Thirty-one children and one adult were killed in Colombia on Sunday when fuel exploded on a broken-down bus returning from a church event, an official said.
The poor countries have old cars, with many repairs who are out of rules from dealer, maybe this was something about Diesel filter, Diesel tank or brakes . . . When I see the video cameras to road control in U.S. is amazing see all the cars with new models, truck Ford F-150, high cost cars . . . The bus in which 32 children died transited without insurance SOAT and technical review . . . The driver of the accident bus in Colombia had no driving license, this is the reality of the poverty . . . 😦
Focusing on what I’ve come to call the “Islamic Small Wars” leaves out a lot of conflict involving autocratic and corrupt governments or, as perhaps may be happening with Brazil (and from this the United States is not immune) befuddled economics leading to gross income disparity and a related host of security and stability issues.
Brazil appears to have a burgeoning economy but, perhaps, a deeply skewed and unbalanced economic and social system, and that rightly calls to action or presence a new journalism and politics.
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The prompt I got before creating this link-forwarding post came by way of Facebook and in Spanish, so, starting from just about scratch, a quick look-up of relevant terms brought the latest framing of the problem to the desktop: Brazilian pride and private interest and some shenanigans between have anchored major sports events that have become a foil for liberal complaint. Beyond posture and sentiment, of course, are real people captive in constrained and difficult lives kept so by either political neglect or political force. Either way, the communitarian needs of the state have not been addressed effectively by way of economic development processes combined with political and social activism.
It’s the same thing, or at least at a distance it looks that way.
Kenya, if acting with both economic and social vision, could distribute the slum’s population to new towns served by rail and developed as manufacturing and transfer points.
Why not?
However, I haven’t seen that idea — mine — tested, lol, but it would seem the labor’s readily available and the land requirement very small in light of the size of immediate urban density and economic distribution issues.
Perhaps like Kenya, Brazil too finds it easier to police and suppress its disenfranchised than engage in aggressive urban and rural (land use) planning, population redistribution (eminent domain may be applied as necessary), appropriate economic development, and perhaps a little chit-chat about family.
Additional Reference
The latest WordPress upgrade altered the link-drag-and-drop that lent itself to “scraping” as well as the development of lengthy reference, so little had to be keyed. Now if I want to share URL, I either key it in the academic manner, embed it behind a phrase in a sentence, or copy-and-paste, leaving the address data unadorned. So I have chose that method here.
To Russian and Syrian officials and their supporters, the Syrian war and the standoff over the Crimean Peninsula are essentially part of a single, larger battle, against post-Cold War American unilateralism.
When Putin’s Russia pledged $10 million to Syrian relief while spending $52 billion to host the winter games in Sochi, it told the world unmistakably what it was going to be about: the greatness of the Great Leader.
Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue what he’s doing while “encouraging” votes to reelect him as their Great Leader?
Why should Vladimir Putin halt the expansion of either mafia enterprise or Russian hegemony in Crimea?
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Six documents stamped with the seal of the Venezuelan army show that as far back as December 2001, agents of then president Hugo Chavez — Maduro’s mentor — sought to build a paramilitary. What is more, the recruitment efforts targeted military bases in order to incorporate army personnel into this non-uniformed militia. In other words, the Chavez government was looking for trained professionals who could handle weapons.
I read the above in hard copy at the coffee shop an hour ago, so it has been out today, Monday, March 24.
Venezuela’s axis may be counterpoised to Russia, as I recall the note of a South American friend: “You can see the oil rigs of the Chinese from Miami.” [1]
The business would seem to come along with the way of doing business – or perhaps dictatorships simply understand one another in the way of crooked and sociopath elites:
The challenges facing most of the Caribbean nations are neither unique nor entirely isolated. They include high unemployment and migration levels, unsustainable levels of government debt and increasingly high costs of energy. In fact, the high costs of energy have led some small Caribbean island nations to join Hugo Chavez’s radical ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) in exchange for cheap Venezuelan petroleum. When a powerful nation such as China comes on the scene and offers loans, credits and investment, local actors take substantial notice, especially when the traditional hegemon, the United States, seems preoccupied elsewhere.
To spell in schematic, “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and “Putin-Yanukovych” (so sorry it didn’t last) seems to me perfectly sensible, and then to suggest a similar but Chinese-oriented path for Chavez seems not unreasonable.
The line may be missing a dot or two, but the dots are there and whether intentionally among the Bond-villain set — in the post-00s of the 21st Century, these already have their nukes — or unconsciously by way of the anomic lust for money that produces the policy that pipes out Sudanese oil while ignoring the Darfur Genocide, for example — hardly matters: free Europeans say “hello” to the new old bosses, the old familiars, the kind that talk kindly while select suspect associates are thrown off the roofs above their heads and the children of their constituents are barrel bombed into dead certain compliance with their will.
. . . since 2005, Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion worth of arms from Russia.[1] In September 2008, Russia sent Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela to carry out training flights.[2] In November 2008, both countries held a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean.[3] Following Chavez’s two visits to Moscow in July and September 2008, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin arrived in Venezuela to pave the way for a third meeting within five months between their two presidents.
This, however, was a significant improvement over media coverage of the violence during the Feb.12 march (see David’s comments in the Financial Times).
That day when the student’s protests turned increasingly violent, private television stations stopped their live coverage of the incidents. Globovisión, the news channel that used to be considered the main pro-opposition media but is now owned by a business group said to be close to the government, had initially given ample – but not live – coverage to the protests. But as soon as violence erupted in the afternoon, they switched to a fashion program.
From a correspondent within the awesome conversation (2/20/2014):
The government of Venezuela is very stronger, have many people that support them and the soldiers have many business in the government.
The media try to present that the government are on the brink of fall, but this is not true, only the soldiers can make a Coup State, and the soldiers give support to the government.
China is the first investor in Cuba, at the end, Venezuela is a poor country also, Venezuela can’t give support to Cuba, they send a single ship of oil to Cuba per week, nothing more, and Cuba give assistance to Venezuela with health aid, doctors and assistance to the poor people, at the end Cuba is a poor country also…
China have many investments in Cuba, they are install offshore oil platforms in Cuba in the offshore of Miami, the people can see the oil platforms of China from the coast of Miami.
China invest in Nicaragua and other countries from the Caribean Sea, they will never allow a Coup State in Venezuela, because this can damage their business with Venezuela government, and China have many influence over U.S. government to keep the peace in the region.
The military force in Venezuela have business with oil, and sell oil to China… the military force can make a Coup State only, but they give support to the government to make business with China…
Venezuela, what this means, the soldiers, send twenty oil ships per day with oil to China and U.S., to sell oil to China and U.S.
They are friends and make business together…
American influence / (Chinese+Russian Influence) : god = capital, patronage, return.
That above I would call the newest world order.
Where people would appear to want a political voice, a say in their fate, some guarantees about dignity, freedom, and human rights, The Money has no conscience, no moral code other than to drift where it pays to go or otherwise directly into piratical networks.
No wonder Putin did not want Khodorkovsky running Russia’s oil business. And China? China’s quietly going about its business with banking, manufacturing, and mining, and it too seems immune to criticism.
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(Reuters) – Venezuelan security forces and demonstrators faced off in streets blocked by burning barricades in several provincial cities on Thursday as protests escalated against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.
His wife, Lilian Tintori, placed a crucifix around his neck. He climbed down into a crowd gone wild with chants of ¡Sí, se puede! (Yes, we can!) and proceeded to turn himself over to the authorities . . . .
Maduro asked the minister of Communication and Information, Delcy Rodríguez to inform CNN that “an administrative process has begun to take them off the aire if they do not mend their ways.”
There are signs that South America’s oldest and mightiest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC), is undertaking a tactical pivot toward ending more than half a century of armed struggle, raising hopes for a lasting cease-fire, eventually a full demobilization and possibly peace.
My correspondent in South America notes, “Colombia have oil, gas and mineral field in the jungle that remain under the control of the FARC Army, this is like a defeat of Colombia, but this is like a defeat of the FARC Army also… like a death point to both sides…”
Indeed, long-running guerrilla conflicts consume the living whose lives have been attached to “the struggle” or its suppression.
Continuous and largely unresolvable issues, more defined by dreaming than by plain dealing but often also provoked by the abuse of the powerful, remain so toward the end, as puzzling to the best of minds and souls as they were when first “discovered” or “encountered” or developed in some narcissistic outrage inflamed by a messianic will.
Evolution in ethics and law in the greater world — and there is always a greater world surrounding comparatively specific ones — then bear down on the policies and practices of place and may do so with a self-concept altering vengeance.
While the idealism informing a youthful revolutionary fervor may sink with age into corrupt arrangements and crime, the powerful too may have the muck to scrape from their boots. The once young and strident nationalist may look in the mirror and find himself surprised with the fat pig looking back at him: good soul that he may have once been, or egotistical and heroic peacock with clean hands and a clean uniform, may have in memory the haunt of an angry hardness and force that wasn’t necessary and that cannot be easily repaired.
I make up characters — here, caricatures — in a short package.
I point to no one with them.
Nonetheless, with a little bit of truth in the fiction that might be made real, one hopes for peace toward the end of a grim trail in dark space.
I have been assured by my contact in Guayaquil, Ecuador, that fighting reported in the Miami Herald last Thursday is still ongoing but with one changed note: the hint that Hezbollah has banded with the FARC “to move their operations to neighboring countries, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador, seeking new territory to plant opium . . . .”
That coca and poppy cultivation have taken place, or takes place, in certain areas isn’t news, but whether or not Hezbollah’s is in on that enterprise — or a part of this most recent fighting — that might be something worth the watching.
Excerpts From an Exchange
Sunday, August 11, 2013:
“We are worried about a war against Israel from many terrorist groups, we have information that Mexico and Peru are increased production of cocaine and opium are sowing now, it is likely that drug traffickers with this money can finance violent groups worldwide, in exchange for weapons and as part of the drug trade, then they can make terrorist attacks with Opium money.”
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“This is a battle with two front of war to Ecuador, because the drug traffickers control the jungle between Colombia and Peru, where the government of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador have no presence, the state have no presence with roads, village, school, hospitals in remote places of the country, far away from the Andes mountains all this place remain alone.”
Dark Space
From back rooms to board rooms to “secure compartmented information facilities”, any space may be made and kept “dark” in terms related to privacy and the keeping of secrets, but remote rural space affords another dimension in dark space: the opportunity to develop criminal and, in essence, criminal political enterprise with impunity.
