---

GAIA AND HOMOSAPIENS

NEW ***** "Where We Are Today" - The Richard Dimbleby Lecture by HRH Prince Charles, titled “Facing the Future”
St James’s Palace State Apartments, London, 7th July 2009 - An Exceptional In-Depth Holistic Call to Wake Up and Act Before It Is Too Late
- Video

---

Note:The symbol ^ denotes that that article continues at the link.

Imaging Life

US-Mexican Border | Trying to get ahead in the slow lane
In the organized chaos of the San Ysidro border crossing, Deciderio Mauricio Cantera is a specialist. He is el churrero, the churro seller. But in changing times, even the best hawkers are struggling.
Los Angeles Times - By Richard Marosi - November 19, 2009
- LINK ^

He walks through shimmering exhaust clouds, hawking sombreros teetering atop his head and sweets held aloft in a blue basket. His churros are warm and moist. "Churros here," he yells. "If they're not hot, you don't pay." Deciderio Mauricio Cantera first waded into the sea of traffic at the gateway to California in 1968 and set eyes on the bored and the hungry as they waited, fidgeted and honked, inching toward the San Ysidro Port of Entry. This isn't a traffic jam, thought Mauricio. This is a swap meet on wheels.

Over the years, Mauricio has peddled Popsicles and pumpkin piñatas, checkered blankets and flowery ceramic vases, Tweety dolls and Little Mermaids. In the 1960s, plaster busts of John F. Kennedy were big sellers; in the 1990s, Michael Jordan piggy banks. To American border crossers, the ragtag knots of vendors have long evoked wonder, pity and annoyance -- symbols of disorder and desperation at the shabby entrance to the developing world.

Mauricio and the others are actually regulated by a vendors union formed decades ago to impose order, and to guarantee the safety and cleanliness of the food sold. He wears the vendors' light brown uniform, faded, but clean. He is one of 500 vendors assigned to different areas along the network of roads, overpasses and bridges leading to the border. Few ever stray out of their assigned territory. Mauricio can sell only along the 300-meter stretch from the international boundary to the Libertad Bridge. His union badge displays his name, picture and product. "Churros," it reads. "It's a dignified job. We all earn an honest living here," Mauricio said in Spanish.

Walking the lanes from 8 a.m. to midnight six days a week in earlier years, Mauricio stuffed his pockets with crumpled dollars and pesos. He bought a hillside lot and built a one-bedroom cottage. Later, he built a larger house. He sent three of his four daughters to college and trade schools in Tijuana. In his spare time, he ran through the pitted hills and finished several marathons, including the one in Los Angeles. These days, the region's weak economy and crime and the heightened security at the border have eroded sales. As a result, Mauricio works fewer hours each day but he is not discouraged. He knows that patience pays off.

The Afghanistani Quagmire

Afghans Losing Faith in Politics | With Video
Al Jazeera - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

Complete here
On the eve of the inauguration of Hamid Karzai for a second term as Afghanistan's president, the country's failed election has only served to solidify opposition and sharpen the focus on corruption. Karzai’s main rivals assert that the election was fraudulent, while the people have not had a government that works for them for decades. Amid calls from the international community that Afghanistan must undertake dramatic political reform, James Bays reports from Kabul on the widespread loss of faith in the country's political processes.

Hamid Karzai: foreign troops out of Afghanistan in five years | With Video
Times Online - November 19, 2009
- LINK ^

President Hamid Karzai today signalled the beginning of the end of foreign military intervention in his country, when he pledged that Afghan security forces would take the lead in combating the Taleban over the next three to five years. In a much-anticipated inauguration speech, the Afghan leader told dozens of visiting foreign dignitaries what they wanted to hear. In particular he pledged to crack down on rampant corruption in his Government, to press for a reconciliation with the Taleban by holding a loya jirga (grand assembly) and for the Afghan army and police to take responsibility for the country’s security.

US army veterans feel mental strain | With Video
Al Jazeera - By Rosiland Jordan - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

Complete here
The Unites States is the largest contributor of troops to the war in Afghanistan with 70,000 deployed there. After eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Us veterans are dealing with years psychological trauma - the effects of which can literally be deadly.

---

Carrumpah-Lobo - The Homosapiens.ki Blog
- GO

---

International

UN / FAO | Hunger Summit Passes Toothless\Declaration
Terraviva / Europe - By Paul Virgo - November 17, 2007
- LINK ^

ROME (IPS) - Fears that the United Nations World Food Security Summit would fail to deliver effective measures to defeat hunger were borne out Monday when world leaders and government officials approved a toothless declaration on the first day.

Canada complicit in torture of innocent Afghans, diplomat says
Richard Colvin's testimony to MPs the first ever to declare that a country's military gave up detainees to face certain torture.
Globe and Mail
- LINK ^

Canada | Diplomats told to keep quiet on torture allegations, sources say
Explosive human-rights controversy seen as ‘detracting from the narrative' Harper government wanted to promote, according to anonymous official.
Globe and Mail - By Murray Brewster - November 17, 2009
- LINK ^

Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources. The instruction — issued soon after allegations of torture by Afghan authorities began appearing in public — was aimed at defusing the explosive human-rights controversy, said sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. There was a fear that graphic reports, even in censored form, could be uncovered by opposition parties and the media through access-to-information laws, leading to revelations that would further erode already-tenuous public support.

Explosive testimony on Afghan detainees
Globe and Mail - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^
Senior diplomat Richard Colvin testified at a House of Commons committee Wednesday that he warned government and military officials that Afghan detainees being turned over by Canadian soldiers were being tortured. The following is an extract from his opening statement.

Why should Canadians care? One may ask rhetorically, ‘Even if Afghan detainees were being tortured, why should Canadians care?' There are five compelling reasons.

Gazans brace for cold and miserable winter
Terraviva / Europe - By Mel Frykberg - November 17, 2009
- LINK ^

EZBT ABBED RABBO (IPS) - Tens of thousands of Gazans living in tents and damaged homes face a wet, cold and miserable winter as Israel’s blockade of the coastal territory continues to prevent the importation of building and reconstruction material.

Israeli settlement plan denounced
The US and UN have criticised Israel's approval of 900 extra housing units at a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.
- LINK ^

US | Senate postpones climate bill
The Australian - By Brad Norington, Washington correspondent - November 19, 2009
- LINK ^

BARACK Obama will attend climate-change talks in Copenhagen next month with no domestic US laws in place to back his position, after Senate leaders confirmed yesterday that debate on legislation would be delayed until next year.

United States

The Shame of Our Politicians | The Decent people who feel forgotten
Editor - No, not forgotten. Worse. Ignored.
Al Jazeera - By John Terrett - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

Reports on the aftermath of September 11, 2001 seldom focus on the group of people I spent Wednesday morning with. They're the first responders - about 300 fire fighters, police, ambulance crews and volunteers of every description who helped on the day the towers came down in Lower Manhattan and then stayed in the ruins for months. They're angry. It's taken eight years for Congress to get round to discussing legislation to provide federal help for emergency workers who fell ill after 9/11. Many are slowly dying from illnesses their doctors say were contracted at Ground Zero.

THE NAKED HEGEMON | Part 1: Why the emperor has no clothes
Asia Times - By Andre Gunder Frank - January 6, 2005
- LINK ^

Uncle Sam has reneged and defaulted on up to 40% of its trillion-dollar foreign debt, and nobody has said a word except for a line in The Economist. In plain English that means Uncle Sam runs a worldwide confidence racket with his self-made dollar based on the confidence that he has elicited and received from others around the world, and he is a also a deadbeat in that he does not honor and return the money he has received.

How much of our dollar stake we have lost depends on how much we originally paid for it. Uncle Sam let his dollar fall, or rather through his deliberate political economic policies drove it down, by 40%, from 80 cents to the euro to 133 cents. The dollar is down by a similar factor against the yen, yuan and other currencies. And it is still declining, indeed is apt to plummet altogether.

United States Government

Opinion | Republic of Fools
Granville Post - By Paul Craig Roberts - November 12, 2009
- LINK ^

The US government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.

Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change, but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military/security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs. It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700+ billion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.

Congress | Senate Democrats introduce $849 billion healthcare reform bill
Majority leader Harry Reid unveiled the Senate's healthcare reform bill Wednesday. Now Reid must cobble together 60 senators to avoid a Republican filibuster.
Christian Science Monitor - By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

The Citizens / Civil Organizations / Activism

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

US | Poll - Wealthy should pay for health care overhaul
Data could boost House plan to tax top-tier earners
Boston Globe / AP - By Erica Werner and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

WASHINGTON - Americans don’t want to shoulder the cost of President Obama’s health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it. That’s the finding from a new Associated Press poll, and it could be a boost for House Democrats, whose plan approved this month proposed taxing upper-income people to fund their sweeping remake of the medical system.

Topical Sections

Art and Culture

Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin" | Music Video
- LINK ^

Iraq | The Poet of Baghdad
Filmmaker Georgie Weedon tells Yasin's story in his film, The Poet of Baghdad.
Al Jazeera - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

In 1979, Nabeel Yasin fled his homeland with his wife Nada and three-year-old son because he had published poetry that did not conform to the views of Saddam Hussein and his regime, including the work The Poet Satirizes the King. Branded an 'enemy of the state', Yasin faced imprisonment and likely death if he remained in Iraq. He continued to write and publish poetry from exile in the UK, his works smuggled back into Iraq where they became a popular symbol of resistance.

Now the Iraqi poet is running for the position of prime minister in the upcoming Iraqi elections.

Climate Change

Birth control role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions
The Australian - By Ben Webster - November 19, 2009
- LINK ^

INVESTING in birth control to reduce population growth could be more effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions than building wind turbines or nuclear power stations, according to a United Nations report. Taking action to prevent one billion births by 2050 would save as much carbon dioxide as constructing two million giant wind turbines.

The UN Population Fund report predicted that the global population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, up from 6.8 billion today, unless urgent action was taken to reduce fertility rates. It said that even its medium-growth forecast of 2.3 billion more people by 2050, which assumes a fall in average fertility from 2.56 to 2.02 children per woman, would make it much harder to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.

.Corporate Crime and Government - The Linkage

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
--- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-Nov-21, in a letter to Colonel E. Mandell House

Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
- LINK ^

Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
- LINK ^

US | Opinion - The Fed is foolishly weakening the dollar
Devaluing the dollar is spoiling global economic recovery. The Fed and President Obama must reject easy money and ever-larger deficits.
Christian Science Monitor - By Peter Navarro - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

Irvine, Calif. - Has America's Federal Reserve become the single greatest obstacle to global economic recovery? Central bankers around the world are increasingly asking this question as the American greenback continues its Fed-inspired decline and damages the export-driven growth of countries from Latin America and Asia to Europe.

Historically, the Fed has responded to economic downturns by cutting interest rates to stimulate domestic business investment and consumer purchases of "big-ticket" items, like automobiles and housing, that are sensitive to the cost of loans. However, in the current crisis, this traditional formula is simply not working. It's not working in part because the Fed's "solution" has been a concentrated dose of the problem. After years of promoting the easy money and loose credit that fueled asset bubbles, it has responded with even easier money and even looser credit. It's like fighting fire with gasoline.

Global warming and Climate Change

Earth 'heading for 6C' of warming
BBC News - By Richard Black. Environment Correspondent - November 17, 2009
- LINK ^

Average temperatures across the world are on course to rise by up to 6C without urgent action to curb CO2 emissions, according a new analysis. Emissions rose by 29% between 2000 and 2008, says the Global Carbon Project. All of that growth came in developing countries, but a quarter of it came through production of goods for consumption in industrialised nations.

Legal and Constitutional Issues

Bloomberg Index of Current Legal News
- LINK ^

Life Style

UK | How to make a Christmas pudding | With Video
The festive countdown begins with Stir-Up Sunday this weekend, the traditional day to bake this festive pud.
Times Omline _ November 17, 2009
- LINK ^

Christmas puddings are traditionally prepared on the Sunday before Advent, which, this year, is the 22 November. The pudding is made in advance in order to allow the flavours of the fruit, sugar and alcohol to fully develop. The name, Stir-Up Sunday, is taken from the Collect for the Sunday before Advent in the Book of Common Prayer: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”. The custom is for the whole family to take a turn to stir the pudding mixture, make a wish and add coins or charms - though being extremely careful not to swallow them when you do eventually eat the pudding - along with dried figs, stem ginger and brandy.

Political Systems

US | Capitalism's Self-Inflicted Apocalypse
Granville Post -B y Michael Parenti - January 23, 2009
- LINK ^

After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.
The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.

Plutocracy vs. Democracy Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.

Rights and Freedom

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians."
--- Angelica Grimke - (1805-1879) Source: Anti-Slavery Examiner, September 1836

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."
--- Thomas Jefferson - (1743-1826), Source: in a letter to John Adams as quoted in John A. Stormer, None Dare Call it Treason (Florissant, MO: Liberty Bell Press, 1964)

Science & Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
- LINK ^

Geology | Did 2008 Wenchuan quake strike because China filled a reservoir?
Christian Scence Monitor - By Pete Spotts - November 18, 2009
- LINK ^

Scientists have seen this one before: Fill a reservoir behind a new dam, and, oops, you trigger an earthquake nearby not long after the lake is topped off. Now, a team of researchers led by the University of Colorado’s Shemin Ge suggest that this could well be what happened with the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province in May 2008.

Editor - Your editor raised the prospect of geological movements following the disastrous tsunami a couple of years ago in the Indian Ocean. Specifically, i raised the prospect that the continuous melt of glaciers into ocean bodies would bring about major adjustments in the earth's cruet not unlike what apparently occured in China.

Violence - Civil and Governmental

Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'
- LINK ^

Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report. Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of recent net-based attacks. Analysis of the motives of the actors behind many attacks carried out via the internet showed that many were mounted with a explicitly political aim.

It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks.

Sound and Fury

Photography - US | Photos from the Book, Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America
- Slide Show / Audio

Hip Hop | Maestro Fresh Wes - Drop The Needle
- Video

Bouncing barefoot on the sidewalk
- Video

A Song for the Times - Bing Crosby (1932) “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime”
- Audio

The History of A Great Depression-Era Anthem For Our Time
- Audio/Text

Yip Harburg (1970)
- Audio

The Internet Press Room

Not on the homosapiens.ki free email subscription list? Get aboard here.
- SUBSCRIBE / UNSUBSCRIBE

Music Video | Leonard Cohen | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA"
- LINK

About Homosapiens.ki

This website incorporates clips from mainstream and alternative media and, less frequently, blogs, and even obviously biased and counter-point-of-view sources. The clips are taken directly from the websites noted in each source link. Quotation marks are used where they appear in the cited source. All linked articles not noted as "Complete here" are continued at "LINK" citations.

Convert webpages on this site to PDF, print or e-mail by selecting the associated mini-icon at bottom right of each page.

Homosapiens.ki has been developed on the XOOPS website production program.

Subscribe to the email notification as each issue of this site is posted. See top, left of any page.

The editorial offices of Homosapiens.ki are located in New York City and Nelson BC Canada. Website hosting and technical services are provided from Sydney, Australia. The domain name registration ( .ki ) is a service of the Republic of Kiribati ( South Pacific ) domain registrar. Special thanks are due to all those who have assisted in bringing this site to life on the internet.

You may email the editor at
editor@homosapiens.ki

In accordancee with TITLE 17 U.S.C. Sectopm 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes, Homosapiens.ki has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this content nor is Homosapiens.ki endorsed or sponsored by the originator.

Links are provided for access to source articles and for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are sometimes updated by their host sites, a version posted here may not match the version our readers view when clicking the source link on this site.

Privacy - we will not sell, rent, or give your name, address or any other personal information to any entity or person whatsoever at any point in time.

---