THREE SIMULTANEOUS ACROBATIC SUICIDES at GUANTANAMO

May 23, 2014, Global Day Of Action To Close Guantanamo. Now.  And For Good.

THE YEAR 2009 was the year ICE first discovered that someone by the name of Tanveer Ahmad—a Pakistani taxi driver as it turned out—had disappeared somewhere in the U.S. immigrant detention dungeons (see http://labloga.blogspot.com/2010/05/jean-blum-finger-in-goliaths-eye-part.html). But 2006 was the year three perfectly good, healthy people managed to disappear in the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo Bay. Their names need to be remembered: Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, Salah Ahmed al-Salami, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi.

PRESIDENT OBAMA TALKS ABOUT GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICES IN RANA PLAZA, BANGLADESH

With a nod to the Bangladeshi garment industry, President Obama parlayed his surprise visit to the Bangladeshi Protectorate by giving a surprise address today at Rana Plaza, the site where 1,129 workers were singed at their Singers including their children in the building’s nursery facilities when the Savar building collapsed in 2013.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Bullet holes through skulls, heads incinerated, but body and clothes untouched by fire. A pregnant woman strangled with an electrical chord and left slumped backwards over her desk in a room untouched by fire or even smoke damage. We are looking at atrocities here.  But these are NOT the result of fire. What hard evidence seems to indicate is that the “fire” was set to cover the massacre of 40 people inside the Odessa Trade Union House. That it has the stamp of a deliberate act of provocation, and that its execution was intended to incite Russia into engaging in outright hostilities.

HOW TO MAKE A KILLING: BIG PHARMA'S POISON PILLS

Big Pharma is learning from the BIG BOYS: to make a killing, sell to both sides.  Dyncorp. Ratheon. General Dynamics, Boeing.  EVERYBODY needs  tanks, guns, bombers, drones, artillery. Even frackers know that. Poison wells, sell bottled water.  One stone to kill two birds. And now Big Pharma takes its cue. Here’s how it works:

“We Come as Friends” dir. Hubert Sauper, 2013 “Happiness” dir. Thomas Balmès, 2013

TWO DOCUMENTARIES: ONE THEME:

Screened as part of the 2014 San Francisco Film Festival Program, both films, each in their way, project the consequences of the neocolonialist program in Africa’s Sudan (Sauper) and Asia’s Bhutan (Balmès). And both films offer telling contrasts in terms of cinematic approach to time, to cutting and intercutting techniques, to cultural diversity, and narrative to bring their message home: neocolonialism is destroying indigenous cultures the world over in its frenzy to grab resources (Sauper) or new markets (Balmès) for its products.