Economy and Society

• 2007-12-01: The First Days Of Petro Collapse;
• 2007-12-02: Classical Music Struggles to Be Heard;
• 2007-12-03: Is Africa The Next Cold War Theater?
• 2007-12-04: Say It Isn’t So!
• 2007-12-04: Questions About the Financial Crisis;
• 2007-12-05: The neocons’ crazy dream of World War III;
• 2007-12-05: There is sanctity in labor;
• 2007-12-06: Russian Press Blasts Anglo-Saxon Terrorist Controllers;
• 2007-12-07: Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space;
• 2007-12-08: Three Years Oil and You;
• 2007-12-09: Justice: Inaction’s fatal price;
• 2007-12-10: Refugees Caught Between Deportation And Death Threats;
• 2007-12-11: India – the Left, rethink or perish;
• 2007-12-11: Communalism and Terrorism, Two Faces of the same Coin;
• 2007-12-12: Remember Somalia?
• 2007-12-13: Swiss Federal Counselors’ Elections;
• 2007-12-13: Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed;
• 2007-12-13: Patterns of Extra-territorial Voting;
• 2007-12-14: again Swiss election schock;
• 2007-12-15: FCC Proposes Greater Media Consolidation;
• 2007-12-16: On Romney, Mormonism And Islam;
• 2007-12-16: Political Market For Midget Europe In The Giant Asia;
• 2007-12-17: The seduction of indifference, again and again and again;
• 2007-12-17: Canadians Snapping Up American Homes;
• 2007-12-17: videos by dailymotion;
• 2007-12-18: Farmer up for child labour;
• 2007-12-19: UN calls for halt to executions;
• 2007-12-20: Bomb After Bomb;
• 2007-12-21: Is a world wide famine in the works?
• 2007-12-21: Iraq: Outsourcing The War;
• 2007-12-22: Citizens Of Twelve Hours;
• 2007-12-22: Femmes d’Asie Centrale, un livre incontournable (Women of Central Asia, a good french book);
• 2007-12-23: Central Asian websites about Cultures, Texts, Arts, Travels, Buyings!
• 2007-12-24: Women bear the brunt of development drawbacks;
• 2007-12-24: African nations agree to $1bn Indian satellite project;
• 2007-12-25: The Rejection Front Wins;
• 2007-12-26: La ratification du Traité de Lisbonne;
• 2007-12-26: Fact-Based Intelligence Prevails on Nukes and Iran;
• 2007-12-27: Severe food shortages, price spikes threaten world population;
• 2007-12-28: Brazil, ILO launch South-South cooperation against child labour;
• 2007-12-29: Krugman on the Democrats;
• 2007-12-30: Peak Oil And Dunbar’s Number;
• 2007-12-31: Pakistan’s fractured polity, who killed Bhutto;
• 2007-12-31: Ungleichheit in den USA auf Rekordniveau …

… Milliarden für Wall Street-Bosse, sinkende Löhne

Publiziert auf WSWS World Socialist Web Site, Von Patrick Martin
29. Dezember 2007, aus dem Englischen (20. Dezember 2007).

Goldman Sachs, die profitabelste amerikanische Investmentbank, wird diesen Monat nicht weniger als 12,1 Milliarden Dollar in Form von Bonuszahlungen an ihre Führungskräfte ausschütten. Im letzten Jahr waren es noch 9,9 Milliarden Dollar gewesen. Insgesamt wird die Firma 20,2 Milliarden an Löhnen und Gehältern zahlen, gegenüber 16,5 Milliarden letztes Jahr …

… Das reichste eine Prozent der Bevölkerung verdoppelte seinen Anteil am Nationaleinkommen von 1979 (neun Prozent) bis 2005 (18 Prozent). In diesem Vierteljahrhundert verdreifachte sich das Einkommen dieser obersten Schicht. Das Nettoeinkommen der untersten zwanzig Prozent wuchs nur um 6 Prozent und das Durchschnittseinkommen des mittleren Fünftels stieg um 21 Prozent, d.h. um weniger als ein Prozent im Jahr.

Das Ungleichgewicht zwischen Reich und Arm wie auch zwischen den Reichen und der Mitte der Gesellschaft hat sich entsprechend verschärft. 1979 erzielte das oberste eine Prozent ein acht Mal höheres Einkommen als die Mittelschicht und nahm 23 Mal mehr ein als die ärmsten zwanzig Prozent. 2005 erhielt das oberste eine Prozent das 21-fache eines Mittelschichtseinkommens und das 70-fache eines Durchschnittseinkommens der ärmsten 20 Prozent.

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Published on Kashmir Affairs, by Murtaza Shibli, 27th December 2007.

… Although Benazir was portrayed as the ‘modern and moderate’ face of Pakistan who could help fight Jihadists, this fact is conveniently buried that it was her government that helped the formation of Taliban whose legacy continues to ruin Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond. After her return from self-exile, Benazir went beyond all decency and decorum to appease the US and other Western powers.

Her assertions that she was not opposed to the American operations in the Pakistan’s tribal areas to fight ‘terrorism’ and would allow disgraced scientist AQ Khan to be interrogated by the US showed her desperation for power. Power was all that mattered and she showed no regard to the public’s feelings or her country’s integrity. She even talked tough about Jihadis and was willing to follow the course of General Musharraf’s

military response to the crisis rather than any political negotiation to rid the country of growing extremism.

Who Killed Benazir?

There is no doubt that Benazir Bhutto had many enemies. After her rhetoric against the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalists, her list of enemies grew phenomenally.

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Published on Countercurrents.org, Peak Oil And Dunbar’s Number, by Peter Goodchild, 29 December, 2007.

Within modern capitalism there is no solution to the problem of oil depletion. Oil energy cannot be replaced with the equivalent amount of “alternative” energy in the required time, so the consequences of oil depletion will be disastrous. Those disastrous consequences are beyond the range of the normal or acceptable issues of political debate. No political contender can win votes by saying that the world is coming to an end. The “end” may be real, but there is no political mechanism to deal with it in the over-crowded and overly complex modern state.

As the twenty-first century progresses, urbanization will increase, and most people will live in about twenty or thirty mega-cities, although the very rich will live in fortresses with armed guards [3]. These very rich will be trying, more or less successfully, to insulate themselves from the coming economic troubles. During this era, however, “oil wars” will continue to devastate the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Balkans, and elsewhere, as the great powers try to control the oil-producing regions and the pipelines.

There is nothing newsworthy about the above; the problem of oil depletion [2] has been described in detail for at least the last few decades …

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Published on Selves and Others, by Thomas Riggins, November 26th, 2007, (First posted online November 8, 2007, on Thomas Riggins’ Blog).

… So, the question is, can the Democrats really push forward a progressive agenda even if they have both the presidency and a bigger majority? What will keep them from still failing to solidly push a progressive people’s agenda instead of caving in to pressures from the corporate plutocracy and the military-industrial complex [MIC]”

Krugman tries to answer this question in an article in Monday’s New York Times (11-5-07).. Krugman thinks the long right wing control of national politics is about to end. He seems to envision a big Democratic sweep in 2008.

He is on tour now, promoting his book, and he says a good question that often comes up is, “How can you be so optimistic about the prospects for progressive change, when big money has so much influence on politics?”

Citing the research of recent polls, Krugman says that Americans have never, in recent history, been so fed up with how the government is being run and that two of the main reason’s are the failure of the misadventure in Iraq, and the growth of a new economic populism. There is widespread resentment against the abuses of the big corporations and the declining share of wealth available to the middle class.

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Published on ILO Internat. Labour Org, (INEWS/07/brazil_childlabour), 14 December 2007. (français and espanol).

The Brazilian Government and the International Labour Organization launch a major new initiative to promote specific South-South technical cooperation projects and activities that contribute effectively to the prevention and elimination of child labour, in accordance with the international obligations of each country.

BRASILIA (ILO Online) – The Brazilian Government and the International Labour Organization (ILO) launched a major new initiative in Brasilia to strengthen the worldwide fight against child labour.

The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim, and the Director of the ILO Office in Brasilia, Laís Abramo, lays the foundation for South-South cooperation to prevent and combat child labour. Together with the Memorandum, the Brazilian government also announced a programme to fight child labour in Haiti coordinated by the ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of child Labour (IPEC).

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Published on the World Socialist Web Site WSWS, by Naomi Spencer, 22 December 2007.

Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.

The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.

Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change …

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Linked with Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity VIPS.

Published on Media with Conscience, by Ray McGovern, December 25, 2007.

For those who have doubts about miracles, a double one occurred today. An honest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program has been issued and its Key Judgments were made public. With redraft after redraft, it was what the Germans call “eine schwere Geburt”—a difficult birth, ten months in gestation.

I do not know how often Vice President Dick Cheney visited CIA Headquarters during the gestation period, but I am told he voiced his displeasure as soon as he saw the first sonogram/draft very early this year, and is so displeased with what issued that he has refused to be the godfather.

This time Cheney and his neo-con colleagues were unable to abort the process. And after delivery to the press, this child is going to be very hard to explain—the more so since it is legitimate.

The main points of the NIE:

• “We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…”
• “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.”
• “We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely…”
• “We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.”
• “We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.”

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Publié par Voltairenet.org, par Silvia Cattori, 20 décembre 2007.

L’Union européenne est consubstantiellement anti-démocratique.

Les dirigeants européens s’apprêtent à faire passer en force le Traité de Lisbonne, alors qu’un texte similaire a été rejeté par voie référendaire dans les États membres où une consultation avait été organisée, France et Pays-Bas. Du fait de ce procédé oligarchique, l’Union européenne ne pourra plus être considérée comme une institution démocratique, mais elle ne l’a en réalité jamais été, assure le professeur Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet.

Silvia Cattori: Lors du Rassemblement du Comité national pour le Référendum qui a réuni à la tribune Jean-Pierre Chevènement et Nicolas Dupont-Aignan [1], vous avez prononcé des mots forts, des mots surprenants. Vous avez qualifié de « haute trahison, de coup d’Etat » le fait que le président Sarkozy veuille ratifier le « traité modificatif » par voie parlementaire. N’est-ce pas excessif?

Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet: Il s’agit d’un acte très grave qui prouve bien que les références incessantes des traités européens aux valeurs démocratiques sont une tartufferie car cette Europe technocratique et confiscatoire ne peut se faire que contre la volonté des peuples.

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Published on Voltairenet.org, from Beirut , December 24, 2007.

It is no more a complicated issue to know the two parties of conflict in the Middle East. On the one hand, there is a project of American dominance which aims at making the region a farm for the capitals covered by tears and blood of the peoples of the Middle East. On the other, there is a project of opposing, facing and rejecting front that springs out of the will of free life by the peoples of the region. Despite everything that can be said about the new system that holds consequences which make it difficult for the peoples of the region, yet the mutual values that the system holds have flexibility that can be developed to become a new version of a New Middle East signed by all the peoples of the region, especially that the current events on the ground assert today that the American project has reached a deadlock. A clear evidence of that is the deadlock of electing a Lebanese President, add to that that the front of opposition and steadfastness has started to win important rounds in the struggle, and a most prominent example of it is the Iranian nuclear file. The group of 5+1 has failed once again in reaching a decision to impose new sanctions on Iran. For its part, Iran will announce on Sunday a new bid for building 19 energy stations with a total capacity of 1000 megawatt for each with the aim of generating nuclear electricity …

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Published on Computing SA, by Michael Malakata, 22 November 2007.

A critical mass of countries are signing on to a plan for India to invest $1bn in the Pan-African e-Network satellite project, a joint initiative with the Africa Union aimed at developing the region’s ICT infrastructure.

The African Union last year entered into an agreement that calls for the Indian government to supply funds for the project. The Indian government will finance the project over a period of five years through a grant to the African Union. Ethiopia for example, has been given a grant of $2,13m from India for the project.

So far, 27 African countries have signed agreements for the project, designed to connect African countries by satellite and fibre-optic network. The countries that have signed for the project include Zambia, Gambia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Mauritius and Tanzania.

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Published on SifyNews, by IANS, 20 December, 2007.

New Delhi: The economic boom and high growth rate that the country is experiencing actually spells bad news for women, says a new report.

Titled “Resources Rich Tribal Poor”, the report by international development agency ActionAid, Indian Social Institute (ISI), and LAYA – an NGO based in Andhra Pradesh working on tribal rights issues – says that when it comes to development projects which in turn cause displacement, women are the worst sufferers.

Joseph Marianus Kujur of the ISI – who was the research coordinator for the study conducted in four resource rich states, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh – said that from being abused to carrying a heavier work load, it’s the women who are the worst sufferers at the end of the day, while the entire world chants that development is taking place.

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Re-edited tel-quel from our NGO blog of May 9, 2005:

Some of here after mentionned URLs will bring you nearer to Central Asians Culture and Art.

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Conveyed from our NGO-blog from July 22, 2005, I cannot resist to recommend you again this book in french about women of Tajikistan:

I found a very good book about the daily hard life of women in Central Asia, mainly in Tajikistan, written by a cameraman of the french-german TV channel ‘arte’: Christophe de Ponfilly, FEMMES d’Asie Centrale, arte Editions – mille et une nuits 2004, ISBN 2-84205-808-9. If you are able to understand french, this book is a must for all interested in Central Asian people’s daily life.

Published on Countercurrents.org, by Wali Laskar, 20 December, 2007.

They are Indian citizens. But their citizenship is limited to twelve hours only. They lose their citizenship for the twelve hours of the night. Thousands of Indian citizens living in Indian soil have been deprived of their citizenship for twelve hours daily for decades. The victims are resident of villages situated in fringe area of about four thousand kilometres long India-Bangladesh International Boundary Lines. There are more than 170 villages along the Indo- Bangla Boundary line right from Kolkata to Tripura. These villages could not be covered by the barbed-wire- fencing erected in the boundary line for technical reasons. The villages have been abandoned. So are the villagers. Everyday when clock strikes six the gates of the barbed wire fence got closed. The State of India abandons its own citizens living outside the fence for the rest of the time till the clock again strikes six in the morning. The gates of Indian State remain open for its citizens for just twelve hour of daytime.

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Published on Countercurrents.org, by Chris Gelken, 21 December, 2007.

This week a U.S. human rights group filed its second lawsuit against security contractor Blackwater on charges of war crimes, assault and wrongful death. The company, at the center of the infamous Nisoor Square shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, is further accused of killing an Iraqi salesman on September 9th 2007.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Congressional committee was hearing testimony from a female former employee of U.S. contractor Halliburton. The young woman told the hearing she was drugged and then gang-raped by American workers in her accommodation in the high-security Green Zone in Baghdad in July 2005.

Two-and-a-half years later, the Justice Department has failed to complete its investigation, and a department official who was scheduled to give evidence at the hearing failed to show up.

In an interview with PressTV, Kevin Zeese, the director of Democracy Rising, hit out at the corporatization of war, Iraq’s lack of true sovereignty, and accused the Democrats of lip-service in their efforts to end the Iraqi conflict.

PressTV: Just how out of control is the contractor situation getting in Iraq? … (full interview text).

Published on Countercurrents.org, by Thomas Riggins, 21 December, 2007.

Was it just seven years ago that the new millennium dawned? I remember all the talk about how this new era would give us a chance to escape from all the follies of the 20th century. Well, it didn’t take long to realize that all the old follies were still with us, waiting to be repeated.

World hunger is one of them. The last century was dotted with mass famines, all of them man made. Surely the UN and the leading nations of the world would not let that sorry record repeat itself?

It appears, however, that they will. The UN is doing its part to help prevent famines, but the UN can only do what the leading nations, represented on the Security Council will allow it to do. We must remember that any criticism of the UN is in reality a criticism of the five permanent members of the SC.

At any rate, the UN has warned us that a famine of Biblical proportions may be on the way. Tuesday’s New York Times has the story. “World Food Supply is Shrinking, U.N. Agency Warns,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal (12-18-07). Here is the gist of it …

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Published on Counterpunch, by Howard Zinn, December 15/16, 2007.

Linked with Howard Zinn – USA.

This essay serves as the introduction to Bomb After Bomb: a Violent Cartography, a collection of drawings illustrating the history of bombing by elin o’Hara slavick. o’Hara slavick is a professor of art at the University of North Carolina. More of her visionary work can be viewed on her website. (AC/JSC).

Perhaps it is fitting that elin o’Hara slavick’s extraordinary evocation of bombings by the United States government be preceded by some words from a bombardier who flew bombing missions for the U.S. Air Corps in the second World War. At least one of her drawings is based on a bombing I participated in near the very end of the war–the destruction of the French seaside resort of Royan, on the Atlantic coast.

As I look at her drawings, I become painfully aware of how ignorant I was, when I dropped those bombs on France and on cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, of the effects of those bombings on human beings. Not because she shows us bloody corpses, amputated limbs, skin shredded by napalm. She does not do that. But her drawings, in ways that I cannot comprehend, compel me to envision such scenes.

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Published on Amnesty International, 18 December 2007.

The global campaign against the death penalty secured a landmark victory on Tuesday when the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the call for a worldwide moratorium (suspension) on executions.

In a landslide result, 104 UN member states voted in favour of the ground-breaking resolution. 54 countries voted against, while there were 25 abstentions.

Amnesty International welcomes this timely resolution, passed at the UN headquarters in New York City, as a clear recognition of the international trend towards worldwide abolition of the death penalty.

A total of 133 countries, from all regions of the world, have abolished the death penalty in law or practice and only 25 countries carried out executions in 2006. 91% of all known executions took place in six countries: China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the USA. Recorded executions worldwide fell by more than 25% in 2006, with a drop from at least 2,148 in 2005 to at least 1,591 …

… “This landmark resolution is a major step towards ending this cruel and inhuman punishment and an important contribution to protecting human rights,” said Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International’s Head of Office at the UN. “The death penalty is inhuman, inherently arbitrary and innocent people are invariably executed”. (full text).

Published on news24 (South AFRICA), 18/12/2007.

Johannesburg – A North West farmer faces prosecution after 16 minors were found working at his farm in Schweizer Reneke, the labour department said on Tuesday.

Department spokesperson Zolisa Sigabi said the farmer would be prosecuted for contravening the law that prohibits the employment of under-aged children.

This after labour officials inspecting the area found the farmer using 16 minors as workers, the youngest of whom was 11-years-old.

”They were being made to carry 50kg bags of fertiliser on their heads and also ploughed sunflower” … (full text).

Go to Dailymotion.

first you register and then click on ’search’, put a key word (like development etc.) and listen to videos:

Here a choice (by the keyword ‘development’):

think big;

sustainable development;

damned by dept relief;

but there are mostly videos with hot music, fun pictures and development in the sense of fantasy and young people amusement.

As I understood, you can upload your own videos.

Published on NYTimes, by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, December 15, 2007.

CHANDLER, Ariz. (AP) – Two hours after his flight landed in Phoenix, Calgary resident Doug Farley already was cruising the city’s vast stuccoed suburbs in search of the one attraction Canadians can’t seem to get enough of these days, cheap homes.

There are thousands of them here: almost new, unoccupied and dropping in value. The mortgage meltdown, combined with a surging Canadian currency, has Farley – and many of his countrymen – dreaming of winter golf on grass that’s always green.

”My dollar’s the same as your dollar, finally,” Farley said, grinning as he peered through a pool fence at a sparsely populated condominium complex in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb.

For moderate-income Canadians like Farley, the race is on to take advantage of the ‘loonie’, which in September reached parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time since 1976. Many are combing the Internet for anxious American home sellers and looking with an investor’s eye at the condos they rented while on vacation in sunbelt states … (full text).

Published on Online Journal, by Gaither Stewart, Dec. 17, 2007.

Yesterday, I ran into a poem I had read as a student in Germany, written by Luthern Pastor Martin Niem’r, who broke with the Nazis in 1933 and became a symbol of the German resistance. His words prompted me to take a look more closely at the complex subject of indifference he speaks of.

Niem’r wrote the following at war’s end in 1945:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

In my mind the subject of indifference is not a closed end affair. You don’t even need a password to enter this site. Most certainly I cannot relegate the matter to ‘oh, that, well, we’re all indifferent to many things in life’.

If so it would imply ‘indifference to indifference’, which in my mind is located still another ring deeper in the Dantesque Inferno. In that respect; I hope that here, as Baudrillard writes, words will prove to be carriers of ideas and not the reverse …

Continue Reading…

Published on Countercurrents.org, by Gaither Stewart, 15 December, 2007.

… For two hundred years Europe has experimented with a political system based on the interplay between the Left and the Right. Basically Left has meant the collective; Right, the individual. The result of this dichotomy is the heart of the European Idea. Today globalization is challenging that coherent system because a globally organized world creates new tensions and new difficulties for the survival of the old ethnic nations.

Still, the Left-Right principle survives. In the past the major countries of the Old World have overcome other phases of internationalization without discarding the open political debate between Left and Right. Markets and international finance, colonialism and imperialism, major migrations and conflicts with other cultures are after all familiar subjects for Europe.

Today’s situation is however different precisely because of the aggressive and unbound form of globalization economics and the entrance on the world scene of dynamic and overly dimensioned non-European economic powers.

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Published on Countercurrents.org, by Ramzy Baroud, 16 December, 2007.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech on December 6th – in which he tried to ‘explain’ his Mormon faith – was met with a mostly sympathetic reception at George Bush Library in Texas.

The speech has been long anticipated, not so much for its relevance to the pressing debate on the defining role of religion in American politics, and how this undermines the very meaning of secular democracy. It was awaited simply because Romney belongs to the wrong faith. Recent polls indicate that one out of every three Republicans will not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon.

The whole affair has done much to reveal the hypocrisy of institutional democracy in the United States. While every presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, has unreservedly uttered lip service to democratic ideals, very few have dared push the boundaries by actually explaining their personal views on what separation of church and state means.

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Published on Countercurrents.org, by Stephen Lendman, 15 December, 2007.

On October 17, FCC chairman Kevin Martin proposed lifting the 1975 media cross-ownership rule that forbids a company from owning a newspaper and television or radio station in the same city even though giant conglomerates like Rupert Murdock’s News Corp. and the (Chicago) Tribune Company already do. On November 13, he expanded on his earlier plan claiming changes will only allow cross ownership “in the largest markets where there exists competition and numerous voices.”

That’s not how Free Press.net’s policy director, Ben Scott, sees it in his statement on the same day saying: “Chairman Martin’s lofty rhetoric talks about saving American newspapers and ensuring a diversity of voices. But the devil is in the details. His new rules appear to be corporate welfare for the (media giants) in the biggest cities (and) most worrying….the proposed rules appear to contain a giant loophole that could open the back door to runaway media consolidation in nearly every market (in) another massive giveaway to Big Media.”

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Linked with my yesterday’s post Swiss Federal Counselors’ Elections:

I looked for a link to the old controversial sheep picture and found it on

Touch of Xenophopia? (30 July 2007);

On the same blog named ‘Expat-Experience’ is the yesterday’s post Playground Games (13 December 2007);

which has a link to the blog ‘the Xpat Files’ with this picture Hee hee – political humor;

..

you find there this updated version of the old picture law & order (Those are the first names of all the Bundesrat members; Christoph is Christoph Blocher);

A good conclusion about this election event you may find on swissinfo.ch of 14 december 2007, specially in their photo gallery.

Links:

Swiss People’s Party;

AUNS;

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf;

Swiss MPs reject far-right leader;

Swiss consensus government falls as rightists quit;

CV in german.

Issued by Migration, Globalization and Poverty, by MICHAEL COLLYER AND ZANA VATHI, Working Paper T22, 36 pages, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, October 2007.

Conclusion:

The global survey presented here reveals that migrant voting is far more widespread than has been previously imagined. Even in 2006, writers on this topic believed that ‘only a few’ countries allowed non-resident citizens to vote (Rubio-Martin 2006:127) but in fact the vast majority of countries for which information could be obtained have electoral systems allowing emigrants to participate in elections. With the exception of the 1990 Convention of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, ratified by only 43 countries, there is no clear internationally agreed obligation for the involvement of emigrants in elections and there is no clear consensus in the limited literature on the desirability of such developments.

Not only are emigrant voting systems widespread but, despite ongoing controversies, they are spreading increasingly rapidly. The Council of Europe has regularly recommended the enfranchisement of emigrants since 1994 (Council of Europe 1999; 2004). In many countries systems regulating the participation of emigrants in elections have remained unchanged for some time. This is most obviously the case for the 22 countries which prevent emigrants from voting, 21 of which date to before 1995. In contrast, the newest systems are those which explicitly address the situation of emigrants through the extra-territorial voting system.

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Published on SouthEndPress, by Vandana Shiva, not dated.

• How are seeds cultivated and saved?
• How far must food travel before reaching our plate?
• Who gets paid for the food we eat?
• Why does our food taste like this?

We live in a world where of the 80,000 edible plants used for food only about 150 are being cultivated, and just 8 are traded globally. A world where we produce food for 12 billion people when there are only 6.3 billion people living, and, still, 800 million suffer from hunger and malnutrition and many more suffer diseases that could be eliminated easily with better food. A world where food is modified to travel long distances rather than to be nutritious and flavorful.

Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed lays out, with practical steps and far reaching concepts, a program to ensure food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically sustainable. It harvests the work and ideas produced by thousands of communities around the world. Emerging from the historic gatherings at Terra Madre, farmers, traders, and activists diagnose and offer prescriptions to reverse perhaps the worst food crisis faced in human history.

There is a growing realization that food politics is vital to the health of our bodies, economies, and environment—in other words, a matter of life or death. Featuring contributions by Michael Pollan, Prince Charles, Vandana Shiva, the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and more, this pocket-sized and galvanizing collection grapples with these enormous costs, daring to imagine a food system—a world—that is sustainable, healthy, and ultimately, just.

A world-renowned environmental leader and thinker, Vandana Shiva is the author of many books, including Earth Democracy, Water Wars, and Staying Alive.

(SouthEndPress).

First my comment: what all this dry news cannot tell is the excitement of a TV live transmission. When Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf finally pronounced ‘yes I accept’, I was as touched as when the Berlin Wall crashed down, in November 1989. This event was the result of a fresh elected parliament showing a real change in our ‘old Swissitude’.

(16.12.07 – This article replaces another one I posted here and retired from the net since):
Swiss MPs reject far-right leader: Swiss parliamentarians have forced far-right politician Christoph Blocher from his cabinet seat, despite his party’s record success in recent polls … (BBC – full text).

Some artists were quick to reinvent the infamous cartoon that Blocher’s party splashed on posters around the country in the run-up to the October polls, which depicted three pure white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag with a crafty flick of the back legs. Yesterday Blocher’s grinning face had been stitched on to the black animal, alongside the caption “For more security: get Blocher out of the cabinet”.

The surprise move shook up the stable world of Swiss politics, as the SVP threatened to pull out of the cabinet altogether unless Mr Blocher was reinstated. “If Blocher is not elected then the SVP will go into opposition,” the party’s outgoing president Uli Maurer told Swiss television shortly after the vote … (full text).

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Published on HPR online, by JOEY MICHALAKES, November 16, 2007.

Since the overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has experienced a nearly uninterrupted state of armed conflict between militias loyal to a rival local warlords. After fourteen failed attempts at establishing a unified, sovereign national government, Somalia’s reputation as a “failed state” also makes it a highly desirable haven for foreign terrorists. Acutely aware of this disturbing possibility, the United States has made the continued pursuit of al-Qaeda operatives the centerpiece of its foreign policy in the region.

Yet Somalia deserves attention for humanitarian as well as strategic reasons. Its people suffer through both constant warfare and an absence of domestic institutions capable of providing even the most basic levels of stability, infrastructure, or life necessities. With the international community increasingly concerned about Somalia’s humanitarian plight as well as its geopolitical significance, reaching a workable, nationwide political solution has become a key aim for all actors involved …

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Published on ZNet, by Badri Raina, December 06, 2007.

I write this on the fifteenth anniversary of the demolition of the Babri mosque by fascist hordes of the Sangh Parivar, consequent upon the pogrom set in motion by Advani’s infamous rath yatra.

Few events in the post-independence history of India have outfaced the founding principles of both the Freedom Movement and the Republic as decisively as that wanton and blood-thirsty challenge to the secular state. That was the day on which Mahatma Gandhi was buried ten fathoms deep, and when majoritarian terrorism came to be installed as the new operative version of ‘nationalism.’

It was also the day when the party that led the Freedom Movement lost its raison d etre. Not to be forgotten that the then Congress prime minister twiddled his pout while fascist pickaxe took the mosque apart brick by brick in full glare of television crews in a day-long operation …

… So, will there be consequences?

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Published on Tehelka.com and re-published on ZNet, by Praful Bidwai, December 09, 2007.

The Indian Left survived, even extended its influence, in the aftermath of Soviet-style socialism collapse. Yet in one year it has undone this and seriously damaged its credibility as a force which speaks for the underprivileged, the excluded, and which upholds the values and practices of inclusive democracy …

… Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee presents the violence as a spontaneous clash between two organisations, in which the BUPC was “paid back in the same coin”. In reality, this was a clear case of abuse of the state police, and its subordination to the CPM. The CPM treated its political adversaries as another country’s enemy population.

This does not argue that the BUPC does not have goons in its ranksIt certainly does. But their power could not have matched the clout of armed CPM cadres backed by the state.

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Published on Inter Press Service, by Ali al-Fadhily, 07 December, 2007.

BAGHDAD, Dec 6 (IPS) – Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis driven out of their country by violence are now faced with detention abroad, or a homecoming to death threats.

More than two million Iraqis, in a population of about 25 million, have taken refuge in many countries. Only a few have won official status as refugees. Most refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and many other countries stay on as illegal residents, facing threats of deportation and imprisonment.

”To deport an Iraqi refugee is to issue a death warrant,” Ali Jassim, an Iraqi journalist recently deported from Lebanon told IPS in Baghdad. “The Lebanese authorities are applying regular migration rules to Iraqis, meaning that most Iraqis in Lebanon will be deported.”

The Human Rights Watch report titled ‘Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon’ released Dec. 4 says Lebanese authorities are arresting Iraqi refugees who have no valid visas, and detaining them indefinitely to coerce them to return to Iraq.

”Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest,” Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch told reporters. “Refugees who are arrested face the prospect of rotting in jail indefinitely unless they agree to return to Iraq and face the dangers there.”

There are at least 40,000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Complaints of mistreatment by Lebanese authorities pushed many Iraqis to flee Lebanon for Syria earlier, but this is no longer possible. As of Oct. 1, the Syrian government requires Iraqis to obtain visas.

The Iraqi refugees already in Syria are struggling … (full text).

Published in The Denver Post, By Michael Riley, Article Last Updated: 11/13/2007.

Delays and missteps in Indian Country criminal cases can give offenders a free pass. The consequences can be tragic.

Zach Gervais and Arthur Schobey weren’t supposed to die.

Both young, both American Indians, the men were killed by assailants who should have been in federal custody for violent crimes they had committed on Indian reservations months earlier.

Gervais’ killer had stabbed two people on the Blackfeet reservation in what a police report described as an unprovoked attack, piercing one of the victims at least nine times. Though just about everyone in the windswept community of Browning, Mont., knew the assailant and where he lived, the FBI failed to make an arrest for seven months.

So he was in his living room when Gervais – a popular boy who had volunteered to help a female friend move out of the assailant’s house – tried to intervene in a scuffle and was stabbed just below the armpit, the blade slicing through a major artery near the heart. The death was bloody, without the mercy of being quick.

A thousand miles away, Arthur Schobey’s killer had stabbed two men in an isolated Navajo village after a scuffle in June 2004, grabbing one from behind and slicing his throat from the earlobe to the middle of his chin.

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ESL Basic Facts

Linked with Pentagon backs plan to beam solar power from space.

Published on Dave’s ESL Bio-Fuel, by David DuByne, Feburary 13, 2007.

Let’s Talk about Future Trends, Predictions and Possibilities of Oil

Link: ESL explained (Hubbert Peak Theory).

Oil is a subject filled with big words that even native English speakers don’t understand, so I have designed this ESL class into easy to read simplified English, for anyone on this planet to study from.

Anyone whose English is good enough to say “I drive a car”, “I bought vegetables at the market”, “I am cooking dinner” “I go to the store” will understand the main point. Natural gas and oil are now a finite, quantifiable (measurable), limited commodity (product). The following pages will explain that some oil wells in the world are past the half way point in production and each day from now on will give less oil, so many oil fields and wells are declining that new oil being found in our planet is not enough to replace what is being used daily.

I leave the politics out of the subject, presenting only documented facts to allow anyone to see the future. The switch to bio-diesel and ethanol has begun. The first part of this compilation explains why the change is taking place, the last part explains what crops will be used and the way forward for these new industries. If you are interested in the subject of oil, want to see some possible investment opportunities or want to be in the right place at the right time. I present to you a crystal ball, so please look into the near future. Future Trends in Oil. Predictions, Possibilities and You.

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Linked with Three Years Oil and You.

Published on NewScientist Environment, by Dan Cho, 11 October 2007.

A futuristic scheme to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it to Earth has gained a large supporter in the US military. A report released yesterday by the National Security Space Office recommends that the US government sponsor projects to demonstrate solar-power-generating satellites and provide financial incentives for further private development of the technology.

Space-based solar power would use kilometre-sized solar panel arrays to gather sunlight in orbit. It would then beam power down to Earth in the form of microwaves or a laser, which would be collected in antennas on the ground and then converted to electricity. Unlike solar panels based on the ground, solar power satellites placed in geostationary orbit above the Earth could operate at night and during cloudy conditions.

”We think we can be a catalyst to make this technology advance,” said US Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Paul Damphousse of the NSSO at a press conference yesterday in Washington, DC, US.

The NSSO report (pdf) recommends that the US government spend $10 billion over the next 10 years to build a test satellite capable of beaming 10 megawatts of electric power down to Earth.

Abundant energy source: … (full text).

Linked with Webster Griffin Tarpley – USA, and with Made in USA.

Published on global research.ca, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, October 16, 2007.

… KMNews: CHECHEN TERROR BOSS ON US STATE DEPARTMENT PAYROLL: KMNews writes: “In early August, … ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria’ Ilyas Akhmadov received political asylum in the USA. And for his ‘outstanding services,’ Akhmadov received a Reagan-Fascell grant,” including a monthly stipend, medical insurance, and a well-equipped office with all necessary support services, including the possibility of meetings with political circles and leading U.S. media….“What about our partners in the ‘anti-terrorist coalition,’ who provided asylum, offices and money to Maskhadov’s representatives?” asks the Russian press agency …

… “Some days prior to the onset of the series of acts of terrorism in Russia, which has cost hundreds of lives, a number of extremely influential Western mass-media, expressing establishment positions, issued a personal warning to Vladimir Putin, that Russia should get out of the Caucasus, or else his political career would come to an end. Therefore, when the President on Saturday spoke of a declaration of war having been made against Russia, this was not just a matter of so-called ‘international terrorism’… One week prior to the first acts of terrorism, the authoritative British magazine, the Economist, which expresses the positions of Great Britain’s establishment, formulated the Western position concerning the Caucasus, and above all the policy of the Anglo-Saxon elite, in a very precise manner,” RBC writes …

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Published on Capital Ethiopia.com, Editorial, November 2007.

A nation can be assured of developmental success only when each of its citizens can raise levels of individual productivity. The richest nations and also those that are rapidly marching to join them, naturally have high rates of labor productivity per man hour, while the poorer a country is, the lower the productivity of the population.

Would the issue at hand were a rally cry to raise labor productivity rates in our country. Unfortunately, that might be a luxury at this point in time due to the more pressing issue of clearing up the role of work or meaningful occupation in our cultural fabric, which after all was formed under feudalism. The darkness of feudalism was dismantled over 33 years ago and is long gone and Ethiopians of the new Millennium may think they are no longer affected by the anti-work ethos of the feudal era.

Unfortunately, we remain scarred by that primitive philosophy and still experience severe aftershocks and flashbacks if you will, of the feudal aversion to hard work and the obsession with manufacturing many unnecessary holidays as excuses to avoid work. Be that as it may, it is not exactly the many off-days that contribute to the low productivity of the average Ethiopian but actually, the issue of not working at full capacity on dedicated work days.

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Linked with Rodrigue Tremblay – Canada.

Published on Online Journal, by Rodrigue Tremblay, Nov 5, 2007.

… The two greatest human catastrophes of the 20th century were World War I (10 million deaths) and World War II (62 million deaths).

In February 2002, neocon journalist Norman Podhoretz (a leading warmonger who is currently senior adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani) wrote an article calling for a new world war. He did it again in an article titled “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win” (Commentary magazine, September 2004), calling for what he called “World War IV”, i.e. a war against the country of Iran that he demonized by calling its leaders “Islamofascists”, who cannot be trusted with having nuclear weapons as can some other countries in the region that already have them (Israel, Russia, Pakistan, India).

Podhoretz and other fellow neocons label their pet world war “World War IV” because they have decided that the Cold War was really “World War III“.

As a matter of fact, there never was a Third World War between the nuclear-armed USA and the USSR. Indeed, because of the policy of containment and deterrence, such a nuclear holocaust was avoided and the world lived through the last half of the 20th century in relative peace … (full text).