There is something very, very wrong with these decisions; the overt arrogance with which this power is being abused is incredibly worrying. How much longer can you keep topping up a bucket that is already full of shit?

This is nothing less, if you don’t know already, than a corporate coup of the modern free world. Welcome to post-modernity.

“More and more toxics are banned in Europe. The knowledge that chemical residues threatens our health is widely spread. Never the less – the toxic returns. “

I had the pleasure to watch and meet a group of Estonian bell-ringers quite recently. It was an amazing performance. It sounds stupid but I’d recommend bell-ringing to anyone. The Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy was probably my favourite. When I left I felt like I’d dreamt the whole thing.

“Debt is also the result of confrontation.

When we are told about economic crisis, nobody says that this crisis didn’t come about suddenly. The crisis had always been there but it got worse each time that popular masses become more and more conscious of their rights against exploiters.”

Thomas Sankara Addis Adebba, July 1987.

The transcript below is about a third complete. I’ll finish it in the next couple of days.

“We think that debt has to be seen from the standpoint of its origins. Debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins. Those who lend us money are those who had colonized us before. They are those who used to manage our states and economies.

Colonizers are those who indebted Africa through their brothers and cousins who were the lenders. We had no connections with this debt. Therefore we cannot pay for it. Debt is neo-colonialism, in which colonizers transformed themselves into “technical assistants”. We should better say “technical assassins”.

They present us with financing, with financial backers. As if someone’s back could create development. We have been advised to go to these lenders. We have been proposed with nice financial set-ups. We have been indebted for fifty, sixty years and even more. That means we have been led to compromise our people for fifty years and more.

Under its current form, that is imperialism controlled, debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave, of those who had been treacherous enough to put money in our countries with obligations for us to repay. We are told to repay, but it is not a moral issue. It is not about this so-called honour of repaying or not.

Mister President, we have been listening and applauding Norway’s prime minister when she spoke right here. She is European but she said that the whole debt cannot be repaid. Debt cannot be repaid, first because if we don’t repay, lenders will not die. That is fore sure. But if we repay, we are going to die.

That is also for sure.

Those who led us to indebting had gambled as if in a casino. As long as they had gains, there was no debate. But now that they suffer losses, they demand repayment. And we talk about crisis. No, Mr President, they played, they lost, that’s the rule of the game, and life goes on. We cannot repay because we don’t have any means to do so. We cannot pay because we are not responsible for this debt. We cannot repay but the others owe us what the greatest wealth could never repay, that is blood debt. Our blood had flowed.

We hear about the Marshall plan that rebuilt Europe’s economy. But we never hear about the African plan which allowed Europe to face Hitlerian hoardes when their economies and their stability were at stake.

Who saved Europe? Africa. One rarely mentions it, to such a point that we cannot be the accomplices of that thankless silence. If others cannot sing our praises, at least we must say that our fathers had been courageous and that our troops had saved Europe and set the world free from Nazism.

Debt is also the result of confrontation.

When we are told about economic crisis, nobody says that this crisis didn’t come about suddenly. The crisis had always been there but it got worse each time that popular masses become more and more conscious of their rights against exploiters.

We are in a crisis today because masses refuse wealth to be concentrated into a few individual’s hands.

We are in crisis because some people are saving huge sums of money on foreign bank accounts that would be enough to develop Africa. We are in a crisis because we are facing this private wealth that we cannot name.

Popular masses don’t want to live in ghettos and slums. We are in a crisis because everywhere people refuse to repeat the  problems of Soweto and Johannesburg.

There is a struggle, and its amplification worry those with the financial power. Now we are asked to be accomplices for a balancing. A balance favouring those with the financial power. A balancing against popular masses.

No! We cannot be accomplices. No! We cannot go with those who suck our people’s blood and live on our people’s sweat. We cannot go with them in their murdering methods.

Mr President, we hear about clubs – club of Rome, club of Paris, club everywhere. We hear about Group of Five, Group of Seven, Group of Ten, and maybe Group of A Hundred. And what else? It is normal that we too have our own club and our own group. Let’s Addis Adeba becoming from now the center from which will come a new breath. A club of Addis Adeba.

It is our duty to create an Addis Adeba’s unified front against debt. That is the only way to assert that refusing to repay is not an aggressive move on our part, but a fraternal move to speak the truth.

Furthermore, popular masses of Europe are not opposed to popular masses of Africa. Those who want to exploit Africa are those who exploit Europe, too. We have a common enemy. So our club of Addis Adeba will have to explain to each and all that debt shall not be repaid. And by saying that, we are not against morals, dignity and keeping one’s word. We think we don’t have the same morality as others… [to be continued]“

Woah.

See Washington Post article

“Karpinski on Abu Ghraib: We were following orders
By David Edwards

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30343776/
President Obama says the Attorney General can review the actions of Bush officials who OKed waterboarding, reports Bill Plante. Harry Smith talks to Janis Karpinski who oversaw Iraqi prisons in 2003.

The Associated Press reported:

An Army Reserve colonel demoted from brigadier general because of prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq said Wednesday the Senate report supports her contention that uniformed military people were made scapegoats for Bush administration policies.

Col. Janis Karpinski said that from the beginning, Ive been saying these soldiers did not design these techniques on their own.

Karpinski said she felt vindicated and said she thought it had taken far too long for the information about the history of the interrogation policy to surface publicly.

This video is from CBS The Early Show, broadcast Apr. 22, 2009.

“In this two-hour presentation at the world famous Oxford Union, David Icke encapsulates humanity’s current plight and how we can secure our freedom from the Hidden Hand behind global events.

“Video footage from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shows Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the countrys royal family, torturing a man. He is the brother of the countrys crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed. The UAE Ministry of the Interior confirmed it was Sheikh Issa in the video but said the incidents depicted in the video tapes were not part of a pattern of behavior.
The handsome son of a gun above is Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Arab businessman is currently on the wrong end of an American lawsuit, filed by a former advisor who claims he was tortured. The basis of said lawsuit is a video, depicting Sheikh Issa torturing an Afghan merchant accused of cheating him.

In the video – a small portion of which you can see here – Sheikh Issa and his henchmen hit the Afghan with a plank, pour salt into his wounds, stick a cattle prod where the sun dont shine, set fire to his genitals with lighter fluid and run him over with a Mercedes SUV.

At one point in the video – which was filmed in 2005 – Sheikh Issa says: Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Let his suffering show. ”

His brother should be thrown out of the UK, his assets stripped. We, and I’m sure I speak for most if not all UK citizens, do not want his kind or his money in our affairs.