Title :
link :
http://ift.tt/2t3211e
.BLOGSPOT.COM
Monday, Jan. 15, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
From a friend…
At least two Marian titles derive from the beautiful gesture of prayer. These are Rāki’ah, which means “She who bows down to God in worship”, and Sājidah, “She who prostrates to Allaah (God Almighty) in worship.” The Quran states: “O Mary, you shall submit to your Lord, and prostrate and bow down with those who bow down.”(8) According to some Islamic scholars, Ruku’ (bowing down) in Salaah (Muslim prayer) during prayer has been derived from Mary’s practice. In this motion, the hands, knees and the forehead of the worshipper touch the ground together. This is the humblest position one can be in before his Lord, the sincerest sign of humility and surrender to the Creator.Isn’t that amazing? The very posture of prayer and supplication, which so defines our conception of Muslims, is actually derived from the Virgin Mary!
Abortion Is ‘Fundamental Injustice in American Society’ Says L.A. Archbishop
AP/Esteban Felix
In the lead-up to the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez has held up abortion as the number one social justice issue in America today.
Despite constant media attention on issues such as immigration, global warming and economic disparity, the fact remains that abortion outweighs them all as the greatest moral evil of our age, or “the fundamental injustice in American society,” in the words of Archbishop Gomez.
“If a child has no right to develop in the womb and be brought into this world — then there is no foundation for any human rights in society,” the Archbishop announced in a tweet Friday.
There is no question that #abortion is the fundamental injustice in American society. If a child has no right to develop in the womb and be brought into this world — then there is no foundation for any human rights in society. #OneLifeLA #MadeForGreater
The Archbishop’s words echoed those of Saint John Paul II, who wrote back in 1995 that “governments must ensure that all members of society enjoy respect for certain fundamental rights which innately belong to the person” and that “first and fundamental among these is the inviolable right to life of every innocent human being.”
John Paul went on to say that “laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law.”
“How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted?” he asked.
Pope John Paul II famously resisted watering down the evil of abortion as just one among many social ills of our age, or positing a moral equivalency between abortion and other issues such as unemployment, capital punishment, inadequate healthcare or a “broken immigration system.”
John Paul, in fact, called the right to life “the first of the fundamental rights,”
“Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good,” he wrote.
“It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life,” he said, “upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.”
Worldwide, the number of abortions performed in the first ten days of 2018 crossed the one-million mark, according to statistics published by the World Health Organization (WHO).
A website called “worldometers” keeps a running record of data related to everything from demographics to economics, and also provides a continuously updated total for abortions performed in the calendar year. As of this writing, the number of abortions for 2018 stood at 1,0359,172.
In the United Stated, approximately 3,000 abortions are carried out every day, meaning that more than one in five pregnancies in the U.S. (22 percent) end in abortion.
Currently, abortion is the leading cause of death in the United States, followed by heart disease, cancer, and lower respiratory disease. Abortions account for over 900,000 U.S. deaths each year, while some 614,000 die from heart disease and 592,000 from malignant neoplasms, according to the most recent statistics.
January 22, 2018 will mark the 45th anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States, wiping away state laws that had outlawed it.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter
Oprah Will Run In 2020 Because All The Other Democratic Candidates Are Even Worse
Kurt Schlichter
If I was a Democrat, like everyone at NBC and noted Cruise Director Bill Kristol, I’d want Oprah Winfrey to run for president too. She’s got all the qualifications to be a Dem candidate - she’s vacuous, she embraces all the required liberal taboos, and she hates the right people - that is, people like you. And, best of all, Oprah isn’t one of the horde of weirdos, losers, and mutations already threatening to run.
She knows how to string a sentence together, which is useful. Oprah wouldn’t be a human gaffe machine like Touchy Joe Biden. She’s also not 87 years old like he is - it’ll be a shame to miss out on what Joe says and does as age loosens his tongue. Someone get that man a Twitter account!
At one time, the noted naked he-nymph probably would have been a big threat to any Republican running for president. He’s not roundly hated like Hillary, and he seems amiable, if bumbling. But the whole wandering hands thing and all those snaps of him leering at uncomfortable-looking teens with a face doesn’t work for males of pallor in the era of #MeToo.
Those pics of Oprah cavorting with Harvey Fernseed won’t stop her - she’ll get a liberal gal pass like Meryl Streep. Remember, the liberals don’t really care. It’s all fake outrage designed to kneecap competitors. When a history of not harassing women, or enabling those who do, gets in the way of what liberals really want, it’s “Gropes away!” Right, Felonia Milhouse von Pantsuit?
Elizabeth Warren can't be happy about Oprah considering a run. Big Chief Running Mouth is shrill and annoying, and you get the idea that she's always on the verge of telling you to use your inside voice. Oprah is calm and soothing and offers mindless insights about how you have to be the very best you you can be, and how you always have to stand in your own truth. The rabble-rousing squaw wants to get people riled up and on the warpath. But Winfrey wants to calm them down, to make them relax, to allow them not to think, and to be swept away in the feel-good vibes. She wants to be the Oprah-oid of the masses.
Warren wants to keep resisting. Oprah’s secret is her unspoken promise of a return to normalcy, of calm and quiet. But, of course, that's a lie. Oprah will be an activist liberal and will put a bull’s eye on those of us who refuse to fawn and applaud.
Bernie Sanders may run again, and he’s so crusty he makes Biden look like a whippersnapper. But the millennials seem to love him, which is why you have to operate under the rebuttable presumption anyone who is a millennial is too damn stupid to vote. It will be an exciting campaign with months of earnest dummies in Che T-shirts assuring us that true socialism has never been tried and that Venezuela is somehow all Trump's fault.
It'll be fun watching the accusations of collusion with the Russians against the guy who got married in Moscow while their flag still had a hammer and sickle on it. Just kidding! The whole anti-Russia thing is just another big fake outrage, like the anti-harassment fake outrage. As soon as pretending to be patriotic stops being useful to liberals, they’ll go back to hugging America's enemies.
Let's see, there's Kirsten Gillibrand, because America yearns for another bitter Northeastern liberal nominee. She's another one who hopes to ride the #MeToo fake outrage down Pennsylvania Avenue and stable it at the White House. The way she stuck the Clintons in the back probably isn't going to help her raise money, though it was hilarious. But Kirsten comes off as hating men. Every guy has dated a Kirsten once. Once.
So she kind of starts with a disadvantage since men are unlikely to vote for someone who obviously despises them. Perhaps someday the Democrats will learn not to have candidates who seem to hate a substantial part of the voter pool, but probably not. The Democrat platform is totally based on hating a substantial part of the voter pool - the part you’re floating in.
Oprah superficially seems to love everybody. She’s all feelings and hugs, but a TV show isn't the campaign trail, and since the liberal media no longer has a monopoly of coverage, she won’t get to write the script. The truth will come out. Oprah already has her own deplorable problem - there's an interview with her suggesting a good chunk of non-liberal Americans are racist and need to die. These people are apparently not the very best yous they can be, and must therefore be purged.
Still, she's got an edge over the other candidates too. From California, there's Kamala Harris, who is as liberal as she is dumb, which is to say very. As the economy booms, it may be difficult to convince America to elect an advocate of a governance model that has turned the Golden State into the Hunger Games. Go east of I-5 - the reporters, the tech zillionaires and the Hollywood hypocrites never do - and California dreamin’ is a nightmare. California stands in its own truth, all right. Perhaps the answer is for California to embrace true socialism, instead of the current version. Yeah, that will help. Then California will be the very best California it can be, or something.
Andrew Cuomo might run on a platform that red staters should subsidize New York's sky high income taxes. I yearn to see a mortified Andy and his brother Fredo out trying to connect to voters in Iowa – that would be amusing and almost worth it in and of itself. Oprah, in contrast, wouldn’t even need to build a rapport; she’d just buy everybody a tractor.
Oprah checks all the liberal boxes. She believes in science, meaning she thinks both heat waves and cold fronts prove global warming, that you can change your gender by wanting to, that vaccines are a conspiracy, and that Dr. Oz’s magic fungus extract will cleanse your body of negative waves, thereby allowing you to be the very best you you can be.
You know she's going to hate guns in the hands of anyone but her private security force. You know that she believes in perpetual conflict over race, gender, and all the other touchstones of liberal hate-mongering. You know that a Winfrey administration would be filled with the same band of punks and hacks who brought us ISIS, North Korean nukes, and who abandoned the Iranian freedom fighters just before shipping their oppressors pallets of 100 dollar bills.
It's painfully obvious that the Democrats are seeking their own Donald Trump, only without the rough edges. What is super amusing is to listen to the liberals n’ their Never Trump fellow travelers howl about how Trump is a no-experience entertainer, and then to watch them wet themselves over a no-experience entertainer because she’s all-in for the left. Muh principles, indeed.
Oprah represents their chance to impose a softer tyranny than Hillary would have, and thereby maybe avoid another counter reaction by the Normals. Oprah seems to be what Hillary never could be - nice. But under that nice exterior still lurks the same hatred and contempt for you that Democrats all share.
Al Gore Blames the ‘Climate Crisis’ for Cold Weather. But Actually, It’s Just January.
Former Vice President Al Gore speaks at the Web Summit 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 9, 2017. (Photo: Pedro Fiuza/SIPA /Newscom)
COMMENTARY BY
Ed Feulner
Edwin J. Feulner’s 36 years of leadership as president of The Heritage Foundation transformed the think tank from a small policy shop into America’s powerhouse of conservative ideas. Remember when global warming meant the planet was supposed to, well, warm up? Temperatures would rise, and all manner of ecological calamity would ensue?
Me too. So it was surprising to find myself shivering, like other Americans, through several days of arctic chill and extreme cold, only to hear Al Gore blame it on global warming.
He didn’t use the w-word, though. “It’s bitter cold in parts of the U.S., but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis,” Gore tweeted on Jan. 4.
Al Gore ✔@algoreIt’s bitter cold in parts of the US, but climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains that’s exactly what we should expect from the climate crisis. http://ift.tt/2lXx1ig
5:50 PM - Jan 4, 2018
See, it’s a “climate crisis” now. But it’s hard to blame him for trying some rebranding. After all, prediction after prediction has come to naught.
But no matter: Like other Doomsday prophets, Gore just acts like the last missed deadline didn’t happen and comes up with a new one.
Which is why it’s important to remind ourselves of what Gore has said in the past.
Consider, for example, how he said global warming would cause the north polar ice cap to be completely free of ice within five years. When did he say that? Nine years ago.
News flash: The Arctic still has ice. Indeed, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “ice growth during November 2017 averaged 30,900 square miles per day.” Oops.
So how about the evidence for the latest cold snap?
Gore’s source, Michael Mann, says the ultra-chilly temps we’ve been enduring are “precisely the sort of extreme winter weather we expect because of climate change.” As the planet warms, he says, we’ll see more cold snaps and “bomb cyclones.”
Seems counterintuitive, but Mann suggests this is because warming is “causing the jet stream to meander in a particular pattern” that leads to these cold spells.
I use the word “suggests,” however, because this is simply a theory—one that other scientists are not sold on. (Gore and the rest of the climate-crisis crowd often act like their ideas are universally accepted—that the scientific community is in complete agreement with them. But there is more room for doubt and disagreement than they care to admit.)
Just ask Kevin Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“Winter storms are a manifestation of winter, not climate change,” he recently told The Daily Caller. “The Arctic is greatly affected by climate change, and it has a feedback effect—but not in winter.”
Even if Gore and Mann are correct about the link between global warming and cold snaps, the record works against them there, too.
“The frequency of cold waves have decreased during the past 50 years, not increased,” University of Washington climatologist Cliff Mass says. “That alone shows that such claims are baseless.”
The term “bomb cyclone” is new to most of us, but it’s been around for a while. Climatologist Judith Curry recently told the Caller that it was coined almost 40 years ago by Fred Sanders of MIT, who spent a lot of time studying such storms.
Moreover, there are about 50 or 60 bomb cyclones every year, but most of them occur too far out to sea for us to notice.
Gore and his fellow travelers may have trouble admitting that they could be wrong. But their never-look-back crusade isn’t helping scientific research.
“It is very disappointing that members of my profession are making such obviously bogus claims,” Mass said. “It hurts the science, it hurts the credibility of climate scientists, and weakens our ability to be taken seriously by society.”
That’s what happens, though, when we bend facts to fit theories—and not the other way around. And remember, Al, as the old song goes, “Baby, it’s cold outside.”
Recently Leaked Documents Confirm Clinton Haitian Gold Scheme
By Georgianne Nienaber
By Georgianne Nienaber
The Clinton exploitation of Haiti will eventually go up in flames, and when the smoke settles an emotional and fiscal disaster of enormous proportions will finally be visible to the world. It will be difficult to sift through the ashes to find truth, but the truth is there. Follow the money, follow the pandering, follow the emails, and follow the favors traded for gold.
Another email linked to Hillary Clinton's pay-for play scandal involving State Department favors for the Clinton Foundation has surfaced, but it is not one of Clinton's famously deleted emails. A confidential email to possible capital investors for a $26.5M fully operational open-pit gold processing facility in Haiti says it all.
"Haiti is geographically located in a 'safe zone', within the sphere of U.S. influence. This sphere of influence included Anthony Rodham, brother of the then-Secretary of State. Anthony (Tony) Rodham served on VCS Mining's Advisory Committee, "providing the company with strategic insight and exposure to key high-level business and government relationships," according to a confidential document provided by a source.
VCS incorporated in 2010 in Delaware, a standard practice for companies looking for favorable tax breaks. and it "owns and operates gold, copper, silver, rare earth, nickel and platinum properties." This was the same year as the 7.0 Haiti earthquake.
The Washington Post began uncovering these connections in March of 2015, but did not have access to the leaked email and one document in particular that provide proof of Clinton influence peddling. A June 2014 confidential brochure for the mining company, "VCS Mining Information Memorandum," as well as a 2015 email from the Chairman/CEO of VCS to investors go a long way toward uncovering yet another scheme that benefits Hillary Clinton's family and the Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony (Tony) Rodham was a prominent player in the mining scheme, according to corporate VCS documents. Rodham has no background in mining, no college degree, and his only qualification to be intimately involved in a mining venture in Haiti was as the brother of Hillary Clinton and the brother-in-law of the Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton. Rodham joined the advisory board of VCS Mining in October 2013 and the 2014 VCS memorandum touts his influential connections to the Clinton's "inner circles" and "power bases" within the beltway.
( Text within image in article: As the brother of the former 1st (sic) Lady and Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the brother-in-law of President Bill Clinton, Anthony is a well-respected American public figure. For years a part of Bill & Hillary Clinton's "inner circle", Mr. Rodham has worked side by side in the highest levels of U.S. politics since 1974. His connections with big business, his access to international influencers, and his connection to the power- base inside Washington (DC) serves Mr. Rodham's clients well. )
The memorandum also explains where excess power generated by the internationally- funded Caracol Industrial plant could go, and it was not to Haitian homes as promised by USAID and the Clinton Foundation. On page 17, VCS Mining says "2.5MW of power will be supplied to VCS by the Power Plant at USAID's Caracol Industrial Park, which has upwards of 50% excess generating capacity."
This is a complicated story fraught with intricate detail and begins with the fraudulent installation of a crooked Haitian president, a Korean trade deal, an industrial park facilitated by the Clinton Foundation, donations from the owners of the clothing behemoth, Gap, Inc., and donations to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign from a Saipan clothing magnate with ties to the Abramoff lobbying click here scandal. The money trail and pay-for-play does not end with the transfer of the all-but-impossible-to obtain Morne Bossa gold mining permit to VCS.
The story ends in more pain, suffering, and abuse for the Haitian people as women are sexually harassed and verbally abused by Korean managers in the sweatshops of Caracol, while a former Gap Inc. executive is at the helm of USAID garment industry agreements with Haiti. If the Clinton connections to Wall Street leave Americans yawning, the systematic exploitation of Haitian workers with a wink and a nod from the Clinton Foundation should at the very least create outrage. But then again, this is Haiti, and Haitian lives do not seem to matter.
It would be scandal enough if Tony Rodham and VCS benefitted from a gold mine permit in Haiti, but the potential electrical power lines for that gold mine lead straight to one of the biggest lies to come out of Haitian "reconstruction." Think of the Clinton Foundation as covert commodities trader, whether it involves strategic minerals, access for the garment industry, special trade deals, or the guarantee that Haiti will always be held within the "sphere of influence" of the United States.
An Earthquake Presents Opportunity and "Hard Choices"
In late November 2011. Port-au-Prince was still crawling out from beneath the rubble of the January 2010 earthquake that claimed up to 350,000 lives. No one will ever know the final count of the mass graves filled by front-end loaders. While most of the country was spared the physical devastation of the tectonic event, no part of Haiti escaped the creeping cholera epidemic courtesy of the Nepalese contingent of the United Nations based near Mirebalais on the Artibonite River. (It took the U.N. six years to admit culpability click here) Economic growth in 2010 was non-existent, hundreds of thousands were still living in dilapidated tent encampments, and the Haitian people had a President installed by the Organization of American States with the complicity of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton would later write that although the official 2010-11 Haiti Presidential vote tally was at odds with results obtained by the Organization of American States (OAS), her goal was to reach a "peaceful resolution." She did not admit that her "resolution" would involve over-turning the official results. Clinton termed this Machiavellian move, "democracy in action" in her book Hard Choices. In the subsequent run-off using the OAS results, a "celebrated musician," using Clinton's words, would become the next President of Haiti. This was Clinton's premise of "good governance," and Michel Martelly would embody U.S. mastery of the disaster, becoming the fulcrum for a new axis of foreign intervention and capitalism. The United States had officially declared that fixing elections was "Democracy in action."
As Clinton's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills said in email CO5779428 to Haiti Ambassador Kenneth Merton and others, "You do great elections. And make us all look good. I am so very grateful for all you have done. Dinner on me in Haiti next trip. [And we can discuss how the counting is going! Just kidding. Kind of (smiley emoticon)]"
All Mills had to do was change the numbers on a piece of paper and hand it back to the election commissioner. The puppet Martelly was now tethered to U.S. State Department strings. At best an inexperienced leader and at worst a cross-dressing thug who installed criminals as part of his inner circle, Martelly owed his rise from carnival singer to President of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere to the Clintons. Martelly's narcissistic and pornographic performances are too blue to write about, but the New Yorker presents the evidence click here of a disturbed personality, for those who can handle the unpleasant descriptions.
Guy Phillipe, AKA "piti-piti", Martelly's right hand man, is still wanted by the DEA for alleged Conspiracy to Import Cocaine, Conspiracy to Launder Monetary Instruments, and Engaging in Monetary Transactions in Property Derived from Specified Unlawful Activity.
The new President of Haiti shouted the promise to the world. "Haiti is open for business," Martelly said, while the lies festered in the swamp of non-existent economic growth--a fetid concoction of development in an agricultural region far from the devastation of Port-au-Prince. By 2013, President Martelly had yet to allow Parliamentary elections, leaving one-third of the Haitian Senate vacant. Martelly was effectively ruling by fiat, with elections two years overdue.
Get Your Gold Mine Permit Here
It had been 50 years since any gold mining permits had been issued in Haiti, but President Martelly awarded one of two to Tony Rodham's VCS in December 2012 for the Morne Bossa project. Officially discovered in 1978 by United Nations, the mine has significant quantities of gold deposits. According to the VCS Memorandum, in November 2011, "the Colorado geotechnical firm and mineralogical assessor, Data Technology Services, published an independent geological survey (NI 43-101), which showed Morne Bossa had measured gold resources of 437,771 ounces (on the 13 hectares assessed). Including 171,746 ounces within its shallow oxide cap, and 266,025 ounces in its sulfide mineral belt. This represented less than 1% of the Morne Bossa 2,500 hectare concession." (Gold is currently listed at $1340.60 per ounce)
The promise to the Haitian people was an enormous lie. VCS CEO Angelo Viard crowed click here, "The Government's commitment to responsible development of the Country's vast natural resource base will be a major contributor to economic development, employment and the welfare of the Haitian people." Time would prove the promise to be a sham even before Tony Rodham was forced to resign from the VCS Advisory Board because of revelations in his sister's emails.
Timing is everything, especially when it involves Tony Rodham's connections with VCS CEO Angelo Viard. According to a piece in the Daily Caller, Viard said he paid a $20,000 "membership fee" to join the Clinton Global Initiative, AKA the Clinton Foundation, to gain access to marketing opportunities. The appointment of Rodham to the VCS Board of Directors was, of course, "coincidence."
But there remains that sticky statement in the 2014 VCS Memorandum: "Mr. Rodham currently serves on VCS's Advisory Committee, providing the company with strategic insight and exposure to key high-level business and government relationships."
There was no higher level of business and government relationships in Haiti than the "coincidence" of Tony Rodham as the brother-in-law of the Haiti Special Envoy and President of the Interim Haiti Development Commission, Bill Clinton. Let's review. The VCS mining permit was issued two years after the earthquake and shortly after Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills conveniently rigged the election. The exploration permit is valid for five (5) years from the date of issuance and renewable for up to 25 years.
In addition, in 2014 the Haitian government proposed new mining policies for corporations seeking mining permits to launch operations in Haiti. New regulations were designed to meet international standards for environmentally friendly mining. Gold mining presents a severe pollution hazard to rivers and streams. The Morne Bossa property is not subject to the new mining requirements, because their permit was granted prior to the passage of the new mining policy. This provides VCS a substantial advantage over new mining companies seeking to launch operations in Haiti. Permits do not guarantee enforcement or regulations. The white paper "Human Rights and Environmental Risks of Gold Mining in Haiti," outlines many opportunities for abuse and mismanagement.
( Quoted text: Although the Mining Decree contains several provisions concerning protection of the environment and community resources that may be affected by mining, those provisions are neither stringent nor specific enough to prevent or mitigate the risks posed by modern mining, particularly in the absence of robust government enforcement. )
Of course, denials abound that Hillary or Bill Clinton greased the wheels for Tony Rodham's appointment to the VCS advisory board. In a Washington Post article, Rodhan said he did "not think VCS chief executive and president Angelo Viard, a Democratic donor, approached him because of his family ties. Rodham declined to say who introduced him to Viard. Viard said he could not remember."
Jean-Max Bellerive, who was co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission click here along with former President and Haiti Special Envoy Bill Clinton, happened also to be on the board of VCS. Both Rodham and Bellerive resigned from the VCS advisory board in March 2016 members-resignation/ a week after the New York Times scrutinized Rodham's involvement in the mining company, click here and one year after the Times click here revealed that Clinton used a private email account on a private server while Secretary of State.
But the mine was just the tip of the iceberg.
South Korea Pays to Play in Haiti
In December 2010, nearly 12 months after the Haiti earthquake, the United States and South Korea finally inked a trade deal that had languished since 2007. Ratification of the agreement stalled when the Democratic Congress under George W. Bush balked over details involving bilateral trade in automobiles and beef exports from the U.S. President Barack Obama and President Lee Myung-bak finally reached an agreement at the 2010 G-20 Seoul Summit, and in March 2012 the agreement was implemented. South Korea had its eyes on Haiti, "a Least Developed Country (LDC) enjoying preferential trade access to 17 country markets, as well as access to the European Union. Haiti also offered duty-free access to the U.S. market for the clothing industry through the HOPE II and HELP legislation."
Hillary and Bill Clinton needed South Korea and its Sae-A garment manufacturing giant to be the anchor tenant in the ambitious industrial park set to be built on farmland in the northern part of the country-- land untouched by the earthquake. The industrial park would give South Korea access to cheap labor and the power plant could power local communities as well as the future VCS gold mine.
U.S. trade preferences would make Haiti an attractive place to invest. But investments inevitably benefit the investor and certain garment industry players were long-time friends of the Clintons.
The Power(s) Behind the Caracol Industrial Plant
One thing was certain. The Morne Bossa mining project would need electricity to operate.
The Clintons' Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) promised $1.6 billion in new projects to benefit the Haitian people and VCS Mining and South Korea were first in line to reap the bonanza of the promised windfall. Deemed a "huge failure,"click here IHRC still "controlled the bankroll and could award the lucrative contracts."
Much has been written about Haiti's Caracol, and failed promises of jobs there. When a recent Washington Post article highlighted Hillary Clinton's failure to deliver 200,000 jobs to upstate New York during her time as Senator, yet another Clinton cycle of promises offered yet unfulfilled was a prescient warning of what would unfold in Haiti in 2010.
In her current run for President of the United States Clinton offers her job creation plans for upstate New York as a blueprint for how she would jump-start the U.S. economy. But her job creations promises failed miserably in New York State, just as the Clinton Foundation's assurances would never come to fruition at the Caracol Industrial Plant.
The total number of people working at Caracol at the end of September 2015 was 8,648. 40-60,000 jobs were promised at the PIC.
The Caracol Industrial Park ("CIP") was built on a square mile, 600 acre (246 hectare) tract near the village of Caracol. The site was a former slave plantation and housed Marines during the 1915 Woodrow Wilson occupation of Haiti. The land has a horrible history and was known as the Chabert Post where 330 U.S. Marines ran a prison labor camp. The iconic rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte was murdered by a U.S. Marine and initially buried on the property in an unmarked grave. His half-naked body was paraded through local communities, strapped to a door.
The addition of Sae-A Global guaranteed an anchor tenant for Caracol. The $300 million project includes a 10-megawatt power plant (1 megawatt in the US will power 1000 homes), roads, a water- treatment plant, promised worker housing, and development of a port in nearby Fort-Liberte. Caracol and was built with assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank, contributions by the United States government, and The Clinton Foundation.
Over four hundred thousand Haitians were unemployed and homeless in 2010. Hope was fading and promised monetary help had either been squandered or stolen. At a Senate hearing on in May 2011, Republicans, led by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), described U.S. relief efforts in Haiti as "pathetic" and said USAID had failed to track its spending and appropriately monitor outcomes. click here
Foreign interests needed bait to lure more investment that would ultimately hook the Haitian population into a fantasy that would feed those predatory interests. Since the 1980s, Haiti's main employment sector had been the garment industry. Investment in the industry had stalled due to trade embargoes and employment fell accordingly. The main complaint was that Haitian workers could not meet export quotas. The earthquake provided the perfect opportunity for corporate entities, led by the United States, to dangle the ultimate holy grail of more jobs and economic recovery based on what Naomi Klein termed "disaster capitalism" after the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. trade preferences would make Haiti an attractive place to invest. But investments inevitably benefit the investor, and the women of Haiti would become the victims of foreign speculation. That consequence may or may not have been the overt intent, but greed would force a result that, by its very nature, necessitated concealment.
A five page Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Haiti, Korean apparel manufacturer Sae-A Trading Co., Ltd, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank and the U.S. Department of State promised an investment utopia that would showcase "Haiti's advantages as a place to do business to other potential investors to create a competitive economic cluster with a range of production facilities and support services." The MOU did not address the source of labor except in the context of "supporting infrastructure." click here
So on a late November day with the temperature a sticky 91 degrees Fahrenheit, and a barely noticeable breeze whispering through the tropical foliage, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Korean apparel manufacturer Sae-A Co. Ltd., officially laid the foundation stone for the Caracol Industrial Park. The stone was set in solid earth; earth untouched and unmoved by the 7.0 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince less than two years earlier.
A promise was made and the Caracol cornerstone was the embodiment of that promise; one that would take less than two years to become an epithet. Clinton's husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, along with the U.S. protegee, President Michel Martelly, presided at the ceremony. Caracol would not only be the largest industrial park in the Caribbean, it would also become the poster child for graft, corruption, mismanagement and incompetence of the USAID program. The lie was believable because desperate people will believe the big lie, and the lie became the headwind for exploitation.
In 2006, The U.S. Congress enacted the Haiti Hemispheric Opportunity for Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006 (HOPE). A plan was set in motion, which on paper, was intended to allow the Haitian garment industry to participate in a duty free preference program. This was an expansion of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act. Building on HOPE I, HOPE II was enacted in 2008 with the intent of protecting workers by an aggressive monitoring program focusing on working conditions in the garment sector.
The Haitian garment industry had never been a worker's paradise. In 2009 the "Clorox" food riots erupted against starvation minimum wage laws. The reference to Clorox described a hunger being so unbearable that it felt as if one were swallowing bleach.
The utopian plans for Korean garment manufacturing at Caracol would go down easy in theory, but would ultimately prove equally as difficult to swallow as bleach in reality.
The lie was as incredible as it was enormous. Sae-A promised 20,000 direct jobs and a potential 65,000 indirect jobs. Factory profit margins were estimated to reach 22 percent because "Haiti has the lowest wage in the Caribbean-labor costs being by far the largest economic component in garment manufacture. Haiti has labor costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark."
There it was. Planners admitted that profits would be built on the backs of sweatshop workers and labor costs were "fully competitive with China."China was the global benchmark for worker exploitation. SAE-A had just promised to out- China China in worker exploitation.
The PR pitch was a pyramid scheme. Opportunities would multiply exponentially for supporting industries and vendors. USAID would fund the new electrical plant, new housing for workers and a port facility. The Koreans would not come unless managers were promised gated communities. The seamstresses live in hovels at the village of "La Difference." The Government of Haiti would mange the project "top to bottom." The port facility would facilitate lower shipping costs and faster time to market.
My god.
"A sin (sic) qua non in the fashion sensitive world," promised the marketing PDF from the Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (CAIPA).
The typo would be laughable if it were not an inadvertent admission of truth. The lies surrounding Caracol were sins of lies-- lies of omission and commission committed in collusion by some of the world's most powerful nations and economic alliances. Sine qua non--with out which not.
The lure of Caracol and thousands of assembly plant jobs resulted in 366 families and 720 agricultural workers losing their land and with only a few days' notice to vacate for the bulldozers. A Potemkin village was shaping up to be more akin to a forced labor camp that leaves the inhabitants with enough money to occasionally go out and feed themselves. When you can only afford to feed yourself and put a roof over your head you are a slave. You have no options, no way out.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began studying USAID's efforts, and in particular shelter projects in the development of the Caracol Industrial Park. Cuban-born Ros-Lehtinen was the first Hispanic woman elected to Congress and serves Florida's 27thCongressional District. Her district, in and around Miami is less than a two-hour flight from Port-au-Prince.
Reports from watchdog groups who were trying to follow the aid money were troubling, and a grass roots' outcry for accountability was becoming a deafening drumbeat. International donors had pledged $13 billion for immediate relief, recovery, and reconstruction. Private charities and NGOs pledged another $3 billion, while Congress approved $1 billion in appropriations for Haiti of which $651 million was provided to the Agency for International Development (USAID).
What the GAO found was far worse than what was suspected. As of March 31, 2013, (USAID) had obligated $293 million (45 percent) and disbursed $204 million (31 percent) of $651 million in funding for Haiti from the Supplemental Appropriations Act, of 2010. Obligations are bills that are not yet paid. Disbursements are the actual withdrawal of cash from the Bureau of the Treasury. $204 million should have accomplished something, but Haiti was still reeling with 320,000 still homeless and a cholera epidemic that was raging out of control.
The homeless were caught in the third circle of hell with no way out. USAID's 2010 housing plans were downscaled by 80 percent. Of the 15,000 houses originally planned, today only 2,649 were left on the drawing boards. Instead of housing for 90,000, only16,000 people would benefit, and those homes were being built outside of the earthquake zone.
The planned port facility had no engineer and USAID had not been involved in port construction since the 1970s. In short, Haiti's homeless were screwed and the $204 million flowed down a rabbit hole. Three years post-catastrophe hundreds of thousands still remained in wretched displacement camps. Everyone was to blame and no one was responsible. The fingers pointed again at the Haitian people, weak property rights, high unemployment, and a poor business climate. The vague notion of "corruption" became the catch basin for all that was wrong with Haiti. Delays were blamed on the difficulty of securing land titles in a country where titling was rare and what records that existed were still buried in Port-au-Prince. USAID cited a "possible lack of economic opportunities" and a lack of "community cohesion."
The release of the 50-page GAO Report was fodder for the media, but what about the grand bargain of Caracol? GAO gave the project "mixed" results, due to the port debacle, housing cut backs in the Port-au-Prince, St-Marc, and Cap-Haïtien areas, and the shaky power facility. Cap-Haïtien was a critical leg of the housing triad, since it meant housing for the promised immediate 20,000 direct jobs and grand potential of 65,000 jobs. Cap-Haïtien would get only a portion of the 2,649 houses left in the plan.
Enter the Gap, Inc. and More Pay-for-Play
The Clinton Foundation website offers access to its list of donors, but the list is searchable only if you know the exact name of the donor AND the amount of money donated.
Caracol's anchor tenant, Sae-A Trading, is a major supplier to American retailers like Walmart, Ralph Lauren and Gap Inc. There are approximately 181 donors to the Clinton Foundation that lobbied the U.S. State Department, and Gap, Inc. is one of them. A web search uncovered the dollar parameter of $100,000 -250,000 for Gap, but Gap is not listed on the Clinton Foundation website. However, the Fisher Foundation is listed as a donor in that category. The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund is a San Francisco-based philanthropic organization created by Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of Gap, Inc.
Why would a philanthropy with its own focus on educational projects donate up to $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation? Perhaps the answer can be found in the appointment a Latin American Gap executive, Mark D'Sa, to an influential State Department post in Haiti. D'Sa is a Senior Advisor for Haiti at U.S. Department of State and the person who recruits companies on behalf of the U.S. and Haitian governments to the Caracol Industrial Park. Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff, recruited him as part of the Clinton Initiative's "Aid for Trade." click here
According to his LinkedIn resume, D'Sa worked for Gap from June 2002 to October 2010, when he was first tapped as a consultant to the State Department. SAE-A and Gap have very troubled labor histories. At that time, he was overseeing trade in 12 countries in Latin America and 4 in Asia. D'Sa's resume includes a stint as a Director at Ralph Lauren from January 1998 -- October 1999.
The Gap had profits totaling $15.9 billion in 2007. In the same year, a raid on a New Delhi factory found children as young as eight sewing clothes destined for Gap stores.
In 2000, a Senate subcommittee hearing revealed that the Gap and Ralph Lauren were contracting work out to Chinese and Korean-owned factories on the U.S. commonwealth of Saipan. Saipan is the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean. This loophole allowed the Gap to cut labor costs drastically while still producing clothes that are technically "Made in USA." The factories employed mainly young Chinese women to work in poor conditions and forced pregnant workers to get abortions in order for them to keep working, according to an ABC News 20/20 special investigation.
Let's also look at Sae-A in Nicaragua, where The Nation click here reported an April 2013 memo to Walmart and other retailers. The Workers Rights Consortium wrote that its preliminary investigation "finds that Sae-A brutally violated these workers' associational rights by directing and paying a mob of more than 300 other workers--while on paid company time--to attack these employees with scissors and metal pipes."
The Gap is another poster child for horrible labor relations. Echoing recent stories coming from Caracol, Alejandro Argueta an Sae-A lawyer turned union supporter, filed criminal cases in Guatemala against Sae-A "for antiunion (sic) discrimination and discrimination against women. He also appealed to Gap, writing, 'The production of Gap clothing is being carried out amidst screaming, threats and even in some cases assaults on workers.'
At the end of 2009, Gap ceased production in Guatemala.
See "How Promises of Aid Stiffed Haiti" for a slide show of conditions in and around Caracol in December 2015.
In December 2015, we interviewed a woman who was fired from Sae-A because she took two days to go to a doctor in Port-au-Prince for what amounted to a stress-induced illness. It takes a day to drive back and forth IF you have a car. Korean employers did not care that she had endured unwanted sexual advances, supervisors screaming at her to "work faster," and fists pounded on tables if she failed to meet quotas.
Willie Tan, Abramoff, and Friends of Hillary
The National Review click here reported that "in 2005 Senator Hillary Clinton accepted contributions from a tycoon involved in the Abramoff lobbying scandal. Saipan garment-industry tycoon Willie Tan gave $2,000 to Friends of Hillary, one of the senator's political action committees. Friends of Hillary also accepted $2,000 contributions from Raymond Tan and Siu Lin Tan, family members who are top executives in Willie Tan's businesses. All three contributions were received on September 30, 2005, according to FEC records." Another family member, Josie Tan, who listed her occupation as homemaker, made a $2,000 contribution received on October 2, 2005. In Total, the Tan family donated Hillary Clinton $10,000 for her Senate re-election campaign. See the complete story at Daily Kos.
A transcript of a May 1999 20/20 investigation of Willie Tan's Saipan operation revealed an incident where more than 1,000 workers were sickened by suspected food poisoning at one of the biggest factories on the island. The same factory where the workers became ill produced even more clothes for the Polo line of Ralph Lauren, which told 20/20 it would investigate conditions but has continued production here. Ralph Lauren, who was president of the company, told ABC's investigative unit 20/20that he didn't want to talk about the garment factories on Saipan.
So, the former Gap and Ralph Lauren Director, D'Sa, would become an integral part of the Caracol operation. His LinkedIn resume includes this description of his part in the development plan at the industrial park. "A catalyst to transform northern Haiti. Largest Industrial Park in the Caribbean region occupying 2.5 million square meters with a power station, fiber optic connectivity, potable water supply, waste water treatment, solid waste disposal, buildings IBC compliant, 5 heliports, health and banking facilities, customs clearing yard and transportation network. Targeted to create 60,000 jobs when fully occupied."
A five page Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by Hillary Clinton between the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Haiti, Korean apparel manufacturer Sae-A Trading Co., Ltd, the International Finance Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank and the U.S. Department of State promised an investment utopia that would showcase "Haiti's advantages as a place to do business to other potential investors to create a competitive economic cluster with a range of production facilities and support services." The MOU did not address the source of labor except in the context of "supporting infrastructure."
Caracol was safely anchored in place by the Korean company Sae-A while Gap, Inc, Willie Tan, Tony Rodham and VCS mining had paid mightily to play in the grand experiment known as Haiti Reconstruction.
Caracol clung to the debris of deception floating on the lies of "poor planning." Viewed from another angle, the planning behind Caracol was in fact deliberate and would result in institutionalized slavery. The devil was in the details, hidden in spreadsheets that confounded understanding and analysis. Financial finagling would dwell within preferential tariff programs that would steal from the poor and promote massive wage theft in the Haitian Apparel industry.
Caracol was a problem, but the GAO report was focused on infrastructure. It was using a telescope on bricks and mortar when a microscope was needed to analyze the cellular degradation caused by grueling poverty and wage theft. Similar to the murder of Charlemagne Peralte, the end result would strap Haiti to the cross of international monetary enslavement.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were the supervisors, while the U.S. Commerce Department issued quotas for the garment industry and turned blind eye to spreadsheets on exports that did not add up.
Not once did the committee ask the question about the number of garment workers vs. productions quotas and how these quotas would be met at Caracol or elsewhere in the garment sweatshops. Discussion focused on building houses to support the workforce at Caracol, and the minimum amount of square footage necessary for a family to night's sleep. Congressman Randy K. Weber of Texas noted that his family did just fine in a vacation travel trailer of 320 square feet, so a house of 450 square feet would "be tremendous." "You can make do with what you can," he added.
The narrative was in place. Haiti was so poor that the people would be grateful for anything. A 40 foot fifth wheel would be more than adequate.
The Workers Rights Consortium was monitoring, but a report published a few months later in October 2013, revealed massive wage theft by North American apparel brands and retailers, including, but not limited to Gap, Gildan, Hanes, Kohl's, Levi's, Russell, Target, and Walmart. Target and Walmart were tied to Caracol, but the cheating and wage stealing was endemic nation-wide. The root of the graft would be found in the non-existent monitoring of the preferential tariff programs Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE/HOPE II) and the Haiti Economic Lift Program Act (HELP) of 2010. See Stealing From the Poor.
Hope and help would be in short supply for Haitian families toiling in sweat shops and facing wage theft and prison-like conditions. Thomas C. Adams, Hillary Clinton's point man, blamed Haitians for the lack of progress in rebuilding and specifically touted the "new economic hub in Haiti's north" (Caracol) as a "catalyst for economic growth."
The economic growth is probably real, for Target and Walmart. The majority of Haitian garment workers were being denied nearly a third of their wages due to income theft. WRC's report demonstrated that a "similarly egregious level of wage theft was occurring at the Caracol Industrial Park," subsidized by the U.S. State Department and the Inter American Development Bank.
At Caracol, workers were paid 34 percent less than the law required, while enduring a work-week of 52.3 hours. Wages averaged 33 percent below the legal minimum. Sae-A violated Haiti's minimum wage law by setting production quotas at levels that made it impossible to earn the minimum wage in an eight hour workday. Production bonuses are rare and seldom reach the sub-minimum wage earned by trainees. Production quotas are manipulated by either setting the daily quota so high that it is unreachable, or by setting the amount of bonuses so low that that they amount to almost zero.
For example, in 2013 the Workers Rights Consortium interviewed sewing machine operators at Caracol. A team of 35 was expected to turn out 1,700 t-shirts in a single day for a production bonus of $0.46. If the team completed 100 more t-shirts they were paid an additional $0.23 PER DAY.
The workers said they could not regularly meet the 1,700 daily quota. Sometimes they had to meet the production quota for three days in a row to receive the bonus.
The result was that many workers were forced to work overtime, and if they chose not to, were told by security guards to get back to work. Quotas had to met.
A Tale As Old As Time
Haiti and Hispaniola have been under occupation for their riches ever since Columbus. The challenge and opportunity for VCS Mining, as described in its confidential memorandum to investors, "is to allow the world to see the "jewel of an isle" this country can be. Gold was what drove explorers to risk life and limb while exploiting Hispaniola--and gold is what attracts enterprising adventurers today."
It is almost impossible not to get lost in the weeds of International Aid to Haiti. What is aid and what is pay-for-play when it comes to the Clinton Foundation? What is hidden probably dwarfs the known contributions from mining executives, clothing magnates, and sweat-shop owners in Saipan.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for a reason, and that reason continues to be American and foreign domination over the former slave colony. For hundreds of years Haiti has never really been able to shake the shackles of outside lust for what Haiti has to offer--and it appears that for the price of admission to the murky world of pay-for-play, Haitian lives really do not matter that much to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
As the former OAS Ambassador to Haiti, Ricardo Seitenfus, wrote in an email: "Le temps qui passe est le Seigneur de l'Histoire. J'espère qu'il le sera egalement, dans ce cas, celui de la Justice".
The passage of time is indeed the Lord of history. Let's hope for Justice.
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen and Moe Lauzier
Helen and Moe Lauzier
Thus Article
That's an article
This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
You are now reading the article with the link address https://capitalstories.blogspot.com/2018/01/httpift_14.html
Related Posts :
The Loud House | New Pet | Pets Peeved | Nickelodeon UK
Cinderella: Stop Blaming the Victim - A Timely Interpretation of Disney's 1950's 'Cinderella'
The Krabby Patty Chronicles | The Dog | SpongeBob Gold | Nickelodeon International | IT
Shimmer and Shine | Bungle in the Jungle | Nick Jr. UK
Power Rangers | RPM Zord Battles! | EN, ES, PT & FR
0 Response to " "
Post a Comment