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Yourself Is Simply The Greatest Thing That You Can Be!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The greatest thing you can be:
By D. Paul Reilly, For The Guardian -
Nassau, Bahamas:



I guess, you're already speculating about what I think the greatest thing you can be is. Some will perhaps think it's that the greatest thing a person can be is a medical doctor, because they assist people in getting rid of their illnesses, thus returning to a state of total health.

Perhaps the more religious people, may feel that being a minister of religion is the greatest thing you can be, thus assisting people from all walks of life to know and understand the importance of focusing on God, and our connection to our spiritual father.

The politically minded will perhaps think that the greatest thing you can be is to be a member of parliament, or better still, to ultimately become prime minister or president of one's country. A whole lot of people, I'm quite sure, will most definitely feel that the greatest thing you can be is a teacher, a person who assists the young people of the world in acquiring the necessary knowledge required in order to succeed in life.

We could go on and on coming up with various occupations, which different people with varying opinions feel are the greatest thing you can be, but my friend, haven't we all overlooked the real answer to the puzzle, so to speak? Yes, I believe we have. In the long run, the greatest thing you can be is simply yourself!

In Joel Osteen's book "Your Best Life Now" in chapter 11 titled "Be Happy With Who You Are" he writes: "Are you being the person God made you to be? Or are you just going around pretending, trying to be what everybody else wants you to be, living up to their expectations and following their dreams for your life?"

I sincerely hope and pray, that those words from Joel Osteen's book have literally woken you up, and that you now realize that far too many people throughout this world of ours, are in fact trying to be, what others want them to be, and not unfortunately what they themselves want to be ... what a tragedy!

My friend, if you wish to be successful and truly happy, you simply must stop trying to copy others, thus blindly following the dictates of those who persistently tell you what you should be. Instead, you need to be exactly what God created you to be, which is yourself.

You are a unique creation of God, and no one — but no one can duplicate you and the special contribution which you — and you alone were put on this earth by God to make to the peoples of the universe. So, stop this very minute trying to be someone else, and just be yourself!

Think about it.

* Email: dpr@humanri.com and Listen to "Time To Think" the radio program on Star 106.5 FM at 8:55 a.m. & 6:15 p.m. Monday through Friday.

April 30, 2008 | 10:35 AM Comments  0 comments


Bahamas Government Focus On Food Security For The Islands' People
Related to country: Bahamas
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Government Focus On Food Security:
By Kendea Jones -
Nassau, Bahamas:


The government is working feverishly to help Bahamian farmers to produce their own food in the midst of a worldwide food crisis, according to Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources Larry Cartwright.

Food prices in The Bahamas have already increased significantly over the last few months.

For instance, in Grand Bahama, in February the reported cost for items such as limes/lemons had gone up by 42.5 percent; for apples, 37 percent; butter, 27.6 percent and sweet peppers, 19.2 percent.

In New Providence, prices in February on tangerines were up 9.4 percent; limes/lemons, 7.6 percent and canned milk, 3.6 percent.

Other food items that advanced the consumer price index included, but were not limited to, frozen fruits and juices, dried vegetables, roast beef, tomato paste, lamb, fresh whole chicken and grapes.

The Department of Statistics said the food and beverage group was impacted "tremendously" by rising prices.

Minister Cartwright indicated on Sunday that the government is on the ball.

"We already have some things that were happening towards that end," he said. "We are targeting North Andros right now and we are dividing our plots over there and doing the same thing through Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation (BAIC) in Eleuthera and Abaco."

Minister Cartwright said in these islands, there is a particular focus being placed on limes.

"In order to alleviate the lime crisis, we are developing 100 acres of land in North Andros and Eleuthera so by the end of this year and early next year, you will see more limes around than you really need," he said.

The minister also said that the government is putting emphasis on starchy foods like cassava and potatoes.

"We are putting more emphasis on these crops because you know with the rice shortages we are going to find ourselves without a lot of starchy foods and so in The Bahamas we grow potatoes and cassava and we are encouraging farmers to produce more of that," Minister Cartwright said.

He said many farmers have already stepped up to the challenge of feeding Bahamians in great numbers.

"In particular, we have pineapples going in Eleuthera, onions in abundance in North Andros, Exumians are now farming again and we are getting all kinds of pleas from them and we are helping them out. There is farming in Cat Island, Grand Bahama and Abaco. We have our challenges but we are doing our best," Minister Cartwright said.

One of the challenges he said was the fact that The Bahamas is an archipelago and so it makes it difficult to transport fresh produce in a short period of time.

"What we produce in Mayguana it’s difficult to get it to New Providence because of our shipping problems and the distance factor and what we produce in Long Island - as near as that is to New Providence by the time we get it there, without refrigeration on the boat, it is difficult to get it to New Providence in a fresh state," Minister Cartwright said.

He said there is a possibility that Bahamians are also able to export. However, he said the government is focusing on making sure that The Bahamas is sustained.

"Our goal is food security," he said. "We are trying to produce food for our own people. But if the farmers have an abundance we can lean in that direction, but the government is not pushing that at this time."

He suggested that the world food crisis would cause The Bahamas problems in accessing traditional food imports.

"As a result of the food crisis, those producing countries are probably going to start holding for themselves and once they begin to that we are going to find that we are going to start having shortages in The Bahamas as far as imports are concerned," Minister Cartwright said.

The cost of food worldwide has climbed 40 percent since 2007, world food experts say.

Rising populations, strong demand from developing countries, increased cultivation of crops for biofuels and increasing floods and droughts have sent food prices soaring across the globe.

According to the United Nations, around 100 million of the world's poorest people who previously did not require help now can not afford to buy food.

Overall, Minister Cartwright said he is optimistic that The Bahamas is going to be able to sustain itself.

"I believe that we are going to be successful in producing much more food this year than last year and years prior to that," he said.

April 28, 2008

April 28, 2008 | 11:11 PM Comments  0 comments


Agent Kolar, Bush’s new hope for destabilizing Cuba
Related to country: Cuba
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Granma International staff writer—

• CAUGHT up in a series of scandals that erased what little credibility it had on the Cuba issue, the Bush administration, which until now trusted that its Cuban-American mercenaries would succeed in destabilizing the country, has placed its hopes in the none-too-clean hands of an astute Czech, a fitting student of its spy services.

Selected and recruited by the CIA in the late 1980s, Petr "Peter" Kolar, ambassador of the Czech Republic in Washington, moved in less than three years from a building maintenance employee and mail clerk to chief researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies attached to the Ministry of Defense in Prague.

This was thanks to a little push forward by his friend Vaclav Havel, also connected to the U.S. intelligence pipelines.

Kolar began his dizzying ascent after the collapse of the socialist state in the former Czechoslovakia, when his masters sent him, overnight, to Washington to begin a training program for his new tasks, according to his official biography. This training program was at the Woodrow Wilson International Center (WWIC), an institution funded and run by the U.S. government.

What his biography doesn’t say is that the WWIC, attached to the University of Princeton, is as closely tied to the CIA as white on rice. So much so, in fact, that the notorious former CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, bequeathed his personal archives to that institute.

James Billington, director of the WWIC from 1973 to 1988, began his career as Dulles’ assistant and ended as advisor to Ronald Reagan. According Dulles’ declassified documents, a large number of professors from that center also worked as "high level" advisors for U.S. spy agencies.

Lee Hamilton, its current director, has an even darker résumé. A former congressman from the state of Indiana, he was a member of the presidential advisory council for domestic security, secretary of the National Security Study Group for the Department of Defense and… secretary of the CIA advisory council on economic intelligence. Even more serious: he was on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission.

What could agent Kolar have studied in Washington, then?

What is certain is that back in Prague, the Havel connection sent him quickly on the way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he would rise from one intrigue to the next at rocket speed until becoming a deputy minister.

Now Washington could reap what it had sowed.

ARRIVES WITH MAFIA FIASCO

On December 2, 2005, Doctor Kolar (he was by now called doctor), presented his credentials to George W. Bush. He knew what the priorities were. He waited until after the New Year’s holiday, and on January 17, 2006, he was in Miami, where he met with some of the most recalcitrant mafia elements.

By May, he was ready to come out as the star of the anti-Cuban show.

In a rather crude move, the conspirators chose the offices of the Center for a Free Cuba, of the notorious CIA agent Frank Calzón, to call a press conference. Kolar had invited a number of diplomats from other former Eastern European socialist countries, in order to launch what he called "an initiative to support the internal opposition in Cuba."

Those accompanying him included Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, son of a government minister under the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship; Caleb McCarry, head of the Bush Plan to annex Cuba; Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, a terrorist recruited from the Cuban Democratic Directorate; the heavily-subsidized Sylvia Iriondo, of MAR por Cuba; Angel de Fana, of the group Plantados hasta la Libertad y la Democracia, a counterrevolutionary organization of ex-convicts; and Mauricio Claver Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, which is dedicated to bribing congress members.

Kolar did not suspect at that moment that before the year was over his troop of conspirators would be dispersed by a hurricane: a report in December from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealing that USAID officials assigned to Cuba concealed the final destination of $65.4 million in grants from this federal agency that went to their friends in Miami and Washington.

The suspects indicated by the GAO report included two of Kolar’s best supporters: Frank Calzón and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, who received millions in subsidies.

The blow was too heavy. Days later, Adolfo Franco, administrator of Latin American funds for the US Agency for International Development, immediately resigned his post… and joined the team of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who just so happens to be a director of the International Republican Institute (IRI), one of the great beneficiaries of Franco’s generosity.

The scandal in USAID continued over the following months, with more resignations and a police investigation that recently "blew up" Felipe Sixto, Calzón’s right-hand man, and the mastermind of a profitable embezzlement scheme, who has been hiding for a few months as "special" advisor to the president.

Another activity organized by Kolar’s "advisors" a short while ago at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel brought to light the new plan for creating subversion in Cuba as imagined by the masterminds in Langley.

Acknowledging Washington’s isolation in its dirty war against the island, Cuban-American Senator Mel Martinez, who was heading up the unusual meeting, emphasized a need for involving "other countries" in their anti-Cuba operation. This was meant to remind Cubans who "have been trained to hate" the U.S. government that the latter "is not their only ally." José Cárdenas, the "interim" director replacing Franco at USAID, said that USAID would soon begin "following the model established by the Eastern European bloc in the 1990s," thus confirming it as the first to benefit.

The mafioso meeting ended with an eloquent piece of nonsense from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutiérrez. According to this former multi-million dollar corporate executive, attention must be given to Cuba "as it has been with Tibet and Darfur," thus admitting U.S. intervention in both of those crises.

Meanwhile, the Czech ambassador was sanctioning such absurd instructions, his perspicacious associate Calzón did not waste any time on a useless show. He was waiting at the fittingly-named Dulles Airport in Washington for the next flight to Prague.

He knew that from now on, the Cárdenas substitute would favor the Czech capital for dist