And if Boobquake caused a tremor?

The same uptick of seismic activity which prompted Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi to condemn Western immodesty might be the best reason not to shake your breasts at Mother Earth in defiance of another earthquake. BOOBQUAKE organizers want to show Iran’s fundamentalists that American women can titillate with disdain for religious superstitions, although the mullah’s Rube Goldberg ipso facto seems appealingly pagan to me. Of course the refutation to be made with #BoobQuake (or #PantsQuake depending on the lure you’re shaking) counts on plate tectonics not batting an eye. How arrogantly Western to presume Mother Nature does not respond to us.

CS Indy turns to cruel IFES deceiver to voice cautionary best hope for Haiti

IFESWhen it came to coverage of the Haiti earthquake disaster, the CS Indy left it to their Your Turn column, and by “your” they meant YOUR MASSAH. What caught my eye was the headline “Time for a new Haiti” accompanied by the excerpt blurb “Aristide’s return would be a disaster,” written by a pasty diplomat who had a personal hand in Haiti’s ongoing misery. Here is our allegedly progressive newsweekly giving the podium to IFES criminal Richard Soudriette instead of bundling him off to Port Au Prince for a well deserved drubbing.

Mr. Soudriette presided over the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) from 1988 to 2007, the period which saw two US coups in Haiti, where twice the democratically elected Bertrand Aristide was removed from office by our hands. Who better to have blown the whistle on the US interference than someone observing, even advising and conducting, the elections? That’s ignoring of course that the IFES is actually a private agency which does the CIA’s work, created in the 80s when Congress moved to limit the CIA’s official role destabilizing democracies. Through the IFES, through the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA continues its intelligence wars subverting foreign governments who threaten America’s corporate rule.

If you want to believe that enterprises like IFES might be serving some good, consider this: if democratic ideals were really being advanced, the US State Department would be proud to do the work. These aren’t subcontracted jobs that wouldn’t benefit from official diplomatic networks. The IFES and ilk are as disreputable cretins as ever wore stuffed shirts, designed to separate people from legitimate representation.

And don’t think all the pitchfork bearing victims of its election racketeering are overseas. The IFES has been an adversary of the American people as Americans have tried to rescue their elections from Diebold and the stolen votes of 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

When will traitorous, undemocratic Neocons like Richard Soudriette meet the wrath they have so richly courted? The Haitians are suffering, there are countless stories of Americans helping in the effort, instead the Indy gives people of Haiti more of the same malignant spin. How did Soudriette explain his expertise on Aristide? He didn’t:

“Unfortunately Aristide is hinting at a comeback despite his two failed terms. Aristide’s return to Haitian politics would be a disaster for the country. His many political allies in the U.S. and abroad would best serve Haiti’s interests by encouraging Aristide to permanently step aside from politics.”

Rather, Soudriette says, we need to back efforts to amend Haiti’s constitution to allow America’s man Preval serve additional terms. Oh, and give more responsibility to USAID, another CIA arm. Why is Soudriette spinning this message to Colorado Springs I wonder?

It’s not enough that Soudriette lent his villainy to Haiti’s disastrous last decades, now two years removed from the job, on the occasion of its most recent natural calamity, Soudriette resurfaces to damn the Haitian people with the same lies, lest they ever catch a break. That’s what makes this brand of conservative bureaucrat so damnable.

And why is the Indy propagating this venomous neo-liberal drivel? It could be highlighting the truly hopeful opportunities which locals have been taking to help the earthquake victims. Tired of watching the US military bureaucracy monopolize and bungle the aid efforts, a Springs surgical team enlisted a local businessman’s private turboprop to spend a week in Port Au Prince effecting miracles. Let’s hear about that story.

To pick up where we left off with scoundrel Soudriette, he of the many Haitian crony friends in DC, the careerist democracy-thief has moved to Colorado Springs, to lecture for El Pomar, and head the Center for Diplomacy and Democracy, which may be just another shell to which the CIA funnels funding. While stationed in DC for the IFES, Soudriette was also billing from an M Street address for the Conservation International Foundation. The good news is that apart from a CFDD franchise opened in Northern Iraq, no doubt to milk from Iraq reconstruction funds, the headquarters here appears to be merely a residence with a walkout on the golf course of the Country Club of Colorado.

Non profit front on the Country Club of Colorado golf course

Is Haiti America’s Gaza?

OSPAAAL posterAs the US military descends to throttle Gaza’s -excuse me- Haiti’s points of entry, as it prepares detention facilities at Guantanamo to intercept and repatriate the expected rush of Haitian refugees, as the US protects its business interests in the Dominican Republic and Haiti which profit from the kept-poor labor market of captive Haiti, there are fewer differences than parallels. One difference, Israeli medics are willing to come help the injured of Haiti.

How did they get in, when every other charity has been forced to queue for the opportunity? Other national and private efforts had to wait behind US military convoys bringing soldiers before food, reinforced borders before help. By the time most medical care was allowed to reach the earthquake victims, surgeons were left with only the option of amputation. I’m curious how a captive labor population of amputees is supposed to benefit their Western overseers.

It minimizes the acute circumstances in Gaza to paint Haiti as a concentration camp with settlers waiting outside the fence for the inmates to exterminate themselves. I’m not aware that our white religious zealots are after anything but Haitian children, their souls or supplicant bodies. But the same prison population control strategies apply. When the Haitians elect populist leaders, we fund goon squads to assassinate them, or we kidnap them into exile. Where is that different? There is a Haitian diaspora as there is for the Palestinians. There is our exploitation of their resources and their labor. How fitting that America’s closest cohort sent medics in for the photo op, and quickly aborted their work before the same darker-skinned unchosen got wise.

Closing Gitmo not opening it wide

Not only is the infamous Guantanamo prison camp NOT CLOSING, its criminal record grows, and now the illegal facility is being expanded to lasso Haitian migrants escaping the devastation of Haiti’s earthquake. Will they be tortured as well? The way Obama is moving on civil rights, we may never know.

We have learned that three of the prison’s suicides, the mysterious coordinated attack of suicide-suiciders for which US military spokesmen accused the detainees of asymmetric warfare, were actually deaths at the hands of torturers. Though officials claimed to have discovered the bodies in their cells, camp guards have revealed that the prisoners were actually taken from the interrogation rooms, having suffocated from water-boarding. Coroners trying to establish the causes of death were hampered by the fact that Gitmo physicians had surgically removed key telltale body parts in the interest of national security.

Diverting attention from the murder story are preparations to expand Guantanamo to greet an anticipated wave of Haitian migrant refugees escaping the earthquake devastation. Just part of the militarization of aid giving.

A processing center is being readied at Guantanamo where Haitians can be returned to Haiti nearly as soon as they are intercepted at sea. Ever gracious, the US reveals that some Haitians will be considered for entry to the US. Temporary work permits will be granted to some Haitians, but only those who can show that they were in the US at the time of the January 12 earthquake.

Labadee: Royal Caribbean’s Neo Haiti

Labadee oasis seas boi caimanFormer President Bill Clinton is heading to Haiti, again. As UN special envoy to Haiti, he paid a visit last year as a guest of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship line to promote their tourist facility at La’Badie. Said CEO Adam Goldstein: “Labadee is just a great example of the way that things can work in a very positive way in this country.” Are those new ways or old? The secured compound, laying under the protection of the old French colonial capitol, greets 7,000 cruise passengers a week, even this week, many of whom don’t know they’re in “Haiti,” on an old slave plantation, or what may have been the crucible of real Islamic rebel voodoo!

I didn’t know about the private resort of Labadee, but my attention was drawn in December to the announcement of the launch of The Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever devised. It was leaving the shipyards of Finland, having to pass under a Danish suspension bridge at low tide, so titanic was she. I took note because the headline announced her maiden destination to be Haiti, an odd place I thought, to be ostentatious.

The spotlight which the recent earthquake has brought on the poverty in Haiti had me wondering if all seventeen decks of the Oasis of the Seas were gawking at the suffering masses awaiting aid in Port-au-Prince. Not a chance. The Oasis, and Royal Caribbean’s fleet of floating carbon boots harbor at a secluded oasis which the cruise line rents from Haiti. Its income represents the largest portion of Haiti’s tourism revenue. If you thought President Obama’s offer of $100 Million was stingy, you can calculate Royal Caribbean’s avarice on one hand.

The tragic earthquake hasn’t interrupted the cruises. It this tragedy has an upside, it’s that some vacationers are expressing less facility stuffing down a burger knowing most Haitians await relief.

Haiti receives $6 for each tourist who disembarks to zip-line, buy trinkets from licensed vendors, and sun on Christoper Columbus Beach. They’re told it was his old stomping ground –which actually can be said of Hispaniola’s entire northern coastline. Likewise the same is true about the slave plantations which, from the port of Cap Francois, provided 40% of Europe’s sugar and 60% of its coffee. Today Haiti is renowned as the poorest land in the Western Hemisphere. The verdant lands of La Partie Du Nord –of Les Grand Blancs— are separated from the Haitian population by a mountainous Massif, and in the case of Labadee, with barbed wire.

habitation-slave-plantationsRoyal Caribbean boasts that its operations are critical to the Haitian economy. It employs hundreds, but contrast that with what the coast could provide if it wasn’t privatized. The resort draws from a cheap labor pool of an unlimited mass of Haitians who are kept with no other options but to hope they can replace the couple hundred employees confined to the cruise line compound.

And yes, the cruise itineraries avoid mention of Haiti, attributing Labadee as a “private island” of Hispaniola. The private island concept is not new, cruise ship operators began several decades back to seek to give their customers refuge from the growing throngs of third world poor who paddle out to the ship hoping for first world largess. Another motive was that cruise lines could also monopolize where their passengers could spend their money while ashore. What began as exclusive contracts with port destinations, very notoriously the Alaskan inland passage, became ventures where cruise line operators bought entire tracks of properties retired from oil or military use, whether half islands, or merely beaches, recast as private beaches, populated by private workforces.

Disney Cruise Line: Castaway Cay, Bahamas
Princess Cruises: Princess Cays, Eleuthera, Bahamas
Norwegian Cruise Line: Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas
Holland/Carnival: Half Moon Bay, Little San Salvador Island, Bahamas
Royal Caribbean/Celebrity: Coco Cay, Bahamas; Labadee, Hispaniola

According to the Royal Caribbean promotional material, the spelling Labadee is anglicized for English-speakers. It’s named after the Marquis de La’Badie, a “Frenchman who first settled the area in the 1600s.”

At one time the French plantation owners were comforted by their remote location, buffered they thought from the potential of slave rebellions from the south. In fact, Haiti’s famed uprising began in the north, not far at all from La’Badie. Off the Royal Caribbean itinerary, but only a stone’s throw away, that is to say, within distance of incoming stones, are landmarks important to the celebrated revolution: Haiti’s first copper mine, site of a lone concentration of Islamic slaves, and the Bois Caiman of lore.

The area of Cape Haitien, as it’s called today, holds two of Haiti’s geography secrets. One, the conclusive location of La Villa de Navidad, where Christopher Columbus built his first European settlement in the New World, a fort made of the timbers of the wrecked flagship Santa Maria; Columbus returned the next year to find his men murdered and the houses burned to the ground. Archeologists are still looking to find definitive traces in Caracol or Bord de Mer de Limonade.

Second, the site of the Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony which launched Haiti’s famed slave rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture. Some scholars have begun to question whether it happened at all. They base their skepticism on the absence of written testaments. Although it’s popularly understood that the gathering of conspirators was confessed under torture by rebels captured by the French authorities. The cynics suggest the story was a fabrication to demonize the black slaves and that:

the manuscript minutes of these interrogations have survived in the French National Archives and make no mention of this or any other vodun ceremony.

That’s something to wrap your mind around, that transcripts remain of torture sessions conducted so many years ago.

Naturally the secret gathering had to escape the suspicions of the French slaveholders, but the infamy of the declaration of the Bois Caiman has inspired every Bolivarian insurrection since, from Bolivar, to Marti, Sandino, Castro, Moralles and Chavez. Revisionists seeking to tamp the populist spirit question why its location remains a mystery. Oral tradition holds that the rebels gathered in an open space in the forests of Morne Rouge.

Morne Rouge, the place where BC ceremony hypotheses converge, is also the only place in Haiti to retain an important Islamic cult. This is because the first wave of slaves were from the Senegambian region and had already undergone heavy Islamic influence. Up to date, Mori Barthelemy and followers of the region maintain this tradition, with honor to the sun, specific funeral rites and so on. If one returns to sources of the 16th century, one finds that there is where the first copper mines were established by the Spaniards, when they started giving up on the gold.

You can find Labadee, 19° 47? 11? N, 72° 14? 44? W on any modern map. Pondering The Cape it occupies, and the deep water harbor it is able to afford a behemoth like the Oasis of the Seas, I was led to research the mysteries of Haiti’s NORD, and survey the progression of place names on European maps which span the years.

haiti
This is Cristóbal Colón‘s own recollection of the northern coast of what he called La Isla Española, marking his first landing at San Nicolas Môle, the island of Tortuga, Fort Navidad, and the landmark Monte Cristi whose height guided Columbus and led him to name Hispaniola after Spain.

haiti charlevoix
A later map made by the French attempts to show the divisions of the indigenous tribes. The site marked “Premier Etablissment” marks Navidad, built near the Taíno cultural center of Hayti-Bohío-Quisqueya.

haiti Vinckeboons
A 1639 Dutch map shows Cap François. On the south shore of Isla Tortuga lies the beach Playa Cyan, across the water from the river Rio dos Caymanis. Also note the hills to the east called Mançanilla, these divided the peaceful Taíno from the warring Caciq. The location name derives from the Manchineel Trees whose poison berries they used to poison the tips of their arrows.

haiti monte christo
French map circa 1723 marks Cayne opposite the Iron Coast of L’Ile de la Tortue. There’s also a typical sailor’s landmark: Pointe des Palmiers (trans. Point of the Palms). The promontory of Cap François has here become Le Cap (The Cape). It shelters Port St. François, east of the heights of Morne Rouge and Mines de Cuivre (trans. copper mines).

haiti labat
French map of Cape Francois dated 1722 adds Le Limbe, the first area which the rebel slaves put to the torch; and Le Chemin du Cap, the main road to the valleys of the south.

haiti Ponce
This 1796 French map features another sailor’s aid, Pointe Tête de Chein (trans. Dog’s Head Point). The fortification battery on the Cape was built upon Roche à Picolet. This map was drawn after the rebellion of 1791. The Morne Rouge (trans. Red Heights) is now designated as Ravine du Morne au Diable and the Acul à Sabal. The Devil’s Ravine is the present location of Royal Caribbean’s Labadee.

The poor of Haiti are still taking heat for the Bwa Kayiman having been a pact with the devil.

haiti bellin
I add this 1764 map for personal interest. Few maps even today mark L’Islet à Rat (trans. Rat Island), which Columbus called La Amiga, was an aid to navigation out of his anchorage at Bay of Acul which he called Cabo de Caribata.

This map also details how colonial French St Domingue was divided into districts, here the Ville du Cap, the Quartier de Plaine du Nord and Camp de Louise.

haiti moreau
This 1770 map of Cap François and Environs distinguishes the larger slavery plantations.

haiti labadi

On the subject of Columbus, isn’t it surprising to reconcile the current verdict on his genocidal behavior, with the histories which have glorified his stature? After all, the primary accounts have never changed. How did earlier biographers overlook the damning and salacious details? One very polite telling of Columbus’ adventures, written by Filson Young published in 1906 provides a prim example. Here Young addresses the kidnap and rape of the indians whom Columbus encountered:

…his taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of any one who studies this extraordinary voyage—the question of the treatment of native women by the Spaniards. Columbus is entirely silent on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good reason, for his silence. So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature, and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity, to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of his crew. He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a matter of no very great importance. His crew had by this time learned to know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences for which he would have been sure to punish them.

[Giving a list of instructions to the men Columbus planned to leave behind at La Navidad, among them: ]

…and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury or violence to the women, “by which they would cause scandal and set a bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of the Christians.”

no kolumbus day christopher columbusAnd here’s the rub. In this passage the author shows if we do not absolve Columbus, we indict ourselves.

The ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate possession of what they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of its inhabitants. If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and Empire-building. Every one understands the distinction; but so few people see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for his unconsciousness of it.

Good news for Haiti

Haiti presidential palace succumbs to earthquake
On the bright side of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake, American puppet René Préval has been cut down a few notches, a whole couple stories actually. Here’s the presidential palace before January 12 and after. The pretender Preval has been Our Man in Port-au-Prince subsequent to the US-arranged a coup in 2004 to depose the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide (for the second time). The popular Aristide was a threat to exploitation interests.

While Americans rally to provide relief to the Haitians, let’s not be too incredulous about the state of their poverty. Here’s A.N.S.W.E.R.’s recent statement to highlight this teaching moment:

All of us are joining in the outpouring of solidarity from people all over the hemisphere and world who are sending humanitarian aid and assistance to the people of Haiti.

At such a moment, it is also important to put this catastrophe into a political and social context. Without this context, it is impossible to understand both the monumental problems facing Haiti and, most importantly, the solutions that can allow Haiti to survive and thrive. Hillary Clinton said today, “It is biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti and the Haitian people.” This hypocritical statement that blames Haiti’s suffering exclusively on an “act of God” masks the role of U.S. and French imperialism in the region.

In this email message, we have included some background information about Haiti that helps establish the real context:

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated today that as many as 100,000 Haitians may be dead. International media is reporting bodies being piled along streets surrounded by the rubble from thousands of collapsed buildings. Estimates of the economic damage are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Haiti’s large shantytown population was particularly hard hit by the tragedy.

As CNN, ABC and every other major corporate media outlet will be quick to point out, Haiti is the poorest country in the entire Western hemisphere. But not a single word is uttered as to why Haiti is poor. Poverty, unlike earthquakes, is no natural disaster.

The answer lies in more than two centuries of U.S. hostility to the island nation, whose hard-won independence from the French was only the beginning of its struggle for liberation.

In 1804, what had begun as a slave uprising more than a decade earlier culminated in freedom from the grips of French colonialism, making Haiti the first Latin American colony to win its independence and the world’s first Black republic. Prior to the victory of the Haitian people, George Washington and then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had supported France out of fear that Haiti would inspire uprisings among the U.S. slave population. The U.S. slave-owning aristocracy was horrified at Haiti’s newly earned freedom.

U.S. interference became an integral part of Haitian history, culminating in a direct military occupation from 1915 to 1934. Through economic and military intervention, Haiti was subjugated as U.S. capital developed a railroad and acquired plantations. In a gesture of colonial arrogance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the assistant secretary of the Navy at the time, drafted a constitution for Haiti which, among other things, allowed foreigners to own land. U.S. officials would later find an accommodation with the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and then his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, as Haiti suffered under their brutal repressive policies.

In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. policy toward Haiti sought the reorganization of the Haitian economy to better serve the interests of foreign capital. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was instrumental in shifting Haitian agriculture away from grain production, paving the way for dependence on food imports. Ruined Haitian farmers flocked to the cities in search of a livelihood, resulting in the swelling of the precarious shantytowns found in Port-au-Prince and other urban centers.

Who has benefited from these policies? U.S. food producers profited from increased exports to Haitian markets. Foreign corporations that had set up shop in Haitian cities benefitted from the super-exploitation of cheap labor flowing from the countryside. But for the people of Haiti, there was only greater misery and destitution.

Washington orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—not once, but twice, in 1991 and 2004. Haiti has been under a U.S.-backed U.N. occupation for nearly six years. Aristide did not earn the animosity of U.S. leaders for his moderate reforms; he earned it when he garnered support among Haiti’s poor, which crystallized into a mass popular movement. Two hundred years on, U.S. officials are still horrified by the prospect of a truly independent Haiti.

The unstable, makeshift dwellings imposed upon Haitians by Washington’s neoliberal policies have now, for many, been turned into graves. Those same policies are to blame for the lack of hospitals, ambulances, fire trucks, rescue equipment, food and medicine. The blow dealt by such a natural disaster to an economy made so fragile from decades of plundering will greatly magnify the suffering of the Haitian people.

Natural disasters are inevitable, but resource allocation and planning can play a decisive role in mitigating their impact and dealing with the aftermath. Haiti and neighboring Cuba, who are no strangers to violent tropical storms, were both hit hard in 2008 by a series of hurricanes—which, unlike earthquakes, are predictable. While more than 800 lives were lost in Haiti, less than 10 people died in Cuba. Unlike Haiti, Cuba had a coordinated evacuation plan and post-hurricane rescue efforts that were centrally planned by the Cuban government. This was only possible because Cuban society is not organized according to the needs of foreign capital, but rather according to the needs of the Cuban people.

In a televised speech earlier today, President Obama has announced that USAID and the Departments of State and Defense will be working to support the rescue and relief efforts in Haiti in the coming days. Ironically, these are the same government entities responsible for the implementation of the economic and military policies that reduced Haiti to ruins even before the earthquake hit.

American pacifist Kathy Kelly reports from Gaza

“Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake,” said a doctor at the Shifaa hospital in Gaza. “We feel very frustrated,” he continued. “The West, Europe and the U.S., watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.”

Another doctor from the hospital…

“They are lying to us about democracy and Western values,” he continued, his voice shaking. “If we were sheep and goats, they would be more willing to help us. You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan. “And this, also, is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”

taken from Report From Rafah- Worse Than an Earthquake by Kathy Kelly

Lack of government regulations makes Chinese products deadly

china industrySo many Americans seem to want to believe that China is a communist country despite the obvious fact that its capitalist economy’s products remain so deadly due to lack of any real government regulation rather than any supposed socialistic government over-regulation.

Its sweatshops are dangerous to the workers, its schools crumble in earthquakes due to shoddy construction, and the products of its factories are dangerous for human use. All are signs of the defects of a totalitarian capitalist economy build without concern for anything other than quick profits. The latest product that the Chinese are producing that is killing people is infant formula with Melamine, the same substance that killed so many pets in the US when imported here. Chinese baby milk scare ‘severe’

The fact that this capitalist dictatorship is presided by one party calling itself ‘communist’ does not mean much. What ever the defects of a past Maoist regime of Stalinist dictatorship, what China has at present is far removed from that. Today, China has become victim of a counter revolution that has industrialized the country through capitalist production, but turned it into a human rights and ecological disaster zone.

Beijing extracurricular Olympic schedule

I have a last-minute, refocused interest in a safe and not-too-disrupted Beijing Olympics. It’s already been unofficially eventful. Here’s a time line of the counter-Olympics leading-up to the Opening Ceremonies. The Gazette is in Beijing. So are we!

OC -5: Marie arrives in Beijing!

OC -4: Sixteen Chinese policemen killed in Kashgar by Uighur separatists. Two Japanese journalists beaten by police for covering story.

OC -3: Earthquake hits Sichuan Province hours after Olympic torch passes.

OC -2: Four US-UK protesters unfurl TIBET banner as torch arrives at Beijing Bird’s Nest Stadium. / Four US cyclists cause furor by stepping off the plane wearing US-issued breathing masks. / Visa revoked for TEAM DARFUR Olympian alumni. Yay!
Tibet protester arrested in Tiananmen Square
OC -0: FREE TIBET demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. American Tourists stabbed. Assailant jumps to death. Official account. Chinese witnesses not at liberty to tell what they actually saw.

OC +1: Tibet activists ejected from Honk Kong equestrian arena. Protester sets himself on fire in Ankara.

Worldwide Transportation Strikes are the first signs of an economic earthquake ahead

All around the planet the working class is beginning to stir once again in mass. What is driving this awakening is the effects of rising gasoline prices, as workers engaged in transport feel the first crunch of declining world supplies of petroleum.

Taxis drivers, bus drivers, truckers cannot keep charging the same rates for their services as their costs for gasoline shoot sky high. Security tightened as fuel protests turn violent And the general public is beginning to panic as they see basic consumer goods become too costly and out of reach.

Let’s face it, much of capitalist production is extremely inefficient, wasteful, and wrongly directed. Now, the world will begin to pay the true price for capitalism’s destruction of nature’s reserves of oil, clean water, and fertile agricultural soil . As a result, all that seemed so timeless and stable in our world is crumbling today into the sands of time.

How are we to get around without the petroleum the oil firms got us addicted to? World society now looks like a heroin addict who’s lost his supply. Look out on our stretched to the limit US suburbs. Everything is built wrong. Ouch!

Freudian Ground Zero

Hiroshima Japan
Hiroshima Japan, Aug 6, 1945. Ground Zero.

This is Ground Zero. Five square miles. 70,000 killed. Japanese men, women and children.

Ground Zero is an Operation Research term. Distances to destination can be discussed in relative terms without divulging -or deciding- the actual destination.

Similarly, the D-day Normandy landing was Day 0. Days preparatory to D-day were called D -x. Events to occur subsequent the landing were scheduled for D +x. This way plans could be made relative to a fixed point, which might have to change with the weather.

Actually, ground zero has designated the impact point of every atomic bomb blast from Hiroshima to Bikini Atoll. Distance from Ground Zero was a key vector in measuring an explosion’s effect. Earthquakes require a similar designation. In the 80’s I remember recriminations flying about our nation’s pitiful response to the AIDs epidemic, the original human carrier was called Patient Zero.

Where pray-tell do we get off calling the World Trade Center Ground Zero? What geometry requires a 9/11 “ground zero?” Is the WTC the epicenter of the media lies unleashed on September 11th, 2001? Is it because every news story and every government rationalization points back to “9/11” Ground Zero?