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Friday, June 29, 2018

Cuba is undoubtedly the Canadian favorite for a vacation


Cuba these days is beginning to sound like a mini Canada.  Everywhere you turn you are likely going to hear Canadian chatter.   In a way, although it's not fair to the Cubans, I am glad that those silly policies of the USA are keeping Americans away from Cuba.  Their loss is our gain.  Viva la Cuba !!

Below a few pics from my recent visit.

Many of the vintage cars have been converted into private taxis available for day trips. If you stand outside a hotel lobby or anywhere downtown in Havana, you will be able to spy several of these beauties.





This white crab met its dead at the same paws that got the anole lizard. The cat could chew on the feet but couldn't crack the carapace.
Fruit unidentified. Was as large as grapefruit.
 
 



Why do wave after wave of South Americans come to the USA ...


would they have still taken the dangerous road to the borders of the USA, plus all the abuse and hate from Americans if their own countries were prosperous?  And, why are their own countries not doing well?  Could it be because the USA has looted their countries' wealth in cahoots with the corrupt governments of those countries placed in power by the United States of America?

Deena Stryker  at Journal-NEO
Russiagate has been almost completely obscured by the media’s crocodile tears over Latino toddlers being torn from their mothers’ arms at the Mexican border.  Neither Gaza nor Yemen — not to mention Syria — have favored the press with comparable tear-jerking moments.  


The Attorney general, Jeff Sessions, known for his racism as Alabama’s Senator, and who was Trump’s earliest congressional backer, confessed to having ordered this inhumane policy in order to deter Latino families from illegally entering the United States — or even legally seeking asylum.  As the President for several days refused to back down until his wife intervened, together with the wives of previous Republican presidents, MSNBC and CNN inundated the airwaves with the sounds of little children crying for their mothers in Spanish.

None so far have asked the obvious question: What has made the people in the US’s back-yard so miserable that they are willing to risk temporarily — or even permanently — losing their children as they try to get into a country where they are not wanted? A recent book titled Crusade and Jihadby William Polk an Arabist and former diplomat, documents all the ways in which the North committed crimes against the South since Great Britain used gains from piracy to take over India two centuries ago.  Alas, little attention is paid by academics or journalists to America’s historic treatment of its Hispanic neighbors.

For two centuries, the tiny countries of Central America extending from Mexico to the southern American hemisphere have lurched from one US-backed government to another and from what sociologists call one development path to another, until politically motivated revolts and revolutions were succeeded by gang violence.

Benign neglect is the best one can say about these fiefdoms which United Fruit ruled for over a century. By the 1930s, the vast conglomerate was the single largest land owner in Guatemala. With a total of 3.5 million acres in Central America and the Caribbean, it had absolute power over the governments of these small, under-developed countries. (The phrase Banana Republic says it all.)

In 1944, a popular uprising in Guatemalaled to the country’s first democratic election, introducing near-universal suffrage, and a minimum wage. What happened later made it the poster child for Caribbean turmoil until the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The revolution’s second government, led by Jacobo Árbenz, broke up large estates, distributing property to landless peasants, and legalized the Communist Party. These actions threw up red flags in Washington, and when 40% of United Fruit Company’s land was expropriated, the powerful conglomerate persuaded the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that Arbenz planned to align Guatemala with the Soviet Bloc....

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Some of my tweets June 17 - 27





































































Sunday, June 10, 2018

Some of my tweets June 6 - 10










































The Americans of today


This is what they have become today. It's all about money. They care very little that that money comes from a country that was (still is) the primary employer of  the 9/11 jihadists.  How greedy and how shameless can one get?

Brian P. McGlinchey at 28pages
Syracuse National Security Program Director Registers as a Saudi Foreign Agent

Former chief of staff to Secretary of State Powell oversees education program for senior national security officials
Congressman Walter Jones: Syracuse situation “should cause major unease for all Americans”
The director of a national security program at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs has registered with the U.S. Department of Justice as an agent of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 28Pages.org is first to report.

In his registration statement, retired U.S. Army Colonel Bill Smullen, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, indicated he has agreed to provide “public relations support” to the Saudi embassy for compensation initially projected at $8,000.

Smullen’s National Security Studies program at Syracuse is billed as “a premier professional development program that offers executive education courses for senior civilian and military leaders who are responsible for the national security interests of their respective organizations.”
Within a few days of Smullen’s registration, another veteran of the Powell State Department signed on to serve the kingdom: Chris Keppler, who held media and communications leadership roles at State between 2001 and 2005, projected
$45,000 in compensation from his engagement....

Hawaii's Kīlauea Volcano ... still going strong



What happened on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967


The betrayal and duplicity of the Israelis once seen, like those on the USS Liberty did, many with their dying eyes, is simply not forgotten nor forgiven.  
This is a "must read" article.

John Crewdson at ChicagoTribute
New revelations in attack on American spy ship


Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.

"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"

 Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.....

Guess which US president chalked up most wars during his tenure



If the New World Order means no more wars ....


I am all for it.  Only time will tell.

Pepe Escobar at ATimes
How Singapore, Astana and St Petersburg preview a new world order

Key economic forums in cities across Eurasia point the way to new power structures rising to challenge Western dominance
Ahead of the crucial Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao this coming weekend, three other recent events have offered clues on how the new world order is coming about.

The Astana Economic Forum in Kazakhstan centered on how mega-partnerships are changing world trade. Participants included the president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Jin Liqun; Andrew Belyaninov from the Eurasian Development Bank; former Italian Prime Minister and president of the EU Commission Romano Prodi; deputy director-general of the WTO Alan Wolff; and Glenn Diesen from the University of Western Sydney.

Diesen, a Norwegian who studied in Holland and teaches in Australia, is the author of a must-read book, Russia’s Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia, in which he analyzes in excruciating detail how Moscow is planning “to manage the continent from the heartland by enhancing collective autonomy and influence, and thus evict US hegemony directed from the periphery.”....

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Some of my tweets June 1 - 5






































































Volcanoes eruptions in Hawaii and Guatemala


Hawaii's Kilauea




Guatemala's Fuego

The tale of a Japanese journalist and his sojourn in a kibbutz


Watch it. Well worth your time.

Ryuichi Hirokawa: Witness From The East


From description at the video:
When Japanese journalist Ryuichi Hirokawa went to Israel in 1967 to work on a kibbutz, he was fascinated by the idea of a farming community based on socialist principles. He wanted to work there and study Hebrew. But two weeks after his arrival, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war erupted. "I thought Israel was right in this war, because the Palestinians and Arabs wanted to destroy Israel," says Hirokawa. But one day, he stumbled across rubble covered with cacti and scattered rocks that later proved to be the remains of the village of Daliyat al-Rawha - a village that had disappeared from the map. "I asked people in the kibbutz [about the village] but they didn't answer me," Hirokawa recalls. Hirokawa investigated what had happened to the village and, checking an old English map, next to the names of former Palestinian villages he found the word 'destroyed'. "I was shocked. I thought I was working in a farm belonging to the kibbutz. But I realised I was working in a place where people once had a life ... I thought there must be people in this country who, like us, would say the war was wrong, the lands shouldn't be seized and must be returned." Hirokawa says his investigation taught him about Nakba and changed his perception of the founding of Israel and the Palestinian cause. After his return to Japan, and throughout his career as a journalist, Hirokawa continued to document the plight of Palestinians, including their expulsion to Lebanon. He documented the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut and eventually presented his evidence at international hearings in Oslo and Geneva. "When I heard about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, my heart went out to the Palestinian people who had suffered so much. In 1948, they were expelled by Israel. And for 30 years they lived as refugees," says Hirokawa. "Their only hope was to liberate their country and return home ... However, from the very start of the Israeli invasion, it was very clear that the aim was not only to destroy the PLO. The Israelis also tried to kill the greatest number of Palestinians." Since 1948, over 420 Palestinian villages have disappeared. Hirokawa filmed over 1,000 hours of footage and took thousands of photographs of Palestinians and their former villages, which he eventually turned into his own film about the Nakba. Although aged 71 when 'Witness From The East' was made, Ryuichi Hirokawa is still enthusiastically working, and is very much motivated by his life's mission to uncover the truth. "We need to collect evidence about what really happened in Palestine, which they call Israel, about what these ruins really are and what happened to the people who used to be there. We need to find that out." ....

Those who Control the Media, Rule the World


We are in their matrix and if we can't break free, it's a life unlived and a life wasted.

From Swiss Propaganda Research at ZeroHedge
The American Empire & Its Media

Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US news outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).



Established in 1921 as a private, bipartisan organization to “awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities”, the CFR and its close to 5000 elite members have for decades shaped U.S. foreign policy and public discourse about it. As a well-known Council member once explained, the goal has indeed been to establish a global Empire, albeit a “benevolent” one.

Based on official membership rosters, the following illustration for the first time depicts the extensive media network of the CFR and its two main international affiliate organizations: the Bilderberg Group(covering mainly the U.S. and Europe) and the Trilateral Commission (covering North America, Europe and East Asia), both established by Council leaders to foster elite cooperation at the international level....


Palmyra Today


Palmyra: Inside Syria's ancient city desecrated by war

Travelling to countries demonized by one's government ...


can make one forever distrust one's government.  Travelling to such demonized countries is an education both pleasurable and enlightening.

J. Michael Springmann  at GlobalResearch
Iran: What Trump Is Not Telling You. What is “The Donald” Concealing?
After a week’s travel in Iran, I am able to provide a fresh, different, and unbiased perspective on the country.  This is an account entirely at odds with Donald J. Trump’s worldview.  It is a story diametrically opposed to the Zionist narrative that has so captivated the American government and media.

Following a surprise invitation to attend an all-expenses paid trip to the 6th International New Horizon Conference (about al-Quds, i.e. Jerusalem), I arrived in Mashhad, Iran on May 11, 2018.  Knowing little of Iran, I expected another version of Saudi Arabia, an arch-conservative society, with no mixing of the sexes, rigidly-controlled politics, and little interest in the outside world.

Enlightening Ignorant Me

I found just the opposite.  Iran and Iranians, despite the unforgivable and deadly U.S. sanctions, are genuinely warm and welcoming.  They possess an economy that, despite American efforts  to wreck it, still functions.  There are airports, motorways (with toll booths!), and double-decker commuter trains. And the most god-awful traffic outside of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, even if gasoline is the equivalent of US$0.25/liter (quart) and the average salary is only US$309/week.

During the conference, at nearly every moment I wasn’t in my chair, I was being interviewed by Iranian journalists and others.  There were no softball questions, they were hard and to the point.  Some meetings were pre-arranged, others were “ambush” interviews , catching me as I went to change money or finished an earlier conversation with another journalist.  I wasn’t alone in this.  Other participants, such as Rabbi David Wise from New York City, Philip Giraldi, ex-CIA, Peter Van Buren, former American diplomat like myself, and Greta Berlin, a member of several supply voyages to Palestine NOT attacked by Israel, all noted the same thing....

Friday, June 1, 2018

Some of my tweets from May 28 - 31