the OAS and its Member States to the principles of respect for the territorial integrity of states, respect for national sovereignty, peaceful settlement of disputes, respect for the right of states to self-determination, and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

It has now therefore become absolutely clear that Luis Almagro CANNOT be permitted to continue to hold the post of representative and spokesman of the OAS!

Indeed, every single self-respecting Member State of the OAS is now under a duty to denounce and repudiate the unlawful and offensive statement that the General Secretary of the OAS made in their names, and to go on to take action to REMOVE Luis Almagro from the post of General Secretary of the OAS !

Article 116 of the OAS Charter establishes that the General Assembly of the OAS may — by a two thirds vote of the Member States — remove the General Secretary “whenever the proper functioning of the Organization so demands”.

The duty of every single OAS Member State to take action in respect of this matter is therefore absolutely clear, and those of us who still believe that we are citizens of sovereign, principled, serious, and self respecting nations will be watching very closely to see how our Caribbean governments respond.

Russian Operatives Accused of Torturing, Pulling Gun on Miners in Guyana

Posted on August 7, 2018 by David

July 27, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Richard Millington, Director of Communications

Email: caribbeaninstitute@gmail.com

CGID calls for investigation of Russian operatives accused of torturing, pulling gun on local miners

The Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID) on Monday vigorously called on the Guyana government to investigate alleged torture, harassment, assault and abuse of Guyanese miners and workers by Russian nationals who own and operate West Bank Demerara Gold Inc – a Russian owned mining company in Guyana.

In a letter to President David Granger and the Ministers of Legal Affairs, National Security and Natural Resources, acting Police Commissioner, Mr. David Ramnarine, and Chairman of the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission (GGMC), Mr. Stanley Ming, the Institute’s President Burke asserted that the Russians allegedly committed torture and other crimes against humanity as well as other human rights abuses of Guyanese citizens, which the government must not condone.

On April 3, 2018, ranger Ken Edwards and Charles Clarke, employees of Hopkinson Mining Logistics, were executing their normal duties on their employers claim, in Quartzstone, near the Quartzstone River, Region 7, Cuyuni-Mazaruni, when they were intercepted by two expatriate, Russian operatives of West Bank Demerara Gold Inc. The Russians attempted to prohibit the Hopkinson workers from entering further on said land.

West Bank Demerara Gold Inc. a company, which acquired and now operates a mining concession known as Chunnylall Babullal & Ricky Ramnarine (CB&R) Concession. Hopkinson Mining Logistics ostensibly has mining claims within the CB&R concession that predates its acquisition by West Bank Demerara Gold Inc.

The Hopkinson security guard recorded the incident with his cellular phone. The video, which was released by CGID, is attached. The video recording shows a Russian operative who is known in the concession area as “Batali,” demanding documentation and challenging Edwards and Charles’ right to be on their employer’s claim. He subsequently attempted to block their access. “Batali” then punched Edwards in his face. When Edwards attempted to defend himself, Batali punched him a second time, then pulled a gun on the men.

CGID has also obtained additional evidence of a separate incident in which the said Russians allegedly handcuffed another mining worker and tied him onto the roof of a structure and tortured him. The worker was reportedly forced to urinate and defecate while hanging from the roof. These are very serious allegations. CGID calls on the entire nation to join in condemnation of these despicable atrocities. If substantiated by the Police, these acts constitute crimes against humanity that carry harsh criminal penalties under national and international law.

“Batali” allegedly displayed a Guyana Police Force supernumerary constable precept; an instrument that licenses security guards to carry a firearm. In light of the alleged reckless actions of the Russian operative, CGID is gravely concerned about the issuance and maintenance of a Guyana Police Force precept for “Mr. Batali” to bear arms.

CGID therefore calls on the Police Commissioner to launch a criminal investigation into the actions of the Russians guards, who should be charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if they are found to be criminally culpable.

With the establishment of the petroleum industry and an expansion of the mining sector, both of which will attract foreign companies that can potentially mistreat or abuse Guyanese workers, CGID calls on the government of Guyana to establish a human rights commission, with powers of a court, to address and adjudicate human rights violations.

Rickford Burke

President

Young Barbadian Scientist @UNLEASH 2018 in Singapore

Posted on July 11, 2018 by David

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Submitted by Dr. Shima L. Holder, Age: 27 years old

Academic Background:

Bachelors of Science (BSc): UWI Cave Hill Campus, Barbados (2009-2013) – Chemistry
Master of Science (MSc): University of Surrey, United Kingdom (2013-2014) – Civil and Environmental Engineering (specialization in Water and Environmental Engineering),
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD): Da-Yeh University, Taiwan, Republic of China (2014- 2017) – Water and Environmental Engineering (Fuel Cell Technolog01_UNLEASH 2018_certificate_globalscalabilitypotential UNLEASH 2018_certificate_water_goldy)

Occupation: Postdoctoral Researcher/Chemical Engineer, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden (July 2017-present)

UNLEASH 2018, Singapore : ’SaniHive’ prototype designed by Savvy Sanitation Solutions

UNLEASHED closing ceremony

I recently took part in UNLEASH that was held in Singapore from 30th May – 6th June 2018. UNLEASH is a global innovation lab sponsored by UNDP, Deloitte, Dalberg, Carlsberg Foundation and DBS (to name a few) that convenes 1000 top young minds chosen from over 108 countries around the world to collaborate on ideas and solutions that can help achieve the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) for food, water, health, education, energy, urban sustain-ability and responsible supply chains.

As the sole female and one of the youngest persons,our multinational team of 5 also included innovators/engineers from Colombia, Singapore, South Africa and Uruguay. We tackled SDG 6: Clean Water & Sanitation and pitched our solution and business plan to potential funders at a marketplace and then to an audience of approximately 1200 people where we were evaluated by leading experts and company partners. Our team’s solution beat 995 other contestants and 169 other solutions to clinch both the Gold Award and the Global Scalability Potential Award –(see appended file).

SaniHive prototype

Our solution is an Integrated Modular Sanitation system that combines the collection and treatment of wastes onsite by Our SaniHive prototype (see attachment), inspired by the honeycomb structure of bees that maximizes space in limited land availability, was conceptualized, critiqued by experts and refined during a gruelling four-day innovation process converting urine and faeces into fertiliser and compost respectively.

The uniqueness in our solution is that the toilet hub is not connected to a conventional sewage network, needs no electricity and can be scaled up or customized according to the community’s needs and natural design. Furthermore, profits can be made from the waste recycling (as this system separates the urine and faeces within the toilet while using no water). We also hope that this innovation would empower the communities by creating employment, as local people can transport the waste to mini treatment plants where high-end products could be created; phosphorous recovery from urine for fertiliser is one example of this.

Final presentation at UNLEASHED

The Future for Savvy Sanitation Solutions Urban slum communities need sustainable sanitation that meets the needs of high population density, because the current temporary portable toilets are largely inaccessible due to space constraints; many people often share a few toilets, leading to poor sanitary conditions. With projections of there being close to one billion urban slum dwellers worldwide by 2030, sanitation innovations such as ours will play a big part in ensuring clean water and sanitation and in creating sustainable cities and healthy citizens.

To start, we will focus on the urban slum Kylethisha in South Africa and we can use this slum as a case study for implementation in other developing countries based on their specific needs and limitations; our solution is not limited to urban slums, but can also be valuable in water-scarce communities/areas, or in richer suburbs, where you create an integrated, decentralised system with a mini treatment plant in the neighbourhood.

Team working at 12AM to completed businessplan and technology

As the co-founders of Savvy Sanitation Solutions, our team is excited about pursuing the SaniHive innovation, and are currently meeting with funders and investors to help commercialise this technology.

International Media Coverage

As an example, here are three articles we are featured in:

1. Netherlands : https://www.utoday.nl/news/65616/beehive-inspired-toilets-for-slums

2.Cape Town, South Africa: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2018-06-15-value-added-toilet-hub-wins-global-sustainability-award

3. Singapore: https://medium.com/@asiap3hub/innovations-unleashed-d999d2fa39b5 (specific mention of our team’s solution is made by Asia P3 Hub’s Senior WASH and Partnership Advisor, Phearak Svay, who served as a judge at 2018 UNLEASH)

Also, I have attached:

1) a feature video done by The Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) which includes our team’s solution (SaniHive) and 2) some group photos of us the co-founders , and 3) supporting photo files.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JLL778hE8E&authuser=0

Please find Official UNLEASH 2018 media coverage here:

https://www.facebook.com/unleashlab/videos/824844727706550/

Summary of TOP 5 awardees: https://unleash.org/news/winners-unleash-found/

Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2018/06/06/business-and-youth-unite-to-unleash-the-sustainable-development-goals/#c822816399b8

Is iMarketsLive a Scam?

Posted on June 27, 2018 by David

The following link was submitted by fellow blogger caribbeansignal.com. The BU household felt compelled to share – in the public interest – with the BU family given the high interest shown by Barbadians in the iMarketslive product. The blogmaster aligns with the view that venturing into the complex forex world requires a level of expertise.

– David, blogmaster

WARNING: This is a lengthy article, but if you care about your money, you should read it. iMarketsLive recently held events in Barbados and Trinidad. From what I understand the Barbados event had a huge attendance (several hundred, possibly thousands from what I remember hearing).

This piqued my interest in iMarketsLive itself. Was this a potential scam in the making? In this post I will refrain from answering that with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Rather, the objective of this post is to help you to arrive at your own definitive answer, or at the very least, to provide you with another opinion to help decide for/against the opinions that you already have.

Please refer to the References section at the end of this article for direct links to various sources cited. The referencing system used is the Harvard system (Author Surname, Year of publication). If you see “n.d.” it means that I could not find a publication date.

First things first, who/what is iMarketsLive? According to their website (iMarketsLive, n.d.-a):

Read the full text of the report – Is iMarketsLive a Scam?

The Policy of a Superpower that Separates Children from Parents

Posted on June 18, 2018 by David

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The story unfolding in the USA where children of undocumented immigrants are being separated from their parents continues to choke global newsfeeds. There is not much the blogmaster can say except that children are innocent. The question seems to be whether lawmakers need to amend an existing law which is being enforced by the authorities or whether President Trump should use the power given him to exert an executive prerogative.

The BU household hopes that the leadership in the US will resolve the matter soon!

Barbados Government Seeks IMF Assistance

Posted on June 1, 2018 by David

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Christine Lagarde

June 1, 2018

Ms. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, made following statement today:

“As announced by Prime Minister Mottley earlier today, the Barbados economy has been going through significant challenges for some years. The authorities are developing an economic reform plan designed to address these challenges, and they have asked the international community and the International Monetary Fund to assist them as they put the economy back on a path to recovery. An IMF team led by Bert van Selm will be visiting Bridgetown to start discussions on how the Fund can support the authorities’ economic plan. Our ultimate goal is to help Barbados achieve higher living standards and more inclusive growth for the years ahead.”

IMF Communications Department

MEDIA RELATIONS

PRESS OFFICER: Randa Elnagar

Phone: +1 202 623-7100Email: MEDIA@IMF.org

2018 General Election BUzz

Posted on May 24, 2018 by David

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The eagerly awaited 2018 General Election is finally here. Unlike previous elections we have not had a CADRES Poll to ‘control’ the debate. The blogmaster’s view on polling in the days and weeks before an election can be found on BU’s pages- it compromises the process.

The blogmaster has grown cynical of late after observing how the majority of the citizens are satisfied with a process best described as ‘political musical chairs’ we love to play every election cycle. Today is the one day in the governance process Barbadians exert the power to dictate to the political directorate who they want to lead the country. The down side is that after exercising our civic duty the system is ‘hijacked’ by those elected to SERVE.

One of the most used words in the political lexicon is CHANGE. The use of the word reached a ‘crescendo’ in 2008 with the rise of Barack Obama. Are we the citizenry satisfied the change which has been promised every election cycle bar none was satisfactorily delivered? At this juncture in our history what has to change? What can we the PEOPLE do to determine how members of the political class – who are elected to serve the us by the way – to force change to our governance setup?

Polling stations will open from 6AM to 6PM.

#voteforchange

#bethechange

Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

Posted on April 9, 2018 by David

Submitted by Pachamama

There has never been a woman, across the histories of all times, who could have transfixed the imaginations of generations of men, and boys, as has Saint Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Her transition leaves armies of Her men with no choice but to traverse one billion lifetimes in an eternal quest for Her divine grace – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

Carrying the weight of the liberation struggle on Her shoulders, nearly alone and for decades, Saint Winnie bore the full brunt of the vicious Apartheid regime of South Africa with a fierce, unyielding, determination. Exiled in Her own country, imprisoned, tortured, kept under house arrest, denied work and ostracized abroad, Saint Winnie still emerged as the central personality fighting against White rule on the home front – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

And yes! There are those who would dare to find fault of Her. They would want to speak of Her ‘football club’ and the death of one youngster in spite of two court cases with no finding of culpability, and many more dying in Her sacred defense, in a state of imposed war. These White-minded coconuts conveniently forget that a hundred-year revolution was being fought against international White supremacy. That there were untold losses on all sides, predominantly innocent, Black South Africans, at the hands of the apartheid state and its global supporters. That Her protection units had to eliminate some agents of that state, operating within, is standard practice in both revolutionary movements and state craft. Only a certain typology of Bajan slave would call for a bloodless revolution in all circumstances. ‘How long shall they kill our ‘Prophetesses’, while we stand aside and look?’ – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

That Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and indeed all the young men and women of South Africa see Winnie as their Patron-Saint can only serve to push the ANC ‘leftwards’. In that location they will then have to deal with a radical land reform, also needed in Barbados, as just recently passed in parliament – for the repatriation of South African’s lands to its real owners – lands that were stolen over centuries. And this is rightness – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

It has been long clear that Saint Winnie was the real radical all along. While people like Nelson Mandela and the now President, Cyril Ramaphosa, opted to either appease racist international neoliberalism and maintain economic apartheid or personally benefit from a highly unjust system, themselves. In the case of Ramaphosa, he opted to become a billionaire, shedding the garbs of a fake trade unionism. Does he not remind you of Leroy Trotman? In Nelson’s case, he opted for personal freedom in exchange for the maintenance of economic apartheid. Nelson Mandela even won the praises of no less a person than COW Williams. A man who once joined Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in calling Nelson a ‘terrorist’, said that Farley Hill could not be named after him – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

Saint Winnie was no western type feminist. Long before western feminist discourses recognized the limits to the thinking of Foucault, Freud, and others, Saint Winnie knew that what the westerners were really lacking was a transgenerational feminine connection, not lesbianism. Not an irrational hatred of men. Not a postmodernist gender competitive environment everywhere. It’s the essence of what the American literary critic, academician, Camille Paglia, now likes to talk about. The critical connection of grandmother, mother, sister and granddaughter interaction and passing on traditional systems of social organization, a powerful sisterhood – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

We beg our greatest ancestors to receive, the first amongst equals, The Great Saint Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. We shall always remember you and forever sing your sweet praises. See you again, soon – Uh Coming Winnie, Winnie Uh Coming!

Free Lula!

Posted on April 8, 2018 by David

Submitted by DAVID A. COMISSIONG, President, Clement Payne Movement

THE CARIBBEAN PEACE MOVEMENT (CPM) is disgusted and outraged by the latest episode in the orchestrated illicit right-wing oligarchical campaign to target and “bring down” by foul means the most outstanding and respected leaders of Latin America’s 21st century Socialist Movement : namely, the conviction by a powerful right-wing Judge of Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva (former President of Brazil) on trumped up corruption charges, and Lula’s incarceration on a 12 year prison sentence.

We Caribbean people find it almost beyond belief that a respected and revered people’s champion like Lula — the highly principled President who lifted millions of downtrodden Brazilians out of miserable poverty and who gave Brazil a new and outstanding image in the international community — could be so brazenly attacked and victimized in this manner by the Brazilian capitalist establishment and their traditional right-wing collaborators in the U S State Department.

For us in the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to arrive at some understanding of the injustice and infamy of this conviction and imprisonment of Lula, we would have to imagine our greatest and most revered historic political leaders — Barbados’ Errol Barrow and Jamaica’s Michael Manley for example — being hounded down by corrupt and vindictive establishment Prosecutors and Judges and railroaded into Prison !

As profoundly difficult (if not impossible) as it is for us to contemplate such a scenario in our Caribbean Community, this is precisely what has been unfolding in Latin America over the past five years or so !

We need to recall that an historic Latin American anti-imperialist and socialist Movement emerged in the early years of the 21st century, and that by the year 2012 several outstanding socialist or progressive nationalist leaders had been elected to power by the Latin American masses throughout the region :– Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; Evo Morales in Bolivia; Rafael Correa in Ecuador; Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina; Fernando Lugo Mendez in Paraguay; Lula in Brazil ; Jose “Pepe” Mujica in Uruguay; Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua; and Michelle Bachelet in Chile. And of course they joined Fidel Castro’s revolutionary Cuba, which had been carrying the banner of Socialism in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1959 !

This was a truly historic development, and constituted the high point of the centuries long historical struggle of the masses of working-class and impoverished Latin Americans to transform the unequal, elitist, oppressive, capitalistic and oligarchical societies that had been foisted upon them ever since the Spanish imperialists had colonized the region in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Here then was a tremendous breakthrough in the progressive, working-class Movement to develop new, just, equal and inclusive Latin American societies. And the impressive results were there for all to see in the millions of people who were lifted out of poverty, and the hundreds of new socially uplifting programmes and institutions that were birthed in virtually all of the countries in question, but especially in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.

But of course, the powerful traditional Latin American oligarchical classes and institutions (and their North American and European masters and collaborators) did not simply fade away !

Rather, they (in partnership with the powerful U S State Department and the international Capitalist establishment ) have carried out a vicious and unprincipled counter-offensive in which they have deployed every conceivable weapon — ranging from physical assassination, to economic sabotage, to trumped up corruption and impeachment charges — against the Latin American socialist leaders and their governmental administrations.

Of course, the whole idea is that since they can’t defeat these popular democratically elected leaders at the Polls, then find some underhand, illicit way to circumvent the electoral process and secure their removal!

The tragic outline of this treasonous political, economic, and judicial insurgency campaign against the Latin American Left is as follows :-

(1) 2012 — the impeachment of Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo Mendez on ridiculous charges of “insecurity” and “nepotism” ;

(2) 2013 — the suspected assassination of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez;

(3) 2016 — the impeachment of Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff on ludicrous charges of so-called “administrative misconduct” and “disregard for the federal budget”;

(4) 2016 — the effort by the fascist Opposition in Venezuela to launch impeachment and recall processes against President Nicolas Maduro ;

(5) 2017 — the prosecution of Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner on a trumped up charge of “trying to defraud the government”; and

(6) 2017 — the prosecution and conviction of Lula on an equally trumped up charge of accepting a bribe when he was President of Brazil.

And it should be noted for the record that the witch hunts against both Lula and Cristina Kirchner are also “preemptive strikes” that are designed to eliminate them from contesting up-coming Presidential elections that they are both highly favoured to win !

We in the Caribbean Peace Movement fully comprehend that nothing less than a “war” is being waged against the socialist, nationalist, and other progressive forces of Latin America and the Caribbean, and that a variety of legal and constitutional processes are being twisted out of shape, bastardized, and prostituted, and used for illicit political purposes.

At this time however, we wish to place our focus squarely and specifically on Brazil.

We hereby denounce the egregious injustice that has been inflicted on Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva ! We wish him, the officers and members of the Workers Party of Brazil, and the masses of working-class Brazilians to know that we are with them in this struggle.

The Caribbean Peace Movement (CPM) hereby CALLS upon the governments of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) , and indeed upon ALL nations and Governments that have a commitment to decency and justice, to raise their voices and publicly demand that Lula be freed and that he be permitted to contest the upcoming Presidential election in Brazil.

We say :- “FREE LULA !”

SIGNED :

David Comissiong

Coordinator

Caribbean Chapter

International Network In Defense of Humanity

Hope Mc Nish

President

Jamaica Peace Council

David Denny

General Secretary

Caribbean Movement For Peace and Integration

Gerald Perreira

President

Organization for the Victory of the People (Guyana)

Robert “Bobby” Clarke

General Secretary

Clement Payne Movement (Barbados)

Lalu Hanuman

President

Caribbean Against Apartheid in Palestine

Trevor Prescod MP

President

Israel Lovell Foundation (Barbados)

Khafra Kambon

Coordinator

Caribbean Pan-African Network

Garcin Malsa

President

International Movement for Reparations (Martinique)

Edson Crawford

Executive Officer

Peoples Empowerment Party (Barbados)

Fuad Abubakr

Leader

New National Vision (Trinidad and Tobago)

Cuban Barbadian Friendship Association

Bridgetown

Barbados

Onkphra Wells

Chairman

Pan African Coalition of Organizations (Barbados)

Friends of Venezuela Solidarity Committee

Bridgetown

Barbados

Trevor Browne

Chairman

Jamaica Cuba Friendship Association

Francisco Manuel Perez Santana

Citizen

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Cikiah Thomas

Chairman

Global Afrikan Congress

Anthony “Gabby” Carter

Cultural Ambassadfor

Barbados

Ana Polyte

Member

Venezuela Institute For Culture and Cooperation (St Lucia)

Investigation into Russian Meddling in US Election

Posted on April 8, 2018 by David

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The following links were sent to share with the Barbados Underground family. In this forum like others there is a healthy interest in the spectacle unfolding in the USA with the Robert Mueller led special investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the last US presidential elections. Where will it lead nobody knows.

Link #1

Click to read the The Moscow Project Account

Link #2

Click image to read Medium’s Trump, Putin and the mob story

Freundel Writes His Name on History’s Page

Posted on April 6, 2018 by David

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I did not dissolve it – deliberately – and of course the experts have been giving expressions to their surprise. ‘This is the first time in Barbados’ history, that a parliament was allowed to stand dissolved by effluxion of time’. That is how history is made. History is not made by things happening the same way all the time. History is made by doing things differently – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart

The quote is credited to the Prime Minister of Barbados in response to wide public disquiet his decision to encroach on the 90 day period the framers of the Constitution provide to have a general election after the dissolution of parliament. For sure the statement can be generously described as puerile and strips bare the reputation earned by Barbados post Independence as a model Black democratic nation punching above its weight class.

Barbados has been reduced to the butt of jokes brought to a head by a story in the Russian media space with the title Swapping Erections for Elections: Prostitutes Dip Toes in Caribbean .…. We have the ridiculous state of affairs a former prostitute entering the race and a political party by the name of PPP – you guessed it – indicating an interest in contesting the next general election. Say what you will, one cannot imagine this state of affairs occurring if Errol Barrow, Tom Adams or Owen Arthur were leading the country. Is it accurate to conclude it has to do with leadership?

Prime Minister Stuart has revealed his value-set to Barbadians on numerous occasion, the best example is when he failed to censure the former Speaker of the House MICHAEL CARRINGTON for withholding payment to a client. Monies based on standard procedure should have been deposited in his Clients Account awaiting final disbursement. Because BU is rated a PG blog the blogmaster will be generous in language to describe CARRINGTON. You will recall the prime minister’s advice was to publicly advise CARRINGTON to get a lawyer. Given the fact there was no crescendo of noise emanating from civil society led by NGOs, Bar Association and others, it brings into question the extent to which political morality is honoured in Barbados.

Notwithstanding, the blogmaster is unable to fathom what political capital Stuart and team is benefitting from subjecting Bajans to the humiliation currently being being experienced. As if the psyche of the Bajan has not suffered a deep puncture and the swagger transformed to a limp as a result of the protracted economic performance downturn. Today we heard it all when perennial local political scientist Dr. George Belle described our government as a de facto dictatorship. From a model Black country punching above its weight class to being described by a local academic as a de facto dictatorship!

It seems like yesterday in 2007 the same political arguments were being had. What has changed? TwiddleD has replaced TwiddleB. How will the cycle be disrupted? Besides Natlee championing the cause of the invisible people, what new political narrative have we been hearing?

Barbadian Media Houses Must Go to Venezuela and See for Themselves

Posted on March 11, 2018 by David

Submitted by David Comissiong, President of the Clement Payne Movement

From the left – Kaymar Jordan, Barbados Today, Anthony Bryan, Barbados Advocate, Anthony Shaw, Nation Publishing and David Ellis, Starcom Network

I have just returned to Barbados from a four day visit of Venezuela. My elder daughter — noted Barbadian dancer and choreographer Aisha Comissiong — accompanied me and we stayed at the Melia hotel in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.

This last trip to Venezuela was my fourth visit over the past 13 months. And even though our stay was relatively short, we were still able to get a general picture of the political and social condition of the country and to make a comparison with the image of Venezuela that the powerful Western news media is so determinedly and comprehensively foisting upon the people of the world.

It is against this background that I would like to publicly deprecate the fact that — unlike me — no Barbadian media house has found it possible to have any of their journalists make even one single fact-finding visit to Venezuela over the past four (4) years!

Venezuela — it should be noted — is a mere one hour’s airplane flight from Barbados if one is taking the shortest direct route. And if one is taking the Caribbean Airlines flight to Caracas via Trinidad and Tobago one is talking about a mere two and a half hour flight time.

Why then won’t such Barbadian media houses as the Nation Publishing Co., Starcom Network, the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, and Barbados Today simply send a journalist and a camera-person to Venezuela to see and assess the political and social conditions for themselves, rather than supinely relying on biased Western news agencies for their warped, propagandistic reporting on Venezuela?

Way back in the month of April 2014 I issued a public challenge to Ms Vivien Ann Gittens, the then Chief Executive Officer of the Nation Newspaper to send a journalistic team to Venezuela, and she refused to take up my challenge.

Subsequent to that, I spoke to the Nation’s current Managing Editor, Mr Eric Smith, and renewed my request for a Nation journalist and camera-person to go to Venezuela. Needless-to-say, he also rejected the request.

I made these requests extremely secure in the knowledge that any team of Barbadian journalists who go to Venezuela would come back with a story that is fundamentally at odds with the propagandistic reporting of CNN, Fox News, BBC, MSNBC, Reuters, Associated Press and all the other Western media conglomerates that have been enlisted in a campaign of “Psychological Warfare” against the Socialist Government of President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

And although I am not a journalist, please permit me to say for the record that I did not witness any violence on the streets of Caracas, nor did I observe any starving people eating out of garbage cans or surviving by hunting cats and dogs! So much for the ridiculous, sensationalist Western media reporting on Venezuela!

In fact, the situation that we experienced at the street level in Caracas was one of unremarkable normalcy.

Actually, the biggest controversial “talking-point” was related to the Venezuelan currency — the “bolivar” — which has been under attack by the formidable financial power of the US Government and financial establishment, leading to it sinking to a ludicrous exchange ratio with the US dollar.

This has led the Maduro government to respond by creating Venezuela’s own version of the “bitcoin” — a new so-called “crypto currency” known as the “Petro“. Hopefully, this innovation will bring some greater stability to the financial and currency situation in the country.

Of course, the currency situation, along with the trade and other sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the USA and other Western nations, and the machinations of the local Venezuelan commercial bourgeoisie, have combined to produce shortages of some consumer items within Venezuela.

And this, in turn, has led to some of the Venezuelan people — one third of whom were actually born in neighbouring Colombia or have direct family ties in Colombia — to travel back and forth across Venezuela’s border with Colombia to either shop in Colombia or to work for temporary periods (thereby earning currency with higher purchasing power) before returning to their permanent homes in Venezuela. This migrant phenomenon has been propagandistically portrayed as a “refugee crisis” by the Western media.

Aside from that ferment on the border with Colombia, Venezuela is quite normal and peaceful at the moment. After several months of Opposition orchestrated street-level violence last year — including the actual dousing with gasoline and setting fire to 29 human beings –President Maduro was able to bring peace to the country by invoking powers contained in the national Constitution to hold elections for and to establish a 545 member people-based “National Constituent Assembly”.

The elitist and fascist Opposition forces played their proverbial “last card” when they engaged in large scale orchestrated violence and intimidation to thwart the National Constituent Assembly elections, but came up against the might of over 8 Million Venezuelan citizens who were determined to cast their votes and thereby send a message that they had had enough of mindless, destructive, Opposition orchestrated violence, and wanted peace instead.

Unfortunately, none of this would be known to the vast majority of the Barbadian people, since all they would have heard from the biased news reports carried by our Barbadian media houses is that President Maduro is a violent dictator and that the Opposition forces in Venezuela engage in peaceful civilian demonstrations.

Actually, the very opposite is the case, but the Barbadian people will never get to know this reality unless their journalists actually go to Venezuela and see for themselves!

In just over two months time — on the 20th of May to be precise — the Venezuelan people will be going to the polls in a Presidential election that will pit President Maduro against former state governor Henry Falcon of the Progressive Advance Party, Reinaldo Quijada of the Unidad Politica Popular (UPP), and three independent candidates — Javier Bertucci, Francisco Visconti Osorio, and Luis Alejandro Ratti.

My plea to the Media Houses of Barbados is to go — go to Venezuela, go and observe the lead-up to the Elections and the Elections themselves — and report back to the Barbadian people what you see and experience yourself.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a member state of our Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and a sister nation of our Caribbean Civilization. Why then should we be depending on North American and European media corporations to tell us about our own brothers and sisters? No ! Go and see the truth for yourself !

Donald Trump Declared Persona Non Grata

Posted on January 20, 2018 by David

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President Donald Trump

DECLARATION OF THE PEOPLE OF THE CARIBBEAN

(A Declaration that was authored by the Pan-Africanist and Socialist popular forces of

the Caribbean nation of Barbados at Bridgetown, Barbados on Saturday 13th January 2018, and

submitted to the people and civil society organizations of the Caribbean for their endorsement and adoption)

U S PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAS BEEN DECLARED

“PERSONA NON GRATA” IN THE CARIBBEAN

We, the under-signed representatives of the sovereign people of the Caribbean, hereby declare that President Donald Trump of the United States of America is “Persona Non Grata” in our Caribbean region!

We further declare that as a “Persona Non Grata” President Donald Trump is NOT welcome in any territory of the Caribbean, and we hereby confirm that we – the Caribbean people – will petition our Governments, vehemently protest against any Trump visit, and engage in popular demonstrations designed to prevent President Donald Trump’s entry into any portion of the sovereign territory of our Caribbean region.

As sons and daughters of the Caribbean, we hereby affirm that the continent of Africa is the revered Motherland of a sizable majority of our people and that the Republic of Haiti — the seminal architect of the destruction of the system of chattel slavery that held our ancestors in bondage — is the foundational cornerstone of our Caribbean Civilization, and we therefore consider that any insult or attack that is directed at the African continent or at the Republic of Haiti is intrinsically an insult and attack that is directed at us as well.

We further affirm that we Caribbean people — in light of our history of experiencing, resisting, and surviving the most horrendous forms of enslavement and colonialism — consciously regard ourselves as champions and defenders of the dignity and fundamental human rights of all Black or African people, and that we are guided by an over-arching and non-negotiable principle of zero tolerance of any manifestation of anti-Black or anti-African racism or discrimination.

It is against this background that we, the people of the Caribbean, have determined that by describing the nations of Africa, the Republic of Haiti and the Central American nation of El Salvador as “shithole” countries, U S President Donald Trump has committed a despicable and unpardonable act of anti-Black, anti-African, anti-Brown racism that has served to further energize and fortify the vile White supremacy system that the said President Trump has self-consciously sought to champion and lead.

We — the sovereign people of the Caribbean– hereby declare to the entire world that we vehemently and unreservedly denounce President Donald Trump and the evil and inhuman White supremacy value system that he represents!

ENDORSED AND SUPPORTED BY THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS :

1. Clement Payne Movement of Barbados

2. Pan-African Coalition of Organizations (PACO)

3. Israel Lovell Foundation of Barbados.

4. Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration (CMPI)

5. Caribbean Chapter of the International Network in Defense of Humanity

6. Global Afrikan Congress

7. Caribbean Pan-African Network (CPAN)

8. Peoples Empowerment Party (Barbados)

9. Pan-African Federalist Movement–Caribbean Region Committee

9. International Committee of Black Peoples (Guadeloupe)

10. Jamaica/Cuba Friendship Association

11. Jamaica LANDS

12. SRDC Guadeloupe / Martinique Chapter

13. Ijahnya Christian (St. Kitts and Nevis)

14. Dorbrene O’Marde (Antigua and Barbuda)

15. NswtMwt Chenzira Davis Kahina (Ay Ay Virgin Islands-US)

16. Ivana Cardinale (Venezuela)

17. Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad & Tobago

18. Organization for the Victory of the People (Guyana)

19. Gerald Perreira (Guyana)

20 Black Consciousness Movement of Guyana

21. Conscious Lyrics Foundation (St. Martin)

22. Myrtha Delsume (Haiti)

23 Anthony “Gabby” Carter (Barbados)

24. Cuban /Barbadian Friendship Association

25. Friends of Venezuela Solidarity Committee (Barbados)

26. Maxi Baldeo (Barbados)

27. Dr. Nancy Fergusson Jacobs (Barbados)

28. Ayo Moore (Barbados)

29. Haiti / Jamaica Society

30. Anthony Reid (Barbados)

31.Cheryl Hunte (Barbados)

32. Hamilton Lashley (former Barbados Minister of Government)

33. Erica Williams (Guyana)

34. Kilanji Bangarah (Namibia / Jamaica)

35. International Movement for Reparations (Martinique)

36. Alex Sujah Reiph (St Martin)

37. Thelma Gill-Barnett (Barbados)

38. Khafra Kambon (Trinidad and Tobago)

39. Margaret Harris (Barbados)

40. Jacqueline Jacqueray (Guadeloupe)

41. Garcin Malsa (Martinique)

42. National Committee for Reparations (Martinique)

43. Officers and Members of the Global Afrikan Congressuk (GACuk)

44. Jamaica Peace Council

45. Ingrid Blackwood (Jamaica)

46. Glenroy Watson (President, RMT’s London Transport Regional Council / Jamaica)

47. Paul Works (Jamaica)

48. Abu Akil (United Kingdom / Jamaica)

49. Kwame Howell (Barbados)

50. Ian Marshall (Barbados)

51. Michael Heslop (Jamaica)

52. Andrea King (Barbados)

54. Cikiah Thomas (Canada / Jamaica)

55. Bobby Clarke (Barbados)

56. Trevor Prescod, Member of Parliament (Barbados)

57. David Denny (Barbados)

58. John Howell (Barbados)

59. Lalu Hanuman (Barbados / Guyana)

60. Onkphra Wells (Barbados)

61. Rahmat Jean-Pierre (Barbados)

62. Philip Springer (Barbados)

63. Cedric Jones (Guyana)

64. David Comissiong (Barbados)

65. Selrach Belfield (Guyana)

66. Kathy “Ife” Harris (Barbados)

67. Andrea Quintyne (Barbados)

68. Felipe Noguera (Trinidad & Tobago)

69. Suzanne Laurent (Martinique)

70. Line Hilgros Makeda Kandake (Guadeloupe)

71. Kerin Davis (Jamaica)

72. Delvina E. Bernard (Africentric Learning Institute, Nova Scotia, Canada)

73. Muhammad Nassar (Barbados)

74. Anthony Fraser (Guyana)

75. Troy Pontin (Guyana)

76. Nigel Cadogan (Barbados)

77. Ras Iral Jabari (Barbados)

78. Nicole Cage (Martinique)

79. Robert Romney (St Martin / Guadeloupe)

80. Anne Braithwaite (Guyana)

81. Icil Phillips (Barbados)

82. Marie Jose Ferjule (Martinique)

83. Errol Paul (Guyana)

84. Erskine Bayne (Barbados)

85. Robert Gibson (Barbados)

86. Alister Alexander (Barbados)

87. Mark Adamson (Barbados)

88. Junior Jervis (Guyana)

89. Lee Bing (Guyana)

90. Akram Sabree (Guyana)

91. Rudolph Solbiac (Martinique)

92. Stephane Eveillard (Haiti)

93. Suzy Sorel (Martinique)

94. Luciani Lanoir (Martinique)

95. Ras Bongo Wisely (St Lucia)

96. Caribbean Rastafari Organization

97. Dr. Rodney Worrell (Barbados)

98. David Bannister (Barbados)

99. Ismay Griffith (Barbados)

100. Edson Crawford (Barbados)

101. Guy M A Vala (Guadeloupe)

102. Urielle Guillaume

103. Laetitia Fernandez

104. Fraiderik Jean-Pierre

105. Vivi Romney (Guadeloupe)

106. Emmanel Fleurant (France)

107. Colette Galiby

108. Monique Ravenet

109. Djaka Apakoua

110. Laura De Lacaze

110. El B Gourdin

112. Joseph Jacques

113. Bella Nazaire (Martinique)

114. Jean-Claude Dorvil (Haiti / Canada)

115. Walter Thermidor (Haiti)
116. Eugene Norden
117. New National Vision (Trinidad and Tobago)
118. Hope McNish (Jamaica)
119. Graham Bannister (Barbados)
120. Sandra Richards (UK /Caribbean)
121. Renette Joachim (Haiti)
122. Winifred Galvan
123. Jean Assoua Anoh
124. Fleurime Remax (Haiti)
125. Herold Jean- Francois (Haiti)
126. Arthur Hatstant (Haiti)
127. Max Tanic
128. Baptiste Snel

129. Emmanuel Cherilus
130. Carl Innov
131. Abel Nazaire (former Minister of Youth and Sports – Haiti)
132. Lucien Beaugendre
133. Guillaume – Emmanuel Quitman
134. J. R. Danglades
135. Sara Diane
136. Modelyne Djoby
137. Hilo King (Benin)
138. Colette Galiby (French Guiana )
139. Dordy Desmornes (Canada)
140. Victorin Alex
141. Serge Bellegarde (Haiti)
142. Keith Ellis (Jamaica)
143. Zilpha Ellis (Canada)
144. Arnold Minors (Bermuda /Canada)
145. Laurent Titus
146. Odney Odly
147. Marie- Frantz Goram
148. Samuel Joseph (Haiti)
149. Bernadette Edne
150. Le Comite Directore de la Solidarite des Jeunes Progressistes d’Haiti
151. Pompous Frantzcell
152. Danielle Edmond
153. Joycelyn Jaubert (Martinique)
154. Gilberte Garo
155. Laura De Lacaze (Guadeloupe)
156. Ajani Ausaru (Jamaica)
157. Guy Joseph (Haiti)
158. Yoyi
159. Isaac Vincent
160. Noee Degbe
161. Noura Jernidier
162. Martine Fourcand (Haiti / Canada)
163. Siba Pascal Guilavogui
164. Mylene Lackmy
165. Front Unifie de Liberation Nationale d’Haiti
166. Wendell Claude (Haiti)
167. Tanoh Kwa Frederic

168. Keturah Cecilia Babb (Dominica / Barbados)

169. Jacques Yvon Pierre (Haiti)

170. Pendant Felix

171. Sylviane Basileu

172. Gaelle Choisne

173. Groupe d’intervention en development local et durable (Haiti)

174. Alexendrite Delilac

175. Jacky Joseph

176. Manuel Morvan

177. Alann Fils Aime

178. Jean Pierre Raynold

179. Unite de Protection et de Defenses de Droits Humains (Haiti)

180. Jean Jacques Feliho

181. Dieujuste Beby

182. Jainor Delor

183. Rudolph Amisial

184. Pierre Smith Jean Louis

185. Gerard Fidelin

186. Hernandez Sicard (Haiti)

187. Jean Claude Henri

188. Danielle Valere

189. Pierre Mary Audate

190. David Abdulah, Movement for Social Justice, Trinidad and Tobago

191. Florvilus Patrice (Haiti)

192. Francois Adren of Pikilz.com (Haiti)

193. Rev. Lejean Louis (Haiti)

194. House of Professions and Trades (Haiti)

Black Slavery is Back

Posted on December 1, 2017 by David

140

SAY SOMETHING!!!!!

The press is saying very little about this! Repost!!!!! This is no laughing matter! I’m so grieved! We WILL NOT be silent! This must stop!!! So what are we gonna DO? #REPOST #Repost @bishopjakes (@get_repost)
・・・

The slave trade that is going on in Libya, and even globally, is an atrocity that has to STOP. We, as a people have to partner together to put an end to this horrific disregard for human life. Here are a few ways you can help: —Use YOUR voice (Social Media, your community, etc.) to raise awareness! —Support organizations that give aid to countries from which migrants are fleeing. —Contact your local officials and become an advocate in the fight against slavery & human trafficking.

We have got to say something…we CANNOT be silent. #Libya #HumanTrafficking #SlaveryInLibya

Modern Day Slavery Exposed in Libya!

Posted on November 14, 2017 by David

The following video shows what is being reported by CNN as a slave auction in Libya. Yes human beings being sold as merchandise. Yes we are living in 2017.

“I’m at $1500 n I wan $1550, $1550, bid on $1550, I’m at $1550 would you go $1550, $1550 …”

Caribbean Peace Conference Against War Mongering…

Posted on October 14, 2017 by David

Submitted by Gerald A. Perreira, Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), Guyana

Bridgetown Declaration I recently attended the first Caribbean Peace Conference in Bridgetown, Barbados, October 6-7th, 2017. The theme of the Conference was : RESISTING NUCLEAR AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER: BUILDING PEACE IN THE CARIBBEAN. Attendees included representatives from Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Venezuela, and Barbados.

This initiative emerged out of the World Peace Council (WPC) Assembly that was held in Brazil in November 2016 and was sponsored by the Barbados-based Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration (CMPI), the Cuban Movement for Peace and People’s Sovereignty (Mov Paz), and the Caribbean Chapter of the International Network in Defense of Humanity, .

The purpose of this Conference was to consolidate a serious Caribbean Peace Movement equipped with a concrete agenda and guiding philosophy.

Donald Trump’s war mongering speech at the UN, and the ever-increasing fascism of the Euro/American Empire’s program for world domination and control, no matter the human and environmental cost, set the grave context for the gathering and the urgency for action. The degree of urgency was best summed up by one of our most heroic brothers and leaders, the late, great, Fidel Castro. A firm advocate of peace in this region, not only in words but in deeds, he warned at the Rio Earth Summit, in 1992, that action to avoid environmental disaster must happen immediately. His prophetic words, “tomorrow is too late”, came to mind as we recently witnessed the hurricanes that devastated a number of Caribbean countries. It has never been more clear that the survival of Caribbean nation-states depends on our ability to integrate so as to speak with one voice, as a Caribbean power-bloc. Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and other leaders have spoken about this necessity. However, real and meaningful unity continues to allude us.

Over the course of the two days we discussed a range of pressing topics impacting our region: What it means to be a Zone of Peace; Trump, the USA and the Caribbean today; Ending Caribbean Colonialism; the Problem of Foreign Military Presences in the Caribbean; Venezuela as a case study of the tactics and strategy of Imperialism; Combating the blockade of Cuba and fighting for the devolution of Guantanamo Naval base; addressing the Haiti–Dominican Republic conflict; the Media, Psychological Warfare and Cultural Penetration; and Combating Economic Crisis and Social Collapse in the Caribbean.

Please find attached the BRIDGETOWN DECLARATION that was produced by the delegates to this Conference. Please circulate as widely as possible.

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Submitted by Steven Kaszab

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Submitted by Caribbean Network for Solidarity with Cuba (CNSC)

@networkforsolidaritywithCuba

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Submitted by Pachamama

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Submitted by Pachamama

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Submitted by Caleb Pilgrim

WE SHOULD NOT OUTSOURCE OUR CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS TO THE USA or any other state. To do so is unnecessarily shabby, insulting and demeaning.

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Submitted Caleb Pilgrim

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Statement on the second meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Proceedings of the meeting

Conclusions and advice

Advice to WHO

To the People’s Republic of China

To all countries

To the global community

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Source: Al Jazeera investigation (YouTube)

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BACKGROUNDER: FAQ

Who is Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org is an international, non-profit organization dedicated to a healthy planet.

– We are volunteers from around the world.

– We are committed to the immediate realization of the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary (MAPS) to protect all life.

– Our long-term vision is to create a Global Peace Sanctuary, to address poverty and hunger around the world.

Who founded Parvati.org?

– Parvati.org was founded in 2014 by the Canadian musician, author and activist Parvati, who gave the northernmost musical performance ever to raise awareness of the melting polar ice.

What is MAPS?

– MAPS, the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary, declares the entire Arctic Ocean north of the Arctic Circle an ocean preserve.

– It stops all activity in the Arctic Ocean that harms this vulnerable ecosystem.

– MAPS is the largest ocean preserve in history, representing approximately 3% of the world’s oceans. This fits naturally with the United Nations’ commitment to protect 10% of our oceans by 2020.

– Leading biologists call for us to protect 50% of the entire planet immediately to prevent mass extinction.

– MAPS is not an end goal, but a baseline necessity.

What does MAPS do?

– By making Arctic seabed oil and gas unavailable for extraction and exploitation, MAPS will accelerate a global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.

– As countries come together to sign the Treaty, our world moves from short-term individual gain to long-term collective good.

– MAPS is practical. It’s effective. And it’s immediately achievable.

Why do we need MAPS?

– The Arctic Ocean ice is our planet’s air conditioning system. It balances weather patterns globally so that we have the food and resources we need to survive.

– The white ice reflects 50% of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere. But it is melting fast. – There is now 75% less summer ice in the Arctic Ocean than there was 50 years ago. The open ocean absorbs 90% of the sun’s rays, and today parts of the Arctic Ocean are now 4º C too hot.

– The Arctic Ocean is under threat as never before by corporations and governments that seek to profit from the unprecedented loss of ice.