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Che Guevara

Hugo Chavez and the Global Poverty Conspiracy

Greg Palast
Vice
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:01 UTC
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London, February 2002. A tiny, dark and intense woman waited at the end of a lecture until I was alone, brought her face strangely close to mine and whispered, "President Chavez needs you. Right now. To Caracas. Right now. You must come to see him."

President Who? All I knew about this Hugo Chavez guy was that he was an Latin-American jefe, led a bungled coup and was filled with a lot of populist bullshit and a lot of oil.

And I also knew that no one at BBC Newsnight was going to blow the budget for me to fly to South America to talk about a nation that 92 percent of our viewers couldn't find on a map and wouldn't want to.

"Send me an email."

"There will be a coup. March 15."

"The Ides of March. I like that. Aren't there always coups down there?"

"They'll kill him, undo everything. He needs you to stop it, he wants to explain it to you because he knows you understand."

Actually, you'd be surprised at the amount I don't understand at all. "So talk."

She did - for four hours - and wore me down into submission. But back at Newsnight I looked like an idiot when March 15 came and went with just a little gunfire in Caracas.

Three weeks later, the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was kidnapped and held hostage by the head of Venezuela's Chamber of Commerce. Suddenly the BBC had to get me on a plane.
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Vader

'Obey': film based on Chris Hedges' 'Death of the Liberal Class'


Truthdig
Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:55 UTC
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British filmmaker Temujin Doran has released a new movie that is based on the book The Death of the Liberal Class by Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges. The film, titled Obey, explores the rise of the corporate state and the future of obedience in a world filled with unfettered capitalism, worsening inequality and environmental changes.

Warning: Viewers may find some of the clips in the film - which you can watch in its entirety below - disturbing.


Comment: Just replace 'global warming' with 'Earth changes brought on by cometary intercession' and the picture is complete:

Celestial Intentions: Comets and the Horns of Moses

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Cult

The "Dirty War" Pope Francis and how the Church is and has always been in alliance with the despot

Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Website
Sat, 16 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
For over a week, the media has subjected the public to a tidal wave of euphoric banality on the Roman Catholic Church's selection of a new pope.
Vaticano
© Desconocido
This non-stop celebration of the dogma and ritual of an institution that for centuries has been identified with oppression and backwardness is stamped with a deeply undemocratic character. It is reflective of the rightward turn of the entire political establishment and its repudiation of the principles enshrined in the US Constitution, including the wall of separation between church and state.

What a far cry from the political ideals that animated those who drafted that document. It was Thomas Jefferson's well-founded opinion that "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."

Jefferson's view - and the reactionary character of the media's sycophantic coverage - finds no more powerful conformation than in the identity of the new pope, officially celebrated as a paragon of "humility" and "renewal."
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Radar

CIA may target Syrian extremists with drones: LA Times


Raw Story
Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:54 UTC
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The US Central Intelligence Agency is collecting information on Islamic radicals in Syria for possible lethal drone strikes against them at a later stage, The Los Angeles Times reported late Friday.

Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said President Barack Obama had not authorized any drone missile strikes in Syria yet, and none were under consideration.

However CIA's Counterterrorism Center, which runs drone programs targeting militants in Pakistan and Yemen, had recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence gathering on militants in Syria.

The targeting officers have formed a unit with colleagues who were tracking Al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq.
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MIB

Tracing the origins of 'Muslim Terrrorism' and the 'War on Terror': Bin Laden family ties to major U.S. arms dealer, the Carlyle Group

Daniel Golden, James Bandler & Marcus Walker
Wall Street Journal
Thu, 27 Sep 2001 17:44 UTC
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© MASTER SGT. JOSE LOPEZ JR.
Dick Cheney meets with Prince Sultan, Minister of Defense and Aviation in Saudi Arabia to discuss how to handle the invasion of Kuwait 1 December 1990. OBL's Mujahideen in Afghanistan (used to collapse the Soviet Union) were collected, trained, funded and processed through Saudi Arabia, the U.S.'s main regional ally since the 1973 oil crisis.
If the U.S. boosts defense spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden 's alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: Mr. bin Laden 's family.

Among its far-flung business interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian clan -- which says it is estranged from Osama -- is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies.

Through this investment and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family has become acquainted with some of the biggest names in the Republican Party. In recent years, former President Bush , ex-Secretary of State James Baker and ex-Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci have made the pilgrimage to the bin Laden family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Mr. Bush makes speeches on behalf of Carlyle Group and is senior adviser to its Asian Partners fund, while Mr. Baker is its senior counselor. Mr. Carlucci is the group's chairman.

Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden , who built the family's $5 billion business, Saudi Binladin Group, largely with construction contracts from the Saudi government. Osama worked briefly in the business and is believed to have inherited as much as $50 million from his father in cash and stock, although he doesn't have access to the shares, a family spokesman says. Because his Saudi citizenship was revoked in 1994, Mr. bin Laden is ineligible to own assets in the kingdom, the spokesman added.
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Airplane

Northern Ireland police to use drones at G8 summit


Guardian
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:34 UTC
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© Keith Morris/Alamy
The drones could cost the PSNI up to £1m.
Police force want to buy two remote-controlled aircraft to assist with security at this summer's economic summit

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is expected to buy two drones for the G8 summit in County Fermanagh in June, it emerged tonight. The aircraft can relay live pictures from high-quality cameras and are flown remotely.

It was reported that they could cost around £1m.
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Heart - Black

Texan politician under fire for opposing public breastfeeding


RT
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:30 UTC
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Texas Rep. Debbie Riddle
Texas Rep. Debbie Riddle has infuriated women throughout the US: the lawmaker has voiced her opposition to breastfeeding in public, claiming that women should be "modest and respectful".

In a Facebook post that Riddle has since deleted, the representative expressed her opposition to House Bill 1706, which would allow a mother to breastfeed her child in public. The bill would also allow parents who believe their breastfeeding rights have been violated to file a lawsuit.

"Now, I am all in favor of breast feeding - however it is important for women to be modest while feeding their baby - and most women are modest and respectful," Riddle wrote on her Facebook page. "But, a bill that would allow for lawsuits if one 'interfered' with a woman breast feeding is really going a bit far."

She also said that a business owner should have a right to object to a woman breastfeeding on his property, and that women who breastfeed in public are "inconsiderate".
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V

Federal judge bans 'unconstitutional' national security letters

Emily Mullen
Raw Story
Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:27 UTC
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© Shutterstock
A judge in the 9th Circuit Court ruled on Friday that "ultra-secret" national security letters (NSL) that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconditional violation of free speech, Wired.com reported on Friday

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing all NSLs, which comes a shocking blow to the Obama administration's surveillance practices. The order, however,is stayed for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

"It's a huge deal to say you are in violation of federal law having to do with a national security investigation," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a challenge to NSLs on behalf of an unknown telecom that received an NSL in 2011. "That is extraordinarily aggressive from my standpoint. They're saying you are violating the law by challenging our authority here."
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Mr. Potato

Our man Bin Laden: 'Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace'

Robert Fisk
The Independent, UK
Mon, 06 Dec 1993 13:24 UTC
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The original Independent article by Robert Fisk
The Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan. Robert Fisk met him in Almatig, Sudan.

Osama Bin Laden sat in his gold-fringed robe, guarded by the loyal Arab mujahedin who fought alongside him in Afghanistan. Bearded, taciturn figures - unarmed, but never more than a few yards from the man who recruited them, trained them and then dispatched them to destroy the Soviet army - they watched unsmiling as the Sudanese villagers of Almatig lined up to thank the Saudi businessman who is about to complete the highway linking their homes to Khartoum for the first time in history.

With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom. 'We have been waiting for this road through all the revolutions in Sudan,' a sheikh said. 'We waited until we had given up on everybody - and then Osama Bin Laden came along.'

Outside Sudan, Mr Bin Laden is not regarded with quite such high esteem. The Egyptian press claims he brought hundreds of former Arab fighters back to Sudan from Afghanistan, while the Western embassy circuit in Khartoum has suggested that some of the 'Afghans' whom this Saudi entrepreneur flew to Sudan are now busy training for further jihad wars in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt. Mr Bin Laden is well aware of this. 'The rubbish of the media and the embassies,' he calls it. 'I am a construction engineer and an agriculturalist. If I had training camps here in Sudan, I couldn't possibly do this job.'

Comment: Zbigniew Brzezinski: ' How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen'
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
The Saudi Connection: Bin Laden Family Is Tied To U.S. Group

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Bad Guys

Monsanto's patents on life

Katherine Paul & Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association
Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:34 UTC
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Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments in a seed patent infringement case that pits a small farmer from Indiana, 75-year old Vernon Hugh Bowman, against biotech goliath Monsanto. Reporters from the New York Times to the Sacramento Bee dissected the legal arguments. They speculated on the odds. They opined on the impact a Monsanto loss might have, not only on genetically modified crops, but on medical research and software.

What most of them didn't report on is the absurdity - and the danger - of allowing companies to patent living organisms in the first place, and then use those patents to attempt to monopolize world seed and food production.

The case boils down to this. Monsanto sells its patented genetically engineered (GE) "Roundup Ready" soybean seeds to farmers under a contract that prohibits the farmers from saving the next-generation seeds and replanting them. Farmers like Mr. Bowman who buy Monsanto's GE seeds are required to buy new seeds every year. For years, Mr. Bowman played by Monsanto's rules. Then in 2007, he bought an unmarked mix of soybeans from a grain elevator and planted them. Some of the soybeans turned out to have been grown from Monsanto's patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds. Monsanto sued Mr. Bowman, won, and the court ordered the farmer to pay the company $84,000. Mr. Bowman appealed, arguing that he unknowingly bought soybeans grown from Monsanto's seeds, not the seeds themselves, and that therefore the law of "patent exhaustion" applies.

The press and public have fixated on the sticky legal details of the case, and the classic David vs. Goliath nature of the fight. But win or lose, Mr. Bowman's predicament is part of a much bigger problem.
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