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I Love You, Africa.

Published on Friday, June 10, 2005 by The Nation

A Noose, Not a Bracelet

by Naomi Klein

Gordon Brown has a new idea about how to "make poverty history" in time for the G-8 summit in Scotland.

With Washington so far refusing to double its aid to Africa by 2015, the British Chancellor is appealing to the "richer oil-producing states" of the Middle East to fill the funding gap.

"Oil wealth urged to save Africa," reads the headline in London's Observer.

Here is a better idea: Instead of Saudi Arabia's oil wealth being used to "save Africa," how about if Africa's oil wealth was used to save Africa — along with its gas, diamond, gold, platinum, chromium, ferroalloy and coal wealth?

With all this noblesse oblige focused on saving Africa from its misery, it seems like a good time to remember someone else who tried to make poverty history: Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed ten years ago this November by the Nigerian government, along with eight other Ogoni activists, sentenced to death by hanging.

70 percent of Nigerians still live on less than $1 a day. Shell is making superprofits

Their crime was daring to insist that Nigeria was not poor at all but rich, and that it was political decisions made in the interests of Western multinational corporations that kept its people in desperate poverty.

Saro-Wiwa gave his life to the idea that the vast oil wealth of the Niger Delta must leave behind more than polluted rivers, charred farmland, rancid air and crumbling schools.

He asked not for charity, pity or "relief" but for justice.

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People demanded that Shell compensate the people from whose land it had pumped roughly $30 billion worth of oil since the 1950s.

The company turned to the government for help, and the Nigerian military turned its guns on demonstrators.

Before his state-ordered hanging, Saro-Wiwa told the tribunal, "I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial.... The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come."

Ten years later, 70 percent of Nigerians still live on less than $1 a day and Shell is still making superprofits.

Equatorial Guinea, which has a major oil deal with ExxonMobil, "got to keep a mere 12 percent of the oil revenues in the first year of its contract," according to a 60 Minutes report — a share so low it would have been scandalous even at the height of colonial oil pillage.

This is what keeps Africa poor: not a lack of political will but the tremendous profitability of the current arrangement.

Highest returns on foreign direct investment

Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest place on earth, is also its most profitable investment destination: It offers, according to the World Bank's 2003 Global Development Finance report, "the highest returns on foreign direct investment of any region in the world."

Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are so unspeakably rich.

The idea for which Saro-Wiwa died fighting — that the resources of the land should be used to benefit the people of that land — lies at the heart of every anticolonial struggle in history, from the Boston Tea Party to Iran's turfing of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan.

This idea has been declared dead by the European Union's Constitution, by the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (which describes "free trade" not only as an economic policy but a "moral principle") and by countless trade agreements. And yet it simply refuses to die.

Nationalize the government

You can see it most clearly in the relentless protests that drove Bolivia's president, Carlos Mesa, to offer his resignation. A decade ago Bolivia was forced by the IMF to privatize its oil and gas industries on the promise that it would increase growth and spread prosperity.

When that didn't work, the lenders demanded that Bolivia make up its budget shortfall by increasing taxes on the working poor.

Bolivians had a better idea — take back the gas and use it for the benefit of the country.

The debate now is over how much to take back.

Evo Morales's Movement Toward Socialism favors taxing foreign profits by 50 percent.

More radical indigenous groups, which have already seen their land stripped of its mineral wealth, want full nationalization and far more participation, what they call "nationalizing the government."

We cannot avoid this

You can see it too in Iraq. On June 2 Laith Kubba, spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, told journalists that the IMF had forced Iraq to increase the price of electricity and fuel in exchange for writing off past debts: "Iraq has $10 billions of debts, and I think we cannot avoid this."

But days before, in Basra, a historic gathering of independent trade unionists, most of them with the General Union of Oil Employees, insisted that the government could avoid it.

At Iraq's first antiprivatization conference, the delegates demanded that the government simply refuse to pay Saddam's "odious" debts and opposed any attempts to privatize state assets, including oil.

Neoliberalism, an ideology so powerful it tries to pass itself off as "modernity" while its maniacal true believers masquerade as disinterested technocrats, can no longer claim to be a consensus.

It was decisively rejected by French voters when they said No to the EU Constitution, and you can see how hated it has become in Russia, where large majorities despise the profiteers of the disastrous 1990s privatizations and few mourned the recent sentencing of oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

All of this makes for interesting timing for the G-8 summit.

Geldof's bracelet — how about a noose?

Bob Geldof and the Make Poverty History crew have called for tens of thousands of people to go to Edinburgh and form a giant white band around the city center on July 2 — a reference to the ubiquitous Make Poverty History bracelets.

But it seems a shame for a million people to travel all that way to be a giant bauble, a collective accessory to power.

How about if, when all those people join hands, they declare themselves not a bracelet but a noose — a noose around the lethal economic policies that have already taken so many lives, for lack of medicine and clean water, for lack of justice.

A noose like the one that killed Ken.

June 23, 2005

Fasting in Geneva
Where You Stand Determines What You See...And How You Live

By KATHY KELLY
That’s how Voices in the Wilderness members began our statement explaining why we’d decided to stay in Baghdad during the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing of Iraq.

During the long war of the economic sanctions, we had stood at the bedsides of numerous mothers who held dying infants and looked at us with imploring eyes, asking “Why?”

We saw too much of the catastrophic military and economic violence inflicted on ordinary Iraqis to ever consider giving up on efforts to end UN/US economic sanctions.

We had returned to our homes haunted by the gasps of children in hospital wards that served as little more than “death rows” for infants, and we had tried to alert people in the U.S. and the U.K., people with some level of control over their governments, about how those governments brutally and lethally punished Iraqi children for political actions they could not control.

Where you stand determines what you see.

For the latter half of June, eight of us will do plenty of standing, again in opposition to economic punishment of ordinary Iraqis, with children bearing the hardest punishment.

We’re fasting for fifteen days leading up to the June 28-30 UNCC deliberations over whether to saddle the poorest Iraqis with billions of dollars of Saddam Hussein’s debt.

We’re standing in Geneva, which is one of the most comfortably elegant cities in the world, and where the future of one of the world’s most desperate countries will be decided.

Although I’m fasting here, taking only water (and that morning cup of coffee), I feel awkward about living in such an exquisitely cushy environ while trying to speak up for people who are going to bed hungry in deteriorating homes, lacking access to clean water, exasperated and frightened by round after round of violence, and bearing scorching temperatures that won’t let up for another two months.

The Iraqis I’m fasting for will never see the people we see entering the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC).

You, too, are accountable

We stand in front of the entrance to the UN in Geneva, holding signs and banners that say to the UNCC, “You, too, are accountable. In your meetings, June 28 – 30, please discuss justice for Iraqis.”

The UNCC’s officials, accountants, claims analysts, and lawyers have played a crucial role in manipulating Iraq’s economy throughout the last decade.

Quite possibly few have visited Iraq or read the reports filed by their colleagues in the World Health Organization, UNICEF or the Food and Agriculture Organization.

We met the people filing those reports regularly, on every visit to Baghdad.

They often implored us to go back to the U.S. and beg our government to recognize that economic sanctions punished the most vulnerable people in Iraq.

They showed us tables and accounting which proved that over 500,000 young children, - half a million children under the age of five - might have survived if the sanctions had not crushed Iraq’s economy and prevented Iraq from continuing a trend that was steadily reducing infant mortality rates.

Gravely contradicted fundamental UN mandates

For UNCC workers who read the accounts, it must have been difficult to cooperate with the U.S. and UN in a strange set of priorities that gravely contradicted fundamental UN mandates.

After the UN Security Council established the oil for food program in 1996, the Saddam Hussein government, desperate for more oil revenue, agreed to pay 30% of Iraq’s oil revenue, yearly to compensate countries, corporations and individuals claiming damages from Hussein’s invasion 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait.

All of the claims to individuals, claims which amounted to 3 billion dollars, have now been settled by the UNCC.

It’s easy to imagine needy individuals submitting those claims.

But beyond the individual claims, shouldn’t the UNCC members have re-examined their priorities?

They could have told the wealthy you have to wait

They could have told the wealthy countries and corporations with outstanding claims, “We’re sorry, but you will have to wait. Iraq’s oil resources should immediately be reinvested into Iraq to give the people there, particularly the children, a chance to survive.”

This sort of statement would have cohered with UN mandates to protect the rights of children and uphold human rights.

Saddam Hussein’s regime showed ruthless disregard for the rights of its citizens.

But the oil-for-food program, with all of its flaws, did save lives and many more could have been saved had their been more revenue available and had the UNCC showed more urgent compassion for humanitarian concerns.

Some UNCC workers clearly were troubled. We’ve recently learned of two lawyers who resigned for conscientious reasons.

52.1 billion dollars paid to rich

But for the most part, the system moved along, and you can examine multiple lists, for each year between 1996 and 2003, of countries and corporations whose claims for many billions of dollars were paid out, from Iraqi oil revenue, after the UNCC deemed their claims to be just.

So far, the UNCC has approved 52.1 billion of Iraqi oil revenue in payment to individuals, companies and governments.

That was their priority.

Allowing Iraqi oil revenue to pay for food and medicine that could have saved hundreds of thousands of children seems not to have been part of their discussions.

From June 28 – 30, the UNCC will hold its final round of discussions before determining how much more of an outstanding 65 billion in reparation and debt Iraq should be required to pay for the 1990-91 war making.

This time, it’s crucial to assure that members of the UNCC are fully aware of Jean Zeigler’s UNICEF report which states that 7.7% of Iraqi children under age are currently suffering from acute malnourishment.

It’s vitally important that they read the May 2005 UNDP report that details catastrophic conditions because of impure water, erratic electricity, and high unemployment.

A June 17, 2005 World Food Program report should be on their agenda.

Rice, sugar, milk and infant formula

It shows significant shortfalls in rice, sugar, milk and infant formula.

A recent UN survey notes that more than half the population lives below the poverty line.

The median income fell from $255 in 2003 to $144 in 2004.

Put these reports together and its tragically easy to see that the 7.7% of Iraqi children under age five suffering from acute malnourishment, a disease often referred to as wasting, might not survive more cuts in Iraq’s budget for human services.

Hans von Sponeck, a former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, who resigned his post as an act of conscience, stood with us on the first two days of our fast.

Speaking to a Reuters reporter, Hans said, “It is incredible that these people, completely outside the structure, should be bringing a message that they should know inside.”

Gesturing at the buildings across the street, Hans laid out the responsibility the people inside the UNCC bore for violating the UN charter. “The UNCC has no legitimacy for one day longer, “ he said. “It is not a colonial master.”

Hans von Sponeck also pointed out that you can’t have it both ways.

If Iraq is now a soverign country

If Iraq is now a sovereign country, then the Iraqi government should be negotiating how much money it owes to creditors.

Our literature calls for a cancellation of all of Iraq’s outstanding debt and a moratorium on reparations payments.

Various UN workers stop to chat with us from time to time. One told us to be assured that members of the UNCC were very aware of our presence.

An accountant told me that he was terribly troubled by policies that lined the pockets of wealthy companies and contributed toward suffering of innocent people.

“Accountants can find a kind of relief in just working with numbers,” he said, looking bemused. “Numbers don’t talk back.”

Neither do dying children.

International conscience must be represented by those willing to stand up for them, within the UN and in every community that believes Iraq's children have a right to live.

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness (www.vitw.org). Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams, was recently published by Counterpunch.

Colonies were more prosperous than the home country

Before the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the war that followed, the colonized part of what is today the United States of America was a Crown possession of England. It was called New England, and was made up of 13 colonies, which became the original states of the great Republic.

In 1750, this New England was very prosperous. Benjamin Franklin wrote: "There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace reigned on every border. It was difficult, even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort prevailed in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread."

When Franklin went over to England to represent the interests of the Colonies, he saw a completely different situation; the working population of the home country was gnawed by hunger and plagued by inescapable poverty. "The streets are covered with beggars and tramps," he wrote.

He asked his English friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so much poverty among its working classes.

His friends replied that England was prey to a terrible condition; it had too many workers!

The rich said they were already overburdened with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the needs and poverty of this great mass of workers.

Several rich Englishmen of that time actually believed what economist Thomas Malthus later wrote, that wars and epidemic disease were necessary to rid the country from "manpower surpluses."

People in London asked Franklin how the American Colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poorhouses, and how they could overcome this plague of unemployment and pauperism.

Thanks to debt-free money issued by the colonial governments

Franklin replied; "We have no poorhouses in the Colonies, and if we had some, there would be no one to put in them, since in the Colonies there is not a single unemployed person, not a beggar nor a tramp."

His friends could not believe their ears, or understand how this could be.

They knew when the English poorhouses and jails became too cluttered, England shipped the wretched inmates like cattle, to be dumped on the quays of the Colonies if they survived the filth and privations of the sea voyage.

(In those days English debtors went to jail if they could not pay their debts, and few escaped, since in jail they could not earn money.)

Franklin’s acquaintances, in view of all this, asked him how he could explain the remarkable prosperity of the New England Colonies.

Franklin told them: "Why, that is simple! In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It’s called ’Colonial Scrip.’ We issue it to pay the government’s approved expenses and charities. We make sure it’s issued in proper proportion to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In other words, we make sure there is always adequate money in circulation for the needs of the economy.

"In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."

English Bankers impose poverty on the Colonies

Franklin should not have been so free with his advice, which soon came to the attention of the powerful English Bankers.

They quickly used their influence to have the British Parliament pass a law that prohibited the Colonies from using their Colonial Scrip money.

The new law ordered them to use only credit redeemable in gold and silver coins that were provided in insufficient quantity by the banks of England.

And so began in America the plague of debt-based money, which has ever since brought as many hardships to the American people, as it has to Europeans.

The first law regulating Colonial money was passed by the British Parliament 1751, then expanded by a more restrictive law in 1763.

Franklin reported that only one year after implementation of the prohibition on Colonial Scrip, the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed and beggars, just like those he had seen in England, because there was not enough money to pay for their goods and work.

The English Banker’s new laws had reduced the circulating medium by half.

Franklin added that this was "the original and true cause of the American Revolution;" and not the tax on tea or the Stamp Act, as has been taught our children for generations in "history" books.

The Financiers (bankers) of every generation manage to have removed from school books any information that can throw light on their own schemes and fraudulent actions that protect their power over the people.

Franklin, one of the chief architects of American independence, put it clearly: "The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been for the poverty created by the bad influence of the English Bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War."

Other great statesmen of that era, including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Jackson confirmed this point of view held by Franklin; and later by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy both issued sovereign money, James Garfield tried, and all three died in office.

A remarkably honest English historian, John Twells, speaking of the money of the Colonies, their Colonial Scrip, wrote: "It was the monetary system under which America’s Colonies flourished to such an extent that Edmund Burke was able to write about them: ’Nothing in the history of the world resembles their progress. It was a sound and beneficial system, and its effects led to the happiness of the people.’ "

John Twells added: "In a bad hour, the British Parliament took away from America its own scrip money, forbade any further issue of such bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in British coins. Consider now the consequences: this restriction of the medium of exchange paralyzed all the industrial energies of the people. Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies; most rigorous distress visited every family and every business, discontent became desperation, and reached a point, to use the words of Dr. Johnson, when human nature rises up and asserts its rights."

Another historical writer, Peter Cooper, expressed himself along the same lines. After saying how Franklin had explained to members of Parliament the reason for the prosperity of the Colonies, Cooper wrote: "After Franklin gave explanations on the true cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, the Parliament enacted laws forbidding the use of this money in the payment of taxes. This decree, clearly in the interest of the British bankers who stood behind the Crown, brought so many drawbacks and so much poverty to the people that it was the main cause of the Revolution. The supression of the Colonial money was a much more important reason for the general uprising than the Tea and Stamp Acts."

DANGER! The Scrip of the Bankers has Taken over America

Today, in America as well as in Europe, we are under the regime of the Scrip of the Bankers instead of the scrip of the sovereign nations.

Hence the enormous public debts, everlasting interest (usury) charges, taxes that plunder purchasing power and rob the production of the people, with the result being more and more consolidation of the financial dictatorship.

Where shall we start to correct the fraud of the bankers?

The first step in the monetary reform being advocated by more and more action groups of educated and intelligent people is precisely the replacement of the banks’ debt money by debt-free money issued by the Constitutionally mandated sovereign government of the nation, the United States Congress, and elsewhere, the British Parliament, and similar governments.

It is the duty of those governments to serve and protect their people, not allow financial robber barons to destroy them.

We must end the dictatorship of the moneyed interests!

It will soon become clear to you that we need to abolish the Federal Reserve Banking System as a privately owned central bank controlled partly by foreign interests.

Check clearing must be taken over by the U. S. Treasury Department, and the commercial banks of our system must no longer be permitted to create and issue debt money by fractional reserve deposit expansion.

A debt money system never provides money to pay interest, so the banks ultimately acquire all the People’s property by foreclosure, as Thomas Jefferson said they would.

The above is political satire! — right?

p e a c e VII.Bee

1758 Benjamin Franklin Age 52

Establishes routine of club attendance that lasts throughout years in England.

On Mondays often dines at George and Vulture with group of scientists, philanthropists, and explorers, including John Ellicot and, occasionally, Captain James Cook.

Thursdays, usually dines with favorite group, Club of Honest Whigs, at St. Paul's Coffeehouse; members include John Canton, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, James Burgh, William Rose, Andrew Kippis, and, occasionally, James Boswell.

Sundays, frequently dines with Sir John Pringle, who gradually displaces printer William Strahan as closest friend in England; Alexander Small and David Hume are often guests.

January to May, confers with Penns and defends Pennsylvania at Board of Trade; finally, November 27, Penns concede limited taxation, but they write the next day to Pennsylvania Assembly averring that Franklin lacks candor.

Spends week at Cambridge in late May performing evaporation experiments with John Hadley, professor of chemistry.

Visits ancestral homes at Ecton and Banbury in July with son William, collecting genealogical information.

Invents damper for stoves or chimneys, December 2.

1762 Benjamin Franklin Age 56

Receives honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford, April 30.

Sends Giambatista Beccaria, Italian scientist who disseminated Franklin's electrical theories, a description on July 13 of recently invented musical instrument, glass armonica, which he had been working on since 1761; Mozart and Beethoven later compose for it.

Leaves London in August for Portsmouth to embark for Pennsylvania; arrives in Philadelphia November 1.

Son William marries Elizabeth Downes September 4 in London, and is commissioned royal governor of New Jersey September 9.

1764 Benjamin Franklin Age 58

Elected speaker of Assembly, May 26; drafts petition to King for change of government, and signs it as speaker after Assembly adopts it.

Massachusetts House of Representatives writes Franklin as speaker urging other colonies to oppose Stamp Act, Parliamentary measure to raise revenue by taxing printed matter in colonies; September 12, Franklin lays proposal before Assembly, which instructs its London agent, Richard Jackson, to oppose passage of proposed Stamp Act, to seek modifications of Sugar Act (enacted April 5), and to argue that only the Pennsylvania legislature has the right to impose taxes in Pennsylvania; Franklin signs instructions.

August and September, election campaign for Assembly features vicious attacks on Franklin's character (it is alleged that he favored royal government because he coveted governorship; that he had drawn large income from public monies while Assembly agent in England; that he had been careless with public funds given to his supervision; that William's mother was his maidservant Barbara, and that he had buried her in an unmarked grave; in addition, an old ethnic slur – Franklin had called German immigrants "Palatine Boors" in 1751 – was brought up), and he is defeated October 1.

His party retains a majority and appoints him October 26 to join Jackson as Assembly's agent in London.

Minority members impugn Franklin, who defends his integrity November 5 in Remarks on a Late Protest.

Leaves Philadelphia November 7; wife, Deborah, again refusing to sail overseas, remains in Philadelphia.

Arrives at Isle of Wight December 9; reaches London the next day and takes up residence at old lodgings with Mrs. Stevenson.

Summaries: http://www.english.udel.edu/lemay/franklin/american.html

The Currency Act 1764

The colonies suffered a constant shortage of currency with which to conduct trade. There were no gold or silver mines and currency could only be obtained through trade as regulated by Great Britain. Many of the colonies felt no alternative to printing their own paper money in the form of Bills of Credit.

But because there were no common regulations and in fact no standard value on which to base the notes, confusion ensued. The notes were issued by land banks, or loan offices, which based the value of mortgaged land. Some notes payed interest, others did not. Some could be used only for purchase and not to repay debt. Some were issued only for public debts & could not be used in private transactions. There was no standard value common to all of the colonies.

British merchant-creditors were very uncomfortable with this system, not only because of the obvious complexity, but because of the rapid depreciation of the notes due to regular fluctuations in the colonial economy.

On September 1, 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act, effectively assuming control of the colonial currency system. The act prohibited the issue of any new bills and the reissue of existing currency.

Parliament favored a "hard currency" system based on the pound sterling, but was not inclined to regulate the colonial bills.

Rather, they simply abolished them.

The colonies protested vehemently against this.

They suffered a trade deficit with Great Britain to begin with & argued that the shortage of hard capital would further exacerbate the situation.

Another provision of the Currency Act established what amounted to a "superior" Vice-admiralty court, at the call of Navel [sic] commanders who wished to assure that persons suspected of smuggling or other violations of the customs laws would receive a hearing favorable to the British, and not the colonial, interests.

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/currencyact.htm

The Townshend Revenue Act 1767

Taxes on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea were applied with the design of raising £40,000 a year for the administration of the colonies.

The result was the resurrection of colonial hostilities created by the Stamp Act.

Reaction assumed revolutionary proportions in Boston, in the summer of 1768, when customs officials impounded a sloop owned by John Hancock, for violations of the trade regulations.

Crowds mobbed the customs office, forcing the officials to retire to a British Warship in the Harbor.

Troops from England and Nova Scotia marched in to occupy Boston on October 1, 1768.

Bostonians offered no resistance. Rather they changed their tactics. They established non-importation agreements that quickly spread throughout the colonies.

British trade soon dried up and the powerful merchants of Britain once again interceded on behalf of the colonies.

June 29, 1767

AN ACT for granting certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs upon the exportation from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoa nuts of the produce of the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on china earthen ware exported to America; and for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and plantations.

WHEREAS it is expedient that a revenue should be raised, in your Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of civil government, in such provinces as it shall be found necessary; and towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting and securing the said dominions; ... be it enacted.... That from and after the twentieth day of November, one thousand seven hundred and sixty seven, there shall be raised, levied, collected, and paid, unto his Majesty, his heirs, and successors, for upon and the respective Goods here in after mentioned, which shall be imported from Great Britain into any colony or plantation in America which now is or hereafter may be, under the dominion of his Majesty, his heirs, or successors, the several Rates and Duties following; that is to say,

For every hundredweight avoirdupois of crown, plate, flint, and white glass, four shillings and eight pence.

For every hundred weight avoirdupois of red lead, two shillings.

For every hundred weight avoirdupois of green glass, one shilling and two pence.

For every hundred weight avoirdupois of white lead, two shillings.

For every hundred weight avoirdupois of painters colours, two shillings.

For every pound weight avoirdupois of tea, three pence.

For every ream of paper, usually called or known by the name of Atlas fine, twelve shillings. ...

IV. ...and that all the monies that shall arise by the said duties (except the necessary charges of raising, collecting, levying, recovering, answering, paying, and accounting for the same) shall be applied, in the first place, in such manner as is herein after mentioned, in making a more certain and adequate provision for the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of civil government in such of the said colonies and plantations where it shall be found necessary; and that the residue of such duties shall be payed into the receipt of his Majesty's exchequer, and shall be entered separate and apart from all other monies paid or payable to his Majesty ...; and shall be there reserved, to be from time to time disposed of by parliament towards defraying the necessary expense of defending, protecting, and securing, the British colonies and plantations in America.

V. And be it further enacted ..., That his Majesty and his successors shall be, and are hereby, impowered, from time to time, by any warrant or warrants under his or their royal sign manual or sign manuals, countersigned by the high treasurer, or any three or more of the commissioners of the treasury for the time being, to cause such monies to be applied, out of the produce of the duties granted by this act, as his Majesty, or his successors, shall think proper or necessary, for defraying the charges of the administration of justice, and the support of the civil government, within all or any of the said colonies or plantations... .

X. And whereas by an act of parliament made in the fourteenth year of the reign of King Charles the Second, intituled, An act for preventing frauds, and regulating abuses, in his Majesty's customs, and several other acts now in force, it is lawful for any officer of his Majesty's customs, authorized by writ of assistance under the seal of his Majesty's court of exchequer, to take a constable, headborough, or other public officer inhabiting near unto the place, and in the daytime to enter and go into any house, shop cellar, warehouse, or room or other place and, in case of resistance, to break open doors, chests, trunks, and other pakage there, to seize, and from thence to bring, any kind of goods or merchandise whatsoever prohibited or uncustomed, and to put and secure the same in his Majesty's storehouse next to the place where such seizure shall be made; and whereas by an act made in the seventh and eighth years of the reign of King William the Third, intituled An act for preventing frauds, and regulating abuses, in the plantation trade, it is, amongst otherthings, enacted, that the officers for collecting and managing his Majesty's revenue, and inspecting the plantation trade, in America, shall have the same powers and authorities to enter houses or warehouses, to search or seize goods prohibited to be imported or exported into or out of any of the said plantations, or for which any duties are payable, or ought to have been paid; and that the like assistance shall be given to the said officers in the execution of their office, as, by the said recited act of the fourteenth year of King Charles the Second, is provided for the officers of England: but, no authority being expressly given by the said act, made in the seventh and eighth years of the reign of King William the Third, to any particular court to grant such writs of assistance for the officers of the customs in the said plantations, it is doubted whether such officers can legally enter houses and other places on land, to search for and seize goods, in the manner directed by the said recited acts: To obviate which doubts for the future, and in order to carry the intention of the said recited acts into effectual execution, be it enacted ..., That from and after the said twentieth day of November, one thousand seven hundred and sixty seven, such writs of assistance, to authorize and impower the officers of his Majesty's customs to enter and go into any house, warehouse, shop, cellar, or other place, in the British colonies or plantations in America, to search for and seize prohibited and uncustomed goods, in the manner directed by the said recited acts, shall and may be granted by the said superior or supreme court of justice having jurisdiction within such colony or plantation respectively...

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces
in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Falluja.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Picture: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

Loved one
Killed by U.S. forces
in their homes in Fallujah

Body of loved one in Fallujah.

Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004

Photo: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

(left)	Body of loved one in Falluja. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004
(right)	Body of loved one in Fallujah. Many people were killed by US forces in their homes in Fallujah, November 2004 Photos: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

Unspeakable grief and horror

Two small children killed as part of the mass killings by coalition occupation for oil forces, April, 2004

Photo: aljazeera.net

النتائج الأولية للحل الأميركي الحذر للمقاومة العراقية في الفلوجة (الجزيرة)

...and the circus of deception killing continues...

Most recent 'Circus of Killing' click here

— 2009

— 2008

— 2007

— 2006

— 2005

— 2004

— 2003
Circus of Torture 2003 — now

He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"

And of course I am.

Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.

"It's all illusion," I say. "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie. The game! The game, me girl, me boy! Takes on interest, don't you know. T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"

Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here

Let's change it!

Globalization

      Coca-Cola and Plachimada, India
      Deregulation, Accumulation of wealth
      — India resistance and corporations
      — India photos

Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans

Photos of Iraq children being born deformed

U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos

US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah

       Democracy in the United States and most of the rest of the industrial West is therefore a false
       front on a rich man’s mansion, a sham in which people are given a political vote but then clock in
       each day to an economic system in which their entire lives are regimented by a small group of
       executives busily downsizing whatever workplace rights people had gained in centuries of struggle.

In the dreamtime
Tough love in the wild, wild west

      The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war,
      the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse,
      and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress

       Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride
       Blair Brown Campbell Goldsmith Hoon Straw
       U.S. and British bombing raids illegal.

Mental Health disorders effecting returning US troops

US and War — Interview with George Galloway

Most religious people are on the same side as most progressive people