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Et la guerre est à peine commencée…

“The sleep of our era is not a good sleep that provides rest. It’s an anxious sleep that leaves you feeling even more worn out, desiring only to go back to sleep again, to escape this irritating reality a little longer. There is a narcosis that begs for an even deeper narcosis. Those who, by luck or misfortune, awake from the prescribed sleep come into this world as lost children. Where are the words, where is the house, where are my ancestors, where are my loves, and where are my friends? There are none, my child. Everything has to be built. You must build the language that you will live in. You must build the house where you’ll no longer be alone. You must find the ancestors who will make you freer. And you must invent the new sentimental education through which, once again, you will love. And you must build all of this upon general hostility, because those who have awaken are the nightmare of those who are still asleep.”

Cf. Alberto Toscano, “The War against Pre-terrorism: The Tarnac 9 and The Coming Insurrection” (Radical Philosophy, March-April 2009); Comité invisible, L’insurrection qui vient (La fabrique editions, 2007); and The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection.

This film was made in New York in 2001, or so says bloom0101.org, where articles published by Tiqqun and tracts issued by the Comité invisible, both founded by Julien Coupat and his friends, may be read

MR Zine for more

By NICHOLAS WADE

It may be the ultimate free lunch — how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet.

It sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. Yet such drugs are now in clinical trials. Even if they should fail, as most candidate drugs do, their development represents a new optimism among research biologists that aging is not immutable, that the body has resources that can be mobilized into resisting disease and averting the adversities of old age.

NY Times for more

David Bauder, The Associated Press

NEW YORK – The General Electric Co. called a Fox News Channel report about the company supplying terrorists with material used in bombs “irresponsible and maliciously false” on Wednesday as a feud between Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann kept sizzling.
It was the first time that GE, the parent company of MSNBC and NBC News, had publicly responded to accusations made by O’Reilly on his Fox show.

Olbermann also kept up his attacks, naming O’Reilly his “worst person in the world” on Wednesday’s show for the GE story. The two men have taken their feud to a new level since The New York Times reported Aug. 1 that the chief executives of both parent corporations of the cable news channels – News Corp. as well as GE – had encouraged them to cool things down.

O’Reilly said on Tuesday that his show’s sources say there is a federal investigation into whether American companies supplied components being used in roadside bombs aimed at American soldiers. He said that radio frequency modules inside some bombs were part of a shipment made by a U.S. company to Corezing International, a Singapore company that does business with Iran.

O’Reilly said that his show “has been told but cannot confirm that the General Electric corporation is under suspicion in the case.”
GE spokesman Gary Sheffer said he was surprised by the report, given O’Reilly’s admission that he could not confirm GE’s involvement.
He said GE does not do business with Corezing or produce the radio frequency modules described in the report.

“We usually do not respond to the misleading and inaccurate claims made on this program because very few people take them seriously,” Sheffer said, “but tonight’s report took this smear campaign to a new low.”

A Fox News spokeswoman, Irena Briganti, had no immediate comment about GE’s statement. FBI spokesman Steve Kodak said the bureau does not comment about any investigations it may be doing.

Sheffer said he believed O’Reilly’s report was tied to the MSNBC feud.
Briganti did not comment on GE’s assertion that O’Reilly’s story was done because of the feud. Fox issued a statement last week about GE and NBC: “Both organizations are covered as news warrants.”

O’Reilly only briefly touched on the GE story during his show Wednesday, saying in response to a reader’s email that “we’re not making any accusations, but we’re staying on the story.”

Olbermann has named O’Reilly one of his “worst persons of the world” four times in the eight shows he’s done since report of the supposed truce. He condemned O’Reilly on Monday for spending too much time talking about O’Reilly’s own ratings.

“As a reporter, I wouldn’t send Bill O’Reilly to cover a john overflowing,” Olbermann said.

Macleans for more

Shiva, Vandana

Intensification of drought, floods and cyclones is one of the predictable impacts of climate change and climate instability. The failure of monsoon in India and the consequent drought, has impacted two thirds of India, especially the bread basket of India’s fertile gangetic plains. Bihar has had a 43% rainfall deficit, Jharkhand – 47%, Uttar Pradesh – 64%, Haryana – 61%, Punjab – 26%, Himachal Pradesh – 63%, Uttarakhand – 42%.

In the final analysis, India’s food security rests on the monsoon. Monsoon failure and widespread drought implies a deepening of the already severe food crisis triggered by trade liberalization policies which has made India the capital of hunger. It also implies a deepening of the water crisis which compelled me to write “Water Wars”.
…
In the 1970’s the World Bank gave massive loans to India to promote ground water mining. It forced states like Maharashtra to stop growing water prudent millets like jowar which needs 300 mm of water and shift to water guzzling crops like sugarcane which needs 2500 mm of water. In a region with 600mm rainfall and 10% ground water rechange, this is a recipe for water famine (see Navdanya’s “Financing the Water Crisis).

A new study led by Matthew Rodell of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland published in “Nature” has shown water levels in North India have fallen by 1.6 inches (4 centimeters per year, between August 2002 and August 2008. More than 26 cubic miles (109 cubic km) of ground water have disappeared from aquifers between 2002 and 2008. Most of this ground water has been extracted for chemical, green revolution style farming.

Not only has water wasteful chemical agriculture mined ground water, it has also mined soil fertility and contributed to climate change. Chemical fertilizers destroy the living processes of the soil and make soils more vulnerable to drought. Chemical fertilizers also produce nitrogen oxygen, a greenhouse gas which is 300 times more potent the carbon dioxide.

The solution for the climate crisis, the food crisis, or the water crisis, under which India is reeling, the same biodiversity based organic farming systems.

Biodiverse ecological farms address the climate crisis by reducing emissions of Green House gases such as nitrogen oxide, and absorbing carbon dioxide in plants and in the soil. Biodiversity and soils are the most effective carbon sinks. They also help adapt to climate change and drought by increasing soil organic matter which increases the moisture holding capacity of soil, and hence provides drought proofing of agriculture.

…

Maximising biodiversity and organic matter production thus simultaneously increases climate resilience, food security and water security.
…
The severe drought in India will force the government to act. It is vital that the Government does not use this emergency to act as a marketer of GM seeds and Round-Up. The alternative is clear. It involves –

1. Conservation and large scale distribution of open pollinated varieties / open source seeds of water prudent crops.

2. The promotion of organic agriculture to increase climate resilience and food and water security.

3. Incentives to farmers for a shift from water guzzling green revolution agriculture to water conserving biodiverse organic farming. Farmers did not create the green revolution. They should not be punished for its consequences. They need to be encouraged to create alternatives.

While long term ecological security, food security and water security needs these transition, the immediate emergency needs the provisioning of food and water to the drought hit areas.

Z for more

(Reuters)

KABUL – There is no doubt who the strongmen are backing in Afghanistan’s presidential election on Thursday.

One by one, the ethnic chieftains whose militia armies dominated the country during decades of war, have lined up to pledge their support for the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai.

Polls show that should be enough to keep the veteran ruler in power for another five years — if not with a first-round victory this week, then in a run-off six weeks later.

But many Afghans and foreign diplomats worry that backroom deals made to secure Karzai’s re-election could restore old guerrilla bosses to positions of patronage and power and set back efforts to improve how the country is run.

“Definitely, the next government of Karzai will include some violators of human rights, commanders and warlords,” said Mohammad Qasim Akhgar, an Afghan writer and analyst.

“Government positions, cabinet or provincial posts, will be distributed on the basis of the percentage of the votes they bring to Karzai. I think this is clear fact and a done deal.”

Karzai, who took power in an internationally brokered deal after the Taliban fell in 2001 and easily won the country’s first democratic presidential election three years later, says his outreach to former guerrillas is not aimed at dividing power among fiefs, but at creating “national partnership”.

His talents as a conciliator are a main theme of his election campaign, and he wins regular cheers at his rallies with a vow to seek a peace deal with Taliban insurgents.

Many of Karzai’s latest ex-guerrilla allies are men the president had carefully managed to sideline in recent years.

Most recently Karzai won a last-minute endorsement from Energy Minister Ismail Khan, a former guerrilla commander whom Karzai had summoned to Kabul years ago to remove from his powerful post as governor of the western province of Herat.

In the north, Karzai has secured the backing of Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek guerrilla commander with a particularly brutal reputation, who won 10 percent of the vote in 2004.

Karzai’s two vice presidential running mates are former militia commanders, from the Tajik and Hazara groups. He has also won the backing of former guerrilla chiefs from his own Pashtun ethnic group, such as Gul Agha Sherzai, a powerful governor who had contemplated running against him.

Influence Gained in War
Afghanistan’s ex-guerrilla chiefs acquired influence in the struggle against the decade-long Soviet occupation in the 1980s, when they fought with the backing of the West.

They later fought each other after the demise of the Moscow backed-government in 1992, causing tens of thousands of deaths.

After helping the United States remove the Taliban in 2001, many were given top positions in Karzai’s government, which they held onto for years, fighting turf battles, growing conspicuously wealthy and building themselves marble palaces in Kabul.

Under pressure from the international community, over the last couple of years Karzai has replaced some with technocrats and professionals
The U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has raised the alarm that former warlords could return to replace those newly-appointed technocrats and Karzai’s opponents have also taken up the charge.

“The problem is that this government has turned into a contract among ethnic entrepreneurs,” Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister said during a campaign trip last week. “There are a number of people who in the name of being Pashtun or Hazara or Uzbek or other groups come and claim to speak for them. They don’t speak for these people. They haven’t done anything to change the lives of these people,” he said.

Daad Noorani, a veteran journalist, said it is simply a fact of life in Afghanistan that no one can hold power without the support of the former Mujahideen.

“There will not be much change. The Mujahideen groups are another layer of power in Afghanistan and whoever has their support will win, and that person is Karzai.”

Guerrilla chiefs will pick allies as ministers or governors, and if Karzai tries to block them they could turn against him and foment more instability, said Mohammad Moin Marastyal, a former deputy minister under Karzai, now a member of parliament.

“I do not see the prospect for good,” he said.

Khaleej Times for more

A Deadbeat Banker
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

This is the story of a deadbeat banker. His name is Allen Stanford and he was once known as the $7 billion man. Now, he faces federal indictments that charge him with running a vast Ponzi scheme that bilked depositors out of billions.

Born in Mexia, Texas, the mysterious arc of Stanford’s career sees him rise from burger-flipping gym rat in Waco to globe-trotting banker, a lord of cricket, a friend (and travel agent) of politicians. His robust resume also includes strangely intimate histories with numerous female acquaintances (known in his circle as the “Outside Wives”), as well as the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Blinking stridently on the radar of federal investigators at various agencies for more than 20 years, Stanford’s banking empire was finally shut down in February by the Securities Exchange Commission, which claims, in self-congratulatory language, that Stanford’s fraudulent operations put the “integrity of the markets” at risk. Stanford and six of his partners now face an imposing list of charges, ranging from banking fraud to bribery of regulatory officials in Antigua to personal enrichment from the vaults of depositors.

Stanford, who was taken into federal custody by the FBI, denies all. He claims that the sudden insolvency of his banking operations stemmed not from embezzlement or fraud but from, in the words of his lawyer Dick DeGuerin, “the SEC’s heavy-handed actions.” Now there’s a first.

Left to sort their way through the rubble of Stanford International are more than 30,000 angry depositors, many from Latin America, who bought certificates of deposit, and other glittering financial instruments from Stanford-owned banks, only to discover, according to federal investigators, that Stanford had diverted large chunks of those deposits into his own accounts to support the familiar playthings of today’s high roller: personal jets, yachts, sports teams, restaurants, women and gaudy mansions, including a 57-room palazzo in Coral Gables that is ringed by a moat.

Still, connoisseurs of financial crimes–and perhaps even the principals, themselves–are scratching their heads as to why the Stanford case, with its rich veins of scandal, sex and villainy, has yet to generate the same kind of media and governmental outrage sparked by the crimes of that other master Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff. Some speculate that Madoff picked the pockets of a finer class of clientele: movie stars, writers, socialites, charitable foundations Holocaust survivors. Stanford’s victims, on the other hand, were either Latin American or obscure residents of the Sun Belt with more new money than they knew how to handle. Others hint at an even darker narrative involving the fruitful and symbiotic relationship many off-shore banks in the Caribbean have enjoyed over the decades with certain secretive federal agencies.

Counterpunch for more

A 37-year-old teacher, community center founder, and anti-mining activist is found tortured and assassinated in Northern El Salvador. Authorities, despite all evidence to the contrary, attribute the death to common gang violence. In the following weeks, other critics of mining are victims of death threats, attempted kidnappings and shootings. Communities plunged into fear not seen since the Civil War of the 1980s place the blame on the presence of Pacific Rim, a Canadian gold mining company.

Comments from Registered Members

sunrise 2009-08-16
Google: The Anti-Empire Report August 4th, 2009 by William Blum; www.killinghope.org; Keeping track of the empire’s crimes. ; http://www.infowars.com/preparing-for-martial-law-international-swine-flu-conference-to-be-held-in-washington; http://www.prolognet.qc.ca/clyde/camp.htm.; .org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares; you can order from Netflix; pl. forward the web-sites.
Transcript
JESSE FREESTON, PRODUCER, TRNN: Over the past month and a half, with the region’s attention fixed on the coup in Honduras, a campaign of violence and fear has intensified in El Salvador, shedding light on the culture of impunity that persists in much of Central America. The events have been centered in the northern state of Cabañas, which shares more than just a border with southern Honduras: the people on both sides live on top of the Central American gold vein, where Canadian mining companies have claims on the metal beneath.

The Real News for more
(Submitted by Reader)

By Engler, Yves

Even a close observer of the Canadian press would know almost nothing about the ongoing demonstrations, blockades and work stoppages calling for the return of elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since Zelaya was overthrown by the military on June 28 the majority of teachers in Honduras have been on strike. Recently, health workers, air traffic controllers and taxi drivers have also taken job action against the coup. In response the military sent troops to oversee airports and hospitals across the country.

For more than a week protesters from all corners of the country walked 20 km a day and on Tuesday tens of thousands of demonstrators converged on the country’s two biggest cities, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. These demonstrations prompted the de facto regime to reimpose a curfew in the capital, which had been in effect in the weeks after the coup.

This resistance – taking place under the threat of military repression – has gone almost entirely unreported by leading Canadian media. So has Canada’s tacit support for the coup.

Last Tuesday the ousted Honduran Foreign Affairs Minister told TeleSur that Canada and the US were providing “oxygen” to the military government. Picked up by numerous Spanish language newspapers, Patricia Rodas called on Canada and the US to suspend aid to the de facto regime.

During an official visit to Mexico with Zelaya last week, Rodas asked Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who was about to meet Harper and Obama, to lobby Ottawa and Washington on their behalf. “We are asking [Calderon] to be an intermediary for our people with the powerful countries of the world, for example, the US and at this moment Canada, which have lines of military and economic support with Honduras.”

To my knowledge, no Canadian media reported Rodas’ comments. Nor did any Canadian media mention that Canada’s ambassador to Costa Rica, Neil Reeder, met coup officials in Tegucigalpa last week. The Canadian media has also ignored the fact that Canada is the only major donor to Honduras yet to sever any aid to the military government.

Z for more
(Submitted by reader)

Written by Humberto Márquez

(This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

(Tierramérica) – The Ecosystems Map of the Northern and Central Andes could serve as a guide for environmental conservation of this South American area covering 1.5 million square kilometres and holding the world’s highest concentration of biodiversity.

The tropical Andes, the stretch of the mountain range that includes the Central Andes (Bolivia and Peru) and Northern Andes (Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela), were dubbed the “global epicentre of biodiversity” by British ecologist Norman Myers.

The zone holds 45,000 types of plants (20,000 of which are endemic) and 3,400 vertebrate animal species (more than 1,500 of which are endemic) on just one percent of the planet’s land surface, according to figures from Conservation International.

These riches “are distributed among 133 specific ecosystems that we have inventoried for our map of areas at more than 500 metres of altitude, of which 77 are in Peru, 69 in Bolivia, 31 in Ecuador, 22 in Colombia and 21 in Venezuela,” environmentalist Eulogio Chacón-Moreno, head of the project in Venezuela, told Tierramérica.

The map, initially presented in April, was conceived as a tool to “identify gaps and priorities for conservation in the national agencies for protected areas, and to develop a set of indicators that allows us to assess the state of conservation of the Andean ecosystems,” said Chacón-Moreno.

Upside Down World for more