North Korea is a giant concentation camp where hunger and repression reign supreme under megalomaniac Kim Jong-il

North Korea is a one party state led by megalomaniac Kim Jong-il and the Korean Workers Party. It is essentially a Stalinist dictatorship underpinned by a most extreme form of Marxist-Leninism.
There is no freedom of assembly or speech. Freedom of religion is outlawed. It has been replaced by worship of a mad man. Human rights have been trampled upon. There are thousands of public executions annually. Murder, rape, forced abortions and medical experimentation are other tools of repression used by the regime. Millions have fled, and thousands have died trying to escape North Korea.It is estimated that there are at least 150,000 people held in prison and detention camps.

Aid agencies estimate that 13 million people in North Korea — more than half the population — are malnourished. Two million people have starved to death.

The North Korean government has claimed that military expenditure for 2009 will amount to 15.8% of GNP. This is a gross underestimate. The real level of military expenditure is believed to be at least 25% of GNP. The country has the fifth largest army in the world. The regime has assembled a massive surveillance network within the country-similar to that operated by the Stasis in East Germany- designed to cow its citizenry. The Communist regime pursues an ambitious missile and nuclear programme designed to blackmail its neighbours whilst its citizens undergo the most intolerable privations. The giant military machine mops up scarce financial resources whilst millions suffer hunger and malnutrition. This is the legacy of the world's newest Stalin.

Video:Darfur Genocide Exposed-Four Sudanese men admit that they participated in violence and massacres

A video recently released by Aegis Trust shows the testimony of four men who state they actively participated in the violence and massacres on Darfur, and who are not afraid to call it genocide. The video was uploaded on The Hub and it is hoped that people will pass it on to others in order to spread this information:

The men - whose identities are obscured - are former members of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militia: one was a senior officer in the Sudan Army Finance, one a high-ranking Janjaweed commander, another a Janjaweed footsoldier, and the last a Sudanese soldier.
On the video, you can hear their testimonies of how the Sudanese government recruited the Janjaweed militias, gave them weapons and supplies and whenever they attacked villages, the government would cover it up and state that the attack had been done by the military against rebels, and not by militias attacking civilians. The video is available with German subtitles, Arabic subtitles and French subtitles.

According to Aegis Trust's press release on Human Rights First, this video could assist in the International Criminal Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's president, General Omar al-Bashir:
Since 2003, at least 300,000 civilians have died in Darfur and millions have been displaced from their homes, many of them at the hands of militia nicknamed the ‘Janjaweed' ('devils on horseback'). Time after time, survivors stated - and international observers confirmed - that as they murdered, raped, looted and burned village after village, the Janjaweed was backed by the Sudanese army and air force. Yet the Sudanese Government has consistently denied responsibility for atrocities in Darfur and to this day, says it has nothing to do with the Janjaweed.
However, the defectors in this film - some of them speaking publicly for the first time - tell a very different story.(Source: Global Voices)

Gaza Suffering- Families struggle for food

Gaza residents talk about hardship; The UN will resume relief operations only after receiving guarantees on security of personnel from the Israeli army.
Locked inside the coastal slice of land, just 40 kilometres (24 miles) long and up to 12 kilometres wide, with next to no food getting in each day, 1.5 million people are battling to find enough to keep their families alive.

The Developed World should count its blessings this Christmas:

The following comes from the editorial comment in the Sunday Tribune:

One Christmas message received by the Sunday Tribune last week offers a timely reminder that we have many blessings to count and much to be thankful for.
If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back and a place to sleep tonight, you are actually richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank and in your wallet and spare change in a dish somewhere, you are among the top eight per cent of the world's wealthy.
If you have more health than illness, you are more blessed than one million people who won't survive this week. And if you can hold your head up, smile and be thankful, you are blessed because many can but most do not...

This comment is apposite at a time of great suffering in Third World countries such as Haiti, Zimbabwe and Somalia amongst others. God has showered us with many blessings.

Haiti: A Hundred Dead People in My Truck-Full RTE Programme (47:0)

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The programme features Westport-born Gena Heraty who runs an orphanage near Port au Prince, Dublin-born Dr Louise Ivers who works in two hospitals in the poorest country in the western hemisphere and Fr Rick Frechette who spends every Thursday burying hundreds of people who would otherwise be eaten by pigs. Some of the images from the kidnapping and hurricane scenes are disturbing. Kudos to Jim Fahy and the full RTE team.

Yellowstone Super Volcano Eruption could destroy mankind

Yellowstone National Park holds one of the world's largest super-volcanoes. Scientific research has shown that the ground is 74cm higher than it was in 1923. The reservoir is filling rapidly with magma.The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor has been 7 centimeters per year for the past three years. This supervolcano has regular eruption cycles of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago. So the human race is living on borrowed time. The Yellowstone Volcano could erupt with 10,000 times the force of the explosion at Mount St. Helens in 1980.

What are the likely effects of the eruption of the Yellowsone supervolcano ? Bill McGuire, professor of geohazards at the Benfield Greig Hazard
Research Centre at the University College of London told the UK
Daily Express that magma would be flung 50 kilometers into
the atmosphere. Within a thousand kilometers virtually all life
would be killed by falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive
force of the eruption. One thousand cubic kilometers of lava would
pour out of the volcano, enough to coat the whole USA with a layer
5 inches.He adds that it would once again bring "the bitter cold of Volcanic Winter to Planet Earth. Mankind may become extinct." (Source:UnMuseum)

Yellowstone supervolcano would blast so much ash and sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere that it would blot out the sun, causing a catastrophic drop in the Earth's temperatures. This would not just be confined to North America . Its effects would be felt in Europe. Crop growing would become impossible. Many would die from starvation as key world breadbaskets such as the Prairies of North America , the Steppes of Russia, East Anglia and the Paris Basin could no longer grow grain crops. Similarly grass growth would cease. World economies would be devastated. The Earths population would be decimated. Scientists and geologists who monitor the volcano see no major threat of a catastrophic eruption in the immediate future. Hopefully they are correct.

Zimbabwe:Mass Murder of illegal miners by machine gun-wielding soldiers in helicopters shocks the world (Mugabe a new Hitler?)

The following is an excerpt from an article titled Zimbabwe: World must act after helicopter slaughter of miners

THE descent of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe regime into thuggery has accelerated as his hold on power slips in the face of total economic collapse.
But the news of the brutal mass murder of illegal miners by machine gun-wielding soldiers in helicopters has shocked the world.
According to The Guardian newspaper: “Zimbabwean air force helicopter swept over the hundreds of fleeing illegal diamond miners and mowed down dozens with machine-gun fire. “After that the police arrived and unleashed the dogs that tore into the diggers, killing some and mutilating others. “The police fired teargas to drive the miners out of their shallow tunnels and shot them down as they emerged. ”
This is a description of one incident and there have been several similar shootings over the last month.
The exact death toll is not known, but estimates run as high as 140 according to the The Guardian....

Joe Seoka, the Anglican bishop of Pretoria,has said that Robert Mugabe “must be viewed as the 21st century Hitler” because of the deaths and suffering of Zimbabweans under his rule. Mugabe has terrorised political opponents and wrecked the economy.Zimbabwe's official inflation rate stands at 231,000,000%. This hyper inflation is escalating. The Zimbabwean Dollar is practically worthless.It is estimated that more than 80% of the country's population lives on less than $1.5 dollars a day whilst 50% is chronically malnourished. Zimbabwe once the breadbasket of Africa ia now an economic basket case. Cholera has spread from the cities to rural areas whilst an anthrax outbreak has also been reported in Hurungwe 300km north of the capital, Harare. Local government services have in many cases collapsed. Raw sewage frequently seeps out onto streets and there are widespread sanitation problems. And yet the world stands idly by.

Now just take a look at this video Terror on Zimbabwe-South Africa border :

Starving Zimbabweans mix cow dung with their food

Zimbabwe's official inflation rate stands at 231,000,000%. In all probability this is an underestimate of the real inflation rate. The Zimbabwean Dollar is practically worthless. It is estimated that more than 80% of the country's population lives on less than $1.5 dollars a day whilst 50% is chronically malnourished. Cholera has spread from the cities to rural areas whilst an anthrax outbreak has also been reported in Hurungwe 300km north of the capital, Harare. Local government services have in many cases collapsed. Raw sewage frequently seeps out onto streets and there are widespread sanitation problems.
Now comes a report from Caritas which states that Zimbabweans are mixing cow dung with their food.

Zimbabwe's economy, agriculture, its education and healthcare systems have virtually collapsed. Caritas staff in rural Zimbabwe are reporting that families are mixing their dwindling food supplies with cow dung to stave off hunger. Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight said, “Our staff say that people in Zimbabwe are dropping dead on the streets from Cholera. They’ve witnessed people mixing cow dung with what’s left of their food to make it go further. This is poverty at its most dehumanising.”

Caritas aid operations are planning to ramp up across the country with hunger likely to increase after poor harvests. A Caritas survey in the areas it works in October found 70 to 90 percent of households going hungry depending on the area and the rest on the brink of starving. At least 5.1 million people are facing starvation out of a population of 13 million people. Nearly 14,000 cases of Cholera have been reported. It’s unknown how people living with HIV and AIDS are surviving without either the necessary medicines or the necessary level of nutrition that is key to the effectiveness of anti-retroviral treatment.......

The international community must maintain the pressure on Zimbabwe for an end to this crisis. We must also prepare ourselves for the implosion of the country and the catastrophe that will mean in terms of human suffering across the region. Zimbabwe’s neighbours must address the xenophobia directed at Zimbabwean refugees in their own countries.....

Mugabe clings to power whilst the international community stands idly by.

RTE Documentary on Haiti would draw a tear from a stone.

RTE has a long history of accomplishment in the production of documentaries. However it is doubtful if any has left as big an impression as Jim Fahy's Haiti A Hundred Dead People In My Truck . The graphic footage of squalor, hunger, malnutrition, shanty towns and trucks carrying the bodies of up to 100 people would draw a tear from a stone. The stench of death was everywhere. The film also contained a brief historic background to the problems of the country. In addition it described how First World countries still demand their pound of flesh in the form of loan repayments from a country on its knees. The activities of kidnappers were recounted-ears of hostages cut off if they are lucky. Murdered if they are unlucky.
Widespread hurricane damage is a common occurrence. Haiti is the country that has been largely forgotten by the western world. Of course UN troops are stationed there to maintain a semblance of order.

Two Irish women childcare specialist, Gena Heraty from Mayo, and Dubliner Dr Louise Ivers a world expert in infectious disease - have been working for years in Haiti’s slums and in the mountainous areas. Working alongside them as a doctor and hostage negotiator is Fr Rick Frechette, a Passionist Priest, from Connecticut in the United States.
The film footage featuring all three was so moving. Their determination to swim against the tide, their exhausting schedules, their compassion and their dedication to the cause of social justice is an inspiration to all.

Gena Heraty has dedicated her life to improving the lot of orphans. She is determined to live out her life in Haiti. She stressed that all children are equal irrespective of where they live and entitled to an equal chance to progress. Dr Louise Ivers is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School . She works in a gradually expanding clinic through the nonprofit organization Partners In Health. She said "I can’t sleep at night because of the things that I see".

The spectre of Fr Rick Frechette helping to load up the bodies for transport and his prayers over mass graves would send a shudder through the hardest heart. The convoys of lorries carrying corpses through the streets merited scarcely a glance from the citizens. As far as they were concerned this was normal.

Congrats to Jim Fahy and the whole RTE team. This documentary should be disseminated throughout the world. It might soften the hard hearted bankers and politicians. This has the potential to shock viewers into action. The full programme may be viewed here

RTE Documentary: Haiti A Hundred People Dead In My Truck- uncovers a land of Murder,Kidnapping,Hunger and Poverty

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This audio contains a preview by Jim Fahey of his documentary Haiti: A Hundred People Dead In My Truck. This goes out on RTE television tonight. It follows the work of an American missionary priest Fr Rick Frechette and two Irish women-Gena Heraty and Dr Louise Ivers who are working to improve the quality of life for the people of Haiti. These are the unsung heroes who fight against overwhelming odds for justice for the poor.

Half of the people of Haiti live on less than a dollar a day in a land of hunger,murder,kidnapping,disease and low life expectancy. Many parents are reduced to a life of scavenging in an effort to eke out an existence. Father Rick’s Summer 2006 in Haiti provides a graphic account of the plight of ordinary Haitians.
The full programme may be viewed here

Burma (Myanmar)-Field of Death

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