An At Risk Nation in Need of Prophylactic Intervention

The News: Police in the UK have "identified" 180 school children as "potential" Islamic extremists. The Association of Chiefs of Police (ACPO) denied singling-out any particular ethno-religious group, explaining that the teacher-parent-community detection programme provided "safeguards to identify young people who are at risk of violent extremism. It also creates a way for the police, local authorities and community to work together to identify those at risk and then refer them to the relevant agency for help." (Guardian)

The Note: The Association of Chipmunk Acorn Crackers (ACAC) has identified 60 million UKers as being at risk of tyrannical totalitarianism.

©Barfo, 2009
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The News: By the time Pope Benedict XIV landed in Cameroon, the world-mudia was already reporting that he had blamed HIV/AIDs on condom use. "Pope says condoms make AIDs problem worse" hollered one news feed headline, although the Associated Press text was a tad less hysterical. According to the report: "Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse,"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

The Note: It would be astonishing in the Pope actually said that condoms increase the AIDs epidemic. According to the Vatican News Service the pope said:

"It is my belief believe that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. ... The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanisation of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with the suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to stand by those who suffer".

We are Nuts and Proud of It.

The News: A BBC news analysis claims that Israel now has a new military doctrine: "go nuts" once and your enemies will fear to strike again. "In the face of enemies who have opted for a strategy of attrition and attacking from a distance, Israel will present itself as a 'crazy country', the kind that will respond (albeit after a great deal of time) in a massive and unfettered assault, with no proportion to the amount of casualties it has endured."

The Note: Well now; I suppose that when you've gone bonkers you can always save face by claiming it to be a "policy choice". But Jews I personally know, meet in chat channels, or whose articles I read in the press have all stated that Israel has careened off the deep end. And when one sees "settlors" raving to television interviewers that God gave them the land they are stealing and that they have a "right" to deport and "drive out" the non Jewish inhabitants, it is clear that the war of attrition and acquisition is being waged not by Palestinians but by Israelis.

©Barfo, 2009

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Chavez punishes Corporate Criminals with Expropriation

The News: Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has ordered the expropriation of food producer Cargill's rice production facilities. Under Venezuelan law, certain staple foods, such as rice, must be available to ordinary citizens and are therefore subject to price controls. Cargill, a trans-national U.S. corporation which produces oil, rice, wheat, pasta, milk, margarine and coffee, sought to avoid the price controls by dedicating 90% of its rice production to exempted rice and by mislabelling the prices on controlled rice. A shortage of affordable rice was the inevitable result. Calling Cargill's action a bald-faced violation of law, Chavez ordered the summary expropriation. Chavez also warned another rice company, Alimentos Polar, to get its act in order and not to "play the clown." Polar purchases state-subsidized rice at low prices which it then falsely repackages as "special" rice, exempt from price controls, and sells at four to five times cost. Chavez warned that the Government would not tolerate such chicanery.

The Note: The "trouble" with Hugo Chavez, the New York Times intones [here ] is that his government's "investments" in public welfare aren't subject to "transparent" accounting. Tsk. Tsk. A true hand-wringer that -- which is why the Times has diligently informed the U.S. public on the plundering-tactics of U.S. companies abroad. As previously reported, [here] Cargill, Arthur Daniel Midland, Tyson, Conagra, Birdseye and other U.S. transnationals have taken advantage of "free trade" to undercut local producers and once these have been destroyed to stick it to the further impoverished locals. This social criminality delights NAFTA shills, like Eduardo Porter, the New York Time's resident tio taco liberal, who "packages" the destruction of Mexico's peasantry as a "win-win" situation. False packaging seems to be a Yankee predilection. Meanwhile, in the land of hucksters and cheats itself, the New York Times reports that executives of Countrywide, the mortgage company that triggered our happy-world sub-prime crises are back in business buying up foreclosed properties for pennies on the dollar with government assistance. Another "win and win" stituation, no doubt.

©Barfo, 2009
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