Hurricane Povertina

From Left Turn: New Orleans Reports by Jordan Flaherty

As a new threat, Hurricane Rita, approaches the Gulf Coast, evacuations are once again suggested for those New Orleanians who had gradually been returning to the devastated city, and also those who had sought refuge in Houston.

In a series of stunning articles, Jordan Flaherty, a native of New Orleans, chronicles the disaster and suggests more harm was and is being done by officials and those seeking to profit from the tragedy than from Katrina.

Dubya's Mom puts her foot in it

By E&P Staff
Published: September 05, 2005 7:25 PM ET updated 8:00 PM

Accompanying her husband, former President George
H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in
Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the
poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated,

"This is working very well for them."

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of
evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost
everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to
Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of
scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Audio Link

Happy Anniversary Little Muddy

Damn ! A whole year went by in publishing these posts, and I even went thru a crisis of why I was doing this recently and whether I should continue. The Don Quixote complex again. But I've come through it and if YOU're reading this it's worth it to have a voice in this increasingly impersonal world.

So happy anniversary Little Muddy, and may the Great Spaghetti Monster be with you.

Another Theory of Human Origins | Bayosphere

Yes, I know, It's on the "about" Blogger link, but in case you missed it, here is some of the humour I promised. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster be with you and in your everyday thoughts. IT is king and lord and cannot stand us. Understandably.

Pat Robertson and Religious Evil

The airwaves have been full of Pat Robertsons advocating the US assassination of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan Prezident. Of course the elimination of Chavez has been at the forground of US strategic thinking long before they engineered the "coup" that deposed him as president for 24 hours until a massive popular revolt and the support of the army placed him back in office.

His major crime was that he insisted that the bounties of oil profits should benefit the poor rather than the oligarchy. Since Venezuela is also the 3rd largest supplier of oil to the US, after Saudi Arabia and Canada this made them nervous.

Despite his many "democratic" elections since then, the Bush administration, who wants to impose US-style democracy on Iraq, has done everything it can to isolate and topple him. Unfortunately his esteem has only increased in Latin America and inspires other regions under US imperialist domination to rebel, such as Bolivia and Equador. It also doesn't increase his popularity with the US that he is chummy with Cuba's Fidel Castro and uses their donation of some 300 doctors to alleviate the suffering in the poor districts. He in turn besides using oil profits to help the poor, is also offering oil at bargain basement prices to his latin american neighbors. One of the greatest fears of the US policy analysts has to be, what if the huge country of Argentina were to be infected with this Bolivarism.

Weirdly or predictably enough, the liberal and social democratic left, view him as a despotic ruler. Their great white hope is Lulu the President of Brazil, a former union leader who will show the way (responsibly) in Latin America. His government is presently under crisis because of corrupt actions by some of his ministers. So far he's given in to almost all the demands of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund which have so castrated any efforts by poor countries to improve their situation. Usually they demand the privatisation of state-owned enterprises like energy or water supply as well as cutbacks in social assistance. Sounds to me the IMF and World Bank are purveyors of Revolution. Bless their secret souls, torn by the evident injustices.

Pat Robertson is aware of this and vocalized what Bush, Cheny, and Rumsfield think and try to implement. Their response to the issue was that individuals have a right to their own opinion. But Robertson was not simply voicing these "opinions" to his fellow workers or neighbors, he was voicing them to the multitude of the "700 club" tv audience. Surely advocating the assassination of a head of a country publically is as heinious as publicly advocating "hate crimes" and should be prosecuted by law.
Of course Robertson will not suffer anything like the fate of Dan Rather for voicing what everyone knows is true. The religious right has too much power and is also one of the last bastions of support for Bush whose approval rating now is at 40%.

Robertson likes to wrap himself in the US flag and identifies with the US founders, especially Thomas Jefferson. Here is another take on that from the mouth of Jefferson and another from Thomas Payne whose book "The Rights of Man" in response to the British conservative Edmonde Burke's condemnation of the French revolution in 1790, resulted in his imprisionment for 2 years in France. It is still an inspiring book which has been little accorded the respect it deserves, perhaps because it espouses the beliefs that Americans say they stand for.

Cindy Sheehan : No more Bushit

Cindy Sheehan' blunt, take no prisoners approach has been remarkably successful and may even spark the Iraq War's first 'tipping point'.

The Monsanto Pig (Patent pending)

One way or another, Monsanto wants to make sure no food is grown that they don't own -- and the record shows they don't care if it's safe for the environment or not. Monsanto has aggressively set out to bulldoze environmental concerns about its genetically engineered (GE) seeds at every regulatory level.

So why stop in the field? Not content to own the pesticide and the herbicide and the crop, they've made a move on the barnyard by filing two patents which would make the corporate giant the sole owner of that famous Monsanto invention: the pig.

The patent applications were published in February 2005 at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. A Greenpeace researcher who monitors patent applications, Christoph Then, uncovered the fact that Monsanto is seeking patents not only on methods of breeding, but on actual breeding herds of pigs as well as the offspring that result.

"If these patents are granted, Monsanto can legally prevent breeders and farmers from breeding pigs whose characteristics are described in the patent claims, or force them to pay royalties," says Then. "It's a first step toward the same kind of corporate control of an animal line that Monsanto is aggressively pursuing with various grain and vegetable lines."

BONO, GELDORF, OXFAM, AND BLAIR - THE LIVE-8 BOONDOGGLE

Africa needs justice not charity An excellent analysis of the G8 agreement.

Casual readers of the newspaper headlines could be forgiven for believing that the leaders of the richest and most powerful countries have had a miraculous change of heart. If the papers are to be believed, the key decades-long demand of the global justice movement — debt cancellation — had been agreed to, thanks to an unlikely alliance between Tony Blair’s British Labour government, leading aid agencies and pop “legends” Bob Geldof and Bono. However, the devil is in the details, as Green Left Weekly’s Norm Dixon discovers.

“$55-billion debts write-off agreed”, declared the June 11 British Guardian. “Debtor nations freed of burdens”, the Los Angeles Times announced on June 12. “Victory for Millions”, trumpeted the June 12 British Observer. “Blair, Bono Win One for Africa”, cooed the June 13 Christian Science Monitor. “Debt deal just the beginning, says Geldof”, assured the June 13 Sydney Morning Herald.

Also:
THE G8 SUMMIT: A FRAUD AND A CIRCUS

Tony Blair's "vision for Africa" is about as patronising and exploitative as a stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added). By John Pilger New Statesman

The front page of the London Observer on 12 June announced, "55 billion dollar Africa debt deal 'a victory for millions'." The "victory for millions" is a quotation of Bob Geldof, who said, "Tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you or me a penny...". The nonsense of this would be breathtaking if the reader's breath had not already been extracted by the unrelenting sophistry of Geldof, Bono, Blair, the Observer et al.

Africa's imperial plunder and tragedy have been turned into a circus for the benefit of the so-called G8 leaders due in Scotland next month and those of us willing to be distracted by the barkers of the circus: the establishment media and its "celebrities". The illusion of an anti establishment crusade led by pop stars - a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion - serves to dilute a great political movement of anger. In summit after summit, not a single significant "promise" of the G8 has been kept, and the "victory for millions" is no different. It is a fraud - actually a setback to reducing poverty in Africa. Entirely conditional on vicious, discredited economic programmes imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, the "package" will ensure that the "chosen" countries slip deeper into poverty.

Is it any surprise that this is backed by Blair and his treasurer, Gordon Brown, and George Bush; even the White House calls it a "milestone"? For them, it is an important facade, held up by the famous and the naive and the inane. Having effused about Blair, Geldof describes Bush as "passionate and sincere" about ending poverty. Bono has called Blair and Brown "the John and Paul of the global development stage". Behind this front, rapacious power can "re-order" the lives of millions in favour of totalitarian corporations and their control of the world's resources.

The Mugging of the American Dream

I seem to be posting more of Bill Moyers all the time, but he is one of the few US journalists not being simply a mouthpiece for the Bush administation.

This is from a speech he gave on June 3 at the Take Back America conference in Washington DC.

A profound transformation is occurring in America and those responsible for it don't want you to connect the dots. We are experiencing what has been described as a "fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power." From public land to water and other natural resources, from media with their broadcast and digital spectrums to scientific discoveries and medical breakthroughs, a broad range of America's public resources is being shifted to the control of elites and the benefit of the privileged. It all seems so clear now that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. Back in the early l970s President Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, predicted that "this country is going to go so far to the right that you won't recognize it." A wealthy right-winger of the time, William Simon, President Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury, wrote a polemic declaring that "funds generated by business...must rush by the multimillions" to conservative causes. Said Business Week, bluntly: "Some people will obviously have to do with less...It will be a bitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."

Son of Antiwar State Senator Becky Lourey Killed in Iraq

A poignant interview with Minnisota Senator Becky Lourey whose son died in Iraq 2 weeks ago. Senator Lourey had authored a resolution in the senate signed by 18 other state senators opposing the invasion of Iraq.

I was reminded of a black US friend of mine whose brother was killed in Viet-Nam. When I expressed my concern to her about him enlisting, that black youths were only fodder for US economic interests, she replied that she couldn't dissuade him since he was unemployed and said it would provide him with a job. Less than a year later he was killed in action. Senator Lourey and her husband had been activists in the movement against the war in Viet-Nam.

How The Right-Wing Took Over Another Medium Of Dissent

It seems that more and more I refer to Bill Moyers, one of the few remaining major journalists who hasn't succumbed to the Bush administration's shackling of the free press. Challenged by PBS in the docile corporate media coverage by most major media who obediently presented the Bush spin on events, the Republican "powers that be" moved to silence this opposition to their imperial power. Since the US hasn't yet descended to the traditional dictatorship solution of blowing up opposition offices or assassinating editors, and since the PBS is a government funded organisation, they
simply took over the funding organisation of the government.

Moyers blows the whistle on the coup and details the original hopes of public broadcasting which he helped set up. Audio and video clips can be found here

THIS IS THE WAY FREEDOM ENDS. NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER.

The IRON HEEL's noose tightens

gatesid

The right-wing Bush administration slipped a "security measure" into a military expenditure bill which was passed by the US Senate yesterday. Naturally few Senators would be seen opposing a Bill which would benefit "our boys in Iraq"

The Bill authorises the US government to institute an internal passport reminiscent of the infamous "required papers" under the Nazi regime in Occupied Europe. It would be required by all US citizens for identification, superceding state drivers licences and any other existing methods of identification. Among other things it would have means of verifying the identity of the ID Card holder up to such things as photos,fingerprints, or retinal eye-scans. It would include such things as home address, phone number, and occupation.

Bill Gates is shown here in an example he volunteered for in a similar Belgian initiative.

Civil liberty organizations have reponded with consternation at the rapidly introduced and passed bill.

That's the way your liberty dies, not with a bang , but a whimper.

US Democracy in Action

Kevin Sites
Originally uploaded by Little Muddy.

Kevan Sites is a freelance journalist who was "embedded" with US troops attacking the insurgents in Fallujah. He originally edited his video leaving out sensitive footage which he felt could enflame the event. He now regrets that decision and has released the full video coverage.

Sites was on assignment for NBC on Nov. 13, 2004, and was following a squad into a mosque that the day before insurgents were using to fire on U.S. troops. The Marines were part of a U.S.-led offensive to clear Fallujah of its insurgent strongholds.

Sites' video shows five men wounded from the previous day's fighting lying on the floor of the mosque. One Marine can be heard shouting to others that a man was only "playing dead."

The Marine corporal in question appears to fire a round from his weapon into the Iraqi's head, and another Marine says, "Dead now."


The U.S. Marine Corps announced that it won't prosecute that Marine corporal, who was not identified, for his actions.

Don Quixote

quijote

I must confess to less than full dilligence to the duty of faithfully blogging the myriad of news items that have passed my outraged comments. I guess like life, it will go in fits and starts. The current state of affairs in the world is so depressing that it becomes difficult to single out any new hypocrisy with anything more than resignation.

Mea Culpa.

But I do continue, not even sure that I reach even as many as in my daily conversations.
And if my contests with windmills fail I can also find a princess to rescue, tho my attempts to save our local bus service was valliant but not greatly successful.


Little Muddy

The Shit Done Hit The Fan

Captains Quarter Blog

The Gomery Commission's investigation into the Liberal party's Adscam hit a new high the last few days. Jean Brault, the head of a Quebec advertising agency with close ties to the Liberals, and who is facing criminal charges, gave explosive testimony on which the Commission placed a publication ban.

A conservative US blogger managed to get ahold of the details of the testimony and published it on his US blog where the canadian ban isn't effective. Now his blog has been swamped by canadians eager to know the "juicy bits". CTV "outed" the Blog and it can easily be found with a search engine like Gooogle.

Pundits are suggesting this could bring down the liberal government. Harper Conservatives who are salivating at the prospect might find a different outcome than what they hope for. It could result in a Liberal wipe-out in Quebec, where interest is high on the adscam scandal, and many in the rest of Canada who voted for the liberals in fear of a Harper government could turn to the NDP. Another minority government would be likely.

View from the West : Canada

Loyd Axworthy, a former Foreign Minister for the Chretien government and now President of Winnipeg University takes a gutsy stand on the Bush administration's Star Wars system. It reflects the views of most canadians.

Free Mojtaba and Arash Day Feb 22

The Committee to Protect Bloggers was established to counter the increasing
number of bloggers who are being subjected to arrest and harrassment world-wide.
The Committee's first campaign is 'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day' to be held today. And it is getting a lot of publicity. "Overwhelming, between PRI's The World, BBC, Slashdot, BoingBoing, we have over twice as much traffic as usual, halfway through the day. People are planning to do the day by the score," said Curt. When asked if this campaign will work and if the Iranian government will listen and release both Mojtaba and Arash, he told me about Sina, a freed Iranian blogger, "Sina credited the attention of the blogosphere for making the Iranian authorities extremely uncomfortable and letting him go. We're hoping the same thing will happen here."

The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation

In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.

As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.

As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

Vananda Shiva

Suicide Seed: Bombshell in Bangkok

Farmers-Struggle-Against-GMO

While the servile canadian press was strangely silent on the event, the internet was certainly abuzz with Canada's turnabout at a UN meeting in Bangkok where they attempted to overturn an international moratorium on the universally condemned "suicide seed" technology which prevents 2nd generation seeds from regenerating. The original leak came from the canadian-based ETC Group. It was followed up with a report of a speech to the conference by Percy Schmauser, the Saskatchewan farmer who was sued by Monsanto for allegedly using "their" patented Canola seeds.
Monsanto versus Schmauser

The Canadian National Farmers Union, has initiated a
"Seed Saver Campaign" to prevent regulatory changes proposed by the federally-funded and corporate-dominated "Seed Sector Review Panel" preventing canadian farmers from saving and using seeds developed over decades, many in association with taxpayer funded agencies and universities. The NFU also issued a statement condemning the canadian delegation's Bangkok proposals.
There are at least 2 quickly-organized US letter-writing campaigns and a British one. here and here
After being swamped this week by protest emails and letters, the Canadian government was forced to soften its public position on terminator, but it continued to press a solidly pro-terminator view in the corridors and in a committee to negotiate a draft text on Terminator.

"The draft text on Terminator released thursday morning was appalling-it looked like it was written by the multinational seed industry", sid Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, speaking from Bangkok. "It strongly reflected the Canadian government's pro-terminator position as revealed earlier this week in the leaked document"

Thomas reported that the Canadian bid to overturn the moratorium on GM Terminator Technologies (GURTS) was backed only by the Governments of New Zealand and Australia in the UN meeting. The United States has never ratified the Treaty and was not part of the 174 nation deliberations. It has always been a strong proponent of "Terminator" technology.

The UN conference rejected the draft report proposal.

Paranoid shift

paranoid.101

Michael Hasty makes a good case for your justified
fears in this Online Journal article.

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me. .....more

Who was the "ordinary" Iraqui Woman at The SOTU Session

It seems the "ordinary Iraqui" woman pointed out by Dubya in his State of the Union speech, who held up a purple-stained finger, showing she voted, is a very important figure in the ruling elite and strongly linked to US hardline front organisations and possibly linked, like Chalabri, to the CIA.
Brings to mind the little girl whose tearful testimony about Saddam's troops throwing babies from incubators to the floor, turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Pere Bush's campaign to whip up support for his Iraqui campaign. It was later completely discredited.
This post was quick off the mark in pointing out the latest subtle deception.

Scoop: William Rivers Pitt: The Story of the Ghost

"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967

Chuckman: Freedom on Steroids

chuckman-freedom%20march

John Chuckman is a former chief economist of Texaco Canada and an excellent journalist who has a different perspective than one could imagine from a corporate executive. His articles appear in dissadentvoice, yellowtimes, and counterpunch among others. He also has an ability with graphics which cut to the quick.

Freedom on Steroids: John Chuckman

A writer at The NY Times counted 27 references to freedom in Bush's inaugural speech. The speech contained not one reference to his ugly war in Iraq, but for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis the only freedom established by Bush's invasion was their freedom to miserable deaths or future lives as cripples.more...

Some other examples of his caustic art can be found here

Canada: A pawn of the US in Haiti

Yves Engler, a Montreal-based jounalist recently spent time in Haiti and points out the yellow journalism of the Canadian media as it relates to the Canadian role in Haiti.