Stephen Lendman

Human activity can cause destructive harm. Columbia University geophysical hazards research scientist, Christian Klose, studies how, including from mining. In a recent paper, he said:

"mining activities disturb the in-situ stress in the upper continental crust and can trigger earthquakes (human-triggered seismicity)."

Past examples are numerous:

-- from potash and other mining in Germany since the 19th century;

-- potash mining in Bulgaria;

-- copper mining in Silesia;

-- ore mining in Russia;

-- coal and other mining in various parts of America, including New York state, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming; and

-- coal and other mining in China and throughout the world.

Klose also says geophysical data suggest that the Zipingpu Dam, a few kilometers from the epicenter of China's 7.9 magnitude 2008 earthquake, likely triggered it. In a December 2008 presentation at the American Geophysical Union, he explained:

"Several geophysical observations suggest this (quake) was triggered by local and abnormal mass imbalances on the surface of the Earth's crust. These observations include (1) elastostatic response of the crust to the mass changes, (2) slip distribution of the main rupture, and (3) aftershock distribution."

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Marguerite Laurent

This article was first published in October 2009.

[Located in the North-Eastern part of Haiti and abounding with tourist sites, Fort-Liberté is a city where the first declaration of Haiti's independence took place on November 29, 1803. It has one of the most captivating historical sites in the area called Fort Dauphin known today as Fort-Liberté. This fort was built around 1731 under the command of Louis XV, king of France, and its ruins are the greatest evidences of its genius designers who chose the most strategic point to built it in order to fight off upcoming invaders.]

Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery – an old notion for Fort Liberte as a transshipment terminal for US supertankers – Another economic reason for the ouster of President Aristide and current UN occupation (Haiti’s Riches:Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti)

There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.

There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti’s deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paper about the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.

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Paul A. Moore

Schools teach that the United States of America is a democracy. The government was established as "of, by, and for the people" and later on, a President Abraham Lincoln called the nation's people to join and die in a civil war that such a thing might never perish from the earth. Aside from the extent the lesson was ever in accord with the truth, it has today become an outright absurdity. The Supreme Court has declared once and for all that the corporations will rule. The United States of America is now better described as a corporatocracy. The government is owned and dictated to by these capitalist creations whose God is Mammon.

Corporations are, of course, different from people. They are devoid of human emotion. They are constitutionally unable to generate empathy. They feel nothing if people suffer exploitation, if people live in misery, or if people die horribly. Union Carbide was unaffected by the thousands dead and dying in Bhopal. It registered only on the balance sheet, a $470-million loss taken for the sake of future corporate viability under a new name, Dow Chemical. The corporation will not be reasoned with, pleaded with, or shamed into changing course even when life on the planet hangs in the balance. McDonald's is in the process of teaching Starbucks that even the pretense of a social conscience is a losing marketing ploy.

The corporation recognizes and reacts only to threats to its air supply-profits. So in one sense corporations do share something with human beings. They have an instinct for self-preservation and if they are deprived of a life giving element they die. While human beings must have oxygen and water, the corporation's lifeblood is those quarterly profits. The corporation must make a profit and then ever greater profits into the future. Corporate profits must grow, forever! Irrational, impossible, unsustainable but that is in the nature of the beast-much as lemmings rush to the sea.

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David Lindorff

What's missing in Congress these days is real progressive leadership and real political courage.

Over the past several decades, the Democratic Party has been entirely taken over by corporate shills and money-grubbing sleazes while those who might still have some vestigial remnant of a conscience or genuine concern for the plight of the common person have been co-opted or intimidated into silence or powerlessness.

Look at Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). He says all the right things. He's fought all the good fights. And yet after 15 years in Congress, he is chair of what? The House subcommittee on domestic policy of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Heck, his post doesn't even merit capitalization in the AP Stylebook! And when he submits an important bill, like his articles of impeachment of both former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, he can't even get a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

Which, of course, is chaired by another long-standing allegedly progressive House member, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Conyers, despite being chair of the House Progressive Caucus (the largest, and least powerful Democratic Party caucus in the Congress) and despite his having served 22 terms in the House, couldn't even manage to get "permission" from the Speaker (Rep. Nancy Pelosi--once a member of the Progressive Caucus!) to hold a hearing on impeachment during the Bush/Cheney years in the Judiciary Committee that he chairs. And more recently, he was even barred from having his own health reform proposal--an expansion of Medicare to cover all Americans--get a lousy hearing in the House. Progressives in the Democratic Party are both joke and oxymoron ¹.

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Stephen Lendman

On January 15, Haaretz reported that:

"The Israel Defense Forces' aid mission to Haiti left Israel overnight (January 14) with equipment for setting up an emergency field hospital. Around 220 soldiers and officers (were) in the delegation, including 120 medical staff (to) operate the hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince."

According to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it includes "40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an internal department and a maternity ward (able to) treat approximately 500 patients each day," including in two surgery rooms.

On January 20, Lebanon's Al-Manar TV reported on the mission, citing a damning You Tube video posted by an American named T. West from a group called AfriSynergy Productions.

"The video presents something to think about while exploiting the horrible tragedy that has befallen Haiti where Israeli occupation soldiers are engaged in organ trafficking."

Israel faced these charges before. In November 2009, Alison Weir's article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs headlined, "Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine." She cited an August Donald Bostrom article in Sweden's Aftonbladet suggesting that Israel illicitly removes body parts, including from Palestinians.

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Marco Villa

I have written about this, and this debate has taken on strong passions not only in the blogosphere but also in the so-called ‘paper-of-record’ the New York Times. The debate merits a collection here on IB so you can decide for yourself if I am right or wrong. First my writings:

Israel and its Zionist supporters should not bother to spend hundreds of millions in propaganda in the U.S. - which they do - since the U.S. media is happy to offer Israel billions in dollars of worth in free promotion.

ABC News, which under Peter Jennings used to be the only reliable nightly newscast on the Middle East; is now under the auspicious of fluff-news journalist Diane Sawyer. And Sawyer is all about the human interest angle devoid of any real information or context.

Last night, she had a story about an Israeli operated tent-hospital in Haiti. She gushed with praise about how Israelis were the first on the scene in contrast to the United States which has yet to set up an equal organization. About how skilled Israelis are, they even have specified tents!, and the Haitian people are so grateful one baby girl was named “Israel”.

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voltairenet.org

[Editor’s Note: The following article was written and published by VIVE TV, a Venezuelan public channel. The video was broadcasted by Russia Today, a Russian public channel. Oddly enough, the Venezuelan channel designates the Russian Army as the source of these claims which, in turn, attributes them to President Chávez.]

According to Russia Today, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías evoked the possibility that the United States are behind the series of earthquakes that struck the Caribben region last week, including the one that devastated Haiti. However, according to Vive Tv, the allegation originated with the Russian armed forces: A report from the Russian Northern Fleet [transmitted to the Government of Venezuela] would seem to indicate that the earthquate that devastated Haiti was the "clear result of a seismic weapons test recently conducted by the US Navy". Be that as it may, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have requested the UN Security Council to convene an emergency session. This forum will be expected to examine these charges and look into the "humanitarian" invasion of Haiti by US troops.

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Scott Horton

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

–W.H. Auden, from The Shield of Achilles (1953)

Continue reading here

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Ellen Brown

The story goes that Churchill offered a woman 5 million pounds to sleep with him. She hedged and said they would have to discuss terms. Then he offered her 5 pounds. “Sir!” she said. “What sort of woman do you think I am?” “Madam,” he replied, “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”

The same might be said of President Obama’s health care bill, which was sold out to corporate interests early on. The insurance lobby had its way with the bill; after that they were just haggling over the price. The “public option” was so watered down in congressional deal-making that it finally disappeared altogether.

However, the bill passed both Houses by razor-thin margins, and the stunning loss on January 19 of the late Ted Kennedy’s Democratic seat to a Republican may force Obama to start over with his agenda. The good news is that this means there is still a chance of getting legislation that includes what Obama’s supporters thought they were getting when they elected him – a universal health care plan on the model of Medicare.

That still leaves the question of price, but all industrialized countries except the United States have managed to foot the bill for universal health care. How is it that they can afford it when we can’t? Do they have some secret funding source that we don’t have?

In the case of our nearest neighbor Canada, the answer is actually that they do. At least, they did for the first two decades of their national health service -- long enough to get it up and running. Now the Canadian government, too, is struggling with a mounting debt to private banks at compound interest; and its national health service is suffering along with other public programs. But when Canada first launched its national health service, the funding came from money created by its own central bank. Canada’s innovative funding model is one that could still be followed by a President committed to deliver on his promises.

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Luboš Motl / Anthony Watts

We’ve talked a lot about record cold and snow, now more from the “weather is not climate department”, and this time there’s a warm side to the story. I’d planned to write something about this, since several people left the UAH numbers in Tips and Notes, but Luboš Motl beat me to it, so I’ll give him the honor here. It will be interesting to see what some pundits do with this number, especially if they compare it to the longer 100+ year instrumental surface temperature record. – Anthony

Many people think that the globe must be terribly cold these days. We’ve seen huge cold snaps and snowfalls in Britain, Eastern parts of the U.S., Western Europe, Central Europe, China, Korea, and India where hundreds of people have frozen.

So these are almost all the important places, right? (At this moment, the speaker forgets that there are places such as Latin America, Australia or the Balkans which have been warm.) So the globe must be cool – cooler than average, people could think. -However, the daily UAH global mean temperature shows a different story.

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Stephen Lendman

Haiti is no stranger to adversity and anguish - over 500 years of severe oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, and natural calamities from destructive hurricanes to a dozen magnitude 7.0 or greater Caribbean region earthquakes in the past 500 years. The last major one was in 1946 at 8.1 in the adjacent Dominican Republic, also striking Haiti. Earlier catastrophic ones were in 1751 and 1770, both devastating Port-au-Prince, and the 1842 one destroying Cap-Haitien in the north.

On September 25, 2008, Phoenix Delacroix quoted geologist Patrick Charles of Havana's Geological Institute saying:

"conditions are ripe for major seismic activity in Port-au-Prince. The inhabitants of the Haitian capital need to prepare themselves for an event which will inevitably occur."

Citing a real danger, he explained that the dangerous Enriquillo Fault Zone extends across Port-au-Prince, starting in Petionville, traversing the Southern Peninsula to Tiburon. Noting earlier tremors in the area, he said a larger earthquake usually follows, yet no precautions were taken, leaving Haitians vulnerable to what happened - vast destruction, perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, countless numbers seriously injured, and disease, depravation, and militarized occupation haunting survivors in the aftermath.

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Craig Murray

The Iraq Inquiry has taken us back again to that period where the government had engaged in a massive military build up ready to invade Iraq, and was desperately looking for evidence on WMD to trigger the invasion - an invasion on which the Washington neo-cons had pinned their entire hopes for the future of the Bush presidency.

Just at that crucial time, one of the UK's foremost experts on Iraqi WMD had let slip to the BBC that the government's claims did not stand up. As a result, he was found dead in a wood, while the BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan, who correctly reported that there were no WMD, was fired for telling the truth.

The punishment of the BBC for failing to unquestioningly echo Blair lies went much further. The Chairman and Director General were forced out. All because the BBC said there may have been no WMD, when there were not. It is almost incredible even now to state what New Labour have done. God know what future historians will make of it.

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Len Hart

St. Thomas More would have called the Military-Industrial complex and their shills on K-street a "conspiracy of rich men to procure their commodities in the name and title of the commonwealth!"

As events this week have proven, SCOTUS is too highly venerated. Their latest outrage is the decree that 'corporations are people' and may spend as much money as they like in order to get their stooges into public office.

It is the worst decision since Bush v Gore which was, at the time, compared to Dred-Scott, a decision which in 1857, seven out of nine Supreme Court Justices declared that no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen, the court stated, Dred Scott had no rights whatsoever and could not sue in a Federal Court! The court ruled that he must remain a slave.

The court was wrong then. It was wrong again with Bush v Gore! The court is wrong now, dead wrong! Corporations are not people and should, by right, have no rights whatsoever and should, by right, exist as long as the people may find them useful or tolerable.

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Len Hart

In the worst decision since Bush v Gore, the US Supreme Court has worked a 'miracle'. Five 'justices' --John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antony Kennedy --have conspired to turn mere words on paper into living, breathing 'human beings' and have decreed that these corporations, mere 'legal abstractions', have the same rights of free speech as do living breathing human beings. Who is the 'conspiracy theorist', who is nuttiest when five ideologues in robes can dictate to you that you treat mere 'abstractions' --pieces of paper --as if they were people?

The crooks on K-street may resume their on-going auction of the United States knowing that their nefarious bargains have been blessed by the 'high court', a cult of weird robed people who believe weird things! 'Corporations' --mere abstractions --are given license to sell out the nation and call it 'free speech'!

Should you dare to use the term 'conspiracy' to describe the activities of these crooks on K-street --the lobbies for Israel and other foreign entities --you will be labeled a 'conspiracy theorist'! But SCOTUS, meanwhile, gets away with calling words on paper a 'person' and giving them rights! I ask you: who is nuttier? You for believing what volumes of federal laws have called 'conspiracies'? Or --the SUPREME court who believes an embossed piece of paper with a corporate seal from Delaware on it is a real, living breathing person? I will tell you what I think! I think that five members of the Supreme Court of the United States are nuttier than fruit cakes!

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Andy Worthington

With a stunning lack of sensitivity, President Barack Obama's Guantánamo Review Task Force chose the anniversary of the president's failed promise to close the prison to announce its conclusions regarding the eventual fate of 196 prisoners.

As the Washington Post explained, the Task Force said, with no trace of irony, that "nearly 50" of the men still imprisoned at Guantanamo "should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war."

The administration's invocation of the laws of war actually refers to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which authorized the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001" (or those who harbored them), as interpreted by the Supreme Court in June 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, in which it was asserted that "Congress has clearly and unmistakably authorized detention" of individuals covered by the AUMF.

This may technically be legal in the United States, but it is at odds with everyone else's understanding of the laws of war. As every other civilized country understands them, the laws of war involve holding combatants for the duration of hostilities according to the Geneva Conventions, which, under Common Article 3, prohibits the "humiliating and degrading treatment" and coercive interrogations to which the men in Guantánamo were subjected, after President Bush declared in February 2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Moreover, these men were never screened to ascertain whether they were actually combatants in the first place.

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