Ever since I read one of his books, William Blum has continued to astonish me. In his latest post he makes it possible to see clearly and simply what has been happening in Ukraine.
Read and wake up.
Category Archives: Capitalism’s greed
Listen to Matt Damon and Howard Zinn
I should have said HI to him when he came to South Africa to ride with Francois Pienaar on the Argus Cycle Tour around the Cape. His film choices and the things he reads and says in various interviews show a truly thinking person so rare from someone so popular.
Here’s one more from him, reading from Howard Zinn… click on the LINK.
Xstrata and Indophil Resources Go Home!
Sometimes it really is quite simple. Lives are more important than profit.
In the following news item it is literally the foot soldiers who are in trouble while the executives of these multinational monsters (or should that be monster executives of these multinational companies?) go globetrotting in search of more lands to plunder.
13 Soldiers Face Court Martial for Davao del Sur Massacre
TPP – ever heard of it?
Apparently it’s something like the Death Star. Need I say more?
Follow the links and find out for yourself:
Finalist Again at Goodreads.com!
My poem “Those Who Still Have Black Blood Under Their Feet” has been selected as one of six finalists at Goodreads.com’s poetry competition. I posted the poem and various related links on my blog for ALIEN TO ANY SKIN.
The winning poem is selected by the members. I don’t know a lot of people. So do the maths. hahaha Oh well, good for a laugh. And maybe some readers will click my name, get to the information about the book. blah blah blah… 🙂 Enjoy the poem at least.
Last thing. In that post on the book’s blog there’s a photo of someone’s sole. I only know one person with flat feet willing to have a picture taken. hahaha
Our Friends and Allies
This news item is more than worrying.
Bigger US Military Role in the Philippines Sought
Sought by whom? For what? And to think the US is in huge economic trouble, yet they keep expanding their military reach. One wonders.
The article does not mention how, through many decades, there had been huge resistance to US the military presence in the country. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 forced the US to abandon its controversial military bases.
Here is a poem I wrote in 1991 and appears in Alien to Any Skin.
The Memory of Snow
When ash falls like snow
(though snow we’ve never had
and snow I’ve never seen)
why do we remember America?
Is it Sesame Street outside
where racism is non-existent
and the eagle is a big yellow bird
talking to a rag in a can?
I do not know what
they’ve taught us to forget.
Yet the memory of snow persists.
Walking on whitened streets
I thought of America moving out
of the volcano’s danger zone
leaving my ancient sisters and brothers
curled up in their huts
like so much pubic hair.
I cannot read the earth,
but this much I know:
the world will not end.
There still is so much to unlearn
like fabricated memories
of America where it snows
and children make snowballs
and snowmen with carrot noses.
It is ash that falls, not snow.
I must learn to tell the difference.
June 1991
-o-
Collapsed hangars at Clark Air Base after Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991. Source: Wikipedia
The Music is the Same, Just a Different Dance Floor
This is from William Blum’s December 2011 post:
-o-
USrael and Iran
There’s no letup, is there? The preparation of the American mind, the world mind, for the next gala performance of D&D — Death and Destruction. The Bunker Buster bombs are now 30,000 pounds each one, six times as heavy as the previous delightful model..
But the Masters of War still want to be loved; they need for you to believe them when they say they have no choice, that Iran is the latest threat to life as we know it, no time to waste.
The preparation of minds was just as fervent before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. And when it turned out that Iraq did not have any kind of arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) … well, our power elite found other justifications for the invasion, and didn’t look back. Some berated Iraq: “Why didn’t they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?”
In actuality, before the US invasion high Iraqi officials had stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: “We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons.”1
In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: “The fact is that we don’t have weapons of mass destruction. We don’t have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry.”2
Hussein himself told Rather in February 2003: “These missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there.”3
Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq’s secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.4
There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that the WMD were non-existent.
And if there were still any uncertainty remaining, last year Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq, told a British inquiry into the 2003 invasion that those who were “100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq turned out to have “less than zero percent knowledge” of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting — as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks — that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction.5
Those of who you don’t already have serious doubts about the American mainstream media’s knowledge and understanding of US foreign policy, should consider this: Despite the two revelations on Dan Rather’s CBS programs, and the other revelations noted above, in January 2008 we find CBS reporter Scott Pelley interviewing FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed:
PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?
PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the ’90s, and those that hadn’t been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.
PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?
PIRO: Yes.
PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?6
The United States and Israel are preparing to attack Iran because of their alleged development of nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied on many occasions. Of the Iraqis who warned the United States that it was mistaken about the WMD — Saddam Hussein was executed, Tariq Aziz is awaiting execution. Which Iranian officials is USrael going to hang after their country is laid to waste?
Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, or at a minimum should have seriously suspected it; the same applies to Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire with new bases, though in the end most of this didn’t work out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, demolished, and tortured.
But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States had known that the Japanese had deliverable atomic bombs, would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been destroyed? Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld, has written: “The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”7
It can not be repeated too often: The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away. Examine a map: Iran sits directly between two of the United States’ great obsessions — Iraq and Afghanistan … directly between two of the world’s greatest oil regions — the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas … it’s part of the encirclement of the two leading potential threats to American world domination — Russia and China … Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away!
END IMPUNITY
English translation attempt. Original Filipino follows – for those who are interested in seeing the random rhymes that got lost in translation.
November 23: No One Can Bury Shadows
remembering those slain in Maguindanao and other places
1
The door is a gaping mouth,
the afternoon’s final gasp
before it goes dark.
Those footsteps
that left this morning
will never again
come knocking. In their place
news of violence
drags the weight
of darkness encroaching.
2
Is it a miracle, a blessing, or a ghastly
burden to escape
the piercing of bullets?
How heavy the echoes of silence
in pursuit of the last
drop of lead?
Pretending to be dead
in order to live.
3
What kind of joy
was set free
by those who pulled the trigger?
Whose voice unleashed
the dogs?
4
Dear President,
I presume you feel
loss such as this?
Your clan bears the stain
of those who usher darkness.
5
Tomorrow, as we turn
the day’s paper,
new names will darken
the pages, our fingers.
-o-
Nobyembre 23: Walang Makapaglilibing sa mga Anino
paggunita sa mga pinaslang sa Maguindanao at iba pang bayan
1
Bukang bibig ang pintuan,
nasa bingit ang huling hininga
ng hapon bago dumilim.
Hindi na kailanman papalapit
ang mga hakbang na pumalayo
kaninang umaga. Sa halip
kaladkad ng marahas na balita
ang mabigat at papalaganap
na karimlan.
2
Himala, biyaya, o malagim
na pasanin kaya ang makaligtas
sa pagtagos ng mga bala?
Gaano kabigat ang alingawngaw ng katahimikan
kasunod ng pagbagsak sa lupa
ng huling tingga?
Pagkukunwaring bangkay
upang mabuhay.
3
Anong uri ng ligaya
ang pinalaya ng mga pumisil
sa gatilyo?
Kaninong tinig ang nagpakawala
sa mga aso?
4
Kagalang-galang na Pangulo,
inaasahan kong dama mo
ang mga ganitong pagyao.
Maging ang iyong angkan
may bahid
ng tagahatid ng karimlan.
5
Bukas, pagbuklat ng pahayagan
iba na namang mga pangalan
ang magpapadilim
sa mga pahina, sa ating mga daliri.
-o-
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maguindanao_massacre
Please tell me if the translation works? Or if the poem itself works? The date has been declared International Day to End Impunity – after this massacre.
Matangmanok 