The Road to the Horizon

[i-sudan%20oil%20fields]
75% of the oil reserve in Sudan, perhaps 6.5 billion barrels, is located in South Sudan (Source).

Since the "second" Sudan war between the North and South started in 1983, an estimated 2 million civilians were killed, and at least 4 million were displaced at least once.

During the war, aid agencies set up one of the largest, most costly and complex humanitarian relief operations ever, "Operation Lifeline Sudan", running a "relief pipeline" from Kenya (and partially Uganda) into the South. An operation which was often criticised as "fueling the conflict".

True or not, I guess "Operation Bulletline Sudan" fueled the conflict much more: While Russia -mostly through proxies- and China -mostly thru "oil-for-bullets" deals- made good business of arms deals with the North, the "West" kept "an extensive arms pipeline" running to the South during the whole conflict.
For years, the world kept their eyes closed, as business was good: selling weapons dearly, and getting cheap oil, I mean, what more can one wish?

This US arms supply to the South continues to run up to this very day, mostly through Kenya, one of the strongest US proxies in the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China continue to supply Khartoum. What will this lead to? An expanded conflict border zone where North and South Sudan dispute oil fields.

Aren't we lucky there is an embargo for selling arms to Sudan?

PS: this map might indicate the oilfields more clearly (Tnx @MFB)

yeah, we’ve got our backups all over the world,
from Kazakhstan to Bombay;
payin’ the bribes like yeah, pluggin’ the leaks like yeah;
interrogating the scum of the earth,
we’ll break them by the break of day!

yeeeaaahhh, it’s a party in the CIA!

by Weird Al Yankovic

[i-How many children have you killed today, Mr.President?]
There are no coincidences in life. Certainly not if they concern politics. Once again, UN and US politics have only one letter of difference.

KABUL: The United States and other foreign powers are engaged in preliminary talks with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the near decade-long war in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday. (Source)

The UN Security Council has split the international sanctions regime for the Taliban and al-Qaida to encourage the Taliban to join reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. (Source)

Via St Pete for Peace. Discovered via Pros before Hos

[i-Graph Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11]

Putting the amount of innocent victims into perspective...

This also means by invading Iraq and being unable to guarantee civil stability (a responsibility enforced by the Fourth Geneva Convention), the US has directly or indirectly killed more Iraqi civilians than Sadam ever did (989,788 versus about 600,000).


Graph courtesy Prose Before Hos

No matter how horrific the 9/11 attacks were. No matter how repressive the Ghadaffi's regime was - including clusterbombing his own people. Still, we, "the civilized world" should show higher ethics.

And we don't. We use "an eye for an eye" tactics, meeting violence with more violence, having our hate and mass hysteria lead us. That's why I have been upset with the world lately.

I think it is immoral to wildly celebrate the murder of a man, even if he was a criminal brain who killed thousands. The more so as Bin Laden was not a cause. He was a symptom. A symptom of a divided world, mostly caused by decennia of frauded US foreign policy. A policy rooted in expansionism, religious discrimination and a hunger to dominate economically and politically.
Now bin Laden is dead, will the world be a better place? I don't think so.

Even worse, what happens in Libya. I have no respect for a repressive leader. I have no respect for any leader turning his arms against his own people to stay in power. But I also have no respect for an international community who miss-uses a pretty clear Security Council resolution to topple a government. Even if it is a repressive government.
The mandate given by the UN Security Council resolution on Libya (#1970) is very clear: protect civilians under threat of attack, enforce a no-fly zone, an arms embargo and a freeze of assets.
This is not what NATO does. NATO is executing a clear support operation for the "rebels", in their attempt to topple Ghadaffi. And that includes attempts to kill Ghadaffi. And nobody cries foul, because Ghadaffi is the bad guy.

Not even if one of the assassination attempts kills Ghadaffi's 29 year old son, and three of Ghadaffi's grandsons. All younger than 12. Only the West can get away unpunished with killing three young boys without being accused of war crimes.

After toppling the Afghanistan and Iraq regime, it seems we are all too eager to open up new war fronts. Wars to which we know no end. Wars which will lead to years long of human suffering. As in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

I am upset with the West, right now. And sad. Even more so when I see people celebrating the death of a person, when I hear all the joy on Twitter, when I hear all the cries of "This is a good day for the nation, God bless America". Just like "Gott mit Uns", the motto of the German Nazis.

If there is a God, I am sure he does not bless wars. I am sure he does not bless the killing of three small boys. Even if they were the grandsons of a cruel dictator.

Meanwhile innocent civilians are getting slaughtered in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. A civil uprising met with violent repression, very much like the one in Libya. But there... "Sssshhht, don't say a word! They are our allies!".

Despicable, that's all I can say. And we are all guilty of not crying foul.

(to view the video, you might have to first click the "close" button in the top right corner, to close the ad)

For the elite not following the news: Trump and others claimed that Obama was not born in the US, which created a US media hype...
This showed once more there is no end to the hot air US media can sell.

Here is Jon Stewart taking a piss at them all. "This man should run for president!" Love it!

PS: Now the only issues remaining:
- Obama's christianing certificate ("He really is a Muslim")
- Justification for his extensive stay in several Muslim countries ("He really attended a madrasas instead of kindergarten")
- Obama's DNA testing to show he is really who he says he is ("He can't be")
- Media claims that the island of Oahu is actually an independent state, and not part of the US Commonwealth ("See the lawsuit of the Single State of Oahu versus the United States of America, for the protection of the Inherited Pacific Guano Reserves")


Video courtesy MediaIte

[i-CENTCOM on Facebook]

The United States military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence Internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by Web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the Internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives. (Source)

[i-US ethics cartoon]

Guatemalans subjected to U.S. syphilis experiments in the 1940s are suing federal health officials to compensate them for health problems they have suffered.

The lawsuit comes after revelations that U.S. scientists studying the effects of penicillin in the 1940s deliberately infected about 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and orphans. None was informed or gave consent. (...)

The Guatemalan experiments were hidden for decades, until a medical historian uncovered the records in 2009. (Source)

[i-US tank cartoon]

A week ago, it seemed that a military intervention in Libya was far fetched. Less so today.

That raises the question of the norms the international community uses to determine for which countries it should intervene.

If it is:
- use of unreasonable armed force against civilians
- atrocities against civilian population
- instigating civil war
- causing a mass exodus of civilian refugees

... then Israel should have been "invaded" a long time ago, I guess.

Certainly when we think of using internationally banned weapons against civilians and civilian targets (use of white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza), economic sanctions against Israel would have been justified. As well as expelling them from all kinds UN committees, a Security Council condemnation, engaging the ICC to prosecute Israeli government officials, and implementing a no-fly zone over the country...

So what are the prediction when this will all happen? For Libya, probably within the next week. For Israel, probably never.

Ok, but then how about a military intervention in Ivory Coast? Or a no-fly zone above Sudan?


Cartoon courtesy Al Jazeerah

On the way back from India, I watched the documentary Inside Job, which tells the story of the global financial meltdown of 2008. Through a series of interviews, knitted together like a thriller, it shows the different issues directly or indirectly related to the burst of the bubble, leading up to a domino-like collapse of the financial pyramid scheme the US government had tolerated to exist.

In a nutshell, loan sharks were encouraged to approve mortgages (even worse, "to chase people aggressively to take a mortgage), for people who had no collateral, nor any means to pay off the mortgage.
As it was an easy way to make a quick buck (for the banks, the bank reps, etc..), these mortgages were issued on a massive scale, even though everyone knew these loans were going to fail. And once a mortgage failed, there'd be no way for a bank to get something of value against the loan failure, as there was not collateral.

That was the basis: a bubble-loan. Or even worse: a bubble everyone concerned, knew would burst. But banks were happy: on paper, they issued loads of loans, cash was flowing, turn-over peaked. Bank reps got commissions on the loans, and the economy got a (short-term) boost.

The banks concerned where AAA-rated giants, so when they were selling those mortgages amongst each other, nobody asked any questions. Worse, those banks invented a financial scheme, valued as first class investments, where they insured themselves against the losses of the loans, and traded that insurance amongst each other, as real values, again on a massive scale.
In short: they were betting on a horse to win and at the same time, they were betting on the same horse to loose. But there was no real horse. Everyone just pretended.

The US treasury and US oversight mechanisms knew what was going on, were warned about the bubble, but did not want to regulate the whole pyramid scheme, as it involved that much money, they feared regulation would break the speed of the economic revival. So bankers were left to do as they pleased.

Of course, the bubble burst, and the whole pyramid scheme collapsed in no time, pulling down all foreign investors in those banks, and causing the first real international financial meltdown. As a consequence millions of people around the world lost their job as all of a sudden, the economy was left with no liquidity and companies had to close their business. Banks went out of business, and many people lost their savings, real savings.

This is not a happy-happy movie. I can not believe how it is possible for a government to allow the financial industry to free-wheel, purely for the short-term gain of the economy, knowing on forehand that it would only be a few years before it collapsed.

On top of that, it is impossible for me to imagine how such a large part of the US economy could have been based on "void". On something which was not real, had no real value. But then again, we are talking about the same government that allowed the Internet bubble to be built in the late 90's, collapsing in 2000.

Worse is the realization that because of the US' greed for easy money, the rest of the world suffered. It is not only the greed, but the deeply instilled financial and economic individualism pulling everyone in for a quick buck. The documentary has a short sideline about the academici, who knew what was going on, but did not say anything... Simply because there was a revolving door mechanism where economic experts from different universities were consultants for the banks involved, and paid high fees to write academic papers glorifying the bubble itself.

And to top it all off, many people who sat at the core of the 2008 meltdown, are still in power, either in corporations, or in the current Obama government.

Fast food, Fast money, Fast wars,... As they say.. "only in the US!"...

Disgusting. The only good thing that came out of it, is that internationally, the US is getting more and more resistance. A dynamic that Bush started in 2003, while invading Iraq, continues: nations are starting to realize that the "US way" is not the way to go, and move back to their own ground, economically, financially, culturally...

And that is a good thing for the equilibrium of the world.

[i-Khaddafi cartoon]

Cartoon courtesy The Dry Bones Blog

[i-Neocons and Khadaffi cartoon]

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organized and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC). (Source)

[i-Wisconsin protests]

Fact:

The battle against Republican attempts to undermine trade union rights is spreading with Democratic lawmakers fleeing the state of Indiana in a bid to block anti-union legislation, and workers' rights protests swelling in the US Midwest.
(..)
Thousands of protesters have occupied the state Capitol in Wisconsin for eight days now in an attempt to block a bill that would strip public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights.

Governor Scott Walker insists he is unbowed by the protest -- which reached a peak of 65,000 people on Saturday -- but the bill's passage was stalled by 14 Democratic state senators who fled to Illinois Thursday to deny the necessary legislative quorum. (Source)

[i-food is a weapon]

Food price crisis, what crisis? 'Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, announced on Wednesday that its profits had tripled year-on-year in the second quarter of its fiscal year, as the company profited from supply disruptions in the global food chain and rising prices’. (Source: From Poverty to Power)

[Loband: Object Removed -]

The family of a 24-year old Peace Corps volunteer from Atlanta, Kate Puzey, says agency personnel set her up to be murdered by revealing her role in the dismissal of an employee she accused of sexually abusing children at a school in the African country of Benin.(..)

As part of the report, Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross also talked to a half dozen female volunteers who said that after they were sexually assaulted the Peace Corps response was incompetent and insensitive.(..)

(Source article and followup article)

[Loband: Object Removed -]

Seriously, How deep can the fear of terrorism attacks run?...

Not so seriously:
Two-year-old Timmy Johnson, spokesman for Toddlers for Justice, who claimed responsibility for the stuffed horse attack, said in a written statement that if they can not burn Korans, they have a constitutional right to display horses in parks.

His girlfriend, two-and-a-half year old Suzy Elderman confirmed they are planning similar attacks using Barbie dolls...

Sarah Palin is rumoured to comment on the incident, using Facebook.


Discovered via American Everyman

[i-the world according to Monsanto]
Two years ago, I published a post about "The World According to Monsanto - The Horror of Commercial GM Crops" which also included a link to a must-see documentary. The documentary showed clearly how Monsanto was encroaching on the seed (and thus food-) markets in developing countries in a pretty straightforward way: they buy up as many seed distributors as possible. Through this network, they offer their GMO seeds - which need their own pesticides to be productive - at a price far lower than traditional seeds. Once the traditional seeds are competed off the market, they will stay off the market, as no new traditional crops are grown to generate traditional seeds.
Once Monsanto has the monopoly of the country's seed market, the prices are increased.

Monsanto has not been sitting still in developing countries. They steadily moved into the aid world, including strengthening their ties with the Gates Foundation. Their common projects came under fire as having too close links to large-scale industrial agriculture and consequently, they were accused of pushing the use of genetically modified crops. A move which was fully compliant with the US foreign policy, it seems.

Earlier this year, Monsanto announced the donation of hybrid seeds to Haitian farmers, under the auspices of USAid, in what I would call an obvious mix of politics, aid and commerce.
That donation spurred a lot of criticism from within the aid community, and the Haitian farmers themselves.

Strangely enough (or not?), a recently completed assessment of seed availability in Haiti found that plenty of seeds for traditional crops exist within the country. The report recommended seeds from outside of the country not to be introduced.
Interestingly enough, the report was funded partially by USAid, the backers of the Monsanto-Haiti deal. Would USAid therefor admit the Monsanto deal was an error? Maybe they should, if you read the report's main findings:

1. Emergency seed aid should be used only to address emergency problems, and those in which seed security is a problem. Note that current farmer projections for August/September 2010 suggest that farmers can access the seed they need.
2. Any seeds made available to farmers through aid interventions have to be shown to a) be adapted to local conditions, b) fit well with farmers preferences, and c) be of a quality ‘at least as good’ as what farmers normally use. One should never introduce varieties in an emergency context which have not been tested in the given agro-ecological site and under farmers’ management conditions. (..)
3. Direct Seed Distribution (DSD) is best used when there are problems of seed availability.(Several agro-dealers in Léogâne indicated they had substantial supplies of maize seed unsold while free seed aid was being delivered. Business was being compromised at the critical moment it needed to be strengthened. While Léogâne is somewhat unique in currently having an input dealer network, such outlets will likely become more numerous in near future: these should be supported, rather than undermined). (...)
4. Novel improved varieties should generally not be introduced to a broad population in the context of an emergency distribution. (...)

[Loband: Object Removed -]

For the "whatever" department of quotes...

Here is some breaking news, fresh from the presses... It seems we are not winning the Holy War on Terror in Afghanistan. Surprise-surprise... And even worse: we have not been winning it since end 2001 neither.

The timelapse video above is based on the famous WikiLeaks documents, listing military incidents. The darker the red, the more incidents..

Is it just my impression, but are those dark red blobs just getting bigger and bigger as time went by?
Wanna make predictions for 2011?

Video discovered via ReadWriteWeb

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