20-21 Jan BlogNews

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BBC NEWS MAGAZINE


How did Quakers conquer the British sweet shop?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8467833.stmFor a religious sect more interested in championing social reform than industry, the Quakers have established an impressive roll call of household business names. 
Barclays and Lloyds banks, Clarks shoes, Bryant & May matches and the biscuit firms Huntley & Palmers and Carrs are just a few of the companies founded by members of the pacifist group.
But when it comes to confectionery, there has been a virtual monopoly for more than a century, led by Cadbury of Birmingham, Fry's of Bristol and Rowntree's and Terrys of York.

HISTORY OF THE QUAKERS Society of Friends founded in England in 1650s by George Fox Pacifist religious sect values all people equally and believes there's something of God in us all Name derives either from founder telling magistrate to tremble - quake - at God's name, or from shaking associated with religious experience About 17,000 Quakers in Britain today, and 210,000 worldwide

This achievement is all the more remarkable given the tiny numbers of Quakers. In 1851 they only accounted for about one in 1,400 of the population of 21 million in England, Scotland and Wales - less than 0.1%.
The move into chocolate began with cocoa drinks in the 19th Century as a reaction against the perceived misery and deprivation caused by alcohol, says Quaker historian Helen Rowlands.
"Quakers and other non-conformists at the time were concerned about levels of alcohol misuse in the population at large, they were part of the temperance movement.
"Cocoa was a way of providing cheap and available drink. It was healthy because you had to boil the water to make it when they didn't have good water supplies."

Graining it
How sugar made tycoons out of a religious sect
Binge quiz
The battle to fight boozing from the Romans on
Dot in the ocean
The remote island where Ford Escorts go to die
Sights unseen
An exhibition of photos by blind people
And all because...
A history of Cadbury's best bars - in pictures
Soul search
If there is a God, why does he allow natural disasters? 






'Perfect storm' of calamity, quake expert says
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/20/quake.expert/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn
Reginald DesRoches is deploying to Haiti to tag key infrastructure buildings with red, yellow and green markers -- designations on whether they're still usable.

Alternate supply routes could open Haiti aid bottleneck
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/20/haiti.aid.bottleneck

Journalist Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation
http://i5.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades
About twelve years ago under the first administration of René Préval, they privatized the Minoterie d’Haiti and Ciment d’Haiti, the flour mill, the state flour mill, and the state cement company. Now, for flour, obviously, you have a hungry, needy population. You can imagine if the state had a robust flour mill where it could distribute flour to the people so they could have bread. That was sold to a company of which Henry Kissinger was a board member. And very quickly, that flour mill was closed. Haiti now has no flour mill, not private or public.  
Here is a country which is mostly made of limestone, geologically, and that is the foundation of cement. It is a country which absolutely should and could have a cement company, and did, but it was again privatized and immediately shut down. And they began using the docks of the cement company for importing cement. So when we drive around this country and we see the thousands of cement buildings which are pancaked or collapsed, this is a country which is going to need millions and millions of tons of cement, and it’s going to have to now import all of that cement, rather than being able to produce it itself. It could be and should be an exporter of cement, not an importer. 
Teleco was the crown jewel of the Haitian state industries. During the first coup d’état, from ’91 to ’94, it was in fact the revenues from Teleco that sustained the government-in-exile of President Aristide. And now we see today, one week before this earthquake, the telephone company Teleco was privatized. It was sold to a Vietnamese company, Viettel. And if we had in this country a robust, agile, nimble national telephone company, a lot of the problems of communication could have been avoided. Instead, all the communications today are practically in the hands of the three private cell companies, Digicel, Voila and Haitel.
We were speaking to the unionist at the telephone company, at Teleco, a certain Jean Mabou. And Jean Mabou, the union leader, took us to a room where it was filled with new, brand new, modern telecommunications equipments, boards, all sorts of things. He said, “We’ve got these, and they won’t allow us to install them. They are deliberately undermining the state company so they can sell it.
We see throughout Haiti the population themselves organizing themselves into popular committees to clean up, to pull out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to set up their security for the refugee camps. This is a population which is self-sufficient, and it has been self-sufficient for all these years.

It’s not now that a bunch of Marines have to come in with big M-16s and start yelling at them. Watching the scene in front of the General Hospital yesterday said it all. Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of Marine—of US 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it. It was a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic.

Here is—they had no business being there. Sure, if there’s some way where you have an army of bandits, which we haven’t seen, on any mass scale going and attacking, maybe you might bring in some guys like that. But right now, people don’t need guns. They need gauze, as I think one doctor put it. And this is the essence of—it’s just the same way they reacted after Katrina. It’s the same way they acted—the victims are what’s scary. They’re the other. They’re black people who, you know, had the only successful slave revolution in history. What could be more threatening?


Stop Treating These People Like Savages!
http://agonist.org/20100120/stop_treating_these_people_like_savages

We are hurting Haiti in the long run, not helping by Stanton Peele

Philippine massacre exposes political underworld
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8470726.stm
Elections and violence go together in the Philippines, but the massacre of 57 people on a small, secluded hilltop in Maguindanao province, on the south island of Mindanao, at the end of last year took it to a new level.

The gruesome images filmed in the immediate aftermath betray the brutality with which the largely female members of a politically-ambitious family and 32 journalists were kidnapped and assassinated.

At the local market, justice campaigners sell DVDs of the raw video footage eerily set to Maguindanao freedom songs.

They leave little to the imagination.

Muslim women shot in the groin, in the face, in the head; bodies crumpled and bloodied in the back of bullet-sprayed vehicles; and a man seemingly shot as he tried to run away.

Difficult for India to show restraint if another 26/11 occurs: US
( Indian opinion is often that the U.S. knows far too much about what it takes to spark hostilities )
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Difficult-for-India-to-show-restraint-if-another-26/11-occurs-US/articleshow/5481809.cms

'Jesus Guns': Two More Countries Rethink Using Weapons with Secret Bible References
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/jesus-guns-countries-rethink-weapons-secret-bible-references/story?id=9617241

Ignorance in America.
Ignorance is pervasive in America; it affects the rich as well as the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the famous as well as the obscure. It’s prevalent in the suites of our nation’s CEOs, the Congress, the military, and even our universities. It defines this nation.

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/GofP.html
Michel Chossudovsky: The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms - Book Report
http://www.covertaction.org/content/view/79/75


Martha Coakley and Modern Witch Hunting - Ritual Child Sexual Abuse
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/201001/martha-coakley-and-modern-witch-hunting-ritual-child-sexual-abuse

Michael Jackson, Truth Serum, and False Memories
Press coverage of Michael Jackson omits one key fact.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-psychologist/200907/michael-jackson-truth-serum-and-false-memories

How to Keep Your Browser from Hogging Resources
http://www.pcworld.com/article/187302/how_to_keep_your_browser_from_hogging_resources.html