Seems to me You’d Stop and See How Beautiful They Are…

February 2nd, 2010

Isn’t it funny how things capture us?
Well, I’ve said for years this is not the age of information, but the age of attention – it is, after all, where our attention goes that determines the probabilities of our outcomes…

This line was in my head all day … the sweet little lilt of it.. the clarity.
so… I had to go find it – various places, various voices and arrangements, and found myself here, loving it best of all in its most child like form… :D

Inchworm…this etheric version won out in the end.

And so – with all the information out there – it’s this,
for whatever reason – tonight, that gets my attention.

Nice that it’s nice.

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Albert Edwards – Central Banks Complicit in Robbing Middle Classes

January 30th, 2010

If you’re a middle aged middle class American or Brit who is thinking to yourself that earning a living has become extremely more difficult for yourself than it was for your parents, you are more than a little correct. In fact, you are exactly right.

This January 21, 2010 Zero Hedge article and Fred Harrison’s Interview at the end of  The Keiser Report in the previous post bring stark contrast to the mass media economic commentary telling us we are in a ‘jobless recovery’ . Rather, Mr. Harrison’s observations, as well as this piece below show precisely that the standard of living in the US has been completely stripped out over the last three decades.

Consider that the level of discretionary income has dropped precipitously in this time frame, that homes today cost approximately 20% more of the middle class wage earners’ median income than in the 50’s and 60’s.  Consider that your children, if aged 20 to 40 in today’s economy are twice as  likely to have financial crises and lose their homes (if they have managed to be able to afford to buy a home) as did your parents, even if your parents were blue collar wage earners in their day, and your children are white collar professionals…

This eye opening piece begins to paint a very different picture of what housing bubbles and tech stock bubbles help make invisible to the average citizen: the stripping of wealth from the middle class and syphoning of that wealth to the top of the top 1% of the wealthy:

Scandal: Albert Edwards Alleges Central Banks Were Complicit In Robbing The Middle Classes

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/21/2010 11:02 -0500

We apologize in advance for the NY Magazine-style headline, but this is a report that has to be read by all Senators who are preparing to reconfirm Bernanke for a second term. When voting for the Chairman, be aware that all of America will now look at you as the perpetrators who are encouraging the greatest inter and intra-generational theft to continue, and as prescribed by Newton 3rd law, sooner or later, an appropriate reaction will come from the very same middle class that you are seeking to doom into a state of perpetual penury and a declining standard of living.

America spoke in Massachusetts, and will speak again very soon if you do not send the appropriate signal that you have heard its anger – Do Not Reconfirm Bernanke.

You have been warned.

We present Albert Edwards’ latest in its complete form as it must be read by all unabridged and without commentary. These are not the deranged ramblings of a fringe blogger – this is a chief strategist for a major international bank.

Theft! Were the US & UK central banks complicit in robbing the middle classes?

by Albert Edwards, Societe Generale

Mr Bernanke’s in-house Fed economists have found that the Fed wasn’t responsible for the boom which subsequently turned into the biggest bust since the 1930s. Are those the same Fed staffers whose research led Mr Bernanke to assert in Oct. 2005 that “there was no housing bubble to go bust”? The reasons for the US and the UK central banks inflating the bubble range from incompetence and negligence to just plain spinelessness. Let me propose an alternative thesis. Did the US and UK central banks collude with the politicians to ‘steal’ their nations’ income growth from the middle classes and hand it to the very rich?

Ben Bernanke?s recent speech at the American Economic Association made me feel sick. Like Alan Greenspan, he is still in denial. The pigmies that populate the political and monetary elites prefer to genuflect to the court of public opinion in a pathetic attempt to deflect blame from their own gross and unforgivable incompetence.

The US and UK have seen a huge rise in inequality over the last two decades, as growth in national income has been diverted almost exclusively to the top income earners (see chart below). The middle classes have seen median real incomes stagnate over that period and, as a consequence, corporate margins and profits have boomed.

Some recent reading has got me thinking as to whether the US and UK central banks were actively complicit in an aggressive re-distributive policy benefiting the very rich. Indeed, it has been amazing how little political backlash there has been against the stagnation of ordinary people?s earnings in the US and UK. Did central banks, in creating housing bubbles, help distract middle class attention from this re-distributive policy by allowing them to keep consuming via equity extraction? The emergence of extreme inequality might never otherwise have been tolerated by the electorate (see chart below). And now the bubbles have burst, along with central banks? credibility, what now?


After reading Ben Bernanke?s speech, once again denying culpability for the bubble, I really didn?t know whether to laugh or cry (remember that Ben Bernanke, like Tim Geithner, was a key member of the Greenspan Fed). I feel like Peter Finch in the film Network, sticking my head out of the window and shouting “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Although criticism of the Fed (and the Bank of England) has now become louder and more widespread, I feel my longstanding derision for their actions during the so-called ?good years? puts me in a stronger position than some to offer further comment.

Opening my 2002-2005 file of old weeklies I did not have to go any further than the first paragraph of the top copy (end of December 2005). “As far as Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the Fed is concerned, we have spared few words of derision. We have made plain our views that the supposed US prosperity that has accompanied his tenure has been based on a grotesque mountain of debt. We have likened the economy to a Ponzi scheme which will ultimately collapse. He has allowed the funding of strong economic activity by mortgaging the US’s future against one bubble (equity) and then another (housing), which is now beginning to implode”. These are almost consensus thoughts now, but not then.

The pigmies that populate the political and monetary elites prefer to genuflect to the court of public opinion. Blaming the banks is simply a pathetic attempt to deflect the public fury from their own gross and unforgivable incompetence. We have stated before that banks are not the primary cause of the bust. Just as in Japan, a decade earlier, bank problems are a symptom of the bust. It is the monetary and regulatory authorities that are responsible for this mess. And it is not just obvious in retrospect. It was perfectly obvious from the beginning.

I was shocked by a recent survey of Wall Street and business economists, published in the Wall Street Journal (see Bernanke View Doubted 14 Jan? link). Asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the proposition ‘excessively easy Fed policy in the first half of the decade helped cause a bubble in house prices’, some 42, or 74% agreed with the proposition. So unbelievably there are still 12 economists surveyed who did not agree! Even more incredible, a majority of academic economists did not agree with the proposition. Maybe they have sympathy for a fellow academic or maybe they actually believe the preposterous proposition that the western central banks were not in control of the bubbles which were primarily due to tidal waves of surplus savings washing across from Asia.

John Taylor shows this to be nonsense. There was no global savings glut (see chart below)

John Taylor is well known for his famous ?Taylor Rule? for the appropriate level of interest rates and he has been very vocal in his criticism of Fed laxity in the aftermath of the Nasdaq crash in his paper ?The Financial Crisis and Policy Responses: An Empirical Analysis of What Went Wrong’, Nov. 2008 and elsewhere – link. His thesis is simple. Lax monetary policy caused the boom in housing upon which euphoric credit excesses were built. The subsequent bust was an inevitable mirror image of the boom. This simply would not have occurred had the Fed (and the Bank of England) acted earlier to tighten policy as shown in the Taylor?s counterfactual profiles (see charts below).

More recently, the San Francisco Fed published a paper this month showing that those countries which saw the steepest run-up in house prices over the last decade also saw the largest rise in household sector leverage (see charts below and link). Of course the causality runs both ways. Loose monetary policy generates higher borrowing which pushes up house prices. Subsequently this prompts other households to borrow against the rising value of their houses to finance consumption via net equity extraction.

Generally most commentators have fallen for the populist line that the banks are to blame. Very rarely does a leading commentator pin the blame where it deserves to be ? on the central banks. Hence, I was very interested to read the Financial Times Insight column on Tuesday from the deep-thinking columnist, John Plender (interestingly his title in the print edition was “Blame the central bankers more than the private bankers” was changed to “Remove the punchbowl before the party gets rowdy” in the web edition – link).

Plender?s point is classic Minsky. An unusually long period of economic stability, also known as The Great Moderation, engineered by Central Bank laxity inevitably created the conditions for the subsequent bust. “Central banks clearly bear much responsibility for past excessive credit expansion. The Fed’s gradualist and transparent approach to raising rates in middecade also ensured that bankers were never shocked into a recognition that unprecedented shrinkage of bank equity was phenomenally dangerous. Despite the popular perception that financial innovation caused so much of the damage in the crisis, the rise in bank leverage was a far more important factor”. His point that it takes guts to remove the punch-bowl when the party is in full swing is spot on. The Fed and the Bank of England were both gutless and spineless. Their love affair with The Great Moderation meant they simply were not prepared to tolerate a little more pain now to avoid a Minsky credit bust and massive unemployment later.

But what is the relationship, if any, between this extreme central bank laxity in the US and UK and these countries being at the forefront for the extraordinary rise in inequality over the last few decades (see cover chart)? And does it matter?

I was reading some typically thought-provoking comments from Marc Faber in his Gloom, Boom and Doom report about current extremes of inequality. It reminded me that our own excellent US economists Steven Gallagher and Aneta Markowska had also written on this. To be sure, the rise in inequality has been staggering in the US in recent years (see charts below).

It is well worth visiting the website of Emmanuel Saez of the University of California who has written extensively on this subject and now has updated his charts up until the end of 2008 (data available in Excel Format ? link). The New York Times reported on the recently released Census Bureau data and showed not only that median income had declined over the last 10 years in real terms, but that this is the first full decade that real median household income has failed to rise in the US - link. What is also so interesting from Professor Saez?s cross-sectional research is how inequality has clearly risen fastest in the Anglosaxon, freemarket economies of the US and the UK (also note that France, with much higher levels of equality, saw much more subdued growth in household leverage).

Our US economists make the very interesting point (similar to Marc Faber) that peaks of income skewness ? 1929 and 2007 ? tell us there is something fundamentally unsustainable about excessively uneven income distribution. With a relatively low marginal propensity to consume among the rich, when they receive the vast bulk of income growth, as they have, then the country will face an under-consumption problem (see 9 September The Economic News ?- link. Marc Faber also cites John Hobson?s work on this same topic from the 1930s).

Hence, while governments preside over economic policies which make the very rich even richer, national consumption needs to be boosted in some way to avoid underconsumption ending in outright deflation. In addition, the middle classes also need to be thrown a sop to disguise the fact they are not benefiting at all from economic growth. This is where central banks have played their pernicious part.

I recalled seeing another article from John Plender on this topic back in April 2008. His explanation for why there had been so little backlash from the stagnation of ordinary people?s income at a time when the rich did so well was simple: ?”Rising asset prices, especially in the housing market, created a sense of increasing wealth regardless of income. Remortgaging homes over a long period of declining interest rates provided a convenient source of funds via equity withdrawal to finance increased consumption” – link.

Now you might argue central banks had no alternative in the face of under-consumption. Or you might conclude there was a deliberate, unspoken collusion among policymakers to ?rob? the middle classes of their rightful share of income growth by throwing them illusionary spending power based on asset price inflation. We will never know.

But it is clear in my mind that ordinary working people would not have tolerated these extreme redistributive policies had not the UK and US central banks played their supporting role. Going forward, in the absence of a sustained housing boom, labour will fight back to take its proper (normal) share of the national cake, squeezing profits on a secular basis. For as Bill Gross pointed out back in PIMCO?s investment outlook ?Enough is Enough’ of August 1997, “?When the fruits of society’s labor become maldistributed, when the rich get richer and the middle and lower classes struggle to keep their heads above water as is clearly the case today, then the system ultimately breaks down.”- link. In Japan, low levels of inequality and inherent social cohesion prevented a social breakdown in this post-bubble debacle. With social inequality currently so very high in the US and the UK, it doesn?t take much to conclude that extreme inequality could strain the fabric of society far closer to breaking point.

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Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert – Breaking the Stories No One Else is Brave Enough To Touch

January 29th, 2010

Of all the sources for cogent information out there, I have to say my all time, hands down, top of the heap favorite is still Max Keiser and his Max Keiser Report with Stacy Herbert.  These two are absolutely on target and on track as they cover the real stories behind the stories in today’s ever more insane world.

Best of all, they are fun – they are funny – AND they, in the vast majority of their work, GET IT RIGHT.  Here’s Max and Stacy – Thanks for Being Out There and Taking us all with you!

So long as Max and Stacy are out there telling the truth – as ludicrous and outrageous as it becomes – there is a chance that at some point the people of the world can find out – and wake up –

Now as the banks crash the markets while the Senate “takes on this most important bank reform legislation” and scare everyone into backing off and backing down – Even as the Rules of the WTO forbid and reign in governments from regulating the size of financial institutions – we at least have front row seats to the financial terrorism now running the western world.

I’m with Stacy on this one – Let’s all petition the Supreme Court for Corporate Personhood for Live People! We’d have more rights and more power – AND we could all run all our earnings through the Cayman Islands just like Goldman Sachs does and eliminate our tax burden! SLICK! No Longer Are the Too Big to Fails Our Enemies! Instead they are our ROLE MODELS!

DOH!!!

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Another Reason for Haitian Militarization Rather than Real Aid

January 29th, 2010

This article is a little long, but worth every word.
Don’t fall for the ‘panic’ and ’security crisis’ being sold on the major media – instead read some real deep research into what is really going on as a result of longstanding historically documentated exploitation of the people of Haiti.

And why have all these major players suddenly made Haiti their target?
Bill Clinton the UN Envoy to Haiti?

Excellent read. Depressing but thorough.

This article was first published in October 2009.

Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery – an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers – Another economic reason for the ouster of President Aristide and current UN occupation (Haiti’s Riches:Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti)

There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.

There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti’s deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paper about the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.

Ezili’s HLLN underlines these two papers on Haiti’s oil resources and the works of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin in order to provide a view one will not find in the mainstream media nor anywhere else as to the economic and strategic reasons the US has constructed its fifth largest embassy in the world – fifth only besides the US embassy in China, Iraq, Iran and Germany – in tiny Haiti, post the 2004 Haiti Bush regime change.

The facts outlined in the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, considered together, reasonably unveil part of the hidden reasons UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, is giving the UN occupation a facelift so that its troops stay in Haiti for the duration.

Ezili’s HLLN has consistently maintained, since the beginning of the 2004 Bush regime change in Haiti, that the 2004 US invasion of Haiti used UN troops as its military proxy to avoid the charge of imperialism and racism. We have also consistently maintained that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is not about protecting Haitian rights, security, stability or long-term domestic development but about returning the Washington Chimeres/[gangsters] – the traditional Haitian Oligarchs – to power, establishing free trade not fair trade, the Chicago-boys’ death plan, neoliberal policies, keeping the minimum wage at slave wage levels, plundering Haiti’s natural resources and riches, not to mention using the location benefit that Haiti lies between Cuba and Venezuela. Two countries the US has unsuccessfuly orchestrated regime changes in and continues to pursue. In the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, we find and deploy further details as to why the US is in Haiti with this attempted Bill Clinton facelift to the UN’s continued occupations.

For, no matter the disguise or media spins it’s also about Haiti’s oil reserves, and about securing Haiti’s deep-water ports as transshipment location for oil or for tank sites to store crude oil without interference from a democratic government beholden to its informed population’s welfare. (See Reynold’s deep water port in Miragoane/NIPDEVCO property- scroll to photos in middle of the page.)

In Haiti, between 1994 to 2004 when the people had a voice in government, there was an intense grassroots movement to figure out how to exploit Haiti’s resources. There was a plan, where in the book “Investing In People: Lavalas White Book under the direction of Jean-Betrand Aristide (Investir Dans L’Humain), the Haitian majority “were not only told where the resources were, but that — they did not have the skills and technology to actually extract the gold, to extract the oil.”

The Aristide/Lavalas plan, as I’ve articulated in the Haiti’s Riches Interview, was “to engage in some sort of private/public partnership. Where both the Haitian people’s interest would be taken care of and of course the private interest would take their profits. But I think it was around that time we had St. Genevieve saying they did not like the Haitian government. Obviously, they didn’t like this plan. They don’t like the Haitian people to know where their resources are. But in this book, it was the first time in Haitian history, it was written in Kreyòl and in French. And there was a national discussion all over the radio in Haiti with respect to all these various resources of Haiti, where they were located, and how the Haitian government was intending on trying to build sustainable development through those resources. So that’s what you had before the 2004 Bush regime change/Coup D’etat in Haiti. With the Coup D’etat now, though the people know where these resources are because this book exists, they don’t know who these foreign companies are. What they’re profit margins are. What the environmental protection rules and regulations to protect them are. Many folks, for instance, in the North talk about losing their property, having people come in with guns and taking over their property. So that’s where we are.” (Haiti’s Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti.)

The mainstream media, owned by the multinational companies fleecing Haiti, certainly won’t lay out for public consumption that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is to secure Haiti’s oil, strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves)��, lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world’s wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies. (See, Map showing some of Haiti’s mining and mineral wealth, including five oil sites in Haiti; Oil in Haiti by Dr. Georges Michel; Excerpt from the Dunn Plantation paper; Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin; There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals, and Is UN proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti).

In fact, the current Haitian authority-under-the-US/UN-occupation that is in charge of regulating exploration licenses and mining in Haiti does not explain, in any relevant or systematic manner, to the Haitian majority about the companies buying up, post 2004, Haiti’s deep water ports, what their profit shares with the Haitian nation are, where are the accounting of said shares owed to the people of Haiti, nor explain the environmental effects of the massive excavations of Haiti’s mountains and waters going on right now. Instead, the Director of Mining in Haiti blithely maintains that “further research will be necessary to confirm the existence of oil in Haiti.”

In an excerpt taken from the article posted Oct 9, 2000 by Bob Perdue entitled “Lonnie Dunn, third owner of the Dauphin plantation,” we learn that:

“On November 8, 1973, Martha C. Carbone, American Embassy, Port-au-Prince, sent a letter to the Office of Fuels and Energy, Department of State, in which she stated that the Government of Haiti “…had before it proposals from eight different groups to establish a trans-shipment port for petroleum in one or more of the Haitian deep water ports. Some of the projects include construction of a refinery….” She further commented that the Embassy was acquainted with three firms: Ingram Corporation of New Orleans, Southern California Gas Company and Williams Chemical Corporation of Florida.. (According to John Moseley, the New Orleans company was probably “Ingraham”, not Ingram.)

In the November 6, 1972 issue of Oil and Gas Journal, Leo B. Aalund commented in his article “Vast Flight of Refining Capacity from U.S. Looms”,.: “Finally, ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier’s Haiti is participating with a group that wants to build a transshipment terminal off Fort Liberte, Haiti”. One of the proposals referred to by Carbone was undoubtedly submitted by Dunn interests.

Additionally, we learn from this article that “Lonnie Dunn who owned the Dauphin plantation “planned to straighten and widen the entrance to the [Fort Liberte] bay so that super tankers could be brought in and the cargo distributed to smaller tankers for transfer to U.S. and Caribbean ports that could not accommodate large ships…” (Photo of Fort Liberte, Haiti).

We’ve put on the Ezili’s HLLN website the other relevant portions of this paper that talks about the corporate eye the US has had, for decades, on Fort Liberte in Haiti as an ideal deep water port for the multinationals to establish an oil refinery.

In the 50s and 60s there was little need for Haiti’s ports or oil as the Middle Eastern monopoly was gushing dollars galore. No need for these oil monopolies to undercut themselves by putting more oil on the market to cut their profits. Manipulated scarcity thy name is profit! or, did I mean capitalism?

But the oil embargo of the 70s, the advent of OPEC, the rise of the Venezuelan factor, the Gulf Crisis followed by the Iraq war for oil, all has made Haiti a better bet for the three-piece suits and their military mercernaries called “Western governments”, yep, a way easier place to pillage and plunder behind the “bringing democracy” or “humanitarian aid” public covers.

Serendipitously with Haiti’s 2004 Bush-the-son Regime Change, a follow up to the 1991 Bush-the-father’s military coup, we find, flurries of Congressional “discussions” about off-shore drillings in preparation, perhaps, to the eventual “revelation” as written in the Dunn paper years ago, that “there is a need for supertankers that require deep-water ports which are not readily available along the U.S. East Coast – nor …welcome…for environmental and other consideration will (not) permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that will be required.”

We underline that Haiti is an ideal dumping ground for the US/Canada/France and now Brazil, because environmental, human rights and health issues and other considerations in the US and in these other countries, would probably not permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that new explorations of oil in this hemisphere will required. So, why not pick the most militarily defenseless country in the Western Hemisphere and dot it with such unsafe initiatives behind a UN multi-national “humanitarian” mask and fatherly Bill Clinton’s snowy white hair and smiling face?

It is relevant to note here that most of Haiti’s major deep water ports have been privatized since the Bush 2004 regime change in Haiti. It is also relevant to note here what I wrote last year in the piece titled Is the UN military proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti: “If there’s substantial oil and gas reserves in Haiti, the US/Euro genocide and crimes against the Haitian population has not yet begun. Ayisyen leve zye nou anwo, kenbe red. Nou fèk komanse goumen. (Read again, John Maxwell’s Is there oil in Haiti.)

The revelations of Dr. Georges Michel and the Dunn Plantation papers seem to positively answer the question that there is substantail oil reserves in Haiti. And our Ezili Dantò Witness Project information is that it’s indeed being tapped and contracted out, but not for the benefit of Haitians or Haiti’s authentic development. That’s why there was a need to marginalize the Haitian masses through the ouster of Haiti’s democratically elected Aristide government and put in the UN guns and UN occupation that today masks the US/Euros’ (with a piece to the new power that is Brazil) securing Haiti’s oil and gas reserves and other mineral riches such as gold, copper, diamond and underwater treasures. (Majescor and SACG Discover a New Copper-Gold in Haiti, Oct. 6, 2009; See, Haiti’s Riches and There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals.)

Today, the US and Euros say they are happy with Haiti’s “security gains” and “stable” government. To wit: the last elections the US/UN presided over in Haiti excluded Haiti’s majority party from participation. Haiti’s jails are filled, indefinitely detained without trial or hearings, since 2004, with thousands upon thousands of community organizers, poor civilians and political dissenters that the UN/US label “gangsters.” Site Soley has been “pacified.” There are more NGOs and charitable organizations – about 10,000 – in Haiti then in any where in the world since 2004 and the Haitian people are a million times worst off than they were before this US/NGO civilization (otherwise also known as the “International Community”) and their thugs, thieves and corporate death squads came and disenfranchised nine million blacks. Food prices are so high, some resort to eating dirt in the form of cookies to assuage Clorox hunger.

Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, the head of Haiti’s largest human rights organization was disappeared in 2007 in UN occupied Haiti with no investigation done. Between 2004 and 2006 under the Western occupation, first by the US Marines then the UN multinational troops headed by Brazil, from 14,000 to 20,000 Haitians, mostly who opposed the occupation and regime change, were slaughtered with total impunity. More Haitian children are out of school today in 2009 than before the US/NGO “civilization” came post 2004. Under the US-imposed Boca Raton regime ,Haiti’s Supreme Court was fired and brand new and paid-for judges, without any Constitutional authority inherited from the people of Haiti’s mandate, took the place of the legitimate judges and law officers and are still metering out paid-for rulings in 2009 under the UN occupation and international community’s tutelage.

And, as a matter of power, privilege, inequity and the violence of neocolonialism, white-sex abusers and pedophiles are having a hay day and human trafficking of Haiti children are at an all-time high. It is no revelation that in the stakes of corruption in Haiti or in Africa that a great many of the foreign NGOs along with their bourgeois/elite/pastors/priests and others are destroying poor children’s life with absolute impunity while being painted as “saints” in their press back home the better to raise more funds to masturbate on Black pain some more.

Yet, Special UN Envoy, Bill Clinton, tells us “I am serving the next two years as a US Special Envoy to Haiti…This is the best chance in my lifetime that Haitians have ever had to escape the chains of their past…” The former President added, “If Haiti pulls out of this it will be in no small measure because of the efforts of non-governmental organizations.”

What that means is perhaps this is the Haitian subcontractors, ruling oligarchs and US/Euro military industrial complexes’ best chance to finally impose their chains on Haiti for good. Tap Haiti’s oil, keep it so poor it will be grateful for slave wages at sweatshops. Let sexual tourism and the white sex-abusers do as they will. Transfer quickly more Haiti properties to foreigners and render the “good” Haitians as maids, butlers and servants in US/Euro-owned Haiti tourist resorts like the rest of the Caribbean. Militarize Haiti so that dissent is not possible even as a thought. That’s perhaps UN Envoy, Bill Clinton’s “best chance in my lifetime” scenario for Haiti. Nothing else makes sense. (See, HLLN comment on new IMF figures indicating Haiti is no longer the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and Does the Western economic calculation of wealth fit Haiti -fit Dessalines idea of wealth distribution?NO! and Comparing crime, poverty and violence in the rest of the Hemisphere to Haiti and Pointing Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth and The Western vs the Real Narrative on Haiti and No other national group anywhere in the world sends more money home than Haitians living abroad.)

Going shopping in Haiti:

“It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. ––Emma Goldman

Though they exist and form the exception to the rule, there are very few Paul Farmers, Margaret Trosts or Bill Quigleys in the Haitian world. And even amongst “the exceptions,” the number whittles down to almost zero in terms of foreign heroes who can be expected to go the lifetime-distance without making “unusual alliances” or joining the status quo that vies for the soul of Black folks. Few who would HEAR, Lila Watson who said, “If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together.” This sort of thinking that inspires self-reliance not dependency and provide the respectful conditions for those in great need to, in liberty, dignity and identify, realize their own needs is not what compels the International Community in Haiti right now.

For, in the age of humanitarian imperialism, globalization, financial colonialism and neocolonial-violence obfuscated behind forced assimilation and cultural imperialism, what exactly do some whites or modern missionaries go shopping in Haiti for: sex, self-esteem, adulation, fun, challenge, adventure, the boost in serotonin-consumption, to exploit cheap labor, plunder Haiti’s natural resources, for self-improvement, recovery, to use Haiti as in excuse to raise funds for their salaries and living expenses to live the old Dixie’s planters’ life with exploitation black sex on tap, or as an easy way to gain international expert credentials in any field and move up the socio-economic ladder at home and/or for securing the good tropical lifestyle with mountain and oceanfront houses, the waiters, maids, gardeners and seafood they couldn’t obtain as easily in their Euro/US countries where they are the majority, ordinary, can’t use the white privilege inheritance without some scrutiny and are not as exotic and special as in neocolonial devastated Haiti. It’s all hidden, of course, behind the mask of being good humanitarians, altruistic charity workers and helping Haitians. (See also, Ezili Dantò Reviews Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking (a book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D.); The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won’t Expose ; Haiti’s Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues; UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children; The-To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti Forum 2009; I am the History of Rape: HLLN Letter to UN asking for investigative reports on UN soldier’s rapes in Haiti; and, Proposed solutions to create a new paradigm.)

Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò is an award winning playwright, a performance poet, political and social commentator, author and human rights attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in the USA.  For more go to Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò website at http://www.ezilidanto.com

Global Research Articles by Marguerite Laurent

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Paul Simon – American Tune

January 23rd, 2010

There are few things as lovely or incredible as pure expression in its higest form and this is nothing, if not that.

Every once in a while I stumble upon Paul Simon again – another sweet reunion – and realize again that in his very succinct and beautifully executed and inspired creations, he has become the voice of the heart of the American experience. He is the true real thing modern folk or popular poetic expression and he is stunningly brilliant and excellent in his construction and delivery. On all fronts, a truly awe inspiring artist.

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Private Profits at Human Suffering’s Expense in All Directions… How Long Has This Been Going On?

January 19th, 2010

Funny I had thought I’d seen the worst of it – and yet..
It just keeps piling in.

Watching the AP news woman ‘ride along’ as it took 5 and ahalf hours to deliver ONE truck load of food in Haiti from a warehouse full of supplies – left behind… while red cross, doctors without borders, field hospitals and aid workers are turned away inbound on the air in favor of US Marines and military… If this is not the most blatant display of lack of care for human life I have ever witnessed in front of a world stage that seems willing to sit and watch, I don’t know what is…

I am not special, I cannot fix it, but I cannot help but be overwhelmed and appalled by it – and yet it seems we are all supposed to just observe it or not… and I feel sick to my stomach – and wonder if I’ve gone mad. don’t sleep. can’t think.

Is it really happening? Tomorrow marks day seven since it all began and still the ‘relief effort’ is like a clown circus at a death camp. Useless and irrelevent. Sickeningly so.

The good thing is, that at least I am not going mad, and I am not deranged for thinking what I am watching is another insanity of death and destruction wholesale of people for profits – it really is that and I am really seeing it.  In the old days this sort of ’screwing with your perception of reality was called ‘gas lighting’. I think perhaps the entire world is experiencing ‘gas lighting’ in its extreme mass media incarnation.

This article at least made me feel less insane.

thanks for that, sir.


Haiti & the Four Stooges
By Jim Kirwan
1-16-10

The four creatures are George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr. and Obamanation, who was just admitted to this elite club of war-criminals. Together their human-rights record in times of Disasters, whether natural or man-made, literally boggles the mind of anyone that thinks the United States Government is ever “here to help.”

Hurricane Andrew and its aftermath is one of the most volatile examples of the difference between government spin and on the ground reality in time of need, that the world has seen from these four war-criminals. More than twice as many people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, in 1992, as were murdered in the attacks of 911, yet the public knows virtually nothing about these crimes at all. And to this day the events surrounding Hurricane Andrew in South Florida remain sealed under national security protections.

“The largest natural disaster ever recorded in the history of the United States was hurricane Andrew, which struck South Dade County, Florida, as midnight turned the clock into August 24, 1992. Contrary to what the American news media broadcast across the United States and throughout Europe, the first outer wall of the hurricane unexpectedly slammed intoSouth Dade, packing 214+ mph winds which quickly escalated to 350+ mph. Most of the 414,151 residents living in the danger zone were asleep when the outer wall struck. Thousands of them lost their lives, for no one in South Dade had been evacuated or even advised to evacuate. Instead, residents had been repeatedly informed by local news media that South Dadeshould expect to experience “50 mph winds”.

By 11.00 am the following morning, 8,230 mobile homes along with 9,140 apartments had vanished off the face of the Earth. The Hiroshima-like horror was beyond catastrophic. Entire families perished in ways too horrifying to describe. The stench of death had already begun to saturate miles and miles of the massive devastation; the hot humid air was reeking with foul, rotting flesh.

How do I know? Because I was in the midst of it all.
The survivors of hurricane Andrew and the rest of the American people were betrayed by their own government. But the betrayal also extended to foreign nationals. At the time Andrew struck, South Dade was inhabited by a large population of Mexican illegal immigrants. The United States Department of Immigration was fully aware of their presence but quietly turned its back on the situation, knowing full well that South Dade farmers couldn’t afford to harvest their crops without the help of the Mexican illegals. The heavily populated migrant camps were situated at the edge of the Florida Everglades. The people who lived there vanished without a trace during that fated night. Many bodies were found way out in the Everglades.

When I lectured at the Clearwater Convention in Florida in 1999, a man in the audience stood up and introduced himself as Chief Petty Officer Roy Howard. He proceeded to address the audience with this exact statement, which is now a matter of public record:

Just for your information, I was called up to active duty after hurricane Andrew went through South Dade County. I spent nine weeks down there. Now I will certify for the benefit of our audience here that the death figures that were officially published are totally inaccurate. According to the information which I received from my own sources within the National Guard, the figure I was quoted when I was down there was 5,280-something. And they were quietly disposed of in incinerators that were hurriedly put together by both the National Guard and FEMA…

As the Chief Petty Officer stated, “5,280-something” bodies were confiscated by the United States National Guard. In addition to this, the Coast Guard independently confiscated “1,500 bodies” from the lakes and surrounding waters. Neither one of these figures embraces the number of dead bodies confiscated by other branches of federal and state government directly involved in the body pick-up operation. This leaves the number of dead confiscated by various US authorities inSouth Dade still unknown.

The total number who died during hurricane Andrew is obviously staggering, yet whenever the “official death toll” is mentioned in the media, a figure of anywhere between 15 and 59 is quoted. The population of the 21 communities annihilated by Andrew’s eye-wall had been officially recorded by the Dade County Census Bureau as 415,151 before Andrew struck. Bodies of human beings confiscated and disposed-of like rubbish, as if their lives had no more worth or meaning than a piece of discarded litter–it’s horrifying to be suddenly confronted by the same kind of atrocities as perpetrated by the Nazis. Once again repeating history, a master-minded cover-up was dutifully carried out by armed military forces, right smack in the midst of horrendous human suffering.

When Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Dade, the State Attorney of Florida was none other than Janet Reno. Her office was located at the Dade County Court House in the City of Miami. The President of the United States was President George H.W. Bush, and the Vice-President was Dan Quayle. Bill Clinton was running for President, and Al Gore for Vice-President. Senator Bob Graham held office, and the late Lawton Chiles was Governor of Florida. His successor turned out to be Jeb Bush, still the Governor of Florida and, ironically enough, the son of former President Bush whose other son, George W. Bush, the then Governor of Texas, has since become the “self-selected” President of the United States…” (1)

Andrew happened on the watch of GWH Bush with Clinton in the wings (Slick-Willie oversaw the cover-up). George Bush Junior gave us Katrina, Houston, Galveston, and numerous catastrophic fire storms plus devastating floods. Yet FEMA’s record in response to all of this is not just abysmal, it is criminally negligent on all counts, and the whole world knows it: yet nothing is done.

Today Obamanation, the war-president of this Police-state, has announced that he is bringing in George W. Bush (junior) and Bill (hands off every real human rights problem) Clinton, to assist in organizing the relief for Haiti! Wow ­ apparently not enough people have died yet in Haiti to satisfy these blood-thirsty colonial servants to their puppet-masters; so in the interests of saving political-face instead of human lives: Obama wants to bring in the Bigtime Criminals perhaps to oversee the redistribution of any wealth that hasn’t already been stolen from the Haitian people.

One other major figure has also been called on: That would be the traitor, former General Colin Powell. People might remember him as the man that sold the world on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the UN, which he knew to be nothing but a pack of lies. Once this was exposed to the world “the general” stayed on rather than do the honorable thing and just resign.

If this were a military operation then this tragedy beyond measure in Haiti would already have seen occupying troops in every open space where helicopters could be landing and taking off every few minutes. Off shore the Seabees and the Army Corp of Engineers would be massing to clear the rubble and re-build the necessary roads; working to reconnect communications, while providing food and medicine wherever needed. Hospital ships would be available for air-evacuations of the most critical patients and all of this would have been in place yesterday. As things stand the major nations are still lining up their talking heads and figuring out how to make Haiti pay for all this generosity that will never arrive!

If this had been a purely military operation the money needed would have been instantly available from the corrupt congress (and from the allied forces of “the willing” nations). All of this effort would have already been contracted out to siphon off as much of this largess as possible; but enough would be left over to at least have eased the pain and to have been successful in saving hundreds if not thousands of lives.

This entire disaster reeks of set-up; but however this “happened” the truth about so many nations will finally be seen in how the aftermath of this earthquake-in-Haiti is actually dealt with. Don’t look to the UN or to very many of all those hundreds of privatized agencies-because these kinds of events are why most of those supposedly humanitarian organizations were formed in the first place: to drain the pockets of those that want to help (but only from a distance).

The world is so screwed up right now because this is yet another example of what actually happens when we “never look back” upon all the crimes that every “new” administration continues and usually amplifies upon, just as soon as they take over from the previous criminal-enterprise which of course they succeeded, in their own turn at the trough of draining the public’s money to fill the already over-filled pockets for yet more private-profits; wherever that opportunity presents itself. Just yesterday three major credit card companies were caught capitalizing on credit-card transactions that were sent as relief funds which they saw as a major opportunity for unforeseen profits. The companies had to back down on what they thought of as a windfall of 5 to 7 percent profit created by a transaction swipe-fee: This should have been prosecuted as a crime, but once they agreed to reverse themselves (only because they got caught) the whole matter was dropped after a few critical lines on CNN.

Instead of helping anyone, the US media is just racing around holding hands with themselves to wail and morn the crisis; while adding to it with the duplicity of what they have never reported regarding every real crisis that this nation, or indeed any poor nation has ever had to face, anywhere on this planet.

Haiti and its blood-soaked history was raped and brutalized by the French and the Americans along with others because Haitiwas the first black slave-state to have successfully revolted and overthrown their so-called masters. The USA has since invaded and occupied that “poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere” way too often to ever be considered as a nation that cares at all-except of course as a place that invades to redistribute the wealth and the political power of Haiti, every few decades. The French were so helpful from the beginning that they held Haiti in financial bondage for a hundred years while they extorted reparations for the slaves that the French lost when the rebellion succeeded in freeing them. Anyone that thinks that slavery is dead, or that colonial nation-states are a thing of the past needs to read about Haiti in depth: because the history of that tiny Republic is riddled with the contradictions and lies that are still alive and well today.

However the truth is out there among all those security-protected-murders and sealed records, if anyone were brave enough to demand that the records of these ‘disasters’ be unsealed. But just as Rummy so famously said during the beginning of Shock & Awe in Baghdad “We don’t do nation-building” ­ it could be said of this continuing fiasco ‘we don’t do humanitarian aid either.’ The current world is all about private profits and the redistribution of wealth no matter the costs; so much so in fact that someone needs to dig a lot deeper into the causes of this supposed earthquake if any reality is ever to known about what really happened on that conflicted island.

This ‘Disaster’ will prove to be yet another example of the duplicity and lies that our continued silence has bought and paid for millions of times over just because too few care that they are being treated like a herd of cattle to be used and abused and then slaughtered for the mega-profits of their owners-worldwide!

kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

1) Hurricane Andrew http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/hurricane_andrew.htm

How Long Has This Been Going On?

and that’s all I can say for now…

~
~

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HAITI – GREG PALAST REPORTS THE TRUTH – WTF???

January 17th, 2010

Okay – my site is officially broken side bar is gone to the depths of hell at the bottom of the pages – whatever…. who cares? WE ARE LETTING HAITIANS DIE AS IF THEY DID NOT MATTER AND ONLY ICELAND – “new terrorist nation” is DOING ANYTHING REAL – as US SEND IN BLACK WATER OPS???
GIVE ME A GOD DAMN BREAK I CANNOT STAND THIS INSANITY ANY MORE!!

1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?

2. There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?” Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in ‘a few days’”?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5. Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I don’t know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has.” We know Gates doesn’t know.

6. From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It’s all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people.” Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7. Send in the Marines. That’s America’s response. That’s what we’re good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8. But don’t worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They’re from Iceland.

9. Gates wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no “structure … to provide security.” For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it’s security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.

10. Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It’s treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.

11. How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off?

Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)

12. What Papa and Baby didn’t run off with, the IMF finished off through its “austerity” plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.

13. In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF’s austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.

14. Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti’s wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled – and have been paying for it ever since.

From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.

15. Secretary Gates tells us, “There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things.” The Navy’s hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!

16. Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That’s a fact of life too, Mr. President.

***
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend’s medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.
Urgently recommended reading - The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.

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Ron Paul’s Special Order Speech

January 16th, 2010

Ron Paul delivers another

“Could it all be a bad dream, or a nightmare? Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? It’s surreal; it’s just not believable. A grand absurdity; a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions; based on preposterous notions; and on ideas whose time should never have come; simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; insanity passed off as logic; grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; evil described as virtue; ignorance pawned off as wisdom; destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; violence, the tool of change; preventive wars used as the road to peace; tolerance delivered by government guns; reactionary views in the guise of progress; an empire replacing the Republic; slavery sold as liberty; excellence and virtue traded for mediocracy; socialism to save capitalism; a government out of control, unrestrained by the Constitution, the rule of law, or morality; bickering over petty politics as we collapse into chaos; the philosophy that destroys us is not even defined.

We have broken from reality–a psychotic Nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. Money does not grow on trees, nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits.

We’re now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people’s money, exorbitant taxation, deficits of trillions of dollars–spent on a failed welfare/warfare state; an epidemic of cronyism; unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth.

A central bank that deliberately destroys the value of the currency in secrecy, without restraint, without nary a whimper. Yet, cheered on by the pseudo-capitalists of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and Detroit.

We police our world empire with troops on 700 bases and in 130 countries around the world. A dangerous war now spreads throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Thousands of innocent people being killed, as we become known as the torturers of the 21st century.

We assume that by keeping the already-known torture pictures from the public’s eye, we will be remembered only as a generous and good people. If our enemies want to attack us only because we are free and rich, proof of torture would be irrelevant.

The sad part of all this is that we have forgotten what made America great, good, and prosperous. We need to quickly refresh our memories and once again reinvigorate our love, understanding, and confidence in liberty. The status quo cannot be maintained, considering the current conditions. Violence and lost liberty will result without some revolutionary thinking.

We must escape from the madness of crowds now gathering. The good news is the reversal is achievable through peaceful and intellectual means and, fortunately, the number of those who care are growing exponentially.

Of course, it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that I’m seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so. But just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-distant future.”

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Se Shepherd Paul Watson Still Taking on the Whalers of the World

January 15th, 2010

This story about Paul Watson caught my eye – on what would have been my mother’s 80th birthday – a man she always highly approved of… She would be happy to know he is still out there doing what he does best – interfering with the killing of ocean creatures without harming people, and with no respect for the property of the sea hunters. “Exactly Right!” I can hear her say.

Paul Watson: Sea Shepherd’s stern ‘warrior’ defies Japanese whalers


Environmental campaigner Paul Watson has lost one of his boats in a confrontation but is determined to save the oceans from ‘the greed of man’

Captain Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation SocietyCaptain Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Friday, 10.30pm, 61 degress South 120 West. Captain Paul Watson is on the bridge of the Steve Irwin, steaming due west at 17 knots in heavy seas past the ice floes of Wilkes Land in northern Antarctica.

Roughly 100 miles ahead of the former Scottish Environment Protection Agency patrol boat, now painted black and flying the jolly roger, is the bulk of the Japanese whaling fleet – mother ship, four harpoon hunter vessels and a security patrol boat – with a licence to kill 935 minke, 50 fin and 50 humpback whales in the next few weeks. Behind the Irwin, near the French Antarctic base of Dumont d’Urville, is the Bob Barker, Watson’s second ship. It in turn is being pursued by a second Japanese security ship. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the Southern Ocean is the Ady Gil, the third ship in Captain Watson’s anti-whaling navy. The $2.5m space-age catamaran-style, biofuel-powered, ocean-going speedboat sank on Friday morning after being hit by the Shonan Maru 2, one of the Japanese whalers.

“Not hit. Deliberately rammed,” corrects Watson, at 59 still the world’s least compromising and most romantic environmentalist. On a satellite link he says: “The Gil was almost stationary in the water. [The Shonan Maru 2] changed course abruptly and steered straight into it. One crewman broke two ribs. It was a miracle that no one was killed.”

I had travelled with Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society from Scotland to the Faroe islands in 1999. Watson was even then a notorious figure, not unlike Captain Nemo, the Jules Verne character who roamed the depths of the sea in his submarine, the Nautilus.

“Nemo understood that it did not matter what humans thought, because humanity was the problem. His duty was to save life in the sea from the greed of mankind. I understand that philosophy and I have lived it every day of my adult life,” he said.

Back in 1999, his crew of young volunteers were disciplined and clearly in awe of their captain, who accepted no “consensus shit”, “abided no drugs” or “friggin’ in the riggin’”, and who forbade meat-eating aboard his ship. Few had been on a boat before, but everyone had complete confidence in his skills as a mariner and his respect for, and command of, international maritime law. They also expected and hoped for peaceful confrontation and seemed prepared to go to whatever lengths Watson asked of them.

We hunted whalers night and day for a week, but found none. Instead we were buzzed by the Danish air force, boarded by customs officers and ordered by the police to keep away from the islands. When I eventually asked to be put ashore to talk to the Faroese, Watson willingly provided an inflatable and dropped me at midnight on a beach. I was arrested and then imprisoned for illegal entry within minutes. Sea Shepherd clearly has the power to scare communities by doing nothing at all.

Last week Watson was full of praise for the 77 people from 16 countries, including Japan, who are crewing his three ships this year. In 30 years of harassing industrial fishers, he has taken 4,000 volunteers to Antarctica, the Pacific and the Atlantic to try to stop whaling, sealing and illegal fishing. Few have returned anything other than inspired and committed.

The sinking of the Gil was just the latest skirmish in what has become an annual battle between the volunteers for the California-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which Captain Watson founded after leaving Greenpeace in the 1970s, and the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, a scientific research body that has effectively become the Japanese government’s whalers.

For the last nine years these two small navies have clashed dramatically in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, an area of 50 million square kilometres (19 million square miles) in which the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has banned all types of commercial whaling.

One year the whaling fleet was chased 3,000km (1,850 miles) through icebergs; another, two Sea Shepherd volunteers were captured and tied to the railings of a Japanese ship after they had been invited on board; three years ago the Japanese allegedly shot at Watson; there have been water cannon battles, and last year the Japanese escalated the war by throwing concussion grenades on the Sea Shepherd boats. Sea Shepherd responded by throwing bottles filled with non-toxic but foul-smelling butyric acid on the Japanese. Each year the accusations have flown and the language has become more colourful: “We are obsessed with stopping the cetacean Death Star, that vicious, cruel killing machine and her fleet of boats armed with explosive harpoons,” says Watson.

But what precisely happened last week is still not clear. It has been the subject of official protests by both vessels, and will be investigated by the Australian and Japanese governments, and possibly one or more courts. From videos released by both Watson and the Japanese in the last 48 hours, it appears that the Shonan Maru 2 bore down on the Gil with its water cannon blasting and issuing warnings from its loudspeaker that it had “authority to repel”. No one disputes that it then sliced through the bow of the Gil, scattering its crew of six.

The Japanese accuse Sea Shepherd of being “hostile eco-terrorists”. “The Sea Shepherd extremism is becoming more violent. Their actions are nothing but felonious behaviour. Aiming directly to the Nisshin Maru crew, the activists have repeatedly fired illegal high-powered laser devices that can produce blindness when irradiated to the naked eye and have fired projectiles containing butyric acid, a substance highly hazardous to the human body including skin and eyes,” said a spokesman for the institute.

Yesterday lawyers working on behalf of Sea Shepherd lodged papers in a Dutch court accusing the Japanese of “piracy and violence”. They in turn dismissed his statements as lies and accused Sea Shepherd of pollution and using bows and arrows.

But the private war has become more public and visible thanks to the internet, and the “whale wars” now threaten diplomatic relations between Australia and New Zealand and Japan. Both antipodean countries are officially embarrassed by the incidents taking place, but have a public overwhelmingly on Watson’s side.

This year the Japanese fleet’s position was relayed to Sea Shepherd not unofficially by the Australian navy, as it has been in the past, but first by small boats near Tasmania, and then by outraged holidaymakers aboard the cruise ship Orion, which happened on the whaling fleet as it was refuelling.

Watson is adamant that he is no terrorist. “In 31 years harassing and confronting whalers, sealers and illegal fishers, we have never injured a single person, never been convicted of a felony, or been sued. Sea Shepherd does not condone, nor do we practise, violence,” he says. “We agree with the assessment by Martin Luther King that violence cannot be committed against a non-sentient object. Sea Shepherd sometimes damages equipment used for illegal activities, but we have an unblemished record.”

“We think [the Japanese] are re-enacting the Second World War,” said Watson yesterday. “They see themselves as against the West and that no one will tell them what to do.”

But he freely admits damaging property. In a lifetime of confrontations beginning with Canadian sealers, he has used “prop foulers” to sabotage ships, boarded whaling vessels, and sunk several in Iceland and Norway.

“We’re not a protest organisation. We intervene against illegal activities, and as far as we’re concerned Japanese whalers are poachers. The oceans are being pillaged and we are the only organisation out on the high seas trying to do something about it,” he says.

He told me he acted by a martial code culled from the methods of ancient eastern and modern western warfare, and that he expected to die for his cause. He quoted films, read widely, wrote poetry and books, laughed a lot.

Watson claims to have co-founded both Greenpeace and Greenpeace International in the early 1970s (something that Greenpeace disputes), but proved far too much for them. “He was a great warrior brother, yet in terms of the Greenpeace gestalt he seemed possessed by too powerful a drive, too unrelenting a desire to push himself front and centre, shouldering everyone else aside,” said his friend Robert Hunter, who died four years ago.

He sailed with Greenpeace many times, and skippered one of its boats in 1972. But he severed all links with the organisation in 1977, after being expelled from the Greenpeace board.

What he wrote in his autobiography 16 years ago holds just as true today, he says: “There are many people who say that what we do is futile, that there is no way to stop the rising tide of human-spawned destruction. There are many who condemn my crew and I for taking the law into our own hands and for taking on the barons of corporate profit. There are some who would like to see us jailed or even dead, so blinded are they to the conceit and folly of their own anthropomorphism.

“I don’t care. I do what I do because it is the right thing to do. I am a warrior and it is the way of the warrior to fight superior odds.”

A life of protests

Nuclear weapons

In 1969 Paul Watson protested against Russian nuclear testing with the Don’t Make a Wave committee, which later evolved into Greenpeace. He then tried to disrupt nuclear tests in the Pacific.

Seals

Watson has opposed the Canadian seal hunt since 1983. He blocked the port at St John’s in Newfoundland, and brought the hunt to a near standstill. The hunt was later banned for 10 years after he took Brigitte Bardot to pose with a baby seal on the ice.

Whaling

Watson has outraged the governments of Japan, Iceland, Norway and Denmark by sinking or ramming whaling ships. He has chased the Japanese whaling fleets in Antarctica for nine years, claiming to have prevented the deaths of thousands of whales.

Fishing

Since 2000 Watson’s ships have patrolled the Galápagos and Cocos Islands to try to stop illegal fishing, causing consternation among fishing fleets and governments.

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Will’s Wisdom – Brilliant Video of Will Smith’s Ideology

January 14th, 2010

This is a lovely video of Will Smith speaking about success, greatness, and the internal decisions required to be the difference in the world…


~



“Being realistic is the path to mediocrity”

That might be my favorite quote in this piece…

Or maybe this:
“I want to do good. I want the world to be better because I was here.”


We are so lucky you are here with us and that you decided to really be who you chose to be. and inspire us ALL!

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