Defence Industry has its Sights on the Olympics http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3189

The security budget for the 2010 Olympics is upwards of $900 million, an amount that has generated criticism and backlash from Games opponents and cash-strapped Canadians alike. But, while activists lament what could have been done with such a massive sum, local and international security and defense companies aren't complaining.

Weapons manufacturers Thales Canada and Lockheed Martin were awarded a contract for an undisclosed amount in order to develop two "passive coherent location radar" surveillance systems for the Games.Iavor Georgeff, responsible for Software Integration and Quality Assurance at VANOC, was a software engineer for Thales Australia for over two years. Thales Canada is heavily involved in Canada's Afghan war operations, and Lockheed Martin is the biggest recipient of defense contracts in the US.

Richmond's MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. received a $4.8 million contract to set up and manage “perimeter intrusion detection solutions” for the 2010 Olympics. The company is a partner with Israel Aerospace Industries in a $100 million federal contract to build an unknown number of Heron surveillance drones, used over Afghanistan.

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The NYT, a Mexican Billionaire, and JP Morgan Chase http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/the-nyt-a-mexican-billionaire-and-jp-morgan-chase/

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Colombian Government Looking for Excuses to Attack http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/february/21/latam-10022103.htm

CARACAS - Venezuela accused on Friday the Colombian government of looking for excuses to attack by using groundless accusations on alleged presence of a guerrilla leader in Venezuelan territory.President Hugo Chavez warned that Colombian government continues aiming Venezuela without sufficient evidences and alert Colombian President Alvaro Uribe not to make mistakes.

Chavez advised Colombian military to respect his country's sovereignty and denied Arauca's major Luis Ataya's statements about the alleged presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader known as Grannobles. In the meantime, Chavez rejected Honduran Ministry of Security's recent statements about alleged drug-trafficker's flights from Venezuela to Central America. Chavez recalled that it is about the Honduran unlawful government which came up from the coup and Venezuela does not recognize.

With regard to accusations on drug trafficking, Chavez said that the unlawful government began to perform as US and bourgeoisie's pawn.Venezuela Minister of Foreign Affairs Nicolas Maduro denied previously the presence of Colombian guerrilla and included Ataya statements in the permanent campaign against Venezuelan government.

comment-also see... Washington behind the Honduras coup: Here is the evidence http://links.org.au/node/1147

ISS - Key leaders of Honduras military coup trained in U.S http://southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html

Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6329

The Honduran coup: another US destabilization operation http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14171

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VIDEO-BRUTAL-I really hope that there doesn't need to be a murder for BP to negotiate”http://gizzacroggy.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-really-hope-that-there-doesnt-need-to.html

The notorious Colombian riot police, ESMAD, arrived and without any warning they violently attacked the strikers and community members using tear gas, their batons and shields.“As is common in our country, the presence of these economic projects are accompanied by state violence and a strong paramilitary presence.” USO Urgent Action (USO is the national oil workers union)In Casanare, a department with a population of around 500,000 habitants, there have been 9900 selected killings, and 2600 people disappeared between 2000 and 2007 according to COS-PACC, a human rights NGO.

It is the first time that workers for the BP have managed to organise themselves in a union. In the late 1990’s, B.P. was exposed by the British media for complicity in human rights abuses. The company had contracted the 16th Brigade of the Colombian army to protect its oilfields, despite the Brigade’s dire human rights record, which includes murder, “disappearances”, torture, rape and the forced displacement of communities. B.P. also admitted to having employed the private security company Defence Systems Limited to provide counter-insurgency training to Colombian police and army units charged with the protection of B.P’s installations.

COMMENT-this is by no means just a case wich involves a brittish oil corporation,but also many other oil corporations, wich also include AMERICAN(OCCIDENTAL)see...Occidental Sued in Human Rights Case  http://www.laborrights.org/end-violence-against-trade-unions/colombia/news/10900

The incident left 17 villagers, including six children, dead...

also see...The world's worst corporations http://www.inaltreparole.net/en/money/classificaimprese290110.html  

Again, Occidental Petroleum, accused of having caused enormous environmental damage in several indigenous lands in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. 

the crimes perpetuated against people all over third world under guise of development,are nothing else but neocolonialism,plunder and imperialism...in order to satisfy the west's  standard of living and over consumption pattern of the developed nations,those who pay price are the exploited indigneous...keep that in mind when you bitch about how oil prices are going up...

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Colombia: Relatives of 'False Positives' Speak Out http://memoryinlatinamerica.blogspot.com/2010/02/colombia-relatives-of-false-positives.html

(transcript in english under video)From the excellent magazine Cambio, which, sadly is apparently soon to lose its current investigative format, comes a video clip focusing on the female relatives of men killed in Colombia's conflict.

The victims were so-called 'false positives' - young men dressed up to look like guerrillas and murdered to boost the 'success rate' of the armed forces' counterinsurgency drive. It's Spanish only but I have attempted to provide a transcript below - it's not perfect and you can see that I had difficulties understanding one of the interviewees in particular, so if you speak Spanish, watch the original, but English-only readers should be able to get a rough guide.

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Chutzpah, Inc.: "The Brave People of Iran" (versus the Disappeared People of Palestine, Honduras, Afghanistan, Etc.) http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/hp200210.html

It is almost a commonplace, at least for the real -- as opposed to the cruise-missile -- left, that the flow of information, opinion, and moral indignation in the United States adapts well to the demands of state policy.

If the state is hostile to Iran, even openly trying to engage in "regime change," and if it is supportive of the state of Israel, no matter what crimes Israel may commit,and if it doesn't like the populist president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and supports his overthrow and a follow-up "demonstration election" by the local elite, the media and many intellectuals will follow the state agenda, even if they must indulge in mental somersaults. In the case of Iran, the Israeli state and its U.S. supporters are also eager for regime change, so the somersaults on the Iran menace are wilder yet, with large injections of chutzpah.

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The Greek External Debt and Imperialist Rivalries: "One Thief Stealing from Another" http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/mavroudeas200210.html

Here comes the tragedy. According to both foreign and Greek pundits, the Greek people have to suffer an "internal devaluation." Now this is a very sweet term, proving that capitalism's think-tanks have a grain of colorful imagination. As every sensible person can guess, "internal devaluation" is a contradiction in terms: you cannot devalue a coin in your left pocket in relation to the same coin in your right one.

But, as it is cynically confessed when queried, this term is a mask for radial austerity: since you cannot devalue your currency, you must cut your wages and pensions. Now the plot of the tragedy is revealed. The Greek people, particularly the working class, have to pay for the salvation of Greek capitalism.There are a few final touches. The Greek economic policy is now openly put under the control of Brussels; even the pretences of national sovereignty are dropped.

In reality, the country is in a condition of limited sovereignty. Whereas only a few days ago PASOK was still proclaiming that it was striving to safeguard the people's right to govern itself, now it is openly admitted that Brussels governs the economy and we are obliged to follow its orders. Recently one commentator put it quite accurately: this is another occupation -- like the Nazi one during WW2 -- but this time it is an economic one.

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The IIRSA(FTA) And Its Mega-Projects In The Amazon: Interview With Harakmbut Jaime Corisepa http://tiny.cc/QYqga

The FTA is the strategy to make indigenous peoples disappear. According to Jaime, the clearest expression of the FTAs are the projects that are promoted under the acronym of the IIRSA. He says they are in a stage of awareness against the projects of "famous" IIRSA wich  have negative impacts too severe and irreversible. Mean dispossession of native communities. Biodiversity loss. Permit the entry of oil companies and miners. Insists this  is the beginning of the disappearance of indigenous peoples.

"Enough is enough, these people have no crown, they are not first class citizens that can tell us 400 thousand natives or 28 million Peruvians ,we have no right to come here, no way, that's a serious mistake and if anyone thinks that way it leads to irrationality and primitive regression. (3) For Corisepa, all this represents "a serious fight between civilizations"

"If we do not accept its dictates, they shoot you with a bullet, jail, criminalize leaders and indigenous organizations. Therefore, we demand self-determination, which is how we live and how we choose our own destiny ... Jamie Corisepa: Indigenous Harakmbut For the young leader, the globalists external and internal developers must understand and respect the fact that to the indigenous peoples, the territory is not a commodity, it is something sacred and spiritual, and there is already an existing economy beyond their money, (the alleged investments that would bring benefits thru  mega projects 'development'.)

The IIRSA project is the acronym for the recolonization by transnational capitalists wich has tackled  the history of South America thru the IIRSA Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America. It is the material support for the policies of free capital penetration and foreign trade, wich is to become the backbone of a development model imposed by international powers, multinationals and multilateral banks. There is much information available online about it. What drives the Inter-American Development Bank, Andean Development Corporation and  governments in the subcontinent, but especially Brazil.

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Where are the Unions in Anti-Olympics Protests? http://mostlywater.org/node/83621

It’s time for someone to mention the elephant that’s not in the room.The room would be today’s British Columbia, where local and imported rich folks are enjoying an 8-billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded party, while a few thousand protesters challenge its moral legitimacy after years of corporate/government attacks on the poor, unions, public education, health-care, seniors, children, etc.And the no-show elephant would be the BC trade union movement, the once-fearsome champion of the working class and of all the underprivileged in our society.Where the hell is labour in the anti-Olympic protests in Vancouver?

The utter absence, not only of the movement’s formal leadership, but also of any visible sector of its hundreds of thousands of members has to be a source of elation to the greed-heads who have pillaged this province for the past ten years. Their joy at moving from a state of being virtually unopposed by unions to one of being COMPLETELY unopposed by unions can only be matched by the profoundly sinking hearts of those who struggle for social justice — both inside and outside the labour movement.

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Israel accused of 'tax theft' Palestinians want to teabag Israeli Leader unmerciful http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201022185321779125.html

Israel is being accused of effectively stealing more than $2.5bn in taxes from Palestinian workers.A recent report by an Israeli NGO says money was deducted from the salaries of Palestinians who were working in Israel.

The tax funds were transferred to the government to provide social services and benefits to the Israeli people.But many Palestinians had to pay without being qualified to receive any of the benefits, prompting the NGO to accuse the government of "theft".Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from occupied Jerusalem.

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VIDEO-Shocking: Truth behind child trafficking in India http://ekawaaz.org/2010/02/21/shocking-truth-behind-child-trafficking-in-india/

Incredible India: A land of Broken Laws, Religion hypocrisy, Gutter Politics and Bigger Contradiction. Our beaurocracy is one of the worst in world so no wonder when we discover that underneath of Incredible India most of our population lives under the poverty line, child exploitation, women exploitation and sex slavery is still exists and is on rise. Yes officially it is illegal but unofficially this crime is going on and no one really bothers to put a full stop on it.