fuckette

Life

2004-09-07T18:11:00.000-04:00

- Chechen terrorists and Arab mercenaries slaughtered at least 335 people, most of them children, at a school in North Ossetia in Russia this September 3rd, 2004

-On August 31st, 2004 there was another attack conducted by terrorists in Moscow, where 9 more people were killed by a car bomb.

-August 24, 2004 - two planes explode in mid-air, killing 89 people - also responsibility of alleged Chechen terrorists (black widows in this case).

These attacks will probably not be the last on the Russian Federation.

- March 11, 2004 - Madrid, Spain - 191 people killed by Al Qaeda in a terrorist attack to a train.

Over 600 people (the latest attack involving mostly children) have died in these two countries (Spain, Russia) because of terrorism this year (We're not even including other terrorist attacks that have occured this year in several other countries, and we willingly choosing to stay out of the Arab-Israel conflict for this entry).

What's really bothering us lately is, at least from our point of view, that although people have shown solidarity around the world when these attacks occurred, we have not seen the outpour of sympathy or expression of rage and anger in view of these attacks, as we saw it when 9/11 happened. It bothers us because, if you ask any person around the world today what happened on September 11 2001 - they will know.

Yet, we are 80% sure that if you were to ask an average person (parts of Europe and obviously Russia are going to be an exception) what happened on March 11 2004, or on August 24, August 31 and September 3 2004, they most likely won't know, or, if American, they will tell you something about a hurricane and about Clinton getting a heart surgery.

From what we've been seeing in people's reactions, as horrible as it will sound, these attacks have been treated as second-rate tragedies - as though somehow they're not that important as 9/11 was, as if just because they were Russian lives and Spanish lives, they are not worth the same as those American lives lost in September 11.

You all saw the world change on September 11, you all saw the flood of media coverage all day everyday for around 2 weeks straight, you saw the rage and the anger and the indignation from everyone - especially Americans, obviously. An entire campaign of war was launched because of this attack! But what about Russia and Spain? Where is the solidarity from Americans, when the rest of the world showed compassion and solidarity for them in their time of need?

President Bush barely mentioned the Beslan School Siege for political gain, to consolidate his campaign and strengthen his speech. What is the US doing to protect those Russians that are still at risk today? Is the war on terror simply a US-made concept that is only valid for President Bush, Americans and Fox News?

What would have happened if terrorists had conducted this same attack in an elementary school on the first day of classes in places like Emeryville, CA or Paducah, KY???

After examining the lifestyle of Americans**, living in that country, finding out and looking at what its government does and has done throughout history (post WWII), immersing ourselves in the mindset of Americans (since 1996), we have come to the conclusion that Americans are the least "innocent" civilian population in the world.

We make this serious indictment, due to the fact that simply by maintaining their regular lifestyle and choosing, voting for or letting elections be hijacked by their own Supreme Court and allowing an imperialistic administration and a non-independent corporate media to continue spreading their brand of American "freedom" and "Jeffersonian democracy" around the world, the American people have, through their failure to engage in an intense, consistent resistance and omission in holding the US government accountable, indirectly assisted in vulnerating the will of the world and disregarding UN opposition, causing the world a massive, irreparable amount of damage.

And still after September 11, most Americans continued to fail to understand why some people could have harbored such hate for the US.

Yet, when Russian children in North Ossetia, or Spanish civilians in Madrid, are killed by terrorists - Americans are able to just brush the events off, and continue on caring about the Republican National Convention, Hurricane Frances and Bill Clinton's heart surgery.

Honestly, we are fed up with the double standard and the special VIP treatment that Americans continue to get in the world, not because they do not deserve to be cared for, but because they are not the only people inhabiting the planet and should not be regarded as the most important faction of the global community.

The fact remains that even though they are the biggest source of wealth and pop culture, they are also the most significant fount of instability and violence in the planet today.

We can understand that the international community considers Latin American elections to be always suspicious (because of the endless cases of corruption and high rates of crime in these lands) and thus they always send us international observers, yet in American elections, there has been no international observation up to this date. We can understand that the US has a bigger voice in economic organizations, because it produces more, consumes more and has the 2nd largest GDP in the world. We can even understand that Americans don't even need visas to get into most countries in the world.

What we can't understand, and at the same time find unacceptable, is the fact that the most discordant, uncongenial, wasteful, ignorant, arrogant and imperialistic group of civilian lives in the world, as are Americans, continue to be perceived as more valuable than the rest of the world's lives.

You mostly only hear about American casualties in Iraq (today reaching 1,000 due to a lie), American casualties in September 11, Americans are the ones fingerprinting and treating everyone who comes into their country like criminals, an American former president's surgery makes the news, it's bad to be "anti-American" but who says it's bad to be anti-Russian, anti-Finnish, anti-Kenyan or anti-Venezuelan? Not only that, but according to the US mindset, God (for those who believe in such an entity) only blesses America and to top it off, after Bush's speech, Americans are the ones who "are going to make the world safer"

Who gave them this authority? Must be all that false, venomous, self-serving rhetoric of "American Exceptionalism" and the "City on a Hill" fable. And then they have the audacity to wonder why anti-Americanism continues to grow. We guess, like they say here in Venezuela, "People get the government they deserve" - a careless, gullible, detestable populace* deserves treatment as such.

Maybe it will always be this way, hopefully just until the American empire starts to decline, but we will continue to stand by the rest of the world, caring for every life, no matter what nationality, including American, extending our deep heart-felt condolences to all those forgotten, underinformed, underestimated lives that have been lost and ignored simply because they were not American lives.

Until then, we will continue to mourn our losses and our abuses here in the rest of the world (opposed to the notion that the world is only comprised of the US) and keep voicing our opinion on this terrible and upsetting double standard that the United States has imposed on the rest of the world, making us feel like our peoples and our struggles are invisible, questionable, and simply not important.

Once again, we express our deep sympathy and solidarity for those lives lost in Russia, Spain, Iraq and so many other countries that have been forgotten by the US-led war on terrorism - you will always be in our thoughts and in our hearts, for your lives are just as important as ours.

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On Putin critics who want Russia to dialogue with Chechnya:

"Why don't you meet Osama Bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?"

- Vladimir Putin

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*As with everything, there are few exceptions.

**For the sake of clarity, we have replaced "most Americans" for just "Americans" - but we are aware that it is not all of them, just most of them.

Sweden is the best place for employees

2004-09-07T01:21:00.000-04:00

http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1076153811167

ILO report: Sweden and Finland best countries for wage earners

According to a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Sweden is the world’s best country for wage-earners, with Finland a close second.
The report, Economic Security for a Better World, covers 90 countries and 86% of the world’s population.
According to the ILO, economic security experienced by workers is a significant factor in assessing the happiness of the people; happiness is seen to enhance stability, growth, and tolerance.

An employee’s economic security comprises seven different sub-sectors.
For instance, Finnish employees have better opportunities to affect the content of their work than their colleagues in many other countries. Finland also has the best protection against illegal termination.
Other sub-sectors include occupational safety (Finland 4), the possibilities to develop professional skills (2), sufficient income (7), and the possibility to be heard through trade unions, for instance (3).
The ILO feels that the traditional method of gauging the state of the labour market on the basis of the unemployment rate is seriously obsolete. The reason for this is the increase and greater variety of hidden unemployment.
For instance, most of the two million people who are in prison in the United States would be unemployed if they were free.
The ILO’s calculations mean that even though Finland has fairly high unemployment, it is doing well in the seventh sector measuring security: that of work opportunities, in which it ranks ninth.

In addition to Finland and Sweden, countries ranking high on the list include Norway, Denmark, and The Netherlands.
Although it is experiencing strong economic growth, Britain is only in 15th place in overall security. The United States is in 25th place.
However, Guy Standing, head of the ILO’s socio-economic programme, said in London on Wednesday that even in Finland the ideals of solidarity are deteriorating, and security is seriously weakening.
Standing, who has studied the Finnish labour market, says that there is increasing pressure for cutbacks in support systems, which is likely to reduce the feeling of security that wage-earners have.
"At the same time, people’s happiness decreases. That cannot be a good thing for the national economy."

* For the original report from the ILO, go to:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/ses/index.htm

Denial

2004-09-07T01:17:00.000-04:00

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=dispatch&s=vandongen081804

Caracas, Venezeula

Late Monday night, 19 hours after the results in this week's referendum on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez were reported, opposition leader Carlos Hermoso was furiously spinning a conspiracy theory. Despite results endorsed by international observers that showed Chávez winning by a landslide 16 percentage points, Hermoso said that "massive fraud" had been committed by both the election observers and the electronic voting machines used here for the first time. In a complicated yarn, Hermoso claimed that touch-screen voting machines in which people could vote "Yes" to oust Chávez or "No" to keep him were expertly "manipulated" by the government. Though there had also been a paper trail recording each voter's choice, Hermoso said the papers had been kidnapped and are now under military custody in a building called the "White Rabbit." But Hermoso warned that hard evidence of such fraud will be "very difficult" to find. As for the stamp of approval offered by election observers like Jimmy Carter, Hermoso argued that such observers were "compromised" by oil companies and the U.S. State Department, which wanted to keep Chávez in power.

Never mind that the populist Venezuelan commander-in-chief spent much of the recall campaign bashing the U.S., or that Washington openly welcomed a short-lived coup against Chávez earlier in his term. Like many others in the Democratic Coordinator (CD), the loose grouping of 27 political parties and 40 civil society organizations that united against Chávez, Hermoso suddenly found himself on the defensive following Chávez's big victory on Sunday, and simply refused to believe he had lost. The New York Times reported that on Monday two opposition leaders became so angry that "their faces turned white." Indeed, many other opposition leaders demanded a manual recount. "We want to know the truth," said Julio Borges, another top Coordinator official. "We will keep fighting until all our hair falls out." Some called for more anti-Chávez protests like the ones that have disrupted Venezuelan life for more than two years. Seven people were wounded in a small protest on Monday.

Indeed, it seems that the opposition leaders simply believed their own hype, while not realizing how ineffective the anti-Chávez movement had been. Riven by internal divisions, the CD waged a weak campaign that failed to take into account the president's enormous popularity in the poor barrios that make up the majority of Venezuela. The CD started on a bad note. In December 2003, the group mounted a devastating two month strike in which almost all Venezuelan business came to a halt and the state oil company nearly ceased operations. The strike ended in February 2004, but the economic damage was severe and the public, say some analysts, largely blamed the CD. "The strike was a failure," said Gregory Wilpert, head of a website called Venezuela Analysis.

Already behind, the CD never created a coherent political agenda to gain the 3.75 million votes it needed to oust Chávez. Its leader, Enrique Mendoza, was an uninspired speaker who brought little to the campaign. Then, the agenda the CD did release at the end of July largely copied Chávez's programs to end poverty and unemployment, without his searing--and popular--populist rhetoric. "The problem with the opposition is that they live in their own world," said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at Washington's Inter-American Dialogue, an organization focused on Latin America. "Having an anti-Chávez agenda wasn't enough." Indeed, on Election Day the opposition's internal exit polls showed it beating Chávez by 20 percentage points, though most mainstream polls, at the time, showed Chávez had a slight lead.

Meanwhile, Chávez, though known as a loose cannon, ran a strong and disciplined campaign. "We shouldn't be asking what the Coordinator lacked, but what Chávez had in abundance," said one opposition consultant who believes the Coordinator underestimated Chávez's charismatic leadership. "The truth is that the president is an excellent campaigner." Chávez's social programs, funded by oil money from the state-run oil monopoly--which has benefited from skyrocketing oil prices--were part of this campaign. Chávez invested up to $1.7 billion from Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, in building "missions" in poor barrios that offer free health care and teach people how to read. He also spent state money on primary education and new housing for the poor, all of which was advertised as being a direct result of Chávez policies. And after the oil strike, Chávez got the state oil company back up and running--partly by hiring Algerian experts to come in and train new Venezuelan workers--and kept the country's 3 million barrels of oil exports a day flowing. Venezuela is the world's number five oil exporter, and Chávez has vowed to expand oil production even further in the coming months.

In fact, the hard truth is that Venezuela is more stable today than it would have been if the opposition had won, at least in the short term. If the president was defeated or even if the vote had been close, mass chaos likely would have ensued with fanatics on both sides taking to the streets. A new election probably would have been held in 30 days, creating another opportunity for protest and even violence.

So despite Hermoso's cries of fraud, the long journey to remove Chávez through a recall is over. Opposition leaders should accept their loss if they are to have any chance of toppling him in the next presidential election in 2006. And they had better get cracking--Chávez's supporters are already talking about keeping him in office until 2021.

Rachel Van Dongen covers Latin America for The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and other publications.

Why this blog exists?

2004-09-02T16:53:00.000-04:00

Freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition -- this set of guarantees, protected in the U.S. by the First Amendment and guaranteed in Venezuela by Articles 57 and 58 of our 1999 constitution, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression is both fundamentally important in its own right and also key to the fulfilment of all other rights. The protection and implementation of other rights depend on freedom of expression in two ways. It is only in societies where the free flow of information and ideas is permitted that individuals will be aware of their rights and actively seek to protect them. In addition, freedom of expression is essential if violations of human rights are to be exposed and challenged.

Freedom of speech is often regarded as an integral concept in modern democracies, where it is understood to outlaw government censorship. Thus states may still punish (but not prohibit) certain damaging types of expressions, notably sedition, defamation, publishing secrets regarding matters of state security, etc.

When an individual announces an unpopular opinion, he or she may face the disdain of their community or even be subjected to violent reactions.

Free speech rights still need constant, vigilant protection. New questions arise and old ones return. Should flag burning be a crime? What about government or private censorship of works of art that touch on sensitive issues like religion or sexuality? Should the Internet be subject to any form of government control? What about punishing college students who espouse racist or sexist opinions?

At the same time, freedom of speech does not prevent punishing conduct that intimidates, harasses, or threatens another person, even if words are used.

Ethics are an integral part of freedom of expression and nowadays, the principles embodied in the concept of ethics are being violated constantly by journalists, media outlets (both state and private), religious figures and politicians across the globe to the detriment of democracy and freedom of speech around the world.

The essential duties of the journalist in gathering, reporting on and commenting on events consist in:

1) Respecting the truth no matter what consequences it may bring about to him/her, and this is because the right of the public is to know the truth.

2) Defending the freedom of information, of commentaries and of criticism.

3) Publishing only such pieces of information the origin of which is known or - in the opposite case - accompanying them with due reservations; not suppressing essential information and not altering texts and documents.

4) Not making use of disloyal methods to get information, photographs and documents.

5) Feeling obliged to respect the private life of people.

6) Correcting any published information which has proved to be inaccurate.

7) Observing the professional secrecy and not divulging the source of information obtained confidentially.

8) Abstaining from plagiarism, slander, defamation and unfounded accusations as well as from receiving any advantage owing to the publication or suppression of information.

9) Never confusing the profession of journalist with that of advertiser or propagandist and not accepting any consideration, direct or not, from advertisers.

10) Refusing any pressure and accepting editorial directives only from the leading persons in charge in the editorial office. Every journalist worthy of this name feels honoured to observe the above-mentioned principles; while recognising the law in force in each country, he does accept only the jurisdiction of his colleagues in professional matters, free from governmental or other interventions.

Public speech, the media, and artistic creativity enjoy far greater freedoms in Venezuela these days than they did before the transition to democracy.

Defamation and libel

Free speech is simply what is left when many other things are taken out. One of those things is the effect of defamation laws, which seek to protect an individual's reputation.

The central problem is to reconcile this purpose with the competing demands of free speech or to put the problem another way (through the eyes of a journalist):

"It is really about how far individuals in society should be protected against what they perceive as the excessive power of those - like the press - who can command a large audience. In practice, defamation law is about the ability of the media to expose an individual to the public on a grand scale".

In a free society there is a strong presumption that people should be able to speak freely, especially in relation to public issues and an individual's behaviour in relation to these issues. However, the reality of potential for abuse of this freedom remains and so with it the need for defamation laws.

Despite free speech laws in Venezuela, we have lies and silence instead of truth.

To create a climate of sincerity, we must not only challenge obvious hypocrisies but also demolish some hypocrisies so solidly entrenched in our culture we no longer notice them. Venezuela needs a pluralism and diversity of media that is independent both of large private corporations and of the state.

Today, as we are living in this new millenium, media concentration presents a threat to freedom of expression.

There is a state of oligopoly or monopoly in a given media industry. For example, movie production is known to be dominated by major studios since the early 20th Century.

Second, there may be some large-scale owners in a industry that are not the causes of monopoly or oligopoly. Clear Channel Communications, especially since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, acquired many radio stations across the United States, and came to own more than 1,200 stations.

The Cisneros Group of Companies from Venezuela is one of the largest privately held media, entertainment, telecommunications and consumer products organizations in the world. The Company's assets include: AOL Latin America; DIRECTV Latin America; Univision Communications, Inc.; Venevision, the leading television network in Venezuela; Eccelera, the Group's technology investing arm; and Venevision International, one of the largest television distribution companies in Ibero-America.

The Cisneros Group also owns, operates and has interests in other consumer product-based businesses in Latin America such as supermarket chains, fast food chains, video franchises and beverage companies. These companies include: Pueblo Xtra International, Regional Brewing Company, Panamco and Blockbuster.

News Corporation Ltd. from Australia owned by Rupert Murdoch, is one of the three largest international media groups, operating in most sectors and most continents.

Its main website includes the group's annual report and information about its global holdings. In 2000 the group had assets of around US$36 billion and annual revenue of US$14 billion. At the beginning of 2003 assets were around US$42 billion, with revenues of US$16 billion. By April 2004 some 75% of revenue was attributable to operations in the US. At that time News announced plans to shift its corporate domicile from Australia to the US (which would facilitate access to capital) and to buy the Murdoch family's controlling stake in Queensland Press, which was partly owned by News and had a substantial stake in News.

Concentration of media ownership often refer to the presence of media conglomerates. When a company owns many different types of media businesses, it is referred to as a media conglomerate. Among the best-known examples are Time Warner, Disney, and Viacom.

Do you want one or two big companies acting as gatekeepers and controlling your access to news and entertainment?

We allow media companies to use them in exchange for their assurance that they're serving the public interest, yet fascist media outlets like Globovision, El Nacional and RCTV nightly news clearly show a disturbing and systematic pattern of lies, deceit, misinformation, half truths and exaggerations about events that occur daily, completely disregarding their own code of ethics and insulting the average reader both within Venezuela and abroad about the current state of affairs in our homeland. Spin is the key to providing info-tainment, truth and balanced coverage of news is something to be ignored and ridiculed in our everyday reality.

Therefore, this site will publish articles in different languages (with an option for translation) in order to reach, debate and inform readers in all corners of the planet about a wide range of issues that we consider to be of importance.

We at Global Existence, without any pretensions or desire to be Know-It-Alls or infallibles, will do our share to promote a more broader look about current issues both in Venezuela and around the world, because in the end, we are all Global Citizens!!

* This introduction has been made using quotes from many sources to enhance our understanding of the world around us and to make full use of our constitutionally protected freedom of expression as mandated by Articles 57 and 58 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Links of interest:

http://www.unesco.org/op/eng/3may98/art-19.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Expression

http://archive.aclu.org/library/pbp10.html

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/cooray/rights/chap6.htm

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/15/1071336859827.html

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/media_consolidation/index.php

http://www.ketupa.net/murdoch.htm

http://www.ijnet.org/FE_Article/codeethics.asp?UILang=1&CId=8296&CIdLang=1

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