Paradise Wrecked

Boracay Island in The Philippines is considered to be one of the last ‘undiscovered’ paradises of the world.

So small it hardly makes a little blue speck on this map. If it wasn’t labelled, you wouldn’t even know it was there.

Idyllic blue waters, powdery white sand and 350+ beach resorts all on a small island two kilometres off  the northern tip of Panay.

It is administered by the Philippines Tourist Authority and touted as the most relaxing place on Earth. Winner of Travel+Leisure Magazine’s best island in the world award in 2012 it has become reknown for it’s tranquility and nightlife (I find that to be an oxymoron).

The following photos indeed make this look like paradise.

Food, sun and sea, happy kids mix with the tourists all appears so perfect.

Major resorts…

Boracay offers a wide range of restaurants, bars, pubs, nightclubs and an 18-hole golf course.

Tourism began about 1970. The island has had colonists and plantations since 1900.

But what was Boracay before?

Boracay was the home of the Ati, an indigenous people, whose ancestors arrived probably from Borneo to escape persecution in the 12th century

Now they face the threat of encroachments on their land by the powerful resorts and discrimination.

Yes, there is an ugly side to this ‘paradise‘, you can read about it better than I can write on The Pinoy Explorer.

The Ati don’t live in resorts

They live in a near squalid reserve that comprises 2% of this small 1,000 hectare island, and the fangs of the resorts are ready to swallow that miserable area as well.

Another paradise wrecked so the rich west can ‘relax’.

Frack Off!

Fukushima: The Monster Under Our Bed

by Chautauqua

“I sit back, thinking maybe if I distance myself enough perhaps the bigger picture will reveal itself to me; but alas, even that does not help me understand the seemingly planet wide denial regarding Fukushima. Here we are approaching the two year anniversary of that continuously erupting nuclear volcano in Japan; and not only has no progress been made, but it’s looking like no attempt at progress has been made. In point of fact, Tepco and the Japanese government have done many things which just make the disaster even worse. It absolutely defies logic that the evacuation zones were rescinded, back to three miles from the laughably inadequate twelve miles, but they were! I could scarcely believe it several months ago when Rense.com correspondent Yoichi Shimatsu reported that the Japanese government was collecting tsunami debris and burning it at many incineration sites across Japan. By burning already contaminated material you are essentially causing a re-release of fallout back into the environment, compounding the damage, both short & long term. It sounds like self-inflicted genocide to keep the population in place and encourage them to eat contaminated food and ignore the fallout, but that is exactly what is happening. Despite official denial, they say that Tokyo is now as badly contaminated in places as the town of Fukushima.

 

For nearly two years now Tepco has been dumping highly radioactive waste water directly into the Pacific ocean, in flagrant violation of international & environmental laws. This of course does not include the plume of radiation which continues to be emitted from the site of three core meltdowns even as its tendrils of death continue encircling the Earth. Meanwhile in the mainstream media there is scant mention of the worst environmental disaster Earth has seen since the Permian extinction. Nary a word about the ever growing cloud of cancerous death enveloping the planet or the fact we have allowed the Japanese government & Tepco to effectively kill the Pacific ocean without so much as a wrist slap or fine…and we’re fine with that it seems. What scant reference there is in the mainstream media about Fukushima is engineered drivel to encourage folks to think the problem has just magically gone away. It hasn’t.

Source: Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly Read more

A Darker Side to Israel

Israel’s Ethiopians suffer different ‘planned’ parenthood

The revelation that Israel is sterilizing Ethiopian women adds to a shameful history of abuse of powerless women and communities.

(File photo) A televised investigation found that more than 40 women have received injections of the Depo-Provera contraceptive. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

It’s hard to believe, but in Israel, in 2012, Ethiopian women are forced to receive injections of the Depo-Provera contraceptive. This injection is not a commonly prescribed means of contraception. It is considered a last resort and is usually given to women who are institutionalized or developmentally disabled. Yet according to an investigation recently aired on the “Vacuum” documentary series hosted by Gal Gabay and shown on Israeli Educational Television, it is also given to many new immigrants from Ethiopia.

This is not the first or only case where the state has interfered in the lives of people who have limited means of resistance. And as in other cases, the system that carried out this policy is extremely sophisticated, so it is hard to find a specific person who is responsible or a signed and written order. But the televised investigation, conducted with researcher Sava Reuven, found that more than 40 women have received the shot….

…The injections given to Ethiopian women are part and parcel of the overall Israeli attitude toward this group of immigrants. During the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews spent months or years in transit camps in Ethiopia and Sudan. Hundreds died en route to Israel simply because a country that is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews decided the time wasn’t right, they couldn’t all be absorbed together or they weren’t Jewish enough – who had heard of black Jews?

In transit camps today, future immigrants enter a horrifying bureaucratic entanglement, which gives them the burden of proving they are worthy of arriving in Israel. As in the past, those who arrive here are not quickly released from the grasp of state institutions. They continue to receive “treatment” in absorption centers, where the children are sent to religious boarding schools and included in special education frameworks, while the parents stay in ghettos and the women continue to receive injections. We are told there is no choice. The repressive, racist and paternalistic policies continue unhindered – policies that are supposedly in the best interests of the immigrants, who don’t know what is best for them.

This policy of total control over their lives, which starts while they are still in Ethiopia, is unique to immigrants from that country and does not allow them to adjust to Israel. Using the excuse that they need to be prepared for a modern country, they are brainwashed and made to remain dependent on the state absorption institutions.

Source: Haaretz Read more

Opinion:

To me this smacks of an attempt to breed black Jews out of an embarrassing existence.

Just another criminal act by Israel…

We should be used to it by now.

Frackin’ Gas

The English government has made its biggest mistake ever!

Politicians are stupid!

Gas fracking: Ministers approve shale gas extraction

The government has given the go-ahead for a firm to resume the controversial technique known as fracking to exploit gas in Lancashire.

The company, Cuadrilla, was stopped from fracking after two tremors near Blackpool.

Conditions have been imposed to minimise the risk of seismic activity.

In fracking, a mixture of water, sand and some chemicals is pumped into a well under high pressure to force the gas from the rock.

The Energy Secretary Ed Davey said shale gas was a promising new potential energy resource for the UK. It might contribute significantly to energy security and substitute for imports which are increasing as North Sea gas is decreasing.

But he warned against over-excitement: “We are still in the very early stages of shale gas exploration in the UK and it is likely to develop slowly.

“It is essential that its development should not come at the expense of local communities or the environment. Fracking must be safe and the public must be confident that it is safe.”

Read more

Opinion:

image: Decombustion

England is NOT America where you have wide open spaces.

1. The introduction of fracking will destroy the traditional quiet balmy rural English countryside.

The countryside will be scarred like this and worse.

2. The jury is still out as to whether fracking produces earthquakes. The earthquakes near Blackpool should be a warning, but once again, no one is listening.

3. Fracking IS proven to contaminate and pollute. The American experience of kitchen taps producing flammable water should be enough to stop this insidious practice, but again, nobody is listening.

I read this on another site:

“The process is safe and controlled

If all goes well,”

“If all goes well???” Well it won’t.

Fracking is hit and miss technology. Not enough is known about it, except that it is known to cause problems.

Even the  CEO of Cuadrilla Resources, the company operating near Blackpool where recent earthquakes have been attributed to their fracking operations, has admitted that “You never have control. Fractures will always go into the path of least resistance.”

Read that again, “you NEVER have control!”

The only thing that is known for a fact is that the companies get rich, and once again the people suffer!

These are NOT soldiers, they are Israeli thugs

A video showing an Israeli police officer kicking a nine-year-old Palestinian boy has prompted an official investigation.

The footage, released by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, shows the child, Abd a-Rahman Burqan, on the ground as he is held by a border police officer. Another police officer then kicks the boy. The first policeman releases him and he runs away.

The incident took place last week in Hebron, a volatile West Bank city where several hundred hardline Jewish settlers live protected by Israeli troops, B’Tselem said.

The cameraman, Raed Abu Rimle, told the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth: “I heard yelling and I saw a soldier kick a boy in the stomach. After the policemen left him, I approached the kid. He was so scared that he’d pissed his pants.”

Source: The Guardian Read more

Opinion:

These bastards are a disgrace to any uniform!

 

This is Child Abuse

Child’s anti-gay church song goes viral

The congregation in the church, which has been identified as the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana, gives a standing ovation after the child sings, “The Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong. The Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong. Romans one, twenty six and twenty seven; Ain’t no homos gonna make it to Heaven.”

A man who appears to be the Church’s pastor Jeff Sangl, can be see standing behind the child smiling as he listens to the performance while a person in the congregation can be heard calling “that’s my boy”.

Many comments across the internet have claimed the child has obviously been coached what to sing.

Source: stuff.co.nz

Opinion:

This church and the child’s parents should be charged with perverting a minor.

This is how arsehole bigots are made!

Hungry children – England, not Africa

When one hears of hungry children, one immediately thinks of Africa, places like Somalia and Ethiopia, or the Sudan. But one never equates the phrase ‘hungry children’ with England.

The problem of hungry children

Teachers are trained to deal with various special needs, but the fundamental issue of hunger in UK classrooms is rarely discussed
• Call for teachers to complete a Guardian survey to probe into whether austerity is having a direct impact on pupil hunger

All teachers have seen the effects of not having breakfast on their pupils. How much of a problem is pupil hunger on a long term basis in your classroom? Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

As teachers we have probably all had hungry children in our class. There wasn’t time for breakfast, they overslept, their sister/brother/dog/hamster had eaten all the Coco-Pops. You have heard the excuses and know the knock-on effects.

Few can say they witnessed a child actually foraging for pencil sharpenings to eat because they were so hungry. But I did.

Callum had come in early that cold winter morning and was helping his teacher with a few jobs before class – one of which was sharpening the pencils. I’d popped up from my year four classroom to borrow something or other and walked in to see him guiltily shoving a handful of wooden pencil shavings into his mouth.

Source: The Guardian Read more

Opinion:

When a kid has to eat pencil sharpenings to keep hunger at bey there is something seriously wrong with the system.

The politicians have just got the plot so totally wrong.

Austerity, while it looks good on paper, it doesn’t put food on the table.

I am not talking about government handouts, that’s just as evil. I’m talking about people having jobs, people having dignity, people having the ability to feed their kids.

But the politicians are too busy worrying about their own necks, too busy worrying about the banks, too busy worrying about the rich getting richer. They have ignored the plight of the people who have been robbed by the institutions so that they can be rich.

The plot needs to be rewritten. Priorities need to be changed.

Britain enters the age of the despicable

London 2012: Missiles may be placed at residential flats

Resident Brian Wheelan: "It creates a lot of fear. It's a massive inconvenience"

The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics.

An east London estate, where 700 people live, has received leaflets saying a “Higher Velocity Missile system” could be placed on a water tower.

A spokesman said the MoD had not yet decided whether to deploy ground based air defence systems during the event.

But estate resident Brian Whelan said firing the missiles “would shower debris across the east end of London”.

The journalist said: “At first I thought it was a hoax. I can’t see what purpose high-velocity missiles could serve over a crowded area like Tower Hamlets.

“They say they’ll only use them as a last resort, but… you’d shower debris across the east end of London by firing these missiles.”

Test run

Mr Whelan, who claims to have seen soldiers carrying a crate into the building, said his property management company put up posters and gave out the leaflets on Saturday.

He continued: “They are going to have a test run next week, putting high velocity missiles on the roof just above our apartment and on the back of it they’re stationing police and military in the tower of the building for two months.

“It [the leaflet] says there will be 10 officers plus police present 24/7.”

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Britain was among the first to decry Gadaffi using civilians as shields, they decry the Syrian use of civilians for the same; and now they are doing the same thing to Britons.

This idea is insane.

What happens to the residents if there is a malfunction?

“Oh dear, collateral damage, never mind, they were expendable in the interests of national security.”

These security measures by the British and Americans (TSA, NDDA, CISPA, etc) are totally over the limits.

The first world is entering the age of the dictators.

 

Soldiers Slitting the throats of 12 year olds

Talk, talk, talk, talk. Blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile Bashar al-Bastard gets away with murder.

The time for talk is over!

The world now has Syrian blood on its hands, poured on by China and Russia when they effectively castrated the UN.

al_Bastard has made the world look like fools.

Syrians fleeing Homs accuse troops of atrocities

"My son's throat was cut. He was 12", one woman told Paul Wood

People fleeing the central Syrian city of Homs have told the BBC that security forces are committing atrocities there.

One woman told the BBC’s Paul Wood on the outskirts of Homs that soldiers had slit the throat of her 12-year-old son on Friday – a day after rebel fighters withdrew from the Baba Amr district.

She said 35 other men and boys from her area had also been detained and killed.

The government has denied the Red Cross access to Baba Amr for four consecutive days, citing security concerns.

Activists have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Electricity, water and communications have been cut off, and in recent days temperatures have plummeted and snow has fallen. Food supplies are said to be dangerously low, and many people are too scared to leave.

‘Screams’

On Thursday, government troops backed by tanks entered Baba Amr after the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) announced a “tactical withdrawal”.

While the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its Syrian Red Crescent partners have been waiting to enter the district, state television said it had been “sanitised” of “armed terrorist groups”.

But opposition and human rights activists said security forces and pro-government militia had been rounding up men and boys over the age of 14 who had remained Baba Amr, and had tortured and killed them.

The claims could not be substantiated, but people fleeing Homs also told our correspondent that security forces had been committing atrocities, including summary executions and cutting the throats of prisoners.

One woman, who had walked for three days to escape, said that on Friday troops had taken 36 men and boys from one area and killed them.

“My son’s throat was cut,” she said. “He was 12.”

Her husband said he was hiding about 50m away and saw one soldier hold down their son’s head with his boot while another killed him.

“I could hear their screams,” he added.

Several men who said they had defected from an elite army unit last week told our correspondent that civilians were being targeted deliberately by security forces and their prisoners were being killed.

“A lieutenant gave us the order,” he said. “We were told in this operation: ‘You shoot anything that moves – civilian or military – you shoot at it.’

“An old man was arrested. An officer put a gun to his head. He said: ‘This is for freedom,’ and he shot him.”

Source: BBC News

Opinion:

A woman does not make up a painful story about her son. The reports maybe unverified, but I’d believe them before I believed al-Bastard.

Talk: Futile

Prayers: Futile

Sanctions: Futile

All the above simply empower al-Bastard, giving him more time to commit more atrocities.