Brad Will a wonderful soulmate that went before
Kathy Change
"CALL ME A FLAMING RADICAL BURNING FOR ATTENTION, BUT MY REAL INTENTION IS TO SPARK A DISCUSSION OF HOW WE CAN PEACEFULLY TRANSFORM OUR WORLD. AMERICA, I OFFER MYSELF TO YOU AS AN ALARM AGAINST ARMAGEDDON AND A TORCH FOR LIBERTY. "
Kathy Change/October 1996
Brad Will's Spirit Lives in this song
And if you don’t make it through this fight I swear I’ll tell your tale
Brad sings “The Solidarity Song” also known as the Teargas song - was the defiant anthem of the resistance to the World Trade Organization that took place in Seattle in 1999. Originally written by Desert Rat, a comrade, Brad added a verse or two of his own, about forests and preserving ecological integrity of this planet; something Brad was dedicated to while he was alive. Brad sang this song in a squat in Amsterdam in 2000. We were in Amsterdam because of the United Nations talks on Climate Change. We were involved with the protests intended to pressure nations and politicians to take real meaningful measures to address the threat of global warming, mass extinction, pollution, etc., (Still waiting for that…!) Brad's songs and his way of singing touched us deep and inspired thousands. He sang from his heart and gave it everything he had. That's also how he lived his life until he was killed at the tender age of 36. Brad’s singing fills my soul with joy though the loss of him still cuts most deeply…
Lyrics to the song Brad Will is singing above
Brad and Malachi and Cathy, and others , will be missed because they made choices according to their dreams. And that looks to me like the most pragmatic and realistic thing you can do.
I’ve seen the land beyond these borders where the corporations rule
And they spin their lies and they globalize and the working man’s their tool
And the streams are so polluted that their banks are bleak and bare
And the babies all are born deformed and the smog is everywhere
And the workers’ wages dropped thirty percent in just one year
Now the greedy bastards want to bring that situation here
And you called upon me brother and you asked what could I do
And I told the truth dear brother, when I spoke these words to you:
I will stand beside your shoulder when the tear gas fills the sky
And if a national guardsman shoots me down I’ll be lookin’ him in the eye
And if I will wash their pepper from your face and go with you to jail
And if you don’t make it through this fight I swear I’ll tell your tale
And I will stay with you in the prison cell in solidarity
And I will not leave that cursed room ’til you walk out with me
For we the people fight for freedom while the cops just fight for pay
And as long as truth is in our hearts we’re sure to win some day
I will not falter when the iron fist comes out of the velvet glove
I will stand beside you brother and defend this land I love
I’ve heard the tales from conquered islands where the sweatshop barons rule
Recruiting girls from the Asian slums to be the rich man’s tool
And they’re promised lives of luxury in the golden U.S.A.
And then they’re stranded on these islands with their passports stripped away
And their aging fingers toil and bleed year after grueling year
Now the greedy bastard want to bring those same conditions here
And you called upon me sister and you asked what could I do
And I told the truth dear sister, when I spoke these words to you:
“I will stand beside your shoulder when the tear gas fills the sky
And if a national guardsman shoots me down I’ll be lookin’ him in the eye
And if I will wash their pepper from your face and go with you to jail
And if you don’t make it through this fight I swear I’ll tell your tale
And I will stay with you in the prison cell in solidarity
And I will not leave that cursed room ’til you walk out with me
For we the people fight for freedom while the cops just fight for pay
And as long as truth is in our hearts we’re sure to win some day
I will not falter when the iron fist comes out of the velvet glove
I will stand beside you brother and defend this land I love
I’ve walked the tall and misty forests, pulsing vein from ancient time
And they’ll cut the heart out of a mountain to kill the oldest thing alive
Now the rainforest dwellers smell a burning, and the ‘dozers are close behind
Replaced with plantations and cattle, plowing under whatever they find
With the rain comes a raging mudslide, where the land was stripped and cleared
Now those greedy bastards want to bring those same conditions here
I’ve watched the oceans rolling, schools of fish running under the tide
Working fishermen grounding their bodies, starving on a hook and line
While industrial fishers haul in their nets, scoring the deep ocean floor
Dolphin and sea turtle snagged in those nets will ride those waves no more
They rip the heart out of the deep blue sea, their boats increase every year
Now the greedy bastards want to push their bloody products here
And you called upon me brother and you asked what could I do
And I told the truth dear brother, when I spoke these words to you:
I will stand beside your shoulder when the tear gas fills the sky
And if a national guardsman shoots me down I’ll be lookin’ him in the eye
And if I will wash their pepper from your face and go with you to jail
And if you don’t make it through this fight I swear I’ll tell your tale
And I will stay with you in the prison cell in solidarity
And I will not leave that cursed room ’til you walk out with me
For we the people fight for freedom while the cops just fight for pay
And as long as truth is in our hearts we’re sure to win some day
I will not falter when the iron fist comes out of the velvet glove
I will stand beside you brother and defend this land I love
I will not falter when the iron fist comes out of the velvet glove
I will stand beside you brother and defend this land I love
- By Desert Rat and Brad
Braceros in latin-american studies
The Dallas Morning News
January 27, 2002
Braceros want an old promise met
Mexicans who worked in U.S. in '40s seek to recoup hundreds of millions in unpaid wages
By ALFREDO CORCHADO and RICARDO SANDOVAL / The Dallas Morning News
HERMOSILLO, Mexico – Every day it gets harder for Zenaido Ramírez Bernal to compete with the drone from the oversized air
conditioner that keeps the torrid heat out of his tidy home in this desert city.
While Mr. Ramírez has a sturdy body, strong hands and a prominent set of bright brown eyes, his reedy voice is fading. But if the
94-year-old is slowly giving way to time, his recollections of his prime are not.
In the summer of 1942, Mr. Ramírez was the first Mexican laborer to sign up for work in the United States during World War II as part of
a guest-worker program. He and thousands of other Mexicans came to help the United States fight the war.
The men, called braceros – Spanish for strong arms – were needed to tend farms, work on the nation's railroads and otherwise provide the muscle to keep
America's economic engine churning and its people fed.
"I was the first. I was proud of that because it meant helping our neighbor when he needed it," Mr. Ramírez said, fumbling with a
yellowed work card stamped No. 1 by the Mexican Labor Ministry. "In California, the bosses and the other workers would forget
my name and just called me 'Uno.'
"The other men seemed to look up to me because of that. But it never earned me anything special."
The bracero experience in the United States has largely gone untold, but that may change. A group of aging braceros has filed a
lawsuit seeking to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages they say are owed them by the Mexican and American
governments.
The money had been withheld from their pay between 1942 and 1948 and was supposed to go into saving accounts that the two
governments had set up as incentives for the guest workers to return home. It was to be the braceros' nest eggs.
About 300,000 braceros worked in the United States between 1942 and 1948. By 1964, an estimated 3 million braceros had held
jobs in America.
The U.S. government maintains the lawsuit belongs in Mexican courts. The Mexican government insists it is immune from suits filed
in foreign courts and says it has no documentation to support the braceros' claim.
But documents examined by The Dallas Morning News show that in the 1940s, both governments kept ample records of what
each bracero was owed, and both governments recorded scores of complaints about missing savings.
The money apparently was mismanaged by Mexican officials in the 1940s or lost in the complex bracero bureaucracy, according to
the documents.
"This is a classic human-rights issue where we're talking about the interest of individuals who were wronged," said Bill Lee, one of a
team of lawyers who have taken up the guest workers' cause.
"This is also about a greater social issue. This is important to the Hispanic community because this is about the community's soldiers
in the field who are now seeking justice," said Mr. Lee, a top civil rights prosecutor in the Clinton administration and now a partner
in the San Francisco-based law firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heinmann and Bernstein.
Lawyers representing the U.S. and Mexican governments in the case refused to comment, as did U.S. Justice Department officials
in Washington, and Interior and Foreign Ministry officials in Mexico City.
Privately, however, some officials suggested that if it's proved that braceros' savings were never repaid, some kind of settlement is
likely. Both governments might contribute to a fund for payment to the few hundred surviving braceros, the officials said.
Some migration activists say the ex-braceros' lawsuits are a vital test case for the two countries now engaged in talks over another
guest-worker deal.
"Before we do another program of this nature, we must take care of the old braceros," said Eliseo Medina, a Mexican immigrant
who is AFL-CIO executive vice president and a member of a binational advisory group on migration. "It would be too easy to
repeat the mistakes of the past, so we have to address those mistakes before we can move on."
Documents in the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Mexican National Archives indicate the bracero
program leaked money everywhere and that money that did reside in various government-run banks was badly managed.
For example, bracero complaints prompted a 1947 internal audit of the now-defunct Banco Agrícola of Mexico. It found that
bracero savings accounts totaling at least 12 million pesos – about $4 million – had not been distributed.
Banco Agrícola was the primary holder of wartime bracero savings accounts. In the document, bank officials say the money was
instead used to fund day-to-day branch operations.
Other documents, apparently from the Mexican president's office, show that government regulators scolded bank officials for
diverting bracero money to cover day-to-day bank operations. But there is no evidence that the savings accounts were ever
replenished.
In fact, another internal audit reports that Banco Agrícola was still millions of pesos in the red before it was merged with Banrural,
Mexico's present-day rural development bank.
Official silence
Behind the scenes, Mexican officials have quietly attended meetings with former braceros. Mexican Interior Minister Santiago Creel
also has met with a Mexican congressional committee investigating the scandal, promising cooperation with the probe.
But publicly, American lawyers hired by the Mexican government support an expected bid by the U.S. Justice Department to have
judges throw out the braceros' lawsuits, filed in January 2001 in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
If judges go along, analysts said, the case probably will die a quick death in Mexico's cumbersome civil courts.
Bracero lawyers allege that both governments broke their promises to make savings funds available. They have not yet disclosed a
dollar amount that they seek.
The same lawyers discount the government moves. They point out that while U.S. officials contend it's a Mexican matter, American
courts have a history of weighing human rights cases from around the world.
These include the Holocaust survivors who were robbed of assets and Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese
military in World War II.
"Besides, some of these braceros are actually now American citizens," Mr. Lee said. "And these men worked in the United States
under contracts co-signed by the United States."
The U.S. State Department reviewed the bracero program in 1943. Officials reported that "the War Manpower Commission shall
send directly to [Mexico] a list containing the names of the beneficiaries and the amount corresponding to each of them for the
above-mentioned fund."
'Established a system'
In 1944, Mexican Labor Ministry officials responded in a letter to the U.S. War Manpower Commission about how to get back
pay and savings fund withholdings to braceros already back in Mexico.
"The institution is technically and practically apt to return the total amount of savings funds to Mexican [workers] ... we have
established a system of bookkeeping ... which allows us to have the individual accounts up-to-date," the officials replied.
Those passages have former braceros fuming.
"How could there be documents then, that are now in its own archives, while the government now says it can find nothing proving
individuals were owed money?" asked Ventura Gutiérrez.
Mr. Gutiérrez is a California farm labor activist whose inquiry into savings withholdings from his late grandfather's bracero
paychecks sparked the current legal fight.
Mexican officials have countered with evidence they say showed that their country's debt to braceros was largely paid off.
A report published last year in the Los Angeles Times described a 1946 Mexican report that detailed the payout of more than
three-quarters of the money in bracero savings accounts.
But elsewhere in the same document, Mexican officials acknowledge that record-keeping in the bracero savings program was a
mess. They called it "another motive for discontent and protest."
Bracero lawyers also insist the 1946 document is an unsubstantiated shell.
"There are no details, no supporting documentation on withdrawals by braceros, nothing but officials in Mexico City putting up
simple numbers to satisfy an inquiry by the United States at the time," said Jonathan Rothstein, a Chicago attorney representing the
braceros.
He said the Labor Ministry did not offer receipts that would prove that braceros actually collected the money.
$35 a week
Jesus Ibarra Roque says he was one of the thousands cheated out of earnings.
From March through October 1945, Mr. Ibarra pulled potatoes from wind-blown fields in Idaho. He was paid an average of $35 a
week.
The money wasn't much, but it was better than anything the 30-year-old had seen in his life of hard work on the family farm near the
village of Tepezala, 330 miles north of Mexico City.
But for all his work, he says he never received $90 owed him. That's what the U.S. government withheld from his pay for deposit
into a savings account for him. Mr. Ibarra also figures he's owed 56 years worth of interest and compensation for his inconvenience.
He said he vigorously pursued the money after his return to Tepezala, joining other braceros from his hometown in filing complaints
about missing money.
After a year, Banco Agrícola wrote to Mr. Ibarra, saying it had mailed him two money orders totaling 518 pesos – about $120 in
1946 currency.
"I never saw the money orders. I never saw my money. And the amount they quote in that correspondence doesn't even sound like
what I was owed," said Mr. Ibarra, who still wonders what happened to his money.
Mexican government officials counter that even if there is enough proof to sway a jury, the actual amount owed might be significantly
lower than $500 million, the amount a Mexican congressional committee estimated the workers were due.
The bracero deal, signed in 1942 by presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Manuel Ávila Camacho, stipulated that the 10 percent
withholding would not accumulate interest.
Bracero lawyers argue that it's always been illegal for a bank to hold someone's money without paying interest.
"Besides, they owe the interest because that's what's called for when a contract is broken," Mr. Rothstein said. "This contract was
broken."
No bank accounts
Before lawyers instructed Mexican officials not to discuss the bracero lawsuit, government officials said after an exhaustive search
that they found no records supporting the workers' claims.
Bracero advocates have rejected that assertion, insisting that the money traveled via a clear paper trail between American farms and
Mexican banks.
The process broke down from the start, it appears.
Archival documents in the United States and Mexico show that American diplomats monitoring the treaty in the 1940s warned
superiors in Washington that misconduct in Mexico was resulting in the cheating of braceros.
Former bracero Reyes Piñón complained in a 1948 letter to President Miguel Aleman that a member of Mexico's Secret Service
illegally withdrew all the money in his savings account. Even after filing a police report, the money was not returned, Mr. Piñón said.
Complicating the fate of the bracero savings fund were plans by the Mexican government to use the money to buy farm implements
and fund irrigation projects in rural communities, an apparent violation of the contract with braceros.
"Fifty years later, we have neither the money, irrigation projects nor the farm implements," said Mexican Congressman Sergio
Acosta, a member of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, who heads the Mexican congressional investigation into the
bracero issue. "The money could not have just gone up in smoke. There must be an explanation. We owe the braceros that much."
The money trail
The idea for the savings accounts apparently came from a desire to help braceros and to encourage their return to Mexico when the
work was done.
During Mr. Ibarra's Idaho stint, for example, 10 percent of his weekly pay was withheld by his employers. The money was sent to
regional offices of the federal government's wartime manpower agencies, which forwarded the cash to Washington. From there the
money went to Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, where the Mexican government maintained accounts.
Afterward, Mexico's central bank issued credits to Banco Agrícola and Banco Nacional del Ahorro – the national savings bank that
was supposed to redistribute the funds.
Most former braceros interviewed by The News either say they simply forgot about the money, thought it was some kind of
nonrecoverable tax or were put off by Mexican government red tape.
Mr. Ibarra has been on the family farm ever since he returned from his stint in the United States. Unlike many other braceros who
stayed in the United States, Mr. Ibarra said he sought only to help his northern neighbors win the war. "I would have picked up a
rifle and marched to the battlefield if they had asked."
Mr. Ibarra is 86 but belies his age with smooth skin and the sinewy arms of a working farmer. He feels physically fit enough for one
more fight, he says.
He agrees with other ex-braceros that they deserve official recognition for their wartime contributions and preference in obtaining
visas for visits to families in the United States. For now, though, he just wants an answer to the 50-year-old mystery of the money.
"At first, my bosses [in Idaho] told me I'd get the money when I left to come home," Mr. Ibarra recalled recently, sitting in the
sun-bathed plaza of Tepezala.
"I was then told the money would come to me in Mexico. They said to be patient and wait a bit. But it's been more than 50 years now,
and I wonder how much they owe me today."
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Insurgents attack NATO's southern Afghan base
Insurgents attack NATO's southern Afghan base
By HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Writer Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer – 24 mins ago
KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents launched a rare ground assault against NATO's main military base in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, wounding several international service members in the second such attack on a major military installation this week, officials said.
A Canadian Press news agency report from the base said artillery and machine gun fire reverberated through the area, about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Kabul, several hours after the attack began.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack — the third major assault on NATO forces in Afghanistan in six days — but the Kandahar area is a Taliban stronghold.
On Tuesday, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the capital, killing 18 people including six NATO service members including five Americans and a Canadian.
The next day, dozens of Taliban militants attacked the main U.S. military base — Bagram Air Field — killing an American contractor in fighting that lasted more than eight hours.
Rockets started hitting Kandahar Air Field about 8 p.m. local time (15:30 GMT), followed quickly by a ground assault, said Navy Commander Amanda Peperseim, a spokeswoman for NATO forces at the base. She said the attack was still ongoing and did not provide further details.
She said at least five rockets struck the base, wounding a number of service members, as militants tried unsuccessfully to breach the defense perimeter on the northern side. There were no reports of deaths and she did not have the precise number of wounded.
Peperseim did not know how many insurgents launched the attack but said they did not appear to be wearing suicide vests, as had many of those who stormed the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul on Wednesday. In addition to the U.S. contractor's death, 16 militants were killed and five attackers were captured in the Bagram assault.
Rocket attacks against the Kandahar base, located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Kandahar city, are not uncommon. But ground assaults against such large facilities as Kandahar and Bagram are rare, and two attacks in the same week show that the militants are capable of complex operations despite NATO military pressure.
The attacks came soon after the Taliban announced a spring offensive against NATO forces and Afghan government troops — their respone to a promise by the Obama administration to squeeze the Taliban out of their strongholds in southern Kandahar province.
Kandahar Air Field is the launching pad for thousands of additional U.S. forces pouring into the country for a summer surge against the Taliban.
Attacks in the south earlier Saturday killed three NATO service members — one American, one French and one Dutch — and an Afghan interpreter. That brought to 996 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in October 2001, according to an Associated Press count. The Dutch death toll in Afghanistan now is 24 and the French toll is 42.
A loudspeaker announcement at the Kandahar base said the ground attack was coming from the north, said Maura Axelrod, a reporter with HDNet who was inside the base. She said she could hear heavy outgoing fire and that commanders had come into the bunker where she had taken cover to order all Marines with weapons to help in establishing a security perimeter.
An Afghan named Najibullah who works with a private security company on the base said that he heard rockets hitting for about half an hour. He only gave one name.
NATO's current push is aimed at winning over the population in Taliban-friendly areas by establishing security and bolstering the local government. However, each military strike has created potential for backlash amid arguments about who is truly an insurgent.
In the latest such incident, at least a dozen people were killed south of the capital Saturday after U.S. troops spotted two insurgents trying to plant bombs, an Afghan official said.
The two were shot dead in Paktia province, district chief Gulab Shah said. Troops saw comrades drag the two bodies away and called in a helicopter gunship which killed 10 more people, whom U.S. officials said were all militants, Shah said.
Shah said Afghan authorities will investigate to make sure the dead were all insurgents.
Civilian deaths are a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai has urged NATO to take all necessary measures to protect civilian lives.
More than eight years into the war in Afghanistan, international support is also weakening.
The defense minister of Britain's new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government met with Karzai in Kabul on Saturday and said he hopes to speed the withdrawal of British troops.
Defense Secretary Liam Fox is quoted in Saturday's edition of The Times newspaper he "would like the forces to come back as soon as possible," and wants to see if it is possible to speed the training of Afghan troops.
___
Associated Press Writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
By HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Writer Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer – 24 mins ago
KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents launched a rare ground assault against NATO's main military base in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, wounding several international service members in the second such attack on a major military installation this week, officials said.
A Canadian Press news agency report from the base said artillery and machine gun fire reverberated through the area, about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Kabul, several hours after the attack began.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack — the third major assault on NATO forces in Afghanistan in six days — but the Kandahar area is a Taliban stronghold.
On Tuesday, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the capital, killing 18 people including six NATO service members including five Americans and a Canadian.
The next day, dozens of Taliban militants attacked the main U.S. military base — Bagram Air Field — killing an American contractor in fighting that lasted more than eight hours.
Rockets started hitting Kandahar Air Field about 8 p.m. local time (15:30 GMT), followed quickly by a ground assault, said Navy Commander Amanda Peperseim, a spokeswoman for NATO forces at the base. She said the attack was still ongoing and did not provide further details.
She said at least five rockets struck the base, wounding a number of service members, as militants tried unsuccessfully to breach the defense perimeter on the northern side. There were no reports of deaths and she did not have the precise number of wounded.
Peperseim did not know how many insurgents launched the attack but said they did not appear to be wearing suicide vests, as had many of those who stormed the Bagram Air Field north of Kabul on Wednesday. In addition to the U.S. contractor's death, 16 militants were killed and five attackers were captured in the Bagram assault.
Rocket attacks against the Kandahar base, located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Kandahar city, are not uncommon. But ground assaults against such large facilities as Kandahar and Bagram are rare, and two attacks in the same week show that the militants are capable of complex operations despite NATO military pressure.
The attacks came soon after the Taliban announced a spring offensive against NATO forces and Afghan government troops — their respone to a promise by the Obama administration to squeeze the Taliban out of their strongholds in southern Kandahar province.
Kandahar Air Field is the launching pad for thousands of additional U.S. forces pouring into the country for a summer surge against the Taliban.
Attacks in the south earlier Saturday killed three NATO service members — one American, one French and one Dutch — and an Afghan interpreter. That brought to 996 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in October 2001, according to an Associated Press count. The Dutch death toll in Afghanistan now is 24 and the French toll is 42.
A loudspeaker announcement at the Kandahar base said the ground attack was coming from the north, said Maura Axelrod, a reporter with HDNet who was inside the base. She said she could hear heavy outgoing fire and that commanders had come into the bunker where she had taken cover to order all Marines with weapons to help in establishing a security perimeter.
An Afghan named Najibullah who works with a private security company on the base said that he heard rockets hitting for about half an hour. He only gave one name.
NATO's current push is aimed at winning over the population in Taliban-friendly areas by establishing security and bolstering the local government. However, each military strike has created potential for backlash amid arguments about who is truly an insurgent.
In the latest such incident, at least a dozen people were killed south of the capital Saturday after U.S. troops spotted two insurgents trying to plant bombs, an Afghan official said.
The two were shot dead in Paktia province, district chief Gulab Shah said. Troops saw comrades drag the two bodies away and called in a helicopter gunship which killed 10 more people, whom U.S. officials said were all militants, Shah said.
Shah said Afghan authorities will investigate to make sure the dead were all insurgents.
Civilian deaths are a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai has urged NATO to take all necessary measures to protect civilian lives.
More than eight years into the war in Afghanistan, international support is also weakening.
The defense minister of Britain's new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government met with Karzai in Kabul on Saturday and said he hopes to speed the withdrawal of British troops.
Defense Secretary Liam Fox is quoted in Saturday's edition of The Times newspaper he "would like the forces to come back as soon as possible," and wants to see if it is possible to speed the training of Afghan troops.
___
Associated Press Writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Bill Clinton and Haiti........ Crying and lying
Scene moves Bill Clinton to Tears
Clinton is UN rep. to Haiti
17 Little Children
Clinton and the NWO
Video apologizes for Haiti Mea Culpa
Clinton apologizes for MK Ultra
Haiti Clinton's Apology
Clinton and Haiti's rice devastation apology
What Bill Clinton's Mea Culpa Should Mean
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
Children of the World
EXCERPT from MYSTUFFS that reminds me of the Clinton ways.
Jill had moved out of mainstream America because of the dishonesty. The lack of humanity in the world was down right ugly.
Robert, on the other hand, had taken stock of his life and decided to live it in virtual reality. It was much better than trying to survive the greed and hypocricy of the ”real world”. At least on the internet, you didn’t come face to face with the enemy daily. They took on many identities and in doing so became the masses of the unknown. Somehow it took the human factor out of the picture. Hell, if you didn’t want to talk to them, you could ignore them, if you wanted to become young, you lied about your age, if you wanted to become beautiful you put someone else’s picture in your profile.
You could become anything you liked on the net. It was an open forum and anybody could join. It drew people from all walks of life. Similar to the environment of the real corporate world, business became even more sleezy but NOT quite so real.
If you couldn’t put a face to the people, how could you feel any kind of connection? How could you feel any responsibility? It reminded you of the eras of the past. People ran helter skelter and didn’t live by any rules.
The net provided many things to many people and the amount of knowledge you could find was infinitesimal. Decency didn’t matter in virtual reality. You could switch off the PC and become the person you pretended to be in real time.
You might be the biggest rogue on the internet but the best dad in the world at home. You could be a CEO’s assistant from nine to five and a porn star at http://pornforhire.net, in the twilight hours.
Amazing as it seems, even the angels of the earth became someone different when the opportunity presents itself. Virtual reality became home of the paranoid, the abusers, the stalkers, the users and the wannabes. It wasn’t a pretty picture but somehow because of the anonimity it drew people in by the droves. =================
Clinton is UN rep. to Haiti
17 Little Children
Clinton and the NWO
Video apologizes for Haiti Mea Culpa
Clinton apologizes for MK Ultra
Haiti Clinton's Apology
Clinton and Haiti's rice devastation apology
What Bill Clinton's Mea Culpa Should Mean
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
Children of the World
EXCERPT from MYSTUFFS that reminds me of the Clinton ways.
Jill had moved out of mainstream America because of the dishonesty. The lack of humanity in the world was down right ugly.
Robert, on the other hand, had taken stock of his life and decided to live it in virtual reality. It was much better than trying to survive the greed and hypocricy of the ”real world”. At least on the internet, you didn’t come face to face with the enemy daily. They took on many identities and in doing so became the masses of the unknown. Somehow it took the human factor out of the picture. Hell, if you didn’t want to talk to them, you could ignore them, if you wanted to become young, you lied about your age, if you wanted to become beautiful you put someone else’s picture in your profile.
You could become anything you liked on the net. It was an open forum and anybody could join. It drew people from all walks of life. Similar to the environment of the real corporate world, business became even more sleezy but NOT quite so real.
If you couldn’t put a face to the people, how could you feel any kind of connection? How could you feel any responsibility? It reminded you of the eras of the past. People ran helter skelter and didn’t live by any rules.
The net provided many things to many people and the amount of knowledge you could find was infinitesimal. Decency didn’t matter in virtual reality. You could switch off the PC and become the person you pretended to be in real time.
You might be the biggest rogue on the internet but the best dad in the world at home. You could be a CEO’s assistant from nine to five and a porn star at http://pornforhire.net, in the twilight hours.
Amazing as it seems, even the angels of the earth became someone different when the opportunity presents itself. Virtual reality became home of the paranoid, the abusers, the stalkers, the users and the wannabes. It wasn’t a pretty picture but somehow because of the anonimity it drew people in by the droves. =================
Clinton's Tears in Haiti
Scene moves Bill Clinton to Tears
Clinton is UN rep. to Haiti
17 Little Children
Clinton and the NWO
Video apologizes for Haiti Mea Culpa
Clinton apologizes for MK Ultra
Haiti Clinton's Apology
Clinton and Haiti's rice devastation apology
What Bill Clinton's Mea Culpa Should Mean
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
Clinton is UN rep. to Haiti
17 Little Children
Clinton and the NWO
Video apologizes for Haiti Mea Culpa
Clinton apologizes for MK Ultra
Haiti Clinton's Apology
Clinton and Haiti's rice devastation apology
What Bill Clinton's Mea Culpa Should Mean
As many of us have been paying close attention to the long-awaited passage of health care reform last week, it was easy to miss something else that was absolutely extraordinary. Former President Bill Clinton said at a recent Senate hearing that he regrets the impact in Haiti of the free trade policies that became a hallmark of his presidency.
"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton said this month. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."
Sadly, he's right. The rapid lowering of agricultural trade barriers in Haiti combined with misguided U.S. food aid policy allowed American agribusinesses to flood the country with cheap surplus rice and force tens of thousands of local farmers out of business. According to the Associated Press, six pounds of imported rice now costs at least a dollar less than a similar quantity of locally-grown rice. So how can a Haitian farmer compete? The past 15 years have shown they simply can't.
Prior to the era of so-called "free trade", Haiti could feed itself, importing only 19 percent of its food and actually exporting rice. Today, Haiti imports more than half of its food, including 80 percent of the rice eaten in the country. The result is that Haitians are particularly vulnerable to price spikes arising from global weather, political instability, rising fuel costs and natural disasters, such as earthquakes that register 7.0 on the Richter scale. In fact, since the January earthquake, imported rice prices are up 25 percent.
It is especially fitting that President Clinton's mea culpa comes as the Jewish community worldwide prepares to observe Passover. The story of Passover is a stark reminder that communities cannot rely solely on others to provide for their needs. Until people are empowered to help themselves, in-kind assistance from the outside is useful only in the immediate aftermath of acute emergencies. Long-term needs must be met principally through a community-led approach. The lesson we take from Passover is that once the Israelites spoke out against slavery their prayers for freedom were finally answered.
Today, the people of Haiti are speaking as loud as they can. They desperately want a voice and central role in the reconstruction of their country, including the ability to meet the country's nutritional needs with food produced by Haitians in Haiti. In fact, President Rene Preval, himself a rice grower, has asked for international food aid to be replaced by financial support for farmers and the re-development of the agricultural sector. Preval knows that sustained success in rebuilding depends on food sovereignty, or the ability for Haitian farmers to grow their own crops and feed their own communities.
Is the international community getting the message? It's hard to say. The AP also reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided nearly four times as much in-kind food aid since January as it invests each year in Haitian agriculture. There is of course a need in grave circumstances for actual shipments of food - but for decades we've used in-kind food as a tool for destroying local agricultural markets on an ongoing basis, not as a last resort measure to be used in emergencies after all possibilities for local purchase have been exhausted. Until our government abandons a system that dumps surplus from American agribusiness on the developing world, its efforts at ending hunger will remain counterproductive. Then again, if you are the D.C. lobbyist for Big Ag, maybe that's the point. Maintaining the developing world's cycle of dependence is profitable business.
The time has come for us to pay attention, to heed the wishes of the Haitian people to be empowered. We must demand that the purpose of our work in Haiti is not to merely rebuild an export market for our surpluses, but rather to support a Haitian-led effort to create a country that can stand on its own, build a sustainable economy and feed its people. Over the next couple of months, Congress will be discussing how to allocate more than $1.6 billion in supplemental funding for Haiti. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and let them know that this money must be used to empower communities, not corporations.
Each year, during Passover, we say "let all who are hungry, come and eat." Then, ironically, we proceed to enjoy a wonderful meal with our families and friends while our front doors remain closed. If you will be celebrating Passover this year, I ask that you open your doors -- at least metaphorically -- and hear those calls from a country just a few hundred miles off our shore. Recognize that the people of Haiti may not need our food. Rather, they need us to listen as they tell us how we can really help.
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