The Spirit of Discordance

Protesters Confront Soldiers After Military Coup in Honduras - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30honduras.html?ref=global-home

"In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last senior
member of the administration to visit Honduras, just three weeks ago,
said that the United States was working toward “full restoration of
democratic order in Honduras.” She said that the situation in Honduras
“has evolved into a coup.” But when pressed by a reporter, she refused to say explicitly that the United States was demanding that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chickenshit

On July 2007 Commondreams published this:

Hillary Clinton, Right-wing darling?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/28/2829



Need I say more?. Empires can´t help being empires. They can´t change, it´s in their DNA. It doesn´t matter if the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

It´s like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. And now when Hillary has a chance to side with the people and side with democracy, she stops halfway across. Just because the deposed president wasn´t very warm towards the USA policies or POV.

FC
PS: The great blog BoRev.net has a pool of the "Most Retarded Justification for the Coup in Honduras". Some of the TRUE statements by local politicos as well as some in the US media are really hillarious, or tragic. And whom do we find there? My pet pevee Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Queen of Freedom, the fighter against all evil populists and leftists in Latin America. Mary Anastasia O'Grady -referred to hereinafter as MAO -for fun's sake-, a former Merrill Lynch employee turned hatchet job hack at the Wall Street Journal.

Her statement? WSJ's MAO describes the military overthrow as all part of a country's democratic system of "checks and balances." PFFFT!!!!!!!!!

Labels: AYNRANDITES, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, NEWS MEDIA, THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT

It seems to me that a GOP top-secret cabal has hired a vodoo wizard to work on the message "Democrats, break a leg!" Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was working from home Thursday after fracturing her right elbow during a fall the day before, State Department officials said. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/18/clinton.arm/index.html?eref=rss_latest Sotomayor breaks ankle on the way to Capitol Hill http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/08/sotomayor-breaks-ankle-on-her-way-to-capitol-hill/

Labels: REPUBLICANS GOOD LUCK

Most -if not all- of the BBC documentaries and investigative news reports I´ve seen are technically impressive. The guys do know their job, and they hire the best. From a content standpoint they are often progressive: from the war in Iraq, to the situation in Palestine, to Global Warming.

So I was a bit disappointed when I watched the Beeb´s program titled "Jimmy´s GM food fight" part of the otherwise great "BBC Horizon" series which I recommend wholeheartedly (For instance the one titled "The Ghost in your Genes" is great).


To put it in a few words, the program host starts with a supposed skeptical look at genetically modified crops, but soon (at around minute 12:00) the balance starts titlting towards the pro-GM side. I was actually dismayed when he started saying "we've been tinkering with plants for years" equalling genetic selection with genetic MODIFICATION. And more importantly, ignoring the chemicals that come with it, namely Monsanto´s RoundUp (Glyphosate and add-ons).

In short: overlooked was the chemical industry's big business with pesticides and herbicides. The dangers of Glyphosate are only recently being known. While Glyphosate itself might have low toxicity, the compound as delivered and sprayed over crops contains various toxic chemicals IN ADDITION TO glyphosate itself.

So "RoundUp" contains more than just glyphosate. Plus, "enhancers" are sold and mixed to RoundUp, to make it permeate the plant deeper, and be "more effective"..

A court down here in Argentina has recently banned crop dusters from spraying glyphosate near rural towns, where it affected the health of the local population.

http://bit.ly/glyphosateban-spanish

English version:

Court in Argentina bans crop dusters spraying Monsanto´s Glyphosate over soybean fields near urban areas. - AYN
http://bit.ly/glyphosatebaninargentina-english

More from the wikipedia:

--------
Scientific fraud

On two occasions the United States Environmental Protection Agency has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate
--
False advertising

In 1996 Monsanto was accused of false and misleading advertising of glyphosate products, prompting a law suit by the New York State attorney general.[13] Environmental and consumer rights campaigners brought a case in France in 2001 for presenting Roundup as biodegradable and claiming that it left the soil clean after use; glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed by the European Union as "dangerous for the environment" and "toxic for aquatic organisms". In January 2007, Monsanto was convicted of false advertising
--------
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup

So as you can see things aren´t as simple as "toying with plants"... and GM crops aren´t as harmless as depicted in this BBC programme, because they aren´t just modified seends, they come with the added chemicals sprayed on them.

Here, an Austrialian study which confirmed Glyphosate´s toxicity to frogs,
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/frog-overview.html

Fortunately, an eco-friendly farming UK blog has noticed this little bias in Jimmy´s programme, and is asking people to file a complaint with the BBC.

Let´s hope Europe does not repeat our mistake, and that we can eventually get rid of GMs too.

FC
PS: He came down here and the first part of the programme shows neat images of Argentina's vast GM soybean fields, even from the air.

Labels: CRAPITALISM, CROPS, ENVIRONMENT, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, NEWS MEDIA

Yet another example of the developed countries caring about us... ;-)

http://tinyurl.com/GSMsecurity

Labels: CELLULAR, MOBILE, SECURITY, WIRELESS

Frankly, I never heard of a Gavin Clarke before today. He seems to be one of the writers @ that OTHER NEWS SITE.

But after reading THIS and THIS and THIS other story... all on the subject of the Oracle-Sun acquisition, and reading his stupid remarks, I conclude the guy has an agenda against Sun or its products.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a personal agenda. I dislike Microsoft with a passion, for instance, for its monopolistic ways. But at least there's some substance to my claims (DOJ trial, UE ruling against MSFT, South Korea's competition commision, etc).

FC

Labels: BOOT LICKERS, FUD: FEAR UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT, MICROSOFT MONOPOLY

The Bible of Reaganomics-style Crapitalism and Creationism, the often partisan mag Forbes from the namesake Steve Forbes, has an incensing piece where one of its writers laments the downfall of traditional media, to the hands of e-pubs and those pesky bloggers.

"Bloggers are very useful but are essentially parasitic; they seldom produce actual news and are often factually challenged, repeating errors more often than correcting them. That is because there is generally no system of accountability. One second after a blogger gets a thought, it's effectively published, often without the blogger even bothering to do a spell check." says Bruce Bartlett @ Forbes magazine over HERE

FC

Labels: FREELANCING, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, NEW MEDIA, PARASITES, REVENUE

We were taking bets with my coworkers as to "where the first mass riots" will happen in Yurope due to the Global Economic Mess (TM) until someone said "it already started, yesterday, London".

U.K. Protests at Foreign Contract Workers Spread
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ax5Mh9vDgyOU&refer=uk

And then I read over here, the "responsible tories" saying:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2486466.0.Tories_blame_irresponsible_Brown_for_wildcat_strikes.php

"The Tories today blamed Gordon Brown's "irresponsible" comments over British jobs for British workers for the wave of wildcat strikes at industrial sites across the country. Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke said however aggrieved people felt, industrial action at power stations and oil refineries at a time of "national crisis" was not the way forward. "We don't want to see riots in Italy about British workers, working in Italy, at a time when British companies are seeking contracts on the continent for their British workers."

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But he added: "Understandable worries at the present time have been turned into direct action as a result of the Prime Minister's irresponsible use of the phrase 'British jobs for British workers'."This was populist nonsense at the time he used it and part of some curious Britishness agenda, which he was pursuing for reasons of his own at the time.

"It was more concerned with his job security than anybody else's job security in this country."

PFFT PARP PARP PARP!


Thatcher's Trafalgar Square riots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/31/newsid_2530000/2530763.stm

"Its unpopularity contributed to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher who resigned in November 1990 after 11 years at the helm of British politics."

The Enemy Within: Thatcher's Secret War Against Miners
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844675084?ie=UTF8&tag=showitem-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1844675084

How Thatcher tried to dodge bill for policing the miners' strike
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/jan/03/uk.conservatives

FC

Labels: CRAPITALISM, FINANCIAL SECTOR, FREE ENTERPRISE, RIOTS, WEALTH