US President Barack Obama today warned that some pretty large Caribbean banks are likely to fail within the next few days, as the full extent of their involvement in financing speculative luxury beachfront condos becomes clear.
Speaking exclusively to The Baruba Post, Mr Obama said “some banks just won’t make it” but hoped that middle- and working-class people’s deposits would be safe. “If a bank or a financial institution is – or was – dumb enough to finance construction of condos selling for millions of dollars and especially since the sub-prime scam broke over a year ago they’re going to face tough decisions,” he said.
The president was particularly critical of those banks giving crack executives obscene bonuses for throwing cheap money at building developers who deliberately misled potential buyers by claiming their properties would be in protected, gated communities with access to private beaches.
“They don’t know about Trinidad and/or Tobago but my CIA contacts assure me all beaches in Barbados and Baruba are completely public. And it’s up to the banks when lending money to make sure their clients act properly and in the best interest of customers by sticking to the bare truth in their ads and brochures. Although in these difficult times it’s not unusual for people bogged down in the surreal estate swamp to exaggerate a tad.”
Mr Obama said he was confident his stimulation package would gain Senate approval within days and plans to make a primetime TV appearance telling the “American People” to “Stimulate Your Package” to cheer them up before dozens more banks collapse and thousands lose their, jobs, homes and SUV’s by the hour.
Great news for the people of Great Britain and citizens of all the cricket-playing member nations of the Commonwealth except Zimbabwe.
Baruba understands.
As the world enters a recession that shows every sign of developing into the worst since the Second World War, with unemployment worldwide soaring above 950 million by next year, not counting the 2.3 billion permanently without jobs since the Second World War.
The Post has learned from an anonymous source under strict instructions to leak the news a trickle at a time that in a late night cabinet meeting yesterday Prime Minister Sir Baldwin J. Scantlebury QC, OBE, WAN, KAN, OBE, SAT & KFC outlined far-reaching plans to enable people holding British and cricket-playing Commonwealth passports (Ed. Not Zimbabwe.) to come to Baruba despite the current apocalyptic global credit crunch.
Virgin Atlantic has already agreed to participate in the scheme by offering two free seats for every seat bought at full price. A Virgin spokesperson told the Post, “This is to encourage large families to travel. As you can see a family comprising mother and father and ten children over the age of 18 months will pay only for three seats – or is it four, I’m not good at maths – but it’s a darn good bargain by anyone’s reckoning.
Baruban hotels and restaurants have also signed-up to offer drastically-reduced bargain-basement deals.
How can Baruba afford to be so generous?
According to another anonymous spokesperson not allowed to reveal anything this entire magnanimous gesture in underwritten by LIME (formerly Cable & Wireless and/or C & W.)
By diverting revenue paid to the Baruban government – no questions asked – for telephone monopoly concessions ever since C & W laid the first undersea cable from Barbados to Baruba in 1846 before there was any use for it. Last year the figure approached $68 million not including the $190 million which was entered into the local economy during the same period.
Asked if this was a good investment a spokesperson close to LIME’s chief executive officer Richard Dodd thought to be in Barbados discussing a simliar scheme there said, “Barubans are the world’s leading text messengers based on population so this is our way of thenking them for their loyal support. It’s also of no concern to us what the Baruban government does with the annual “kickback” – please don’t print that – hmnn…license fee we give them in non-consecutive $100 bills.
“And – but please don’t print this either – it’ll force Digicel out of Baruba, in the first of many Caribbean islands we hope, until our parent company Cable & Wireless pLc is bought by the Abu Dhabi Telegraph, Internet & Telephone Corporation – AB-DAB-TIT – as soon as they’ve wrapped-up buying Liverpool FC with the British Pound at the lowest rate since the Second World War.
“Or maybe since we laid that cable from Barbados but I’m not good at history or maths either but it’s a darn long time by anyone’s reckoning.”
Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the “reckless and indiscriminate” shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers.
With the death toll from the 17-day Israeli assault on Gaza climbing above 900, pressure is increasing for an independent inquiry into specific incidents, such as the shelling of a UN school turned refugee centre where about 40 people died, as well as the question of whether the military tactics used by Israel systematically breached humanitarian law.
The UN’s senior human rights body approved a resolution yesterday condemning the Israeli offensive for “massive violations of human rights”. A senior UN source said the body’s humanitarian agencies were compiling evidence of war crimes and passing it on to the “highest levels” to be used as seen fit.
Some human rights activists allege that the Israeli leadership gave an order to keep military casualties low no matter what cost to civilians. That strategy has directly contributed to one of the bloodiest Israeli assaults on the Palestinian territories, they say.
John Ging, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza, said: “It’s about accountability [over] the issue of the appropriateness of the force used, the proportionality of the force used and the whole issue of duty of care of civilians.
“We don’t want to join any chorus of passing judgment but there should be an investigation of any and every incident where there are concerns there might have been violations in international law.”
The Israeli military are accused of:
• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.
Israeli military actions prompted an unusual public rebuke from the International Red Cross after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded.
Human Rights Watch has called on the UN security council to set up a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes.
Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have separately written to the country’s attorney general demanding he investigate the allegations.
But critics remain sceptical that any such inquiry will take place, given that Israel has previously blocked similar attempts with the backing of the US.
Amnesty International says hitting residential streets with shells that send blast and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes “prima facie evidence of war crimes”.
“There has been reckless and disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate use of force,” said Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty investigator in Israel. “There has been the use of weaponry that shouldn’t be used in densely populated areas because it’s known that it will cause civilian fatalities and casualties.
“They have extremely sophisticated missiles that can be guided to a moving car and they choose to use other weapons or decide to drop a bomb on a house knowing that there were women and children inside. These are very, very clear breaches of international law.”
Israel’s most prominent human rights organisation, B’Tselem, has written to the attorney general in Jerusalem, Meni Mazuz, asking him to investigate suspected crimes including how the military selects its targets and the killing of scores of policemen at a passing out parade.
“Many of the targets seem not to have been legitimate military targets as specified by international humanitarian law,” said Sarit Michaeli of B’Tselem.
Rovera has also collected evidence that the Israeli army holds Palestinian families prisoner in their own homes as human shields. “It’s standard practice for Israeli soldiers to go into a house, lock up the family in a room on the ground floor and use the rest of the house as a military base, as a sniper’s position. That is the absolute textbook case of human shields.
“It has been practised by the Israeli army for many years and they are doing it again in Gaza now,” she said.
While there are growing calls for an international investigation, the form it would take is less clear. The UN’s human rights council has the authority to investigate allegations of war crimes but Israel has blocked its previous attempts to do so. The UN security council could order an investigation, and even set up a war crimes tribunal, but that is likely to be vetoed by the US and probably Britain.
The international criminal court has no jurisdiction because Israel is not a signatory. The UN security council could refer the matter to the court but is unlikely to.
Benjamin Rutland, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said an international investigation of the army’s actions was not justified. “We have international lawyers at every level of the command whose job it is to authorise targeting decisions, rules of engagement … We don’t think we have breached international law in any of these instances,” he said.
Comments Off on The Shame & Disgrace of Gaza | Uncategorized | Permalink Posted by crackeditor
Officially, according to a St James’s Palace spokesperson, no doubt to quell the mounting public perception that he’s as “nutty” as his alleged father (or the more likely other one) Prince Harry is said to be “terribly sorry” for calling a brown-skinned colleague a “Paki.”
Perhaps not as sorry as he was when photographed dressed as a fully-paid-up Nazi SS member carrying Third Reich speeches and brass band marches on 12 CD’s to a party three years ago.
And then conveniently shortly after that revealed in a BBC exclusive “Harry meets Taliban” 1-hour documentary to be risking his life for Queen and country in Afghanistan unbeknownst to anyone. After being filmed and interviewed for weeks doing it.
Cynics in foreign-language newspapers surmised the documentary was released to take the heat off Harry’s Nazi tendencies. Through “Saving Private Harry” a hastily-passed law forbidding the British media from disseminating anything about him appearing first in foreign-language newspapers the British public never got to see this damning claim.
That’s the official story and the Royal Family is sticking to it.*
In truth the young prince who persistently refuses to submit to DNA tests to quell doubts about his lineage based on his physical appearance – especially his full head of curly red hair – seems not a whit repentant.
Caught yesterday enjoying himself on Baruba’s famed 3-mile long Sir Anthony Eden Beach by a Post photographer noticeably-white-skinned Harry seemed totally unconcerned by the “racist” tag spreading like wildfire worldwide about him.
With close friends and/or romantic interests, Greta van Susteren, daughter of either Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus or Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, or any combination, in any event the ABBA couple who divorced shortly after her birth but continued performing together and still remain best of friends and disgruntled David Bentley, Tottenham Hotspurs’ recent record signing from Blackburn Rovers unable to find a regular first team spot because he can’t kick with his left foot.
* This is not the first time someone has been forced to tug a forelock and grovel to apologise for a clumsy Prince Harry lapse of judgment.
His decision to attend a friend’s fancy dress birthday party wearing a swastika armband in 2005 caused widespread outrage.
Clarence House quickly issued a statement saying the young prince was sorry if he had caused any offence.
In recent years he has worked hard to shake off a reputation as a playboy prince earned from his regular appearances on the London nightclub scene.
In the past he gave his critics plenty of ammunition, from smoking cannabis as a teenager to a nightclub scuffle with a paparazzi photographer.
In the autumn of 2004, he was embroiled in controversy when his former Eton art teacher claimed she helped him cheat in his A-level.
Clarence House described the allegations by sacked tutor Sarah Forsyth as “incredibly unfair” and the exam board later said there was no evidence to support the claims.
Then, just a week later, the prince was pictured scuffling with a photographer outside the Pangaea nightclub in central London.
No criminal action resulted, but the paparazzi photographer’s cut lip and the pictures of an angry, red-faced Prince Harry further dented his image.
The public’s sympathy may have been with the hounded prince, but in royal circles it was simply not the done thing.
His trips abroad have also generated some problems.
In Argentina, during his double gap year after leaving Eton, there were reports of a plot to kidnap him.
In Australia, the ranch he was staying at was found and besieged by photographers, prompting close aide Mark Dyer to confront them, declaring the prince might flee the Commonwealth country if they did not leave him alone.
Prince Harry’s first serious negative publicity happened when, as a 17-year-old, he was involved in under-age drinking and taking cannabis.
The News of the World broke the story and told how the Prince of Wales had sent his youngest son on a visit to a rehabilitation clinic, Featherstone Lodge in south-east London, to highlight the long-term dangers of drug use.
Yet, Prince Charles’s spin doctor Mark Bolland admitted some time later that the visit to the centre had actually taken place several months before, prior to evidence of the drug-taking being uncovered by the press.
During his schooldays, Prince Harry was relatively sheltered from exposure to the media, partly thanks to the protection of his mother.
Through an informal agreement struck in the wake of her death, the media left Prince Harry and Prince William alone while they finished their education.
Large swathes of readers of the print edition of the Post on Sunday were apparently incensed yesterday by published pictures of Richard Gere lazing on Baruba’s famed 3-mile ‘Sir Anthony Eden Beach.’
Over 20 calls were received saying it was an outrage for Gere and his wife to willingly take their impressionable 8-year-old son to the section of Eden beach reserved – and clearly signposted “Adults Only” – expressly for nude sunbathing.
Soon after the pictures appeared the Post also received a call from Gere’s crack Beverly Hills showbiz attorneys Perry, Perry, Chew & Perry demanding an unconditional apology and a written guarantee the pictures would no longer be published in print.
The Post unreservedly apologises therefore and guarantees the pictures will no longer be published in print. In lieu of damages the Baruba Post is prepared to make an appropriate low-four-figure contribution to a charity of Mr. Gere’s choice.
In the interest of full disclosure for online readers who may feel disadvantaged by missing the print edition – which sold out in minutes – these are the pictures causing all the kerfuffle.
Have a nice day.
(Editorial Note: The Baruba Post on Sunday frequently publishes pictures of nude Hollywood celebrities spotted on Sir Anthony Eden Beach. Have you consdered a subscription?)
Excerpted from the 2009/10 Sunday Times Caribbean Beachcomber Travel Guide.
Until 2005 when the government of Prime Minister Sir Baldwin J Scantlebury QC, OBE, WAN, KAN, OBI, KFC lifted the 50-year-old ban on tourists – introduced when an unmarried British couple from Nottingham were seen to be having sex often on the island’s public transportation system – Baruba was relatively unknown and hard to find on most maps of the West Indies.
Baruba remains proudly and defiantly not a member of any world association (UN, FIFA, UNICEF, NFL, NBA, BBC, OXFAM, etc.) which is a matter for serious debate in parliament when Baruban citizens have to pay full prices for tickets to World Cups, Olympics, Heavyweight Boxing Championships and Bruce Springsteen concerts.
Baruba with its unique lush vegetation is a rugged mountainous island, the smallest in the Inner Leeward Archipelago approximately 440 nautical miles due NNW as the crow – or the indigenous yellow-beaked sea egret – flies from Barbados. Although no record of any bird making the trip alive exists. It is easy to distinguish coconut-shaped Baruba from the air. According to ancient cartographers Baruba (or “The I’ve got a lovely bunch of Coconut Isle” as Christopher Columbus jokingly called it) is the only perfectly coconut-shaped-island in the world.
Baruba is renowned for its thick jungle rain forest which covers approx. 91% of the island and where oversized creatures breed and flourish at an alarming rate. The three toe sloth while rarely seen is Baruba’s best known mammal and leaping fish – thought to be unique to Baruba – leap, breed and flourish in the many streams and rivers flowing – many at dangerously high speeds – to the Caribbean Sea.
Baruba’s main tourist attraction is the 3-mile long “Sir Anthony Eden Beach”. Named by The New York Times in 2006 to be among the 5 best beaches worldwide it is said to have the finest, whitest sand to be found anywhere. A small cottage industry has developed making egg-timers with Baruban sand for domestic consumption only since the government places strict restrictions on the amount of sand to be harvested.
Until the “Sir Norman Foster” luxury hotel – owned, designed-by and named after the world’s greatest living architect – is completed hopefully by late 2012 visitors to Baruba must satisfy themselves with – as Barubans call it – “Typical Baruban Accomodation.”
In wooden beach shacks dotted at discreet distances between each other on Eden beach. Discreet because the government having long overcome the ban on public sex displays is promoting the possibility of such activities in Baruba’s first ever advertising campaign to run on CNN and the BBC later in 2009.
Most Barubans, the majority, live in the hinterland of the island – off limits to tourists for nature conservation reasons and to keep Baruba’s flora and fauna breeding and flourishing prodigiously – and to a large extent grow and catch most of the staples needed to stay alive on an island without a supermarket.
In Baruba the temperature varies little from 28 °C (82 °F), moderated by constant trade winds from the Gulf Stream which today’s mariners are convinced starts its thousands of miles voyage at the northern tip of the island. Yearly precipitation never falls below 1,000 mm (40 in), most of it falling before breakfast and in late autumn.
The Baruba flag design will be familiar to Battle of Britain pilots. It was chosen to commemorate those brave men and women who kept Britain free in 1940 and designed by a Wing Commander Hancock and Group Captain Neddy Seagoon who lived together on Baruba briefly in the 1950’s before returning to England to try their hand at radio comedy and flag designing if that failed.
The Baruba Post as a public service publishes in its entirety the text of a statement read yesterday by Prime Minister Sir Baldwin J. Scantlebury in his weekly radio address broadcast live on BarubaRadio 83.1FM and streamed over the Internet at http://www.barubaradio83.1.com
“My fellow Barubans. I’m just old enough to remember the catastrophic aftermath of World War II. As a young boy my father took me with him to Germany in 1948 as he collected material for his “Never Again” book documenting the horrors of German National Socialism.
“Today, watching the savage, cowardly invasion of Gaza by Israel I’m compelled to recall our visit back then to the Dachau Concentration Camp in the suburbs of Munich.
“How could human beings be so bestial towards each other,” I thought on that cold bleak day. And admit I have found no answer in the intervening sixty years.
“I raise the same question today. How can Jews who suffered so much inflict the same suffering on others.
“How can they seal off the most densly populated piece of Godforsaken land in the world, with no electricity, no running water, no sewage system, no food, no communications, no medical supplies and no friends.
“And then attack with America’s most modern weapons to destroy buildings in which women and children cower in cold, dark cellars. And then, with the supreme blind arrogance of people who claim there is a “God”, say ‘there is no humanitarian suffering.’
“I will not speak for long today. My heart is so heavy. But as I watch TV and listen to the radio about this genocide I accuse the Israeli and U.S.A. cowards – beholden to the almighty Jewish Lobby – of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Why do I also call them cowards? They’re following their own New #1 Rule of Warfare.
“Never attack and invade a nation or state you haven’t reduced to poverty, misery and impotence beforehand.”
Apologies to all Post readers who relaxed and lowered their guard when we said we’d never again consciously run an article about Simon Cowell.
We feel compelled to do so today but at least we’re not showing pictures of his hairy nipples. Which is more than can be said of most “Western” newspapers who run pictures of him and his profligate coterie on front pages while still maintaining in strident editorials that Hamas is responsible for the humanitarian tragedy currently taking place in Gaza.
For months ruthless Baruban property speculators have been enticing Cowell to renounce Barbados where he spends a suspiciously inordinate amount of time and build another $million dream mansion here on the only crime – and pothole – free island in the West Indies.
To no avail. Each time building permission was requested it was flatly turned-down by the titular head of the Baruba Rural Development and Pothole Elimination Ministry. On the grounds no villa, mansion, mall, bus shelter, marina or bank over 2 storeys high will ever be built in Baruba.
Today we learn Cowell has given-up his quest for Baruba property and is close to completing in Barbados what Sir Norman Foster – the world’s greatest living architect – called, “the ugliest most inappropriate building in the West Indies.”
This is definitely the last time Cowell will be mentioned in the Baruba Post but if you’re a sucker for punishment and really interested you can read more here.
CAUTION: If it’s hairy nipples you’re expecting you’ll be sadly disappointed.
Shocked Barubans of all creeds and colours awoke late this morning to the news – rumoured for days – that four senior Royal Baruban Police Officers were in fact arrested in pre-dawn raids at their homes on Christmas Eve. Their alleged offences? Photographing young Baruban ladies – however willing – in various stages of dress and undress – mainly undress – and publishing same on the Internet at www.barbcopfun.com (since shut down) for profit without their express written permission.
Although the names of the detained are widely known – almost all Barubans are related in one way or the other, normally the other – and The Post has information positively identifying three of them, we have been served with a temporary injection tea-bag restrainer by the sweaty-bewigged Lord High Court Justice Sir Clarence K. Cumberbatch KC, OBE, KFC and OJ & Bar preventing us from publishing any of the facts contained in – or on – the charge sheets.
What is known thus far – and can be published – comes directly from the sweet kissable lips of one of the young women in question who works for The Post in the Classifieds Online Advertising Department and whose identity understandably is withheld to save her pastor father further embarrassment at Sunday services. And who would cast the first stone at the incarcerated cops?
“Yes, it’s true,” she said defiantly. “I posed and I’m not ashamed. If Rihanna can walk around with her boobs on show at a sacred wedding I don’t see the harm in whipping-open my blouse in a rum shop for senior police officers in uniform who swore the realtime live view and pictures were for their private enjoyment only. That my face and naked chest appeared later that night on YouTube was not agreed to. I’m asking for maximum retribution or at least a second-hand BMW.”
When asked for his reaction after The Post broke the story Prime Minister Sir Baldwin J. Scantlebury said he’d considered mentioning the matter in his televised Christmas address to the Baruban people last night. But declined, as he said, “I don’t want young Barubans to know there’s a mountain of porn on the Internet featuring young girls in various states of dress – and undress – being photographed and videoed by men in real and comedy police uniforms.”
The Post asked him how he knew this, but he preferred to treat the matter as a Caribbean-wide phenomenon.
“Never have the differences between two similarly-sized Caribbean islands been so drastically exposed – if I may use the expression – in such a short time. A week ago our Barbadian friends arrest girls for taking pictures of policeman. And we arrest policemen taking pictures of girls. Where would you prefer to spend your next Christmas holidays?”
We’re still waiting for a Baruba web entrepreneur to construct a social networking site for all Barubans and visitors to post their memories of the island online. So that we too can run fun promotions like this one started by KoolBarbados.
Unfortunately the current global economic crisis is hitting traditional print newspapers hard and the otherwise risk-taking adventurous Baruba Post editorial board members have declined the chance to finance such an endeavor.
Citing drastically reduced advertising revenues as the reason. “We’d rather keep staff than fire them and use the money for non-proven ventures.”
That’s fair enough but it doesn’t stop us admiring the sponsors and creators of the KoolBarbados website. Communicating like this on social networking sites is clearly the future and we at the Baruba Post will have to adjust our strategy to meet these cataclysmic changes.
Why is KoolBarbados offering a BDS$100 prize?
Let them say it in their own owrds;
Times are tough. Tourism is down. So how can we attract more tourists to Barbados? With a great slogan! Not a generic statement that can be used by any tropical island. And has probably been used somewhere already.
A brilliant slogan – “Barbados. Floss Your Brain” – was already sent by Cool Barbados new members “crop_over_KIDZ” a couple of days ago which started the idea for a slogan search.
So write a really cool slogan best describing Barbados in 12 words or less. The winner gets a Barbados $100 Gift Voucher from Cave Shepherd. Entries close 31 January 2009.
How can you win?
Join up as a member at KoolBarbados. It’s completely free. Then go to the Most Popular Groups section and you’ll see where to submit your entry.
If you have questions you can always email the KoolBarbados site organisers here.
We don’t expect many Barubans to enter. That’s not the point.
It’s to kick our own people into action and get with the modern communication techniques before it’s too late.
people’s deposits would be safe. “If a bank or a financial institution is – or was – dumb enough to finance construction of condos selling for millions of dollars and especially since the sub-prime scam broke over a year ago they’re going to face tough decisions,” he said.
Posted by crackeditor 
Their alleged offences? Photographing young Baruban ladies – however willing – in various stages of dress and undress – mainly undress – and publishing same on the Internet at 
The Baruba Post Online 