Following fears that Burma might become another Rwanda, President Matthew Jenoin has ejected The ambassador from Burma. The move came after the rohingya people of Burma faced treatment similar to the one faced by the Tutsi in Rwanda came to light.

A man with a semi-automatic rifle killed at least four people and wounded several others Friday as he carried out a deadly rampage across several blocks of a normally idyllic beachfront city before police shot him dead in the Santa Monica College Library.

Police said earlier that seven people were killed, including the gunman.

The violence began when the gunman, dressed in all black and wearing what appeared to be a ballistic jacket, opened fire on a house where the bodies of the gunman's father and brother were found, authorities said.

As the house burst into flames, the man wounded a woman in a car before moving toward the campus, spraying bullets as he went. Police said he opened fire on a city bus, a police car and other vehicles, as well as bystanders and pedestrians.

He killed three people on the street before shooting at an SUV leaving a campus parking lot. That vehicle's driver was killed and two passengers were wounded as the car crashed through a block wall.

From there, the gunman entered the campus, shooting a woman as he made his way toward the college's library, where students were studying for final exams.

"It appears that those who were encountered on the street were random victims," Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said.

"We saw a woman get shot in the head," said administrative assistant Trena Johnson, who looked out the window of the dean's office, where she works, when she heard gunfire. "I haven't been able to stop shaking," she said.

Inside the library, students reported hearing gunfire and screams.

"I was totally scared to death and I can't believe it happened so fast," said Vincent Zhang, a 20-year-old economics major who said he heard a woman pleading, "No, no. Please, no."

The gunman continued to shoot at people in the library, Seabrooks said, but apparently didn't hit anybody there as dozens ran for the exits.

"The officers came in and directly engaged the suspect and he was shot and killed on the scene," she said.

Just 3 miles away, President Barack Obama was attending a fundraising luncheon. Secret Service spokesman Max Milien said the agency was aware of the shooting, which began just before noon, but it had no impact on the president's event.

The president was scheduled to take Marine One to the airport, but traveled by motorcade to avoid any impact on the ongoing local response to the shooting.

After the gunman was killed, police wearing helmets and armed with shotguns and rifles searched the campus for a second shooter. A man dressed entirely in black, the words "Life is a Gamble" on the back of his sweatshirt, was seen being led away in handcuffs.

Sgt. Richard Lewis, a Santa Monica police spokesman, said at a news conference Friday night that investigators had released a man who had been detained and questioned as a "person of interest."

The identities of the man detained and those who were killed were not immediately released.

Two officials briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press the two victims in the burned house were the gunman's father and brother.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

Two women were admitted to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said Dr. Marshall Morgan, the chief of emergency medicine. One was listed in critical condition after undergoing surgery. The other arrived in serious condition but was upgraded to fair condition Friday night.

Three other women went to UCLA Medical Center Santa Monica with relatively minor injuries, Morgan said. One had shrapnel-type injuries and the two others had injuries not related to gunfire, he said. All were treated and released.

Jerry Cunningham Rathner, who lives near the house that caught fire, said she heard gunshots and came out onto her porch to see a man shooting at the residence. Soon, the building erupted in flames and was billowing smoke.

The gunman, dressed in black and wearing an ammunition belt, pointed a rifle at a woman in a car and told her to pull over, Cunningham Rathner said. He then signaled to a second car, also driven by a woman, to slow down and began firing into the vehicle.

"He fired three to four shots into the car -- boom, boom, boom, right at her," said Cunningham Rathner, who went to the woman's aid and saw she was wounded in the shoulder.

She said the gunman then abducted the woman in the first car and drove away.

From there, the chaos shifted to Santa Monica College, located among homes and strip malls more than a mile inland from the city's famous Santa Monica Pier, Third Street Promenade and its expansive, sandy beaches.

The two-year college, spread out across 38 acres, has about 34,000 students.

Jimes Gillespie, 20, told The Associated Press he was in the library studying when he heard gunfire, and he and dozens of other students began fleeing the three-story building.

"As I was running down the stairs I saw one of the gunmen," said Gillespie, who described the shooter as a white man in his 20s, wearing cornrows in his hair and black overalls.

As he ran across campus, he said he saw a car in front of the English building that was riddled with bullet holes, had shattered windows and a baby's car seat in the back.

Student Noke Taumalolo told Fox News that he saw a female worker sorting recycling cans lying bloody on the ground with the gunman standing over her.  According to the student, the gunman was wearing black tactical gear including a vest, SWAT-like fatigues and a riot helmet.

In a staff parking lot, college employee Joe Orcutt said he saw the gunman standing calmly with his weapon, looking as though he was trying to determine which people to shoot at.

"I turn around and that's when he's just standing there, like he's modeling for some ammo magazine," Orcutt said. "He was very calm just standing there, panning around, seeing who he could shoot, one bullet at a time, like target practice.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/08/gunman-opens-fire-at-california-community-college-several-injured-police-say/?intcmp=HPBucket#ixzz2VcnkXq5I

The Illinois Ag Dept.  illegally seized privately owned bees from renowned naturalist, Terrence Ingram, without providing him with a search warrant and before the court hearing on the matter, reports Prairie Advocate News.

Behind the obvious violations of his Constitutional rights is Monsanto. Ingram was researching Roundup’s effects on bees, which he’s raised for 58 years.  “They ruined 15 years of my research,” he told Prairie Advocate, by stealing most of his stock.

A certified letter from the Ag Dept.’s Apiary Inspection Supervisor, Steven D. Chard, stated:

“During a routine inspection of your honeybee colonies by … Inspectors Susan Kivikko and Eleanor Balson on October 23, 2011, the bacterial disease ‘American Foulbrood’ was detected in a number of colonies located behind your house…. Presence of the disease in some of your colonies was confirmed via test results from the USDA Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland that analyzed samples collected from your apiary….”

Ingram can prove his bees did not have foulbrood, and planned to do so at a hearing set in April, but the state seized his bees at the end of March. They have not returned them and no one at the Ag Dept. seems to know where his bees are.

The bees could have been destroyed, or they could have been turned over to Monsanto to ascertain why some of his bees are resistant to Roundup. Without the bees as evidence, Ingram simply cannot defend against the phony charges of foulbrood.

Worse, all his queens died after Kivikko and Balson “inspected” his property, outside of his presence and without a warrant.

Of note, Illinois beekeepers are going underground after Ingram’s experience and refuse to register their hives, in case the state tries to steal their private property on phony claims.

Youth gang riots in the Swedish capital Stockholm have entered fifth straight night. Hundreds of mostly immigrant teenagers tore through the suburbs, smashing windows and burning cars in the country’s worst outbreak of violence in years.

At least six vehicles were torched throughout the city late on Thursday while the police called for reinforcements from other Swedish cities bracing for further unrest. 

Firefighters were putting out flames that engulfed several cars and a school in immigrant-dominated areas of Stockholm.

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation (Blackwater’s Black Ops, 9/15/2010) revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Services) clandestine intelligence services was sold to the multinational Monsanto. Blackwater was renamed in 2009 after becoming famous in the world with numerous reports of abuses in Iraq, including massacres of civilians. It remains the largest private contractor of the U.S. Department of State “security services,” that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training – for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of “public disclosure” of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a “totally separate entity from Blackwater.”

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become “Monsanto’s intelligence arm,” spying on activists and other actions, including “our people to legally integrate these groups.” Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $ 105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the “science of death” as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of “philanthropy.” Another association that is not surprising.

It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of “market competition” of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really “donating” anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their “donations” finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.


Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the “Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa” (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.

* The author is a researcher at ETC Group


Source: http://banoosh.com/blog/2013/05/22/monsanto-is-now-the-owner-of-blackwater/

Argentina's former-military leader Jorge Rafael Videla has died of natural causes at the age of 87 while serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

The general was jailed in 2010 for the deaths of 31 dissidents during the 1976-83 military dictatorship, of which he was overall leader until 1981.

He was also sentenced to another 50 years in 2012 for the theft of children born to female prisoners.

Up to 30,000 people were tortured and "disappeared" by the military during the dictatorship, in a campaign known as the "Dirty War".

Suspected regime opponents were swept into secret prisons, tortured and murdered.

In his last public appearance on Tuesday, an unrepentant Videla told a court that his subordinates acted under his orders and assumed "full military responsibility for the actions of the army in the war against terrorism".

Videla died in the Marcos Paz prison south-west of Buenos Aires, where he spent his final days in a spartan cell with a wooden cross on the wall.

"Last night he didn't feel well. He didn't want to eat and this morning they found him dead in his cell," Cecilia Pando, the head of the Association of Family and Friends of Political Prisoners, told reporters.

A medical report said Videla was found "without a pulse or pupillary reflex, so an EKG was performed confirming his death at 8:25 (11:25 GMT) on this date."

"He dies condemned by justice and repudiated by society," Nora Cortinas, of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights organisation, said.

Videla showed little remorse for the systematic abuses that occurred during his presidency, a traumatic five-year upheaval still being felt today.

"Let's say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die to win the war against subversion," Videla said recently in a prison interview, according to journalist Ceferino Reato.

"We couldn't execute them by firing squad. Neither could we take them to court," Videla was quoted as saying.

Military leaders had agreed that secretly disposing of their prisoners "was a price to pay to win the war," Videla said, according to Mr Reato in his book Final Disposition.

"For that reason, so as not to provoke protests inside and outside the country, the decision was reached that these people should be disappeared."

After this interview was published, Videla said he had been misinterpreted.

The journalist insists that the general had reviewed his handwritten notes and approved them before publication.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner who drew international attention to the junta's abuses, said Videla "never repented of the crimes and he is taking a lot of information with him".

Videla was the head of the army when the military overthrew Isabel Peron, the widow of Juan Peron, at a period of mounting instability, punctuated by guerrilla attacks and a surge of killings by right-wing death squads.

The junta that assumed power suspended the constitution, outlawed political parties and imposed censorship on TV and radio in what was called a "Process of National Reorganisation".

A fierce campaign of repression unleashed on the leftist guerrilla groups active in Argentina soon spread far beyond their ranks.

Family members, suspected sympathisers, labor organisers, politicians, clergy, students, journalists, artists and intellectuals were killed or secretly imprisoned in clandestine concentration camps.

The regime's trademark became the unmarked Ford Falcon sedans that hooded agents used to drive their captives to some 500 detention centres.

Among the victims were French nuns Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, Catholic bishop Enrique Angelelli, Swedish student Dagmar Hagelin, the union leadership at Ford and Mercedes Benz, and even members of Argentina's diplomatic corps.

Argentina's military joined forces with like-minded dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay under "Operation Condor", sharing intelligence and helping capture each other's political enemies.

Rail-thin and with a rigid military posture, Videla in his heyday cut a sombre, unsmiling figure with large dark eyes, a brush moustache, and hair slicked back from a bony face.

He delivered speeches in a strident manner and often appeared uncomfortable in public, wringing his hands as a nervous tick played across his cheeks.

Although aligned with the United States, Videla was at loggerheads with US president Jimmy Carter over the regime's human rights abuses and for refusing to join a US-backed grain embargo against the Soviet Union.

In 1981, Videla handed over power to General Roberto Viola to begin the slow transition to democracy.

But General Leopoldo Galtieri ousted Viola in a palace coup and took Argentina to war and ultimately to a humiliating defeat against British forces in the Falkland Islands the following year.


Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-18/argentine-dirty-war-leader-jorge-rafael-videla-dies/4697798