Open Discussion Archive 3
Hi Folks
This is the ARCHIVE of the Open Discussion forum from February 4 2011 to August 25, 2012
NO FURTHER COMMENTS ARE ALLOWED HERE…
We’re leaving it up for reference as there are some excellent conversations and articles submitted by BFP readers over the years. You will still be able to read and link to these reader comments, but for current discussions please see the “Open Discussion” page.
Thanks!
Barbados Tourism Authority – still room for improvement?
Had a look at the web site for Destinations – i.e. a holiday/travel show held in London. Wasn’t exactly impressed with the Barbados section on the web site. Would it have been too hard to add a paragraph about how great Barbados is and contact details?
http://www.destinationsshow.com/london/caribbean/
I really like Mount Gay Rum’s ad with the bit Barbados. I think something similar would get some good mileage outside Barbados.
Plastic bags. Another disaster for the enviroment can live in the soil for ever never seems to disintegrate.Disaster for plant and oceanlife. Another way of mans disrepect and disregard for nature how SAD!
These protesters in the streets of Egypt are clearly asking for reform through democracy Is this american form of democracy or Islamic theocracy
I’m hearing that the Civil Servants are getting back their Tax Free Allowances due to Union pressure, but private sector employees will have to suck salt.
Is this true? If so, it possible cause for protest marches.
In the USA Peak Happiness occurred way back in 1956, and happiness has been on the decline ever since (according to a new documentary, The Economics of Happiness)
Green Monkey,
Thanks for that article as it is very thought-provoking. We’ll feature it and direct our readers there.
Clive
How markets may respond to resource scarcity: The Goldilocks syndrome
by Richard Heinberg
Once upon a time (about a dozen years past), oil sold for $20 a barrel in inflation-adjusted figures, and The Economist magazine ran a cover story explaining why petroleum prices were set to go much lower.[1] The U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency were forecasting that, by 2010, oil would probably still be selling for $20 a barrel, but they also considered highly pessimistic scenarios in which the price could rise as high as $30 (those forecasts are in 1996 dollars).[2]
Instead, as the new decade wore on, the price of oil soared relentlessly, reaching levels far higher than the “pessimistic” $30 range. Demand for the resource was growing, especially in China and some oil exporting nations like Saudi Arabia; meanwhile, beginning in 2005, actual world oil production hit a plateau. Seeing a perfect opportunity (a necessary commodity with stagnating supply and growing demand), speculators drove the price up even further.
As prices lofted, oil companies and private investors started funding expensive projects to explore for oil in remote and barely accessible places, or to make synthetic liquid fuels out of lower-grade carbon materials like bitumen, coal, or kerogen.
But then in 2008, just as the price of a barrel of oil reached its all-time high of $147, the economies of the OECD countries crashed. Airlines and trucking companies downsized and motorists stayed home. Demand for oil plummeted. So did oil’s price, bottoming out at $32 at the end of 2008.
But with prices this low, investments in hard-to-find oil and hard-to-make substitutes began to look tenuous, so tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new energy projects were canceled or delayed. Yet the industry had been counting on those projects to maintain a steady stream of liquid fuels a few years out, so worries about a future supply crunch began to make headlines.[3]
It is the financial returns on their activities that motivate oil companies to make the major investments necessary to find and produce oil. There is a long time lag between investment and return, and so price stability is a necessary condition for further investment.
Here was a conundrum: low prices killed future supply, while high prices killed immediate demand. Only if oil’s price stayed reliably within a narrow—and narrowing—“Goldilocks” band could serious problems be avoided. Prices had to stay not too high, not too low—just right—in order to avert economic mayhem.[4]
SNIP
By mid-2009 the oil price had settled within the “Goldilocks” range—not too high (so as to kill the economy and, with it, fuel demand), and not too low (so as to scare away investment in future energy projects and thus reduce supply). That just-right price band appeared to be between $60 and $80 a barrel.[7]
How long prices can stay in or near the Goldilocks range is anyone’s guess (as of this writing, oil is trading in New York for over $90 per barrel), but as declines in production in the world’s old super-giant oilfields continue to accelerate and exploration costs continue to mount, the lower boundary of that just-right range will inevitably continue to migrate upward. And while the world economy remains frail, its vulnerability to high energy prices is more pronounced, so that even $80-85 oil could gradually weaken it further, choking off signs of recovery.[8]
In other words, oil prices have effectively put a cap on economic recovery.[9] This problem would not exist if the petroleum industry could just get busy and make a lot more oil, so that each unit would be cheaper. But despite its habitual use of the terms “produce” and “production,” the industry doesn’t make oil, it merely extracts the stuff from finite stores in the Earth’s crust. As we have already seen, the cheap, easy oil is gone. Economic growth is hitting the Peak Oil ceiling.
As we consider other important resources, keep in mind that the same economic phenomenon may play out in these instances as well, though perhaps not as soon or in as dramatic a fashion. Not many resources, when they become scarce, have the capability of choking off economic activity as directly as oil shortages can. But as more and more resources acquire the Goldilocks syndrome, general commodity prices will likely spike and crash repeatedly, making a hash of efforts to stabilize the economy.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-02-21/how-markets-may-respond-resource-scarcity-goldilocks-syndrome
So, Britain Sent The SAS To Train Gaddafi’s Elite Troops In 2009 & Sold Him Sniper Rifles In 2010.
This post at Democratic Underground gives links to 3 news stories about UK arms deals with Libya, including this one:
DU thread at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439×496553
Here’s another link to the story on the UK sending sniper rifles to Gadaffi’s army, the link posted above no longer seems to work.
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/britain-sent-sniper-rifles-to-gaddafi-just-before-his-troops-began-killing/
Here’s a link to a page with some documentaries on the policing methods used at the Toronto G20 meeting last year (see below). The first video on the page is a recent (Canadian) CBC documentary by their current affairs program “The Fifth Estate,” and if you page down further at the same link there is a second, more detailed, longer documentary – [b][Toronto G2o Exposed[/b] also posted.
What really stands out in both videos is that what seems to have really got the ball rolling at this event was an initial riot over a period of several hours when masked Black Block anarchists went on an unchecked rampage, smashing store windows and setting abandoned cop cars on fire. We had been told via the media that the number of riot cops available (cops had been flown in from cities all over Canada) and the number of street security cameras and overall security measures for this G20 meeting were unprecedented in history, yet the cops appeared to be very laid back at this violence and property destruction and just watched it proceed over a period of hours from the sidelines (and presumably on their security camera screens in the command center and overflying “eye in the sky” helicopters) with a rather surprisingly nonchalant attitude, making no attempt to intervene and bring it to a halt. The riot ended when the rioters apparently got tired of breaking store windows and throwing bricks and decided it was time to go home.
However, following the conclusion of that riot and the consequent expressions of shock and horror by the politicians and corporate media commentators at this wanton violence inflicted on the city , the cops seemed to take an especial delight in being unnecessarily brutal and vicious towards the non-violent protests that followed. There were mass arrests of peaceful protesters and even bystanders who had been going about their own business and unfortunately found themselves by circumstance near a location where the cops were exercising their prerogative to “serve and protect” by bashing peaceful, non-violent people about their heads and bodies with truncheons, smashing in their faces with riot shields, shooting them with rubber bullets and trampling them with police horses and then arresting them by the busload to hold them in inhumane conditions in vastly overcrowded, temporary holding cells. The temporary holding cells were cages erected in a warehouse in the East end of the city where food, water, access to lawyers, and medication for chronic conditions and police inflicted injuries were withheld for extended periods.
Buy far, the large majority of those who had their civil rights arbitrarily suspended by the police were later let go and all charges dropped. After the viewing the evidence in the videos, one can only wonder if this exercise was nothing more than a show of force by the police and the authorities to get the Toronto population accustomed to the fact that their civil rights granted under the Canadian Constitution by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms could be withheld at any time at the whim of the police and authorities and to intimidate the population at large into refraining from taking parts in this and future protests to air their legitimate grievances. Just goes to show that even in a civilized, supposedly “democratic” country like Canada it would be very unwise to assume that accustomed civil liberties and personal freedoms will always be there for us when we need them.
Watch the documentaries and see for yourself (remember you have to page down for the 2nd, more detailed video): http://www.torontog20exposed.ca/
Green Monkey, Yes !
Couple days ago we were seeing, on BBC TV here in Barbados, inside one of Qaddafi’s armories in Libya. The British reporter was showing us munitions that had come from all over the ammunition – producing world.
But good, go ahead and knock the British, the Canadians, the Americans. They should have all known better.
Of course, nobody knows better when there are big bucks to be made, though blood be the tragedy of the outcome. That is the way of The Human, ain’t it ?
Green Monkey, Of Mass Hysteria and Freedom !
You have lived around like I have. You should know from having seen, or heard about such demonstrations, that there are always just a few people who go to such gatherings , hell bent to stir up and cause as much trouble as possible, trouble that quickly spreads into a mass crowd -hysteria where even normal people start behaving like they would never normally behave.
I don’t feel sorry for people caught up in such demonstrations.
I don’t feel sorry for them in the least. Port Of Spain Trinidad, was ram-sacked twice, because there were not enough police or army to prevent it. Many women were raped, many stores plundered and burned, and nobody, to this day actually, knows how many people lost their lives.
From a security point of view, it is just about impossible to know how tough you are going to have to be. And after all, those in charge of security are also human and can get scared, badly wounded, and lose their lives.
There are better ways to demonstrate, and destroying a city and property that the tax payer has to buy and pay for,… is not the way to go about it.
If you decide you are going in such a crowd, in this day and age,
then ‘One day, one day,… Congo tay’ . ( That’s what the old people say ). And your protest had better be about a problem of life or death, like the people in North Africa who are giving their lives for Freedom.
Colin, did you actually watch any of the 2 videos? Did you watch the 2nd of the 2 videos I mentioned above posted at TorontoG20exposed.ca which examined the use of masked, undercover, rock carrying policemen as agents provacteurs at a similiar protest gathering a few years earlier in Montebello, Quebec?
I would have to assume that you think it was good policing for the thousands of riot cops in Toronto for the event (there was absolutely NO lack of police in Toronto for that G20 meetup; plenty of extra police had been flown in from cities all across Canada) to sit on their thumbs as they did and not intervene at all as a couple hundred Black Block anarchists went on an unopposed rampage over a period of several hours up and down the streets of Toronto setting abandoned police cars on fire, breaking store windows and damaging private and public property and then to allow these rioters to disperse without hindrance. Their laid back approach to riot control, however, did produce, whether intentional or not (personally, I think it was absolutely intentional), a knee jerk reaction from the politicians, media and many members of the public similar to your own: i.e. the vast majority of protesters are probably just a bunch of hoodlums determined to engage in violence and destroy property so who gives a rat’s behind how extreme or brutal the cops become in dealing with these hooligans (even the ones pretending to be non-violent). Let them do whatever it takes to keep them off the streets. And the occasional passer by who was just going about personal business and got roped in and thrown into an overcrowded lockup along with the protesters and a trumped up charge and denied the right to contact a lawyer, too bad for him/her. Should’ve known better than to go out that day.
It’s good for the cops bash in their heads with truncheons , burn their eyes with pepper spray , arbitrarily haul them off to jail under cooked up charges etc. That’ll teach them that in polite societies like ours, the government loves us all and only wants what’s best for us, so if you think the government is doing something wrong just stay home and STFU.
Apparently a male policeman punching and beating up on a slight young woman s (not resisting arrest) while sitting on top of her as she is held down in the back of a van by his fellow “peace” officers as she was being carted away to the detention facilities, is a quite legitimate form of policing according to the Colin Beadon concept of law and order.
I wonder if you would be so cavalier about it, if it was your “naive” daughter or sister who was silly enough to believe she had a right to peaceful assembly and protest without being beatup and arbitrarily carted off to jail by police goons. Well anyway, I guess she’ll learn her lesson that she has no business publicly meeting with like minded individuals to let the government know that some of the electorate are displeased with they way the country is being governed. After all, the civil rights like the right to free assembly, free speech etc. supposedly protected by the Canadian constitution are not there to be taken literally for heavens sake. They are just there for their PR value in convincing the Libyans, Tunisians and Egyptians why ours is the better way.
In my opinion, your type of thinking, Colin, is precisely what Benjamin Franklin was speaking about when he said: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Green Monk,
You need to read mine again. And please don’t assume by accusing and twisting what I have written, that I am all for,…. the heavy hand of the law.
One of the subjects they don’t teach in Universities, is what happens in very large crowds when the hysteria starts, and about the few trouble makers who start destroying public property, burning, looting, hurling rocks, et al, and how swiftly more and more people get sucked into the act of riot, as though they are making out against the king, or government, or whoever else runs that country. It does not take much to get a crowd All Turn wild.
The bottom line is that the public, you and I, pay for all that damage, all those hospital bills and burned police and ambulance cars, the buses, the shop windows, the clean up, the striped shops, those who find themselves in jail, all those who find themselves without jobs because their work places were burned or destroyed. We have to pay for their ‘out of work’ dole too,
and for all the court cases. We pay for all that in the end, and all because a few misfits kicked off a revolution against authority. We pay, you and I, Monk.
We pay for such idiocy, and to make the problem far worse, the world is in population explosion, and so, much like a huge herd of elephants set on rampage, the huge crowds today, once allowed to turn ugly, far too often become uncontrollable monster.
Green Monkey. And Safe Passage.
Yes, I did look at the two sites, and very informative they were too.
Many years ago I told all my family and friends, to stay away from large crowds ( except in Carnival, that is ) . My father, a policeman all his life, had pointed out to me the many reasons for giving demonstrating crowds a wide birth.
There are always three sides in a demonstrating crowd, those for, those against, and the law whose duty it is to keep the peace, if possible.
The probability of kinetic energy unleashed, is thee-sided, and anything can very quickly happen. You are just as likely to get a brick thrown by the opposition from the pavement as you pass, as to collect when the real fun starts, a baton behind your left ear from the Fuzz.
So in my ever-constant interest, study, and at times in the past, actual viewing -participation of what goes on across the world, I have found my father’s words to have been peremptory. The oilfields have thrust me into as much danger through my life, as anybody needs, and a split head would be far from appreciated.
I hope, Green Monk, you will have your chance to demonstrate for all you are worth in a tight- massed crowd, where you can smell the adrenalin and often the pee when things start going wrong. And I’ll wish you safe passage.
Colin,
My main concern in posting these videos about the G20 policing was to wake people to how they are manipulated either with outright staged events by the authorities and governments or by these authorities handling/manipulating ongoing events in such a way that an unacknowledged but desired outcome is the result. That desired outcome is kept hidden from the public at large because they know that the public will not necessarily agree with their desired goal or with the methods used to attain it.
In this case 100 or so (as per news media, and bystander reports) rabble rousing, Black Bloc anarchists were allowed to rampage for a couple of hours through the Toronto streets damaging public and private property, and presumably putting the safety of innocent passers by at risk by throwing paving stones etc. as they went along. Yet with an available 16000 police in Toronto that day, including RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and the additional police specially brought in from cities across Canada to boost security for the meeting (with no expense having been spared in equipping them with all the latest in crowd/riot control equipment) someone gave an order for these 16,000 officers to stand down and not intervene as the 100 rabble-rousers ran riot. Police who were there at the time allegedly told at least one reporter that they could have stopped these rioters quite easily, but orders had been given to stand down and not interfere.
Immediately following that riot, in effect normal civil rights guaranteed by the Canadian Constitution were suspended without notice, and a severe and often unnecessarily (one would think) brutal crackdown with mass arrests began on all assemblies of demonstrators so that effectively it was impossible to take advantage of normal democratic rights and carry out any protest at all to publicize to government and fellow citizens criticism of government policies, In addition, the average person would definitely by inhibited from taking part in any organised, peaceful protest. As the city was still shell shocked from the riots on Saturday afternoon after viewing pictures on the TV news of cop cars burning in the streets and shattered store fronts, there was not much controversy at the time over these rather excessive police tactics against peaceful protest.
The author Naomi Klein in her book “The Shock Doctrine” explains how exceptional events which cause disruption in a society are used by authorities to implement policies which would normally be rejected by a population if normal conditions prevailed. Klein focuses in her book on large scale disruptions caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves etc. and also by wars, insurgency campaigns and what not and explains in her book how these life-disrupting events can put a population into effectively a state of shock in which their normal ability t0 think and reason and their reactions become dulled. Most importantly, they have much less propensity to question or object to authority figures. They simply hope, more than anything else, to have calm and order restored to their lives. Seems to me that Toronto G20 meeting was absolutely a mini “Shock Doctrine” in action.
That riot was plainly used as an excuse to shut down public displays of dissent for the remainder of the G20 summit. I think Canadian deserve to know who exactly ordered the cops to stand down at that riot. Was it the RCMP officer in charge of policing for the summit on his own initiative? If so what was the ostensible logic behind giving that order? Or did he himself get an order or maybe just a suggestion (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) from someone even higher up, say in the PMO, that the PM would be really happy if some means could be found to ensure large scale or prolonged protests against the G20 (non-violent or otherwise) could somehow be kept to a minimum so as not to embarrass his important colleagues.
If they get away with pulling this stunt, what will be the next trick they try on Candians? So far their has been no admission of wrongdoing by the authorities involved in the G20 situation in Toronto, aside from some grudging acknowledgment that maybe one or two over enthusiastic cops went “too far”.
The US Newspaper columnist Sydney Schanberg wrote once: “We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.” In this particular case Schanberg was referring to the faked Gulf of Tonkin incident in which a non-existent attack by a North Vietnamese torpedo boat on a US navy destroyer was used by the Pentagon and the Johnson administration to justify the full scale US military involvement in Vietnam (at the costs of thousands of US lives and millions of South East Asian lives but to immense profits for the US military industrial complex). Canadians should endeavor not to make the same mistake.
OK GM. Conspiracy, and Carl Sagan
I get you now. I’m often too willing and gullible to take things as I hope they should be. A limited ‘complexity horizon’ no doubt, admitting I’ve never really followed politics or business, they’ve never absorbed my interest like science has. And then there are so many conspiracy theories, and theorists, you never can be sure you’re not being sucked in by one, though you do seem to have a good point, and one that seems more poignant once you do some serious thinking about it.
It does seem quite like City Hall told the police to hold back, so the public could see what could happen in such an event, if things got out of hand at the G 20. Except it does not appear to have worked very well, and the people filled the streets non the less, and some got hurt, and jailed and what else. So you can’t catch me in crowds like that.
Anyhow, I just found Cosmos, by the scientist Carl Sagan, is now available on the net, all 13 episodes. Sagan was the best science teacher I ever saw. I’d have been a scientist if he’d been my teacher. He really knew how to teach science. ‘Topdocumentaryfilms.com/Cosmos/
Did you ever see any of the most astounding 13 episodes? Now you could take your time and see all, at your leisure, if science so takes you. Sagan saves and raises your wonder of life, the Earth, and the Universe. And this is what we need today.
Libya in the Balance,…. and Others,… and in the Murk.
Some of these old and crusted Mid East and African heads of state, are a tough lot. You would be too, if you had had your own way for so long and had done to your country what those guys had done to theirs.
They know what will happen to them, should they decide to step down and place a toe in the waters of abdication. They know there are many sharks circling violent-hungry waiting to turn the water blood red for all the wrongs they have committed, and all the violence they have meted out, and for all the blood money they have salted away.
They know too, that the music had changed on Mother Earth, and they can no longer get away with the old ‘Take All’ tunes.
The problem though, is that they could never pay, in any way, for all the killings, cruelty, anguish, tears, the utter poverty, the destitution of their peoples and countryside that once held such promise of a better life for all, if only they had cared less about self-grandeur, and more about the country and its people they had promised to serve.
So now the circling sharks of the new world order, will have their day, sooner or later, and it almost does not matter what passes, it may be all too late, and other penury like that of Haiti, may quickly spread.
The Earth is becoming tired and impovished as its populations quickly grow, impovished , and polluted, and suffering species degradation, and we all have nothing else or nobody to turn to, except to press on through the murk, and dream of better times for all, if we just had the energy or could find the steel will power,…. to get the right things done.
“Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet. See this film!”
Larry Pinkney
Editorial Board Member & Columnist
The Black Commentator
Watch it online or download for free: http://metanoia-films.org/compilations.php
The Anti Nukelists,… and their Complexity Horizon.
Listening to the Anti Nukelists on the news medias across Earth, that have had their day made by the problems now going on with such power stations in Japan, one just begins to fully appreciate how overincredulous is their bickering, and how very limited their knowledge and understanding of the total world energy demand needed to keep ‘The Human’ living in his comfort zone.
The Anti-Nukelists(my word for them) are rather like people insisting we do away with all forms of mechanized transport because of the danger such machines cause to human life and limb on a 24 hour basis, on world roads, and how many million tons of pollution those same forms of transport, including aircraft and ship, billow into the atmosphere around our Orb, on a 24/365 day yearly basis, effecting all living things on land, in the sea, and in the air.
A Nuke Power station, two or three, cannot compare in any way, to all the other forms of Earth destruction we inspire.
So I’d ask, if please, could the Anti-Nukelists lobby, kindly get a grip on themselves, and break free from displaying they are living at the peak of what is obviously ,….. their University- fostered complexity horizon.
The problem is that man has “F”…….up so much s………….t already that the anti nukeist have had enough of world leaders continuing to give empty promises in the name of helping mankind. Things that they say wolud help us eventually kill us. So therefore the battle lines are drawn and peoples eyes are wide open and the great divided is mistrust. eventually they are no winners only losers
Sure AC,
Yet we have to retain as much of a perspective of HOPE, as we can.
Or, perhaps, we have always just drifted along where the tide has pushed us like reeds in the wind and the waves.
No. That’s not good enough. We’re progress- hunting creatures, desire driven with an inclination to want much more than we need, so that we fail, like termites, eating ourselves out of house and tree, till everything fall down, and we’re never satisfied even then.
@colin
Just like thenuke coils our integrity have melted to the core. . What we have left is very little No real sense of meaning. Not even knowing Why we are here. Our conscience is dead. Man only see one thing that is “what”s in it for me. ‘ and every body and everything else be damned. That is why we have arrived at the road with a sign which says”DEAD END”
It’s been confirmed; Americans are avoiding air travel because they object to being subjected to the TSA’s intrusive genital groping and/or irradiating, nudy picture machines. Who can blame them?
The Agribusiness Juggernaut: Assault on Nature, Threat to Human Survival
Organic food has become one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. agriculture. In all probability, however, it will be virtually impossible to obtain any real organic food in the not-too-distant future.
Monsanto, a giant in agricultural biogenetics and holder of patents on several genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is working to corner the global market on Life. Their genetically modified (GM) crops — some complete with suicide genes which render their seeds infertile and others genetically resistant to herbicides — are intended to ultimately overrun all natural crops, making Monsanto quite literally the sole owner of all food crops on Earth.
These GM crops will ultimately be the only game in town and, therefore, every vegetable, fruit or grain you eat will be a genetically modified organism (GMO). The same will apply to every form of feed used for livestock, poultry and any creature whatsoever that is raised as a source of food for humans. It’s even quite certain that food animals themselves will be subjected to the same sort of genetic manipulation that is now being used on crops. In fact, genetically modified salmon could be available at a supermarket near you sooner than you think.
snip
Monsanto is arguably one of the most willfully malign entities, sometimes known as corporate persons, ever spawned by the crony capitalist profit machine. For a bit of insight, see The World According to Monsanto. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If Monsanto is in fact a “person”, that person is an unmitigated psychopath.
Presently, whenever a Monsanto GM strain contaminates a neighboring farm that’s growing the same crop, say soybeans, it is company policy to sue that farm for stealing a patented GMO. These suits are generally successful, resulting in the bankruptcy of the victimized farmer whose land is then easily acquired by Monsanto. This not only puts a potential competitor out of business but provides free land, empowering a quest to own all the food we need for survival. Just search Monsanto suits. Almost a quarter million hits. The goal of this monolithic multinational is nothing less than the total ownership and control of the global food supply.
Once these GM crops are growing in the open, anywhere in the world, they will inevitably contaminate all non-GM crops. The wind and every creature that enables pollination will carry GM pollen everywhere. Such cross-contamination is inevitable and already occurring. As deregulation allows more GM crops to be grown, the process will escalate at an ever increasing pace.
snip
As long as the driving force of our society is the quest for corporate profits above all, we will only continue the degradation of our total environment.
As long as we allow the crony capitalist, consumerist paradigm to put profit before Life itself, we will inevitably continue upon a course of self-destruction.
Nature is a force far greater than we can ever even begin to control. There are immutable laws in place, not written by any human hand, that simply cannot be defied. If our species refuses to comply with those laws, it simply will not survive its own ignorance and arrogance.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/03/agribusiness-juggernaut-assault-on_19.html
Hey, Green Monk an AC,
I in England couple days till end month. Boy, things real cheap here compared to Bados, but it well cold, you don’t need ice in a grog.
Plenty squirrel hopping about where we is. Catch you a bit later, when the sun rise his-self up an my fingers can move.
I am trying to gain info on Lawton Gaylord Duke from St peters and St Michaels Sailor who had a half brother Carter and sister Eliza Duke. Lawton he was my great grandfather but I know nothing of him and his fam. Any info is welcomed. He left in the late 1880s to 1890s. Even info of what was happening at this period of time in barbados is welcomed.
Thank you!!
We ask ourself why the youth act the way they do towards adults and we keep questioning their actions but really it’s us the adults who sometimes disrespect the youth and don’t care because we have the power to do so. I’m saying this beacause a young fellow who played football for B’dos and his school was invited to recieved a prize at his school annual speak day(Coleridge & Parry) and he was all excited to be awarded and recongised for his hard work. His family awaiting patient to see him go up to receive this prize when he came and say don’t look for him on stage beacause he was told by a teacher that he can’t get the award because he was wearing the wrong school pants can you believe this is the same pants that he was wearing from the start of the school year no one ever told him or his parents that he was wearing the wrong pants and then to hurt him to the core to not give an award beacuse of a 5 second appearance to get an awarded for all the hard work he have done for Barbados and this school it make you wonder what else can go wrong in this society.
Hi 96
Enjoy your vacation. Hopedully with a little luck you might get an invite to the royal wedding.
What can be done to improve West Indies cricket? They used to make West Indians living all over the world so proud. However, their performance over the past few years has been sad. What is being done to try and turn the tide?
All this fussing and fighting…no use. Blood pressure going up. Look, enjoy either your pension or salary, live within your means and enjoy your life – you only have ONE. I have reached the stage of my life (63) where only God and Me matter, and I feel good!
Anonymous…where did you go to school? Just curious.
2007 West Point Study Shows Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk Area was a World Leader in Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Recruitment
By Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
March 24, 2011 “Tarpley” — -Washington DC — The current military attack on Libya has been motivated by UN Security Council resolution 1973 with the need to protect civilians. Statements by President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron, French President Sarkozy, and other leaders have stressed the humanitarian nature of the intervention, which is said to aim at preventing a massacre of pro-democracy forces and human rights advocates by the Qaddafi regime.
But at the same time, many commentators have voiced anxiety because of the mystery which surrounds the anti-Qaddafi transitional government which emerged at the beginning of March in the city of Benghazi, located in the Cyrenaica district of north-eastern Libya. This government has already been recognized by France and Portugal as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The rebel council seems to be composed of just over 30 delegates, many of whom are enveloped in obscurity. In addition, the names of more than a dozen members of the rebel council are being kept secret, allegedly to protect them from the vengeance of Qaddafi. But there may be other reasons for the anonymity of these figures. Despite much uncertainty, the United Nations and its several key NATO countries, including the United States, have rushed forward to assist the armed forces of this rebel regime with air strikes, leading to the loss of one or two coalition aircraft and the prospect of heavier losses to come, especially if there should be an invasion. It is high time that American and European publics learned something more about this rebel regime which is supposed to represent a democratic and humanitarian alternative to Gaddafi.
The rebels are clearly not civilians, but an armed force. What kind of an armed force?
Since many of the rebel leaders are so difficult to research from afar, and since a sociological profile of the rebels cannot be done on the ground in the midst of warfare, perhaps the typical methods of social history can be called on for help. Is there a way for us to gain deeper insight into the climate of opinion which prevails in such northeastern Libyan cities as Benghazi, Tobruk, and Darnah, the main population centers of the rebellion?
It turns out that there is, in the form of a December 2007 West Point study examining the background of foreign guerrilla fighters — jihadis or mujahedin, including suicide bombers — crossing the Syrian border into Iraq during the 2006-2007 timeframe, under the auspices of the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda. This study is based on a mass of about 600 Al Qaeda personnel files which were captured by US forces in the fall of 2007, and analyzed at West Point using a methodology which we will discuss after having presented the main findings. The resulting study1 permits us to make important findings about the mentality and belief structures of the northeastern Libyan population that is furnishing the basis for the rebellion, permitting important conclusions about the political nature of the anti-Qaddafi revolt in these areas.
Darnah, northeast Libya: World Capital of Jihadis
The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
snip
The West Point study also offers another, more sinister perspective. Felter and Fishman hint that it might be possible to use the former LIFG components of Al Qaeda against the government of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, in essence creating a de facto alliance between the United States and a segment of the terrorist organization. The West Point report notes: “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s unification with al-Qa’ida and its apparent decision to prioritize providing logistical support to the Islamic State of Iraq is likely controversial within the organization. It is likely that some LIFG factions still want to prioritize the fight against the Libyan regime, rather than the fight in Iraq. It may be possible to exacerbate schisms within LIFG, and between LIFG’s leaders and al-Qa’ida’s traditional Egyptian and Saudi power-base.”13 This suggests the US policy we see today, that of allying with the obscurantist and reactionary al Qaeda fanatics in Libya against the Nasserist modernizer Qaddafi.
snip
Rebel Leaders Jalil and Younis, Plus Most of Rebel Council are Members of the al Qaeda-linked Harabi Tribe
The result of the present inquiry is that the Libyan branch of Al Qaeda represents a continuum with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group centered in Darnah and Benghazi. The ethnic base of the Libyan Islamic fighting group is apparently to be found in the anti-Qaddafi Harabi tribe, the tribe which makes up the vast majority of the rebel council including the two dominant rebel leaders, Abdul Fatah Younis and Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The evidence thus suggests that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the elite of the Harabi tribe, and the rebel council supported by Obama all overlap for all practical purposes. As the late Foreign Minister of Guyana Fred Wills, a real fighter against imperialism and neo-colonialism, taught me many years ago, political formations in developing countries (and not just there) are often a mask for ethnic and religious rivalries; so it is in Libya. The rebellion against Qaddafi is a toxic brew compounded of fanatical hatred of Qaddafi, Islamism, tribalism, and localism. From this point of view, Obama has foolishly chosen to take sides in a tribal war.
Full article at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27760.htm
An Empire of Lies: The CIA and the Western Media
by Jonathan Cook
snip
Eight years on, Curveball revealed to the Guardian that he had fabricated the story of Saddam’s WMD back in 2000, shortly after his arrival in Germany seeking asylum. He told the paper he had lied to German intelligence in the hope his testimony might help topple Saddam, though it seems more likely he simply wanted to ensure his asylum case was taken more seriously.
For the careful reader — and I stress the word careful — several disturbing facts emerged from the report.
One was that the German authorities had quickly proven his account of Iraq’s WMD to be false. Both German and British intelligence had travelled to Dubai to meet Bassil Latif, his former boss at Iraq’s Military Industries Commission. Dr Latif had proven that Curveball’s claims could not be true. The German authorities quickly lost interest in Janabi and he was not interviewed again until late 2002, when it became more pressing for the US to make a convincing case for an attack on Iraq.
Another interesting disclosure was that, despite the vital need to get straight all the facts about Curveball’s testimony — given the stakes involved in launching a pre-emptive strike against another sovereign state — the Americans never bothered to interview Curveball themselves.
A third revelation was that the CIA’s head of operations in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, passed on warnings from German intelligence that they considered Curveball’s testimony to be highly dubious. The head of the CIA, George Tenet, simply ignored the advice.
With Curveball’s admission in mind, as well as these other facts from the story, we can draw some obvious conclusions — conclusions confirmed by subsequent developments.
Lacking both grounds in international law and the backing of major allies, the Bush administration desperately needed Janabi’s story about WMD, however discredited it was, to justify its military plans for Iraq. The White House did not interview Curveball because they knew his account of Saddam’s WMD programme was made up. His story would unravel under scrutiny; better to leave Washington with the option of “plausible deniability”.
Nonetheless, Janabi’s falsified account was vitally useful: for much of the American public, it added a veneer of credibility to the implausible case that Saddam was a danger to the world; it helped fortify wavering allies facing their own doubting publics; and it brought on board Colin Powell, a former general seen as the main voice of reason in the administration.
In other words, Bush’s White House used Curveball to breathe life into its mythological story about Saddam’s threat to world peace.
So how did the Guardian, a bastion of liberal journalism, present its exclusive on the most controversial episode in recent American foreign policy?
Here is its headline: “How US was duped by Iraqi fantasist looking to topple Saddam”.
Did the headline-writer misunderstand the story as written by the paper’s reporters? No, the headline neatly encapsulated its message. In the text, we are told Powell’s presentation to the UN “revealed that the Bush administration’s hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed” Curveball’s account. At another point, we are told Janabi “pulled off one of the greatest confidence tricks in the history of modern intelligence”. And that: “His critics — who are many and powerful — say the cost of his deception is too difficult to estimate.”
In other words, the Guardian assumed, despite all the evidence uncovered in its own research, that Curveball misled the Bush administration into making a disastrous miscalculation. On this view, the White House was the real victim of Curveball’s lies, not the Iraqi people — more than a million of whom are dead as a result of the invasion, according to the best available figures, and four million of whom have been forced into exile.
There is nothing exceptional about this example. I chose it because it relates to an event of continuing and momentous significance.
Unfortunately, there is something depressingly familiar about this kind of reporting, even in the West’s main liberal publications. Contrary to its avowed aim, mainstream journalism invariably diminishes the impact of new events when they threaten powerful elites. (my emphasis /GM)
More at:
http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/03/25/an-empire-of-lies-the-cia-and-the-wester
A quieter, bird friendly, no-propeller type windmill design for home power generation.
Green Monk
Having had some 15 years of solar and wind power usage on a yacht and house, this new wind generator you show, shows definite advantages in that the blades don’t have to be orientated for the wind direction.
I had often wondered who would come up with something like what you have shown on the clip. We will have to wait and see how such a system really tests out, and see what winds speeds it needs, and how much energy it produces.
If it really is testing out as the designer says, one would expect us to see a sudden switch to this sort of wind turbine, since it does not need to track wind direction like other systems do. The other question would be if it is designed capable to ‘ feather off’ like other props, in the event of excessive wind speeds?
High Colin, here is a link where you can download the spec sheets in pdf format for the Windspire windmills:
http://windspireenergy.com/windspire/specifications/
There seems to be lots more info and links relating to this windmill design available if you go to the homepage at windspireenergy.com, including an email newsletter
I noticed they’ve got a spec on there called “Survival Wind Speed” listed at 105mph for the basic model. Sounds like they’re implying that they can’t guarantee it will stay together in anything over that wind speed. However, they’ve also got a model designed for higher windspeed areas called the Extreme Wind Speed Unit which has a “Survival Wind Speed” of 160mph.
It appears they have a braking system to slow down the rotor in high wind conditions rather than a system of feathering like the prop type systems use.
Of the High Windspeed Unit the spec sheet says:
The Windspire is designed to operate in wind speeds of 7-34 mph. At
wind speeds higher than 37mph the redundant electronic braking system
will engage as a safety feature. While it may seem counterintuitive
to engage brakes and therefore cease energy production during high
winds, this is essential to the safety and reliability of the Windspire. Per
UL specifications, the Windspire will also engage the brake if the grid
voltage or grid frequency falls outside the regulatory ranges.
GM,
I’m stuck on a book my son gave me in the UK. Have you read’ Enigma’, ‘The Battle for the code’ by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. It is how the code was captured off the Germans, bit by bit, and how much of the war and lives it saved. Can’t put it down.
They have photos of some of the code machines. They look like old fashioned typewriters. What would those guys have thought of modern computer science, I pods and tablets, and the quantum physics that surges the new world ? Alan Turing must want dug up again.
@Colin Beadon
I haven’t read that particular book, but I am aware through various documentaries, articles, internet posts etc. of the Enigma code machines and the vital work performed during WWII by some very bright people at Bletchley Park in breaking the German codes so that coded radio messages to U boats and German ground forces etc. could, for the most part, be read and decoded almost instantly by the allied forces.
I remember reading somewhere that Admiral Canaris suspected their codes had been broken and ordered the creation of a new code machine to replace the Enigma. I believe the code breakers at BP were not able to crack the system that the new machine was using, but by the time the Germans put it into service, it was too late to change the course of the war.
An observation on Health, and Reading.
There are so many excuses you can think of for not setting time aside to read, or keep yourself healthy. They are excuses, nothing else! You make those excuses entirely against your own inner voice, calling, whispering, imploring…. You make those excuses to your own detriment and well being.
I just wanted everyone to take a listen to Damian “Bobo” Bowen’s Paint the Picture, a single he released last week on local radio stations. The song addresses the NHC issue with his mother Marilyn Rice-Bowen and minister of Housing Michael Lashley. It’s a good stick licking!!!! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Take a listen it can be found on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8yCFia9mbQ
One of the fundamental reason I believe that the youth in Barbados and else, way lack civility with to respect to the older generation; resides in the fact the their have live by a double standard for far to long. It is common knowledge that young people learn by imitation and emulation, and if the older generation of Barbadian are conflicted in the messages to the youth disrespect it going to be the end result. Someone once said the youth ” has never been good at listening to their elders, but their never fail in emitating them”. We as the old Barbadian must influence the minds of the by accommodation and not by censure. We must influence and empower the minds of the youth in positive ways, so that their can empower and influence other. We as parent must relinquish this dictorial predominance when we are endeavour to confabulate with the youth people of Barbados.
Don’t get me wrong, I expect a certain amount of respect from the youth in Barbados. Nonetheless ,it is perposterous and imbecilic to advancing the perspective; that the youth in Barbados are disrespectful to their elders when we have been instructing them. It just goes to show that we have not been doing a good job in instructing the youth in Barbados. Given this reality , it is therefore important that we take some self-reflection to really ascertain the etiology of this new social order of disrespect by the youth in Barbados .
Yes Lixicon. An Angry Look, won’t do !
The problem is very much the fault of those who insist on sparing the rod, of any kind, from an exceedingly young age. It is no good instigating a thrashing once the child has reached the age of seven, eight, nine or ten. The child’s first lessons on behavior, must start even when he begins to crawl. No, it does not have to be an infliction anything more serious than a smack on the bottom, or across the back of a young probing hand being taught not to touch this or that when the child refuses to listen.
By six, the correction may have to be of a more substantial nature. There are those of us who were caned at that age. By the time you got your second caning, you began to consider strongly whether you needed any more of that. Most of us caned around six years old at school, quickly accepted it was wiser not to fight, or go out of school bounds.
I blame the weeping hearts, the liberals, and the child psychologists for those of our youth who have lost all respect, don’t know how to behave, and do just as they like and get away with it.
A good beating when we deserved it, never turned any of us into misfits. To say, as has been often said by advocates of non spanking, that parents, or teachers, may not understand what must be the limits of appropriate licks, is like making them all out to be uncivilized morons.
So you now know who to blame for those youth who have never been shown much more than an angry look, or told to stand in a corner, or given five hundred lines. It may work for some, but too many of us are of a more substantial nature.
Seems we have another brain surgeon in Barbados. Dr Sparman is quoted in today’s Advocate “when I as a surgeon ,dissect the human brain”
.God help us all. Maybe he was misquoted!!
Mia Mottley also in today’s Advocate wants people to give of themselves BEYOND THEIR COMMITTMENT TO RELIGION.These are interesting words as the First commandment is in direct contradiction to this.Signs of the times I guess.
Rasta Man,
I was thinking of giving of myself beyond my commitment to sex, or grog, writing, self preservation, or breathing heavily. One could, of course
give of himself beyond his commitment to work, or sleep, or eating, or playing a flute. It is rather a nice phrase, anyhow, and I shall bare it in mind for future committals, like not waking up early in the morning, feeding the birds, or frowning on bad drivers and Seven Day Adventists, and garbage litterers with expensive air-conditioned cars, and motor cycles without silencers. It is quite a long list, and one could easily become a habitual beyond committal being, drifting aimlessly in the winds of non committitality.
Once again this Government has got it wrong. I am speaking about the dispensing fee. What difference is there between dispensing a drug costing $1 as opposed to one costing $100? My understanding is that this fee is really the profit that the pharmacies used to make under the old regime. Can someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Once, we lived in a world where most things made perfect sense. These days, there seems to be another level, perhaps above, perhaps below, the normal complexity horizon most us understood once as perfect sense.
Perhaps the young, who understand computers and their jargon so well, understand the new world imperfect senselessness. Or perhaps they too, are dumbfounded, and have just learned to live with such imperfectability,…
Order that does not exist.
How wonderful the dawn I awoke to this morning. How wonderful this small island in the Caribbean. How wonderful the Earth, the Universe how wonderful. What a spellbinding incomprehensibility the jostling jargon of world faiths, and wars, mankind still eating his opponents in today’s Africa, United Nation fundings, still being absconded buying arms, and bombs, instead of growing food or finding water.
What incomprehensibility the mind, or face, of God. Where is the shepherd,….. lost amongst his sheep, hidden by the dust of time and explosives, and children crying for milk ?
And suddenly, as the sun’s lip rose from the Eastern sea, a firm voice answers,… ” The incomprehensibility, beloved, is in the mind of man. The clarity lies in not- thinking. Man cannot apprehend the incomprehensible, and so by trying he sheds his own blood attempting to impose order that does not exist. “
Overloaded schemes of grandeur in an uncertain world !!!
101 Million US dollars on a third marina, this one to be built in Bridgetown’s Careenage.
Is this gross stupidity, or madness, with energy prices rising across the globe, the recession far from over and looming with new bloom as uncertainty and wars spread across much of the oil- bearing world.
There are other much, much, much more important problems facing Barbados today. Don’t the politicians and business bigwigs listen to world news ever, or are they only thinking of themselves ?
The steadily rising cost of food and energy prices, the renewal of the agricultural and the water systems, are much more important here in Barbados in today’s world, than another marina that is going to cost way more than 101 Million US dollars. There is no disputing this cost overrun. Every scheme of this kind, far outstrips its initial estimates. That is one of the reason why such schemes are undertaken.
The people of Barbados are being overloaded by such schemes of grandeur, and we will pay for them dearly. The real grandeur, when everything is over, will apply to just a very few.
@colin beadon.: could not have said it better.
Only problem is when the rich and famous stop coming because of the people’s revolt there will be no use for a Marina.
On another matter the “PM” Stuart says that the Town and Country Planning Dept is to be commended for their outstanding work .Wonder if he stopped by the officer, who I am reliably informed has over 200 applications on her desk for the past two years of which I am one, to compliment her too.God help Barbados
We as people have to treat each other a human being…we must treat people equal..In other country immigration dont allow you to take anything…Every possesion own by that illegal is frozen by that government…Suggestion is that when the reach to their respective country should allow them to have the possesions
On Grandeur, or on the Unique ?
Visions of grandeur will displace the possibility of securing World Heritage. Which do we want? To be another Miami, perhaps, or to retain our own quaint essence that made this island so special, so different, so sublime ?
I see Mr ‘Bizzy’Williams has a problem with Mr Neville Rowe.
I find it strange that an astute businessman like Mr Williams is supposed to be would advance $11million without a signed agreement.
Maybe it is a case of what goes around comes around.
Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking & Tax Havens.
Green Monkey, Re: Treasure Islands.
Looks like a great book. Do you have it yet ? I want second in line after you. It’s a bit like what is being forced upon us in Barbados, by a few.
‘We, …. los esclavos,…. is finding we selves being used as a treasure island, by a few. ‘
Re the book Treasure Islands, nope don’t have it yet. What was something of a revelation to me was Shaxon’s comments in the video of his interview with Democracy Now about the extent to which the developed nations intentionally use their own financial and banking sectors to facilitate tax avoidance/evasion by the wealthy from other developed nations. He calls it a form of economic warfare going on between these developed, first world nations.
However, it’s usually places the Cayman Islands and even Barbados that end up on the receiving end of most of the bad publicity in the international press regarding shadowy “tax havens” which exist to help the wealthy shuffle their money around to avoid their own governments’ regulation and taxation.
This Morning, on the BBC:
‘The Earth is one shock away from a full blown food crisis”.
This is from the president of the World Bank. Mr Zenick.
And we, in this island Barbados, want to build another marina, the third, while most of our agricultural land is growing nothing, or sugar which we seem to be doing our best to discredit or stop growing.
Further to the food crisis and its rising costs, the rising cost of energy seems to be escaping the minds of big business and politicians, who would rather build grand schemes using up agricultural land and huge sums of finance, instead of concentrating on food and water production and simple forms of saving and accruing our own energy.
Now will somebody go down to Trinidad, and photograph the huge vegetable stalls along the sides of many roads there, and then ask the question why such produce cannot be grown here in Barbados too?
There are those of us who can tell you why, but why bother ?
A nice dose of starvation would probably concentrate minds on what really is important and what, in desperation, needs to be done.
@CB: It would not only be starvation it will be literally “dog eat dog” if you understand what I mean
rasta man.
You are more than absolutely right, but we’ll be accused of scare mongering to scribe it that way.
Note to BFP: There is a post I made earlier this morning (Sunday, April 17) about Japan and its energy crisis still being held for moderation. Could you release it please. Thanks
Our Min of International Business needs to be told that the Winter season ends on April 15 th and not March 15th as he intimated recently. Scary isn’t it?
11 million more,…. Down the drain ?
After reading about Rowe and Bis, I was wondering how much bad water line could be replaced with 11 million dollars ?
@CB:I assume you are talking about the Tri-Mart saga??Strange situation. Wonder if wifey had anything to do wth it?
Neoliberal Globalization: Is There an Alternative to Plundering the Earth?
Excerpt from “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century”
What Is “Neoliberal Globalization”?
Let us first clarify what globalization and neoliberalism are, where they come from, who they are directed by, what they claim, what they do, why their effects are so fatal, why they will fail and why people nonetheless cling to them. Then, let us look at the responses of those who are not – or will not – be able to live with the consequences they cause.
This is where the difficulties begin. For a good twenty years now we have been told that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization, and that, in fact, no such alternative is needed either. Over and over again, we have been confronted with the TINA-concept: “There Is No Alternative!” The “iron lady”, Margaret Thatcher, was one of those who reiterated this belief without end.
The TINA-concept prohibits all thought. It follows the rationale that there is no point in analyzing and discussing neoliberalism and so-called globalization because they are inevitable. Whether we condone what is happening or not does not matter, it is happening anyway. There is no point in trying to understand. Hence: Go with it! Kill or be killed!
Some go as far as suggesting that globalization – meaning, an economic system which developed under specific social and historical conditions – is nothing less but a law of nature. In turn, “human nature” is supposedly reflected by the character of the system’s economic subjects: egotistical, ruthless, greedy and cold. This, we are told, works towards everyone’s benefit.
The question remains: why has Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” become a “visible fist”? While a tiny minority reaps enormous benefits from today’s neoliberalism (none of which will remain, of course), the vast majority of the earth’s population suffers hardship to the extent that their very survival is at stake. The damage done seems irreversible.
snip
Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes an object of “trade” and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably “wageless” commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and everything into commodities, including life itself.[35] We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this “mode of production”, namely total capitalization/liquidation by “monetarization”.[36]
We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing what can be described as “market fundamentalism”. People believe in the market as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A “free” world market for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.
One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a “hole in the ground” and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated machinery and money without value.[37] However, once all concrete wealth (which today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx’s words, “evaporate”. The fact that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created. In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority. Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive. And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production nor money?
Continued at:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24403
Preview of an upcoming documentary “on tax havens and Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer, a man who broke the Cayman bank secrecy law by publishing sensitive client data on WikiLeaks.” The narration is in English with French subtitles.
We’re asking scientists, via Google,….
How many megawatts , daily, could we get from alternative energy if the 83 million US dollars recently used on the caves, and the 101 million US dollars about to be squandered on another marina by the government, was placed on carefully designed and installed renewable energy use here in Barbados ?
My main concern is this new social order of incivility that has emerged amount the youth. It seem incomprehensible as it relates to the decorum of the youth in our present day society; it seem like their have no respect for God, parents, and the law. It make one wonder what is giving birth to this reality, some critiues has point to several factors that probably might be contributing to this impertinance.
It has been argrued that the youth in our present day society is up again challenges that was not present in sucessive generation. For example, we are now living in the information age and the youth are expose to the kinds of information that was not present in our generastion. when I refer to our generation, I’m speaking as a male who is some way in his forties.
Other has advanced the view that we are raising the youth who have little or no concept of a supernatural being that exercise absolute oversight over our universe. And the list contiunes to go on as to the many reasons for this new social order of incivility expessed by the youth.
But I take a completely different perspective on this issue, I believe that most of the blame should be attribute to our generation. Because we are that one’s who are influencing the mind of the present generation so the responsibilty remains with us.
@lexicon; Cannot agree with you . Maybe you do not have children,but after doing everything to teach them right from wrong and they go astray ,how can you blame the parents.
Where are the Hummingbirds ???
With the lignum vitea and the firecracker flowering in profusion, the hummingbirds usually busy at their flowers, seem to have left this part of the island. No problem for the honey bees, the yellowbreasts and the large bumble bees and certain moths. But where are the hummingbirds ? Can anybody report on seeing them ???
The crowning glory of PM Stuart.: Opening a kitchen at the Geriatric Hospital.We cannot say he does not speak any more.LOL
‘Snuggles on a Beach’ made out Easter. All those who love wild creatures, and nature, please go to Google and download the clip. I wish everybody in the world could see that clip. It was photographed in deep South America’s Georgia region, where few tourist have ever been, thank God.
Matter:
The really strange thing about matter, is that it is just another form of energy. In the plasma stage of the Universe that lasted about 300,000 years after Big Bang, there wasn’t any matter. There was just energy, nothing else.
Just energy !
Hi Colin,
Yes, all life is energy, quite true. Nothing less, more though…yes.
Cheers
Green Monkey: An alternative to Earth Plundering ?
One wonders how many people read, or were able to fully comprehend your posting ?
With the world population exploding, the constant hunt for ways to keep people alive longer, the constant attempt to destroy or put an end to harmful bacteria, mosquitoes, birth death, cancer, road accidents, and all the other reasons that kill off man by the thousands, and millions, there is no possible end to the continued man- manipulated plundering of Earth and Nature, even supposing for one instance, it were possible to stop Man’s avarice by a shot of divine insight.
The driving force of world population growth and human demand, would quickly overtake any alteration in Man’s slightest possible ability to see that light,…. and stop his instinctive greed.
What seems destined, is a fast- approaching lack of the type of energy Man needs to be able to grease the wheels of his growing population, to manipulate and produce the simple food and water he needs to stay alive in such growing numbers.
We are like vast herds on a fast- drying plain, the grass turning to dust, and we are to blind or too dense to know who to blame.
Oh Rumple, from where have you, like a virtual quantum particle, appeared ?
So good to hear from you, desde tantos tiempos, pues !
Hi Colin,
I am around…..life is ‘occupying’ muchly. Been a while yes….You have been holding fort well, gunslinger.
I did see a hummingbird a few days ago, though the first in a long time. It was yellow mostly, I seem to remember.
i do like this time of the year . Nature puts on a good show. especially watching the butterflies going from flower to flower and at the same time using a simple way to pollinate .
Can anyone explain to me what the PM really said last night? Seems to have been a rehearsed interview for the sake of saying something. The interviewer also left much to be desired.
rasta man, Of Politicians and Dinosaurs
You didn’t give up listening to politicians long ago ? I have always found them like listening to rather bad con men. There is a lot of beautifully crafted dialog though often over plugged with over overused quotes , carrying coals to newcastles, and stiches in time, cart before the horse, etc. At the end, you still have not gleamed what the politician was talking about, or, what he intended to get done, or how he intended to do what he was supposed to be talking about.
The politician who can really fill you in on what he is going to get done, these days, is long-seemingly gone,…. like the dinosaur.
Farmers and police clashed in Trinidad as they crops were bulldozed to make room for housing . Thousands of dollars in cropssuch as cassava ,sweet potato , and pumkin were lost.
At what stage does a ‘theory’ become ‘accepted’ or not-a-theory?
Theory will always be theory. If it is proved it becomes fact
BGI
Quantum theory, for some weird reason, still seems to stick with being called a theory. Yet the whole modern electronic world, including this computer I’m writing on and the broadband hookup I’m using, springs from what is known about quantum particles and their principle behavior.
If you’re baffled, so am I. I have always felt we only know the world about us in a metaphorical way. Its reality, like the reality of God, is beyond human apprehension. So we end up doing the best we can, and tend to get stuck in the pitfalls, and end up with sometimes pleasant, often unpleasant results, like in a game of catch as catch can. We have to put up with a lot of political and inter- religious bickering, sifting out the truth, doubtful if truth, actually, truly, exists.
Possibly this is what makes the world, and life, so uncertain, and yet so interesting as the same time.
Barbados’ Doppler Radar has gone MIA (Missing-In-Action) again, the web site has not been updated since March 1st., 2011.
http://www.barbadosweather.org/radarImagery.php
Does anything on this island work any more, or is just jaw flapping?
Major management shake up at FirstCaribbean as the new senior executive at CIBC, Rick Nesbitt takes control. The CEO is leaving and replaced by a non banker to undertake major restructuring. More information to come soon.
David G. B.
The Doppler Radar is probably suffering from the same thing my CPU has been suffering from since last Saturday. Chinese computer parts. My CPU is less than six months old.
My cousin, a sub editor to a well known British Newspaper, has asked me to write : ” A guide to repairing products from The People’s Republic. ”
Well, I’m fast getting to wanting to write such a guide, since almost every product you pick up is designed with a life of just a few months at the most, and some, a great deal less. I am tired of rebuilding and repairing such products.
We, in this island, are being ripped off. The problem is that so many of us are too young to know that products used to last for years and years without failure. We are being forced to buy ( supposedly) cheap, and forced to buy junk, over and over, and over. There is no quality control on imports here in Barbados.
Has anybody got anything further to add on this ????
Those who live by the Gun.
There are those who are objecting Bin Laden being shot when he was
( supposedly) unarmed. Those in the Twin Towers were unarmed when his plan was executed, but Laden didn’t think about that, did he !
Those who live by the gun, should sleep by it too. Tough Titties for him if he wasn’t armed at the time. Bet he didn’t find 62 virgins on the other side either.
As for Pakistan, we don’t need to finish this sentence.
Sometimes I wonder if those persons who speak in public engage their brain before opening their mouth.
Bizzy Williams is reported as saying “Price of land in Barbados is too high” Was it not him and his brother COW who caused this problem in the first place by selling land to foreigners at exorbitant prices in the interest of “foreign exchange” ?
Yes, Rasta Man,
Ya got dem der boy ! Ya got dem !
Let we hear what dem goin say to dat !
Wonder if the driver of the B&B truck will get charged with dangerous driving in the death of the co worker . Heard he was overtaking improperly..
In giving evidence today to a parliamentary select committee on what went wrong with England’s World Cup bid, Lord Triesman, former Chairman of the Football Association, has accused several FIFA executive committe members of “improper and unethical” behaviour.
He told the select committee looking into football that the Fifa vice-president Jack Warner asked for money – suggested to be £2.5m – to build an education centre in Trinidad with the cash to be channelled through him, and later £500,000 to buy Haiti’s World Cup TV rights for the earthquake-hit nation, also to go through Warner. Surprisingly, Warner had denied it.
It makes you wonder what RedJet had to pay.
And nothing will happen !!!
According to Prof Hans Machel ,” I find it inexcusable that permission was granted to build the Apts in Arch Cot on top of a known cave without any geological testing being undertaken” The Prof does not seem to know that money talks in Barbados. Wonder what will the T&CP ‘s response to this ???/ Will wait with bated breath.
Sinister Collusion
The working class, being the large numbers of a population, are the people who vote in a government. A government is supposed to regulate, primarily, and make sure all citizens are treated to a fair deal. That is what a government was voted in for, and nothing more.
Yet in these days of rapidly raising prices, just what do we see ?
Government has become a big fat business in collusion with other big business at the expense of the largest numbers of the population.
The two, government not performing as it should, and business given free hand, treat the largest numbers of the population like their new slaves.
Sooner or later, it is this sort of destruction that leads to civil strife.
The Migley Award could be given to so many of us.
E.F. Schumacher, famous for his book ‘Small is Beautiful’ , wrote another book for which in my mind, he should have been given equal fame. His book is called ‘Good Work’ . Simple as that.
Here is a quote.
‘ A very clever chap once said that if an ancestor of long ago would visit us today, what would he become astonished at : The skill of our dentists or the rottenness of our teeth ? ‘
The modern ever increasing and so many ever harmful technologies we have found ourselves eagerly reaching out, snatching for, are fast beginning to take full control of us. We ourselves, are becoming the robots of the new technologies. This is why nature, of which we are part of, is becoming increasingly under the umbrella of violence, a violence against everything that comes under the banner of Nature.
‘A nonviolent approach to why our teeth are rotting, would put the best of human intelligence into resolving the question of why our teeth are
rotting? ‘
A non violent approach to traffic congestion would likewise pit our intelligence as to why we have been so stupid to allow it . We have to blame many more people than just Kiffin Simpson. We are all to blame.
Away with agriculture !!!
Yes, build, build, build, destroy the agricultural land. Build, bring the farmers in from the fields and teach them how to manage or sell shares, or repair computers, or manufacture plastic bags, or build more roads and over passes. Yes, bring in the farmers from their fields, and convert their fields to towns and car factories and superdomes, and armament machine shops, and tourist ports, and water slides.
Concrete up as much as you can, so you can’t see trees or shrubs, and all their leaves, or grass, in case of rats.
Then suddenly wonder why there is a shortage of food, and why food prices are going up into space, and why people are starving, and why the cane fields are overgrown with weeds and you can’t walk along the cane tracks (in St John anyhow) for the creeper weeds tripping at your shoes.
Well, at last, the Chinese are wondering about all this, but in this island we are still living a swan song, and crying out the recession is over.
Over ??? Really ??? Most of us are not old enough to know what a recession is yet, and so have no idea what leads to it. Perhaps we need to read what is going on across the globe and get rid of all the sand covering our eyes !!!
As an afterthought.
A recession takes place slowly. It creeps up upon us like a slowly rising water level. We’re given time to dream up all sorts of reasons why it really isn’t happening. ‘Oh, it is just a figment of our imagination, a chimera’.
That is why war is better than a recession. War is much better. The bite of war comes snake-like swift, like the strike of the hamadryed, the King Cobra. Right away you know you need to start digging and planting, the shop shelves are empty, the supermarkets closed, trucks, cars, buses stalled, where they ran out of gasoline. The tractor is idle, there are no cart horses for plow- pulling. The farmer has forgotten how to manage the soil. The suck holes are plugged. A good spade is worth more than a car. A bicycle is again king. The Cartwright is long buried, a wheel barrow is worth more than a television or a cellphone, or blackberry. War brings people back together, and to their senses, if they manage to live through it.
Of course, we write all this in joke. Or do we ???
Hi Colin,
How many more cars and 4x4s can this little island take? How many more lanes, how many more roads? How many more parking spaces? How much more to support the personal chariots to the detriment of public transit?
Can you imagine if 15 years ago we had set a limit on the number of private autos, and instead of building ever more roads invested in public transit?
As a nation we wanted first class all the way. 2 vehicles at every home, borrow against increased earnings that were promised in the future – or rather were foreseen by the soothsayers with chicken entrails that we call “economists”.
We enjoyed the world’s most expensive cricket party for a few weeks: our unborn grandchildren will still be paying for it when they die.
We spent and partied and invested little in money making ventures. Name me something the government ‘invested’ in that made a profit. I’m not arguing that we should expect public infrastructure or hospitals to make a “profit”, but somewhere along the line everything deserved the word “investment” so the word ceased to have meaning. We “invested” in 2 million dollars of weed wackers to put lazy uneducated boys on the block into business. Guess what? The weed wackers are gone, the 2 million is gone and none of the boys are still “in business”.
And now the times are getting tougher and we put aside nothing during the good years.
But we had one hell of a cricket party!
Robert
As a follow up to the previous comment,I see that the Barbados Rally Club has a record number of entries for Sol Rally Barbados 2011. This is against a backdrop of increasing fuel prices and other costs.
My reasoning is that,after polo , this is another playground of the rich because who in their right minds would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a car to receive a trophy for their efforts.
I am well aware that the NON paying crowd of followers enjoys the spectacle but I am wondering if they had to pay to attend the stages how many would indeed go.
Rasta Man, How many of us actually contribute ?
When you come to think of it, sport was just supposed to keep us fit.
Now look at it, us trying to keep fit has become a spectator sport, if you good at kicking a football or aiming a basket ball, you could make millions. If you could swat a tennis ball or knock somebody flat in a ring, you don’t have to work much after a couple years. You driving a BMW and living in a great house, and flying where ever you want at no matter what cost or if Red Jet flying yet, and some are begging to be knighted, and at the same time wanting a Republic. And the Head of the IMF, running to hold a woman down ?
But all that is not really contributing to life. It is not helping to save
the rising cost of food, or the rising cost of energy. The land, much of it, lies unproductive in the growing of food. Everybody sporting or watching sport, traveling miles to catch a peek, spending so much cash and energy to get there and back, or pay to enter the stadium. And all the prices of everything going steadily up, and we are not seeing the water rising, or the trees disappearing, or the garbage in the countryside, or hearing the starving in Africa and elsewhere. Most of us are not contributing, really, in any true sense of the way. We are just using,… users, and paying through our noses , and we’ve forgotten that two and two is supposed to make four, but it does not matter any longer, or whether we can read.
Mankind has run amok, and the path to return is overgrown and indistinguishable, and no birds sing, and saviors throw up their hands , smoke pot, or look for young boys.
@CB: Could not have said it better.
Securing medicine at the government dispensary means taking time off work, resulting in loss of pay. Correspondingly, the number of sick days attributable to obtaining government perscriptions is causing drastic losses of productivity to businesses. Dispensaries often lack all the medicines. pensioners especially often have complex medication regimes and are crying out about receiving substitutes that are disimilar, and not being able to afford the outside fee. What can the social media contribute to solving this problem?
$BDS 566 million in Barbados yearly fraud.
Well, Ah well, raise you hands if you didn’t know; and then raise your hands again for Andy Armstrong. One wonders why he placed himself in such jeopardy. To spill such beans was as brave an act as any. Was it the final painful disgust that drove him so ???
Is it also not technically fraud with all the interlocking directorships in companies?
This morning we awoke with one question in mind:
What is the philosophy, if there is any, of the Taliban ?
Google does not come up with a worthwhile answer.
the philosophy of the Taliban is to wreck fear and destruction against those who opposed them. While at the same time cultivating hatred among there own people against “the enemy” Now with Osama gone there is going to be covert actions with the intent of building a stronger network of guillible persons whose sole purpose is to revenge the death of Osama.
Pensamientos de corrompido (evil corruption), and a full night’s sleep.
One supposes, if you allow some stretching of your perspective, that corruption could be considered tolerable. This is if such gains are not flooding out of the island into hidden accounts, but being used to filter into the domain of the every- public- person.
For instance, Mr Corrupted builds a huge new home with that he has evilly accrued, but at the same time puts a lot of people to work on the project, and everything else that goes into it, even to the swimming pool and car.
The funds, initially, probably came from some insurance company, or from the IMF, or as USA, British, or Canadian aid, even China could play too.
So Mr Corrupted is really enriching himself, like some modern day Robin Hood, so he can bestow it on the poor, ( is how his thinking must be obviously constructed) in order to bless him in the eyes of God, and give him a full night’s sleep.
Latest joke. Bring back Mr Duprey to help policy holders get back their monies. The man should be in jail waiting for a trial like Sanford. Only in the Caribbean !!!!
Oh rasta man, Oye amigo !
You know they don’t jail West Indian politicians, or West Indian big business people for things like a few millions dollar rip off. They never have. It is against the constitution of our islands.
Poor Sanford. He had two strikes against him. One , he wasn’t in no way a West Indian, two, nor was he a West Indian politician though he attempted to behave like one. And then of course,… three, you could see him easily in the dark.
Notice how did my best to evade racial surf.
@CB:Well said .Three good points
“Advancing into old age “. A friend sent me this !
‘ As you advance into old age, the value of your opinions progressively diminishes . Eventually they have no influence on either the present or the future: you’re relegated to a segment of humanity that is tolerated but not taken seriously. What “is” and what ” will be”, as you might interpret it, no longer has meaning. All you have left is the opportunity to reflect on what once was, while arguing with your fellow seniors who remember it differently. ‘
While the above script is distasteful to me. I’ll have to admit it is more than possibly quite true. So it raises the question, in my case, of the worth of further writing ?
ACB:I learnt that a long time ago from dealing with my children.
However I still get some satisfaction when what I say comes to pass.
Keep on writing.
that should have been @ CB.
rasta man
You have made Sunday morning by refusing to suggest I should stop writing. Your words oozed new vigor into my fingertips and somewhere a doddery battery in my brain cavity became recharged. Perhaps the battery had run low on water, and rain filled her last night.
The large fruit- eating bates have gone, as too have the monkeys. The lack of rain has caused the full- laden mango trees to shed their providence, unripened, early, littering the ground, the fruit sour and unfilled, so that even the birds object to their tasting.
When one hears of the terrible tornadoes caused by strange atmospheric happenings in the mid USA , one ponders our fate as Zeus, the bird of time drops swiftly, like a falling stone from the grasp of Thor.
May we be provoked to full guard, alert, shielded, this coming Hurricane season, blessed by the safety net of Divine Providence.
May President Obama, who the greater part of the world has grasped to full- hearted popularity, likewise be safe- shielded; for he has envious, malicious, and serious enemies.
The world we so little know !
I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s book ‘A short History Of Nearly Everything’ again, this time doing my best to see if I can find any part of it, any page, that is not remotely interesting in any way….. I failed.
It is a book you can open at any page, and find yourself quickly entrapped, engrossed, even if you have already read it several times like I have.
It is a book for all seasons, and places, and ages, unless you are a moron, interested in nothing else except your next fix, or flickering a keyboard killing dragons for hours and days on end on an I pad.
It is a book to inspire any young person with an inquiring mind, who hopes to be inspired into a life few have trodden; a path on any page, that could set you off on a thrilling quest across the whole world for the rest of your life.
I am seriously not as well familiar with this subject matter but I do prefer to have a look at blogs for layout tips and interesting subjects. You in fact described a subject matter that I ordinarily really do not care a great deal about and made it incredibly fascinating. This can be a great weblog that I will be aware of. I currently bookmarked it for long term reference. Lung Cancer Symptoms
Cancer Symptoms, a reply to you.
Sure , Bryson’s book covers cancer in the chapter ‘ The Stuff Of Life’.
After all, the books is called ‘A short History of Almost Everything.
Cancer, and why some tend to get it, is an interesting study, attacked by several well known writers on the subject. We all have cancer cells, apparently, waiting for us suffer a dis-equalibram of body, or mind, to bring the cancer cells to full fruitation where they begin to do their worst.
I had two good old friends, two Bequian brothers in law, who spent their lives building boats, sailing, and diving for whelks or lobster. They spent much of their lives smoking, but very few people could dive with them, and spend as much time under water as they could on one breath. They used to worry me sometimes, you’d come up after your near minute for breath, and they’s still be down. You’d wait, and wait, and they’d not come up. So you’d take a deep breath and go down yourself again, and it was like they’d forgotten they breathed air.
And yet back on land, they’d rock back on the seats in their high off- the- ground porch, and twist off a nice coconut, mix it with whiskey, sometimes rum, and light up and smoke for the rest of the evening. They only stopped smoking when their packs ran out, and so they’d trudge off to the nearest cigarette selling abode, have a couple drinks there and buy a couple packs more, and another bottle of whatever they were on that evening.
“Don’t you guys know smoking its supposed to be really bad for your lungs, ” I’d say, pathetically.
” We don’t read or hear that stuff, ” would be their gruff reply.
“We don’t hear it. How you want us to live without something to smoke ? ”
They lived and worked with the sea, in any weather. They knew everything about the sea and the moon changes and what the weather tides and the lee tides did, and how and where the fish were or were they were going. They lived. They really lived, some of their stories of the sea, were almost unworldly.
But they died of old age, not of lung cancer or anything else like that. I can still see them leaning back in their chairs, and twisting the fresh coconuts to mix those first drinks after diving, and the cigarette smoke drifting from their lips or their fingers.
Perhaps it was the long- diving and blowing their lungs when they hit surface again, and eating fresh sea food, and vegetables they grew, and not giving a damn about things that destroy most of us one way or another. They were great wind sailors and boat builders too, well known in the islands, Steadman and William. I loved them.
Corruption. Ever where you turn is corruption !
Now just look at FIFA, you’d have thought that at least, it could have been kept clean. Oh no ! No way ! Out of the question !
So FIFA let in a Trini, in a big position, and so he bring what Trini know from too many years, too well. It could almost be said that such Trini lose their milk teeth on such things.
Perhaps the other big wigs in FIFA found they were not making it into the Big Time themselves, so they needed some highly technical advice. Somebody whisper to FIFA, ‘Piisst,…. there is only one place to fin’ ah man expert in dat. ‘
Red Plastic could write a winner about that.
@rasta man, and Colin Beadon…
My post of Apr 29, questioning “when does a theory stop being a theory”, was the beginnings of a rambling, that I never go back to, so since the passage of time has erased my momentum, I’ll go again…
When does a theory stop being a theory? Usually when evidence has been supplied to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the subject or premise of the theory is supportable, or reproducable. For example, gravity is not a theory – it’s effect is observable, predictable, and reproducable, even if gravity itself cannot be measured. Now as plausable as all this seems, it appears that in our current world reality, a theory only ceases to be a theory when some “expert” says otherwise, evidence be damned. I’ll give an example…
In the case of the events surrounding September 11, 2001, there is little doubt that on that fateful day, several thousand innocent persons lost their lives during a horrific event. However, that is where the reality stops, and the theory begins. There is enough evidence to conclusively show that the “official” account is badly flawed, if not an all-out fabrication. Several laws of physics and material behaviour were mysteriously broken, every question raised more questions, and yet, America (and by default, the world) went to war against ‘those dasterdly towel-heads’. With no real hard evidence, only what was fed to an unsuspecting puplic. Yet, any attempt to bring attention to the glaring inconsistancies is always met with the demeaning label “conspiracy theory”. So again I ask, when does a theory stop being a theory?
Did you know that it takes more faith to believe in evolution, due to its absolute impossibility of having occured as the scientists say, than it takes to believe in a literal 7-day creation?
BGI Only when a Theory is converted to practicality it cease to be a theory. However with the case of 911 . the theory remains because the practical is the only avenue of proof of which there is none for the conspiracy theorist..No practical ! NO proof!
BGI, AC, Rasta-Man, beloveds all.
Word games make me sleepy.
But this is not a word game. Perth in Australia, is 2246 Miles from Brisbane, also in Australia. The average cost of that flight, which takes 4 hours 44 minutes, is : 358 dollars. The cheapest flight, is 195 dollars. Why does is cost us so much more money to fly a miserable few miles to Trinidad from Barbados, about a 40 minute flight ?
Integration, could never happen. The cost of integration would send the flight costs up into outer space, as though you were taking a rocket to Saturn. This is not a conspiracy or a theory, it is how Island peoples are ripped off by Island governments. Trinidad is only about one hundred miles away, airport to airport. Now I’m even more sleepy.
Correction to above dispatch. 221 Miles, Grantley to Piarco. Still 2020 miles shorter than the Perth to Brisbane flight. Wonder if they have government intervention/meddling, in Australia air flights too ?
It is better to sleep than stay awake pondering such absurd abnormalities.
Could one of you come up with a worth while theory or a good conspiracy about this ? Even a good calypso would do. Give it a soca beat please, to lull me to sleep.
More on Barbados Doppler Radar – see back (54) – Barbados Today.
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=9d0MY3s121Jk&PBID=87ad6005-1972-4d63-92b0-8927eda53c7a&skip
As an independent observer, I think Sunday Sun Columnist Albert Brandford might have got it all wrong this week (see his column: Sunday Sun, June 5, 2011). I now clearly understand why Social Media has ruled Traditional Media, obsolete. Social Media, for the most part, is being driven by young people: a new generation, who have found an innovative way to communicate, which seems to have given them the freedom of expression, they are comfortable with. This is a new generation who are not willing to turn a-blind-eye towards corruption. Mia Mottley therefore seems aware that going into the next election, the BLP will have a major problem!
Talk what you like – Mia Mottley is, therefore, pure class, in that the woman seem to have a vision, while her reformist philosophy is also a commendable attempt to re-position the 72-year-old BLP, to win. How can you fault her for that? The point must not be lost that it was Mia Mottley (a then 28-year-old Minister of Education) who introduced technology into schools in Barbados.
Therefore, what is Mia Mottley’s reformist agenda all about? To find the answer, Albert Brandford would have to have asked himself: despite the alleged life threatening change in healthcare, despite the state of the economy – what is the one issue, which the DLP is likely to use against the BLP (with credibility) during the upcoming general election campaign? The answer would again have to be :corruption.” There has never been a time in its 72-year-old history when the BLP can be said to be as corrupt as it is now under its present leadership. This explains the clash between the new leadership of the BLP and the Stalwarts, who too are being ignored in their attempt to tell the BLP, pull back. Barbadians want competent governance but they equally want, honest government!
Many will willingly admit that the BLP was removed from office because of allegations of corruption and that it really did not help the BLP’s case when the late David Thompson was able to produce a cheque to emphasise his charge. Owen Arthur was seriously wounded long before the campaign started. In fact, from the night he was forced by Thompson to bring debate on the Budget, to an abrupt end, Arthur became a liability to the BLP.
Now in Opposition, it does not help the BLP’s image when in the very Nation newspaper, there are front page stories, with images of voter rigging and other forms of electoral fraud. It is hardly a pretty sight when people willingly admit that they never made any attempt to join the BLP but have received letters confirming their membership. Call it what you like, that is corruption. A year has since passed yet not a word from the leadership of the BLP.
Then there is the “Prior Park Accord,” or the deal which was worked out between Owen Arthur and George Payne, the man who has been fingered as being head of the BLP’s elaborate Ponzi scheme. It should make anybody nervous that if now in Opposition and Arthur is so willing to cut deals in his interest, think what will again happen during what he describes as his ‘second coming.’ The new generation finds this type of conduct, vulgar and offensive!
So an element of the BLP was corrupt in Government; it is also now corrupt in Opposition but wants the people o Barbados to vote for it so that what? It can continue its corrupt practice? Is that it? How could that be fair to the new clean candidates the BLP is running? This seems to be what Mia Mottley’s reforming philosophy is all about. It seems clear that her reformist agenda and crusade for change started with her putting new, fresh; clean candidates in place early.
You do not have to be a rocket-scientist to realise that Mia Mottley seems to be trying to stamp-out corruption within the BLP but that decision has placed her squarely on a collision course with the old-boys club and the very persons who are responsible for the corruption. It seems obvious that Mia Mottley had the option to close ranks and keep her mouth shut. That most certainly would have caused her to find favour and be popular among the corrupt element. That she opted to speak-out and finds herself sandwiched between Arthur/Payne and the gang of five – means that the only persons she can sensibly turn to in order to force change, is the rank-and-file, hence her: “one man one vote,” re-engineering agenda.
The issue seems quite simple to me: Mia Mottley is on a crusade to stamp-out corruption within the BLP but powerful people seem determine to put obstacles in her way, in their own interest. Are Barbadians going to wait until the next BLP Conference to appear surprise when they read that the BLP’s voters list has again been rigged? This cannot be solely a BLP issue because every year, the BLP receives $150,000 from the public purse to run its affairs. Don’t panic! Given my many years, I have never seen an easier DLP campaign on a silver platter. I kid you not!
BFP must be pissed that the top boy in this year’s commone entrance exam was from their much maligned moslem school. hahaha. de only boy in the top ten students and he from a moslem school. dem moselms winning essays and speech competitions and now they coming out top students. poor bfp. wunna must be a real sad bunch this weekend.
independent observer, your comments are apt and i do hope for the sake of the people of barbados that those masquerading as representing the interests of the blp quickly realise that those interests do not reconcile with independent thinkers. i agree with you that since owen arthur cheque issue was brought to the public’s attention, mr arthur was never his former self in debate. matter of fact, he contributed to the blp’s demise at the polls by the series of stupid and contrversial statements made in the campaign, i cannot understand why the blp apologists/sycophants are unwilling or too blind to see that the writing is on the wall for the blp for the next 15 years unless the untrustworthy old guard see the inevitable writing on the wall.
Agree with you ruth . Totaly plain and sensible observation. The Blp is in shambles not because of Mia. but because of the selfish old guard. They will keep holding on until the bottom falls out and like humpty dumpty nothing would put that party togther again. It was political suicide when the Gang of five perform a surgical strike on Mia and the end result is a party without proper leadership. Wuhloss
ac- good and unselfish leaders know when the writing is on the wall and bow out gracefully. i maintain that despite the political propaganda that history will be kind to mr arthur in his stewardship of barbados over the past 14 years and i frown upon the suggestion that his success was as a result of years of plenty. under whose management was the years of plenty created? nevertheless, the blp lost the election because the independents believed the dlp’s charges that the blp were corrupt.in jurisprudence, a man is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty; in the game of politics it is the onus of the blp to prove they are innocent unless they would be considered as guilty. how difficult it is for the blp to prove the dlp,s election charges false if they are false? the bottom line is that the independents are mistrustful of the owen arthur/payne alliance.
Ah, ‘Good and Unselfish leaders’ A species of past ages, if ever.
CIA’s Bin Laden Hunter Ordered to Stand Down 10 Times
Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Osama bin Laden unit, told the U.K. Daily Telegraph in a recent interview he was prevented from capturing or killing the terrorist by his superiors on at least 10 separate occasions.
The 22-year CIA veteran-turned-whistle=blower resigned from the agency in 2004, disgusted by the government’s lies surrounding the terror war. And he’s been embarrassing the U.S. establishment ever since.
In 1995, Scheuer was selected to lead the spy agency’s bin Laden efforts. By then the militant Islamist was exiled in Sudan after angering Saudi authorities. Bin Laden was running several businesses in the African nation that Scheuer suggested disrupting. “We formulated operations and submitted them for approval but they would not approve any of them,” the ex-CIA official told the Daily Telegraph. “If we had been able to deal a serious economic blow it could have been a show-stopper.”
The next year, bin Laden declared war on the American government. And in 1997, when bin Laden was again living in Afghanistan, Scheuer said his team groomed a band of Afghans to capture the suspected terror boss. There were at least two “clear opportunities” to bring down bin Laden by the middle of 1998, according to Scheuer. But in both cases, he said, CIA bosses refused to proceed.
Then, in August of that year, bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network bombed two American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden said the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was targeted for serving as a U.S. intelligence hub for the CIA. The attacks killed numerous U.S. diplomats and at least two CIA agents, according to the Associated Press.
Scheuer told the Telegraph that following the missed opportunities to kill or capture bin Laden in 1998, there were at least eight other chances to get the terror mastermind. By that point, bin Laden was supposedly among the U.S. government’s most wanted criminals. But for some unknown reason, senior officials refused to authorize his capture or assassination.
“One 50-cent round could have put us all out of our agony,” Scheuer explained. But that didn’t happen, as high-level authorities consistently ordered the CIA unit not to stop bin Laden.
In 1999, Scheuer told the paper that he sent an angry letter to higher-ups demanding to know why his men were risking their lives for somebody the U.S. government did not seem to want stopped. “I don’t know what you are doing when you talk to the President but he will not get a better opportunity than this,” Scheuer explained to his superiors.
snip
Why high-ranking officials in the U.S. government would have let bin Laden escape on so many occasions is certainly a matter that should be investigated by the press and authorities. Speculation has been running rampant for years. But unfortunately for Americans, analysts don’t expect serious inquiries to happen any time soon.
More (with embedded links) at:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/7753-cias-bin-laden-hunter-ordered-to-stand-down-10-times
GM’s comment: Now there’s a head scratcher. Seems strange that the Americans for many years went out of their way NOT to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, AKA the worlds biggest, baddest evil-doer.
Green Monkey
And yet many in America are against Obama, yet he got Bin Laden done.
But what are you suggesting, Green Monk ? That there was a conspiracy to keep Bin Laden alive and active ?
Hey Colin, you trying to get me in trouble? Don’t you know we have been warned (well at least I have) putting forward conspiracy theories is strictly verbotten on BFP – the notable exception being conspiracy theories about corrupt Bajan politicians and/or businessmen; those conspiracy theories are OK.
On another topic, purely as a literary exercise I do recommend that everyone should read George Orwell’s famous book 1984 (available for free on the web) and pay particular attention to the pivotal role played by the character Emanuel Goldstein.
Green Monk,
From what you had written, it sure seemed there had been a conspiracy within the US government at that time, not to burn off off Bin Laden, when they knew often just where he was.
I should certainly hope you weren’t anything to do with such a conspiracy, and I most certainly didn’t imply you were.
Customers of Caribbean banks are now incurring unneccessary fees when they travel.Due to the new chip and pin banking system which England and Europe have adopted ,international credit card holders who do not have this technology in their cards are unable to purchase goods ,food or transport while on vacation or business travel in the UK.
The reason for this is that the Caribbean is still using out of date credit cards although the chip and pin system has been around for over ten years. The USA will also be moving to this system shortly.
So if you are travelling to the UK now or USA soon you will have to travel with cash or travellers cheques .putting yourself at personal risk.
There is also a fee of two pounds for every transaction at an ATM in the UK.
Green Monk,
I’ve got Orwell’s 1984 . Never did like him much as a writer, though you have to admire his fame. You want to read his ‘ Burmese days’ ? I have that too.
rasta man,
Long time ago I appreciated it was so very much simpler all around, to just carry cash like in the old days. These days, your bank account can just as easily be hacked as you yourself can be robbed, so why have to go through all the hassle of plastic and pin numbers and all that trash. I suppose it depends of how rich you are and how much money you decide you have to carry around with you.
Any time I use a plastic card, it never works anyhow, probably because of such dramatically infrequent use. I hate the damn things and avoid their use like a plague.
People, by banking systems, have been brainwashed into believing in such plastic. They obviously don’t mind paying the extra cash such transactions involve. Nobody ever said you had to do it that way.
@thywillbeadon, I haven’t read Orwell’s “Burmese Days”, but I do remember reading some time ago <"Shooting an Elephant", the short story he wrote about a British, colonial police officer (who might have been Orwell himself, can’t quite remember) in Burma who finds circumstances have forced him into the position of having to kill (with an underpowered rifle) a rogue elephant. This causes feelings of guilt and an internal conflict when he sees the suffering he causes the animal because of his inexperience and the realization that he took the course of action he did mainly because he wanted to save face in front of the natives and show them that he (i.e. the foreign, white man) could take charge of the situation. I found it quite poignant.
Here is an interesting comparison: Who was best at predicting the future, Aldous Huxley author of “Brave New World” Or George Orwell, author of “Nineteen eighty-four”. I have to admit, it looks, as of right now, like Huxley was quite prescient in his forecast of our future.
Sample:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.
What Huxley feared was there would be no reason to ban a book, because there would be no one around who wanted to read one.
More at: http://fatpita.net/?i=1952
Hi Green Monkey,
I agree wholeheartedly: Brave New World is the truer vision, and as with Brave New World some folks sing “That dear little bottle of mine” (or whatever the song was called – it has been a while since I read the book) and attend the feelies, while the “uncivilized” live on reservations. Bim used to be a reservation, but now we have the feelies called Crop Over. 🙂
Clive
Green Monk,
The police officer could have been my Uncle or my father too. They were both with George Orwell in Burma. I won’t repeat what they said about him.
Did you read again, ‘A Brave New Dystopia’ by Chris Hedges where he brings in Orwell and Huxley on stage, to say their pieces. It is a brilliant six pages, literally spelling out the path of the new age, word by word, as though we are on railway tracks set in time.
DLP Blog is removed completely
BLP’s sporadic – Boxing Day 2010, April 22 and May 21 no more after that…
BLP website very current, videos too but DLP refers to Induction of New members only, looking at late David Thompson’s daughters a la Kennedy’s
War,Death, and football.
BBC Today, Friday. Listening to interviews with North Africans caught up in their wars of hope- coming freedom, you might have been struck like I was, midst all the bombs , bullets, rapes, and deaths, that while half the people of those countries seem to be fighting one another, and another half are fleeing, there is another half deathly worried not about the new politics that might or might not take place and who will actually run this or that country in the end, and another half much more concerned about what will happen to their football.
You see, in this day and age, there appears four half’s to a whole instead of just two. Football, from the deep anguish in their voices seems as important, if not more so, than stability, economics, politics, or death.
As it is, football hooliganism seems to be having a great time, with nobody around to keep order. Those who are not fighting for so called’ freedom’, are busy street- fighting opposition football teams anywhere they can find them.
And so it goes.
Why no article about the fight on a recent flight to Barbados? Ah, some British people, acting like drunken hooligans….what a surprise. NOT.
We should make sure who we are accusing of fighting in mid airflight. We’re told they were Germans, not British.
“THREE BRITS CHARGED IN RELATION TO A FIGHT ONBOARD A VIRGIN ATLANTIC FLIGHT ENROUTE TO BARBADOS” http://bit.ly/mbXizw A Dane not German tried to STOP the fight…
Check the Bar Codes on things you buy.
These days,since many items and foods are not marked with their country of origin though they should be, and because importers are not being government regulated, like they should be, it makes sense to know what your Bar Codes tell you.
Here is a list of the lead numbers you should know.
USA and Canada bar codes start off with 00-13 numbers. Germany start with 40 – 44. The UK Bar Code starts with 50. Central America 740-745. Philippines 480. France 30-37. Japan 49. Denmark 57. Finland 64, Switzerland 76. Australia 93. And China start with 690 to 695. Each one of these bar codes have a string of other number that follow. What has been given in each case here, is just the starting numbers.
Bar Code subversion.
Further investigation has shown that Bar Codes are being subverted. So though you might want to stay away from products, especially consumable products, from a certain country, you may still find yourself eating what that country produces.
So that is the world of today. Grow your own food if you possibly can.
good piece of information. Thanks CB. especially on China Products ! CB you made my day!
The New World, without values !!!
The values of the world we knew, are sliding, plunging, into a void of senselessness where the only sobering thought seems to most of us, is, how much we can say that we own.
We’re fools, fools, fools,….we don’t own any of it. It is just what we are lent by fate, hard work, or corruption, for a few microseconds of cosmic time, ‘ like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, alighting an hour or two,….is gone ! ‘ ( to borrow a strip from Khayyam ).
@CB :All points to one thing,the return of our Lord and Saviour ,Jesus Christ. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
The BBC, Allen Stanford, and questionable pretenses.
Listening to the BBC these last few days with their interviews of people in Antigua who actually worked for Allen Stanford, he seems like the boss most people would pray for.
Stanford seems to have just about literally owned and run that Island. The island, had been doing a lot better than other islands. Stanford employed more people than the whole of the Island government or any other organization, we were told.
If for instance, one supposes, that Stanford were a full navel- string- budded West Indian, in all probability he and Antigua would still be chugging along happily together.
No doubt there were the envious, who wished him in eternal hell; which happens to all successful men, politicians included. But you have to look at the overall results.
After all, Stanford is not the only person, organization, or country, who has, or is, in this day and strange age, sucked wealth from the rest of the world under questionable pretenses.
Rasta Man,
Though Fermat’s last theorem has been cracked ( BBC Today) at last, though very few people can understand anything about it, the question of the human soul remains still non-provable. .
Depends on what is meant by your ‘ Gain the whole world’ ? We’ d go for gaining the complete knowledge of the world, which might lead us to more specificity as to if such a thing as a soul exists, though we have no such doubt as to the existence of a Primal Mover, … You can supply the name.
Can you imagine not one BLACK rally driver in the recently concluded Sol Rally Barbados could be highlighted in the special Nation newspaper review even when winning their Class.
Just goes to prove that it is a “RICH WHITE MAN”S & WOMEN’S” sport
Rasta man
And the best runners all come from Africa, just about. We see one or two white women creeping into the running picture, and some darkish guys winning in Formula One. As for golf and tennis, any colour could play and win.
Anyhow, should we blame fate or God for the inequalities ?
A reminder of Sugar’s contribution. by Trevor Rudder in the advocate last week. That was when agriculture kept this island afloat. It won’t float any longer, with all the concrete, and it won’t feed its people, when the energy crisis hits and we can’t afford the huge importation.
It is a really good letter by Trevor Rudder, pointing out how carefully finance was used in this island to do the most necessary things, and to show how people really worked a worthwhile industry, when they had people who cared about it and the land.
Oh, they didn’t have computers in those days, or cell phones to while away time on. and they didn’t have LIME.
LIME in Trinidad, means to lime around doing nothing. No wonder we have to call St Lucia or Jamaica to get our phones fixed now. Too much liming taking place here in Barbados.
The Soothsayers amongst us.
There are those of us, the soothsayers, who have warned and warned. So now we only hope, because there is nothing else we can do but hope, that the voted in party and the opposition can somehow get together and get this going. They could start by listening to the world news every day on the BBC. That would be the best place to actually start, just as soon as they wake up.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse are treading across our countryside, their hooves clattering on concrete and bare fields where food crops should be growing. People are starving across much of the world, and all we are doing is converting land to buildings, and other worthless projects, none of which will put food into hungry mouths when things begin to get really tight.
If we can’t find people interested enough, or intelligent enough to kick start intensive agricultural projects, then let us find somebody who can.
Don’t say this cannot be done. It has to be done, and started right away. It is now imperative! Now !
Not next year, not next month, not to-morrow.
Barbadians seem to hate trees and find every excuse to cut them down, have anyone notice that the majority off the fruit trees are gone, that is why a lot of birds have stop coming to our Island. AND. why Asthma is on the increase, the Doctors might like to say differently but Less trees more Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.
The Government and the Hotel Association along with the Unions needs to step in and STOP all these Condo from being built here our Hotels are empty because of the nonsense off letting people who do not live here buy a Condo then bring all their servants and food stuff, we need people in our Hotels not having their own houses here!
Barbados depends on tourism and if we want our standard of living to continue the construction of Condos that Barbadians can not afford to buy ,plus the taking up a lot of agricultural lands needs to STOP
Do we need all those golf courses? God forbid that something should happen that food could not get in to Barbados, what will we eat concrete and grass?!!!!!
Mary_Clyne,
Well you know in some places in Africa, they can not find even grass, and resort to eating mud pies.
The problem in Barbados, is that too many people are too young and have never experienced real hunger and being unable to not even see food, let alone get some to eat. The same thing can be said about the lack of water, except that lately is has been raining almost daily and we’ve hardly seen the sun for a couple weeks now.
Things can change so fast you can’t imagine, and the hooves of the four horses, clatter on us while we doze half asleep. And much of the world is in spreading tumult. This is a small easily forgettable island, should things get tougher in other places, and I have long-remembered dreams, of the second world war.
This is certainly the beginning, but it can easily, also, be the End!
We’re just been given, at last, a heritage status. Is a great pity this new status could not have included this whole once- lovely island, but it is too late, oh too late indeed. And we’ll never now stop the garbage being thrown out of expensive air-conditioned cars, out of buses and off the back of trucks .
And now, sadly, very sadly, we have to add Barbados to the growing list of porn locations dotted around the world. When Casinos arrive too, that is the next step, then we can claim we’ve ‘Reached’ the ultimate corruption, and the doors of all churches and places of worship will be just shimmery of what we once were. .
The murk will be evenly, everywhere, like the blankets of dirty snow or volcanic dust, and everything and everybody will be tarnished with the corruption, like the escalators down, down, and down, on a decent into hell.
There must be full length mirrors, and big weighing scales like in a British Boots shop, at the entrance to our parliament building.
Then the politicians can check themselves out carefully, each day, and make sure they stop this decent into fast- becoming fat slobs.
Living the good life.
Living the good life. While the rest of us have to scrunt and bear it.
rasta man, We are, in actuality, the new slaves.
I’ve written it before. We are the new slaves, when you come to think about it. The big projects dreamed up between big business and government ( this dealing takes place across much of the world these days) is designed in such a way that the project often fails or never gets finished, and most certainly way- oversteps, always, all estimated costs.
The people responsible for this ‘flinch’, laugh all the way to their own respective bank accounts, and the tax payer wakes too late to find his taxes going up to cover the debuncle. This, is what is called business these days, and nobody is ever found to pay the piper, so near- perfect is the shroud of lies that covers everything neatly up.
Great Barcode sham !!!!
Within the last few days, inspecting brand named goods from England and the USA, we have discovered here in Barbados, the Barcodes to be as they should be from those countries. But, But, but, but, but , on close inspection of the good themselves the products are actually made in China. Now this is criminal.
So we may be eating British and American foods, made in China too.
It just shows you who is not guarding our interests like they should be.
The latest irony is the new land tax valuations. Some have gone up by over 100%. This is our CARING Government. How much more can the people bear without revolting?
Rasta Man,
So how can poor people afford to buy and own land. What is the government trying to do ? Would you think they are trying to make more money to conveniently hide and mysteriously lose, on The Four Seasons, and on L.I.A.T ?
Man, Rasta, don’t try to get me going on such things. They make me want to puke.
Poor people can buy land because they scrimp and save and were told they should own a piece of the rock.I personally bought for my sons who will not be able to afford any soon from now . Now it seems that the Govt wants to take it away from them
Hello Colin
I personally agree with you,I used to drink Ovaltine made in Switzerland then all of a sudden I noticed a change in the presentation.I had to acquire a magnifying glass to read the Very Obscure Place of manuacture…. Where?????? Yep Made IN China….Now I really dont have nothing against Chinese,,,,But previous warnings about Baby Milk Etc.,,,And their lapse of Hygeine….Well I have now changed to Nesquik Made in Brazil until I receive data about such…Note I really loved Bournvita made in good old Egalaaand…However after reading Made in India (And aware of their Excellent hygeine) I also made a personal decision to abort……..
Tweedley Dum. A new form of genocide, perhaps ?
I’ve been on to the British Embassy about this use of Barcodes, and how we here are getting supposedly British goods made in China. I have also spoken to two stores that sell supposedly British goods, to ask them if they were aware of this Barcode deception. You can’t get anybody worth talking to at the American Embassies, but then we know they have been trading in double tongue for years, and the use of incorrect Barcodes on their goods, are all part of the deception. Lastly I phoned the Fair Trading commission here in Barbados, nobody of authority was available to speak to me, ( they hardly ever are ) and they never phoned back to my message, given to the young lady at deception, (sorry, I mean,… reception ).
So we are up against a criminal deception how ever we turn, and we better start making our own food and drink as best we can.
In that respect, the amount of sugars placed in island soft drinks should be slowly cut back. Those responsible here in our islands are just as responsible for spreading early death, loss of limb and staggering medical bills, as are the Chinese.
Ah well, Ah well. Perhaps It is all just a way to control population growth, or perhaps it is the doctors, specialists and business people and funeral establishments getting rich at our expense, or it is the new form of mass genocide of lesser peoples like us ? Take your choice, because very little is ever going to be done about it.
‘ Tough New World ‘. A review of Earth.
We must look out for this new book by Keith Meatto, who has the credentials to write it. Check it out on Google, and you’ll get a sniff of it.
I see I’m not the only Soothsayer.
Correction. Kieth Meatto did the review. The author is Bill Mckibben.
‘Tough New World’. A review of Earth today and what we are inducing.
Hi This may not be major but a group of us have been discussing it and thought we would like to alter a behavior pattern we come across daily in Barbados. Let me know what you think.
“It is time to change the ritual with the change”
I have small yet endless pet peeve about Barbados Shop clerks that maybe you could help me change with your blog. It is a wide spread practice, from major stores to corner shops and it happens no where else in the world that I have ever come across. It is culturally prevalent everywhere in Barbados. After paying the clerk in a store, instead of putting the bill in the bag or handing the items to you politely and separately, the clerk will always take the register bill, the paper money and the coins, put them in one bundle with the coins on top, and then awkwardly try to give them to you at once. Your hands usually contain your wallet and you have a bag to pick up but somehow your are left having to separate this bundle with your one free hand that is now full of coins and paper. And of course with the coins on top, they tend to slide right off the paper. Nowhere else in the world do store clerks do this, really! Elsewhere in the world these items are handed separately to you by all clerks as the otherwise awkward result is obvious. In the old days in other countries the clerk would always put the receipt in the bag, but now they ask if you would like it in the bag or not. Here it is obvious that this is a very old idea that someone thought was necessary, way back when, and it was taken up by all Barbadian stores and to this day they must train their clerks to perform this task as a required awkward ritual. It is funny to watch Bajans come up with all sorts of personal tricks to get around this at the counter, but the main constant if you sit back and watch at a store check out is the amount of coins that fall all over the counter and floors during this awkward exchange. It is time to change this ritual with the change.
cog911,
An interesting observation, and yes we’ve gone through the awkwardness of picking up dislodged coins. Perhaps we should allow this Bajan idiosyncrasy. It is probably good for your back, bending like that, and it certainly helps to slow down the pace of modern life.
*US government openly admits arming Mexican drug gangs with 30,000 firearms – but why?
It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going.
This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called “ATF”) under orders from Washington. The program was called “Fast and Furious.”
Even Reuters is now covering the news and reporting how members of Congress are outraged to learn that this happened.
Details are also starting to leak about the cover-up inside ATF, which was led by the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, an Obama appointee . The engineering of the illegal gun running went right up the chain of command to the director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, who is now expected to resign. The real planning of this event went even higher up the chain of command in Washington, possibly all the way to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Among the firearms sold to the Mexican drug gangs were AK-47s, thousands of pistols and, remarkably, .50-caliber rifles which are typically used to disable vehicles or carry out sniper-based assassinations at extremely long ranges (up to two miles). The mainstream media is now reporting that these weapons are turning up in violent crimes being committed in Phoenix, Arizona. As an ABC news affiliate reports:
“According to the testimony of three Phoenix ATF agents, including Dodson, hundreds of weapons are now on the streets in the United States and Mexico, possibly in the hands of criminals. Dodson estimated the number could be as many as 1,800 weapons. He estimated agents in the Phoenix field division facilitated the sale of approximately 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers. A few hundred have been recovered.”
snip
When theory becomes fact
You see, all this used to exist solely in the realm of conspiracy theory. A few years ago, if you even suggested this kind of thing was going on, you were called a kook. But now it’s an established fact being reported by Reuters, Washington Post and other major news outlets. Now the U.S. government has been forced to admit that yes, it actively delivered 30,000 firearms into the hands of Mexican drug gangs and then intentionally stopped tracking where they went.
More with imbedded links at: http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html#ixzz1RWO4RAGD
Green Monk,
I have heard BS, and probably, unwittingly, taken part in it sometimes, but this is the Epitome of all the BS I have ever heard.
‘Ten Commandments’ Leo Szilard.
Speak to all men as you do to yourself, with no concern for the effect you make, so that you do not shut them out from your world; lest in isolation the meaning of life slips out of sight and you lose the belief in the perfection of creation.
@Colin::
“but this is the Epitome of all the BS I have ever heard.”
No, it’s not Colin, ’tis but a small piece of the grand design, you seem to be inadvertently encouraging.
The biggest BS you ever bought into was the supposedly desirable shutdown of the whole global economy to mitigate the “catastrophic man-made global warming” of just one half of a degree C this century.
You enjoy a good read, I know, so digest this latest from your new UN masters ( reported by James Delingpole – Daily Telegraph ).
“More dangerous than Al Qaeda
Former US secretary to the United Nations John Bolton once famously said: “The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” (H/T Milo)
But I’d say Bolton was being too modest in his aspirations. Far too modest. I’d suggest that if we lost all 38 stories the benefits to mankind would be almost incalculable. Right now, indeed, it’s likely that the United Nations poses a far greater threat to Western Civilisation and the world’s economic future than Al Qaeda does. Have a glance at its latest report World Economic And Social Survey 2011 – and you’ll see what I mean.
The report argues that over the next 40 years our governments must spend an annual minimum of $1.9 trillion – that’s an eyewatering $76 trillion – steering the global economy onto the path of “green growth.”
But “Green growth” – as the report more or less acknowledges – is an oxymoron. That’s why, even though it was supervised by an alleged economist, Dutchman Rob Vos, the report is not at all ashamed to advocate limiting economic growth through rationing, punitive taxation and other forms of government intervention. Why? To combat “Climate Change”, of course.
Here’s the kicker:
“Hence, if, for instance, emission reduction targets cannot be met through accelerated technological progress in energy efficiency and renewable energy generation, it may be necessary to impose caps on energy consumption itself in order to meet climate change mitigation in a timely manner. Proposals to put limits on economic growth can be viewed in this context.” (P.19)
And if shaving off $1.9 trillion from the world economy each year (that’s 3 per cent of the world gross product in 2010) results in further economic stagnation and a lower standard of living for our children and grandchildren, well what the hell. As the report primly tells us, none of us actually needs to earn more than $10,000 a year. Anything more is greedy:
“For example, taking life expectancy as an objective measure of the quality of life, it can be seen that life expectancy does not increase much beyond a per capita income of about $10,000. Similarly…cross-country evidence suggests that there are no significant additional gains in human development (as measured by the human development index) beyond the energy-use level of about 110 gigajoules (GJ) (or two tons of oil equivalent (toe) per capita.”
Are they seriously suggesting that developed economies should ration their people’s energy use? They surely are:
“The Survey estimates that the emissions cap would be equivalent to primary energy consumer consumption of 70 gigajoules per capita per year, which means that the average European would have to cut his or her energy consumption by about half and the average resident of the US by about three quarters.”
So, instead of being able to enjoy a hot shower every day all you Americans, you’ll now confine your warm ablutions to weekends only. Same goes for air-con in summer. And heating in winter. Welcome to the New Green World Order.
What’s amazing about this stuff – and believe me, there’s plenty more where this came from – is the unblushing shamelessness with which it advocates this economic insanity. Here is the world’s most powerful intergovernmental institution essentially arguing for the destruction of the global economy, enforced rationing, Marxist wealth redistribution, greater regulation, the erosion of property rights and global governance by a new world order of technocrats and bureacrats. And being so upfront about it they actually issue press releases, telling us what they’re planning to do and encouraging us to write about it.
This is the thing that amazed while I was researching my book Watermelons. If the global green movement is any kind of conspiracy, then it’s a conspiracy in plain sight. The people in power who are advancing its agenda – be it President Obama’s house eco-activists John Holdren and Carol Browner, Green MP Caroline Lucas, and all those faceless apparatchiks at the UN and the EU – make absolutely no bones about what it is that they want to do to save the world from the peril of “Climate Change”: the end of Industrial Civilisation.
Which might be just about understandable if the crisis we were facing were so great that only the most extreme measures would suffice. But the crisis they describe is non-existent. As I argue in the second half of my book, economic growth and true environmentalism – as opposed to the sick, bastardised, warped, hair-shirt perversion of it currently being dumped on us by the Greenies – go hand in hand.
As economies grow richer, so they have more money to set aside for cleaner rivers, fresher air, as well as to invest in R & D projects for ever more eco-friendly forms of energy. It’s no coincidence that quite the worst environmental damage in the last century was done in those countries behind the Iron Curtain. Free market economies tend naturally to be cleaner and healthier because clean and healthy is what people choose anyway if they can afford it. They don’t need government to step in and take their money in order to spend it inefficiently trying to achieve something which would have happened quite naturally anyway.
What this ludicrous UN report is advocating is the exact opposite of what the world needs if it is to become genuinely greener. All those people in the developing world, if they’re to live healthier, less environmentally damaging lives the very last thing they need is hand-outs from richer economies. What they need is property rights and free trade and the chance to grow their economy to the point where – cf the Kuznets Curve – they can afford the luxury of having to breed fewer children and to heat and light their homes without having to chop down the nearest trees. What they also need for us in the rich West to have thriving economies in order that we can import more of their produce.
Rationing and limits to growth are not the answer. The UN is a menace and we listen to its eco-fascist ravings at our peril.”
Reconsider Szilard’s thought for a moment, but through a different lens.
Do not shut them out from your world, denying all development, clean water, electricity and refrigeration in the name of carbon reduction.
Carbon utilisation has been the driver for our half of the world’s escape from subsistence, but some would now deny their less fortunate half the same opportunity.
I hope you, in your zealous environmentalism, can see beyond the obvious, and calculate the inevitable blowbacks .
Straight Talk
I don’t really honestly see any reason why there will not be blowbacks.
It’s going to be tough, and getting much tougher. There are millions starving and dying already across the world. We have to learn to live on a drastically more frugal path if this Earth is to survive the devastating affliction we are daily causing on a greater and greater scale.
Now that is my final answer about the subject, though I agree there are people trying to make business hay out of the Greening issue, the global warming issue, the alternative energy issue, and every issue placed out there by people like me who see the Earth and all its living creatures and flora,…. being ground inexorably to a pulp.
So you’ll have to live with the way I look at things, and hopefully allow me to remain your friend, and at the same time permit my point of view. The argument is just too complex, and so much depends on your own point of view, which is on a quite different perspective and path than my own .
“Capitalism is the absolute ENEMY of the free market” (David Korten author “Agenda for a New Economy”.)
Get Free From Wall Street: An Interview With David Korten
How to avoid money games and create real wealth.
by Doug Pibel
David Korten’s 1995 bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World, was a key document in building the anti-globalization movement. In the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown, he wrote Agenda for a New Economy, a critique of the overwhelming influence of Wall Street on economic policy, which has resulted in a political system that serves, not the many, but the very wealthy few. Eighteen months later, Korten is back with a much-expanded second edition of Agenda in which he details a strategy for taking back our political and economic systems and using them to create localized, community-controlled economies that foster the things we really need. I had a conversation with David at the YES! offices.
snip
Doug: In the United States, it’s an article of faith that we depend on Wall Street for economic well-being. You suggest that Wall Street is actually the cause of many of the problems on Main Street. How are people reacting to that challenge to such a widespread belief?
David: Well, it’s a very interesting tension, because at one level, people have seen so clearly the corruption of Wall Street: the greed, the meanness, the predatory ethics and practices. So there is enormous outrage against Wall Street that cuts across the political spectrum.
On the other hand, we have been lured into a situation where many of us depend for our retirement on Wall Street investments, which is really a euphemism for Wall Street speculation. Since our expectations of income cannot be met by Social Security alone, we look to these financial funds as the real basis of our retirement security. So that creates an enormous political constituency in favor of Wall Street. The tension is very real and very powerful.
Doug: What needs to happen to resolve the tension between outrage and dependency?
David: The interesting part of this and the key to understanding it is recognizing the distinction between real wealth and what I call “phantom wealth.” Phantom wealth is money that is created from nothing, unrelated to making anything of real value. The Wall Street game is about generating financial claims on the real wealth of society, while doing nothing to contribute to the pool of real wealth—food, shelter, entertainment, transportation, education, health care—on which those claims are made.
Doug: Why is this distinction hard for people to make?
David: Our whole language about money is so convoluted that it’s almost like the language was designed to prevent us from seeing the reality. When a person uses terms like “assets,” “wealth,” “capital,” “resources,” there is absolutely no way you can tell whether they’re talking about money, which is simply accounting entries, or about real things that those accounting entries are claims against.
If you add up all the financial assets in the world, they exceed the market value of all the world’s real wealth, which means those claims can never be fully actualized.
Over the long term, the system has to collapse, as it did. Since we are pumping it back up, it will inevitably keep collapsing until we fundamentally restructure it.
snip
Doug: What is your response to people who say that capitalism, freedom, and democracy are inseparable? That it’s all part and parcel?
David: It’s a total lie. In terms of human liberty, capitalism works really well for the liberty of the very, very rich. If your concern is the liberty of billionaires, it’s quite an adequate system. But more broadly, it is the absolute enemy of the free market, because the whole dynamic of capitalism and the goal of the larger corporations is to establish monopoly control of whatever sector they’re in. Whether it’s monopolizing seeds, water, air, whatever it is—that’s the game, so that you can extract monopoly profits.
Capitalism is also the enemy of democracy because the goal is for the financial interests to dominate the political system and manipulate the rules in ways that benefit the very rich and are totally contrary to the interests of ordinary people. That ultimately strips ordinary people of meaningful participation in the political process.
Doug: According to standard American analysis, if you say that about capitalism it must make you a Marxist.
David: Part of the mental trap that we’re in is this idea that our only choices is between the repression of rapacious capitalism and the repression of communism. The hope for change resides in the people who are engaged in rebuilding their local economies.
I grew up very conservative, even fairly right-wing. The reason I pursued a career in international development was my concern about a communist takeover of the world, and how that threatened our American way of life. I am most definitely not a Marxist.
Actually I see myself as being an advocate of democracy and real markets. In some ways, I see Adam Smith as my patron saint, if you really understand Adam Smith’s framework. His Wealth of Nations was a tirade against corporate monopoly, and essentially against the dynamics that we now celebrate as capitalism.
It’s pretty clear to me that Smith’s market ideal was an economy comprised of locally rooted enterprises owned and operated by people who live in the community and function within a framework of community
moral values.
snip
Doug: What do you want readers to take away from having read the book? On a personal level?
David: Most all of the dysfunctions that we’re experiencing in society—economic instability, social breakdown, violence, and war, environmental destruction—they are all inevitable consequences of an economic system that is designed to concentrate power and focus social values on money. The only way we’re going to be able to correct the failure is through economic transformation. The new edition of Agenda for a New Economy presents a model and framework that address these issues and that have a very real prospect of increasing the security, well-being, and happiness of almost everybody except perhaps a few of the greediest billionaires.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/get-free-from-wall-street
Attorney General on a razor’s edge
Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder is tiptoeing on a razor’s edge of incompetence or perjury.
He has once again denied prior knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious (Gunrunner) smuggling guns into Mexico that were used to kill American Agents. President Obama told CBS last week, “My attorney general has made clear that he certainly would not have ordered gun running to be able to pass through into Mexico”. (Attkisson, 2011)
But more evidence has surfaced that Holder must have known ATF was smuggling guns into Mexico at least a year before Border Agent Brian Terry was killed in the desert south of Tucson by ATF-smuggled-Operation-Gunrunner-weapons.
The evidence? Senator Charles Grassley last week showed his House Committee an email from Phoenix ATF Agent in Charge, William Newell, about a “Southwest Border Strategy Group” of senior Justice Department officials meeting on October 27, 2009.
The meeting was about Gunrunner, and smuggling guns into Mexico. (Owens, 2011)
snip
As detailed in Examiner/Tucson, articles (4/4, 4/29, 6/20, 6/28) Operation Gunrunner was a multi-agency, extra-legal scheme that purchased nearly 2000 firearms from Tucson and Phoenix gun stores that were then smuggled to Mexican drug cartels. ATF agents were ordered by supervisors to let the guns be smuggled into Mexico without notifying Mexican police. Hundreds of smuggled weapons have turned up at crime scenes across Mexico and the US. Along with US Agents, Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, 152 Mexican police and soldiers have been killed with Gunrunner weapons.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Attorney General on a razor’s edge – Tucson Crime Prevention | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/crime-prevention-in-tucson/attorney-general-on-a-razor-s-edge#ixzz1RZjUWJRw
Green Monk,
Now you writing something (Capitalism, the enemy of the Free Market) that anybody with any small part of a brain can see makes obvious sense. Major Corporationism and Multinational companies are destroying the world economy. Look now Italia is tottering too. Nobody ever listened or read ‘Small is Beautiful ‘ in these last fifty years. It was written in the days when most people had work, but E.F. Schumacher could see what was about to happen. He was one of the last of the true Seers.
A clip out of the back of ‘Small Is Beautiful’ for all those who have never read or heard of the book.
‘ Dr Schumacher maintained that Man’s current pursuit of profit and progress, which promotes giant organisations and increased specialisation, has in fact resulted in a gross economic inefficiency, environmental pollution and inhuman working conditions.’
‘ With the emphasis on the person, not the product, Small is Beautiful
points the way to a world in which Capital serves Man in stead of Man remaining a slave to Capital. ‘ The book was first published in 1973
I don’t think Schumacher was right. I bloody well know he was right. Just look at the world around us today.
My Island.
My island soaks within a stretch of shimmering reefwater. She is, about, one hundred paces of white sand. There are three coconut trees living on her, nothing else but sand and the sea’s gently -washing lip.
There is nothing on my island to suggest man was ever there. No word or sign cut into the coconut tree’s bough. The birds come and strut the beech, a crab or two scuttles along, and the ooo-coo-cooing of a dove.
Sleeping on her sand at night, I feel motherly breeze touch my face; looking up, are the stars of eternity,…. in the eyes of my love. C.L.B.
What has changed?
Big business, governments and multinational organizations, cut the forest, blast roads and dam the rivers where the Mid and South American Tribal people live. With their natural environment gone, this turns those peoples to slaves.
In other countries, like China, Malaysia, to some extent Australia and Canada, the same Status Quo fells the forests, builds huge cities, dams the great rivers, and chases the farmers and hunter-gatherers into new towns where they cannot survive without their land. Those people become sweatshop slaves.
In the past, galleons were used to do the same thing out of Africa. Strip people off their natural environments, transports them far away, and turn them to slaves.
Now the Earth is three quarters full of slaves.
Nothing has changed. !
C.L.B.
Wasted Energy. The Fuels of Hell.
Assuming the Anthropic Principle in one or other of its forms, ( look it up on Google, if you’re not familiar with it and take your pick) we’re still left with a problem
caused by some religions.
Why would Mankind be created to be placed on
Earth, subjected all his life to endless temptations not all designed or evolved by him, and then, at his death, have to face a wall of fire for impiety?
It almost seems, if this is the story, that God (any God, take your pick) must have a mean streak of sadism.
It would have been just so much simpler not to have bothered to design a Universe at all, or at least, left out Man with his morbid sin- searching intelligence. Why waste energy on fuels for hell ?
The Anthropic Principle suggests Man was created so there would be somebody to admire the Earth and the Universe.
One might ask, would a painter, a sculptor, a composer, poet, create something if there was nobody else on Earth to admire his work ? Is this why God created Man,…. and Man his art ?
Those of our worthy ancients, who chalked the wild animals they met on the walls of their caves, would have been surprised how many millions of us have seen their work since. They, bless their hearts, knew nothing of Jesus, or Mohamed, or even what sin was though they admired the stars, not knowing what stars were either.
Maybe we should never beg such questions when there is no language can be used to give a sensible or satisfactory answer !
C.L.B.
@CLB
Not to mention one of our great achievements is the ability to use our minds Howeve in the overall scheme of things we ae unable to use it wisely prefering to create a God who see and act the way we do.
AC. That is a good point made. We, Mankind, have created each in our own time and place, anthropomorphic Gods, and our Cleric attempt to dictate the paths and ways they insist we should act and live.
The unfortunate result of all this, is that Cleric tend to fall to sin just as much as we do. They don’t have the all- seeing depth of divine vision needed to appreciate the common thread running through all religions, so we end like idiots, fighting religious wars.
The BBC today 16th July, has an interesting discussion on the Bhagavad Gita ( The Song Of God. ). With India taking over much of the new world stage, the Bhagavad Gita, in book form, is for those persons interested in religions not to be without, since Hinduism is by far the oldest true and fascinating philosophy, way of life and religion, on Earth. There is so very much to be said for it, should you seek path into the Indian Mind and Thought.
Hinduism is a nature religion whose roots spawned the other great nature religion, Buddhism. They are both attached to the principle of the Earth and everything on it,…. as Divine Ground.
Most people still don’t get it, the “war on terror” is a scam:
US Recognizes Al-Qaeda War Criminals As Libya’s Official Government
Bangkok, Thailand July 15, 2011 – Associated Press reports that, “U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration has decided to formally recognize Libya’s main opposition group as the country’s legitimate government. The move gives foes of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi a major financial and credibility boost.”
In an act of utter desperation as the brutal, though entirely ineffective Libyan rebels flounder in their NATO-backed offensives against Libya’s ruling government in Tripoli, the US has now recognized the Libyan rebels as the country’s “legitimate government” allowing the US to directly fund, arm, and support with US troops, the Al-Qaeda tied war criminals operating out of Benghazi. The recent farcical move indicates that France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has failed in his threats and posturing to get Libya’s Qaddafi to stand down, and that the NATO-backed war of aggression is about to reach new heights of brutality most likely including the involvement of US, UK, and French troops on the ground.
Libyan Rebels are Al-Qaeda – On Record
Operating out of the Libyan cities of Benghazi, Darna, and Tobruk, Libyan rebels themselves have admitted that many of their members are drawn from Al Qaeda. The London Telegraph has reported that Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi had admitted many of his fighters had just returned from fighting US forces in Iraq. The Telegraph also reported that Hasidi himself had “earlier fought against “the foreign invasion” in Afghanistan, before being captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan. He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.” A United States Army West Point report confirms indeed that fighters drawn from the Libyan cities of Benghazi, Darna, and Tobruk were second only to Saudi Arabia in contributing forces to fight US troops in Iraq.
This illustrates the absurdity of both the “War on Terror” and the current NATO-backed operations unfolding in Libya, where the same known terrorists are used both as an excuse for global intervention and continued foreign occupation while concurrently provided arms, air cover, legitimacy, and now direct funding while participating in global intervention. On full display for the world to see is how the global corporatocracy manipulates and exploits all sides of any given conflict for their own nefarious self-serving ends. One must wonder what races through the minds of US and UK pilots as they provide air support for the very men they strafed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-recognizes-al-qaeda-war-criminals-as.html
Green Monkey,
All war is Scam, unless you are having to fight for the security and freedom of your own country. And yet, we can be drawn into war if it effects the security of the adjacent regions in which we live.
The problem today, is that we have been responsible for making the whole Earth adjacent, inter-connected, bound by gold and economic chains, so that it too has become the adjacent region in which we live. And so we are trapped, in a Catch 2 which no man on Earth is intelligent or strong enough to lead us a way out.
In truth, ‘Small, would have been beautiful’ . Except,… low,… simplicity like that is now way too late.
Dear BDF, I don’t understand how I have managed to get THYWILLBEADON tacked onto my name. It is my Skype name, but I’d prefer I could get rid of it for BFP.
Africa and its political leaders.
Jacob Yuma is telling the world he does not want interference in Libya. In other words, if Qaddafi wants to kill or eat his people, that is his business, just like if Mugabe wants to keep destroying his country, no big thing. In other words, ‘All the rest of the world needs to do is go on feeding the starving in Africa, while we go on fighting our wars, running our people into leaking boats, starvation, death, and feeding our vultures. ‘ (Words to that affect.)
Well, that’s one way to lower world population figures. It is just that Jacob Yuma does not give one,…. about his own people as long as he can hold on to power. And this is the problem with most politicians anywhere you find them.
For the aviation enthusiasts among us, I would just like to bring to your attention that June 17th was the 15th anniversary of the downing of TWA’s flight 800 off Long Island, New York. This 747 crash, many experienced and credible aviation professionals believe, has not been satisfactorily explained by the report on the crash investigation as issued by the NTSB. The NTSB report concluded that the aircraft was most likely brought down by a fuel vapor explosion in the centre wing fuel tank.
From the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization (FIRO):
TWA Flight 800: An Introduction
Present Status
The official theory for the crash is no longer viable. The initial detonation captured by multiple radar sites that blew debris at supersonic speeds away from the aircraft shown in detail here excludes the official theory of a fuel-air explosion as the cause of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded and all relevant government scientists agree that the fuel-air explosion was low-velocity. Such an explosion could not have launched debris at supersonic speeds in any direction.
The NTSB has not yet responded to multiple requests regarding the high-velocity debris recorded by multiple FAA radar sites. Neither the NTSB final report, nor any factual or other report in the 13,000 page public docket contains any analysis of this initial radar-recorded detonation–the very explosion that caused the crash.
As described here, the government’s explanation for the many eyewitness reports of a rising streak of light was the plane climbing sharply after breaking in two. However radar tracking of the accident aircraft recorded no such climb. This leaves nothing in the official theory to explain nearly 200 eyewitnesses accounts.
snip
Informed Citizens = Safer Skies
The purpose of this website is to inform the public of significant lapses in the official Flight 800 investigation that led to the release of an inconclusive and incomplete final report. FIRO believes that citizens informed on matters related to aviation safety can help make air-travel safer.
FIRO’s petition to the NTSB is publicly available in Internet-friendly format, and lists evidence in conflict with, and not addressed in the NTSB’s Flight 800 crash report.
The reader is urged to be objective and diligent, for this is a complex case, with many details. A good starting point is to learn about the government’s handling of the eyewitness evidence.
http://flight800.org/intro.html
About FIRO from flight800.org:
Formed in April of 1999, FIRO (Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization) is a group dedicated to uncovering and publicizing the facts surrounding the crash of TWA Flight 800. Its membership includes former airline crash investigators, scientists, engineers, and aviation professionals.
FIRO has identified significant discrepancies in the official investigation and blames many on an unusual relationship between the FBI and the NTSB during the investigation. In violation of Title 49 of the federal code of regulations, which gives the NTSB “priority over all other investigations of such accident or incident conducted by other Federal agencies,” the NTSB was repeatedly denied access to physical and eyewitness evidence collected by the FBI.
According to senior NTSB investigator Hank Hughes in a June 14, 1999 letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, “there are still unanswered questions concerning evidence sent for examination.” Until at least such a time when the NTSB and the parties to the investigation are allowed to thoroughly access and review all of the evidence, reports, and analyses in the FBI’s possession related to the crash of TWA Flight 800, the NTSB’s final report will remain inconclusive and incomplete.
Correction re the crash of TWA Flt 800:
Sorry, I got my months mixed up. The TWA 800 crash occurred on July 17th, 1996 not June 17th as I indicated above.
FOX News Whistle blowers. UNBELIEVABLE!!! – They try to report on a questionable new Monsanto product (Bovine Growth Hormone) used to increase milk production in US dairy cattle and get fired for their trouble.
Wondering how Monsanto was able to get their rBGH product approved by the FDA in the US when Canadian scientists raised the alarm over potential harmful health effects and would not allow its use in Canada?.
Mosanto and the FDA seem to be on the same page as some Bajan politicians, “Conflict of interest? Wuh dah is? I ain’ nevah hear bout dat.” And remember that with the importation of so much of our foodstuffs from the USA, it would be somewhat naive to assume that the FDA’s green light to allow the adulteration of the USA’s milk supply in order to enhance Monsanto’s profits will have no impact on us in Barbados.
Green Monk. Barcodes again.
In response about the Bovine Growth Hormone above, This is the reason why I am most concerned about the true origins of all products we get into our islands, especially those products we place in our stomachs by eating or drinking. Local investigation has shown you cannot go by the Barcodes. As far as we know, our so called Barbadian milk could be coming from anywhere. One could ask if this was the reason the packaging was altered to be more durable not so long ago ?
The fair Trading Commission are not interested in returning phone calls about Barcodes.
The Policies at Clico Insurance Company has been classified as Junk since the company cannot pay Policy holders who policies have mature and they cannot pay the policy holders despite them saying that the policies are good (junk). People should cancel or stop paying them any premiums on policies which they cannot honour despite what government says. They can only pay you what premiums you pay them. It aint worth it paying premiums on a policy and can benefit from the policy, your premiums are going towards paying the staff salaries. Stop the investments now to Clico i was in an accident with them and they cannot pay me whats due to me nor even refund me for my total expenses. People should listen cause both goverments are involved with the same company. The past government sold a lot of plantations to them to shore up the economy. They have assets ut no liquid cash to settle any financial obligations to clients, policy holders nor civil litigants
Clico….Clico???? RFLMAO….
That company still exists????
Food, Inc.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner uses reports by FAST FOOD NATION author Eric Schlosser and THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA author Michael Pollan as a springboard to exploring where the food we purchase really comes from, and what it means for the health of future generations. By exposing the comfortable relationships between business and government, Kenner gradually shines light on the dark underbelly of the American food industry. The USDA and FDA are supposed to protect the public, so why is it that both government regulatory agencies have been complicit in allowing corporations to put profit ahead of consumer health, the American farmer, worker safety, and even the environment?
194. Good, very informative clips.
This just goes to show we don’t know where are imported food is coming from, despite our local regulations and care in supermarkets, restaurants and other food outlets. This is why the barcodes should be at least telling us the food imported if from this country or that, but even barcodes are being corrupted, and too many imports are not even marked where the product were grown of made.
When you thing about it, the safest food you can get it what you grow yourself, but then even those seeds, often imported, can be genetically altered.
This is what the modern world has become. This is what progress and world trade is all about. Sweatshops, and food of doubt-filled origins and safety.
Anyhow. There is some great music this Cropover, although- raise you hand in the air- shout and wave- still seems prevalent, as though creativity in music and lyric, is still suffering the fast-food path.
Metal Thieves: Vultures of a Fallen Empire
Over the past decade America’s leading export to our imperial successor China has been trash in the form of discarded items such as waste paper and scrap metal. Since copper wire fetches higher prices than used toilet paper at the local salvage yard, a perversely entrepreneurial criminal industry has emerged to keep such exports booming.
All across this once-fair and now-mottled land, faded emblems of a vanished industrial base—manhole covers, oil tanks, steel beams, aluminum bleachers, fire-hydrant control valves, sewer grating, plumbing pipes, rusty stoves, and any public monuments that appear to contain copper—have been showing up at scrap yards and sold for a fraction of their value by tweaked-out parasites itching to smoke and snort and shoot more brain-eating stimulants. The US Department of Energy has estimated annual losses of $1 billion due to copper theft alone.
“The thievery escalates as the economy plummets and metal prices soar.”
The thievery escalates as the economy plummets and metal prices soar. Entire apartment complexes and shopping centers are mercilessly denuded of their air-conditioning systems, which are not only rich in copper but also contain anhydrous ammonia with which to manufacture more slushy piles of meth. The vultures swoop in on houses foreclosed in the real-estate downturn, picking them clean of their metal riches and rendering them permanently uninhabitable. Six tons of scrap metal wind up missing from a Seattle biotech firm. Baseball fields and a skating rink in Colorado Springs are shorn of their electrical wiring. Eight miles of copper power cable disappear from Tucson and leave a two-mile stretch of the city without streetlights. An Arkansas Walmart, hospital, and mall get ransacked in one strike, leaving two thousand customers without power. Playgrounds, construction sites, train tracks, and electrical sub-stations get pillaged and torn open, the mess left for others to clean. Even scrap yards get hit, with the spoils sold to other scrap yards.
snip
Back in America—at least so far—metal thieves seem to be more of a direct physical danger to themselves. There are an estimated three dozen “copper-theft fatalities” nationwide yearly. An alleged 2010 attempt in Dallas to pry a 13,200-volt copper wire from a conduit led to two deaths and this series of extremely graphic (you’ve been warned) photos making the Internet rounds. In March of this year, a 19-year-old North Carolina man was electrocuted and his partner charged as an accomplice in his death during a botched copper-wire theft. This past Monday night, a 41-year-old man was burned to a crisp during a bungled copper robbery in Cowpens, SC, that resulted in a power outage for 3,000 local citizens.
As Congress debates whether it’s more ethical for the national debt to be $14.3 trillion or a mere couple trillion more, average American nobodies are incinerating themselves in search of the base material that used to form our humble penny.
http://takimag.com/article/metal_thieves_vultures_of_a_fallen_empire/print
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of
Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some
2,000 years prior:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until
the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts
from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for
the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with
the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal
policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of
history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations
always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”
This is well worth reading a few times, and keeping to re-ponder.
What to do with burns, right away.
We just received this on email from long known and reliable sources.
Spray a burn with cold water first, then dose it with egg white alone. The Placenta in the egg white, is full of vitamins.
This is worth passing on.
Consolidation of seed companies leading to corporate domination of world food supply
(NaturalNews) Throughout the history of agriculture across the globe, farming has always been a diversified sector of the economy. Small, self-sustaining, family farms were the order of the day in most cultures. Even as small farms grew larger and more specialized over time, many of them still saved seeds or purchased them from other farmers, which kept control of farming in the hands of the people.
But today everything has changed, as large chemical and agribusiness firms have acquired or merged with seed companies and other agricultural input companies. They have successfully gained a foothold on genetically-modified (GM) crops with transgenic traits.
These primary factors and several others have facilitated a crescendo towards the global domination of agriculture by corporations, and thus the world’s food supply.
The dismal state in which we find ourselves today did not come overnight, of course, but it did pick up rapid speed after the introduction of GM crops in the mid-1990s. Since that time, multinational corporations like Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta have seized a significant amount of control over the global seed industry, which has greatly limited agricultural diversity and freedom.
The ability to patent both seeds and seed traits has also added injury to insult, as the ability to obtain natural or heirloom seeds is becoming increasingly difficult, and many farmers feel they have no choice but to go with the flow.
snip
The only thing worse than Monsanto and the dominance of the seed market are the cozy relationships with one another. Prof. Howard’s analysis reveals that every company in the “Big Six” has at least one mutual relationship with one another, and they together share corporate control of the seed industry.
Monsanto has established cross-licensing agreements for its transgenic patents with every single other company in the mix, while Dow has agreements with all except for Bayer. And Syngenta has agreements with Dow, Monsanto, and DuPont, while BASF has agreements with Dow and Monsanto.
What does this all mean? It means that the already-disturbing oligarchy that controls the seed industry is shaping up to become a total monopoly with Monsanto at the helm, of course. And as transgenic technology continues to develop, which forces farmers to either go with the flow or leave the business, there may soon be no other choices in farming besides whatever Monsanto has to offer.
One would think that farmers would be more aware of this takeover and resist it. But the “Big Six” effectively fly under the radar, in most cases, by selling their seeds and chemicals through various vendors and under different names. According to Prof. Howard, this is how they effectively maintain an illusion of competition and choice in the midst of their takeover.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033148_seed_companies_Monsanto.html#ixzz1TJcQouOR
The UK’s Channel 4 Dispatches program investigates the world of the Rupert Murdoch and the influence and political power he holds in the UK
How Murdoch Ran Britain (Video)
Seems like in Barbados the concern is that the politicians exert undue influence on the media while in the UK the problem is that the press (i.e. Murdoch) exerts undue influence on the politicians.
Caribbean airlines crash in Guyana. Thank goodness everyone got out alive.
Sounds like they need to review the emergency services for the airport though. Other countries in the region should also take note.
Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists
By Peter Dale Scott
Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.1 Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe.
U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances.
In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention.
But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies.
The pattern of U.S. collaboration with Muslim fundamentalists against more secular enemies is not new. It dates back to at least 1953, when the CIA recruited right-wing mullahs to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran, and also began to cooperate with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.3 But in Libya in 2011 we see a more complex marriage of convenience between US and al-Qaeda elements: one which repeats a pattern seen in Bosnia in 1992-95, and Kosovo in 1997-98. In those countries America responded to a local conflict in the name of a humanitarian intervention to restrain the side committing atrocities. But in all three cases both sides committed atrocities, and American intervention in fact favored the side allied with al-Qaeda.
The cause of intervention was fostered in all three cases by blatant manipulation and falsification of the facts. What a historian has noted of the Bosnian conflict was true also of Kosovo and is being echoed today in Libya: though attacks were “perpetrated by Serbs and Muslims alike,” the pattern in western media was “that killings of Muslims were newsworthy, while the deaths of non-Muslims were not.”4 Reports of mass rapes in the thousands proved to be wildly exaggerated: a French journalist “uncovered only four women willing to back up the story.”5 Meanwhile in 1994 the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL) traveled to Bosnia and fervently endorsed the case for intervention in Bosnia; in 2011 February BHL traveled to Benghazi and reprised his interventionist role for Libya.6
In all of the countries mentioned above, furthermore, there are signs that some American and/or western intelligence groups were collaborating with al-Qaeda elements from the outset of conflict, before the atrocities cited as a reason for intervention.. This suggests that there were deeper reasons for America’s interventions including the desire of western oil companies to exploit the petroleum reserves of Libya (as in Iraq) without having to deal with a troublesome and powerful strong man, or their desire to create a strategic oil pipeline across the Balkans (in Kosovo).7
That the U.S. would support al-Qaeda in terrorist atrocities runs wholly counter to impressions created by the U.S. media. Yet this on-going unholy alliance resurrects and builds on the alliance underlying Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1978-79 strategy of provocation in Afghanistan, at a time when he was President Carter’s National Security Adviser.
In those years Brzezinski did not hesitate to play the terrorist card against the Soviet Union: he reinforced the efforts of the SAVAK (the Shah of Iran’s intelligence service) to work with the Islamist antecedents of al-Qaeda to destabilize Afghanistan, in a way which soon led to a Soviet invasion of that country.8 At the time, as he later boasted, Brzezinski told Carter, “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”9
http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578
And some Island Governments were trying to make out Red Jet wasn’t safe . Que muyaha ! Or it is Moyeha ? That’s like Yeeeeha in Texas., I hope.
There are a few things that I have been observing over the years and in recent months that causes me to question successive governments’ commitment to the people they govern.
First is the decommissioning of the Mobile refinery and the subsequent deal with Trinidad. We the public need an explanation of the thought process behind that decision because just on the face of it, it reeks of insanity. We produce the oil, send it to Trinidad to be refined, then we buy back petroleum products from them. Exactly where in that process do we as consumers benefit? On the issue of alternative energy. For years we have been the leaders in solar water heating. It is beyond me as to why we are so far behind on electricity production via solar. If there is anything we as a nation have (that we don’t have to pay Trinidad for or isn’t owned by them) is sunlight. For the peoples’ sake USE IT!! Give consumers duty-free importation on these systems for a period of one year. I’m sure that our oil needs will reduce and everyone will benefit from the lower costs. Our landfill is an energy plant that is inexplicably untapped. The research is there and the process is actively in use overseas. It’s virtually an energy source without end because as consumers, we will inevitably produce garbage. These are just a couple solutions to our energy situation.
I now turn to drainage. Barbados is a limestone based island. POROUS ROCK. We should NEVER have such a problem with flooding. The problem is the excessive use of concrete with no sensible consideration for the natural water runoff corridors. Bridgetown is a city by the sea. Can someone please explain why it floods?? Shouldn’t that water runoff easily into the sea?? The drains in town are too small and that’s the problem. No drain in town should be under 6′ feet deep and 3 – 4 feet wide. Bridgetown takes the water that runs from St. Thomas and St. George. All that water converges on Bridgetown with its small drains therefore it must flood. Increase the size of the drains and we will see the difference. That was free advice. Government could save that $250 000.00 they just borrowed for a drainage study. Wasted money.
I will speak again to other issues as time goes on. Until then, think on these things.
@Anonymous.Some really good points here. Pity they will all be a waste of time with the know it alls .
By the way ,”What commitment to the people “?
Monsanto-spawned superweeds growing three inches daily, destroying farm equipment
The proliferation of superweeds — weeds that have mutated to develop resistance to popular herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup formula — continues to rise. But the individual plants’ overall size and strength is also increasing. According to a series of new studies published in the journal Weed Science, farmers are having more trouble than ever dealing with out-of-control superweeds in their fields, some of which grow up to three inches a day in size, and are so strong and thick that they are destroying farm equipment.
The studies reveal that there are currently at least 21 different weed species known to be resistant to Roundup, also known generically as glyphosate. These species include ragweed, pigweed, horseweed, waterhemp, and ryegrass. Since 2007, the total acreage of farmland known to be infested with superweeds has also jumped more than 450 percent, from 2.4 million acres to 11 million acres, which means that the problem is only going to get exponentially worse.
“Super-strains of plants like pigweed — which grows three inches a day and is tough enough to damage farm machinery — have emerged, which may dramatically reduce the options for farmers to control them,” writes Fast Company in a recent piece on the issue. “The alternatives are usually more dangerous chemicals or plowing and mulching fields, undermining many of the environmental benefits biotech crops are supposed to offer. It’s ‘the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,’ claims Andrew Wargo III, president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.”
snip
A recent report in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch (SLPD) explains that farmers are quickly running out of options for controlling the superweed problem, as many superweeds are now resistant to three or four other herbicides, and counting, besides Roundup. Superweeds with massive stems up to four inches thick are devastating fields, and farmers are becoming desperate for solutions.
“It’s rather ironic that we were sold glyphosate as an alternative to these older pesticides, and now farmers are using them again,” said Brett Lorenzen, a legal analyst with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), to SLPD concerning farmers trying anything and everything to get rid of superweeds. “But that’s part of the pattern of the pesticide industry.”
The same report explains that, in order to get rid of the monstrous superweeds, farmers are having to hire laborers to hack down the behemoth plants by hand, which together with trying all sorts of other pesticides and herbicides, is costing farmers more time and money than if they had never planted GM crops in the first place.
snip
Shuffling around pesticides and herbicides, and manually chopping down weeds, however, will not ultimately solve the superweed problem. No matter how many chemical applications conventional and GM crop farmers apply, superweeds just continue to get stronger and more pervasive. And they are becoming so strong that not only are they squelching all non-resistant weeds from existence, but they are also spreading resistant genes to other plants.
“Pollen can transfer the resistant trait; that’s the problem,” said Kevin Bradley, a weed scientists from the University of Missouri, to SLPD. “There’s not much we can do about pollen flying through the air, and that’s why we see such rapid spread of resistance.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/033195_superweeds_farm_equipment.html#ixzz1TnTmIUz9
Green Monkey,
I’ve noticed these superweeds and vines in Barbados. They grow really fast. Perhaps we can eat some of them, if we have to. You try first and let me know. The African snails are not eating them yet. though. Is that a
hint ?
Try using your thumb and forefinger
Yeh racka,
Perhaps you could come and help me. We’ve a field of small very young cow itch sprouting up. You could help me pull them out, couldn’t you, since nobody else seems interested. ?
On The Origin of Species, just rediscovered in this computer files. I’d originally sent it to Rumplestiltskin, who sadly, we don’t hear from these days. Maybe he morphed into something else, an apostate to human induced global warming, perhaps, or am I muddling him with Straight talk, who we don’t hear much from either ?
Why we are, as we are !
The 150th anniversary of the publication of:
“On the origin of Species”.
‘The moment has come to ask how Darwin’s insight can be used profitably by policy makers.’ Go to the Economist: December 2008 Darwinism. Five very intriguing pages, on why we can’t get away from being how we are.
Here are couple extracts, to add fuel to the fire:
‘ Philosophers have preached that there exists between man and beast an unbridgeable distinction. Sociologists have been seduced by Marxist ideas about the perfectibility of mankind. Theologians have feared that the very thought of evolution threatens divine explanations of the world. Even fully paid-up members of the Enlightenment, people who would not for one moment deny humanity’s simian ancestors, are often sceptical. They seem to believe, as Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University England, elegantly puts it, that evolution stops at the neck down, but human behaviour is culturally determined,….. The evidence, however,…..’
Well, read on the site. It is well worth spending time on the five pages written in the Economist of December 20th 2008.
Darwin, was never that far wrong.
Colin it is my experience that cowitch seeds germinate for 3-4 years once the parent plants have dropped them, so in my marginal experience this would be the time of diligence to radicate. Having cowitch in fields is not a new problem but has become lots worse as we have ceased to cultivate. Maybe the problem is not the weeds but our lack of continued diligence as you rightly state. A sweet potato sometimes at $5? Wah de rass.
Poonka quoted in the papers, his email veriton1@caribsurf.com for reported complaints, about people who always burn their stuff. Have an upwind neighbour who does it all the time. But I sure Poonka and your neighbours would not object about calling the Fire Dept to control burn that field, if and when it ever stops raining, and before the next crop of seeds. I coming to plant some orange sweet potatoes and weed it, aright?
Racka,
Do that for sure. We love the ‘orange sweet’ best. The fields are supposed to be looked after by a nearby estate. There is cow itch all over the place these days, when there never once was.
They wouldn’t burn that field, too close to down-wind houses. Mostly they just let the cow itch grow around about here and then leave white protective clothing all over the fields after cane crop.
Like stinging ants, you get used to cow itch if you stop thinking about it. It is probably a good form of atonement, or flagellation
without to much loss of blood. Chow Pues.
racka,
Couple days ago I had pulled a number of young cow itch from between the recently cut cane field out front of us. The young cow itch is coming up fast. some of it creeping like three, four, feet already. It pulls out easily in these wet conditions, amazing how long and fine the roots are, like over two feet.
Anyhow, this afternoon, walking across the field again, I went to inspect what I had pulled up. It was very very dead, I hardly recognized it. Even with all the recent rain, the little sun we’ve had seems to have killed what I pulled, dead,dead dead, all the green gone and shriveled where it lay on top the cane trash, the roots looking like exhausted cobwebs.
But there is so much to pull. It is really invasive, and the harvester just spread it more. In the past I’ve pulled huge roots of it, thirty feet and more long.. It is a son of a b,….
Warning over drug-resistant salmonella superbug
A potentially deadly drug-resistant form of salmonella is spreading across the world and has already infected hundreds of people in Britain, scientists have warned.
The S. Kentucky “superbug” variant of salmonella bacteria appears to have developed due to the use of antibiotics in chicken and turkey farming, rendering it untreatable by those same drugs once it has infected humans.
Symptoms of salmonellosis, the common food poisoning illness that arises from an infection by the bacteria, usually involve nothing more serious than diarrhoea or vomiting. But it can present far more serious problems for the elderly or those with weakened immune systems – of the 1.7 million infections that occur in the US and Canada every year, 2,800 are fatal.
That number would be higher but for the use of the antibiotics whose effectiveness is now at risk from S. Kentucky, which infected 244 people in England and Wales between 2000 and 2008, according to the research.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/warning-over-drugresistant-salmonella-superbug-2331448.html
Green monk,
Humans don’t really have carnivores, except each other in time of real last ditch hunger. However, our numbers tend to boost bacteria species, instead. Population density is just what bacteria love. They don’t have far to jump, and we have greatly over- used and abused, our defenses, the antibiotics. Wow is we !
Monsanto’s Lab Rats R Us
Glyphosate—The World’s Most Popular Herbicide…
Genetically engineered crops have vastly increased the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s nonselective broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, and this product alone is now wreaking unimaginable havoc in our environment. According to Jeffrey Smith with the Institute for Responsible Technology, by 2004 farmers used an estimated 86 percent more herbicides on GM soy fields compared to non-GM fields.
So-called “Roundup Ready” soybean, cotton and corn crops became exceedingly popular because it allows farmers to spray Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide directly onto their fields without harming the crops. Ordinarily, if you were to spray Roundup, or any other glyphosate-based herbicide, onto a plant, it would rapidly die.
Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) stopped updating its pesticide use database in 2008, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to estimate how much glyphosate is actually used in the US, but the following 2006-2007 market usage estimates were reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year:
Agricultural market used 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate
Home and garden market: 5 to 8 million pounds
Industry, commerce and government: 13 to 15 million pounds
snip
The Environmental Dangers of Glyphosate
A couple of years ago, a French court found Monsanto guilty of falsely advertising its herbicide as “biodegradable,” “environmentally friendly” and claiming it “left the soil clean.” The truth is that Roundup is anything BUT environmentally friendly. Monsanto’s own tests showed that only two percent of the herbicide broke down after 28 days, which means it readily persists in the environment!
Glyphosate is the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscape maintenance workers in California, and researchers have now linked it to Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a serious plant disease, in many fields around the world. Numerous studies have also shown that glyphosate is contributing not only to the huge increase in SDS, but also to the outbreak of some 40 different plant and crop diseases! It weakens plants and promotes disease in a number of ways, including:
Acting as a chelator of vital nutrients, depriving plants of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant function
Destroying beneficial soil organisms that suppress disease-causing organisms and help plants absorb nutrients
Interfering with photosynthesis, reducing water use efficiency, shortening root systems and causing plants to release sugars, which changes soil pH
Stunting and weakening plant growth
The herbicide doesn’t destroy plants directly; instead, it creates a unique “perfect storm” of conditions that activates disease-causing organisms in the soil, while at the same time wiping out plant defenses against those diseases. So the glyphosate not only weakens plants, it actually changes the makeup of the soil and boosts the number of disease-causing organisms, which is becoming a deadly recipe for crops around the globe… A report from 1998 by the Environmental Monitoring & Pest Management Department of Pesticide Regulation on the environmental fate of glyphosate states that:
“Aerial drift of the herbicide will cause injury to nontarget plants… Minute quantities of mist, drip, drift or splash of glyphosate onto nontarget vegetation can cause severe damage or destruction to the plants or other areas on which treatment was not intended.”
So, what exactly is being done to vegetation everywhere, now that both air and rain is clearly contaminated with glyphosate?
snip
Genetically Modified Crops May Contain Toxic Roundup Residues
It’s widely known that genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready crops contain Roundup residues, and a 2009 study demonstrated just how toxic these residues may be to your health… Even when researchers tested formulations of Roundup that were highly diluted (up to 100,000 times or more) on human cells, the cells died within 24 hours!
They also found damage to cell membranes and DNA, along with an inhibition of cell respiration. Further, the researchers discovered that the mixture of components used as Roundup adjuvants actually amplified the action of the glyphosate. The researchers wrote:
“This work clearly confirms that the adjuvants in Roundup formulations are not inert. Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from Roundup formulation-treated crops.”
Although Roundup isn’t used exclusively on genetically modified (GM) crops, these crops are some of the most prevalent in the US diet. So to drastically reduce your exposure, avoiding GM foods would be an obvious starting point.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/05/how-did-weedkiller-wind-up-in-most-us-rain-samples.aspx?e_cid=20110805_DNL_art_1
@Green Monkey: Not that easy to avoid GM foods unless you grow your own.
The Metamorphose
Do we see, at last, in David Cameron, the metamorphose of another Churchill, another Thatcher, now in time of British need ? Somebody to lay about him with the cane or the birch, perhaps even the Cat, Just here and there, a touch where it is sorely needed. There is nothing else that quells youth violence for those who have been spoiled all their young lives– refused it. Civil rights advocates, the bloody bleeding hearts, and the European Union, have destroyed British stability. Perhaps, when Europe’s time comes for their hoodlum uprisings, the Union will recognize the results of its soft-soaping too well.
Imagine, the yobs, have destroyed in their own quarters, the lives of their own people, placing many more out of work. How long will it take business and the hard workers in those neighborhoods, to forget such mayhem, the burned- chard plunder the guttersnipes have caused ? How willing now, will anybody want, to afford yobs a couple farthings ?
As the 10th anniversary of the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon draws closer, an unlikely “conspiracy theorist” pops out of the woodwork – none other than GW Bush’s former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.
‘On the Youthgrab in England.’
On the BBC, a housewife in Jamaica this morning, asked by the BBC what she would do with the British youth responsible — She blurted out “Cut dey Ass. Dey never get a good cutass yet ” . I thought. Great minds think alike. I hope ‘Spare the rod fanatics’ here in Barbados will take note of that. It seem we are reaching that point here in this island, long time, when we need to share the cane or the tamarind swish. It may also be too late. Perhaps far too late for the many.
Corruption At The Top Leads To Lawlessness By The People
by Washington’s Blog
I’ve repeatedly noted that corruption and lawlessness by our “leaders” encourages lawlessness by everyone else. See this, for example.
Peter Osborne – the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator – wrote yesterday:
The criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich ….
snip
Osborne also gives specific examples of corruption, such as the prime minister’s involvement in the Murdoch scandal, and members of parliament abusing expense accounts.
Indeed, the rioters themselves agreed. As Reuters notes:
Speaking to Reuters late on Tuesday, looters and other local people in east London pointed to the wealth gap as the underlying cause, also blaming what they saw as police prejudice and a host of recent scandals.
Spending cuts were now hitting the poorest hardest, they said, and after tales of politicians claiming excessive expenses, alleged police corruption and bankers getting rich it was their turn to take what they wanted.
“They set the example,” said one youth after riots in the London district of Hackney. “It’s time to loot.”
(Indeed, looting by the bankers has been shown by a Nobel prize winning economist as being the root cause of the S&L crisis and today’s economic crisis).
Austerity Leads To Rioting And Unrest
I’ve previously argued that the British riots are due to bad economic policy which has created rampant inequality. (As I’ve noted for years, raging inequality and policies which help the big boys at the expense of the “little people” are causing unrest – not just in Egypt – but worldwide
snip
Indeed, a study this month by economists Hans-Joachim Voth and Jacopo Ponticelli shows that – from 1919 to the present – austerity leads to violence and instability:
Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? From the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s to anti-government demonstrations in Greece in 2010-11, austerity has tended to go hand in hand with politically motivated violence and social instability. In this paper, we assemble cross-country evidence for the period 1919 to the present, and examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. The results show a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship simply reflects economic downturns, and conclude that this is not the key factor. We also analyse interactions with various economic and political variables. While autocracies and democracies show a broadly similar responses to budget cuts, countries with more constraints on the executive are less likely to see unrest as a result of austerity measures.
As CNN notes:
Studying instances of austerity and unrest in Europe between 1919 to 2009, Ponticelli and Voth conclude that there is a “clear link between the magnitude of expenditure cutbacks and increases in social unrest. With every additional percentage point of GDP in spending cuts, the risk of unrest increases.”
snip
Corruption And Austerity = Global Unrest
Time Magazine’s Global Spin blog sums up these two threads nicely:
Simply working hard and playing by the rules is no longer a path to prosperity or even a dignified future in much of the industrialized West, where neoliberal economic policies have funneled most of the wealth created in recent decades to a small, already wealthy elite, while shrinking the middle class finds its living standard steadily declining, and more than one in five young people is unemployed with no prospect of finding work in the foreseeable future.
The looters respond to their circumstances by simply breaking the rules and grabbing whatever they can, while the moment — and their capacity to hurt anyone who gets in their way — allows it. The protestors, who are far more numerous, despond (sic) by demanding that the rules be changed, and they’re on the streets because they believe that even the democratic political system has failed them, producing governments in thrall to the interests of financial elites regardless of which party dominates. And the British anti-austerity programs are echoed on the streets of Madrid and Barcelona, Rome and Lisbon, Athens and Tel Aviv — an Austerity Intifada is sweeping Europe.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/meaning-of-british-riots.html
Green Monkey
Corruption at the top, leads to lawlessness by the people.
There we go, Green Monk, but do you think politicians in our islands will sit up and take notice ? Do you think they will suddenly see to the bottom of just what causes our major problems, and why for instance, island peoples are finding it difficult to move and trade between islands, and why unless a decent ferry system is allowed to start, any such island federation is just a big fat ( over- fat like most of our politicians today) joke ?
The new austerities facing so much of the world, will start to bite us to the bone in our islands, but now our youth see how it should be faced, though Trinidad youth have had long experience, and nothing was learned from it in that Island, though Port Of Spain was torn apart badly, pillaged, burned, raped, twice, it never stopped the greed seeping from those who wielded power, though the island had the black gold from the the earth that could have made all life in Trinidad beyond reproach.
So nothing, really ever changes. Those at the top, blame those at the bottom, and visa versa, it is all just diversifications of corruption, and it all stems from what you should have been taught when you were very young. Spare the Rod, the firm hand, and you have destroyed all hope of raising the Man, except in exceptional instances too remote to use as examples.
Is this plausible: Man’s moral breakdown caused by Nature ?
It is a strange thought, perhaps, but non the less it seems worth pondering.
Nature has her own way of dealing. But Mankind seems to have convinced himself of his own Free Will.
We know you can become very confused by certain gasses, just as certain drugs give us hallucinations. If, for instance, the oxygen content of Earth altered far each side of its 21%, it would greatly effect human ability to think. What I am suggesting is that Nature may be understanding Man has spread too far, or damaged too much, and so it is time to regulate, or greatly reduce man’s abilities and man’s spread. This regulation by Nature. could take place in any number of ways. So it could turn out we don’t have the Free Will we think we have.
I’d welcome any post to do with this weird possibility.
Colin L. B.
Send free things
We need the smell of Earth and we need it under our fingernails, and stop sitting at a desk thinking about growing anything, and what the government should do to import food for us. The government won’t starve, they’ll make sure about them selves at our expense, one way or another. But many of us can and may starve, while weeds and vines, cow itch included, overtake the fields as they are doing right now.
Does this Government really know what is going on? The price of oil is down on the world market,but yet we have increases in the price of gasoline and diesel as of midnight last night
I see that MQI is sponsoring a car for the winner of the Richard Stoute Teen ? Talent competition. If memory serves me correctly this will be the fourth car that MQI has sponsored for the year. All the while when they cannot give their staff a raise in pay. Just boggles the mind!!!
Did Tenet Hide Key Info on 9/11?
By (retired CIA analyst) Ray McGovern
With few exceptions, like some salacious rumor about the Kennedy family, the mainstream U.S. news media has shown little interest in stories that throw light on history — even recent, very relevant history. So it comes as no surprise that, when a former White House counter-terrorism czar accuses an ex-CIA director of sitting on information that could have prevented a 9/11 attack, the story gets neither ink nor air.
Bulletin for those of you who get your information only from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM): Former White House director for counterterrorism Richard Clarke has accused former CIA Director George Tenet of denying him and others access to intelligence that could have thwarted the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.
Deliberately withholding critical intelligence from those who need it, and can act on it, is — at the least — gross dereliction of duty. The more so if keeping the White House promptly and fully informed is at the top of your job jar, as it was for Director of Central Intelligence Tenet. And yet that is precisely the charge Clarke has leveled at the former DCI.
In an interview aired on Aug. 11 on a local PBS affiliate in Colorado, Clarke charges that Tenet and two other senior CIA officials, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, deliberately withheld information about two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 — al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The two had entered the United States more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.
Clarke adds that the CIA then covered it all up by keeping relevant information away from Congress and the 9/11 Commission.
Lying by senior officials is bad enough, and there is now plenty of evidence that former CIA Director George Tenet and his closest agency associates are serial offenders. Think for a minute about the falsehoods spread regarding Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” stockpiles.
But withholding intelligence on two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been particularly unconscionable — the epitome of malfeasance, not just misfeasance. That’s why Richard Clarke’s conclusion that he should have received information from CIA about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, “unless somebody intervened to stop the normal automatic distribution” amounts, in my view, to a criminal charge, given the eventual role of the two in the hijacking on 9/11 of AA-77, the plane that struck the Pentagon.
Tenet has denied that the information on the two hijackers was “intentionally withheld” from Clarke, and he has enlisted the other two former CIA operatives, Cofer Black (more recently a senior official of Blackwater) and Richard Blee (an even more shadowy figure), to concur in saying “Not us; we didn’t withhold.”
Whom to believe? To me, it’s a no-brainer. One would have to have been born yesterday to regard the “George is right” testimony from Black and Blee as corroborative.
Tenet’s Dubious Credibility
Tenet is the same fellow who provided the “slam dunk” on the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, as well as the “artist renderings” of equally non-existent mobile laboratories for developing biological warfare agents, based on unconfirmed information from the impostor code-named (appropriately) “Curveball.”
It was Tenet who, under orders from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, ordered up and disseminated a fraudulent National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq, the purpose of which was to deceive our elected representatives out of their constitutional prerogative to authorize war. No small lies.
After a five-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Chairman Jay Rockefeller described the intelligence adduced under Tenet to “justify” attacking Iraq as “uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent.” Good enough to win Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though. The corruption of intelligence worked just fine for the purposes of Bush and Cheney, thank you very much.
Continued at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-Tenet-Hide-Key-Info-on-by-Ray-McGovern-110817-852.html
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals.
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.
That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.
snip
Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.
snip
Much has been made in recent months of the government’s glaring failure to police Wall Street; to date, federal and state prosecutors have yet to put a single senior Wall Street executive behind bars for any of the many well-documented crimes related to the financial crisis. Indeed, Flynn’s accusations dovetail with a recent series of damaging critiques of the SEC made by reporters, watchdog groups and members of Congress, all of which seem to indicate that top federal regulators spend more time lunching, schmoozing and job-interviewing with Wall Street crooks than they do catching them. As one former SEC staffer describes it, the agency is now filled with so many Wall Street hotshots from oft-investigated banks that it has been “infected with the Goldman mindset from within.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817
Transfixed, watching the march of Giants spilling off central Africa, Will they punish us, for some allusive inequities, or slide on bye to vent their damage elsewhere ?
20th Aug. Few strokes short of Nine-morning. The venting of rage has been discontinued for now. But bye and bye, another blustering Banshi may appear, and us threaten with his twirling Dervish dance.
http://www.kleinezeitung.at/steiermark/graz/graz/2807564/zwei-tote-ein-paar-dollar.story
MURDER IN BARBADOS!
Wonder if the ALMOST perfect solution to the BAICO saga stated by the MIN OF FINANCE includes bringing to justice the individuals who caused the problem ? Guess not that is why it is an ALMOST perfect solution.LOL
Why Isn’t Wall Street In Jail?
By Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone
Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
“Everything’s f***** up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”
I put down my notebook. “Just that?”
“That’s right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything’s f***** up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.”
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses.
More at:
http://dailybail.com/home/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-matt-taibbi-raises-holy-hell.html
(page down past the embedded video for the article by Taibbi)
INSIDE JOB – How Wall Street Became A Criminal Enterprise And Took Over Government – Feature Film Trailer, Oscar Winner 2011
Director’s Statement
This film attempts to provide a comprehensive portrayal of an extremely important and timely subject: the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which continues to haunt us via Europe’s debt problems and global financial instability. It was a completely avoidable crisis; indeed for 40 years after the reforms following the Great Depression, the United States did not have a single financial crisis.
However, the progressive deregulation of the financial sector since the 1980s gave rise to an increasingly criminal industry, whose “innovations” have produced a succession of financial crises. Each crisis has been worse than the last; and yet, due to the industry’s increasing wealth and power, each crisis has seen few people go to prison.
In the case of this crisis, nobody has gone to prison, despite fraud that caused trillions of dollars in losses. I hope that the film, in less than two hours, will enable everyone to understand the fundamental nature and causes of this problem. It is also my hope that, whatever political opinions individual viewers may have, that after seeing this film we can all agree on the importance of restoring honesty and stability to our financial system, and of holding accountable those to destroyed it.
Embedded video at link:
http://dailybail.com/home/inside-job-how-wall-street-became-a-criminal-enterprise-and.html
Friend hung himself. Who do we blame for a life ill spent? Who designed the grape and the sugarcane bow that beguiled him so? Who designed the apple, and the snake ?
Bravo. Good God. At Last.
At last, it has sunk in just how important the sugar cane industry is to Barbados. Will we not start to recover the fields that have become ugly like those in Antigua and St Kitts, filled with scrub trees and bush of no value. Will we really, at last, see a transformation, and stoppage of deep rich agricultural soil being converted to concrete. Will we ? Will we? Or is this just more talk, and more talk, while what we will need to live off, in coming years, the land, goes to further disuse and ruin.
my condolences,Colin.And yes it is a lot of long talk re the importance of the sugar industry.
Warning, Warning, Warning about snail bate.
Nearby close friends lost a magnificent highly intelligent dog they had picked up off the side of the road, after several days coaxing, as a young deserted pup. She grew, and become a most lovable prize winning dog here in this island Barbados.
She died, aged just three years old, when she ingested snail poison placed for the African snails. This was verified by a leading island vet who tried best to save the dog.
Don’t use snail pellet type snail bait, if you love your dogs, cats or wild birds.
What utter Fools we are.
On the BBC 26th August.
” if you want to do well in coming times, become a farmer. For the best Expectations, go Far East.” The number one growing problem in the world, fast becoming one of Food.
There seems to be a little staggering towards this realization in Barbados, at last, that something must be done with agriculture, in a big way. There are those of us who have been constantly screaming about it, but our voices are now hoarse, and age has taken away our insistence.
But ” One day, one day, Congotay. That’s what the old people say. ” Will the true revival of Barbadian agriculture come too late? Will we really ever start eating our own grown and raised food again, where we have control of what pesticides and what forms of fertilizers we use ?
There are so many great farmers, all over the world, suffering war, and drought, and all forms of persecution, and here we have land, going to useless waste, with good rainfall, and mostly mild conditions, and we have to import 90% of our food requirements. What utter fools, fools, fools we are.
Ship shut 4 lotsa slots!
An Elegy for the Age of Space
The orbiters are silent now, waiting for the last awkward journey that will take them to the museums that will warehouse the grandest of our civilization’s failed dreams. There will be no countdown, no pillar of flame to punch them through the atmosphere and send them whipping around the planet at orbital speeds. All of that is over.
In Houston, the same silence creeps through rooms where technicians once huddled over computer screens as voices from space crackled over loudspeakers. The screens are black now, the mission control rooms empty, and most of the staff have already gotten their pink slips. On the Florida coast, where rusting gantries creak in the wind and bats flutter in cavernous buildings raised for the sake of a very different kind of flight, another set of lauch pads sinks slowly into their new career as postindustrial ruins.
There are still rockets lifting off elsewhere, to be sure, adding to the globe’s collection of satellites and orbiting space junk. The International Space Station still wheels through the sky, visited at intervals by elderly Soyuz capsules, counting down the days and the missions until its scheduled deorbiting in 2016. In America, a few big corporations have manned space projects on the drawing boards, angling for whatever federal funding survives the next few rounds of our national bankruptcy proceedings, and a few billionaires here and elsewhere are building hobby spacecraft in roughly the same spirit that inspired their Gilded Age equivalents to maintain luxury yachts and thoroughbred stables.
Still, something has shifted. A tide that was expected to flow for generations and centuries to come has peaked and begun to ebb. There will still be rockets surging up from their launch pads for years or decades to come, and some few of them will have human beings on board, but the momentum is gone. It’s time to start coming to terms with the winding down of the age of space.
snip
Behind that unwelcome news is the great geopolitical fact of the early 21st century, the decline and imminent fall of the American empire. Like any number of empires before us, we’ve gotten ourselves wedged tightly into the predictable downside of hegemony—the stage at which the costs of maintaining the economic imbalances that channel wealth from empire to imperial state outstrip the flow of wealth those imbalances are meant to produce. Once that stage arrives, the replacement of the failing empire by some new distribution of power is a foregone conclusion; the only question is how long the process will take and how brutal the final cost to the imperial state will turn out to be.
The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was a standard contest to see which empire would outlast the other. The irony, and it’s a rich one, is that the loser of that contest was pretty much guaranteed to be the winner in a broader sense. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had an empire wrenched out of its hands, and as a result it was forced to give up the struggle to sustain the unsustainable. The United States kept its empire intact, and as a result it has continued that futile but obsessive fight, stripping its national economy to the bare walls in order to prop up a global military presence that will sooner or later bankrupt it completely. That’s why Russia still has a functioning space program, while the United States may have trouble finding the money to launch cheap fireworks by the time its empire finally slips from its fingers.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/08/elegy-for-age-of-space.html
Green Monk,
Beautifully written. Just about ineffable in its bearing. How does one imagine such a fall and the crumbling of the world we knew. As I have said, and written a number of times, when the USA slips, what happens without their protective shield in this part of the world, will not be much fun.
High-wire Robbery
By Orlando Burke
My most recent electric bill showed a significant increase. My energy charges totalled $252.50 while the fuel charge was $549.16. If paid before the discount date, the Barbados Light & Power (BL&P) would reward me with a discount amounting to around $30.00. I will not be hooked by such insignificant bait.
Originally, fuel was an input in the production process of the BL&P; now it is both an input, and an add-on. An apt analogy would be the case of a baker selling a loaf of bread and charging extra for the flour used to make it.
Currently, Barbados is experiencing challenging economic times. A period characterized by lay-offs, calls for Unions to exercise wage restraint, and the common sight of persons having to leave items at the cash register in the supermarket.
I am concerned that in such an environment, the BL&P, a private monopoly appears comfortable in recording a profit of $54 million. While it is accepted that investment in a new plant facility, as alluded to by an official of BL&P in the Nation Newspaper, Sunday Sun edition of 28th August, 2011 maybe necessary over the long term, there is still no justification for the super-profits recorded by the Company.
I understand that an increasing number of consumers are unable to pay their electric bills. Surely, the BL&P could have some social conscience, whether voluntarily or otherwise, and reward its shareholders in a manner more reasonable when set against its treatment of the consuming public. In my view, a profit of $54 million today represents significant overcharging.
One recalls how effectively the BL&P defended its case at the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) which examined its proposed rate increase One’s impression was that such an increase was crucial to the Company’s survival, but by all available evidence this appears not to be the case in light of the $54 million profit.
Over the years, the BL&P whether through its fault, or otherwise has failed to pursue alternative and cheaper means of reducing the production costs of electricity in this country. There is a small island in the Cape Verde Islands several times poorer than Barbados, and about 20 years behind Barbados in its development. Yet, it manages to generate all of its electrical power from wind turbines. One also recalls when the new generating plant at Spring Garden was constructed, the BL& P professed that it would reduce the cost of electricity. This has not materialized.
Questions which the BL&P should answer the:-
a) Why has the BL&P not pursued the erection of wind farms, or the generation of electricity from solar power as aggressively as it has pursued the rate increase?
b) Is the current generating plant used at the Garrison the most efficient technology available?
If the BL&P is unwilling or unable to show a social conscience and charge equitable rates, then the Barbados Government should intervene. Our nation should not be taken for granted.
@Orlando Burke: While I agree with you, much the same can be said about Gasoline and diesel prices as well.
Orlando, and rasta man, Small Island Malady. .
I know of a similar story. The British government contracted a rig from Trinidad to drill steam wells in St Lucia. This was in the mid 1970s.
I took the rig in and we drilled seven wells. Three of the wells had steam that tested a total 3.5 Megawatts. In those days that would have lighted the south of St Lucia across to a Viewfort .
In those days the British Government, still held certain sway over St Lucia power generation, but they were all terrified of the steam wells drilled at Sulphur Springs in Soufriere.
Certain overseas companies wanted to go in to St Lucia and produce electricity from the steam. But the government did not want that.
In 1981 or 82, I had to take a cementing truck from Trinidad, and go back into those wells in St Lucia, and cement them up. The Americans later, drilled a much deeper well in the same area, that tested , I’m told, 12 megawatts. Nothing further has been done with the steam in St Lucia, though in many parts of the world steam electricity generation is powering thousands of megawatts, as you can find out by going to Google.
So why should BL&P be any different here in Barbados, than the company that runs Power in St Lucia? It would appear that we are struck by a certain small island Malady when it comes to using alternative forms of Electricity production. For the last five odd years, there are people here in Barbados that have been attempting to be allowed to produce electricity using their own finances, but they have been so far blocked. That is five years of Malady. wouldn’t you say ? Can you wonder why our electricity can never cost us less ?
New Barbados Products. Top of the line.
The two new Banks beers. Amber Ale and the stronger Seven, are top of the line. I’ve discontinued Carib, for the two stronger and fine- tasting locals, not that the older Banks was that far behind.
Then ‘Lionel’s Red hot pepper Sauce, in which tamarind is being used, is the most superb I’ve been able to find. It is not all that hot, for a hot pepper- eating Bajan or Trini, but man, it hard to beat that flavor added by the tamarind. I had to call Lionel and thank him for his dexterity, perfection, and gift to my palate.
Sounds good
Saturday Sun – Sept. 10, 2011 – FLYING FISH & COU COU: Looming Large (Page 10, Lower-Right Hand Corner)
The recent discovery 12000 year old monolithic site.
Friend sent me this clip on Gobekli Tepe. I went right to Google to find out more this morning. Gobekli Tepe is a 12000 year old site not unlike Stonehenge, except that Stonehenge and the Pyramids are recent, compared to it. Gobekli Tepe is in South West Turkey, about 350 miles from Mount Arafat.(the BBC ). The site has been under intense archaeological investigation since it was found by a shepherd, two years ago. It is nothing to do with more modern religion, or even with Sumerian ones. It is, with its strange animal stone carvings on the 16 ton slabs of carved standing monolith sandstones, something beyond anything modern man has ever seen.
Check out Google for more about this. Nothing of this civilization is known at this point. It is an extensive site, ineffable in its wonder. The geologist say they have only just started to uncover what lies below.
Solar electricity.
Why do we need an overseas company coming to Barbados to install solar equipment when we already have Barbadians completely capable and already doing it ????
Former FBI agent says truth of 9/11 remains hidden
A former FBI agent has told the BBC that he is being prevented from telling the truth about the events of 9/11 and what has happened since.
Ali Soufan alleges that crucial intelligence was not passed on from the CIA before the attacks in 2001.
He has written a book detailing some of his claims and has been speaking to the BBC’s Security Correspondent Gordon Corera in his first on camera interview on the subject.
Embedded video at link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14892377
I was meant to put ‘solar voltaic’ equipment. I know of two local companies doing it. There is not a lot of science in it, and anybody here in this island could learn how to do it, if they are interested. You can go to Google and get a complete spreadsheet, and work out just what you need to power your home. It is done in simple detail. What are all these people going to University for anyhow, if we have to allow companies to come in and do everything for us ?
Bury Me
On some near-deserted strip of land,
Where surf divides West Indian Sand.
where friend and beloved perhaps might pass.
And smiling—-momentarily stand.
Where gold sea grain will fill my mouth
And wavelets wash my eyes away.
And everything I ever heard,
Transmute—- to living spray.
Where fish and crab and bird of prey,
Will don my flesh, the sea my blood.
And an ocean’s restless sway—-
Grind old bones to sud.
Please—no prisoning board, no cloth,
no musty edifice, nor choral sob,
In silent joy return this frame,
To HER—from whence it came.
5th March 1996, Colin Leslie Beadon
Hi Colin,
Good poem, but we thought you had another idea about how you want to be, er, disposed of! 🙂
The Barbados Chum Machine… by Colin L. Beadon
Chum machine or sea – lip disposal .
Yeh, but who going to put that chum machine together? It would serve the same purpose, just faster, possibly not quite so economically though. The chum machine could possibly be solar or wind powered. I don’t think the Gods would mind too much, since both ideas are nature provident- intensive, don’t use or burn trees, don’t absorb huge areas of precious land space and quickly help regenerate wild nature.
Since I see everybody is still getting Knighted these days,….Don’t suppose such revolutionary forms of human remains disposal would merit such consideration ? Sir Beadon, the Designer of Superspeed Nature Rehabilitation. Or, simply, that crab, or redfish you ate yesterday, ate chum made of me a few days before.
I’m not sure, of course, if you can be knighted after death. In this case there would not be much left you could find to knight.
Republic, refrained !
One supposes the reason why Barbados has not become a republic, is because there are people in this island who would rather like the old Mother Country stamp of approval,… in knighthood,… though it really does not mean anything in our islands. It is when they land in the UK, you see, and are introduced as Sir, that raises the eyebrows of respect.
And why not too ? Bravo Barbados , and its gaggle of Sirs.
The glorification has changed personality.
Man once built huge monuments and cathedrals to his inspiration of his Gods. Now he builds skyscrapers to daunt all those steeples and towers of worship. The skyscrapers are inspirations of his own worth, and the hands of Gods are staid. CLB.
Antibiotics losing the fight against deadly bacteria
Scientists warn of a global public health concern as overuse of drugs reduces their effectiveness
By Jonathan Owen
Our last line of defence against bacterial infections is fast becoming weakened by a growing number of deadly strains that are resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, according to new figures given to The Independent on Sunday by the Health Protection Agency (HPA).
The disturbing statistics reveal an explosion in cases of super-resistant strains of bacteria such as E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, a cause of pneumonia and urinary tract infections, in less than five years.
Until 2008, there were fewer than five cases a year in the UK of bugs resistant to carbapenem, our most effective intravenous (IV) antibiotic. New statistics reveal how there have been 386 cases already this year, in what the HPA has called a “global public health concern”. Doctors are particularly concerned because carbapenems are often the last hope for hospital patients suffering from pneumonia and blood infections that other antibiotics have failed to treat. Such cases were unknown in the UK before 2003.
Years of over-prescribing antibiotics, bought over the counter in some countries, and their intensive use in animals, enabling resistant bacteria to enter the food chain, are among the factors behind the global spread. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation, some 25,000 people a year die of antibiotic-resistant infections in the European Union.
More at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/antibiotics-losing-the-fight-against-deadly-bacteria-2356583.html
My navel string was not buried here but I have spent all my adult life here, married a Barbadian, raised his children, our children and now our grandchildren. I have struggled to make a good life but am satisfied with my lot. However I cannot help feeling increasingly uneasy with the number of un-documented white people – mainly women – who have “retired” to Barbados lock stock and barrel .
These women most of whom are living off pensions are allowed to rent houses on contract sometimes for several years although they are given no more than 3 months at the airport. They are forcing the prices of houses upward and often get the house over and above a Bajan family because they can pay the 3 months up front that many Bajans cannot afford.
Many move their homes to Barbados – bring in container loads of furniture and equipment without paying a cent in duty – A Barbadian on the other hand would be charged duty on every piece!!
These are not investors- merely women who can better afford to live here than they can at home in Europe or North America etc. They then proceed to apply for Magna cards, BARP cards, Pricesmart cards etc and reap all the benefits that Bajans should be enjoying after our hard years of working for the betterment of Barbados.
I am not against foreign investment – in fact I welcome it -but surely this is taking advantage. Yes they spend money at the supermarkets and pay rent but surely they should be made to pay for the privilege of living in this wonderful little rock!!
were is it right that a headtecher can do as she like and nobody can tell her she is wrong gaving away a child to some one that her our his name is not down to collect that child that what is happening at a primary school in st george the person had right to that child but that was taken away but the head teacher does not care and gave away that child at three oclock and the court time is six on friday to six on sunday at the house were the chijd live and she did that and the person brought back the child not fully dress for school and to the ministry and was told it is not for them but to go to the police were is it right
Welcome to Boston, Mr. Rumsfeld. You Are Under Arrest.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office. The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company. The company was under contract to the Department of Defense. The company was assisting Iraqi insurgent groups in the “mass acquisition” of American weapons. The ruling comes as Rumsfeld begins his book tour with a visit to Boston on Monday, September 26, and as new, uncensored photos of Abu Ghraib spark fresh outrage across Internet. Awareness is growing that Bush-era crimes went far beyond mere waterboarding.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters in 2004 of photos withheld by the Defense Department from Abu Ghraib, “The American public needs to understand, we’re talking about rape and murder here…We’re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We’re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.” And journalist Seymour Hersh says: “boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has.”
Rumsfeld resigned days before a criminal complaint was filed in Germany in which the American general who commanded the military police battalion at Abu Ghraib had promised to testify. General Janis Karpinski in an interview with Salon.com was asked: “Do you feel like Rumsfeld is at the heart of all of this and should be held completely accountable for what happened [at Abu Ghraib]?”
Karpinski answered: “Yes, absolutely.” In the criminal complaint filed in Germany against Rumsfeld, Karpinski submitted 17 pages of testimony and offered to appear before the German prosecutor as a witness. Congressman Kendrick Meek of Florida, who participated in the hearings on Abu Ghraib, said of Rumsfeld: “There was no way Rumsfeld didn’t know what was going on. He’s a guy who wants to know everything.”
snip
The forms of torture employed against the Americans included “techniques” which crop up frequently in descriptions of Iraqi and Afghan prisoner abuse at Bagram, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib. They included “walling,” where the head is slammed repeatedly into a concrete wall, sleep deprivation to the point of psychosis by use of round-the-clock bright lights and harsh music at ear-splitting volume, in total isolation, for days, weeks or months at a time, and intolerable cold.
The 7th Circuit ruling is the latest in a growing number of legal actions involving hundreds of former prisoners and torture victims filed in courts around the world. Criminal complaints have been filed against Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials in Germany, France, and Spain. Former President Bush recently curbed travel to Switzerland due to fear of arrest following criminal complaints lodged in Geneva. “He’s avoiding the handcuffs,” Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. And this month Canadian citizens forced Bush to cancel an invitation-only appearance in Toronto.
The Mayor of London threatened Bush with arrest for war crimes earlier this year should he ever set foot in his city, saying that were he to land in London to “flog his memoirs,” that “the real trouble — from the Bush point of view — is that he might never see Texas again.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief-of-Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson surmised on MSNBC earlier this year that soon, Saudi Arabia and Israel will be “the only two countries Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest will travel too.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/20/1018370/-UPDATED:-Welcome-to-Boston,-Mr-Rumsfeld-You-Are-Under-Arrest?via=siderec
Landell Mills and Linpico. What are they telling us?
They are telling us in Barbados, for 4.3 million Barbados dollars, that in 48 years the University of Barbados has produced nobody capable of telling us how to run our agriculture and grow our own food.
Obviously we’ve produced economist, but none of them seem to have been much use, or had any clout. We must have produced agriculturalist, but likewise they didn’t have the guts to rock the boat, or seemed to have learned anything about agricultural administration.
So what else does this say for the rest of our Barbados University graduates in the last 48 years?
BBC today, Faster than light quantum particles.
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. Faster than light signaling has been known for years. Those who might have interest understand more about the phenomena, would be better going to Wikipedia ‘Faster than light’. If you have been into quantum physics for a time, you should be able to make head or tail of it.
so what about the enviromentmankind is reaping what it sow. that is the seeds of neglect , abuse,pollution. greed .vexation. these anymany more the enviroment is handing back to civilisation.at a pace so fast mankind cannot rapidly respond to. the lesson being never kick a gift horse in the mouth.. When will we ever learn.How many times must mother nature forgives us. just asking?
ac,
You’ve got it. The big question is how many more times will nature be able, to forgive us ? The world population is expected to move from 9 billion to 12 billion, and we’re attempting to allow everybody to live on to Western standards, and that everybody will treat Earth like a holy shrine.
Even in the West Indies we can’t fully agree over a simple airline. What does that say to human agreement on anything ? Meanwhile the Chinese are killing off all the Sharks for fin soup, and the Japanese killing off the whales, and the rest of the world fishing fleets are dredging everything out of the oceans from as deep as they can dredge. And nobody fully believes global climate change has anything to do with mankind; for that matter nobody really believes man -caused pollution has any truly nature-
damaging effects, not in the air, water, or on the life of all natural things including us ( though we can’t stand being expressed as part of Nature ourselves ).
It passed my mind that maybe our lives are designed in such a way that we carry the seeds of our own destruction. Every way you turn, it looks like that. Maybe it is part of our genetic code. ‘ At Expiration date, self destruct. ‘ .
Not so long ago our foreparents had it right they were taught the art of self preparedness and survival. These skills were only borne out by the fact they were good listeners and experts on the environment taught to by by watching the way mother nature control the earth. Time and seasons were a very important to their survival. they were so in harmony with nature that most of their daily activities was solely dependant how how nature was going to plan the day. Their were the true “scientist of the soil” and the knowledge which they acquired in doing so was evident in their survival and knowing what nature expected of them. In return the earth rewarded them with bountiful harvest.it’s not happenstance that they were able to provide foods which were not laced with pesticide .it is only because they were respectful of nature and the environment. Sadly in today’s society we have succumbed to a culture which wants everything at a fast paced even if we die in the process of doing so. What a legacy our foreparents left for us one which we have discard and in return we are sowing the seeds of death and destruction and reaping them as well.When will we ever learn,
Dangerously Addictive: Why We Are Biologically Ill-Suited to the Riches of Modern America
By Peter C. Whybrow, MD
The United States is the quintessential trading nation,and for the past quarter century we have worshiped the“free” market as an ideology rather than for what it is—a natural product of human social evolution and aset economic tools with which to construct a just and equitable society. Under the spell of this ideology and the false promise of instant riches, America’s immigrant values of thrift, prudence, and community concern— traditionally the foundation of the Dream—have been hijacked by an all-consuming self-interest. The astonishing appetite of the American consumer now determines some 70 percent of all economic activity in the United States. And yet, in this land of opportunity and material comfort—where we enjoy the 12-inch dinner plate, the 32-ounce soda, and the 64-inch TV screen— more and more citizens feel time starved, overworked, and burdened by debt. Epidemic rates of obesity, anxiety, depression, and family dysfunction are accepted as the norm.
It is the paradox of modernity that as choice and material prosperity increase, health and personal satisfaction decline. This is now an accepted truth. And yet it is the rare American who manages to step back from the hedonic treadmill long enough to savor his or her
good fortune. Indeed, for most of us, regardless of what we have, we want more and we want it now. The roots of this conundrum—of this addictive striving—are to be found in our evolutionary history. As creatures of the natural world, having evolved under conditions of
danger and scarcity, we are by instinct reward-seeking animals that discount the future in favor of the immediate present. As a species we have no familiarity with the seductive prosperity and material riches that exist in America today. A novel experience, it is both compelling and confusing.
Brain systems of immediate reward were a vital survival adaptation millennia ago when finding a fruit tree was a rare delight and dinner had a habit of running away or flying out of reach. But living now in relative
abundance, when the whole world is a shopping mall and our appetites are no longer constrained by limited resources, our craving for reward—be that for money, the fat and sugar of fast food, or for the novel gadgetry of modern technology—has become a liability and a
hunger that has no bounds. Our nature has no built-in braking system. More is never enough.
Click to access PCReader-Whybrow-Addictive.pdf
This economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’
Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened
Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it’s a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled “growth” are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair.
To listen to a political leader at this moment in history is like sitting through a sermon by a priest who has lost his faith but is desperately trying not to admit it, even to himself. Watch Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband mouthing tough-guy platitudes to the party faithful. Listen to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy or George Papandreou pretending that all will be well in the eurozone. Study the expressions on the faces of Barack Obama or Ben Bernanke talking about “growth” as if it were a heathen god to be appeased by tipping another cauldron’s worth of fictional money into the mouth of a volcano.
In times like these, people look elsewhere for answers. A time of crisis is also a time of opening-up, when thinking that was consigned to the fringes moves to centre stage. When things fall apart, the appetite for new ways of seeing is palpable, and there are always plenty of people willing to feed it by coming forward with their pet big ideas.
But here’s a thought: what if big ideas are part of the problem? What if, in fact, the problem is bigness itself?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/25/crisis-bigness-leopold-kohr
Greed is what cause the collapse of america. The rich getting richer refusing to give the poor and middle class a decent living wage . preferring to outsource only because it was more beneficial to their bank books while again taking advantage of those countries and labour force that allows them to do so, always willing and ready to trampled upon any one who stands in the way. Do the big financial giants really care NO! They have high tailed to other countries leaving the crumbs for the poor to put to together, This is a real tale of”Humpty Dumpty”
AC and Green Monkey,
You seem to think these things are only happening in the USA. These happenings may have spawned in the USA, but they have blown too, and the ideas have seeded. Even little tiny Barbados has such sprouts, convinced there is such a thing as sustainable development.
God forbid we ever, ever, ever, hit high volume offshore oil and gas. God forbid it. God forbid it !
The noise created by Bushy Park is one thing. Soon, in all probability we’ll have night racing there, that will make the noise even worse on still nights for all of us living in the area of several miles. But that is not what worries me most.
Barbados has a multitude of young impressionable people, who have very little driving experience on the roads. They go racing to Bushy Park, and then racing on their way home afterwards. In many cases their exhaust mufflers on morotcycles and cars, have been removed or replaced to make loud noise, as though they think this denotes power and speed.
All this leads to road deaths, sooner or later, and traffic police are never seen until there is catastrophe.
as a air pollution was not enough with today newer and better technology our ears and brain are being bombarded with noise pollution.,such is the experiences that our minds screams no more .the blaring sounds of music coming from cars with hi tech dvd sound. the police ambulance screaming noise on their way to rescue a sick person. the car alarm which goes off in the dead of the night while we are asleep.Yes a world of faster better.but what a price our minds and bodies have to pay
Oh ! for the peace and quiet of a night in the middle of an ocean with sailcloth up above and a ghosting wind, and no time of arrival or place of destination, and so far out you don’t know which way is land. Or perhaps, if the sea frightens you, way out in the middle of a desert, where each star is a brilliant breathing object, calling, “Look and Me. I am the beginning and the end of time. “
@Colin
Those things i can only dream of maybe with a peaceful night sleep!
Global Warming or Mayhem ? No ! We had nothing to do with it ????
I’m forgetting about those who argued against Mankind being the main cause of global warming. They seems very silent these days, as though their penny’s have dropped, and they have caught up with those of us who felt Man was probably the major cause.
Since we (Man) will be placing so many billions more forms of transport onto roads, seas, and into skies, within the next few years, as world demands for such forms of transport ( most of them carbon consuming), climbs and climbs, it will be interesting for those of us who survive, to see the result of what we have instigated on nature and on ourselves. We are part of nature, you see. Don’t be stupid to be brainwashed into believing otherwise.
We, (Mankind) are now becoming like the dwellers of one huge city, or one huge island. If we won’t believe of the possibility of collapse, then we should read for the first time, or again, the Book ‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond, and let him run you through the civilizations that have ‘Gone Through’ before us, and let him point out for you, just why, for simple reasons, they are no longer around.
The problem with mankind is that we have a superior belief that it won’t happen to us because we are smarter and better than the civilzations before us.
Tillin’ de soil
We’ve never seen so many tractors in two fields, plowing and tilling the soil up here in St John. We counted seven. Hope this means locally produced produce, on a grand and cheaper scale ? Or is this just wistful
daydreaming?
Scientific studies conclude GMO feed causes organ disruption in animals
(NaturalNews) A new paper reviewing data from 19 animal studies shows that consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys (http://www.enveurope.com/content/23…). “Other organs may be affected too, such as the heart and spleen, or blood cells,” stated the paper. In fact some of the animals fed genetically modified organisms had altered body weights, which is “a very good predictor of side effects in various organs.”
The GM soybean and corn varieties used in the feeding trials “constitute 83% of the commercialized GMOs” that are currently consumed by billions of people. While the findings may have serious ramifications for the human population, the authors demonstrate how a multitude of GMO-related health problems could easily pass undetected through the superficial and largely incompetent safety assessments that are used around the world.
The researchers, lead by French Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, found that nearly 1 out of every 10 measured parameters in the studies, including blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses, were significantly disrupted in the animals fed GMOs. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that “several convergent data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO diet effects.” The authors point out that livers and kidneys “are the major reactive organs” in cases of chronic food toxicity.
Feed’em longer!
One of the most glaring faults in the current regulatory regime is the short duration of animals feeding studies. The industry limits trials to 90 days at most, with some less than a month. Only two studies reviewed in this new publication were over 90 days — both were non-industry research.
Short studies could easily miss many serious effects of GMOs. It is well established that some pesticides and drugs, for example, can create effects that are passed on through generations, only showing up decades later. IN the case of the drug DES (diethylstilbestrol), “induced female genital cancers among other problems in the second generation.” The authors urge regulators to require long-term multi-generational studies, to “provide evidence of carcinogenic, developmental, hormonal, neural, and reproductive potential dysfunctions, as it does for pesticides or drugs.”
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033784_GMO_animal_feed.html#ixzz1a9ldfQH5
Perhaps the World’s Most Overlooked Poison
Concerns about Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup, are at an all-time high. But according to a new report by Earth Open Source, one of the biggest concerns may be something that you’re totally in the dark about, namely birth defects.
Research published last year shows that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, causes birth defects in frogs and chicken embryos at far lower levels than used in agricultural and garden applications.
The malformations primarily affected the:
Skull
Face
Midline and developing brain
Spinal cord
Other independent scientific research has also found that glyphosate causes:
Endocrine disruption , DNA damage, Developmental toxicity, Neurotoxicity
Reproductive toxicity, Cancer
Many of these effects were apparent at much lower doses than the typical levels of pesticide residues found in food… Yet despite the evidence, which strongly suggests that the precautionary principle should be applied, regulators are turning a blind eye. According to the Earth Open Source report:
“The EU Commission dismissed these findings, based on a rebuttal provided by the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL). BVL cited unpublished industry studies to back its claim that glyphosate was safe.” [Emphasis mine.]
Massive, Uncontrolled Experiments are Currently Taking Place
The above-mentioned study was prompted after reports surfaced of high rates of birth defects in areas of Argentina growing genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soy. This GM soy has been genetically altered to be tolerant to otherwise lethal doses of Roundup. What this means is that the plants absorb the herbicide and survive, which makes them vessels of potentially high levels of glyphosate. Naturally, when you eat this crop, you also ingest glyphosate, which makes these findings extremely disturbing…
According to the lead author:
“From the ecotoxicological point of view, what is happening in Argentina is a massive experiment. It is a cautionary tale of what could happen in any country that adopts glyphosate-tolerant GM crops on a large scale.”
Unfortunately for American consumers, the United States is a major grower of genetically modified crops. For example, in the US, over 90 percent of all canola grown is GM Roundup Ready canola, as is about 90 percent of US soybeans, and about 70 percent of all corn and cotton. And according to the featured report, industry and regulators KNEW that glyphosate causes deformities as early as the 1980’s, but withheld the information from the public…
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/07/are-you-being-kept-in-the-dark-about-birth-defects-from-weed-killers.aspx?e_cid=20111007_DNL_art_1
‘ War of the World Views.’
This will be a book to look forward to. Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow, a discourse on science and God, and how and if they meet.
They do meet, if you’ve an open mind, a mind open enough to appreciate the difference in the language, and a mind that gets you past the religious scriptures as being beautiful and profound metaphors rather than cast iron factuals.
Remember the “”Anthrax Attacks” that happened a week or so after 9/11? Anthrax filled envelopes were mailed out to media figures and to two Democratic Party senators, Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy (who just so happened to be threatening to hold up passage of the ill-named Patriot Act in the Senate). The anthrax filled letters were to cause the death of 5 victims who succumbed to the anthrax spores which were let loose from the envelopes.
These envelopes were made to look as if they came from Muslim terrorist, as in addition to the anthrax spores, they contained letters filled with typical Muslim, extremist slogans against the US and Israel and proclaiming the greatness of Allah. At the time it was more or less taken for granted that the letters had been mailed by Muslim terrorists, especially after it was reported that the anthrax showed some chemical traces indicating it came from Iraq. That was taken as a sure sign by some that it could only have been supplied from one of Saddam’s WMD labs. The anthrax letters were eagerly seized on by some politicians (e.g. John McCain) and political commentators who effectively used them as propaganda to gain public support for invading Iraq in order to take out Saddam and destroy his supposed WMD labs.
It turned out afterwards that scientific analysis of the spores definitively proved that the anthrax came from a highly secure US military lab and not from Iraq at all. The FBI ended up pinning the blame for the attacks on another of their “lone nut” suspects, a US anthrax researcher named Bruce Ivins (not a Muslim). Ivins latter committed suicide.when he found out he was to be charged with the crime.
However, the FBI’s case against Bruce Ivins is not holding up well under examination from leading anthrax researchers and scientists. These scientists believe the anthrax in the letters bore certain characteristics and was of such a high quality that it would have been practically impossible to have come from Ivins working on his own and sneaking out some spores from the samples he had access to in his work.
Just goes to show, I guess, that not all terrorist attacks are what they might appear to be on the surface, nor is it safe to assume that because some individuals are identified by the authorities as the culprits, we have the whole story.
What the hell is going on? Oh, just the new monopoly game today !
Friday Oct 7th, we see in the Advocate that the Barbados Road Safety Association would like Government to set up a fund for those families of road accident victims. The reason being, as from Mr Richard Cox the public relations officer, is that there have been several instances where road users lost their lives in accidents where the car owner’s vehicles were not insured.
In any civilized country, driving an uninsured car, is a serious criminal offence, like owning an unlicensed fire arm. But not in Barbados where driving an uninsured vehicle these days, seems to be almost above board, and common place.
Well I’m mad about it, since a couple years ago we were hit by an uninsured driver near Bath Beach, and the police arriving on the scene tried to make out we were wrong. The youth had sprung out from a minor road, not stopped at the stop sign, and come sweeping across the road to hit us on the other side. I had all the photographs I needed of what happened, and I made sure the policeman was in them too. The young driver of the other car, did not have insurance and the police did not prosecute him. We had to pay all our damages and replace a back door on our car, in order to retain our no claim insurance premiums which would have cost us more than paying for our car repair ourselves.
Now, I don’t see why we have to start paying extra tax, because the police won’t do their duty and trap people driving without insurance, and the government is not enforcing driving without insurance as a crime instead of a traffic offense.
Instead, government is wanting to bail out Clico, for a 150 odd million, so that Clico can turn around and repeat what they have already done to Barbados (besides destruct Sam Lords Castle that should have been included in our Heritage sites), while nobody responsible ended up in jail.
This is the sort of puke, we tax payers are all up against, and why people in New York have seen the light of such things, and are striking back. Meanwhile, nobody passed GO, and nobody goes to jail. That is the new Monopoly game today , and Politicians are becoming overweight slobs because of it, and millions of normal people are finding them selves without jobs, and country’s are becoming bankrupt.
Colin, you are right on about this issue of uninsured drivers. Several years ago my parents were in a collision with a motorcycle (his fault) which sent the rider and his motorcycle sprawling on the ground. He was apparently not very badly injured as he righted the motorcycle, hopped back on and immediately sped away.
My parents took down the license number to give the cops when they arrived on the scene. But the policeman when he arrived said he could almost guarantee it was a fake license plate on the bike, and even if it was valid, the driver would likely have no insurance. Sure enough It was a fake number plate, and the driver and motorcycle were never found. My parents were stuck with paying to get the dents and scratched paint repaired on their car.
I would love to know if any of the scrambler motorbike riders riding bikes with no mufflers (and making an eardrum shattering roar as they zoom past you on the road), with no visible license plates (or with license plates so small you are unable to read the numbers), and often pulling wheelies as they proceed down the public roads and highways have the required insurance coverage.
Green Monk,
DRIVERS WITHOUT INSURANCE.
Wish we had some Texan traffic police here. We don’t seem to have any traffic police. You hardly see them on the roads, and never see them at night unless there’s an accident. Two good Texan traffic police would get the island right in a hurry. Perhaps the government could allow two in to take up duty as a form of inter-country relations, and as an assist to fill government coffers with unpaid license fees, traffic violation fees, insurance fees, helping to keep people from becoming road kill, helping to keep people out of hospital beds due to road accidents, helping to keep damage to public property down done by careless drivers, helping to make the bus transport drive safely and the buses in one piece, helping to keep the high- flying lorries drivers in check, jailing dangerous drivers for their own good or having their drivers licences taken away.
Two good Texan traffic cops would turn this island around traffic wise, in a hurry, provided the judicial system would back them up (which, of course, is highly improbable, since we love the system in anarchy
as it is). At very least, Barbadian drivers are considerate, perhaps the most considerate in the world, when it comes to— letting fellow drivers out of blind roads.
I woke this morning after reading a report in the August 6th /2011 Economist magazine, about Shale gas last night. I awoke, glad to find I was still breathing, and happy to consider that I knew very little about shale gas, though I had met it everywhere we had ever drilled in Trinidad, and Barbados, and St Lucia.
Apparently, reading the three pages in the Economist, there is a huge drive across the USA, Canada, and the UK, to start putting shale gas to good use, and there are huge volumes of it to use, though recovery is only about 15 to 20 %. It is a low pressure gas, cleaner ( they say) than natural gas.
It looks as though you just need a small rig, capable of setting a small surface casing safely down below your water zones. Then you drill into your shales. You could undeream as large as you feel like doing, before setting your production casing. I’m thinking along the lines of drilling near village areas, to keep supply lines short and simple, having met such a well years ago here in Barbados, which was supplying (much to my amazement then) its gas to a plantation yard and houses at Bennets near the middle of the island. I traced the I” pipe line back till I found the well several hundred feet away from the yard. I don’t know if Bennets still get there gas from that well, but it looked like it was just a simple water well that had been drilled a little deeper than most. It was very old, and very simple, like some of the old wells you can still find doing nothing in Trinidad, drilled using cable tools, probably.
So this about Shale gas, has got me thinking. I must find out if anybody is doing anything with it in Trinidad. They certainly are not doing much with it in Barbados, though they are seriously talking about a natural gas line from Trinidad. You can just imagine what ‘that’ will cost, since politicians are dealing with it.
Colin L Beadon
Winning a Million, like undeserved reparation !
Instead of one person winning 150 million or more in a lottery, why shouldn’t 150 people be given the chance to win one Million ? Wouldn’t this sell just as many tickets, if not more, because individual chances are better and wealth, in this way, gets spread out better ?
If you can’t do well with a million, 10 million is not going to help you either. Even a million dollar win, has destroyed so many people, if you read back the story of their lives.
The reason why so many of us are not rich, is because we don’t know how to handle money, or are just not interested in business, or money, to the extent we want to throw our lives on the line for it.
You see, it does not matter how rich we become, we all die sooner or later, and very rich people die, through over- indulgence, just as many poor people die through dereliction. It is just that there are fewer rich people, and their wealth better shared, could have saved many of those who died through dereliction.
Every day, almost, famous artistes, singers, Steve Jobes’s, writers, poets, musicians, multi- millioneer business people, each with all the money in the world, die through over indulgences, or cancer, or drugs. Or, they shoot themselves. What does this tell you ? Who are the really aged in Barbados. Few , if any, were rich. Bet you on that ! But they are, according to their own testimonies, contented,… and loved.
@CB: You got it right.And which category would you fall in?
Rasta man, If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. I think of myself as rich, in old books, words, my own family, and friends of many shades and colours, across the world. I own a 11 year old three cylinder car, and pay rent that consumes more than my pension. If there is anything else you’d like to know, I’ll tell you. Colin.
@CB;So you are rich ,contented and loved.That is a good combination.
rasta man,
Blessed are they that are blessed. The corridors of Hell are full, anyway. The devil has a sign posted on the gates of Hades ‘ Full House! Try again nex year. ‘
The extremely high cost of living in Barbados makes everyone looks like a billionaire.
@cb: Sory to burst your bubble,but the devil always has room for another sinner.And you do not have to try either,he will welcome you with open arms.
rasta man
As long as my human friends, of all colours, and my animal fiends are there, and there’s good Bajan rum, and pork, I won’t give a shit.
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken’d,
Man’s Forgiveness give—-And take !
Omar Khayyam.
@CB: Now that is an interesting perpective .A concept where hell is a place of enjoyment and contentment. Most people I know who actually think there is a hell think of it as a place of torment.
rasta Man.
Heaven is a set up job. Hell is where the action is. Besides,
El Diablo has had to cut back on power consumption for his fires. God is vex, complaining about the pollution reaching up in Nivana.
They holding a meeting to discuss it. Those in heaven saying nothing happens there, You can’t get salted or laid, and de music gets on your nerves after a time. No deep- throated tumba, no cowbell, only steady organ ya hearing. No brass or guitar atal, atal. No grog of any kin’, not even church water’d wine. The congregations staring to murmur. They want Sparrow and Red plastic bag. It’s like outside the New York Stock exchange.
De people lookin’ for change, people sellin’ shark and bread, and black puddin. Even the chilren’ an dem, drinkin beer and winning up. Souse sellin’ cheap every where you look. A goat for two farding, etc. People givin’ way roti. People all colours an designes. It’s one big fete. Some even wondrin’ if it’s heaven dey reach.
Never min’ God is a good fellow. All t’will work itself out and be fine. You’ll see. Thou and I will claps han’, and sip the necters of eternity.
@CB: I wish you all the best but the Bible says”God is not mocked”.
rasta man, man, I don’t dig the Bible much. I dug it many years while I was a choir boy, going church every morning, twice on Sundays. Then I start seeing de res’ of the worl’ I began thinking differently, especially after I pass through a college run by Catholic priest, and being told I mustn’t talk to the girls goin’ to de convent cross de road, and mustn’t cycle to school wid dem. And then much later hearing all the stories ’bout dem priest an dem, etc. Anyhow, I pass through the National sea training school, three months of bootcamp, and gorilla- like training, and then I was at sea, as a deck boy, going roun’d de worl’,all about.
And I guess, with all my reading from Plato to Bertrand Russel, and then the books of all the major religions, I found many wonders. Many wonders, and deep inspirations, and I became Agnostic, fully aware ‘The Ultimate’ is way beyond human apprehension, and all we do trying to understand, is tie ourselves in knots, and fight bloody religious wars that end, over centuries, by killing billions because of our bigoted beliefs.
So you could chant all the ‘God is Love’, and ‘Allah Akbar you want. But I ain’t thinking along such lines, never, never , done !
‘ All the sages and the saints, who discussed,
Of the two worlds, so learnedly, are thrust,
Like foolish prophets forth, their words to scorn are scattered.
And their mouths are stopped with dust. ‘ Omar Khayyam.
Hi Colin,
Reading up, I see you lost a friend, sorry to hear and we can blame no one, it is life, karma, whatever. Still a tragedy.
These recent events that transpire are what we, including Straight Talk, Green Monkey etc spoke about some years back, at the commencement of these blogs.
It has come to pass. Unfortunately the recession had some assistance, both by Government policies and financial markets, then the created ‘wars’ that only kill innocents and make specific companies / people rich, including ruthless sociopaths (as per reading up).
I noted a bit of humour the other day in the news, about SOC Clinton visiting Libya to promise an ‘aid package’.
Ha ha. What nation with ‘before war’ invested surplus assets of 500 Billion (one of the few nations with such at this time) needs an ‘aid package’???
Rather boldfacd.
But, that is mankind, no? Certainly, it has been an interesting couple of years, seeing international law usurped for specific ends.
But, time has now come for the ‘reaping’ of what is sown…..it appears to me that the demonstrations are more serious than many people think. Further, the demonstrations also indicate that the ‘rules’ have changed in some minds i.e. back to the 60’s and ‘people power’…not what modern Government’s want. In fact, I did see where one person make such comment that freedom of speech has become lip service to some who now are now quite offended that people have the courage to demonstrate in public.
Thanks gosh they do, authoritarianism has been pushed on the world for the past few years, not to mention the gullibility of believing everything that is published by official press, to the point of accepting rash actions by nations as ‘good’.
Ah, but that is life, no?
Take Care
GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs
Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues
Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of “superweeds”, according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.
The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.
The report claims that hunger has reached “epic proportions” since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM “traits” have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale.
Most worrisome, say the authors of the Global Citizens’ Report on the State of GMOs, is the greatly increased use of synthetic chemicals, used to control pests despite biotech companies’ justification that GM-engineered crops would reduce insecticide use.
In China, where insect-resistant Bt cotton is widely planted, populations of pests that previously posed only minor problems have increased 12-fold since 1997. A 2008 study in the International Journal of Biotechnology found that any benefits of planting Bt cotton have been eroded by the increasing use of pesticides needed to combat them.
Additionally, soya growers in Argentina and Brazil have been found to use twice as much herbicide on their GM as they do on conventional crops, and a survey by Navdanya International, in India, showed that pesticide use increased 13-fold since Bt cotton was introduced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/19/gm-crops-insecurity-superweeds-pesticides
Today, I am truly disgusted.
How is it that an unelected individual come to be referred to as the ‘Prime Minister’ of a country, so soon after a military coup and how is it that former ‘terrorists’ become known as ‘rebels’?
How is it that the brutal murder of a nation’s leader is accepted and even applauded, without trial, without a blink?
Yes, the world initially stood by while Hitler rampaged.
A dangerous precedent indeed. Just remember these lessons of today, no elections are now necessary, the Hague court is now a puppeteering court, murder of a leader after unrest is to be applauded and he who claims leadership does not have to be elected, only recognised by those who have the most power.
Those are the lessons we are being taught today.
My only answer?
The Almighty is all aware and all powerful, only he has the answer and can make decisions.
Mother Earth is more powerful than the little men who murder. No one has to answer to another, but all have to answer to life and time!
Peace.
PS Sad how so many feed on the trivial garbage being fed by politicians and newsbenders masquerading journalists. Thanksfully such as the ‘Wall Street Occupiers’ provide hope that all is not lost in this generation.
Rumple,
You’ve been gone so long Man, You had me worried like I loss a nex one to dust. I too, am concerned about so much, just don’t know where to start on it all. Can’t concentrate on one thing, and another comes tearing at me. Is everything falling down, or reconstructing? Is it old age that makes me think it is the end of King Arthur’s Round table, valor, decency, rule of law. Is the Middle East really on a new course to Freedom, or just endless, leaderless, bloodshed ? Look at Pakistan, Russia, the mounting billions in China. The daily weakening of the West where any chance of stability might have laid.
You tell me Rumple.
@CB: Why are you concerned about so much? You and your friends will supposedly end up in hell drinking rum and living it up.Or so you said.
Lol. Thanks for the concern CB. Leaderless bloodshed is unstable, right where certain interests want it.
They just dont get it, stop the fighting and shame the armsdealers.
The West I believe is weaker than we think ,the current demonstrations but a tip of the iceberg.
Keeping other parts of the world unstable makes the west look stable. Par for the course. But the money well runs dry and demonstrations will increase, it may not be just the ME with bloodshed.
The economic condition is bad indeed, I would not bet against riots in western countries either.
Whilw we here are not shielded against the financial woes, at least we are partially shielded against the violence that may ensue form a collapsed stock market.
Things grow no less dangerous, but at least, this is all part of life and we will watch and live, this is mankind, you and I cannot change this.
The hounds of hell hath been released, who will chain them?
Only the Almighty can. You and I can but observe.
But, we can take comfort that this is what life is about and we can live and enjoy ours.
The irony is that today’s ‘victor’s’ also fight amongst themselves…and that may be the biggest fight of all.
Peace
‘Super Freakonomics’ by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner.
‘Eaarth’ by Bill McKibben.
Two new books about our times. Both well acclaimed. I’ve only
just started on Freakonomics. It’s very amusing, I’ve already discovered misapprehensions, and new ways to look at things, on its first pages.
We tend to get stuck by insularity, living in small islands steeped in our own conventions, problems , local politics, weather patterns, most of us unable to travel a great deal any more. So such books show us the surge of new world views, and thinking, possibilities, even amongst the bloodshed, the surge of new life, the new freshness of possible dawns, even amongst all the corruption that some are being nailed for, and forced to pay for, one by one, one by one, though so many involved go weekly to church, and un-cringing, sip the wine hopeful of deliverance.
Colin, talking about freaky, does Freakanomics touch on the ever expanding role of the financial instruments known as derivatives in generating obscene amounts of income for the economic high rollers operating in Wall Street and the The City of London?
The Coming Derivatives Crisis That Could Destroy The Entire Global Financial System
Most people have no idea that Wall Street has become a gigantic financial casino. The big Wall Street banks are making tens of billions of dollars a year in the derivatives market, and nobody in the financial community wants the party to end.
The word “derivatives” sounds complicated and technical, but understanding them is really not that hard. A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made.
Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Estimates of the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market go from $600 trillion all the way up to $1.5 quadrillion.
Keep in mind that the GDP of the entire world is only somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 trillion. The danger to the global financial system posed by derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction”.
For now, the financial powers that be are trying to keep the casino rolling, but it is inevitable that at some point this entire mess is going to come crashing down.
When it does, we are going to be facing a derivatives crisis that really could destroy the entire global financial system.
snip
Yes, the boys and girls down on Wall Street have gotten completely and totally out of control.
In an excellent article that he did on derivatives, Webster Tarpley described the pivotal role that derivatives now play in the global financial system….
Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like “toxic assets,” “exotic instruments,” and – most notably – “troubled assets,” as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.
Most people do not realize this, but derivatives were at the center of the financial crisis of 2008.
They will almost certainly be at the center of the next financial crisis as well.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-coming-derivatives-crisis-that-could-destroy-the-entire-global-financial-system
greetings, can anyone tell me why “ESCAPE AT THE GAP” resort has closed ? i have stayed there twice and found it excellent. i was hoping to book my sons wedding there in december 2012. regards from a barbados lover. david fleming
Easy, Easy, Green Monk,
So far I’ve just scratched the surface of the book Freakonomics. But it is a book I can tell already, is going to fascinate you no end. I’m on the part dealing with hospital emergencies, and how most hospitals have no idea how to deal with real emergencies on large scales, even in the USA. That is a chapter well worth reading, dealing with hospital administrations and how they are mainly the ones who constrict and tie in knots what could be a well run system. Sounds like a place we should know quite well.
The book is a cross section across the board of life. You meet some amazing characters, prostitutes, economists, murderers, mathematicians, scientists, a variety of ways to postpone death, what is worse, cow farts or car exhausts, why did US cities breath fresh air when the car came along, reasons to hate geoengineering, what is wrong with wind and solar farms, why are suicide bombers usually well educated people, how to catch a terrorist or a politicians. Lots of exciting, simple, carefully though out solutions for living in this strange age.
Zooming Exponential Human Population Growth.
Well at last, having written several times on the world population growth myself, and being ignored by the BBC to use the subject on their talk
shows, the penny has now dropped on the world stage, and the shit has started to hit the fan.
In the New Book, ‘Freakonomics ‘ I’ve been glad to find, the authors have pointed out that birthrates have dropped in third world countries ( the major population growth areas) where television has found its way into small villages and distant towns. So it is education, most of the way, that may stem the tide, ( and the eradication of greed and corruption, I’d add ).
We’re passing 7 billion people, and the Earth is groaning under the stress already. Just listen to world news, if you don’t believe that.
Saving energy, in simple ways.
An English made rechargeable spotlight, now after 18 years of recharging and near- nightly use, has decided to pack in. So I’m ordering another battery, since it can be charged from the mains, or from a car or boat, and recently, I’ve found, the sun, using a 12 volt solar charger, does a great recharging job too. .
I told the agents, that at age 76, I’d hardly need to order another battery again, after this one, if the products at Nitech, still maintain there 1993 standards.
Now you can work out, how you want, the fact that you can still get products out of the UK, that will far outlast those from anywhere else; true you may have to pay a little more for them. But in the long run, you are actually far ahead, and don’t leave much for the garbage collectors of batteries and those sorts of things, to dispose of. One lantern battery in 18 years, shouldn’t anger , or add, very much to the destruction of the Earth, and a small solar panel of 3 Watts, can fully recharge that, implying no load use to Light and Power at all. .
There are so many small simple ways, we can reduce our energy consumption. But most of us, are not interested,….yet !
Conserving energy.
We could, for instance, switch off most of the streets lights. All they really do, is give thieves a way forward so they can see the dogs in your yard, or see you looking at them from a window.
@ Anonymous:
Be careful how you tread here! Unless you can bring published evidence to this charge back off and stay silent.
Hello miller,
You are correct. We’re not going to put up with that nonsense without evidence. Thank you for alerting us to the anonymous idiot and we have taken away his comment.
Heck, we don’t mind publishing photos of the Minister of Health holding a goat in an obvious reference to him being associated to a bestiality website – but we have to have the fact enough to believe it is true. But we have to have some proof.
Thank you for your sharp eye!
So what happened with my post? Is it incorrect?
@ BFP:
As Superman would say in the men deodorant advert “No sweat!”
I am here to work for a better Barbados since I understand what’s ahead of us. We need to prepare for the tsunami.
So don’t dismiss my earlier contention that over $13 million was wasted on the medical transcription project and enriching some people both overseas and local. Trust me!
Rumple, Straight Talk,
In fact, anybody with a freewheeling mind, interested in discoveries, fixing or inventing things, earth science and its problems, un-conventional ways of getting things done ‘ Freakonomics’ is your book. You won’t put this book down, or take a chance on lending it out. It is a New York Times best seller too.
7 billion people.
We don’t fully appreciate a figure like 7 billion. So here is one way to get a handle on it.
If from the day you were born, you were to have the people in the world pass you at the speed of one every second, you could not live long enough to have them all pass you. Besides, the rate of world population growth is now more than one born every second, and the death rate from old age and others reasons, due to scientific findings, tends to be for ever falling.
Things are going to get tough. There is an extreme ‘fishout’ in rivers, lakes, seas. Depletion in energy, forestry, the many ores, agricultural land, fresh water, wild life, complete ecosystems, and so on, are going to force more want, and more huge refugee camps, starvation, and wars upon us. All this will intensify as the world population exponentially, like a huge balloon, swells and swells..
One supposes there is some God- given plan to slow or stop such an Apocalypse, but you won’t find any answers that humans are prepared to follow, in Islamic Korans or Christian Bibles.
GMO Researchers Attacked, Evidence Denied, and a Population at Risk
By Jeffrey M Smith
Biologist Arpad Pusztai had more than 300 articles and 12 books to his credit and was the world’s top expert in his field. But when he accidentally discovered that genetically modified (GM) foods are dangerous, he became the biotech industry’s bad-boy poster child, setting an example for other scientists thinking about blowing the whistle.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Pusztai was awarded a $3 million grant by the UK government to design the system for safety-testing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). His team included more than 20 scientists working at three facilities, including the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, the top nutritional research lab in the UK, and his employer for the previous 35 years. The results of Pusztai’s work were supposed to become the required testing protocols for all of Europe. But when he fed supposedly harmless GM potatoes to rats, things didn’t go as planned.
Within just 10 days, the animals developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged immune systems. Moreover, the cause was almost certainly side effects from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, the GM foods on the market, which are created from the same process, might have similar affects on humans.
With permission from his director, Pusztai was interviewed on TV and expressed his concerns about GM foods. He became a hero at his institute – for two days. Then came the phone calls from the pro-GMO prime minister’s office to the institute’s director. The next morning, Pusztai was fired. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit, his team was dismantled, and the protocols never implemented. His institute, the biotech industry, and the UK government, together launched a smear campaign to destroy Pusztai’s reputation.
Arpad Pusztai, saw his career runied by big government and big agri-business because he told the truth about GM food
Eventually, an invitation to speak before Parliament lifted his gag order and his research was published in the prestigious Lancet. No similar in-depth studies have yet tested the GM foods eaten every day by Americans.
Trail of Devastated, Silenced Scientists
The treatment of Dr. Pusztai sent a chilling precedent around the world. By 2001, New Zealand Parliament member Sue Kedgley told the 2001 Royal Commission of Inquiry on Genetic Modification: “Personally I have been contacted by telephone and e-mail by a number of scientists who have serious concerns about aspects of the research that is taking place . . . and the increasingly close ties that are developing between science and commerce, but who are convinced that if they express these fears publicly, even at such a commission. . . or even if they asked the awkward and difficult questions, they will be eased out of their institution.”
On September 2, 2009, the prestigious journal Nature acknowledged that the regular attacks on biotech researchers are orchestrated by a “large block of scientists who denigrate research by other legitimate scientists in a knee-jerk, partisan, emotional way that is not helpful in advancing knowledge and is outside the ideals of scientific inquiry.”
These attacks have all but stopped independent research into the health and environmental side-effects of GMOs. According to University of California at Berkeley professor Ignacio Chapela, there is a de facto ban on scientists “asking certain questions and finding certain results.” He says, “It’s very hard for us to publish in this field. People are scared.”
Continued at:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/237064-GMO-Researchers-Attacked-Evidence-Denied-and-a-Population-at-Risk
Green Monkey,
I suppose what you have written about GMO, ties in with what I’ve written about WPG (World Population Growth). GMO products would not be needed if the WPG was not getting out of hand, and big business and politicians didn’t see a way to make big profits or win votes out of it.
Colin, the agro industrial complex would like us to believe that the world needs their patented GM seeds and crops because it is the only way to increase food production enough to feed the teaming masses. I am not buying it, especially when the conscienceless, avaricious and soulless corporations let loose the results of their genetic tinkering into the earth’s environment with no regard to the precautionary principle and little or no testing for the harmful effects their patented seeds might have on the environment or on human health (as described in the post above).
by the year 2050 there will be 9billion people on this planet increasing the demand for food more urgent. so how do we expect to keep up with a higher demand if there are no short term solutions. it is a catch 22 in any case and the need to supply the food is of greater priority than how it is supplied . sad but true!
Our Garbage has not been picked up for the week. Will the SSA still not have enough trucks in the year 2050? They always blame it on not having enough trucks.
ac Is there a way out ?
Perhaps we just evade the problem, since there does not seem to be any way out. We will have to see what comes, and take what happens as we can. It all ties in with everything else, global warming, the growing carbon dioxide ppm, the rising sea levels, melting ice caps, droughts, forest fires, growing shortages of all minerals and major energy supplies, on and on.
For Mankind to survive, we have to start seriously thinking about an end to development and re-learning how to live with nature, instead of against it, as though we are at war with her.
You might come across the new book ‘Eaarth’ (That is how it is spelled) By Bill KcKibben. His first chapters are horrifying, since he nails all
the world’s major problems. But then he is kinder to us, showing us possible ways out. The problem —- nobody is going to want to take on those possible ways out, just like Italia and Greece don’t want to follow their austerity measures, and Americans and most other people in the world, don’t want to junk their cars, or do away with their multinational companies. or stop building hotels and resorts, race tracks and billion dollar stadiums, dams, converting agricultural land to cities, golf courses, theme parks, multi-rise apartment blocks, Skyscrapers, all those things that require so much energy to run, and so much of the remaining world supplies of resources.
So we’re left, as I said in an earlier script, with the Koran and the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, the I chang and the Torah, the Tao, and the hieroglyphs in tomb burial chambers across much of the world.
We need to get back to the land and grow our own foods, in and on every available foot we can plant. We need to go back to village communities like in the days when we were busy near home, happier, much less stressed. . We need to read ‘Small is beautiful again’ . ‘Eaarth, is a book up to date, on what we are up against now. Right now !
You will find, in the book ‘Eaarth’ , what the world renowned scientist are really saying, uncluttered and un-restricted by big business and politicians and
political intent. Who will read it, and who will listen ?
yes colin i am hearing you and am in complete agreement with what needs to be done to reverse our way of doing things for a more healthy environment .however the damage which has been done would take hundred of years to be corrected but in the mean time the 7billion of us living in this capsule called planet earth still have to be fed, and house quickly for our survival .so in the meantime what should we do..climate changes has already told us we do not have the time and natural resources that we once have and enjoyed .our natural resources have been depleted . with so many mouths to feed and so little time to feed them .where do we go from here except to reinvent the wheel . or the alternative mass starvation.
ac, There is little that can be said, or done.
I awake every morning and ask myself the same questions. The real problem is not enough people are asking the same questions, most don’t appreciate there are questions to be asked. Even so, there are not enough people who could come up with solutions that most people would, or could, agree upon.
We are like huge herds of sheep, being driven by sheepdogs. We don’t know where we are going, or for what reason. Most of us are not really interested as long as we can get our food and our drink. Most of us are not even worried about the state of Nature or the state of the world around us, and what is happening to it beneath our feet.
Our religions have impressed upon us about the life to come, having impressed very little about the life of the Earth that mothers us, and of which we are truly made.
Don’t worry, no chance we will reach the 9biilion mark, not after we’ve been made sterile and our lifespans decreased due to our compromised immune systems.- just a couple of minor side affects from subsisting on a diet composed of mostly genetically modified, patented Franken food.
Scientist: GM food safety testing is “woefully inadequate”
According to Judy Carman, Ph.D., very little safety testing is done on genetically modified foods, and when it is done, biotechnology companies conduct minimal testing.
Dr. Carmen says that more extensive independent testing of GM foods is needed to ensure they are safe. Her recommendations seem prophetic in light of a recent Austrian government study that found reduced fertility in mice fed GM corn.
Dr. Carman is director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research, Inc., a non-profit research institute based in Australia focusing on the safety of genetically modified food. She earned a doctorate degree in medicine from the University of Adelaide in the areas of metabolic regulation, nutritional biochemistry, and cancer. She has investigated outbreaks of disease for an Australian state government.
Ken Roseboro, editor of The Organic & Non-GMO Report, interviewed Dr. Carman during her recent visit to the United States.
Can you tell me a about your research on the health impacts of GM foods?
We are conducting one of the very few first long-term, independent animal feeding studies with GM foods. To date, most of these types of studies have been done by biotechnology companies or scientists associated with biotechnology companies.
Of the few independent studies being done, a study by the Austrian government recently made public found reduced fertility in mice fed GM corn. Another recent study done in Italy showed immune system problems in mice fed GM corn.
The studies done by biotechnology companies tend to show no health problems associated with eating GM food. The independent studies are finding adverse effects.
Do you have any comments about the Austrian study showing reduced fertility?
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. It is interesting that (Russian scientist) Irina Ermakova had similar findings (of reduced fertility) with mice fed GM soy.
It is disturbing that the study showed a gradually worsening effect on mice that ate the GM corn. I am worried that something similar is happening in humans. If it is, it could take many years for problems to become apparent, and by then it could be too late to do anything about it.
http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/dec08/gm_food_safey_testing_inadequate.php
Green Monk, ac, (Back to Population control )
Well possibly, there we have it ! Humans, will inadvertently, induced by the dictates of nature, be forced into a system to stem their own fertility, ( population growth ).
Perhaps this is how nature actually works, once nature finds itself in a spot ( in this case over- burdened by human population), it derives a way out. So man has devised his own devise ( GM foods that reduce his sterility like proven in mice and rats )
I’m continually stuck with the thought we are actually controlled by nature, though we insists, are indeed convinced by our Faiths, that we have Free Will, and so are not controlled by nature.
I think we had better hope I am correct, that nature in actuality, has the last word on every account. .
Slightly the worse for grog, this evening, I hope I’ve written this understandably. If not, forgive my indulgence.
What is independence of a nation really:
Independence is the controlling of smaller nation by a bigger nation without supporting them financially. I submit we were never really independent nor soverign. Control is through debt at exorbitant interest rates which can never be repaid.
@colin
no wonder i was laughin. the last two sentences explains it all
@ colin & ac – New inventions are being invented all the time. In today’s ‘Nation’ Barbadian born Dr. Andrew Phillips (pg. 18A & 19A) has won a prestigous award for helping to develop computer software that is on course to reprogramming human cells. In the article he says: “I’d really like this work to contribute to solving some of the big challenges facing humanity, for example in developing sustainable energy resources and advancing medical research.”
One would have thought that, having won the Richard Stoute Teen Talent competition with two religious songs,Everdene Smart would have given thanks and praise to the Lord for her success..
Just goes to show that what comes out of the mouth is not neccessarily in the heart
Analyzer,
Perhaps Dr Andrew Phillips might be prevailed upon to reprogram human cells so our sperm count drops radically, saving the Earth from over-population, ( and all the horrors that will ensue because of it ).
There is no other problem that can compare with the one than Mankind himself, forces on the Earth with his exponentially growing birthrate.
That is the problem Mankind should be attempting to regulate before Nature is forced to take its own course.
An Addition to above:
Developing sustainable energy resources, and advancing medical research, in no way alleviates the human population growth problem.
They both, in fact, add to the problem, in a variety of new ways like all new challenges and inventions, since everything is derived from oil or gas; and medical research is primarily designed to prolong life, but does not necessarily allow a patient fitness to contribute to the working of society.
So in a nutshell what do you think should be done? I don’t have the patience to read through all your posts. Do you think China is one the right track telling their people that they can only have 1 child or that is what I heard a long time ago, is that still the case, do you know?
Anony,
The one child Chinese law, has put China in problems. You’ll probably find much written about it like I have found if you search.
If you had read what I’ve written about world Human population, you’d appreciate I have no answers, and offer none.
Nobody wants to broach the subject, for obvious reasons. It would be like telling people they have to do away with cell phones, cars, and airline flight, because of the rising pollution they all cause in multiple ways.
And by the same token all these things, including food and water shortages, will get far worse as the human population swells and desires more.
Since nobody is prepared to discuss world population, there is not much point in attempting to start it going. I’m pointing out that world population growth is by far the major forward- thrusting problem, whose consequences we all shall face.
In the meanwhile, we continue blaming everyone and everything else, and continue destroying the environment of the Earth, faster , and faster than it can sustain and recover.
@COLIN
Don;t think mother nature desn’t have the answer. i know you have seen the recent increase in earthquakes and the thousands who have died and mankind has effortlessly her her out in more ways than one making the problem of overpopulation solvable.
AC,
There are so many checks that need looking into. This morning early, I was into the world refugee count as it stands 1pm June 30th 2011.
43.7 million people. And as it was in 2007. 11 million people. Now that is an extremely sharp and alarming rise. 32,7 million more refugees in four years.
Nobody has to be a rocket scientist to appreciate Earth is in a spot with its human populations, its foodstocks, its water, wars, natural resources
climate warming. The now- melting permafrosts will unlock vast amounts of extra carbon dioxide adding to what mankind himself is already adding through the burning of fossil fuels.
Go to Google and look at the ‘Global Warming Effect Map’. It’s informative.
Big business and Politicians, are not listening or taking all this seriously. They’d rather not hear about it, or about the fast-zooming world population that is at the cap of the problem.
There are ways to reduce almost everything that is happening, but nobody wants to hear about them, or in any grand way, act.
@Colin
there are some organisation who are stampeding across the globe with the concerns of world poulation growth and are suggesting that a way to begin is if couples only have 2 childern this should continue well into the 22ndcentury. if a politician would dare suggest such i don;t think they would be part of the human race for long.
What we can learn from the Chinese.
Page 2 Advocate Nov 9th 2011. They were mostly young, and they were slim and trim. Look at our side, sitting opposite, across the table, and standing in the bottom photo.
Hope we asked for some of their expert nutritionists, and some of their expert farmers ????
Ah well ! Perhaps nobody noticed our heavyweights ? Bet we out-weighed them, three Chinese to one of ours.
The above post came from CLB, not from 56, who ever he is.
The Above post came from me, CLB, not from 56, who ever 56 is.
Colin
Steam from solar energy.
I’d spoken to solar energy companies locally here in Barbados, two or more years ago, that I was convinced you could quite easily design solar panels to give you steam, enough to drive a steam engine, to drive a generator to power a home.
You would need a lot of steam to drive a steam turbine, but a steam piston engine requires a lot less, and I had checked this with people in the UK who still build small steam engines.
Ok, so this evening I’m into Google, to see if anybody has taken up solar powered steam driven piston engines engines to make electricity. And I’ve found a crude12 Kilowatt Unit , doing just that, and other tests going on along the same lines.
So nobody locally, took on my idea. What a shame. Guess we’ll wait till we have to start importing such things.
Why is my post seemingly coming from Anonymous ? Colin Leslie Beadon ? The Steam engine project, above ????
What we can learn from the Chinese.
Page 2 Advocate Nov 9th 2011. They were mostly young, and they were slim and trim. Look at our side, sitting opposite, across the table, and standing in the bottom photo.
Hope we asked for some of their expert nutritionists, and some of their expert farmers ????
Ah well ! Perhaps nobody noticed our heavyweights ? Bet we out-weighed them, three Chinese to one of ours.
Steam from solar energy.
I’d spoken to solar energy companies locally here in Barbados, two or more years ago, that I was convinced you could quite easily design solar panels to give you steam, enough to drive a steam engine, to drive a generator to power a home.
You would need a lot of steam to drive a steam turbine, but a steam piston engine requires a lot less, and I had checked this with people in the UK who still build small steam engines.
Ok, so this evening I’m into Google, to see if anybody has taken up solar powered steam driven piston engines engines to make electricity. And I’ve found a crude12 Kilowatt Unit , doing just that, and other tests going on along the same lines.
So nobody locally, took on my idea. What a shame. Guess we’ll wait till we have to start importing such things.
@Colin,
Thanks, saw it in days bookstore a couple of weeks ago, almost bought. Really busy right now, will buy and read, thanks.
@Miller ‘We need to prepare for the tsunami.’
Fully true economcially, but also unfortunately the rain events of the last year have me wondering if indeed we may be heading for another ‘great flood’.
Thailand is under water, rain is devastating many places, what is going on? In my memory 2011 is one of our greatest rain years, not sure of figures actually, just anecdotal.
Will 2012 be the year of the great flood?
Rumple,
I’ll look forward to your take on Eaarth. Wonder how many people will read it, or if a book like that can cause a jolt in new thinking, or do we have to actually wait until we are, all around the earth, in deep sh….
Liposuction fat, could save Mankind !
When you think about it, Liposuction, could be used to reduce the weight of islanders who love their bellies more than their health. We seem to have a plethora of those people around, in government benches and elsewhere.
Of course, the over- weight could be paid for the fat that is extracted. And that fat could fire the steam boilers used to drive the turbines for the generation of electricity.???
But why stop at Liposuction ? We could take it a step further , if you didn’t think the ‘Chum Machine’ was worth while. We could melt down our dead into fat, and use that too, for the generation of electricity.
Wonder how much fat you get out of a 280 pound overweight
body ? Two such, could probably give you a barrel of oil. You’d be lucky to extract a couple pint from me.
The subject is gruesome, I suppose you think ? Well so it might be! But in this fast- coming future ( if we humans are to survive) it will come to using our fat and earthly remains, for much more than that.
Liposuction anybody ? Paid blood donations. What’s the difference ?
Two such, could probably give you a barrel of oil. You’d be lucky to extract a couple pint from me.
Cheer up Colin, we might not get much oil from you, but you could still provide some useful fertilizer for a fruit tree, or if you are more into the ornamental, maybe you would prefer to push up a flamboyant or frangipani.from the grave.
Dying to be Green
Here Here, and Here again!
I still think my ‘Barbados Chum Machine‘ is the best way to go. We get pelt out as Chum, and feed the oceans our protein. Why dust to dust, when the oceans are being drained by us of produce?
‘GIVE BACK TO THE OCEANS ‘, t’would be far sensible, and make far better and faster use of us Bring out the Chum Machine !
Dying to be Green, by Bianca Nogrady.
The script by Nogrady, does not offer anything new. It still places the human body to waste. We live all our lives taking sustenance from nature, and then get buried or burned, and turn to dust, and some gas escapes probably.
So we have virtually given nothing back to nature, and, taken space in a grave yard, or consumed a quantity of energy, to go up in smoke.
The North American Blackfeet Indians, and other tribal peoples across the world, give their bodies back to living nature, the wild animals mostly, that they have lived on. The ‘Barbados Chum machine’ does this in a spectacular way, and we quickly re-enter the food chain, which is how everything else ( except ourselves ) does, with the remains of just about everything we eat.
The “Chum Machine’ could easily be made purely mechanical, requiring no form of energy to drive it except a water driven piston. Even the water could be re-used.
The ‘Chum Machine’ is sort of a joke, really, but going back to hand-driven kitchen utensils, would be considered a joke these days too. But never mind! Electrical energy is fast becoming a premium, and the premium on death with its expensive coffins and funerals, is fast becoming more than many can afford. And what good do funeral fires, coffins and and funerals, repay to nature ? Nothing, Nothing, Nothing. !
President Obama’s Speech to the Australian parliament.
I know this speech I have just heard, is the best I have ever heard by anybody. I hope everybody has a chance to hear this speech, and listens to it carefully. It is a speech about Freedom and Democracy, and why the most successful Nations on Earth, follow such principles. In these uncertain times, let us never forget !!!
Regarding the uphill struggle to get some type of Freedom of Information Act passed in Barbados, the following article might provide some insight as to why Bajan politicians don’t really have any enthusiasm at all to see this come to fruition. Seems Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for FOI type laws has diminished considerably since he got a freedom of information law passed in the UK in 2005,
Blair Regrets Passing Freedom of Information Law
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) — Poised on the brink of power, Tony Blair made an impassioned vow: Britain’s jealously-held culture of official secrecy would be dramatically swept away.
Fifteen years later, the country has a thriving right to information law, with almost 44,000 requests made last year, and recently announced it would accept demands for government data posted using Twitter. So former prime minister Blair must now reflect with pride on delivering his promise?
Not exactly.
“You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop,” Blair wrote of himself in his autobiography “A Journey” last year, recalling his adoption of the law in 2005. “There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.”
Britain’s experience gives a close-up view of how controversial freedom of information laws can be, at a time when they are spreading rapidly around the world.
Blair was once a leading advocate for the people’s right to know what their government is doing behind closed doors. But even before Britain’s law passed, Blair had hurriedly watered down his original plans and stalled the bill’s progress. He added exemptions that mean records related to the Royal Family, international relations, national security, defense, government policy and the courts are routinely refused.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/11/17/world/europe/AP-Access-Denied-Blairs-Regret.html?_r=1&hp
Hi Green Monkey,
About FOI, no doubt British politicians regret it just as they now regret having anti-corruption laws too.
That’s why the DLP government will never pass the legislation: they don’t want to stop feeding at the trough.
The DLP never had any intent to pass FOI and Integrity Legislation – it was merely a marketing tool for the last election.
holders of pension plans with Clico Insurance should class action sue the company and directors for those ponzi schemes which they devise to steal money from persons on those plans calling them investments when they know fully well that within the contract stated that they are pensions to be returned after ten years and now to hear the Judicial Manager telling them they can’t get their money back well he shouldn’t get his either let the court decide cause they are entitle to get their money back as stated in their contract. so the JM wouldn’t be able to sell the company neither with them getting their money as well.the directors inclusive of leroy would have to bring back the bonuses he get
N.I.S. funds coming under government abduction ???
What happens when a government starts consuming the funds of the N.I.S in the attempt to save failing government adventures ? Reminds one of a Government who decided to consume the safety net -bad- weather funds belonging to the sugar plantations, a stretch of years ago.
The major difference this time, is that the N.I.S fund is the safety net for the aged, the sick, and people out of work, and to suggest that a government would ,…… I don’t want to deface an Island government system I have held in deep respect, and touted as one of the best across the world, so I won’t finish this sentence for the moment, except to say there must be thousands of people worried, and wondering, about Barbadian political morals,… and sovereignty.
If no private investors can be found with confidence enough in a project to put money into its development, I think it is scandalous that the National Insurance Board should even think of putting at risk funds on which we Barbadians and residents are counting on for our current or future pensions and other benefits. We are compulsorily contributing every pay day to these funds, and every current NIS pensioner and every worker hoping for a NIS pension or other benefit, should be aware that our entitlement is possibly, or maybe probably, would be put at risk by investment of these funds in a scheme in which no knowledgeable private investor is willing to invest. If it is not illegal for NIS funds to be so invested, it should be!
Please! All present NIS pensioners, and all hopeful future pensioners and and other recipients of NIS benefits, please let your parliamentary representative, yours family and friends, and everyone with whom you connect, know how strongly you are opposed to such investment of the NIS funds.
Rhubarb,
Well written, and hard to the point. I wonder if the people of Barbados fully appreciate what a government draw down on N.I.S. funds is liable to mean. What has the government got to offer the N.I.S as collateral when difficult times come, a serious hurricane, for instance ????
A government has no right attempting to behave like a business with funds that have been contributed mainly by the public as an insurance against sickness, age, and hard times. Such a fund abduction by government is no better than an atrocity, and the public would be fools to allow it to happen, the possibility of the fund ever being repaid, being just about zero. (Of course, maybe the government could sell of a sizable chunk of the hotels in trouble, to the Chinese ??? That’s the way to go, Isn’t it ? )
HARLECON WEBSITE OWNER PADARAIG O’HALLORAN IN MORE TROUBLE AND OWES THE BARBADOS GOVERNMENT MILLIONS:
Harlecon founder, ICE Group and Cellate Caribbean owner Padraig O’Halloran is again making international press having stolen patents and trademarks for construction techniques.
Readers will recall that O’Halloran fled Barbados some 18 months ago following Harlequin Hotels and Resorts taking him to court over misappropriation and Fraud allegations. Since the court case began many former employees have testified of O’Halloran’s guilt and now as that trial date approaches O’Halloran finds himself in yet more hot water.
O’Halloran fled Barbados owing well over $1,000,0000 Barbados Dollars in tax and PAYE to the government as well as some further $500,000 to dozens of local and Caribbean businesses and a number of international accounts unpaid in Barbados such as Virgin Atlantic.
Recent months have seen him make a litany of violent and racist threats against former employees who have whistle blown his operation. Despite having fled Barbados the Irish conman continues to cause pain to Bajans and genuine international investment. He recently admitted to being the founder of the Harlecon website launched against Harlequin Hotels and Resorts in an effort to upset their business in the lead up to trial in Barbados. Harlequin are suing him for Fraud and it is understood are also helping and representing local businesses.
Bajan’s will wait to see if O’Halloran will return to the island but it is unlikely given arrest warrants out for him and huge monies he owes.
Here is to President Obama, for another term.
Following as closely as we can on what is the status of those doing their best to unseat President Obama, we’re convinced the President needs another term. The rest are jokers.
Bayes’s theorem of Inverse Probabilities.
I’d not be surprised an editor would blank a script with such a heading as above. Yet in an attempt to continue encourage all our youth, in the pursuit of science, and mathematics, I can’t but press blindly ahead.
Thomas Bayes 1701-1761 was a clergyman from Tunbridge Wells in Kent. He was, as Bill Bryson writes in his newest book ‘At Home’ , a shy and hopeless preacher, but he was a singularly gifted mathematician.
The Rev Thomas Bayes somehow tripped upon an equation. And as has been often been the case with equations, he did not know what it could be used for.
Thankfully, Rev Bayes wrote it carefully down, but then he shelved it. That is right ! Rev Bayes shelved it away, and died two years later.
Two years after his death, a friend sent the equation to the Royal Society in London. It is a short equation. About 30 key strokes on a laptop could write it. The equation was published in the Royal Society’s ‘Philosophical Transactions’. But there were not any computers around in those days, to make head or tail of it.
‘ Today that equation is used in modelling climate change, predicting the behaviour of stock markets, fixing radiocarbon dates, interpretation of cosmological events, and much else where the interpretation of probabilities is an issue.’
As I have said before in previous letters, this phenomena of a scientist/mathematician coming up with an equation that does not seem to fit anywhere, until a great many years have sailed by , never fails to bring up goose pimples. I don’t know how many times now, reading on science I have come across this extraordinary facet of long -delayed equation recognition.
I’m going to repeat my enthral of the other book by Bill Bryson. ‘ A Short History of Nearly Everything’.
If we are definitely serious about getting our young people interested in science, then the above book should be in every single classroom, and should have been read by every politician too, since it deals interestingly, and excitingly, in all the major knishes of science.
Reading such a book, would draw most of us out of the morose and blindness we swim around in concerning the world and the modern age in which we live.
Too many of us are being hoodwinked by sellers of modern technology dealing with climate change and alternative energy (for example) , technologies most of us know extremely little about.
@Colin Beadon,
Bill Moyers the distinguished PBS journalist and commentator recently said the following in a public speech:
How come it is mostly Colin Beadon and Green Monkey in the open discussion? Maybe it should be called the Beadon and Monkey chronicles?
“It’s a fraud problem, not a business cycle problem.” William Black a US federal fraud investigator during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s in which 1000 bankers were taken to court, convicted and jailed talks about the origins of today’s economic “downturn in the business cycle” and how, in contrast to the 1980s, this time the crooks are allowed to walk.
Embedded video at link:
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/banking-malfeasance/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-knowabout-the-meltdown-but-thebullshit-news-media-will-never-tell-you.html
As I’ve said often before. Most of us are caught between big business and politics; we’re the new slaves, consumers of macafushet and taxation.
As for Analyzer. What wrong wid he/she ? He han’ break? He min’ devoid of joining worthwhile comment ? Nobody stopping him/her, joining our tirades. Hey, Green Monk, you stoppin’ anybody ?
(macafushet, probably spelled wrongly) it means in Trinidad,
” Leftovers ” .
@CB: yes it is spelled wrong, should be “macafuchette”
I was just making an observation. I don’t have any opinion on your recent postings, it’s all a bit over my head. You two may just be a little too intellectual for the average BFP blogger. So carry on happily. Maybe someone is reading the stuff other than you two.
Thanks Rastaman,
I’d forgotten I had the book ‘ Cote ce Cote la ‘ The Trinidad and Tobago dictionary. I found maca fushette in that this afternoon. They have it spelled as two words. Actually, not many Trini know the word, you’ll find.
Thanks anyhow.
Analyzer. The Bajan blogger, is much more astute than you allow. You tread on thin ice/ banana peel. Thank you so much for allowing us to continue
@ Colin Beadon
You seem to be taking my comments negatively, like I said I was just making an observation and kind of joking that it is mostly you two on the ‘open discussion’. You don’t need my permission to continue. I’m happy that technology allows for this phenominal way of communicating. Could you enlighten me on what ‘maca fushette means? Maybe I can learn something today from a well informed person such as yourself and I say that as a compliment, I am not being sarcastic.
Analyzer,
Yes, I was taking your comments a little negative, and I’m happy you have destroyed my mythic inclination. I too, would be most sad to find myself without these ultra modern modes of (almost as fast as light) communications.
Maca Fushette, is an old Trini expression handed down to me by an ex-Trini mother in law, sadly now passed away. ‘ Colin, we only have maca fushette today nah ‘ .
In other words, she’s letting me know the larder only has yesterday’s ‘leftovers’ in it.
Eh Eh, but what ‘leftovers’ they were ! Since she was a great cook, who would ever have minded maca fushette, or not ?
Green Monk,
I really like the way Bill Moyers writes. He explains exactly just how I feel . I first came across his work in the book by Joseph Campbell, when Moyers and Campbell are in discourse. ‘The Power Of Myth’ .
Anybody really interested in attempting to understand religions, and what they are all on about, should read that book. It is much more than a bible for me.
On the other hand, you might care to read the 34 odd books of
‘The Golden Bough’ . I’d get the one book ( concise) edition first, if I were you. Most of us would find that ‘quite enough’. ‘The Power of Myth’ is a much more easily readable way to go. The Bill Moyers — Joseph Campbell discourse, covers the field of Religions in one full and highly interesting sweep. But I like the way Bill Moyers pulls out straws the way he writes about most things, exposing each straw,… one by one.
That’s okay, everybody is a little uptight these days.
Thanks for the story about Maca Fushette!
Yes CB, I’ve read a few excerpts and passages from the Golden Bough over the years but never had a chance to read any more than that.
Here is another interesting little tit-bit of information and opinion I came across as I was surfing the web this morning.
Turns out the ‘Government Sachs’ conspiracy theorists were right all along,/b>
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
In a shocking article published in Reuters, Felix Salmon confirmed what the so-called conspiracy theorists have said all along: former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Hank Paulson was giving insider tips to his cronies at Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street titans which directly benefited them.
The article is entitled, “Hank Paulson’s inside jobs,” emphasizing the fact that this wasn’t some one-off lapse of ethics on Paulson’s part, but instead a disturbingly regular practice.
For those who are unaware, Paulson was the CEO and chairman at Goldman Sachs from 1999-2006 and he clearly provided them with actionable information that epitomizes the plague upon our economy, and the greater global economic system, that is crony capitalism.
snip
Salmon writes, “Paulson was giving inside tips to Wall Street in general, and to Goldman types in particular: exactly the kind of behavior that ‘Government Sachs’ conspiracy theorists have been speculating about for years. Turns out, they were right.”
Now if only the derisive label of “conspiracy theorist” would be lifted from these issues when it is far from a conspiracy theory and is indeed a conspiracy fact.
I won’t be holding my breath, because so long as governments criminally conspire with multinational corporations and others, the label of conspiracy will be denigrated in order to keep people from discussing and investigating these facts and issues.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/turns-out-government-sachs-conspiracy.html
In protest of the incarceration of 10 Barbadian fishermen by theTrinidadian Goverment. I am boycotting , ALL Trinidadian products and services. I have already dropped an insurance policy with one of their insurance companies.I REFUSE TO PURCHASE ANY FOOD ITEMS MADE IN TRINIDAD.I WILL NOT HAVE AN ACCOUNT AT ANY TRINIDADIAN OWNED OR PARIALLY OWNED BANK.
Well done ,Donna Goodman. Unfortunately it will not make any difference.
Oh God Donna. No Carib Beer!!! Never mind. I much prefer the new Banks ‘Strong’, over all beers. I jus’ hope they ain’t goin’ stop mekin’ it.
sometimes sending a message is just as good as making a difference. too often we tend to shy away from “various causes” because we first look at the outcome forgetting it only takes a ripple to make a wave.
Donna,
But the Caribbean is not common ground for all its people. It probably never will be, although it was tried, with painful outcome. Suppose Trinidad rigs came up into our waters and started to drill, taking the oil and gas they found within our recognized boundaries ? What then ?
Trinidad has had to fight for its fishing grounds. I have seen , early morning from the top decks of offshore drilling rigs in the gulf of Paria, fifty or more fishing trawlers from Venezuela, Japan, and elsewhere, fishing in Trinidadian territorial waters. Would we in Barbados, not scream holy murder if that were happening here offshore, in our waters ? I should hope so.
Fish are getting scarce. They don’t know anything about boundaries.
Fishermen will go where the fish are, and get locked up sometimes, and lose their boats and equipment, and sometimes get shot, hijacked, and at times, never seen again. There are some who run drugs too, which does not help the equations of a fisherman’s life.
Nothing in politics is logical Words like rationale . Fair and reasonable are not found in the politican rule book these words only lend themselves at the right time during a speech or a campaign. Politicians only relate to such words as “Greed and selfinterest.
AC ,
Yes, most! But are we lost ? Are they all like that, the Politicians ?
I’ve been looking at the huge difference in the cost of flights to Trinidad from Barbados now that Red Jet has arrived. It would seem Island governments owe island people some explanation, compensation, for years of paying much higher flying costs than we should have paid? How come the cost of flights could been forced down almost half, because of competition ?
Island politicians, and others, forever spouting ‘Integration. Integration!!! ‘ Yet they themselves are the ones who drop the mill stones around our necks against it.
There are some of us who understand why this is, and hope others will fathom it too. We live in a world of conspiracy and predatory pricing, of which those who we voted in, are supposed to be our guardians against.
Instead, our voted-in- guardians, have helped enslave us.
another word that lends itself and justifiably so to the politician is “Predator and gouging. Those words defines clearly how the politician can so easily access the average mindset of the public into buying into and believing what the politician say at a very high price .sounds familiar but true. Integrity another buzz word used and abuse by the politician during election time afterward then discarded and left to toss and turn in the wind for all to chew on.
AC,
Besides which, I failed to add, we live in a world of much higher oil prices, and yet flight costs to Trinidad and other islands, have radically dropped. Will somebody kindly ask all our island politicians, from Trinidad, and north up the chain, why this is so ?
One would assume the political establishment, and their kin, has been flying at the expense of the citizen, which possibly counts for why island aircraft seats have always flown full. There are probably other dark reasons we’ll never hear about too. Nor will we see inter- Island Integration, which in view of such political behavior, does not point to a good idea at all.
colin thatopens door to “accountabilty” a door which no politician dare to open. As in this case silence is truly golden for them.
AC,
When you come to think of it, having just watched a Youtube of the history of the Barbados railway, which showed the docks, plugged with white-top- masted schooners, before much air travel came along, you begin to appreciate, while still under Colonialism, there was actually a lot more inter-island integration. I remember that, and island docks athrow with inter island life.
When each island become its own political potentate, and extensive airports and air travel began to spell the doom of the beautiful and lovely interchange of sail and rigging, fresh produce and passengers from the other islands, ….. Integration got pulled up short. That was much the end of the freedom that once had been. Customs and Excise, and political bartering and disagreements, and ‘ all of we is not any more one ‘, or longer under or against the flags of Colonialism, which is done ! Done ! Done !
So a lot more could be said, for or against . Who should we blame? We pick our own politicians , these days. So whose fault the injustice now ?
colin”We pick our own politician” Do we or are we just a bunch of brainwash nit wits,How is it possible that we keep making the same mistake over and over again
AC,
At Last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the mountain ‘Is there Any Hope ? ‘ .
To which an answer peeled from that far land,
But in a voice no man could understand,
And on the glimmering summit, afar withdrawn,
God made himself the awful rose of dawn.
Like us, Tennyson was disturbed by things that could not be explained.
The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
I’ve written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud our vision on the details within this new information.
Just when I thought the banksters couldn’t possibly shock me anymore… they did.
We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the specifics, a limited one-time Federal Reserve view, of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” by a small group of unelected bankers. This data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 TRILLION in taxpayer money – $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in “other financial arrangements.”
Wait, what? Did you say $12.3 TRILLION tax dollars were thrown around in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the details?
snip
Talk about the ransacking and burning of Rome! Sayonara American middle class…
If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.
Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that God is dead.
More at:
http://pubrecord.org/nation/8622/pentagon-papers-wall-street/?mid=5354
Here’s one for Colin Beadon:
Colin I gather you want your dead body to go to feed the fishes via your patent pending chum machine. How would it grab you if instead it was used to allow couch potatoes to enjoy Dancing With the Stars or The Price is Right in a more environmentally friendly way?
Oh yeah and there might be some lawyers waiting on the sidelines to reduce the temp.as in looking out for the rights of the deceased.
No, Monk, AC, No ! No! No!
I insist on feeding the fishes. There is no pollution in that. And everybody, and everything that eats fish, gets to partake in some way at some date. Somebody said somewhere, we are all part of Shakespeare, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King, King Tut, and Nebuchadnezzar, Genghis Khan, and everybody else you can think of who has died. The only difference is that those buried deep in earth, or encased in deep tombs, take much longer to become part of us who are still living. Burning a body, is just about the worst way of wasting the protein all living systems , humans included, need.
I vote down burning a human body implacably! It is an atrocious way to rob the Earth of what we owe her back. It consumes energy and pollutes. Using solar energy to power television, is clean and non polluting in every way. Besides, all us sinners shall probably find all the fire we need, later on, if the Pope is correct, the Anglican Bishops, the Pentecostals, those who swear by Allah, etc.
My computer is working again. So I’ll thank God that I don’t get burned by lightening.
Today, Wednesday Dec 7th, is the anniversary of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which lead to the US formally entering into a full combat role in WWII on the side of the Allied forces.
A former Canadian secret agent from back in the World War II days, Clifton Stewart, during an interview with the CBC (Canadian CBC, not the Bajan CBC) discussed his war time work in intelligence and at one point informed the interviewer that the US had 8 days advance notice of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but intentionally did not respond to the warning so that the attack could proceed unimpeded. It was expected, and apparently rightly so, that the resulting deaths of US servicemen (approx 2400 US servicemen and civilians died in the attack) and hurt American pride that they had let themselves be “blindsided” by the Japanese forces would stir up pro-war fervor in the population and drive Americans (who were largely pacifist in regards to the ongoing world war) into supporting FDR’s efforts to get the US fully involved in the war against the Axis powers (i.e. Germany, Italy, Japan)..
Here’s a link to an audio file of the interview:
http://www.cbc.ca/maritimemagazine/2011/05/17/a-man-most-ordinary-the-story-of-clifton-stewart/
Start listening at around the 20 minute mark for Stewart’s remarks about the Pearl Harbor attack.
I wonder if we will find out about other episodes in history where advanced notice of an attack on the USA that could have been prevented was ignored for political and/or propaganda purposes.
Green Monk,
I suppose it could be said that Joan of Ark knew she would be burned at the stake by the Catholic inquisition, and lived her life wanting to become a martyr. I wonder if the Japanese knew what the Americans were doing in California at Los Alamos. The Japanese in America were all rounded up and placed in a huge prison camp when their country went to war. They must have had radios, even concealed ones. They must have known something of the development of the A Bomb, but the war ran its course for them, back on their island home. Despite their surprise attack on Peal Harbor, they didn’t do very well in the end, did they ? It is dangerous to disturb sleeping giants. Maybe fate drives mankind in the end, anyway. He does not, perhaps, really have free will or options, like he thinks he does.
What option does Barbados have, not to build the island into another Miami ? Only a real energy crunch, or world war, would stop that from happening.
What option does Barbados have, not to build the island into another Miami ? Only a real energy crunch, or world war, would stop that from happening.
Well hold onto your hat then:
What Peak Oil Looks Like
by John Michael Greer
There are times when the unraveling of a civilization stands out in sharp relief, but more often that process makes itself seen only in the sort of scattered facts and figures that take a sharp eye to notice and assemble into a meaningful picture. How often, I wonder, did the prefects of imperial Rome look up from the daily business of mustering legions and collecting tribute to notice the crumbling of the foundations on which their whole society rested?
Nowadays, certainly, that broader vision is hard to find. It’s symptomatic that in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a fair number of emails insisting that the peak oil theory—of course it’s not a theory at all; it’s a hard fact that the extraction of a finite oil supply in the ground will sooner or later reach a peak and begin to decline—has been rendered obsolete by the latest flurry of enthusiastic claims about shale oil and the like. Enthusiastic claims about the latest hot new oil prospect are hardly new, and indeed they’ve been central to cornucopian rhetoric since M. King Hubbert’s time. A decade ago, it was the Caspian Sea oilfields that were being invoked as supposedly conclusive evidence that a peak in global conventional petroleum production wouldn’t arrive in our lifetimes. Compare the grand claims made for the Caspian fields back then, and the trickle of production that actually resulted from those fields, and you get a useful reality check on the equally sweeping claims now being made for the Bakken shale, but that’s not a comparison many people want to make just now.
snip
The point that has to be grasped just now, it seems to me, is that this is what peak oil looks like. Get past the fantasies of sudden collapse on the one hand, and the fantasies of limitless progress on the other, and what you get is what we’re getting—a long ragged slope of rising energy prices, economic contraction, and political failure, punctuated with a crisis here, a local or regional catastrophe there, a war somewhere else—all against a backdrop of disintegrating infrastructure, declining living standards, decreasing access to health care and similar services, and the like, which of course has been happening here in the United States for some years already. A detached observer with an Olympian view of the country would be able to watch things unravel, as such an observer could have done up to now, but none of us have been or will be detached observers; at each point on the downward trajectory, those of us who still have jobs will be struggling to hang onto them, those who have lost their jobs will be struggling to stay fed and clothed and housed, and those crises and catastrophes and wars, not to mention the human cost of the broader background of decline, will throw enough smoke in the air to make a clear view of the situation uncommonly difficult to obtain.
Meanwhile those who do have the opportunity to get something approaching a clear view of the situation will by and large have every reason not to say a word about what they see. Politicians and the talking heads of the media will have nothing to gain from admitting the reality and pace of our national decline, and there will be a certain wry amusement to be had in watching them scramble for reasons to insist that things are actually getting better and a little patience or a change of government will bring good times back again. There will doubtless be plenty of of the sort of overt statistical dishonesty that insists, for example, that people who no longer get unemployment benefits are no longer unemployed—that’s been standard practice in the United States for decades now, you know. It’s standard for governments that can no longer shape the course of events to fixate on appearances, and try to prop up the imagery of the power and prosperity they once had, long after the substance has slipped away.
More at:
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-12-08/what-peak-oil-looks
The Real History of ‘Corporate Personhood’: Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You
The real history of today’s excessive corporate power starts with a tobacco lawyer appointed to the Supreme Court.
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America.
Lewis Powell, like the Citizens United dissenter Justice John Paul Stevens, was a decorated World War II veteran who returned to his hometown to build a most respected corporate law practice. By all accounts, Powell was a gentleman — reserved, polite, and gracious — and a distinguished lawyer and public servant. Commentators and law professors cite Powell’s “qualities of temperament and character” and his “modest” and “restrained” approach to judging. At his funeral in 1998, Sandra Day O’Connor, who had joined the Supreme Court in 1987, said, “For those who seek a model of human kindness, decency, exemplary behavior, and integrity, there will never be a better man.” Even the rare critic will cite Lewis Powell’s decency and kindness.
Much about these accounts must be true, but none tells the whole story of Lewis Powell. All of them, and even the principal Powell biography, omit the details of how he used his gifts to advance a radical corporate agenda. It is impossible to square this corporatist part of Powell’s life and legacy with any conclusion of “modest” or “restrained” judging.
snip
Powell’s call for a corporate rights campaign should not be misunderstood as a “conservative” or “moderate” reaction to the excesses of “liberals” or “big government.” Rather, to understand the perspective of Powell and his allies is to understand the difference between a conservative and a corporatist.
snip
Once on the Court, these two Nixon appointees followed very different paths. Justice Powell would go on to write the Court’s unprecedented decisions creating a new concept of “corporate speech” in the First Amendment. Using this new theory, the Court struck down law after law in which the states and Congress sought to balance corporate power with the public interest. With increasing assertiveness by the Supreme Court even after Powell retired in 1987, the new corporate rights theory has invalidated laws addressing the environment, tobacco and public health, food and drugs, financial regulation, and more.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153345/the_real_history_of_%27corporate_personhood%27%3A_meet_the_man_to_blame_for_corporations_having_more_rights_than_you?page=1
Do I have to be called Anonymous or 56 ???? on my above scripts.
Alternative power.
High winds can turn wind generators into bonfires, if they are not lowered or feathered. In my own experience between wind chargers and solar panels, I have proved the following:
Over all, solar panels are so much longer lasting and give you energy every day, though cloud cover will take its toll on full value production.
Wind chargers need servicing to their bearings, blades and stays. In hurricane or high wind conditions, the blades should be removed, or the whole tower lowered. There are always times in the year when the wind fails utterly, and so you get no charge of any sort. This can be the case for a month or more, night and day, no wind.
The wind charger when there is steady wind, will make up for much loss, but over all, the solar panel takes takes the cake. They will far outlast a wind charger, without anything more than cleaning the glass and making sure it is secure where it is mounted, and that the electrical connections are in good condition against water entry.
This is my personal 25 year experience.
If my full name is to be cut from Barbados Free Press, then I won’t write anything more. Perhaps that is the intention, and I’m sorry to have bored people with my scripts.
Colin L Beadon.
Hi Colin,
We didn’t do a thing to your name. Did you switch computers or use a new browser or something? (going from Explorer to Firefox does funny things for me). We don’t have any control of that but sometimes if you commented on another wordpress site the software remembers what name you last commented under and it uses that name. Something to do with cookies or cache or something so says Clive. He’s not around right now but I’ll ask him to comment. I’ll change ‘thywillbeadon’ to Colin L. Beadon as you normally use, but try resetting your browser.
Aha! I see that your “gravatar” profile is under “thywillbeadon” and not Colin, so that’s something else to think about.
That is the sum of my knowledge. Clive will know more.
Marcus
Hi Anonymous (or 56)
We ask that people choose a name for themselves, and if they don’t we assign a number so folks can know who said what. Otherwise readers can’t tell if three or four anonymous comments are by one person or many. So if you don’t want us to assign a number, please make up a name (even if just for the day) and use that.
Thanks!
Marcus
Colin Leslie Beadon.
8th Dec 2011.
Green Monk,
I suppose it could be said that Joan of Ark knew she would be burned at the stake by the Catholic inquisition, and lived her life wanting to become a martyr. I wonder if the Japanese knew what the Americans were doing in California at Los Alamos. The Japanese in America were all rounded up and placed in a huge prison camp when their country went to war. They must have had radios, even concealed ones. They must have known something of the development of the A Bomb, but the war ran its course for them, back on their island home. Despite their surprise attack on Peal Harbor, they didn’t do very well in the end, did they ? It is dangerous to disturb sleeping giants. Maybe fate drives mankind in the end, anyway. He does not, perhaps, really have free will or options, like he thinks he does.
What option does Barbados have, not to build the island into another Miami ? Only a real energy crunch, or world war, would stop that from happening.
ISLAM – A FAKE AND DESTRUCTIVE RELIGION!!
YES, how true!
The conclusion: The Arabs are not happy!!!
· They are not happy in Gaza .
· They are not happy in the West Bank .
· They are not happy in Jerusalem .
· They are not happy in Israel . (There is no equality)
· They are not happy in Egypt .
· They are not happy in Libya .
· They are not happy in Algeria .
· They are not happy in Tunis .
· They are not happy in Morocco .
· They are not happy in Yemen .
· They are not happy in Iraq .
· They are not happy in Afghanistan .
· They are not happy in Syria .
· They are not happy in Lebanon .
· They are not happy in Sudan .
· They are not happy in Jordan .
· They are not happy in Iran .
Where are the Arabs happy?
They are happy in England.
They are happy in France.
They are happy in Italy.
They are happy in Germany.
They are happy in Sweden.
They are happy in Holland.
They are happy in Denmark.
They are happy in Belgium.
They are happy in Norway.
They are happy in the U.S.
They are happy in Canada.
They are happy in Romania.
They are happy in Hungary.
They are happy in Australia.
They are happy in New Zealand.
They are happy in any other country in the world that
is not under a Muslim rule.
And whom do they blame?
· Not Islam.
· Not their leadership.
· Not themselves.
But the same countries in which they are happy to live.
This is so true… Democracy is really good for them:
In a democracy they can live comfortably,
Enjoy the high quality of life
which they did not build nor work for,
They don’t have to be productive and earn a living,
They can be wild, and break the law,
Exploit the social services,
Wear Burkas and make a mockery of our Police and Courts
And Generally bite the hand that feeds them.
My question is why do they always try to bring their failed system with them, why do they want to turn our Country into the country they left for a better life….?
While our various Governments are fixated on pandering to them… Why??
WATCH THEM CAREFULLY AS THEY GROW BIG TIME IN BARBADOS. THEY ARE EXPANDING VERY DISCREETLY, YET THEY ARE BREEDING EXPONENTIALLY. SOONER OR LATER THEY WILL BE DEMANDING ALL SORTS OF THINGS! WATCH THEM CLOSELY I SAY!!
The Muslims will screw themselves up in the end. Their kind of laws never really got them anywhere. They are not very interesting or inventive.
I’m really sorry for their women and for those of the men who want to shrug off the old ways.
Much more interesting is Voyager 1, She’s now 18 billion km from Earth. Another billion and she’ll be out of the solar system and into deep space. Both of them voyager 1 and 2 are 34 years old now, and still working well. It takes a control message 13.5 hours to reach them, traveling at the speed of light. Their engineering is so beyond anything we can imagine. Pity the Chinese can’t sell us products that last something like that, instead of two years, or less, if you are lucky. I’m tired working on Chinese crap products.
@CB: And you do not believe there is a God????
rastaman,
Belief is one thing. There is something way beyond mere belief, as there should be in all of us at some dawning period in our lives.
There is a certainty, based on what your can find by using your eyes, ears, and other senses, by thinking meditatively, by reading everything you could ever find on religions, science, by having been in many places and sat by many lakes and rivers, and looked out on the views from many mountains, and seas, and looked deep into the Universe as often as you can, nightly preferable, so you never forgets its wonder. And, and, and,…it is a long never ending list, and I hope it answers you question.
Quantum physics and the Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson has an interesting short history. About a page long, which is probably enough for most of us to swallow. Dial up on Google,
” A short history of the Higgs Boson” .
An interesting easily readable book on the theory that changed the world was written 2002, by Dan Falk. ” Universe ON A T- Shirt “. The Higgs Boson comes from the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, derived by him in the mid 1960’s His brilliance looks like, if you are following developments, just about set fruit.
Are You Eating, Drinking and Breathing Monsanto’s New Agent Orange?
In a groundbreaking study published in the Annals of Bioanalytical Chemistry last month, researchers found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide “Roundup,” is flowing freely into the groundwater in areas where it is being applied.
The researchers found that 41% of the 140 groundwater samples taken from Catalonia Spain, had levels beyond the limit of quantification – indicating that, despite manufacturer’s claims, it does not break down rapidly in the environment, and is accumulating there in concerning quantities.
snip
This groundwater contamination study adds to another highly concerning finding from March, published in the journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, where researchers found the chemical in 60-100% of all air and rain samples tested, indicating that glyphosate pollution and exposure is now omnipresent in the US. When simply breathing makes you susceptible to glyphosate exposure, we know we are dealing with a problem of unprecedented scale.
snip
Indeed, glyphosate is a powerful endocrine disrupter. Exceedingly small amounts are capable of mimicking and/or disrupting hormonal pathways, cell receptor sites and signaling. Research culled from The National Library of Medicine links it to 17 adverse pharmacological actions, including carcinogenicity, genotoxicity, neurotoxicty, hepatoxicity, and nephrotoxicity.
But what is most disturbing, and which may make its comparison to Agent Orange all the more appropriate, is its teratrogenicity, i.e. ability to cause fetal malformations.
As recently as 2004, glyphosate was revealed to exhibit endocrine-disruptive and embryotoxic effects, indicating that it may contribute to birth defects and abnormal fetal development.
Now that glyphosate has been found in the majority of air and rain samples tested in the US, and is now likely contaminating our wells, springs and aquifers, exposure is not only likely, its inevitable — the difference being only a matter of degree.
More at:
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/are-you-eating-drinking-breathing.html
Green Monk,
Very horrifying, glyphosate. Somehow it all adds up to over population, and what Man tries to do to produce more food, in this case using weed killers that are slowly damaging the whole ecosystem. So if it is glyphosate killing us off, wars, global warming that we are steadily inducing, chocking on carbon monoxide fumes, starvation caused by inflation, recession, some new dreadful emerging disease, running out of our prime energy (oil); one way or another nature will induce a way to look after herself, against Man’s zooming, ever demanding, population growth. The Law of Cause( Man ), and the Effect ( what will follow).
“Then to the rolling Heav’n itself I cried,
Asking, “What Lamp had destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark ? ”
And—- “A blind Understanding! ”
Heav’n replied.
Omar Khayyam.
the March Towards Pre-Emptive Nuclear War
By William Engdahl
Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it’s not at all about Iran and Israel. It’s about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).
On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: “The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense,” he announced on Russian television. “One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad.” Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less.
snip
What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950’s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman’s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war.
The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being “defensive” as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow.
snip
During the Cold War, the ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’ Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’
Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, “the missing link to a First Strike.”
snip
That’s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees – from the United States – that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on.
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/william-engdahl/2011/12/02/the-march-towards-pre-emptive-nuclear-war
Wondering ???
I’ve been wondering if the Earth is not too full of University graduates, and too lacking in people who want to really work in such a way that they actually contribute to the things that are needed to sustain life on earth. Most of us just use up energy, frivolously, no contribution made. We should ask ourselves this question. C.L.B.
WORK well that ‘s a word which has lost it’s true meaning. For some just breathing is work, With today’s technology people” perform Duties” no such thing as WORK, That word went out ages ago when technology put the remote control in our hands, But the funny part is that people are more tired. Tired of guess what “WORK:
Green Monkey
“… Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on…”
The Amerindian peoples of North America are fully aware of this strategy. Iraqi, Libyan, Panamanian, Chinese, Vietnamese and a good few other governments through out recent history have been on the receiving end of this strategy. It is important that peoples of the world recognize who the real International terrorists are. Obama three days ago said that he did not fully appreciate the power of the lobby in the Washington before he was made President and said that it would take more than one term, more than one Presidency to change the mindset. Wow, this may very well become the excuse hence forward to continue voting for Presidents, but the admission, weather excuse or not, is condemning.
Russia October 1962.
We tend to forget what Russia, in Cuba, was up to in 1962. This was the closest the world came to atomic war. I don’t think we can blame American concern now, after a much more recent 9/11.
Atomic war, of any kind, would cause mass extinction, and a complete breakdown of all world business and order.. Those that did not die because of it, might well wish they had. Iran, does not seem to be worried about that, which is what makes them so dangerous. But hopefully, all other atomic- armed nations, have enough sense to fully appreciate this.
I think President Obama is our best hope against such a demise, and so I hope he does make another term, since I see nobody else on the American horizon that makes me feel he has Obama’s esteem.
Russia’s presence in Cuba was a RESPONSE to Americas presence in Europe and NATO. Russia then pursued and succeeded in negotiating a better arrangement with NATO and left the island. The information you heard was that the US did not back down and that Russia remains guilty of bringing the world to the brink of a Nuclear war. To be exposed to one side of a story is to be a victim. No one has to date proven that the events of 9-11 were as a result of outside agents. Surely you are understanding the magnitude of the problem … I think we are well past the stage of labeling and name calling now.
@BAFBFP and CB
Read the book by James Douglas “JFK and the Unspeakable:Why He Died and Why It Matters” for a good account of how Kennedy negotiated with a willing and cooperative Khrushchev behind the scenes and behind the backs of both their generals in order to avoid a nuclear war. Both men recognized neither country would be a winner in a nuclear exchange in spite of the delusional thoughts of their generals who were urging them both to loose the missiles at each other and were becoming increasing angry and impatient with them when they refused to follow that advice.
As a result of the negotiated settlement the USSR withdrew its missiles from Cuba while the USA removed missiles which they had previously placed in Turkey and pointed at the USSR and which the Soviet Union considered a provocation by the USA. For public consumption, Khrushchev allowed Kennedy to present the settlement as a case of, “We stared them down, and they blinked,” and no public mention was made that the Soviet Union got the USA to withdrew the missiles from Turkey as a condition of the deal going through to withdraw Russian missiles from Cuba.
Imagine if the Pentagon held the short end of the stick technologically speaking and were today to see Russia in the process of setting up high tech BMD systems, which they knew they did not have the technological prowess to match, in Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, Cuba and some pacific islands Does anyone really think the US political and military leadership would afford themselves the luxury of thinking, “I am sure Russian intentions are good, and we can afford to assume that down the road sometime they would never hit us a with a nuclear missile bombardment knowing they would remain relatively safe and immune to to our retaliatory strike behind their missile shield.” Fat chance.
As far as 9/11, can’t say too much about that here without running afoul of the BFP rules, but Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton the two co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission formed to investigate the attack and produce a report as to what actually transpired and what steps needed to be taken to prevent a re-occurrence are on record as saying of their own Commission that it was “set up to fail.”
From Wikipedia:
My bringing 9/11 into the discussion was just to remind us that it got the wind up the USA, and so they have sunk back into a much more defensive stance. Who can really blame them ?
I’d love to be able to fully trust Russia now, but I lived in the midst of a war in which they were partially involved, and then watched later, their arms race. . But yes, and yes again, yes, there is guilt on all sides. Mankind enjoys tying his own knots.
As for the long BBC rendition today of the world banking and economic problem, it amazes me that all those people involved are out of universities, where they obviously didn’t learn anything to do with good economics. How come so few people understood what was likely to happen ? To me, like in the oil drilling industry, it is like drilling a well with no precautions ( blowout preventors ), and never constantly checking for the first sign of gas donating the possibility of a ‘kick’ (blowout).
Economic blowout time.
Well now we are watching an economic blowout, at close quarters. What fun we shall all have ! We can expect hundreds of more committees leading nowhere, and many grand luncheons and supper parties, at taxpayers expense. Any coals, that those who have placed us in this mess might be dragged over, will be long dead and cold.
Here’s an Interesting article (see below) I came across recently touching upon some of the many references by authors and farmers in days of old when men were bold (and apparently hemp grew abundant across the land) to the useful nature of the hemp plant . I.e. before the hemp plant became another casualty of the war on drugs.
Interestingly enough in the USA, although as recently as WWII growing hemp as a commercial crop was encouraged, today even growing the non-hallucinogenic, low THC varieties of hemp is strictly verboten by the authorities (even thought it is permitted in Canada and Europe). The claim is that it would be too hard for police and law enforcement to distinguish between the legitimate, low THC varieties and the illegitimate high THC varieties (aka marijuana) which were being grown to give smokers a high. And apparently the feeling seems to be that allowing non-hallucinogenic hemp to be widely grown would just be the thin end of the wedge: Sure those hippie types might say for now they only want to grow the stuff to make long lasting fabrics, clothes, paper, food products, medicinal oils and a thousand other useful things, but we all know they really only want to get it accepted by the public so they can then start to grow it to get stoned.
The argument that it would be hard to distinguish hallucinogenic hemp grown for maximum THC content from low THC hemp varieties grown to produce non-hallucinogenic products is disputed by hemp plant proponents in the USA currently lobbying for changes in the law to allow US farmers the right to grow hemp as a commercial, non-drug crop. They point out that the way the low-THC variety (which can in no way produce a high) is cultivated and grown makes it easy to spot the difference between a field of hemp plants being grown to be harvested for non-hallucinogenic purposes and a field of the high THC varieties which are being grown to produce the smokeable marijuana that gives a high. Furthermore, they point out that the cross pollination between the low THC varieties and the high THC producing varieties would cause a significant lowering of the THC levels and the ability to produce a high in any marijuana plants that a grower attempted to illegitimately hide among a field of approved low THC varieties.
@CB
Colin, you wrote:
I’d love to be able to fully trust Russia now, but I lived in the midst of a war in which they were partially involved, and then watched later, their arms race. . But yes, and yes again, yes, there is guilt on all sides. Mankind enjoys tying his own knots.
What’s interesting about the James Douglass (note the name is spelt with a double “s”) book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters I mentioned above in a previous post is that the book details how Kennedy and Khrushchev after the Cuban missile crisis was resolved without going to war were so scared at how closely the two sides had come to an all out nuclear exchange that both knew would have left their two countries and much of the rest of the world little more than a radioactive wasteland began exchanging private letters outside the normal, official diplomatic channels of their respective governments in order to try to negotiate and end to the arms race and to take some meaningful steps towards a real nuclear disarmament. They were apparently making progress towards that end. Pope John XXIII was also involved in these secret diplomatic exchanges and acted as a go between in their negotiations. Kennedy also started taking steps to withdraw the US troops that were in Vietnam and initiated a dialog with Castro to bring US/Cuba relations back into a state of normalcy. These talks and negotiations were also going well and a rapprochement with Cuba appeared to be in the cards. It was at that point that Kennedy was assassinated and the steps that he had taken to ease tensions between the US and the USSR and to at least start on a meaningful attempt at nuclear disarmament were reversed by the incoming Johnson Administration.
Change of subject…
Headline: ‘Man with trolley and long pole with a double knife on the end trespassing on private properties to pick fruit all the time!’
There is a man that wears a hat, short pants and no shirt that lives off of a side road of Dayrell’s Road that walks through neighborhoods of Rockley, Brown’s Gap, Navy and Marine Gardens and casually jumps over peoples walls and fences with his pole and leaves his trolley on the road to go and pick fruit unti his heart is content, apparently he goes and sells them.
I have called the police when I saw him at one of our neighbours who are away and told them which direction he was headed. The man has been back about five times since then and you see him on the street with his pole and trolley up and down Dayrell’s Road and vicinity. How can he get away with this? Can the police please do some patrolling of the area late morning/early afternoon. If I see him again, I am going to report it again.
He could be using this picking fruit as an excuse to make other more serious crimes against citizens. Someone told me that he was in jail already for stealing. This isn’t the ‘Grease Man’ out again is it?
Green Monk & Hemp !!!
And so we many well wonder why hemp has been so restricted. The Status quo, just does not allow it. It’s bad for business. , would put too many of the highly dangerous chemical insecticide and herbicide companies out of business. And so Man insists on sealing his own fate, fighting against the use of a natural earth product. Where can I get some hemp seeds. It is on the negative list ?
Could this be the real “reason for the season”?
Christmas and the ancient winter festivals of light around the world
by D M Murdock (AKA Acharya S.)
These days many people understand that “Christmas” represents the continuation and remake of the very ancient observation of the winter solstice, the time of year when the sun “dies” and is “reborn” or “resurrected,” as the daylight hours decrease to their shortest point and then begin to increase again. This important solstice time has been observed most notably on December 21st or 22nd in the northern hemisphere. However, as we can see from the image below (click to enlarge), over the past several thousand years in many cultures globally the winter solstice has been celebrated at various times, from the middle or end of November to the middle of January. The symbolism in many of these instances is clear: Mourning the decrease and celebrating the increase of the sun’s life-giving light and heat.
As can also be seen, this solstice transition was incorporated into mythology in numerous parts of the world, as the sun god or goddess has been represented frequently as emerging from a “cave,” symbolizing the “underworld” or the place where the sun appears to go at night and during the winter months.
While it is clear that winter-solstice festivals of light have extended throughout the month of December, the winter celebration most people are familiar with is “Christmas,” which occurs on December 25th, the transition from “Christmas Eve” on the 24th. This date is not a mistake or calendrical misalignment; indeed, it represents the end of a three-day period or triduum observed by the ancients as the sun’s “death” and entrance into the underworld, after which “he” is resurrected or reborn into the world. The ancients noticed that, for three days during this period, the sun’s shadow on the sundial remained in the same place (at noon); hence, it was believed that “he” had “died.” Thus, according to this ancient perception the solstice period – “solstice” meaning “sun stands still” – begins at midnight on December 21st and ends at midnight on December 24th.
Winter solstice and Jesus Christ’s ‘birth’
While hundreds of millions worldwide continue to be taught otherwise, it is well known these days in certain quarters, including among many Christian fundamentalists, that “Christmas” does not truly represent the birth of a historical Jesus Christ as the “real reason for the season.” It is understood that this “Christian” celebration in actuality constitutes a remake of the birth of the sun instead, and it is contended that this “Pagan” winter-solstice festival was adopted into Christianity only in the third to fourth centuries after Christ’s alleged advent.
[Jesus as the Sun throughout History] However, there are indications that this solar “birthday” of Jesus was already in the minds of the creators of Christianity long before that time, including comments by Church fathers, the biblical and traditional depiction of Christ as the “sun of righteousness,” and an enigmatic verse in the Gospel according to John (3:30), put into the mouth of John the Baptist:
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
More at:
http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/628-christmas-and-ancient-winter-festivals-of-light-around-the-world.html
Green Monk,
Christianity borrows much more that that from the pagan faiths.
The first virgin birth, there are others, was Tammuz, who likewise died of a wound in his side, and was enclosed to be born again. That was Ancient sumerian/Greek. Luke was a Greek. The Christian halow comes from the Romans, Sol Evictus, or Evictus sol, never remember which way it goes. If you read D.H.Lawrence ‘Apocalypse’ he gives you a wealth more, as does the writer Joseph Campbell in any of his great book on Mythe.
The roots of all religions came from deeper roots, and so many of the stories, parables, are just different but recognizable versions, of far older ones.
Colin,
try counter-culture sources in the UK and Europe
where hemp seeds are sold for anything like 5 Pounds each.
These are hybrids like White Widow and AK47 designed to knock your little socks off when smoked
but I doubt that is your intent for this marvellous magical plant
capable of so much more than inducing a pleasant euphoria!
Otherwise, contact any local Rasta guy for some seeds, easily found in the ‘shakes’ at the bottom of the bag,nah!
Hemp seed is something like 70% oil, dripping oil, when crushed
and could easily be the renewable fuel resource Mankind needs
but oh dear BigOil would see to it that That is fought tooth and nail.
Hemp FABRIC-clothes are exceedingly durable,
as is CANVAS(the Dutch word for Cannabis) -it’s the only natural fibre capable of resisting salt water, it won’t rot!
and thus its popularity in olden (pre-Dacron) days when natural fibres were all mankind could make durable sails of.
Hemp has an exceedingly dense-root system (ask me how I know…lol)
and is an excellent natural plant for holding soil in place.
Soil Conservation at Haggatts,down in SinAndrew could, all now so, be making real use of hemp in Morgan Lewis Hills, to stop that slippery section of Barbados from disappearing into the sea.
But alas the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act of the U..S.Congress would need to be repealed first
to allow any of the above useful natural functions to persevere…
a sad state of human affairs
where Nature/God saw fit to place a VERY useful wonder-plant on the planet
only to have arrogant man illegalize it! Preposterous to say the least!
BigAlcohol will see to it that the anti-Hemp status quo is maintained
because they stand to lose the most, if/when hemp is ever legalized.
P.S. Plenty hemp seed on dis island, if you know how and where to locate.
Before planting, soak your seeds in rainwater
(even better is Aquarium water -think nutrients)
watch for signs of life….then plant.
Beware ANTS.
Lotus Eco Elise car made with hemp
Needseeds?
Thank you exceedingly for your knowledge of hemp, some of which I had very recently, like yesterday, gleaned from Google, and reading the book by Bill Bryson ‘At Home’ a book I can heartily recommend.
The ropes of all ships, when I was at sea back in the 50’s were made of hemp, and I’m familiar with flax and hemp made sails on early yachts, and hemp rope splicing, which was one of my sailor- days duties.
What interested me most was that hemp was found most useful against garden pests and had been extensively used where in India it was grown. It might be found useful so again against the young African snails that insist that certain plants we cherish, are very eatable, like my hot peppers, sunflower leaves, okras, etc. in our assault against having to buy costly imported products and vegetables sprayed with only God knows what.
All you have to do is lay some hemp rope, wet, on the ground around what you are attempting to produce. Or spray a hemp product you can make yourself, as a pesticide.
The hemp plant is used, planted amongst other crops, for exactly the same purpose and reasons, in hemp growing countries where it has always been traditionally allowed.
One of the major reasons hemp was placed on the negative list, is because it is so effective in these regards, and would have spelled the end to companies who make and sell other such products.
I never knew any sailors who smoked hemp, but remember when wet, coiled on decks, it did not have an unpleasant smell. Beside, in those days, we had strong ‘Navycut’ tobacco, and rolled our own ‘smokes’ by hand. That was real tobacco, and filters were unheard of.
The Marijuana Trick – Hemp the revolutionary plant – 8 Youtube videos posted at::
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Marijuana+Trick+-+Hemp+the+revolutionary+plant+&oq=The+Marijuana+Trick+-+Hemp+the+revolutionary+plant+&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=27859l27859l0l29785l1l1l0l0l0l0l146l146l0.1l1l0
Hemp and Marijuana are not the same plant, though they are related. Check this out on Google, everybody, and let’s get the facts corrected as to the many uses of hemp.
Indulging further into hemp on Google, and all that can be done with hemp. it is very surprising we are not turning all our dis -used fields to the raising of this product.
The fact that we are not doing this, seems to imply there is a lot wrong with our thinking. Just Google up Hemp, read all you can about it, and then help me ask our island governments why we are losing out on this produce which has so many local uses; building, foodstuffs, stock feed, construction, cooling or heating insulation, ropes, clothing cloth, fuel, yes fuel, ……… Go and look it all up. You are going to be as surprised as I am. Here is a way to give people many jobs.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
FROM
THE LIGHT PARTY
ALL ABOUT HEMP
by Nathaniel Altman
Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is both highly controversial and widely misunderstood. Its negative aspects are emphasized while the benefits are largely ignored, especially by the mainstream media. As a natural product with a wide range of industrial and medical applications, it has been subject to a campaign of misinformation by big business and government who have a vested interest in its prohibition.
Q: What are the origins of hemp?
Native to Central Asia, hemp has been cultivated for over ten thousand years. The ancient Chinese called it “ma” and used it for making cordage, building materials, cloth and paper. High protein hemp seeds were used as food and in making hemp oil, which has been found to be richer in polyunsaturated fats than canola or soy. In India, hemp was believed to have been produced by the gods. The “Bhagavad Gita (IX:16) called it “the healing herb”, and throughout the subcontinent it was a valuable medicine used to treat malaria, improve digestion, cure dysentery, increase mental power and heighten sexual potency. The Bible referred to hemp several times in the Old Testament. In Ezekiel 34:29, hemp (Kaneh) is called a “plant of reknown”. Few remember that between the American Revolution and the Second World War, hemp was one of our country’s most important agricultural crops. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations and both encouraged its widespread cultivation. Benjamin Franklin started one of America’s first paper mills with hemp, which allowed the colonies to have a free colonial press without having to import paper from England. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper. Because hemp fiber is ten times stronger than cotton, it was traditionally made into twine, canvas and clothing. The sails for the USS Constitution, and nearly every other old sailing ship, were made of durable hemp fabric.
Q: How is hemp used?
Hemp can be used to make an astounding 25,000 different products. In addition to well-known products like rope, twine, nets, canvas bags and carpets, the fiber from hemp stalks can be used to make textiles for apparel, diapers, sheets, towels, tents, drapes, knapsacks and shoes. The first Levi’s jeans were made of hemp fibers which are longer, stronger, more lustrous, absorbent and mildew resistant than cotton. The fibers and hurds (a pulp byproduct after the hemp fiber is removed from the plant) can make newsprint, cardboard and stationery. Hemp fibers will also strengthen and allow paper to be recycled indefinitely.
In addition to salad oil, margarine and food supplements, hempseed oil has been used to make paint, varnish, ink, fuel, plastic resin, solvents and lubricating oils. It can also be used to make soap, shampoo, bath gels and cosmetics. Hempseed is the world’s second richest plant source of protein and is cheaper to cultivate than even soybeans. Hemp protein can be added to flour and animal feed instead of more expensive crops like soy and corn.
Hemp hurds can be used to manufacture cellophane, plastic, building materials, insulation, fiberboard, cement blocks and mortar, and can even be made into a fiberglass substitute.
A hearty plant with few natural enemies, hemp requires no pesticides or fertilizers. Since it takes only 100 days to grow, several crops can be planted a year or after other crops are harvested. the leftover stalks make excellent mulch. A variety of hemp used for industrial purposes contains only minute amounts of the psychoactive chemical THC that is usually associated with hemp cultivation.
Q: Where is hemp produced today?
While hemp cultivation has been prohibited in the United States since 1938 (except during WWII when the government strongly encouraged farmers to grow hemp), it is widely cultivated legally for industrial use in China, the world’s largest producer of non-wood paper. Over 10,000 tons of hemp were harvested in France last year, primarily to make building materials and insulation. Romania, Hungary, Russia, Spain and Poland all grow and make products from hemp.
Q: Does hemp have medicinal value?
Until the development of aspirin and barbiturates, cannabis was an important drug in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was used to treat rheumatism, ulcers, asthma, insomnia, migraine and other health problems. Although information of its therapeutic value is ignored by the mainstream media, a growing number of physicians have investigated the medicinal values of hemp. The excellent book, Marihuana: the Forbidden Medicine, by Lester Grinspoon, M.D. and James B. Bakalar, discusses many of their findings. After numerous lawsuits on behalf of cancer patients, 35 states now permit hemp to be consumed primarily to counteract the nausea produced by cancer chemotherapy and AIDS drugs. Help has also been found to help improve the appetite of people with AIDS and to treat symptoms of glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, pruritus (severe itching), depression and other mood disorders.
Q: But isn’t hemp a dangerous hallucinogen?
Hemp has long been valued as a euphoric, uplifting and mind-expanding herb. A campaign organized by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and supported by the alcohol, tobacco, petrochemical and paper industries during the 1930s led the public to believe that hemp as addictive and caused “violent crimes (and) psychological and emotional degeneration.” Despite a number of scientific studies (including one undertaken in New York City by the LaGuardia administration which found no proof that major crime was associated with marihuana or that it caused aggressive or anti-social behavior) it was declared a dangerous drug by the Federal Government and outlawed in 1937.
While the abuse of mind-altering substances can be harmful, especially while driving or operating machinery, there have been no studies that have proven that smoking hemp is either dangerous or addictive. A major study in Jamaica between 1968 and 1975, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas, Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marihuana Use: Anchor Books, NY, 1975), reported even regular smoking of ganja was “without deleterious social or psychological consequences” and found “no impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability and cognitive style and tests of memory.” The study also debunked the theory that hemp smoking leads the user to hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, since the use of hard drugs among working class Jamaicans is virtually unknown.
Q: How can hemp cultivation save trees and support the environment?
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 10,000 acres planted in hemp will yield as much paper as 40,000 acres planted in trees, and requires far less caustic chemicals in its manufacture than paper from wood pulp. Its potential use as an environmentally-friendly source of paper, including corrugated boxes, computer paper and stationery, as well as paperboard and particle board for furniture and housing construction, is enormous. Even if 1917 technology to process hemp into pulp were used today, hemp could replace about 70 percent of all wood pulp produced by paper mills.
Coal and petrochemicals originally received their energy from the sun millions of years ago and stored energy as the plants decayed. When burned, they release pollutants into the atmosphere. Biomass fuel, on the other hand, releases fewer pollutants and the fuel source spends the growing season removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Hemp is the world’s champion photosynthesizer converting solar energy into biomass more efficiently than almost any other plant. Hemp has at least four times the biomass/cellulose potential of corn or kneaf. It can also compete economically with petroleum-based fuels, without depleting the ozone layer. During World War II, Henry Ford even developed a car that could run on hemp-based fuel.
Q: Why is the government so against the cultivation of hemp?
The alcohol, tobacco and petrochemical interests, as well as large paper companies with interests in forest products, helped influence the government to ban the cultivation and use of hemp in the 1930s. Timid politicians, who prefer to maintain the status quo, are disinclined to legalize hemp for fear of being branded drug advocates. However, shifting economics have renewed interest in hemp cultivation and products. By 1994, over 200 different companies imported hemp, and that year the Governor of Kentucky appointed a task force to study the feasibility of tobacco farmers growing hemp. In January of this year, the Hemp Production Act was introduced in the Colorado state legislature.
Q: What is the future of hemp?
Hemp is one of the most economical crops one can grow. If not outlawed by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the 1930s, many of the nation’s family farms would be profitably growing hemp today. Because it grows in many climates and in most types of soil, it is perfectly suited for regional economics. In contrast to importation, local production of hemp would be inexpensive, and lead to the growth of local businesses.
As the public learn more about the value of hemp, there will be a greater demand for hemp products. Seek out additional sources of information and share it with friends, relatives and public officials. Support the use of hemp textiles, clothing and paper.
Local Hemp investigations !!!
On further local investigation, hemp was tried here in Barbados. But it seems the local inteligencia ( to use a Spanish term), dealing with the cultivation aspect, missed the que completely. In other words, they didn’t bother to do a full investigation, or know what was going on in the rest of the world with HEMP !
Now, instead of us selling sugar to Europe, we, like idiots, will or already are buying, European and Chinese products made of hemp, that hemp, that we could be growing ourselves, and employing our own people to use in local manufacturing of hemp made products, clothes, shoes and 20 thousand other things, including sturdy shopping bags. Are We Not Fools ??? ( Wish I could prevail upon myself to use a few much stronger words about this subject).
Further Hemp investigations.
25 major countries put many thousands of people to work growing and manufacturing important products, from Hemp. With most of our cane land going to waste, who is we ???? We stupid, or what ????
The original post that started this discussion on the value and diverse uses for the hemp plant discussed the historical references to the uses of hemp in past centuries as a natural and effective herbicide to control weeds in farm fields and as a pesticide used to protect crops from insect pests (see post# 430 above).
Now that news is leaking out about the previously hidden dangers inherent in the chemical glyphosate, the main ingredient in the widely used Monsanto herbicide “Roundup” (in addition to the fact that weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to Roundup requiring the application of ever increasing doses of the chemical), one would think it would behoove us more than ever to look for some more natural and less dangerous options that have also proven their worth over the centuries.
Politics, A Mill stone !
It is becoming, more and more difficult to induce that West Indian politics is in any way helpful to the life and living development of the average citizen. Politics, steadily seems to becoming a giant and expensive hindrance.
Can anybody explain, simply, why we should insist on needing such a mill stone ?
HEMP
Industrial Hemp Information
Industrial hemp contains less than 1% of THC the psychoactive component of marijuana. Trying to get high on industrial hemp is akin to trying to get drunk on non alcohol beer.
Hemp is the world’s strongest natural fiber. It has been used to make cloth and rope for over 10,000 years. Hemp was the first crop ever cultivated for textile production.
Hemp cloth is stronger, longer lasting, more resistant to mildew, and cheaper to produce than cloth made of cotton. Hemp ropes are known for their strength and durability. The original Levi Strauss jeans were made from a hempen canvas. Even Old Glory was made from hemp fiber. A 44 gun frigate like “Old Ironsides” took over 60 tons of hemp for rigging, including an anchor cable 25 inches in circumference.
Hemp can be used to make virtually anything that is currently made of cotton, timber, or petroleum. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. Until 1883, more than 75% of the world’s paper was made with hemp fiber.
In 1937 Popular Science magazine called hemp “The New Billion Dollar Crop.”
Then the big money people struck out to protect their interests. Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst led the crusade to ban hemp. Hearst owned millions of acres of prime timber land and a machine that simplified the process of making paper from hemp had just been invented. Hearst used his power as a publisher to create public panic about the evils of hemp and marijuana. Another big money player Pierre DuPont held patent rights to the sulfuric acid wood pulp paper process. In 1937 DuPont patented nylon rope made from synthetic petrochemicals. Along with Duponts backer Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon the big money people prevailed and near the end of 1937 Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. By placing a prohibitively high tax on hemp production it destroyed the industry. This was done to protect these big money interests of the timber, petrochemical, and cotton industries. Hemp was briefly re-legalized during W.W.II. The U.S. government produced the movie Hemp for Victory to encourage farmers to grow hemp. Even 4H clubs were asked to grow hemp to help their country in wartime. The parachute that saved George Bush’s life in World War II was made of hemp fiber.
Henry Ford dreamed that someday automobiles would be grown from the soil. In 1941 the Ford motor company produced an experimental automobile with a plastic body composed of 70% cellulose fibers from hemp. The car body could absorb blows 10 times as great as steel without denting. The car was designed to run on hemp fuel. Because of the ban on both hemp and alcohol the car was never mass produced.
Industrial hemp can replace cotton. Cotton is typically grown with large amounts of chemicals that are harmful to people, wildlife and the entire environment. Close to 50% of all the world’s pesticides are sprayed on cotton. Hemp grows well in a wide variety of climates and soils. It requires far less fertilizer and pesticides than most commercial crops.
All parts of the hemp plant are useful. Hemp can be used to produce everything from fuel to soap. The oil from hemp seeds has the highest percentage of essential fatty acids and the lowest percentage of saturated fats.
Industrial hemp can yield 3-8 dry tons of fiber per acre. This is four times what an average forest can yield. It can replace wood fiber and help save our forests. Trees take approximately 20 years to mature – hemp takes 4 months. Paper made from hemp lasts for centuries, compared to 25-80 years for paper made from wood pulp.
Hemp is the perfect source for fuel. It produces more biomass than any other plant. If we had to pay at the pump for all the military costs to keep the oil flowing clean burning alcohol fuel produced from hemp would be a bargain.
Today industrial hemp is cultivated in Canada, China, Russia, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, England, Poland and many other Eastern European countries.
We at Shirt Magic support the re-legalization of industrial hemp farming in the United States and the rest of the world..
For more information on industrial hemp check out our links page.
SHIRT MAGIC HAS BEEN SELLING HEMP AND ORGANIC COTTON T-SHIRTS ON LINE FOR OVER 11 YEARS
WHOLESALE T-SHIRTS CUSTOM SCREEN PRINTING ABOUT US
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HEMP INFO EMAIL US LINKS
A Canadian farmer explains that he found putting hemp into the crop rotation with cereal crops reduced his input costs as it has reduced the need for both chemical fertilizers and herbicides to be applied in his fields,. (Around the 0:45 min mark of the video).
Green Monk,
Maybe you should have kept that clip above back. We’re going to have the business establishment who sell fertilizers, kicking up hell. They’ll drag or invent every bad reason they can find, why Hemp should never been grown here, though it will give us four crops a year and employ many more people in its other industrial uses.
Dengue, Mosquitoes and Dragonflies:
Has it not occurred to anyone that the huge problem with Denque and the increase in the number of mosquitoes in Barbados is not just about rain but also about the lack of mosquito predators? Dragonflies are mosquito larvae killing machines. But using poison to kill mosquito larvae also destroys the dragonfly; net effect is the mosquitoes win because there is no way a human will find every spot where mosquitoes breed. And do you want all that poison splashing around your yard water?
Perhaps a cheap way to get the dragonfly population up again might be to have a school project in each school on the island to each raise one thousand dragonflies in one year.
Luc,
People are terrified of dragonflies and frogs here in Barbados.
Both of them are mosquito consumers, besides the bats, which people here are also terrified of. The mosquito population could be kept under better control, if people didn’t pelt their garbage every which way across the country and roadsides, giving mosquitoes ‘raintraps’ to breed in.
In St John, we have dragonflies, frogs and bats. Perhaps that is why we are not bothered by mosquitoes though often our fields have long- lasting lakes., in which the moorhens breed.
Shame they won’t stop the fogging.
More uses for Hemp:
http://dotsub.com/media/fc4e051a-1709-4e63-8a2c-912b09486c9f/e/m
Marvin,
Ok,OK. Your clip above, is an extremely important one. It is so sad that business has a modest operandi of such greed, that we have to be forced by it, to live under such subterfuge.
We don’t seem to have anybody, in the truly scientific world, prepared to go into cannabis research in a truly scientific way. Will anybody allow a clear and utterly truthful answer about the healing effects of Cannabis Cancer healing ?
Myself, I’d have to stay far out of such promotion, being so far from qualified in such a study, or debate. I’m far more interested in the less volatile Hemp, and how so many countries have started growing and using it for so many reasons, since it is fast and easy to grow, and has so many growing benefits besides its many industrial uses. Anybody doubting this
I write, just has to unfold Google or any other search engine, and log in:
‘Industrial Hemp’. And that is that !
Hemp Hemp, and More Hemp ???
Who wants a primer on the hemp industry today. Just go to :
‘ A-Z Hemp.com’ That’ll fill you in.
Please watch my 100% bajan channel at worldtv.com/bajantv. This channel seeks to provides viewers with only bajan or bajan related content. Join the Bajantv family today. A lot of newsworthy stuff happens in our communities everday but we do not see it on our major news media. You can put an end to that. We can make low cost movies, documentaries etc and put them out there for all to see. So visit us at worldtv.com/bajantv and please feel free to comment.
Donville Mayers,
That’s the way to go. Blast it for all you are worth. Good luck, and Happy New Year. Consider the Industrial Hemp too. People Need creative work they can do and make with their hands. Creation is where the true path of happiness exists. The cash comes for the creative person, when you forget about cash, and become a master at doing what you truly deeply love. That is the sign and life, of the true artist, poet, writer, painter, artisan. Few of us reach that level, because we refuse to relinquish our souls.
Those of us who don’t make it !!!
Most of us refuse to relinquish our souls and become totally, utterly, fused in what we wish to create. Far too often we are in way too much of a hurry, to get anything worthwhile and enduring done.
Perhaps we’ve been so pushed by the rate of the modern world, we just don’t have time to create what we did in the past, and the ancient past.
I’m thinking of all the great music, art, the work done in the building of the famous cathedrals, the inscriptions done in ancient tombs, and temples of all religions, all over the world, the stone statues of Easter Island; we’ve no time to do such work, no ability to create unless it will heap instant wealth on our heads. That is our prime intention, wealth, and why true creativity has deserted us, and few artist or poets, song writers, are worth more than a day’s jingle that the next night will drown with further mediocrity.
Since Mr Lemuel Rawlins secured permission to constuct apartments on the land at Arch Cot which had a problem with caves and according to the Coroner ,he did not admit any knowledge of that in Court, will he be at least charged with contempt of Court?
Of course Mr Rawlins is a lawyer and will probably know how to get around these things.
Looking back in hindsight on the fake Gulf of Tonkin incident which the Pentagon and the Johnson Administration used as a pretext to justify to the American people and the world the full scale US military involvement in the Vietnam war, US newspaper columnist Sydney Schanberg wrote: “We American’s are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.” (See fair.org/index.php?page=2261 )
No doubt the US government’s ability to pull the wool over the eyes of “the innocents” in order to stir up outrage and war fever on cue has been made much easier over the years by having compliant corporate media houses willing to act more or less as an unofficial propaganda arm of the state, as the following video explains:
Green Monk, OK. OK !!!
We can take all this clip as Fake, Manipulation, What ever you want. It is just as easy to dredge up and manipulate, in this world today, as it is to attempt to tell the truth.
The bottom line, though sad to say, is that Power will fill its own vacuum. Who do you wish to take the place of the USA ? China, Russia, Iran ? Who do you think would be best suited, fair, reasonable. Who would allow us to live more or less like we are used to live, or better, more justly, all inequities ironed out ? Do you really think we would be as safe, if, the USA folded up shop and let the rest of the world do as it wants in our area ? Do you really think so ?
So ! Now,…. I want you to reply, and set out what terms, of fairness, and reasonability, you think should be set by the the new power who decides to take the place of the USA. Somebody will take the place of the USA as sure as the sun rises at dawn.
If you can’t , or won’t, attempt to set down such principles, or become hesitant, driven into thinking how rather stupid would be such contemplation, then I’d suggest you Thank God we still have the USA around, despite its obvious faults, and tone down a little, on anti US rhetoric.
Speaking of the futile ‘fogging’ operations on the island…
What a delicious mixture the fogging is!
Something like 1.5% MALATHION –and 98.5% Diesel fuel, as the ‘carrier’.
Bajans are inhaling this stuff, even if it’s in parts per million.
I spoke with an American cancer researcher visiting the island last year.
He was horrified that we were still allowing/using MALATHION on the island.
He characterised it as one of the bad-ass carcinogens
and here we are broadcasting it far and wide!! -brilliant!
Barbados is also very much a NON-SMOKING nation nowadays.
So when Lung Cancer deaths are(strangely) up to astronomical levels in the next 2-4 decades
everyone will query…but how is that even possible? -we are a non-smoking nation, big time! (which we are!)
Ah yes, but are we a non-fogging, non-Malathion nation??
______________________________________
Malathion is an insecticide: it kills insects.
It doesn’t differentiate between good insects and bad.
It kills all insects.
When last have you seen a Lady-Bug?? -or BEES?
Check the pink-flowered Coralita vine for bees.
Ask farmers how very useful insects are, for fertilizing flowers into fruit, etc.
We’re in trouble!!
To hell with spraying and poisons. Much of the mosquito is our garbage- pelting fault.
Ah well. My lignum vitae is flowing and full of moths, butterflies, hummingbirds, yellow breast, bumble and honey bees. The bee’s huge nest in the base of the sandbox tree, is busy with their hum. I must look for Lady -Bugs. The evening air is full of assorted bats, and there is a giant midge cluster sky-dance, close to the garage, congregating a bushel of young frogs. The frogs were unable to stop a couple of midges getting up my nose, making me sneeze.
I’m glad the fogging seems not to have taken toil here, we hardly ever get mosquito, not taken by the bats, and the trees are full of late evening firefly, and the green-light beetle too, drones on bye here and there.
Hi Colin,
What surprises me about your posts is their acceptance of radical ideas in the main,. yet total internalisation of pro-US
propaganda.
As for who would we like to be the world’s policeman ? – none of ’em.
They’re all infected with the globalist agenda.
Since the millennium, how many countries have your above stated boogy men intervened militarily.
How about the US since 2000- let’s see
Sierra Leone
Yemen
East Timor
China
Afghanistan
Philippines
Ivory Coast
Iraq
Liberia
Georgia
Djibouti
Haiti
Kenya
Ethiopia
Eritrea
Pakistan
Lebanon
Somalia
South Ossetia
Iraq
Libya
Nigeria
Uganda
Be careful, my friend, for what you wish for.
@CB
You wrote:
The bottom line, though sad to say, is that Power will fill its own vacuum. Who do you wish to take the place of the USA ? China, Russia, Iran ? Who do you think would be best suited, fair, reasonable. Who would allow us to live more or less like we are used to live, or better, more justly, all inequities ironed out ? Do you really think we would be as safe, if, the USA folded up shop and let the rest of the world do as it wants in our area ? Do you really think so ?
Colin, believe it or not, I think the best chance (although a slim chance) for the world right now is for the citizens of the USA to wake the F*CK up and take back their country from the psycopathic corporations and financial interests that have corrupted their politics and seized control of the government and whose first goal is to accumulate profit and power rather than to protect the health, safety and well being of the average US citizen.
Do I think I would be better off living under Chinese, Russian or Iranian rule or influence in the future? Well the way I look at it is that it doesn’t really make much difference, because if the USA continues on the path it is on right now, I (and increasing numbers of others) see the US as rapidly heading towards becoming a full fledged, totalitarian police state run by and strictly for the benefit of corporations.
I advise watching the film by deceased Hollywood producer Aaron Russo America:Freedom to Fascism as a long (1hr 51min) but engaging introduction to this important topic.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173
Please be sure to watch past the first part of the video where he deals with the constitutionality of the US income tax, because that’s when it really starts to get interesting.
My purpose in linking the articles, videos etc I do is not to ridicule Americans, or because I have some knee-jerk dislike of America and Americans, or because I think that life under Chinese leadership would be sweeter, more prosperous and more secure, but in the hopes my posts might play some part, however small, in lighting a fire under America’s ass so that Americans will wake up in time to take back their government from the soulless, avaricious corporations and financial interests that have stolen their republic from under their feet and before we all come to experience the feeling of a jackboot on the back of our neck
From the pen of Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal:
Woodrow Wilson
All the King’s Horses, all the King’s Men.
Green Monk,
What you really want, is the overthrow of the status quo, under an assumption that something new could be worked out, and everything will become hunky dory, a nirvana, where man re-finds his Innocents, drops away from his greed. Maybe Jesus, Allah or Zeus, will come down and hold our hands, and lead us along the new path to Avalon, paradise or Nirvana.
Well just watch what will happen across much of the Middle East, where what you have been suggesting ,,…is taking place there; the overthrow of the old order, so completely that the in-coming wave does not know what it really wants, or how to manage what it wishes to inherit. All it knows is how to blast off AK47s, and shout Allah Akbar for all it is worth, and hunt down the vestments of old regimes, and bicker and fight between its own new factions. So let us watch the fireworks. The West, no doubt, will have to become, once more, all the King’s Horses and all the King’s men, and attempt to put all the pieces together again.
CB wrote, “What you really want, is the overthrow of the status quo, under an assumption that something new could be worked out, and everything will become hunky dory, a nirvana, where man re-finds his Innocents, drops away from his greed.
Newsflash Colin. Whether we like it or not, the overthrow of the status quo has been planned and has been ongoing for some time now (I refer you to the Russo film linked above), and when the new status quo emerges into plain sight, it is not the crazy Muslim fanatics who will bear ultimate responsibility, although the planners will no doubt find them useful tools, patsies and scapegoats in the accomplishment of their nefarious purpose.
Excerpt from Aaron Russo interview:
I dontI don’t see any remarks about the crisis at the Alexandria school, ? How dare some staff ‘strike ‘for not taking instructions from the principle and expect to keep their position of telling pupils what to do.
Ms Redman this could never happen in the real world without parents taking action!!.
Children first then parents Ms Redman saying parents dont understand the facts? ????
Straight Talk. Ah, World Peace !!!
Good to hear from you again. I wish for nothing, nothing. There is not anything really worth wishing for, except a peaceful world. But sadly the world is not designed that way. It never was designed that way. It is designed(created, if you insist) for utmost strife, to keep us on our toes, so that evolution-revolution can continue to drive us forward. Forward to what,…. You may well ask. Apocalypse, perhaps.
Whatever Man dreams up in his groping- warring utterly confused forward, his own death by overpopulation ,… hangs ominous and over weighted, dragging down the lowest side of the scale.
So there is nothing to wish except World Peace, which not even the very Universe was designed for.
Peace and tranquility was all part of natures design for the universe until mankind came along then all hell broke loose.
Dear AC,
Long before Man arrived, certain dinosaurs ate only meat. So the world of Earth behaved in much the same way, spilling blood, of which certain huge dinosaurs had, in olympic swimmingpool’s full. There was certainly not peace and tranquility, unless perhaps, you were one of the carnivores, and everybody ‘fraid you.
FSC boss out on bail
Tongues are wagging in Barbados and in the Caribbean and in the international business sector ….how can the head of our Financial Services Commission be charged with a criminal offence and still be on the job….and on bail?
colin
Peace and tranquility. Natures way for animals to survive was intentional.The laws of Nature are not as mankind has redesign which includes greed ! malice ! hatred! destruction by any means necessary all of which has wrecked havoc on a once tranquil universe whose laws were percise and complete .
ac,
For far too many ions, Mankind has been treating himself as though he were not part of nature. His religions in most part, are responsible for this There is a very simple proof, that Mankind is a part of nature in every way. Just try and stop breathing or drinking water and eating, and you’ll soon find we are no different than any other living thing, and animals have just the same emotions as we have, but in many respect the animals are better controlled. We are all part of the same system in every way. It is just that we are far more destructive, and all our college degrees of deep learning, our religions and high- steepled cathedrals, universities and sciences, our medical advances, our libraries brimming with books, trips into outer space, our knighthoods, our so called culture, have really taught us nothing at all.
man has divorced itself from nature choosing rather to invoke our own laws which have created chaos and rendered us impotent and unable to have peace and tranquility in a universe where natures laws are precise and unchangeable in fact we have committed the unforgivable sin that is being at war with our creator” NATURE’ and at times when nature has had enough unleashes it volatile forces as a reminder as to MAN as to who is really in charge
Reality strikes back: a review of Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth
by Chris Stratton
If you’re worried about the recession and looking for reassurance that the world’s economies will soon be back on track and everything will return to normal, you should probably stop reading now.
But maybe you’re concerned about all the debt we’re in. Maybe you’re skeptical about how we currently measure societal progress and personal well-being. If you’re prepared to examine the hard, unsettling economic and environmental realities that await us, then may I recommend to you, brave reader, Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth.
Heinberg’s overarching message is that the current economic downturn is not temporary and that, because we have now reached fundamental, unalterable ecological limits, economic growth is gone for good. In other words, the world is in for a permanent economic depression, as currently defined.
snip
But haven’t we heard before how growth will stop because we’ve run out of resources? (Think The Population Bomb.) So far, it hasn’t happened. Innovation (say the business people), substitution (say the economists), and efficiency (say the scientists) have always allowed us to overcome any resource limitations and advance along the path of progress and growth—and they will continue to do so in the future. But Heinberg says, not this time. Today, innovation mostly just involves tweaking existing technologies. And some materials fundamental to economic growth—most notably fossil fuels—simply have no substitutes. And efficiency can be used to decouple energy use from economic growth only to a certain point.
Heinberg asserts that the end of growth has profound social and economic implications for “developed” and “developing” countries alike. The argument from the rich has long been that we don’t have to be concerned about redistributing the economic pie (both among and within countries) because the pie is constantly growing; well, without growth, that argument falls apart. And remember all that “development” that developing countries were going to do? …maybe not so much. In short, Heinberg says we’ll no longer have the prospect of growth to paper over issues of inequity. The Occupy movement began after this book was published, but if Heinberg is right, it’s just the beginning of many inequity-based upheavals to come.
Great, so we’re screwed. Now what? The bad news is that we can’t keep “improving” in the ways we have traditionally defined it—primarily by consuming ever more and better stuff. The good news, say Heinberg and many others, is that maybe we don’t need growth to be better off. Maybe our measurements of well-being and progress have been flawed all along. Heinberg advocates for “redefining progress” using alternative economic metrics that, unlike GDP, are not based on how fast we make and consume stuff, but rather on how happy and healthy we are, whether or not our communities are thriving, and how much agency we have in our lives.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-11/reality-strikes-back-review-richard-heinberg%E2%80%99s-ithe-end-growthi
Well there you now , Green Monk!
Thank God Richard Heibergh has come along and backed me up.
It has been so damn obvious that we can not go on going along as though there is no such thing as an end to growth in a world that is over filling with people, and actually, truly, obstinately, of limited dimension and resources.
Perfectly true, we can, and will be for a time, able to come up with amazing alternatives, but for every alternative there are a million of us born to absorb away the progress, enhance the pollution, burn up the energy, absorb the fresh water and cut the trees, push nature further and further back into decline, cover the ecosystems with concrete and roads, and airports, so that we may all have some work for a while, though what we shall eat is another, ever- growing question.
So we are in reality, left with no answers. No answers that is, that anybody is willing to listen to, as we drive away in our huge SUV’s, and build our huge Earth consuming homes, and fill our hospitals with babies, and forget what starts wars, pestilence, and, as has happened in the past often enough, mass extinctions.
The NIS being stripped.
I’m disgusted about this. We have certain politicians and certain business, hell bent on stripping Barbados for all it is worth. Are we going to sit back and watch the NIS stripped too ? It certainly appears so now.
Urination on dead enemy. What not ??? Who is forgetting American Blackhawk pilots in Mogadishu Somalia, and what happened to them ???
Let’s look at this: You’ve been in a gunfight, some of your friends have been killed. The only reason you are alive is because you were lucky and didn’t take a bullet. Why wouldn’t you be bloody minded enough to do what these fighting men did, far away from home in a country that hated them ?
Then, what do you think the enemy do to the dead bodies of your fighting friends ? They strip them, or everything they want. Isn’t that as bad as urination on them ?
The world is getting too damn soft. The West, deserves what it gets if it decides to take such action against its fighting men in this respect. War is not playing toy shoulders, or eating ice cream. Who was there to stop the downed Blackhawk pilots in Somalia, dragged around behind trucks?
Greener Pastures with Lunatic Farmer Joel Salatin
Joel Salatin doesn’t mind being called a communist. Though the self-described “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic farmer” has a penchant for stockpiling adjectives, Salatin actually defies labels left and right. He’s a capitalist who as a matter of principle has no sales objectives and will not ship food beyond his local food-shed. He’s a Christian whose priority is environmental health. And he’s a lunatic who’s running a 550-acre farm that is so self-sustaining he’s never bought seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, plows, or silos—aka “bankruptcy tubes,” in Salatin-speak. He’s also a veritable celebrity—having been catapulted into the national spotlight thanks to Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and dubbed the “High Priest of the Pasture” by the New York Times—but he betrays no bravado as he chats with me over the phone from his home in Swoope, Virginia.
Salatin raises cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits on his “family-owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market” Polyface Farm, which has become synonymous with sustainability, bioregionalism, and honest transparency. Indeed, the farm is open to visitors at all times, with nary a corner that is not camera-accessible. An unabashed libertarian, Salatin has gone off the government-supported grid as much as possible: home-schooling his children and developing farming practices that are absolutely antithetical to the agribusiness model. ”I always said if I could figure out a way to grow Kleenex and toilet paper on trees,” he muses, “we could pull the plug on society.”
snip
You refer to yourself as a capitalist, and as someone who owns his own business, that makes a certain sense. Then again, your principles are all quite anti-capitalist.
Yes—today we had our bi-monthly farm tour, and at the end of the hay wagon ride, a woman said, you sound like a communist! (laughs) So yeah—I’m a communist capitalist. In this book, for example, I make a point that no American needs to be paid more than $250,000. Nobody. The problem with pure capitalism is the problem with unbalanced anything. Amoral, unbalanced capitalism is no better than amoral, unbalanced communism. In the book I do take umbrage with this country’s incredible disparity—I just read in the newspaper today that the average college athletic director in America now makes $450,000 a year. I wonder what the Physics professor gets? $80,000? We’ve become obsessed with things that aren’t important.
snip
I’m curious about your Christian principles, which seem to embody a very different worldview than the one I was taught growing up Catholic.
I think that our responsibility as stewards of creation is to do exactly that—to steward it, not pillage it, exploit it, but to actually massage it. Okay, you and I, with our Catholic backgrounds, let’s take a principle like forgiveness—we share this, right? How do we build forgiveness into a farm? It would mean that our farm should be more immune to the vagaries of nature. The fact is you’re going to have drought, flood, heat, cold. So a forgiving farm is one in which we massage the landscape so that it is more forgiving for these natural anomalies. Therefore, every time we get a few thousand dollars extra, we build another pond. These ponds draw down during droughts and allow us to have plenty of water for irrigation, for watering livestock, for keeping the frog and salamander populations high, making places for ducks to land and turtles to breed. And then during flood time, they absorb the surface run-off that swells and becomes devastating down river. So on both extremes, for example, building a greater control of the hydraulic cycle builds forgiveness into that landscape.
What I want is more forgiving immune systems in my animals. Therefore I build a terrain of production that increases immunological function rather than debilitating it. Now, if I take these animals and confine them in a factory house, then I quickly compromise their immunological system because of that toxic environment. I don’t increase their immune systems by doping them up with drugs and hormones and chlorine. Rather, the forgiving thing to do is to back off from that abusive terrain and build a habitat in which the pig is fully allowed to express its pigness. Living in sync with his terrain—getting exercise, fresh air and sunshine, moving from area to area so he’s not in his excrement all the time—is the way to build natural immune function.
http://www.shareable.net/blog/greener-pastures-with-lunatic-farmer-joel-salatin
Green monk,
That is why the best eggs and chicken meat come from barnyard and free ranged chickens, who don’t live off steroids and each other’s feathers, and all sort of other junk fed them to get them fat fast. The problem is that free style poultry take much longer to grow, though they are better off, their bones stronger, and they taste like they should taste and make the best curry.
All animals today, bread for the table are inhumanely fed, and bread, pumped and primes with all sorts of antibiotics and steroids, which are now effecting us humans.
The shame is that the whole world system of food production has been re-tuned, primed, to work like this, except in very remote areas.
Enjoyed and envy the life evolution and work of Joel Salatin, but it is way beyond every one of us in this island, and that of most of the West.
All animals today, bread for the table are inhumanely fed, and bread, pumped and primes with all sorts of antibiotics and steroids, which are now effecting us humans.
Colin, and that may not be all about modern day, industrial, agriculture that is adversely affecting our society today.
Massive Pesticide Exposure Inflating Global Obesity Crisis
snip
In a study conducted by the Mercer University School of Medicine, researchers examined whether pesticide exposure played a role in worldwide childhood obesity. It is interesting to note that the researchers chose to focus on childhood obesity, as pesticides are damaging to both children and adults.
During the study process, the researchers observed nearly 6,800 subjects aged 6 to 19. Individual exposure to environmental pesticides was determined through the use of urine tests, identifying the concentrations of pesticide residues.
What the researchers found is a higher prevalence of obesity in the participants with high urinary concentrations of a pesticide known as 2,5-dichlorophenol (2,5-DCP). It is important to note that 2,5-DCP is one of the most widely used pesticides on the globe.
Avoiding Pesticides — The GMO Pesticide Trap
While pesticides are quite prevalent among the food supply, it is very possible to avoid the large majority of pesticides lurking in your diet. Perhaps the largest pesticide trap has to do with genetically modified foods (GMOs). Touted by Monsanto as requiring less pesticides, GMO crops actually require significantly more pesticides! This means that the GMOs you may be unknowingly consuming are actually loaded up with obesity-causing pesticides, as if the GMOs themselves weren’t damaging enough to your health. As you probably know, a review of 19 studies announced that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans may lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys.
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/massive-pesticide-exposure-inflating.html
Barbados makes it second installment for the purchess of the Brooklin Bridge. The first installment was for 100,000,000 dollars by the Primeminster who shortly died as the checks were cleared by the nation owner Mr. Williums. The approval of the second payment of 60,000,000 dollars means that we can now forget about the fist payment as being lost in deep water and concentrate on the current pament as part of the swing in the bridge, our next payment wil be considered a sand barge for dreging.
should compact fluorescent lights be banned in barbados due to mercury content and the danger of contaminating the water aquifers
we can’t banned everything but laws should be enforced to stop the illegal dumping of all hazardous products and which can cause harm to people and the enviroment.
But Green Monk.
We’re warned that the race(the human one) cannot be fed unless we turn to Genetically modified food production. Sugar cane could probably be cut right out, and they could grow Hemp instead, which serves thousands of more purposes than cane, gives three to four crops a year, and regenerated the soil at the same time. Far less sugar about, would actually be a very good thing, save millions on dentistry, diabetes, and those who slob themselves with it, inducing the diseases of over-feeding. Many of Man’s problems started when the first sugar fields were cut, and sugar started entering the new world, I’d miss the Rum though, hating whiskey, vodka and gin. You can cut back on sugar to the point you don’t miss it at all. Your teeth would last much longer, and so would your health, your heart, limbs, and just about everything else. And,… you’d never have to pay the new overweight charge for a flight.
Green Monk, Flying overweight passengers, and all their luggage.
Actually, thinking about the new overweight charge they want to start for people who partake more than is good for them, perhaps the airlines should give us a guideline. For instance, those of us who are way under the average weight, should be allowed to take extra baggage to make up for it. Why should the airlines have it all their own way? By the same token, overweight people should be restricted on the weight of the luggage they are allowed to fly with. All this would save the amount of energy an aircraft needs to fly from Barbados to the UK, close on a hundred tons of fuel, or more, one way. It is really quite staggering, all around, and very much more so if you know how many aircraft are flying across the world on a 24 hour basis. That is where the real pollution is taking place, high in the atmosphere
In the beginning there was everything. Then it seemed to have gone slowly wrong. Teachers want to do their own thing, be their own law, come and go as they want, without restriction. Hallam King was fired, so there has been a precedence as to what teachers can get away with in schools, and so mediocrity drifts slowly and relentlessly in. And sensible people know not how to turn.
@CB: It is not only teachers ,it is all Government workers
Rastman.
It all seems to be getting very widespread. Humans are revolting over the old system. Everybody wants change but does not know what change is wanted or needed. The modern age has confused all people on earth, with promises that could never be accomplished even if we take off our pretty clothes and get on our hands and knees and really work.
But work for most who have it, has become a bad word, and we attempt to dodge it as much as we can, and still insist on being paid more and more, and buying all the luxuries we can, and using up all the energy.
We are, in effect, digging our own early graves, and the grave of Mankind. As the world population explodes ( and I’ve written about this so many times before), the available energy gets used up faster and faster, with the available food and water, fish, timber, ores, cultivated land and water, and the world of nature gets slowly pushed to extinction, as the pollution fills the air, outer- space, and the sea. Those of us who die before all this happens, will be the lucky ones. The malady of discomfort is rife and becomes obdurate, and the Gods are not caring, or hearing.
Life does not need Progress. It needs stability, moderation. You don’t deserve or need everything before you reach twenty, thirty, forty. Why should you have everything, just because you went to college or university. None of that gives you any right to have anything, until you have been through the mill of apprenticeship, and taken the weather, the hours without food, or sleep, the setbacks that life can— and will give. If you can weather those things, then you deserve consideration. CLB
Well I guess we can always go on, and bleat about slavery, as though if we were still under it, or under the Romans, or the Hun, or pulled with a rope around our necks across the desert to the slave markets of the Middle East. Or our mother’s sold out on us when young, and we arrived today, in parts of middle and southern America, as chattel. Or reaped Cocoa till our fingers were bare in West Africa. It seems a well paying, long term plaster. And the West have for years, fallen for it.
Thank you, I’ve just been searching for information about this subject for a long time and yours is the best I’ve found out so far. However, what in regards to the bottom line? Are you sure concerning the supply?|What i do not realize is in truth how you’re not actually much more neatly-appreciated than you might be now. You’re very intelligent.
Hobocth,
You can’t be replying to me. Or you shouldn’t. Most take me with a huge pinch of salt, and intelligence does not come into it, as I never had any, nor passed an exam pertaining to it. So there you are with just gleanings, gathered, here and there, nights and days on offshore rigs, sliding in ships or sailboats, down mountains of waves, in diverse oceans, sleeping and eating besides all manner, and colour, of working men, feeling rather than understanding, a world of diversity, and disequilibrium, as though Gods spoke in tongues anybody could ever understand, or indeed were ever meant to.
You spoke about the unacceptance of conspiracy theory; however this is about the likely unfolding of imminent events. You folks will decide if you will publish it or not. I am just doing my part to highlight it.
There is a very real possibility of a major war between America, Britain France and Israel on one side and Iran, and probably China and Russia on the other side. Here is a video that lends some support to this argument.
Somaliland. What a good place in Africa to hear about. Looks as though we need to get some intelligence people over there from the West Indies, and find out why Somaliland is doing so well, and why they have such a small government involved, and why the true ingenuity is coming from its people, without Western help or aid(at the moment). Listen to the BBC, and let us attempt to follow suit. Don’t send our politicans, for God Sake. By the way, 56 above, was written by CLB. Me. I don’t know who 56 is, or why my own name was not used.
DLP Blog no longer exists – the authors deleted it… BLP blog still active, last entry 18th January this year
War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.
Thomas Paine
@CB
Colin, I came across this article about the deist philosopher and author Thomas Paine (also counted as one of the USA’s Founding Fathers) which you (and others) might find interesting.
Happy Birthday Thomas Paine!
“I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic . . .
.It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood . . . it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings and I recall thinking at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.”
Thomas Paine, the great writer and thinker praised by the above quote of Thomas A. Edison, was born in Thetford, England on January 29, 1737. His father, Joseph Pain, worked as a staymaker and belonged to the Society of Friends, or Quakers. His mother, Frances Cocke, was a member of the Church of England. As a boy Tom Paine was required to read and study the Bible, and was made a member of the Church of England.
snip
Thomas Paine was instrumental in getting the fence sitters off the fence on the side of revolution with his work, Common Sense.
When the Revolutionary War broke out, “Shouldering a musket, Paine joined the rank and file, and won reputation as a brave soldier.” But he made an even bigger contribution to the American Revolution when, in its darkest hours, he wrote The Crisis. The ideas in The Crisis, which is a total of fifteen separate essays each written when an obstacle arose which to weaker hearts and minds seemed insurmountable, strengthened the beleaguered Americans. They planted hope in the hearts of the active idealists even as thousands of Continental soldiers were deserting, those loyal to the legally established government were harassing the rebels whenever possible, and no other nation was willing to assist the radicals fighting and struggling against the most powerful government on earth to bring forth not only a new nation, but a new ideal and way of life. Thomas Paine’s writings were so successful and vitally important to the success of the American Revolution, John Adams wrote, “Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”
snip
After Paine spent ten months and nine days in the Luxembourg prison, James Monroe, who was the new American Minister to France, won the release of Thomas Paine. Paine was very ill due to the inhumane conditions he was subjected to in prison. James Monroe and his wife Elizabeth took him in and nursed him back to health. While a guest of the Monroes he wrote the second part of The Age of Reason. This time he had a Bible in his possession and used it most aptly against itself. Irate religious leaders tried, all in vain, to refute the solid and sound arguments Thomas Paine unleashed against superstition. It seems what upset that day’s System the most was his bringing Deism to the masses of people. After Thomas Paine, Deism was no longer just an intellectual parlor topic. However, the System prevailed by slanderous sermons of damnation against Mr. Paine and anyone who followed his demonic Deism. He was viciously and unreasonably attacked not only from pulpits around the world, but also from the press. In particular, the Federalist press attacked him as well as his good friend Thomas Jefferson, who was running for the presidency. He was hanged in effigy by good Christians the world over, and in England The Age of Reason was banned as blasphemy and the government prosecuted/persecuted a bookseller who carried the work.
More at:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/01/28/happy-birthday-thomas-paine/
Yes Green Monk,
I’m probably very much a Deist, with some Buddhism thrown in.
It is not really any belief, more a certainty, accrued from the world around me, and what I have seen, where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and how all this has effected me.
At the moment I’m wondering why it has taken so long to develop the compressed air driven car, when such a system was so obvious. Deism is like that too. Both air driven cars and Deism are up against the dogmatism of the status qua, as is Industrial Hemp.
Dumpy Lizard. About Raul Garcia. What is wrong with us ???
You have the best plan yet. Get it on the BBC, Fox and CNN. This man’s plight is one hell of a story, and I’m amazed nobody locally has not taken it up and spread it across the whole world, where it rightly belongs. It is an amazing story of a Man’s resilience, his regret at his past, his long years in jail, his constant attempt to help his fellow goal mates discover art. Everything about his life needs blasting out there. What a book, a biography, it would make. Some one needs to get of their ass, and get him free. He could become a huge tourist attraction with a book and his art.
Interesting interview with the creators’ of a video documentary about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing “A Noble Lie”.
Check out McVeigh, in uniform, at Camp Grafton, the US army’s explosives and demolition training centre, one year after his supposed discharge.
RIP yet another CIA patsy.
Anybody got the up to date on Raul Garcia. This is a most appalling situation for Barbados to allow itself to be caught up it. It makes this Island, so well governed in so many ways, look like a tin pot republic, that we would allow this man to die in jail when he has served out his time in exemplary fashion, and his own country, Cuba, will not take him back. Have we become Islamic already, or what ?
Well I copied and pasted a section of BFP on the subject pertaining to Raul Garcia, to Amnesty International, this morning. What more can one do, living in a peaceful society, who is unwilling to rock the boat on such a dilemma.
But, I’m told, in the USA, a man held two days longer than he should have been held, just won $250, thousand dollars, for illegal imprisonment. Are we looking for, a million dollar or more lawsuit here, in this respect. ?
Look Guys, let the man out to do his wonderful paintings. He is not a violent man. He has paid for his youthful mistake. What sort of people are we, to insist he die, which he will in his hunger strike. And then what will the world think or us, and our professed ,….. I don’t need to finish this.
@Colin
with so much publicity the story is getting it won’t be long before he is freed my only hope is that he would not have succumbed to his self imposed death sentence. but the government under pressure is going to have no other option but to release him.
Quick question. In today’s paper, BFP’s old sparring partner, DPP Charles Leacock has accepted yet another manslaughter plea from a man who murdered his ex-girlfriend. And of course! She ‘provoked’ him! At least, according to the murderer (manslaughterer?) who says she attacked him first with a knife.
Of course, since it was only two of them in there, we will have to take the word of an admitted killer. Poor Sophia Phillips will never get to tell her side.
This is at least the fourth time in the last 3 years that the DPP has taken a plea in a domestic violence killing. And always there is the defence of there being an element of ‘provocation’ – one woman had the nerve to tell the man no to sex so he beat her to death; another woman allegedly told her ex she gave him a class of poisoned koolaid (again, entirely his word and ignored the fact that he had been stalking and abusing her for years); another woman was divorcing her husband and took her lawyer’s advice not to leave the marital home though he tried all means to force her out; and now this.
Any outrage on this BFP? Or is your outrage only reserved for streakers and drug peddlers of a lighter hue? I wait anxiously…
Flying Fish democracy. I like that. adding it to my list of banana republic names. We could call the Trinie to our south, ‘The Shark and Bake Republic ‘ .
Well sadly, a young woman we knew well from St Vincent, with two young children there, was shot dead by an ex local boyfriend who had been doing nothing more than using her and taking her money whenever he could. It was such a shame. She was such a fine, hard working, so pleasant a person, very attractive too. It was such a dreadful waste of a young life, and two children losing their mother, by a vagabond who should have been roped up hung. We knew her whole story well. The police would not listen to her asking for help. She was not of lighter hue, niether was the vagabond . I don’t think the story even got in the papers. We felt so awful hearing of her death, and missed her too. But Fling Fish Democracy, you seem to have something against women, seeing no reason why a man should not treat them like chattle ? Hope I’ve got that wrong, though among too many men here in this island, that seems to be an exceptable standard.
Acceptable Standard.
Let me tell you something about Dogs.
If you own and keep a dog on a chain, or in a cage, or out of your home where you think it should be, then you should not own a dog, of any kind. You are wasting your money, and you will never appreciate the intelligence of a dog, keeping it that way.
But if he, or she, the Dog, lives in your home, sleeps near you, or in some cases even on your bed beside you, then that dog soon knows what he is asked to protect, and will protect, with his , or her, life. And you will slowly begin to fully appreciate, what dogs, since the dawn of Mankind fully understood, long before most of us dumb humans ever did. Amen.
Dog Treatment by those who should know better.
Once a dog on a chain, or kept in a cage, gets away from you, your chances of seeing her again, are remote if she, or he, can possible help it.
This is not any difference to how a human being would behave, and has behaved under such circumstances of incarceration.
The problem with far too many humans, and their treatment towards their dogs, is that as has been the case with many of us back in our near enough history, we never learned a thing from it. And so too many of us treat our dogs with chains and cages for most of their lives, and the lesson of experience amounts to……..I don’t need to finish this sentence.
The overthrow of the established order, does not lead automatically to divine, sublime, living conditions for everybody. It leads to extreme hardship and misery, for most, depending on who wrestles control.
You doubt that ? just keep watching what is happening in Middle East countries. , and then look back at your history books to accrue the full story. The established order may be faulty, but you can fall prey to so much worse, in your hurry and hope, for imagined equality, that really is just a figment of imagination.
The strong survive, others survive depending upon their wits and resilience to ‘scrunt’ . There is no such thing as a fully fare system anywhere today, if there ever was such an aberration . Life is build, designed, on strife. You can’t write a novel without conflict.
The Coming World Government
By Adrian Salbuchi
February 12, 2012
Lucid and aware people observing world events unfold over the past decade or so – say, since September 11, 2001 – will have surely asked themselves what on Earth is going on here?
We see ever-growing violence, war, outright lies, invasions, false flags, social upheavals, poverty, ruin and the death of millions… The world’s become a pretty dangerous and pitiful place to live in, and it only gets worse…
Which leads us to the obvious question: Why? Why is all this happening? Can we explain it away as Man’s wicked nature? Or his folly and ignorance? Perhaps just a series of bad mistakes and wrong turns on key issues?
SNIP
First, A Word About “Conspiracies…”
If you don’t buy any of the above explanations, and you feel that today’s calamities are being purposefully engineered – that some group of people somewhere control the course of world events – then be careful because you risk being branded another paranoid, hallucinating, conspiracy theory kook.
Don’t let that worry you too much because those who disqualify as mere “conspiracy theories” any attempt to put together an alternative model of how global power really works are either, (a) blissfully ignorant and believe in the “world according to CNN and FoxNews”; (b) near-sighted on key long-term geopolitical processes; or (c) purposely deceptive and thus have an axe to grind protecting the Global Power Elite, which always reacts with uneasiness whenever someone shines a light on them. I will only deal with the last of these options.
SNIP
World Government
The dream of erecting a world government controlled by a very small, extremely powerful and elusive minority goes back several centuries. Its roots lie not just on the political stage but, more so, in social, cultural and religious spheres, often with symbolic, “occult” overtones.
In our time it has been variously described under the guise of “New World Order,” “One World,” “Over-World” and, more recently, “Globalisation.”
Call it what you will, the facts are that national sovereignty, which is the ability of the People to organise around nation-states, to make the final decisions on their own affairs, from being a sharply defined concept is now so eroded and diffuse that no one can readily define exactly what sovereignty means today.
Maybe this would be acceptable if national sovereignty were lessened for the sake of better coping with global problems affecting Mankind as a whole – for the Common Good – however increasing famine, disease, contamination and war shows a very different picture. Why?
The reason is that basically World Government is not emerging around robust global public institutions that have (or should have) the Public Good of We the People in the forefront, but rather around private organisations that have sectorial profit and interests at their forefront. In fact, the World Government we see rising before our eyes has one key, seldom mentioned, characteristic: it’s private.
SNIP
It cannot be said loud enough. If true democracy is government of, by and for the majority of We the People for the purpose of protecting and promoting the Common Good, and the “democracy game” we’re all forced to play today is fully subservient and subordinated to UNdemocratic money power, then it follows that there is NO democracy, anywhere.
Not to understand this is not to understand how the global power system really works which, in turn, means not being able to arrive at a correct diagnosis as to why things are going badly in this world.
And if we don’t get our diagnostics right, then no cure will ever be found for this sickly state of affairs. It’s high time we open our minds and eyes to this!
http://theintelhub.com/2012/02/12/the-coming-world-government/
Al Qaeda Paradox: Freedom Fighters Who Hate us for our Freedom
On September 20, 2001, just days after the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City, the attack on the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the loss of a hijacked jetliner over Pennsylvania — attacks squarely blamed on “Al Qaeda” — US President George Bush would declare:
Americans are asking ‘Why do they hate us?”
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
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With Al Qaeda’s recent call for support of “pro-democracy” “freedom fighters” in Syria, people are literally asking, “How can they hate us for our freedom and our democratically elected governments, but then support and even die for those allegedly fighting for these very ideals?” Clearly we’ve been lied to about something.
We’ve Been Lied to About Everything
By all accounts, including admissions by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Osama Bin Laden’s organization that would become Al Qaeda was created during the Soviet-Afghan war in in the late ’70s and throughout the ’80s. The funding of these militants did not begin after the Soviet invasion, but actually several years before. US intervention in Afghanistan by training and arming Afghanistan’s Mujaheddin, along with Osama Bin Laden’s Arab fighters, is one of the leading factors that led to the murderous and protracted decade-long war, according to the Nation in an article titled, “Blowback, the Prequel.”
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More recently, Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department (page 1) as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” was armed, trained, funded, provided diplomatic and political recognition, and even lent air support and Western special forces to overthrow the government of Libya in 2011. Far from a conspiracy theory, two West Point Counter Terrorism Center reports confirm not only LIFG’s ties to Al Qaeda, but that they were demonstratively killing US and British troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq directly before returning to Libya to assist the US and NATO in regime change.
Now, French independent reporter Thierry Meyssan of VoltaireNet.org has exposed that LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj has left the Libyan capital of Tripoli and is directing the “Free Syrian Army” from the border of Turkey (a NATO member since 1952). Reports are already trickling in that the US, British, Arab League nations, and the EU are arming and assisting cross-border militants in their bid to overthrow the government of Syria.
We are told that the purpose of these revolutions are to instate “freedom,” “human rights,” and “democracy.” So why then is Al Qaeda supporting these uprisings when clearly this is what we’ve been told for 10 years are the very ideals that drive them to commit their heinous campaign of terror? The answer is simple: while Al Qaeda’s ranks are filled with impressionable, extremist ideologues, the leadership was initially created in the ’80s to fulfill US foreign policy, and to this very day still performs this function.
The West’s ambition to oust Qaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, or the government of Iran did not begin in 2011 with the “Arab Spring” in support of the “democratic aspirations” of the people; rather it was a documented conspiracy that predated 9/11, or even the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center — later exposed to be an FBI sting operations “gone wrong.” Rather, a campaign to entirely reorder the Middle East to Wall Street and London’s advantage was declared as early as 1991.
General Wesley Clark in a 2007 speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California, would reveal a document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 indicating plans to attack and destroy the governments of 7 countries; Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon and Libya.
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Al Qaeda is Wall Street’s Arab Foreign Legion
Al Qaeda is the impetus being used to advance PNAC. ( Side note: PNAC = “Project for a New American Century”, google it if you haven’t heard of it before /GM.) It was an FBI operation in 1993 disingenuously portrayed as a “terrorist attack” that was to serve as the justification for Wolfowitz’ post-Desert Storm blitzkrieg to “clean up the old Soviet client regimes.” It was Al Qaeda nearly ten years later that would “try again,” this time succeeding and giving the US justification to invade and overthrow the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, flanking Iran and beginning a covert war against the Islamic Republic; while more recently, in 2011, sowing chaos and regime change through US-funded opposition groups, labeled as the “Arab Spring.”
Al Qaeda was created in the mountains of Afghanistan to serve US foreign policy in the 1970s and ’80s; they were invoked as the perpetrators of the New York attacks in both 1993 and 2001 in attempts to justify extraordinary military interventions that, while long-planned, would have been impossible otherwise. Now Al Qaeda legions are in Libya and Syria carrying out regime change of governments long on Wall Street and London’s corporate-financier elites’ hit list.
Original with embedded links to supporting material at:
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/al-qaeda-paradox-freedom-fighters-who.html
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Hi BFP, I made a post this morning (Mon, Feb 13th) that still shows as “awaiting moderation”. Could you release it please. I think the information it contains is important for everyone to be aware of in these troubled times.
Thanks
Hi Green Monkey,
Done. I (Robert) still don’t buy that tinfoil hat garbage that Bush planned and executed 9/11, but there is much more truth about how the world is manipulated in some of the stuff you’re posting IMHO. Marcus does things differently when he moderates but that’s him and this is me and this will tell him to leave your stuff up.
R.
I (Robert) still don’t buy that tinfoil hat garbage that Bush planned and executed 9/11
Well you aren’t the only one. I believe that inarticulate bumbler would have had a hard time planning an escape from a wet paper bag myself. On the other hand, there are many credentialed scientists, engineers, architects, academics, veteran US intelligence analysts, commercial pilots, US and foreign military veterans of senior rank (including ex US military fighter pilots) who believe that there has been a massive coverup as to the real circumstances leading up to and surrounding the 9/11 attacks. See: http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/ for some of their statements and position papers etc.
World Government. Don’t make Joke !!!
Any coming world Government would be a complete and utter disaster.
We can’t even agree on fishing rights between two tiny islands in the Caribbean. World government ? Run by who ? God perhaps? And even that would be most doubtful. Doubtful that God would even want anything to do with such nonsense.
Yes Green Monk,
Democracy, is on it’s way out. We should think ourselves lucky we were able to live under some of it, with comparative safety. But now the Dark Ages re-emerge, though not backed by a Pope this time. What will be the difference, none, none? Just as much hypocrisy, bloodshed, greed, slavery of one sort or another, continual wars, and all that go with wars and their results. And with all this Mankind will run through his remaining energy, the last of the oils and timber, the fresh drinkable water, the iron and aluminiums. Plastics will cover every beach and choke everything that lives in the seas, together with the floating mines that blow off legs and arms. Starvation will spread across an Earth where nobody is safe to farm and the waters are polluted with atomic fall out. That is what a world attempted Government would quickly evoke, like another USSR, and another Siberian slave campus. Even God would turn away and puke. So has become the nature of man.
i went to Cheffette black rock and i was taking pictures of my son and his friends then i was told i could not take pictures in there. Should there not be a sign saying that person are not allowed to take pictures in there?
Those who advocate World Government !
How could anybody, who has closely followed the flounderings and escapades of the European Union, ever dream of advocating a single world government. Lo! We forget what happened to such an attempt in our own W.I. back yards.
Questions surround government’s actions in “underwear” bomber case
– Doug Hagmann & Joseph Hagmann Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Commonly referenced as the “underwear bomber” or the “Christmas Day bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was sentenced to life in prison last week by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds in a Michigan court. He unexpectedly pleaded guilty on October 12, 2011 (day two of his trial) to eight felony counts, including attempted murder and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, related to reported attempt to detonate an explosive hidden in his underwear while aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253 flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009. There were 279 passengers and 11 crewmembers aboard that flight.
While it is indisputable that Islamic terrorists indeed exist and target the West, there are a number of things very wrong with the official account of this event. The problems begin well before Abdulmutallab ever stepped foot aboard flight 253 and continue through today. Moreover, the fact-a-phobic media appears to have been neutered with regard to reporting on this very questionable scenario.
Bomber allowed to board plane with explosives
As ugly and conspiratorial as it sounds, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was permitted to board flight 253 with explosives despite being identified as a terrorist.
You need not take our word for it, however. Undersecretary of Management at the U.S. State Department, Patrick F. Kennedy, disclosed this tidbit during a January 27, 2010 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Appearing uncomfortable throughout the questioning, Kennedy testified that Abdulmutallab appeared on a terrorist watch list before and on the day of the attempted bombing. Kennedy’s testimony seemed stained and contradictory at times, but he made it clear that Abdulmutallab was permitted to proceed on board the flight at the direction of a person and agency that he would reveal only in camera, or privately to the committee.
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Despite all of the oddities surrounding Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (and there are many more than listed here), the Department of Homeland Security and all of the agencies people involved, not one of our elected officials has appeared to have any desire to disclose the truth of flight 253. Additionally, the corporate media has been AWOL to the point of complicity.
It’s time for Americans to demand accountability – or resignations.
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=160155#160155
Game of Creation.
Oh come, ye Dawn of star-filled hair and laughing eyes,
The Flame of youth is yet, once more potent with Sun’s
Rise.
That we, once more a silent path shalt tread,
to yield ‘mongst fallen petals of frangipani,
So soft a bed.
And in such peace-filled corner of the hubbub, softly
slouched, make game of ‘That’ which made of us,…
So much.
c.l.b. With slight flinching from Khayyam.
Maybe it would be safer to have all Americans resign, then the rest of the world would find out what it had missed. As it is, they are no longer allowed to pour aid and help into countries when those countries and their people are under extreme duress. The Russians and the Chinese have put a stop to that.
You don’t have to listen to the absolute horror of Syria, you’ve a control, just turn off the radio or television, and don’t read the papers. There’s sand dunes down in the Scotland district you can bury your head under.
Oh yes, sure, somebody will come up with a reason to blame Syria’s problems on America. The conspiracy theorists are hard at work already, bet you! An don’t shout for God either. He done gone looking for a more peaceful planet. I don’t think he’ll make the same mistake about an Adam and Eve again, or hum possibilities of peace on Earth, good will towards all men. Hiroshima looks like a wonderful city now, you’d never believe. And atomic radiation was supposed to last thousands of years. So everything is a lot screwed up, and counting. It is all what makes life so interesting, and uncertain. We hold on by our teeth and nails.
Nature, itself, was based on conflict, the strongest, etc, and we’ve spent a couple thousand years thinking it wasn’t, and trying to prove Christ will return and make everything perfect.
The sanctity of life.
It’s those guys who died thinking of their 72 virgins waiting for them.
There’s no need of creation in the spirit world, so there’s no bodies, and so, no way to make use of 72 virgins, far less one. There must be many who look back and wish they have lived more sensible lives after they have given their lives for King and country, or for causes with little or no merit, or for Gods they were brainwashed into believing really did exist. There must be many millions who wished they’d never allowed them selves to be dubbed into such deaths. Oh yes, you can understand why one would lose life attempting to save another. There are those of us who have been called upon to do that and have done it gladly, and with luck not lost our own. Or maybe we did, and just don’t know it ???
In age, comes a certain clarity, a certain derangement, a point where you really don’t any longer wish to tolerate the status quo of what you know is just pure bull shit. In other words, you are fed up attempting to appease those who need to knuckle down and do some real work, long hours, without sleep if need be, without food, if it so happens, in all the worst weather and under all sorts of extreme conditions, just so they appreciate what being alive is really all about. CLB.
Why The Law Forbids The Medicinal Use of Natural Substances
According to the FDA’s legal definition, a drug is anything that “diagnoses, cures, mitigates, treats, or prevents a disease.”
The problem with this definition is that there are numerous substances, as readily available and benign as those found on our spice racks, which have been proven by countless millennia of human experience to mitigate, prevent and in some cases cure disease, and which cannot be called drugs according to the FDA.
SNIP
Historically the FDA has required new drugs undergo expensive and elaborate multi-phased clinical trials, which are out of the grasp of any ordinary interest who might want to demonstrate the efficacy of a non-patentable (and therefore unprofitable) herb, food or spice.
The average out-of-pocket cost for obtaining a new drug approval is US$ 802 million dollars.[1] Therefore, an investor putting capital into bringing to market a substance that does not lend itself to market exclusivity, and therefore cannot produce a return on investment, is committing economic suicide, if not also breaking the law. The investor actually has a legally-binding fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make a profit. Hence, capital will not flow into any would-be commodity that can be produced or obtained with ease, including most things that grow freely on this Earth.
SNIP
Inadvertently, some of the very same companies and interests which require that natural substances not receive the same drug-approval status as synthetic ones, are funding research that prove basic vitamins, foods and spices are as effective or more effective – and usually much safer – than the drugs they are developing to replace or supplant them.
This means that tens of thousands of studies do exist showing that natural substances may prevent and/or treat disease, at least in the in vitro (test tube) and animal models. These results often confirm traditional uses in Ayurvedic, Chinese, and other traditional systems of medicine, and therefore may be compelling enough for individuals or healthcare practitioners to use the information to inform their treatment decisions.
SNIP
For additional information on the remarkable research supporting the use of Turmeric and Curcumin in medicine, watch the video below. Join our Facebook research page on Turmeric for updates: Turmeric — What The Research Reveals
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/02/why-law-forbids-medicinal-use-of.html
Should Corporations Have More Leeway to Kill Than People Do?
By PETER WEISS
Published: February 24, 2012
NEXT week, the Supreme Court will hear a case with many potential ramifications for American and international law, and for corporate responsibility for human rights around the globe. The justices will be asked to decide whether the corporations to which they have been extending the rights of individuals should also be held accountable for crimes against human rights, just as individuals are.
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The question of whether foreign corporations doing business in the United States can be sued here for crimes committed elsewhere has arrayed international businesses against human rights advocates, with many “friend of the court” briefs filed on both sides. Four governments have also chimed in: Britain, the Netherlands and Germany for the corporate defendant and the United States on the side of the Nigerian plaintiffs.
The story behind the Kiobel case is compelling: The plaintiffs are members of the Ogoni people in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, where Royal Dutch Shell had extensive oil operations in the 1990s through contracts with the brutal military dictatorship that held power at the time. The region is widely considered a zone of calamity, in terms of both environmental and human rights. In the suit, Royal Dutch Shell was accused of assisting the Nigerian government in torturing and, through sham trials, executing Ogoni activists who had threatened to disrupt Shell’s operations because of the devastating health and environmental effects of unregulated drilling practices. The plaintiffs are either victims of torture themselves or had relatives who were executed. Esther Kiobel, the plaintiff after whom the suit is named, is the widow of a victim.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Royal Dutch Shell and against the plaintiffs, multinational corporations — particularly in mining and other extractive industries — could draw the lesson that it is now safer to forge alliances with autocratic regimes that have poor human rights records because they will not be judged culpable in the way individuals can be.
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A decision affirming that Shell should go unpunished in the Niger Delta case would leave us with a Supreme Court that seems of two minds: in the words of Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent from Citizens United, it threatens “to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation” by treating corporations as people to let them make unlimited political contributions, even as it treats corporations as if they are not people to immunize them from prosecution for the most grievous human rights violations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/opinion/should-corporations-have-more-leeway-to-kill-than-people-do.html?_r=2