This video from Ireland is called US Spy at Shannon Airport.
“US Attache Lt Col John O’Sullivan taking pictures of anti-war protestors at Shannon Airport, Co. Clare, Ireland February 2003 without authority or authorisation from the Irish Government. He refused to identify himself and walked away as soon as he noted the small camera on the journalist.”
Training troops will become ‘a regular sight’ according to a spokesperson for the British army a helicopter activity is stepped up in Rasharkin, Co Antrim. Training, including the use of helicopters, is set to become commonplace.
Nationalists from the Glens of Antrim, Loughgiel, Glenravel and Dunloy claimed that since the beginning of August British army activity in their areas has actually increased.
This video is called Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.
“Celeste Zappala, my mother, [and mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq] speaking at the National Cathedral on 3/16/07” against George W. Bush’s Iraq war.
During the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who will become head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Sept. 1, had criticized the U.S. government’s plan of preventative war and said a unilateral war against Iraq would be a “crime against peace.”
In a recent interview with the Italian magazine 30 Giorni, the cardinal said his early criticisms had been prophetic.
“The facts speak for themselves. Alienating the international community (with the U.S. push for war) was a mistake,” he said in the magazine’s Aug. 10 issue. A copy of the interview was released in advance to journalists.
He said an “unjust approach” was used to unseat Saddam from power, resulting in the mounting chaos in Iraq today. …
Cardinal Tauran is a longtime veteran of the Vatican’s diplomatic service and a specialist in international affairs. He was Pope John Paul II’s “foreign minister,” the official who dealt with all aspects of the Vatican’s foreign policy from 1990 to 2003.
This video from the USA shows the testimony of Rory Mayberry before a US congressional committee on July 26 on Filipino slave labour in the construction of the US embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
SCARY was the testimony of Rory Mayberry before a US congressional committee on July 26. He told the story about how, in this age, foreign workers could be tricked by a contractor for the US government to work on a project they knew nothing about, for which they were not prepared and, when they were on the project, worked under bad conditions.
Mayberry, an emergency medical technician contracted to First Kuwaiti International—the construction company building the US Embassy inside the Green Zone in Baghdad—testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he was ordered to shepherd 51 Filipinos. First Kuwaiti has denied the claim.
When the Filipinos protested on the plane upon learning they were being brought to the wrong place, a security officer threatened them by waving an MP-5 machine gun.
Eventually, the Filipinos were “smuggled into the Green Zone,” past US security forces.
Mayberry testified that the Filipinos, among other laborers forced to work on the embassy site, worked without safety equipment. Many were injured at work.
The word “Shanghaied” refers to a history of workers tricked to where they did not want to go by lies; especially for US American merchant ships.
In Zoo Labyrinth Boekelo, this week about six rare dabchick chicks have hatched. …
To the workers of Zoo Labyrinth Boekelo, the birth of the dabchicks was a surprise. They had seen adult dabchicks coming, but they had not noted the nests.
This is a video about Fijian labour history. It says about itself:
Definition of blackbirding:
Blackbirding refers to the recruitment of [eg, Fijian] people through alleged trickery and kidnappings to work on plantations, particularly the sugar cane plantations of Queensland [in Australia].
Fiji: Public sector workers strike against junta’s austerity measures
In defiance of threats by the Fijian military regime, more than 10,000 government workers began an indefinite strike on August 2. The strikers are members of the Public Employees Union (PEU), Fijian Teachers Association (FTA) and the Viti National Union of Taukei Workers (NUTW)—all affiliates of the Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions (FICTU).
The strikers joined more than 1,600 nurses who walked out on July 25 over the same issues—the government’s budget decision to cut the pay of public sector workers by 5 percent and axe jobs by lowering the retirement age from 60 to 55. In the small Pacific island state of just less than a million people, the strikers represent a significant section of the organised workforce.
The British High Commission in Wellington says that the recruitment of Fijians into the British army is completely separate from its diplomatic stance over the December coup.
It was earlier reported that Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, and the Commonwealth Secretary General, Don McKinnon, had been lobbying against the recruitment all year.
But the British government has decided it can continue.
Pressure is mounting within the Australian foreign policy establishment for Canberra to normalise relations with the Fijian military junta: here.
Fiji’s military government has dramatically stepped up its harassment of trade unionists by issuing a decree which will “effectively abolish all trade unions in Fiji,” the Fijian TUC warned at the weekend: here.
The Utah mine disaster: A tragic consequence of government-industry collusion
The Utah mine disaster, which has left six miners trapped 1,500 feet below ground, is but the latest tragic result of the collusion between the US government and the American mining industry. The health and safety of miners are wantonly sacrificed to boost the profits of the coal companies.
Forty six miners were killed in job-related accidents last year and ten have died so far this year.
The Utah miners were trapped below ground at the Crandall Canyon Mine when the mine collapsed some 3.4 miles from the portal in the early morning hours of August 6. The US Geological Survey reported that an earthquake of 3.9 magnitude rocked the region shortly before 3 a.m. Monday, local time. However, scientists at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations said they believed the recorded movement in the area was not a quake, but rather was “consistent with a mine-type collapse.” Since the mid-1990s, at least half a dozen other mine collapses have caused similar seismic waves.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 