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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
Laura Bush told a whopper even Dubya can't bring himself to say. Just " one bombing a day-- this discourages everybody".
Germany has issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents. Next step -- figure out who they were.
Given the extent collusion between European goverments and the CIA over this, there may be people in the German government that know the answer.
The
Freedom from Religion Foundation challenges the constitutionality
of Bush's "faith-based initiatives".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think we have an excess of faith-based initiatives in recent years.
Bush has made both legal preparations and rehearsals for establishing martial law in the US-- disguised.
I won't say that nationwide police cooperation to arrest criminal suspects is necessarily unjust, or that there is no possibly use for it. I am skeptical of the article's claim that murder suspects were deliberately "left on the street" to be arrested in this sweep. Before accepting that conclusion, I'd want to see if a large sweep has practical advantages as a means for arresting them.
Nonetheless, the lack of clear information about why these people were arrested makes these FALCON raids are suspect, and need to be investigated to see if it is justified. Were all the people arrested the subject of arrest warrants? How many of them have been charged with crimes? What is the complete breakdown of offenses? If those answers are not forthcoming, that would be a sign of guilt.
Meanwhile, given the legal changes that increased Bush's power, the possibility that this is a rehearsal for martial law, and for mass arrests of dissidents is very threatening, even if these FALCON sweeps did nothing actually wrong.
The US government is supporting terrorists in Iran.
They can't stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but they could create chaos and suffering there.
The suspicious death of Dr. Kelly, who exposed the falsehoods about
Saddam's weapons, was not properly investigated; the B'liar regime assumed it
was suicide, but did not demonstrate this. Many in the UK, including an
investigating opposition MP, have concluded it was murder, but they are
reluctant to consider the suspect with the most obvious motive: the British
government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I do not know who killed Dr. Kelly, but an investigationt hat fails to consider this plausible suspect is a sham investigation.
B'liar has
given in to public pressure to remove British troops slowly
from the Bush forces, while claiming that this is because things are
going so well there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Other countries plan to pull out of the Bush forces too.
The Great Barrier Reef, already in danger from global warming, is being polluted by pesticides.
8 former Black Panthers are being charged with murder
based on confessions extracted through torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A US appeals court has dismissed all the habias corpus lawsuits of Guantanamo prisoners, thus accepting and implementing the official transformation of the US into a state that does not respect the most basic human rights.
The Israeli Supreme Planning Council for occupied Palestine
retroactively legalized a
large construction project on
stolen Palestinian land.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Americans grossly underestimate the number of Iraqis killed by Bush's invasion of Iraq.
The Bush forces shot and killed an Iraqi family that was fleeing from the death squads that the Bush forces unleashed.
Some US generals "will quit" if Bush orders them to attack Iran.
Noam Chomsky analyzes US policy towards Iran, North Korea, South
America, etc. "It all comes down to control".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The
Iraqi government official who wanted to prosecute Shi'ite police
for raping a Sunni woman has been fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A human rights activist who investigates corporate abuses in Angola's
oil industry has been
accused of spying.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
She has been released on bail, but the charges are still in effect.
Israeli soldiers and politicians are already talking about "the next war", but not talking about the most likely target -- Iran.
The Japanese whale meat factory ship is sailing away from the penguin rookery that could have been damaged by an oil spill.
The refusal to be towed away by Greenpeace prolonged the danger, unnecessarily.
The UK government has decided to require immigrants to learn English
-- and to cut the funds for the classes to teach them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many poor countries suffer from deforestation, and planting trees
can be helpful. But tree planting won't make up for the damage done by CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Oral histories given by firefighters provide evidence that the WTC towers were destroyed by explosives planted inside them.
A NIST report argues against some of these conclusions, but I find that answer number 6 does not present enough of an argument to be convincing.
1500 Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners protested in the second
anniversary of the nonviolent movement at Bil'in against the confiscation
of their land by the annexation wall. Soldiers attacked the protestors
and some were seriously injured.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile Israeli soldiers, mistaken for prowlers in a Palestinian
building, shot two Palestinian cops who came to investigate.
One was shot in the back walking to his car.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Two articles explore both sides of one difficult dispute:
about whether Palestinians should have the right to return
to live in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's Iraqi government has almost finished its law to allow foreign oil companies to take over Iraq's oil assets.
The Iraqi Resistance denies the validity of the Iraqi government and all its acts; it will certainly reject this law.
Israel is reportedly asking the US permission for an air attack on Iran.
I think that statement presents the Israel-US relationship in a strange way, as if the desire for an attack came from Israel and the US had to be persuaded to go along. But it does not seem that Bush is reluctant to attack.
The Bush forces raided the union of Iraqi journalists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The EU agreed on a 20% further cut in CO2 emissions, but has not
decided how to achieve this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The fact that the poorer Eastern countries get to count the decreases that have already occurred is probably a good idea, because they are disadvantaged and probably don't make a large fraction of the emissions.
The plan to reduce by 20% unilaterally, and increase it to 30% if the rest of the world joins in, seems wise to me, because that both shows leadership and encourages the rest of the world.
The UN envoy to the Philippines accuses the army of killing many
political activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar is accused of trying to undermine efforts to develop a treaty against cluster bombs.
Australia has decided to ban incandescent bulbs, as a conservation measure. However, they will take 3 years to phase them out.
Fanatical prudes are threatening to cut the funds for a public library unless it imposes complete censorship of porn, even on adults.
The people running this library should say, "Shut us down if you want, but you can't make us endorse your policy."
Saudi Arabia convicted four foreigners of robbery and sentenced them to prison. Then -- surprise -- they were executed.
The trial wasn't fair either.
Almost half of Palestinian families are in danger of being unable to get enough food.
First there was news that a US representative had told the Palestinian
Authority it would continue the boycott against the national unity
government. Then Condoleezza Rice said that this statement was an
erroroneous report.
Then she made the same statement herself.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
What see-saws!
A UN envoy, who is South African and an expert on the apartheid system, is the latest prominent person to point out how the Israeli occupation of Palestine resembles that.
The reason his report may appear to one-sided, paying much less attention to Palestinian violence against Israelis, is that the latter is much less in both quantity and quality, and thus deserves less attention.
Under the harsh, pro-business policies of the UK, a charity finds that many poor people are condemned to a lifetime of debt.
A Muslim fanatic says he assassinated a Pakistani female politician
acting on his religious beliefs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Illegal production of strawberries in part of Spain, using
illegal wells, is drying up the rivers, and
threatens to cause an
irreversible environmental disaster before the shortage of water forces
the growing to stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Greenpeace activists protested the company that makes Kleenex
for cutting virgin forests, which is unsustainable.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Scientists call for an end to government subsidies for unsustainable deep-sea fishing, which uses very destructive methods.
Here's more information on what they destroy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hugo Chavez' program of democratic socialism with human rights,
explained in detail and contrasted with the Bush regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
More troops are being sent to Afghanistan, but facing a guerilla, it is unlikely to do any good.
UK's police chief calls for prescribing heroin to long-term addicts.
He recognizes that this is the humane way to prevent the crime that
many addicts commit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Allowing heroin addicts to get injected in doctors' offices can lead to big decreases in use of the drug.
The
civil war in Iraq has led to food shortages.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Vermont passed a
resolution calling for withdrawal of the Bush forces
from Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's "Iraqi" police are accused of raping an Iraqi Sunni woman.
This is a step up from what they usually do to Sunnis (kill them).
US legislators and representatives of other major countries reached a tentative agreement on a plan for a CO2-limitation treaty, which could perhaps be adopted once Bush is no longer in a position to interfere.
Will it come in time to save civilization? Or will Bush block the rescue mission until it is too late?
If Bush uses nuclear weapons against Iran, all the current members of
Congress could be held liable by the International Criminal Court, if
they were ever to go to places such as Europe which support the court.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Spring arrived in the UK,
several weeks early.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The corporate empire's economy compared to a tapeworm.
I am not sure whether the suggested measures would be beneficial, or feasible; but the issue is worth thinking about.
Rapidly moving rivers under the antarctic ice could enable the ice to
melt more rapidly than people previously knew-- meaning that
previous estimates of the danger of rising seas are too low.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK is 'one of the most stressed nations in Europe'.
The reason could be that
people there work more hours than anywhere in Europe except Latvia.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The reason for this is almost 30 years of rule by parties that put business above people. (Their justification is a variant of Reagan's "trickle down" theory.)
Bush seems to be ready to attack Iran if he thinks that certain Iranian activities have been proved.
Given Bush's standard of proof, this means he could attack at any moment.
The costs of the Iraq war are deepening the cracks in the US economy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know whether the proposed solutions are good ideas, or whether they would be sufficient to solve this problem.
If we look at the Iraq war merely as a problem for Americans, it might be valid to say that low wages and high debt are a bigger problem. However, that way of looking at the occupation of Iraq misses the main point. The occupation is not merely burdensome, it is a crime.
There reports that major donors are
trying to punish Brandeis University for inviting President Carter to
speak.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian prisoners, imprisoned without trial, are on hunger strike
because they have bad food and no blankets, and forced to urinate in
their clothing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime denies previous reports about rejecting the
Hamas/Fatah unity government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Japanese whaling factory ship caught fire. This will keep the
whales safe whales for a year; but if oil leaks from the the ship, it
could be a disaster for penguins.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Portugal will legalize early abortions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The true cost of cotton includes poisoned farm workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Free trade" treaties are the reason why governments of countries as powerful as India don't dare act to prevent use of these dangerous chemicals.
A new program of cheat
offsetting shows what carbon-offsetting programs can turn into if
you're not careful.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
(This problem of "cheating" has a much better solution: polyamory.)
With the water shortage in Iraq, people have to walk long distances to get water from rivers-- water that can make them sick.
US legislators and representatives of other major countries reached a tentative agreement on a plan for a CO2-limitation treaty, which could perhaps be adopted once Bush is no longer in a position to interfere.
Will it come in time to save civilization? Or will Bush block the rescue mission until it is too late?
A UK court ruled that B'liar's "consultation" about building
additional nuclear power plants was a "sham".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Drug companies have a practice of
paying their competitors not to produce generic drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Once upon a time, this would have been illegal. It should be illegal now.
Most countries don't ask other countries, even former enemies, to recognize "their right to exist". They only ask to be recognized as existing. But Israel makes a special demand of the Palestinians: part of a system of one-sided demands that ensure peace is impossible.
Illegal production of strawberries in part of Spain, using illegal
wells, is drying up the rivers. This threatens to cause an
irreversible environmental disaster long before the shortage of water
forces the growers to stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US House of Representatives adopted a non-binding resolution
against Bush's troop increase in Iraq, and Democrats say binding
measures will follow. This could perhaps lead to an end to the
occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A study found that
nutrients in fish are important for babies. But, thanks to human pollution,
eating fish can poison babies (and adults) with mercury.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If mothers do try to eat more fish, it will speed the depletion of the seas, which is already projected to be nearly complete in a few decades.
Palestinians are trying to resolve the violent dispute between Fatah and Hamas by forming a national unity government, but the Bush regime does not want them to succeed.
The fighting between Fatah and Hamas was provoked by the same outside pressure that is being continued here.
B'liar is dragging the Labour party down in the polls, while the Liberal
Democrats are moving up. But they still have a ways to go to catch up.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since the UK Labour Party came to power 10 years ago, its policies, friendly to business and rather unfriendly to working people, have increased poverty, especially among children, the old, and the ill.
This is the result of imitating US-style policies, which B'liar loves to do. The US government is like the parents of a dysfunctional family.
Scientists plan to try to preserve hundreds of frog species in
captivity, as a fungus whose growth is boosted by global warming
wipes them out in the wild.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Zealand's PM proposes to make the country carbon-neutral, but the plan
uses methods such as biofuels and tree-planting which have their own serious
problems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Anne Frank and her family were sent to Auschwitz because the US and other
countries wouldn't let them in as refugees.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Today, once again, many refugees fleeing places of great danger can't find a country that will let them in.
A campaign of many MPs and other public figures opposes B'liar's plan to
build expensive new nuclear missile submarines.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ivory Coast made a multinational company pay almost $200 million for
dumping toxic waste. (This happens commonly there.) But the poisoned victims
say that is not enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA spoke with Italy's spy chief, in general terms, about the idea
of kidnaping suspects from Italy back in 2001.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The same UK soldiers who in Northern Ireland ran spies in both sides, provoking murders, are now at work in Iraq for the Bush forces.
If they are doing in Iraq what they did in Belfast, Bush nay be more directly responsible for the civil war than we realized.
"Vulture companies" buy up poor country debts that are about to be forgiven, then demand repayment in full.
There is one anomalous point in this article. If governments really want to forgive these debts, why do they agree to sell the debts?
Another point worth noting is that these "debt forgiveness" programs typically impose harsh privatization requirements that keep the country in permanent suffering.
There is very little good about the practice of making loans to poor countries-- it is supposed to enable them to develop, but its real effect is to put them in a permanent trap.
The main cause of these debt traps is the expectation that the exploitative loans will be repayed. Therefore, what really is needed is for debtor countries to start simply canceling their debts. Once rich people learn that by trying to exploit poor countries this way they are likely to lose, they will stop.
A US bill to "protect minors" would ban Wikipedia access
from schools and libraries, as well as making online discussion
forums unfeasible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
DEA judge calls for government to end obstruction of medical marijuana research.
The DEA prevents any research from being done to study the medical effects of marijuana, by refusing to provide marijuana for studies.
The US prosecutor who has
imprisoned Josh Wolf for six months says he
is a journalist "only in his imagination". Meanwhile, a chapter the
Society of Professional Journalists has named him "journalist of the
year".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US Air Force punished a sergeant for posing nude, removing her from active duty. She responded by resigning from the national guard.
If you want to avoid participating in a criminal war in Iraq, and you are not heroic enough to follow Lt. Watada's path, this is the easy way out!
Bush's top environmental crimes prosecutor got a
juicy reward for
letting a big oil company off the hook.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Isolated instances of corruption happen in every government, but they happen a lot more when the government treats corruption as acceptable starting from the very top.
Sex and torture in America.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A petition against the plan for "road pricing" in UK received over a million signatures in a short time. The arguments presented by the authors included falsehoods such as denial of the danger of CO2 emissions from cars, but also a valid reason: opposition to government surveillance of car travel.
The
UK already does total surveillance of car travel; this wrong must
be corrected. If road pricing based on surveillance is introduced,
ending the surveillance will be impossible.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The right way to discourage driving and reduce CO2 emissions is to increase the gas tax. Each gallon of gas burnt produces approximately the same amount of CO2 regardless of circumstances, so why discourage it more in one place than in another? Of course, the UK should also make trains and buses cheaper and more frequent. Privatization of trains in the UK has backfired, resultingx in trains that are so expensive that people fly instead.
Various religions are starting to recognize the importance of
protecting the environment, and to work with environmental
organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Free Software Movement also receives support from some religious people who conclude that forbidding people to share with each other is against their principles.
Forests in Sumatra and Borneo are being cut down illegally
as if there
were no tomorrow. And for orangutans, maybe there isn't one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Charges were dismissed against some British troops in the Bush forces, who were accused of beating Iraqi prisoners (one of whom died from this). Because they blindfolded the prisoners, the prisoners couldn't identify the soldiers who beat them.
So where does this leave all the Iraqi prisoners that Bush forces soldiers might want to beat in the future?
Google has stopped indexing the uruknet.info site, in effect carrying
out a form of censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Google claims that this is due to some sort of technical problem, but the claim is implausible and seems not to be true anyway.
Google has resumed indexing urknet as a news source.
A
professor at Bowling Green University was harassed by the police for
using a free software browser plug-in, Tor, which blocks some methods
of surveillance of what users browse.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The attitude that merely blocking surveillance is a crime is common among the "security forces" of universities.
I am disappointed with this professor for granting even partial legitimacy to the desire to suppress Tor. No matter what method they use -- just making nasty threats, or by writing a policy against anonymity -- it has to be resisted.
An
ex-CIA-agent is suing the CIA, saying he was fired for reporting
evidence suggesing that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass
destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I am both shocked and perplexed by the measures to forbid the agent from even identifying himself to the public.
The Bush regime's accusations against Iran have sunk to a new level of absurdity. It says that Iran is supplying the antitank mines used by Sunni resistance groups, counter to all evidence.
To balance the budget,
Bush proposes to cut health care for wounded
soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It often happens that governments spend a lot of money to produce something, then don't bother allocating any to take care of it.
The State of Maine has rejected the US government's Real ID plan
to convert drivers' licenses into national ID cards.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Excessive government power is far more dangerous than terrorists. For more information on the danger of Real ID, see here
The UK arrested a
Muslim leader who called for Muslims in the UK army
to be killed. He also endorsed the standard Muslim policy of killing
anyone who leaves Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This belief shows the basic injustice of Islam as an organized religion, in its current form. In most Muslim countries, rejection of Islam by a Muslim is a capital crime. This offence against religious freedom must be strongly condemned.
Two teenagers in Florida were prosecuted for taking sexy photos of
themselves together. It is legal for them to have sex, but if they
take a picture, that is "child pornography". The judges argued that
they should be punished now because the photos might be released some
day, even if it were against their will.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, this case reveals the dishonesty of the word "child" in the expression "child pornography". When they use that term, they want us to think of 10-year-olds, but then they apply it to sexually mature young adults.
Hamas and Fatah have made a tentative agreement to stop fighting each
other and produce a "national unity" government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The fighting, and the agreement, is a response to the blockade imposed after Palestinian democracy elected Hamas. But Israel is not satisfied with inclusion of Fatah: it demands total surrender by the Palestinians to the occupation.
A real peace must include recognition of Israel, acceptance of all former treaties except as modified, and a clear renunciation by all sides of all terror and violence. A real peace must also include ending the occupation and giving the Palestinians sovereignty over the West Bank and its resources. It is unfair to demand that the Palestinians make all their concessions at the outset, while Israel does not.
The Bush forces say that the Iraqi Resistance is getting its antitank mines from Iran.
These accusations could be true: why shouldn't Iran (or any country) help the Iraqi Resistance kick out the occupying army? (We're not ashamed of the help provided by France to the American Revolution.) They could also be false; we can't trust what Bush says about this.
If Iran is working with the Iraqi Resistance, is it working with Iraqi Shi'ites? That would mean that Iraqi Shi'ites are an important part of the Resistance. Or is Iran helping Iraqi Sunnis? Neither relationship is impossible, but either one would undermine the Bush view of the situation.
The Iraqi resistance has stated terms for peace. They include canceling all the decisions that the Bush regime has imposed on Iraq.
This is a legitimate demand, since such decisions (which include privatization of many state activities, plant patents, and debts, with the theft of Iraq's oil in progress) have no validity when imposed by a conqueror.
However, the fact that Iraq is now effectively divided makes it futile to make peace with the Sunnis alone. Things are much worse in Iraq now than they were 3 years ago.
Monsanto advertised in France that Roundup is biodegradable and safe. It was convicted of false advertising, then fined a trivial amount.
Monsanto will probably tell its ad agencies in other countries, "Go ahead and try it: the worst that can happen is we pay a small fine, and millions of people will still believe what we told them."
Fines need to be millions of euros if they are to succeed in deterring corporate crimes like these.
A DOD report confirms that the Bush regime distorted intelligence reports
in order to fabricate an excuse to attack Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime has accused Iran of aiding in a effective tricky attack on a Bush forces base in Iraq. There is no evidence for this, but Bush wants to prepare excuses to attack Iran. But there is another theory: that the attackers were Americans.
I won't take for granted that the Iraqi resistance lacks the capability to organize such an attack. I also won't assume that the Bush regime has the moral scruples not to attack its own troops. Brzezinsky recently warned Congress that Bush might be planning to do that. (There's also the possibility that the Bush regime participated somehow in the 9/11 attacks.)
The Iraqi government is executing captured members of the resistance as "criminals", after "trials" without defense lawyers.
Do these leaders want to be executed when the resistance captures them?
Italy will try the Bush forces soldier who shot Nicola Calipari
on murder charges.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here's a good illustration of the kind of society that non-free software (which gives the developer power over the users) leads to.
Prominent nuclear physicists called on the US Congress to pass a law
prohibiting nuclear attacks against countries that do not have nuclear
weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ethiopia, an ally of Bush, is
imprisoning and torturing political
opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Teaching allies to torture is standard US practice since at least the 60s. Maybe the Bush regime taught the Ethiopian government some of the techniques.
Here's
more detail about Lt Watada's mistrial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It seems that prominent authorities on the law agree that he cannot be prosecuted again. But who knows whether the Bush regime will respect the law?
The EU proposes to
establish Europe-wide criminal penalties for
crimes that damage the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If this is enforced energetically against shipment of waste to the poor countries where a large amount of it now winds up, it could make a big difference.
To demonstrate the absurdity of the main supposed argument against gay marriage, a ballot initiative proposes to annul any marriage that does not produce a child within three years.
In an overpopulated world, the idea that the state has an interest in encouraging births is suicidally insane.
The judge in Lt. Ehren Watada's court martial found he was unable to keep Watada's defense -- that the war is illegal and therefore the order for him to fight is illegal -- from being heard in court. So he found a strained excuse to declare a mistrial. This probably means Watada cannot be prosecuted again, and therefore cannot be convicted. But that would be less of a defeat for the Army than to see him found not guilty.
It is a great victory, but if another officer follows Watada's
in footsteps, the Army will probably find a different legal strategy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President Chavez was recenly given limited power to decree laws in a certain range of issues. This article explains more about law-decrees in Venezuela. They can be overturned by the legislature or by a referendum, or by the Supreme Court if it finds them unconstitutional.
I am confident that Chavez intends to respect democracy.
Florida proposes to have a voter-verifiable paper ballot for all votes
cast.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This will certainly make things better, but my enthusiasm for a voter-verified paper backup ballot was dimmed by the experiment which found that most people failed to notice that their paper backup ballot didn't match the votes they had cast. Unless we educate voters to pay more attention, we need to have votes cast on paper.
Meanwhile, let's not forget that use of optical scanning machines does not ensure an honest election. Evidence strongly suggests that Bush stole the 2004 election through the rigging of optical scanning vote counting machines in Ohio.
B'liar is accused of sabotaging a UN push to abolish the death
penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Note the British diplomats' half truth: they say they are "skeptical about the resolution's chances of passage". This is dishonest if they are the ones preventing it from passing. But even if it were honest, it would not be a valid reason to oppose the resolution.
Devastating floods made 340,000 people homeless in Jakarta.
They were caused by deforestation of nearby hills, which was done to make houses for the wealthy.
The latest Republican proposal: to make your ISP spy on you for the US government.
Zbigniew Brzezinski told a senate committee that the Bush regime is looking for a provocation to excuse attacking Iran, to carry out its "self-fulfilling prophecy" of such a war.
He also condemned the Iraq war as morally wrong.
The Australian government attacked concert organizers who tried to restrain hooligans, because the hooligans literally draped themselves in the Australian flag. The opposition, and mass media joined in the attack.
The concert organizers made a mistake by going on the defensive. They should have accused Prime Minister Howard of supporting hooliganism.
Tens of thousands marched in Oaxaca demanding the resignation of the
governor, accusing him of stealing the election.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In late 2006, the governor crushed massive protests, arresting large
numbers of people and torturing some. Others seem to have been
"disappeared".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
But this did not put an end to the movement.
I suppose Bush would also respond to massive protests by arrests, torture and disappearace. But people in the US have not shown the courage in defense of their democracy that we have seen in Mexico.
Professor Yayla job in Turkey criticized some of the ideas of Mustafa
Kemal, founder of modern Turkey. For this, people called him a
traitor, and he was fired.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Academics in the US have been punished for their views in recent years, too. This is equally wrong in any country.
The Indian Young Publisher award was given to a publisher who focuses on
issues of caste.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dr. Ambedkar's Navayana form of Buddhism is a rationalist form, with the spiritualist aspects removed.
Amnesty International is concerned about the
torture of a conscientious objector in Turkey.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
On Feb 7 there were protests in many countries against the UN troops that control Haiti.
This article also explains why.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers of the Bush forces, in the "Iraqi" army,
kidnaped an Iranian
diplomat, then released him.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime could have ordered it as part of their campaign against Iran, denying it afterward. Or perhaps these soldiers were working on some other account.
Spain arrested 18 people just for belonging to a group that had
recently been declared "terrorist". Apparently there is no need for
them to be personally connected with any crime in order to be
convicted and punished.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Spain as in the US, this practice constitutes guilt by association -- which is unjust use of government power. ETA bombings are injustices, but that doesn't legitimize government injustices.
(I am not a supporter of Basque independence; treating people this way is wrong no matter what cause they support.)
Bush is quietly pushing the construction of a hundred new coal-burning
electric plants. If they are built, there is little hope of reducing
US CO2 emissions. And it's totally unnecessary, since Greenpeace
shows how the US could cut emissions drastically by building windmill
farms and requiring cars to be more efficient.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Car company lobbies made the EU water down its CO2 emissions limits.
In order for governments to get serious about preventing climate disaster, or protecting freedom, or reducing poverty, or anything except pandering to business, they must have the strength to tell business lobbyists to buzz off: "What you say is surely only half true, and you are not very important anyway."
Note how the car companies blocked the previous effort by agreeing to "voluntary standards", which they then ignored. Business always proposed voluntary standards as a compromise because it can ignore them, so that is really just a way for business to deflect the pressure for regulation. A government which is serious about achieving a goal will respond to such a proposal by saying, "Business can't be trusted to keep voluntary standards. We'll make mandatory standards, and avoid an unnecessary risk."
You may have read that President Chavez convinced Congress to give him the power to "legislate by decree". The story is true, but only partly; this is limited to a few specific areas.
I find this somewhat disturbing, because bypassing constitutional procedures is generally worrisome, and because I don't see why it should be necessary. However, these areas are not the ones that are significant in terms of human rights, so I don't think this is outright bad. I will wait and see what laws he makes this way before I criticize.
China is planning to build an arcology powered by renewable energy that could house, employ and feed half a million people.
Steve Jobs called on the record companies to end use of DRM.
Here is his actual article.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article pleads for us not to hold Apple responsible for iTunes' DRM. However, nobody held a gun to Jobs' head to make Apple implement iTunes; he and Apple cannot evade responsibility for what they did. The article also insults people who share by calling them "pirates" and calls sharing "stealing".
Nonetheless, this article may help in the pressure to abolish DRM.
Iran is about to announce increased production of weapons-grade uranium -- partly as bluff; some experts say it will need years to really produce enough for weapons.
I do not believe Iran's claims that this is meant for peaceful uses; they do face an oil crisis in the future, but if they only wanted nuclear power plants, they could get them without this confrontation. However, I would be more inclined to regard Iran as a particular menace if the nuclear-armed US were not so aggressive, and more inclined to blame Iran if the US had not made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only way for other countries to protect themselves from US attack.
Disposable clothing boosts pollution both before and after it is worn.
Iraqis fleeing the murder in Iraq can find refuge in Syria, but Palestinians fleeing Iraq are stuck in a camp at the border.
In order to support the official pretense that Afghanistan was a safe place, UK officials denied asylum to a refugee who said he and his family faced the threat of murder there. They deported him, and sure enough, he was murdered.
The B'liar regime, like many, is more interested in creating an appearance of validity for its lies, than with what they do to people.
The Conservatives say they will scrap the B'liar's ID card plan if they are elected. They are trying to scuttle the scheme even sooner by scaring companies off of bidding to implement the scheme.
This approach should be applied to "free trade" treaties too.
Fatah and Hamas are meeting in a last-ditch chance to avoid a Palestinian civil war.
The conflict between them is the result of the Israeli blockade and financial embargo. I would guess that many in the Israeli government are hoping that civil war does break out among Palestinians. But I think that if it does, they will eventually regret it.
A Citizens' Hearing presented the
evidence that Lt. Ehren Watada was
forbidden to present at his trial -- which would appear not to be much
of a trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Senate Republicans prevented any debate about Bush's plans to send more troops to the Bush forces.
Many US cities are passing laws making it
a crime to feed homeless people. Politicians feel these unsightly
nuisances belong in the cemetery.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UN denies its troops in Haiti fired at shantytowns from
helicopters, inevitably killing bystanders, but the roof damage seems
to prove they did.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Labour MP writes that he is ashamed to be a Labour MP, after he was unable to stop a family of Pakistani refugees from being callously deported from the UK.
The minister who deported them, trying to look tough on immigration, considered the case in such a cursory fashion that he never had the evidence the family offered, as proof that their lives would be in danger in Pakistan, translated into English.
The new unit of Guantanamo prison is even harsher-- solitary
confinement for everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime, as usual, lies about it. Prisoners should just love this new prison.
The UK plans to teach all school students about global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, the focus on what individuals can do-- supposing they pay constant attention and that their work pressures allow them time to do so-- could be an excuse not to do what is really needed to limit global warming: firm and effective goverment policies.
It looks like the Iraqi resistance has found a new way to shoot down Bush forces helicopters.
The 200 or so pilgrims that the Bush forces killed-- and then claimed
were terrorists-- were reportedly part of a group of Shi'ites that
want to stand with the Iraqi Sunnis against the Bush forces, rather
than with the Shi'ites that are slaughtering Sunnis, who control the
"Iraqi" government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
So maybe the "Iraqi" government was being murderously rational in killing them.
There are now
over 140,000 street children in Jakarta.
Many poor people can't afford to care for their children.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The best way to avoid this sort of problem is to help (and convince) people to have fewer children.
The B'liar regime is using recent police raids as an opportunity to demand imprisonment of suspects for 90 days, even though these raids have nothing to do with such a policy.
Note the argument that "we can imagine circumstances in which this power would be needed." Any conceivable proposed government power could have such a "justification" -- therefore, if we value any kind of freedom at all, we must conclude that such we-can-imagine "justifications" are not sufficient reason to abolish a freedom.
The people who opposed the invasion of Iraq are
now seen to have been
right, but they cannot take much pleasure in it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The most noteworthy point in this article is actually the details of the pressure that was put on some of these people to lie and support Bush. That is fundamental corruption of the political system, waiting to be used by any dishonest president for any purpose.
Congress is starting to document Bush's record of gagging US scientists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Seclists.org, which archives various security-related mailing lists, was shut down by its domain registrar on request from MySpace.com. Neither MySpace.com nor the registrar bothered to talk with the maintainers of Seclists.org before they did this.
The Brookings institute says that the Bush forces must
give up on
trying to control Iraq's cities, and invite Syria and Iran to help
reestablish order and end the civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
That resembles what I've been saying here.
German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for the CIA kidnap team that
seized a German citizen in Macedonia and imprisoned him in Albania.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
They ought to include the former head of the CIA, who must have authorized this.
The "Vishnu Strategy":
persistent massive use of armed force, which
breeds the hatred that eventually defeats it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I'm told that the writer has misunderstood the Hindu conception of Vishnu, and that the proper translation of that part of the Bhagavad-Gita is "I am Time, that comes to destroy worlds", the point being that everyone Arjuna fights in the coming battle is going to die sooner or later anyway. I wouldn't consider that alone a justification for war, but the point is that people shouldn't take this article as a lesson about Vishnu. It is nonetheless interesting for what it says about Bush.
The net is
closing around B'liar's lieutenants who offered honors
in return for contributions to the Labor party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Novartis and other drug companies are pursuing a
campaign of mass
murder, through a lawsuit in an Indian court that attempts to change
Indian patent law.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
When people die because the WTO made medicine too expensive for them, their tombstones should say, "Patented to death by the WTO." This is what the world needs to generate, over time, the movement that will destroy the WTO.
The WTO deserves to be destroyed because it subordinates democracy to the unjust power of business.
The destruction of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia has brought back to Mogadishu the chaos and violence that existed before the ICU.
The contents of "bin Laden tapes" has repeatedly produced suspicion that they are made by someone working for the Bush regime (who may or may not be Osama bin Laden). The statement connecting Somalia to al Qa'ida is consistent with that theory -- if the Bush regime wanted to intervene there, this gave them a fine excuse.
What shall we call Gordon Brown?
Gordon Brown has already made it clear that, if he replaces Tony Blair, he will continue Blair's attacks against the Rights of Englishmen. Therefore, he will deserve to be the object of derision and disgust.
But the name "B'liar" won't fit him. So what should we call him? "Frown"? "Clown"? "Drown"? Something else?
Please email your suggestions to rms at the site gnu followed by a period and orgy without the y.
B'liar blocked the Italian initiative for the EU to take a stand against the death penalty world-wide. The reason given: to pander to the US.
Shame on the UK, and shame on the US.
The Bush forces say they suspect two Iraqi generals helped plan a Jan 20 attack by resistance fighters disguised as Bush forces.
If this is true, those generals are secretly loyal to their country, even as they appear to collaborate with the occupation. And they are far from alone.
An UK parliament report on poverty urges a new focus on helping poor countries reduce population growth.
I disagree with those that object to China's birth limitation policy: it is both necessary and justified. To say to a person "have as many children as you want" is tantamount to saying "50 years from now, take for your descendants as much land, as much water, as much gasoline, as much of everything as you want". Both are equally unsustainable.
In some countries the birth rate has decreased to the point where there is no problem of population growth. In some countries, providing free contraception would suffice to solve the problem. We should do this, of course. But if in some places that doesn't solve the problem, we must still curb that growth somehow, and letting it be done by starvation and disease is not humane.
Canada's depository library now requires submission of electronic works -- copies sans DRM.
Major US companies CEOs called for a cap on carbon emissions -- in
other words, serious efforts to restrain global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The CEOs' goal is probably long-term economic growth. That's not a very good goal, since it gives no direct value to ending poverty. But the contrast with the Bush regime's policy shows that the regime has much worse values. The Bush regime has the attitude of a looter.
The Middle East's military tensions
block observers from studying the
environmental condition of the Jordan River, but the parts they can
see have almost no water in them. And they are so polluted that they
are dangerous to visit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas and Fatah are battling openly in Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US criticized Israel for using cluster bombs in populated areas.
So we cannot say that Bush regime has made the US do bad things 100% of the time. But it comes pretty close.
The Bush forces wiped out a group of Iraqis on pilgrimage, more than 200 people, after a fight that started by accident.
Like any tyrant, Bush would rather lie to accuse others than admit his own mistake. So the Bush forces called the pilgrims "terrorists", and called the fight a great victory.
B'liar personally intervened to divert aid funds for African children
into buying an unneeded radar system.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The radar was made by a British company that B'liar persistently operates to support.
The campaign for a world boycott of the Israeli Medical Association
and other Israeli
medical organizations that support the occupation of
Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is firing effective federal prosecutors
and replacing them with
inexperienced political hit-men -- probably so as to stop them from
exposing and prosecuting corruption that Bush encourages.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK's prisons are full to capacity, but there's
still room for a
peace protestor who refuses on principle to pay a fine for protesting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Soldiers in Guinea
shot protestors as a general strike calls for the
ouster of the president. They also arrested the leaders of the unions
that organized the strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This article seems to want to give the feeling that the violence was mutual, but the another article, for which I don't have a usable URL, says that the killing was done by soldiers to protestors.
An ice shelf disintegrating due to global warming has produced a giant iceberg the size of a city.
At least this problem won't get worse and worse. In a few decades, there won't be any ice shelves left.
Dishonests presidents, such as Nixon and Bush, pretend to be the "commander in chief" of all Americans.
In fact the president is the commander in chief only of the armed forces.
WTO negotiations on a revised "free trade" treaty, which appeared to
have collapsed, are being reopened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Free trade" treaties are inimical to democracy because they transfer power from states to big business. Some of these treaties attack democracy explicitly, by requiring states to pay for the privilege of regulating business. All attack democracy implicitly, by making it easier for businesses to tell states, "If you dare to regulate us, we will simply move."
Encouraging international trade is beneficial only so long as democracy is not weakened, but weakening democracy is exactly what businesses want. Thus, there is no practical prospect of a "free trade" treaty which isn't a threat to the public good. All the existing free trade treaties should be abolished because of the harm they do to democracy.
Disposable clothing threatens to boost pollution, both while it is made,
and after it is thrown away.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush ignored Congress and sent more troops to the Bush
forces. The result is that a lot of them are being killed,
along with a lot of Iraqis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces say they killed some 200 members of an Iraqi cult group that was planning to attack a religious festival.
It could be true, but I don't trust the Bush regime enough to take its word for any of the facts that cannot be verified.
Thailand decided to produce cheap generic versions of some life-saving medicines.
This exercizes a clause in the TRIPES agreement that the US keeps trying to pressure poor countries not to use.
Violence and division continue to increase in Baghdad, and
the rest of Iraq, making Bush's supposed "strategy" absurd.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Litvinenko killer 'will die of poisoning within three years'.
Is that a clever move by the organizers of the killing, to get rid of the killer as a possible witness? Will the killer confess to get revenge on them?
Millions of tons of waste from rich countries are disposed of in China, where poor people sort through it by hand and get sick from it.
Russia has banned two human rights organizations which have helped Chechens publicize and go to court about Russian atrocities in Chechnya.
The practice of banning organizations arbitrarily has been championed by the US and its allies, and has been extended by them to the UN level.
Under NAFTA,
Mexico has become dependent on corn from the US. The
increase in corn prices due to turning corn into ethanol has created a
food crisis there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Biofuel is no solution to the problem of oil if it competes with food for humans. Only if made from waste plant material (which is not yet feasible) can it be a substantial renewable energy source.
Ecuador is going to sue Colombia in the World Court for US-backed
drug-eradication spraying, which damages crops and people's health
in Ecuador.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Maryam Ibrahim, 8 years old is in prison in Texas, as is the rest of
her family. They came to the US legally and asked for asylum.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian peace activist whose 11-year-old daughter
was murdered by the Border Police still wants peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush wants to win the occupation of Iraq by
killing Iranians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If the Bush forces start killing Iranians in Iraq, they will start hiding better. A few will be killed nonetheless, but it won't change anything directly. However, it will create an appearance of activity, escalate the tension with Iran, and provide a lever to manipulate Americans. I think that is what Bush wants.
Some senators think
this is leading to an attack against Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Recent announcements suggest that maybe Israel will make that attack.
I would feel more sympathy for Israel's view of this situation if it were not involved in a system of oppression that makes Iran look like paradise.
Officially, some 3,000 Bush forces soldiers have been killed by the resistance. But that only counts official soldiers. Some 48,000 mercenaries fighting as well, but the casualty figures do not count them.
Carl Bernstein: Bush Administration has done
"Far Greater Damage" than Nixon.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are attacking in many Iraqi cities, and rampaging against civilians too.
When Shi'ite and Sunni students started shooting at each other in
Beirut,
the army could not decide what to do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Publishers of restricted-access scientific journals have hired a
PR agent to attack the open access movement. The agent previously worked
to deny global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The people operating a medical-marijuana operation in Canada, who funded it through voluntary donations, were prosecuted and accused of distributing the marijuana commercially.
Prosecutor Lindley's quote is a vicious act of misrepresentation. The evidence which supposedly shows this was commercial actually proves just the opposite, when carefully considered. It confirms that the recipients of the marijuana were not charged any price: when some sent money, that was a voluntary donation. But Lindley takes the fact that many chose to donate as a sign of evil.
I wonder what Lindley would do if she suffered from a disease and the only drug that provided relief were illegal.
The European Parliament's
investigation of US kidnapings in Europe denounced government ministers of
various European countries for refusing to cooperate with the investigation,
and says they surely knew about these crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
After 9/11, some
Muslim immigrants in the US were arrested on vague suspicions and kept in
jail for a long time; while there, they were mistreated and beaten and labeled
as "terrorists". Now some have gone to court about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush, forced to admit that global warming is an issue, continues
trying to block real remedies. His "solution" calls for a small
reduction in oil use over a long period of time, to be achieved by
biofuels--
thus avoiding real solutions that would burn less.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's plan may actually cause harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A soldier who killed some Iraqi prisoners has been convicted of murder and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The Army is doing the right thing in this case, but it is a rare exception. Even the killing of prisoners is punished only occasionally. Killing unarmed Iraqis who are not prisoners happens all the time. When soldiers do this intentionally, usually it is not punished. Even more often, jumpy soldiers shoot unarmed Iraqis out of fear they might be attackers. This is not considered a crime on the part of those soldiers, but it is part of the crime that Bush committed.
Protests sparked riots in Lebanon, threatening a reignition of the
civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is worth noting that it was not the Hezbollah people that started the violence.
Brian Haw won a victory in court to continue his 6-year protest in front of Parliament.
B'liar passed a law specifically to stop this protest; that shows how much it stung him, and how little regard he has for democracy.
The world's leading climate experts now predict that global warming will do even more harm than previously estimated.
In Kabul, the poverty is so great that people regularly die from the cold.
Nepal has been pressured to privatize the water supply.
Resistance is beginning.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A joint Israeli-Palestinian protest made the Israeli government back off its latest plan to restrict Palestinians; the prohibition on Palestinians' riding in Israeli's cars.
More generally,
this article says how the Israeli rule of Palestine
resembles South African apartheid, and how it differs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains why
it has moved the doomsday clock up to 5 minutes to midnight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A list of what Israeli troops do to Palestinians
when not shooting at them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's plans to attack Iran amount to a major war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Iraqi resistance says that Bush force soldiers shot a 16-year-old Iraqi for spitting at them.
Bush should teach his soldiers to say: IEDs can break my knees, but spit will never harm me!
The second looting of New Orleans.
We need to help rebuild New Orleans, but not in the same place! That is asking for it to be drowned again. Even the parts that aren't below sea level now will be below sea level in a few decades. If we don't to take advantage of this opportunity to move the city to higher ground, we will all regret it later.
Bush admits his occupation of Iraq is a "slow failure", but as always
he insists on continuing it. Democrats are trying to end the
occupation -- slowly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Somalia, the guerrilla resistance of the Islamic Courts has begun.
It looks like Iraq all over again, except that Ethiopia has already
said it will not keep troops there for long.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors say that
Iraqi children are dying by the hundreds, and the US
and UK are responsible, since the invasion and occupation of Iraq
caused these deaths.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Carbon offsetting" can ease people's consciences without reducing CO2
emissions. "Offset" plans based on tree planting are especially
ineffective.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Former Israeli justice minister Lapid recognized the parallel
between the Israeli treatment of (some) Palestinians in Hebron
and the widespread antisemitism of the pre-WWII world.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Peace Now tried to protest there, but the protestors were blocked.
The police seem quite capable of restricting Israelis who stand for
human rights. It's only the bigots bent on ethnic cleansing that they
can't stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Stephen Hawking warns that climate change is nearly as dangerous
as the possibility of nuclear war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US Congress is trying to make all Internet sites censor all
postings by "sex offenders" (a category which includes people
convicted of skinny-dipping). If a site fails to do this, the
operators would be fined. Many sites sites would have to close
rather than run such a risk.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In around 15 years, due to global warming, Snowdon won't have any snow. All the snow-covered mountains of England and Wales are losing their snow.
The UK's latest Big Brother proposal: a single combined data base with
all the government's information about everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
UK scientists accused B'liar of manipulating a scientific committee
report about nuclear waste, so as to facilitate his plan to build new
nuclear plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The B'liar regime plans another attack on human rights: many
kinds of administrative punishment without a trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
One of B'liar's men condemned the Law Lords for standing up
for human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
On the run with the Karen people forced to flee Burma's genocide.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Rioting Israeli soldiers, firing indiscriminately, killed 10-year-old
Abir Aramin who had just stepped out of school.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iraq's refugee nightmare: 1/6 of all Iraqis have fled their homes, but it is increasingly hard for them to get into any other country.
Prominent doctors say that Iraqi children are dying by the hundreds, and the US and UK are responsible -- since the invasion and occupation of Iraq caused these deaths.
The ACLU has shown that the US military has tracked at least 186 anti-military protests in recent years. And that is just the beginning of unjust government surveillance.
Atheist Richard Dawkins on 'The God Delusion'.
Please don't accept the invitation to post your statements of Atheism (or anything) on YouTube.com. That site is designed so as to require proprietary software (the Flash player) in order to view anything. If you want to post a video, post an Ogg Theora file on your own site.
Hrant Dink, a Armenian-Turkish editor who was convicted of "insulting Turkish identity" for writing about the genocide of the Armenians, has been assassinated.
Turkey has imprisoned conscientious objector Halil Savda. Turkey does not recognize any right to conscientious objection.
Secret unofficial peace talks between Israel and Syria, carried out
with the Israeli government's knowledge, considered ways to return the
Golan Heights to Syria and ensure security. The proposed draft would
have had Syria stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Israel, the president, the prime minister, and the finance minister
all face possible prosecution. And Defense Minister Chalutz has
resigned, taking responsibility for the "failure" of the invasion of
Lebanon (but not for its inexcusable attacks on civilians and their
infrastructure).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I believe it was Chalutz who, when asked what he feels when he drops a bomb from a plane, replied "a little bump".
Henry Siegman, the former head of American Jewish Congress, defends
Jimmy Carter's new book and writes about how Israeli
governments have killed the peace prospects.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Taliban raids into Afghanistan have tripled in certain parts of the Pakistani border.
The US Congress is considering a law to prohibit Bush from attacking Iran.
This law could actually be adopted, if it were included in another law that Bush couldn't afford to veto.
I've posted several warnings that an attack on Iran was under immediate consideration, but no such attack has occurred. Perhaps all Bush wanted to do was generate anxiety and keep people off guard.
Iran says it is willing to help train "Iraqi security forces" so that the foreign occupying troops will leave Iraq.
Perhaps Iran is already helping to train them. Iran has been accused of supporting Shi'ite militias, many of whom are members of the "Iraqi police" and run death squads that kill Sunnis.
Nonetheless, open Iranian help could be useful for ending the violence, if some other country (a Sunni Arab country perhaps) could help the Sunnis defend themselves from the Shi'ites.
Global warming has disrupted salmon's mating cycle in Scotland.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
In a further attack on freedom of speech, Germany wants to make "holocaust denial" a crime in the whole EU.
Denying the holocaust is a falsehood, but political and historical positions must not be censored merely because they are wrong.
Israelis for peace plan a "Freedom Ride": they will defy the law that
prohibits them from carrying Palestinian passengers in their cars in
Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Malian film puts West's blueprint for Africa on trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
BearingPoint, the company that wrote the Iraqi law to enable Bush's cronies to run off with Iraq's oil wealth, has a long history of inside connections with the Bush regime, and a long history of not accounting for what it does with the money that the Bush regime pays it.
A New York Times columnist calls Bush "defeated", and calls on
Republicans to save the additional lives that Bush's troop increase
would destroy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Before we start to crow about Dubya's possible defeat, we must remind ourselves that ending his war will not restore human rights in the US. To make the US once again a country that deserves to be admired or supported, there is a long way to go, and most US politicians are against it.
Paul Krugman says Bush's continued pursuit of his war for Iraq is a
matter of looting, and compares it to the deceptive operation of a
bank that seeks new depositors after it is already broke.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
An article in the Atlantic claims that Bush personally believes his
lies, because he has disconnected himself from reality. That could be
the explanation for why he persists in all these lies even after they
are disproved.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Bush wants to believe that Saddam Hussein possesses banned weapons, and pressures the CIA until it fabricates evidence for this, whereupon Bush cites the CIA's evidence, then Bush has not lied -- not exactly. Rather, he has made the government as a system lie on his behalf. Since he is in charge of that system, he is just as responsible for this as he would be for lying personally.
John Murtha, proposing to forbid Bush from sending more troops to Iraq, said on mainstream media: "The invasion itself is what causes the sectarian violence. It's the occupation [that] causes the violence."
I'm really glad that the wall forbidding people to say that the war is wrong has been punctured.
Greg Palast says: instead of letting Bush have one more fix of troops, ask Saudi Arabia and Iran to work out peace in Iraq.
I have recommended similar things.
There is a disease alert in Baghdad because the sewage system has been
overwhelmed. The tap water is now sewage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's attacks on infrastructure, and the violence that his occupation unleashed, set the stage for problems like these.
Indian Prime Minister Singh compared the caste system to the former apartheid regime.
A Bush regime official called for a
boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo prisoners. In effect, he is
trying to deny them the possibility of legal representation by sabotaging what
remains of the US system of justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Although other Bush regime officials did not support this plan, the fact that it was proposed at all reflects the Bush regime's climate of opposition towards the very idea of the rights of the accused.
Some UK MPs demand that
MI5 account for its role in sending two UK residents to Guantanamo.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A new film tells about the
cruel and deadly mistreatment of Canadian indigenous children carried out by
the United Church in Canada, and how it punished minister Kevin Annett for
exposing what was done.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
11,000 Palestinians who are political prisoners of Israel are on a hunger strike as a protest against the fighting between Hamas and Fatah.
UN officials denounced the execution of Saddam Hussein's lieutenants,
and the injustice of their trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime seems to be trying to open the door for the US Army to
spy on Americans with no supervision or restraint.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas took a step towards recognizing Israel's existence, at least as
a fact that is not expected to change.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Two journalists in Morocco were convicted of insulting Islam and the king, demonstrating the lack of freedom of speech there.
Does Morocco allow access to the Jesus and Mo webcomic?
"Surgical" air attacks in Somalia did not hit their targets, but they killed plenty of others. Tell us, Dr Bush, can their relatives sue for malpractice?
Protestors in Bangladesh achieved their goal:
a postponement of the
elections, giving time to produce a correct voters' list.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Contrast this with the Bush's theft of the 2000 election--by excluding some 50,000 mostly-Black, mostly Democratic voters from the Florida voters' list.
Police in Berlin raided a center organizing protests against the G-8 meeting -- before the protest started.
Robert Fisk: Bush's new strategy --
the march of folly.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Union of Concerned Scientists has
decided to move the Doomsday
Clock closer to midnight, reflecting an estimate of increased danger
of nuclear war.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
NGOs in Niger are going to sue the US for Dubya's
false claims about
selling uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush got an unenthusiastic response from troops he was sending to fight in Iraq, so they were prohibited from speaking to reporters afterward.
Venezuela's president
Chavez says he will re-nationalize energy and
telephone companies that were privatized by a previous government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
It makes no sense to privatize state operations that do not operate in competitive markets.
Even Republicans in Congress are rejecting Bush's plan to send more
troops to Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, what Senator Hagel said is absurd. The "mistake" of continuing the war is not bigger than the "mistake" of starting it in the first place -- and calling them "mistakes" is whitewashing a crime.
Arabs sometimes maintain family feuds for hundreds of years after
forgetting the reason. Perhaps the fighting between Sunnis and
Shi'ites in Iraq has taken on the aspect of a feud. If so, it would
be very difficult to settle even if the underlying causes are removed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Imad Kabir, Egyptian, objected to how a policeman was treating his cousin. The policeman in response sodomized him with his stick. Kabir complained, so he has been imprisoned for "resisting authority".
Police around the world think that their weapons entitle them to brutalize people and make false accusations against them.
Dubya's attacks against "al Qa'ida leaders" in Somalia seem to have killed mainly bystanders. The intended targets may not have even been there.
As usual, the US attacking based on untrustworthy information that it buys, and the victims are innocent people, like most of the Guantanamo prisoners. And, as usual, the US never admits any mistake.
After five years, the Guantanamo prison continues to symbolize the evil of the Bush regime for the whole world.
Guantanamo is not the only place where the US practices contempt for human rights. It has disappeared thousands of people, who may be held in secret prisons, or may be dead. Thus, closing Guantanamo is just the first step of what the US must to to rejoin the society of civilized states.
The
wealthiest parts of the world cause global warming, but the
burdens fall mainly on the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Fredy Muñoz, reporter for Telesur in Colombia, has been released from
prison, but still faces trumped-up criminal charges. They are based
on accusations by other prisoners, who say that the police leaned on them to
inculpate Muñoz.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Muñoz now fears he will be murdered, as has happened to other political prisoners in Colombia.
B'liar's most flagrant attack yet on political freedom in the UK is a proposal to arrest protestors for "offensive" chanting and signs.
Shahawar Matin Siraj has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for
expressing willingness to participate in a theoretical bombing plot
that was suggested to him by an undercover police agent. Shahawar,
who is somewhat retarded, was arrested shortly after telling the
police agent that he had moral doubts about the plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
What we see is that Americans are so hungry for victims that they will shred all kinds of legal protection in order to get their hands on someone on whom to vent their rage.
A Pentagon memo predicts 10,000 or more Americans in the Bush Forces could be killed in Iraq by 2008.
Since hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already been killed due to Bush's occupation, it is likely that hundreds of thousands more will be killed by 2008.
The UK proposes banning the use of animal egg cells to produce human stem cells, apparently for purely irrational reasons.
The Democrats' new ethics rules have potential loopholes that could undermine them completely if they are not enforced very carefully.
An EU report says that climate change will transform Europe
disastrously. The Mediterranean will become so hot and dry that
people will not want to live there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar, refusing to act to reduce CO2 emissions, ducks the issue by saying that no politician would "ban" cheap flights.
Of course, the idea is not to "ban" them, just to tax them enough that they won't be so cheap.
Judge Jose Martinez, who has
protected Coca Cola Company from lawsuits
for its murders in Colombia, does fund-raising for the University of
Miami, and the big donor is the Coca Cola Company.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US is spending billions on future weapons. Some don't work at all. Some do work, but they are only necessary to fight previous generations of US weapons. Some might give the US power that no country should be allowed to have.
As Bush talks about sending more troops to Iraq, the UK says it will
cut troops in Iraq by almost half, by May.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
One unjust and unwinnable war in Iraq isn't enough for Bush. He now threatens to include Syria and Iran.
The Bush forces attacked an Iranian consulate in the Kurdish part of Iraq, arresting its staff.
I've heard elsewhere that this angered the Kurds, as well as Iran.
A campaign of tent cities focused French politicians' attention on the problem of homelessness, and made them take action.
Contrast this with the total callousness of US politicians towards the homeless.
1,000 people gathered on the beach in Pelosi's home district to spell out "Impeach".
The UK is letting train fares rise to the point where they drive
passengers to fly instead.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
If they keep this up, the problem will correct itself when London disappears beneath the rising North Sea.
Bush will propose sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq,
plus adding a billion dollars to the billions that were frittered
away ineffectively on "reconstruction".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
As a plan to "win the war", it is hopeless, but it can serve for Bush's real aim, which is to continue the occupation and not admit defeat.
Direct
US intervention in Somalia could give Islamists a boost for
starting the guerrilla war that they have threatened.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces soldier who lead the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family was previously diagnosed by a medical team as a homicidal threat. The Bush forces often send such soldiers back into combat, because they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for more troops.
Another Bush forces soldier who shot and killed several helpless prisoners was sentenced to 9 months in jail.
I would suppose that the murdered Iraqis' families do not think justice was done.
Producing ethanol for cars from corn could lead to a worldwide rise in
corn prices.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This would be good for farmers in poor countries; they might be able to compete. But in the long run we cannot afford to make car fuel the way we grow food-- it is too resource-intensive. Biomass fuel will only be a solution if it is made from weeds.
The Bush forces arrested journalists who covered a march that protested the execution of Saddam Hussein, as well as dozens of the protestors. (Search for "reporter".)
That's the sort of "freedom and democracy" that Bush has brought to Iraq.
Segolene Royal, candidate for President of France, took China to task
for its mounting inequality and its disregard for human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Remember when US leaders used to try to put pressure on China about this? Then they decided that copyright enforcement was more important.
The US is steadily increasing its spying into the lives of everyone that visits the US. Next step: taking all 10 fingerprints. This is in addition to reading your email.
If you don't want to feed Big Brother, stay away from the US. Spend your money elsewhere!
French President Chirac told the Bush regime, "I told you so."
He opposed the invasion of Iraq, and called for restoring "full
sovereignty" to the Iraqi people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Full sovereignty would mean that Iraqis would be free to cancel the theft of Iraq's oil resouces, the imposition of plant patents, and other privatizations.
Two US senators wrote an
open letter to Exxon-Mobil, calling on the
company to end its support for global warming denial.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
India's prime minister made a strong speech in favor of energy
conservation, calling on India to do more, and condemning the West for
failing to conserve.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iowa plans to build a 300 MW wind-power storage facility.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Piergiorgio Welby, paralyzed by muscular dystrophy, was condemned to a life of torture by the Italian state. He begged to die; he went to court, but it did not recognize his right to end his torture. Doctor Riccio defied the court and disconnected his respirator, letting him die.
I've read elsewhere that the doctor now faces criminal charges for his act of compassion.
The right to end one's life must not be limited to the "terminally ill". Mr Welby was not "terminally ill", which means his torture could have lasted decades if he had not received help.
Bush is about to achieve his goal from the invasion of Iraq: transferring Iraq's oil to his backers' oil companies.
An Iraqi expatriate who opposed Saddam Hussein condemns the Bush
forces and supports the Iraqi resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A proposal for how to remove the Bush forces from Iraq and protect
Iraqi civilians: give them a safe place to flee to.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The State of New Jersey is
leaning towards abolishing the death penalty.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A newspaper reports receiving secret Israeli plans for a nuclear attack against Iran.
Hurricane Katrina killed 1300 people.
A hurricane striking South Florida could kill more than 10,000-- but
nobody is planning for this. Nor is there planning for how to make New
Orleans safer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
New Orleans is a great city and we should not let it die. But it can only survive, for more than a few decades, if it is moved.
In support of Bush's War on Integrity, many government agencies in the
Bush regime are firing or sabotaging their own anticorruption
inspectors.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This reflects is a general Bush policy in favor of corruption.
Bush forces Marines took lots of photos of the murders that some of them committed in Haditha, Iraq.
The US is developing germ warfare technology in corporate and
university labs, and maintain illegal secrecy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Agribusiness funding of nutritional studies corrupts the results.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
For full details, here is the study.
Entire towns in Alaska have to move because of global warming. The erosion is also filling up rivers, wiping out the salmon that spawn in them.
The opposition in Bangladesh plans to boycott the election, saying it
is being rigged.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is a health warning over safety of bottled water in the UK.
(And often it doesn't even taste any better.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
People have been manipulated into assuming bottled water is somehow better, just because they have to pay for it.
A former minister in the "Iraqi" government has proposed a
peace plan that might work-- if the Bush forces get out of the way.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, I am concerned that the provision of respecting the Iraqi Constitution actually means respecting the Bush regime's robbery of Iraqi oil and other state assets.
Residents of public housing in New Orleans want to return, and are
fighting government plans to demolish the housing and build new
buildings which would have room for fewer people.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A UK minister was disgusted by the video of Hussein's execution. Not by
the execution itself, mind you, just that there was a video.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Italy, by campaigning against the death penalty,
is focusing attention on what really matters.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A few weeks ago, the Israeli army announced that
Palestinians had been banned from Shuhada street in Hebron for six years "by
mistake". But Palestinians had to struggle to walk on that street-- and
when they finally did, they were attacked by Israeli settlers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A large nonviolent protest in Bil'in, with both Israeli and
Palestinian officials, was met with violence from Israeli soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Some British soldiers in the Bush forces, who were caught on video
beating up helpless Iraqi prisoners, will not be prosecuted.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tali Fahima, an Israeli who was threatened with execution for making
contact with a Palestinian militant, has been released from prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces handed over Diyala province to "Iraqi" troops. The result was that the resistance more or less took over.
The Iraqi army of collaborators is good for only two things: massacring Sunnis, and perhaps, in the future, saving face for Bush while he pulls the Bush forces out.
During 2006, Israeli attacks killed 660 Palestinians, while
Palestinians killed 23 Israelis. Those 23 are Israel's excuse for
killing 660 (and wounding thousands). However, killing is just a
fraction of Israeli violence against Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bert Sacks, who accuses the US of deliberately killing Iraqi children through the economic sanctions, was fined for bringing medicine to Iraq. He has taken his case to the Supreme Court.
I and most of the world expected, after the Gulf War, that Saddam Hussein would comply quickly to get the sanctions lifted. If things had taken that course, the sanctions would not have done much. Of course, he did not. But I wonder what the US would have done if Hussein had complied with the UN demands. Would it have twisted the facts to keep the sanctions going?
Journalist Sarah Olson, who has been called to testify against Lt Watada, says that such subpoenas of journalists threaten freedom of political speech in the US.
Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America.
Bush's "surge" plan seems to come from neocons who have wanted more
troops for the occupation of Iraq all along.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A temporary increase in troop levels has no chance of defeating a popular resistance movement.
Israel raided Ramallah, killing four Palestinians, just before an
Olmert-Mubarak summit on "peace".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Exxon spent $16 million
trying to create doubt about global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps Exxon should be held financially responsible for damage caused by global warming which might have been prevented if not for Exxon's obstruction. They'd probably drop this campaign in a hurry!
The trial of Lt. Watada, and
its implications.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is
trying to seize the power to open Americans' mail without a
court order. He did this with a "signing statement" that totally
reverses the meaning of a law that he signed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President Bush is dedicated to the establishment of tyranny and the abolition of human rights. He is the worst enemy of Americans -- and the rest of the world as well.
The Asian Human Rights Commission condemned the execution of Saddam
Hussein for the
failure of the trial to follow international norms of
law and human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's War on the Environment suffered a reverse, as a court struck
down the EPA's relaxation of smog limits.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The execution of Saddam Hussein was used by Iraqi Shi'ites as part of their murderous power struggle with the Sunnis.
Gone by not forgotten: the basic human rights that separated the US from tyranny.
Driving Afghanistan's "almost finished" ring-road
is a good way to find out the
true conditions in Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
A retired Bush forces soldier with PTSD was notified that he would be sent to Iraq, and threatened to kill himself. To prevent this, the police shot him dead.
The police's action was irrational, but at least this soldier got his wish: to die rather than help oppress another country. However, it would have been better for him to desert. That way he could have done something positive with his life, rather than only avoid doing harm.
The Iraqi government demonstrated its commitment to human rights by
closing a Dubai TV station's local office. The station is accused
of sympathizing with the Baath party.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The execution of Saddam Hussein seems to have spurred violence in
Iraq, and Bush forces casualties are increasing.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Flynt Leverett, former CIA analyst, says Bush tried to gag him by
falsely claiming his article revealed national secrets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
(The CIA had already checked his text and decided it revealed no secrets.)
Faux News has noticed how the intersectarian war in Iraq
serves Bush interests.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
President-elect Correa of Ecuador demands that the government of
Colombia pay compensation for the damages caused in Ecuador by the
drug-eradication chemical spraying which it carries out, mainly in
Colombia but also illegaly in Ecuador, under the orders of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
More about the damage that this spraying causes--to crops, and to
human health.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thanks to the War on Drugs,
marijuana is now the top cash crop in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Libya has sentenced several Bulgarian nurses to death, after torturing
them into confessing that they deliberately infected patients with
HIV.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Evidence that HIV had contaminated the hospital before those nurses worked there was ignored.
The total failure of B'liar's middle east trip is making the servility
of his "special relationship" with Bush clear to everyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
But don't expect B'liar to admit the truth, even when he knows everyone knows. What B'liar says to the public is never honest, it is theater, and his motto is, "The show must go on."
The International Crisis Group, which studies how to end and prevent war,
says that only a new diplomatic approach can stop Iraq from falling apart
into a "failed state".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think it is too late already to prevent Iraq from falling apart. The right thing to do is to accept this unstoppable change, and help it go through in a way that results in reduced violence.
The US: prison without bars. Most Americans are not aware of the extent to which government surveillance is being extended over all our activities.
Keep in mind that, through the USAP AT RIOT act, all businesses' data about you and me is immediately available to Big Brother's police without even a court order. This is why I use cash rather than credit cards to buy things, and why I don't have a cell phone. And when I travel on Greyhound, I never give them my right name.
I would say that surveillance is the first sign of incipient tyranny, except that the US government has already gone well beyond the first.
The EU caved in to pressure from fishing interests and made just small
cuts in cod quotas, disregarding scientific advice that this could
lead to
wiping out the cod.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
The EU's arrangements for regulating fishing are grossly and dangerously inadequate.
Some bears in Europe have stopped hibernating.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is one sign, among many, of how global warming has deranged the world's ecosystems.
Uri Avnery writes about the possible futures for Israel.
How many people died in Iraq today?
House Democrats plan to acknowledge the
challenge to a Florida election that was apparently thrown by electronic
voting machines.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Nonviolent protest against the annexation wall has spread to the
Palestinian village of Umm Salamuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Political consultants who turn around and lobby the officials they
once advised are a a growing form of corruption in US governments at
all levels.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-15 because the old link was broken.]
Saddam Hussein has been executed, after being convicted for a small part of his crimes. Now that he is dead, there will probably be no trials for the bigger crimes he committed. Was the execution intended to cover up the involvement of other governments in those larger crimes?
The execution of Saddam Hussein was unjust, regardless of his crimes, because execution is always unjust. He deserved life imprisonment for his murders. His execution makes it impossible to punish Bush properly for his similar crimes; imprisonment in the same cell with Hussein is the only fitting punishment for Bush.
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, who wrote a book about his three years of
imprisonment in Guantanamo, has now been arrested again -- because his
book criticizes the government of Pakistan for handing him over to Bush.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization of highways in the US will give American drivers a taste of what the US has imposed on many other countries.
Because building a new highway is so politically difficult, as well as expensive, there is effectively no competition in the road market, so highway privatization is obviously harmful for the public. This practice is nothing more than raiding the public treasury. it ought to be a crime.
The Bush regime stationed "military spy teams" in many countries --
even "friendly" ones -- out of distrust for the CIA.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Large predatory companies
squeeze billions out of poor Americans for
loans, check cashing, money transfers, etc.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Those companies are also very effective at lobbying, which is why the government permits them to continue.
The Bush regime have had trouble, for years,
figuring out who in Iraq
to call "the enemy".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces troops have a simpler view of things. They consider
Iraqis enemies, pure and simple. For instance, a Bush forces patrol
in Ramadi couldn't find the resistance fighters they were looking for.
So they arrested 50 men at random, broke their arms, and crushed their
fingers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Since the Bush forces have already crushed medical care in Iraq, many of those men will be crippled for life. But I am sure some of them will overcome their handicaps to find ways to fight their country's oppressors. Perhaps some will become suicide bombers.
Israeli protestors set up a barbed-wire "separation fence" in the
middle of Tel Aviv, giving Israelis
a taste of what they are doing to
Palestinians' lives.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
An
ice shelf bigger than Manhattan Island broke off from Ellesmere
Island in the Arctic. This part of a long-term trend which is caused
by global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The melting of sea ice does not alter sea level, but ice reflects sunlight much more than water does. As the Arctic loses its ice, it will warm even more -- and if Greenland melts, it will be Manhattan Island that we say goodbye to.
The Bush forces, desperate for troops to
secure their conquest
of Iraq's oil, are
forcing discharged
troops back into the fight.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Lohachara Island, formerly home to 10,000 people,
has been taken by rising seas.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It will be the first of many; as I write this note, in Manhattan Island, I wonder how long before it too is flooded.
The Ethiopean army has conquered Somalia; the fighters of the Union of Islamic Courts melted away.
If Somalis accept the foreign-appointed "transitional government", the results may be good. On the other hand, the transfer of allegience of warlords and clans sounds like what happened in Afghanistan, and it might unravel the same way Afghanistan is now doing.
Seaman Jonathan Hutto is organizing against the occupation of Iraq.
In addition to the thousands killed by the Bush forces and the civil war
they have provoked, an increasing number of Iraqis are commiting suicide
from the stress that this causes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
In a crack in Bush's War on the Environment, the US has listed polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming.
Venezuela's President Chavez plans to shut down an opposition TV channel.
It is true that the opposition media actively supported the coup attempt in 2002, going far beyond the expression of political opinions. But that is in the past, and shutting down opposition media is not a good thing to do.
Greg Palast documents the
government actions that are keeping Blacks
from returning to New Orleans -- political manipulation of disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The city of New Orleans should not be rebuilt in the same place, because that is asking for future disaster. They can't keep raising the levees as the sea rises. But the city should be rebuilt, on higher ground -- moving the parts that were not flooded this time.
This will cost money, but it will be money well spent.
Armadillos are moving into the northern US, probably as a result of global warming.
Lots of other organisms are on the move too, including some that can devastate crops or make people sick.
Desmond Tutu compared Israel to the apartheid system he lived under.
Here's more explanation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Iran's oil revenue is declining fast.
To my mind, this lends more credibility to the statements made by the government of Iran about developing nuclear power.
The Bush forces death toll now exceeds that of the 9/11 attacks in the US.
The Bush regime is clearly responsible for the deaths of the soldiers it sent to Iraq, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis it has killed. Whether it was responsible for the attacks of Sep 11, 2001, has not been properly investigated.
As the Bush regime struggles to recruit enough soldiers for its wars
of conquest, it is considering active recruitment of foreigners,
offering US citizenship as a reward.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime's aggression completely changes the way we must judge this issue, as it does so many others. If these recruits were truly "defending their country (to be)", as the soppy propaganda of the mainstream media says, giving them citizenship would be entirely appropriate. However, if that were the mission of the US Army, it would not have a shortfall.
President Carter warns that Bush has made the US the "prime culprit"
in nuclear weapons proliferation, destroying decades of work.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Desmond Tutu: Apartheid in the Holy Land.
Uri Avnery: Israel's insistence on pretending it is in Europe is part of a world view that prevents peace.
A commentary on the war in Somalia calls on Somalian expatriates
to try to reconcile the fighting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I don't share that writer's admiration for Islamist martyrs; Islamic law is another name for cruelty and injustice. The regime of the Islamic Courts can only show merit when compared with the anarchic warlord violence that Somalia has known for decades.
Nonetheless, his point about where the war is headed seems valid. Ethiopia's army can probably conquer some or all of Somalia, but the "transitional government" in whose name they are doing so exists only in name, and its support comes purely from outside the country. Ethiopia is likely to have to turn to murderous warlords to exercise control. Somalis will not obey willingly.
There are reports that the US organized this intervention.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This is the sort of disastrous thing the Bush regime habitually does. Whether it intentionally promotes the growth of Al Qa'ida because it needs an enemy to scare Americans with, or whether it persistently fights Al Qa'ida in ways that backfire, is hard to tell from the outside -- because either way the outcome is the same.
Here's some more information.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Colombian government has been
tied by hard evidence to the
right-wing death squads (which we always knew were working for that
government).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The great debate among Iraqi Sunnis: is the fighting in Iraq a religious war or a fight against an external occupier?
Harith al-Dhari is right in his advice to Iraqis: don't fight each other, fight the occupiers. However, factually it is clear that many Iraqis have turned their backs on this wise advice, and are now engaged in what they see as a battle between Sunnis and Shi'ites. It is also clear that Bush forces activities have played up that conflict -- following the age-old policy of "divide and rule".
The UK made a small increase in the gas tax,
which has drawn a lot of opposition from short-sighted drivers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly, and they are already too high. In my view, as long as driving continues to increase, the gas tax is too small.
Iranian president Ahmadinejad organized a world-wide holocaust-denial
conference.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
While B'liar is right to condemn this, he pointedly ignores the lessons about oppression that we ought to learn from Nazi atrocities.
Amy Goodman interviews Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh
about Bush plans for Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Ritter has a good point that most Americans are only "anti-losing", and don't recognize the invasion of Iraq as wrong. This is why the recently elected Democrats are doing nothing to end the war, and why I didn't support them and still do not.
Raoul Castro has suggested he
might lead Cuba to more freedom of
speech.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Bush is rushing to complete the theft of Iraq's oil, by pressuring the "Iraqi" government to hand it over to Western oil companies.
As Iraqis blead, and Americans pay, those thieves are the ones to blame.
Four Bush forces soldiers have been charged with murder for shooting helpless Iraqi civilians after the resistance attacked them.
These murder charges are a speck of doing what is right, in an ocean of Bush evil. The command structure was well on its way to covering up these murders when bad luck tripped them up. We can be sure that lots of other Bush forces soldiers succeed in covering up similar murders.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz says that Bush's
war will cost the US 2 trillion
dollar.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Sunderbans, home to the world's largest wild tiger population and
to almost 2 million people, is being flooded and destroyed by global
warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Mugabe, who has crushed democracy and freedom in Zimbabwe,
says he intends to stay on as "president" for as long as he likes.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
A riot broke out as Copenhagen police tried to evict a squatter group
from the building it has used, with official acquiescence, for 24 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
A refresher about the PNAC, and what they did with their convenient New Pearl Harbor.
The Bush forces arrested Reuters reporter Ammar ad-Dulaymi.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Mahmoud Al-Safadi, recently released from 18 years in an Israeli prison, wrote an open letter to Iran's president Ahmedinejad calling on him to recognize the Holocaust.
I stand in honor of the moral courage shown by Palestinian in respecting the great wrong that was done to the ancestors of the Israelis that now oppress his people -- even as he champions the end of that oppression. Unlike most Israelis, Mr Al-Safadi has drawn the right lesson from the Holocaust: never again--to anyone!
Three cheers to the former Israeli soldiers who have gone on tour
explaining to the world the "monsters" that they became while
enforcing the Israeli occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
And three cheers to Jimmy Carter for daring to say in a prominent way
what Israel is doing in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Jews who want to prove the injustice of using Israel's wrongs as an excuse for anti-semitism have a duty to speak up in support of Carter.
A prominent expert in bioweapons disarmament accuses the Bush regime
of developing biological weapons for aggression and terror.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This raises the question of what must be done to take away Bush's weapons of mass destruction.
Bush, admitting for the first time that he isn't winning the war against the Iraqi Resistance, took up the proposal to expand the US Army.
The most interesting point here is that this adopts the solution Democrats have found to avoid ending the occupation.
Maliki has a plan for how to use extra forces to defeat the Resistance.
I don't think it would work. Occupying armies that try to defeat a popular uprising tend to fail; the guerrillas "melt away" when the opposition is concentrated, and come back later.
However, Bush might win if he destroys outright the areas where Sunnis live, killing them or forcing them into exile. Examples such as Falluja show we should not put that past him.
Otherwise, the ISG's proposal for Iraqization is available as a way
to make defeat look less bad.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Robert Gates, now confirmed as Secretary of "Defense", admitted that the Bush forces are not winning the war in Iraq.
But he presented a skewed version of the range of possible outcomes: either "improving" (from the Bush point of view) or a "regional conflagration", designed to put the idea of ending the war off the table.
An Israeli court ruled that Palestinians can sue the Israeli
government for damages -- but the exceptions are so broad that this
will cover just a small part of the damage that Israel does to them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
An evicted group of artist squatters in Barcelona transformed their
defeat into theater, by protesting naked when the mayor spoke.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar plans to gut the UK's Freedom of Information law. It has been too effective at enabling journalists to find out what he is doing.
The Correctional Corporation of America operates a privatized prison
that holds 400 prisoners, half of them children,
none of whom is accused of a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime is making the Guantanamo prison more painful, claiming all the prisoners are all dangerous "terrorists", even though many of them are known not to be terrorists at all.
The Iraqi resistance, which specifically attacks the occupying Bush forces,
is
more active than ever before, launching almost 1000 attacks a week.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Last summer's supposed plot to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable
scale" (but nothing to what Bush has committed in Iraq) turns out to
be
pure hype, but Bush and B'liar won't admit it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Neo-cons in the US wanted Israel to attack Syria, and they are still
blocking Israel from opening talks with Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Shenzhen, China, are trying to organize and run for local
office for the sorts of local causes that people commonly champion in
the West--despite legal and political systems rigged to keep them
down.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The opposition in Russia, including former politicians and the leader of
a banned party, planned a mass protest march in Moscow, defying
Bush-style and B'liar-style restrictions on protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I presume this has already occurred, but I have not read about the outcome.
The Bush forces in Iraq kept an FBI informer in prison for 97 days, after arresting him in the raid triggered by his own information. They refused to believe him, and apparently did not hurry to ask the FBI.
If people working for the FBI take 97 days to be released, imagine how many years it takes if you don't have something like the FBI to back you up.
The
Bush forces often attack the Iraqi Red Crescent.
Now Iraqi kidnapers have joined in.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Where did all our wildlife go?
"Iraqi" prime minister al-Maliki called a meeting about national reconciliation, but nobody came to represent the militias.
Here is the full text of Carne Ross' testimony. He testifies that
through mid 2002 (when B'liar was already preparing the "dodgy dossier"
that would present excuses for war), UK intelligence believed that
Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no WMD and posed no threat to any other
country, and never got any evidence to the contrary.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
He also shows why this means that the Bush invasion was illegal under the UN charter.
The Yangtze river dolphin (baiji)
seems to be extinct.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The National Science Teacher's Association's
refusal to distribute An
Inconvenient Truth is no exception. The organizations has been
thoroughly corrupted by business, and distributes materials to
whitewash various forms of business wrongdoing. Its president lies to
cover this up, and has tried to suppress criticism.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Russia is obstructing the investigation of Litvinenko's murder.
This tends to confirm Russia was involved in the murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Gaza City: '
Free the women and you free the whole country'.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The IWW is picketing Starbucks Coffee for its anti-union activity.
The Atrocities of Augusto Pinochet and the United States.
The Israeli high court gave its approval in principle to political assassination.
The "Iraqi" courts set up by Bush dispense justice just marginally better than that of Abu Ghraib. The court can sentence you to death and get you executed, but if it finds you innocent, that doesn't mean you go free.
For women in Iraq, life is 'just like being in jail', thanks to Bush.
Nonviolent weekly protests in Bil'in continue, but the annexation wall
has already been built through the town.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Nonviolent resistance is essentially a method of winning redress of an injustice by flagging it before the sight of the world, and pressuring the perpetrator through the shame brought by its own actions. To suppress the protests often requires even more flagrant injustice, which increases the shame.
This approach works against some oppressors, in some situations, but not always. Gandhi famously called on the Jews to practice nonviolent resistance, including fasting to death, against Nazi mistreatment, but even in the 1930s this probably would not have bothered the Nazis much. There was so much worldwide prejudice against Jews that the world would not have criticized them sharply. And once the Nazis were at war with most of the world, in the 40s, and began systematically killing Jews, nonviolent protest had even less of a chance to stop them. Armed resistance as in the Warsaw Ghetto was the only way.
Sad to say, the situation is similar in Palestine today. The world does not care enough about Israel's oppression of the Palestinians to make Israel feel the shame when its acts of oppression are highlighted.
Unless Israel shows a willingness to respect the rights of Palestinians when they are claimed without force, it cannot condemn the use of force to do so.
Although the Bush regime says that the prisoners in Guantanamo are
"dangerous terrorists", in most cases this is not true.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime keep up the pretense because the worst thing for a tyrant is to admit a mistake.
20,000 Egyptian textile workers, who must be rather badly paid, have
held a successful strike when they were denied their annual bonuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The recent Bush forces attack on the Iraqi Red Crescent is part of a common pattern.
Bush plans to keep 200 or so prisoners in Guantanamo forever without a trial.
I distrust the claims of the US State Department that the reason for this is that "countries won't take their nationals back". Oh, it may be true, literally--but I suspect they refuse because Bush asked them to refuse.
Diplomat Carne Ross' previously secret report that UK intelligence never believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD or posed any threat to anyone until in 2002 they were told to provide support for such conclusions.
We already had the smoking gun. Now we have a film of Bush and B'liar holding it. So will this lead to removal and imprisonment of these lying mass murderers?
Florida Governor Bush doesn't mind killing prisoners, but wants it done quickly. Thus, a fluke mistake which slowed down an execution has been the accidental occasion for a stay of executions in Florida.
The death penalty does not work better to deter crime. Meanwhile, it debases society, and makes the frequent miscarriages of justice more uncorrectable. It should be abolished. Even mass murderers such as Saddam Hussein and Dubya should not be executed.
The Palestinian president is talking about calling early elections.
Hamas, which won the previous elections, says this would be illegal.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
This is the outcome of pressure from the US and Israel to crush the results of Palestinian democracy, which elected a government they did not like.
If I were a Palestinian with my general world view, I would disapprove of Hamas' religious orientation. But its refusal to surrender to Israeli brutality and annexation might win my vote nonetheless.
Many people arrested even for minor crimes during Hurricane Katrina
are in jail
awaiting trial, over a year later.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Pinochet succeeded in escaping punishment for his crimes by delaying his trial for his whole life.
The Spanish judge who tried to put Pinochet on trial
laments his ability to avoid justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It is a mistake to credit Pinochet for Chile's economic success. His laissez-faire policies destroyed Chile's economy, and then Allende's achievements came to the rescue.
Irrational revulsion against prostitution leads to irrational and
pointless harassment of prostitutes, which facilitates violence
against prostitutes, including murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I think credit cards would not be dangerous if they were used in a healthy democracy. A democratic state would require credit card companies to follow understandable rules, to discourage people from getting in over their heads, and make money from people who use the cards wisely.
However, in the US all attempts to make them do this have been blocked by the power of the card companies' lobby. They send college students credit cards they didn't ask for, to give them a chance to get in trouble.
Indian forest dwellers are protesting in Delhi after
officials suddenly
destroyed their crops (and some of them were arrested resisting this).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It can be bad to have large numbers of people living in forests that are meant as reserves. However, if people lived there when the reserve was created, they are entitled to full compensation for being evicted -- something that poor people in India generally do not get when they are displaced by the government. And there can be no grounds for evicting them at all, if the government will then let other people live in the same forest area, or allow it to be cut down.
This issue is important, but the underlying problem is India's unchecked and dangerous population growth. 40% of Indians are under age 18.
According to Amartya Sen, around half of all Indians can't get sufficiently nourishing food, even though nobody actually starves to death. This too will be impossible to correct unless population growth is brought down.
Christians nuts, common in the US, are using a video game to encourage their followers to believe in the imminent second coming.
A Christian nut I knew once lent me a copy of the book, Left Behind. I read it, and concluded that this was a good presentation of the sort of events it would take to rationally justify their beliefs. The fact that these events are not happening therefore provides strong support for Atheism.
As for "the Night of Bush Hunting", that game could teach people it is ok to shoot mass murderers. However, the best way to deal with them is to arrest them, convict them in a fair trial, and sentence them to life in prison.
I used to say that George Bush and Saddam Hussein should spend their lives as cellmates, but it seems that we need Hussein to restore order in Iraq.
The Bush forces raided Falluja General Hospital, arrested doctors,
closed it, and forced the rest of the staff out into the cold without
blankets. This
violates the Geneva Conventions, but Bush only
says he obeys those.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
"
This is the first time in the history of this country that a court
has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no
law applies."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The occupation of Iraq has strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East.
As a recent note shows, the Bush forces a year ago were looking at which sectarian side to back in Iraq. They chose to back the Shi'ites. So this result should not be a surprise.
The
US refuses to accept Iraqi refugees, because it pretends that the
violence that has made them flee will not last.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Since the occupation of Iraq is wearing down the Bush forces, they want more money to increase forces. They also want to be able to grind down the US National Guard more quickly.
Kofi Annan,
in his parting speech, condemned the Bush regime for
trampling human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Many Americans have been sentenced to long prison terms, even life
imprisonment, as part of the War on Drugs. Others have been killed
by police raids, or by their imprisonment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush family protected Pinochet and his operatives from prosecution for crimes such as murder in the US, and even terrorist bombing, and Pinochet in return helped by providing weapons to Saddam Hussein.
10,000 scientists in the US have signed a statement condemning Bush's political interference in science.
This brings to mind Stalin's political interference in biology through the support of Lysenko's groundless theories about evolution. Effectively, nondemocratic political systems corrupt knowledge.
The Bush forces have played on the sectarian division in Iraq.
Here is specific evidence of how.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Some see the ISG report as the beginning of a plan to blame the Iraqi government for losing its grip, as an excuse to pull out.
I hope it is -- at least it would be a way to end the occupation.
But
another analysis suggests that the report is a plan for how to
continue plans for US domination of the middle east. When it talks of
"redeploying" some of the Bush forces combat units, that very likelys
just means putting them in other bases inside Iraq. And when it talks
of "reducing support" for the "Iraqi government", that could mean
installing a strongman who could impose order.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
If a strongman is wanted, I suggest Saddam Hussein. Some unknown would probably need even more brutality to establish control than he would, and it would be impossible to tell in advance if he is capable of doing the job.
Bush does not seem to want to follow the report's recommendations. So the main importance of the report is in its influence on public debate. The US mass media work with politicians to steer the debate towards the question of how to "win", and away from the question of how to punish the criminals that launched this war of conquest.
As the EU adopts a directive for recording and testing chemicals that might be dangerous, businesses want their own economic interests to come before public safety.
The UK law lords ruled that the police acted illegally when they stopped busses of citizens going to a protest.
The UK wants to extend censorship by banning the possession of artwork that present "abuse" of children. (I suspect their definition of "abuse" refers to sex, not violence.)
In the 1980s, US officials arguing that "child pornography" (involving "children" of ages up to 17) was evil because it was always made by "abusing" a "child". Then the US government made a mockery of that argument by prohibiting all art depicting "children" having sex, even when made without a real "child". But this law was rejected as unconstitutional.
Here's
what the Axis of Evil has been up to in Iraq this week. Among
other things, they blocked a woman giving birth from reaching the
hospital, and they killed a helpless, bound prisoner because he
laughed to see Bush forces soldiers dead.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
That prisoner had courage; the soldiers that shot him are murderous cowards. The murder they committed was a big breach of military discipline, which shows that these troops are cracking up. That's the only good thing about what's happening in Iraq: it is grinding down Bush's army so he cannot invade any other countries.
Police have identified
Dimitry Kovtun as the suspected
murderer of Litvinenko. He spread Polonium contamination
before he met with Litvinenko.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Jose Padilla, whom Bush wanted to imprison without trial, has been subject to permanent sensory deprivation for years. This appears to have made him lose his mind. He no longer understands what it means to be on trial, for instance.
But this is not an isolated case. Torture is routine, standard
practice for the Bush regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Several Jordanians, released from an Iraqi prison after three years during which the question of their innocence was not addressed, carry permanent emotional and physical scars from their torture by the Bush forces.
Nine former prisoners who were tortured by the Bush regime are trying to sue Rumsfeld and top commanders of the Bush forces.
The Bush regime and its many subservient governments are the main "Axis of Evil" in the world today.
Congressman Kucinich is running for president again.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
What a breath of fresh air, compared with all those "continue the war" Democrats. Kucinich for President!
As greenhouse gases increase, melting of Arctic ice will speed up, and by 2040 the Arctic Ocean will have essentially no permanent ice.
Since ocean absorbs more heat from sunlight than ice, the result will be even more warming.
Hezbollah demands a new government in Lebanon, through large street
protests, which remain peaceful.
But there are small sparks that could set
off a civil war if people are not careful to avoid it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Corporate mercenaries are active in many countries, not just Iraq.
The Geneva Conventions apply to mercenaries, but the Bush regime loves
them because in practice enforcing those inconvenient rules of war
against them is too hard.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The US School of the Americas used to teach torture to soldiers from
other American countries. In response to public condemnation, the US
changed the school's name, and contracted its activities. Now Bush is
expanding them again,
to spread torture through the Western
Hemisphere.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
UNICEF:
Children suffer when women face discrimination.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Senegal's
success story in AIDS prevention.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
1 in 32 American adults are in prison, on probation, or on parole, due
to the insane 'War on Drugs'.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
As long as this war remains "on drugs", it will continue to devastate the US.
The
Republicans have created a fiscal disaster and left the
Democrats holding the bag.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The disaster is no surprise; Republicans' tax cuts for the rich, together with spending billions on the crime of invading Iraq, had to cause such disaster sooner or later.
The
Bush forces threatened to rape Um Ahmed unless her husband
surrendered. Then they threatened to rape her unless he confessed to
their list of crimes. But this sort of kidnaping is just the tip
of the Iraqi iceberg.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
RAWA says that the US-established Afghan government doesn't respect human rights very much, since it is full of murderous warlords and gangsters.
Notwithstanding RAWA's points, the current government does appear to be better than the Taliban in some ways--it encourages schools for girls, for instance. But it may be true that a government made of warlords and gangsters can't win much popular support.
Britons with multiple sclerosis who sent free "cannibis bars" to other
victims of MS
face 14 years in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Corporations are honing the practice of giving a tiny fraction of
income to charity, in order to make you feel good about their much
larger profits, your own wasteful consumption, and any other problems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This is part of a general tendency to the corruption of most areas of life by business.
One Iraqi thinks the Mahdi army has access to personal information on former Baathists, and used it to track down him and his brother.
If the "Iraqi" government has this information, it would not be hard for Shi'ite death squads to get it.
Sexual paranoia in the US has reached a point of total absurdity.
You can see the dishonesty of the school officials when they cite a student's privacy as an excuse to refuse to respond to a complain made on behalf of that student.
I'm with John Holt: school is not a very good way for children to get an education.
The IWW is extending its campaign against Starbucks, which has repeatedly punished workers for union organizing.
A riot broke out in privatized UK prison, when the guards tried to turn off the TV which was showing a news report about how badly that prison was run.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
A trial run in Heathrow airport shows the sort of biometric surveillance that the UK government wants to impose on everyone.
They always bring out the absurd idea that "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide". But that's nonsense; the question is not whether your actions are wrong, but whether someone else (perhaps someone powerful) could hurt you if he knew. Nearly everyone wants to keep aspects of their life from being known to others.
Al Sadr's militias are openly attacking Sunnis in a part of Baghdad.
Sunnis cannot effectively defend themselves and their neighborhoods from Shi'ite militias, because the "Iraqi" army and police are almost branches of those same Shi'ite militias, and they prevent such defense. Iraq is now inevitably going to be divided into Sunni and Shi'ite areas. But the Shi'ites might well commit genocide conquering the Sunni areas.
Uri Avnery reads the Baker report as a proposal to make Israel agree to peace with Palestine.
Exxon continues funding the denial of global warming. The executives in charge of this probably figure on moving to high ground when global warming floods the coastal cities.
A protest in favor of democracy in the
kingdom of Tonga led to violence.
Some 8 protesters were killed, perhaps by their own fire.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The article says that the protest destroyed most of the capital city, but then it admits this refers only to the central business district. Perhaps the parts of the city where people live don't count for businessmen.
The violence could be used as an excuse to refuse to establish a democracy.
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) introduced a resolution to impeach
George W. Bush, Richard Cheney and Condolezza Rice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Here is the resolution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush regime is breaking the law yet again, by profiling international travelers for their "terrorist potential" even though Congress forbade it.
I think Bush will use this as he has used past confrontations with Congress and laws: to undermine the system of checks and balances by ignoring it. I predict that he will not stop for anything short of impeachment.
The US army has a new weapon which tortures people at a distance. It
causes unbearable pain. The torture does not cause permanent
injury...provided people run away fast enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This weapon will be ideal for suppressing embarrasing political protest.
Clothing workers in Bangladesh are
forced to work 80 hour weeks and
get paid under 10 cents an hour. These clothes are sold to major
retail companies which claim to require their manufacturers not to do
this. When the factories are checked, the companies force the workers
to support the lie.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This is what "free trade" treaties do.
(5 pence in the UK are worth around 8 or 9 cents in the US.)
The Iraq Study Group may not have a solution for how to end the war, but it does have a way for its corporate friends to make money.
The Bush forces killed the civilians in some houses,
then
bombed them from the air to try to hide the crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This article explains why the Bush forces call them all "terrorists".
There are two levels of lie here. A person who really carries a gun might be a resistance fighter (though this is not certain), but is probably not a terrorist. A person who is in a house with a gun may very well be neither one.
The
13 coutries with the worst censorship of the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Many other countries practice censorship on the net, however. The whole EU joins the US in censoring the free software that you can use to read a DVD.
The UK spent around $50 million of its "foreign aid" persuading poor
countries to
privatize their water and sanitation systems.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Greg Palast: The Baker Boys: Stay Half the Course.
The Bush regime is systematically underreporting the violence in Iraq,
presenting perhaps 1/10 of the real level. This violence has led 100,000
Iraqis to flee the country each month, with almost 2 million now in exile.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Brazil has declared protection for 63,000 square miles of the Amazon rain forest.
Even assuming this is successfully enforced, it is just a first step in what must be done. Over 200,000 square miles of the rain forest were cut down in the past 35 years.
The Iraq Study Group report recognized that things are going wrong for the Bush forces, but admits no uncertainty in the assumption that their "victory" is to be desired.
The report recommends a plan of Iraqization of the occupation, which could mean recruitment of Iraqi traitors, or could mean helping the Shi'ites to commit genocide against the Sunnis. Or it could be a way to cut and run without losing face, as happened in in Vietnam.
Iraq: One by one, supporters of the war admit the truth.
Far from closing the Guantanamo prison, the Bush regime is replacing the facilities with new ones.
Many Iraqi women are imprisoned by the Bush forces, often as hostages, and sometimes they are raped by their jailors.
CNN announcer Glenn Beck threatens Muslims with concentration camps.
Bush and his Christian fanatics have caused a lot more deaths in recent years than Muslim fanatics have. Should they be put in concentration camps?
B'liar, apparently with Brown's approval, wants to
eliminate local planning control so that projects "in the national
interest" can be forced through.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
These projects "in the national interest" include nuclear power plants, which are dangerous and vulnerable to attack, as well as airport expansions that can only be needed if air travel grows to an extent that will assure global catastrophe.
Political opposition in the Maldive Islands has been crushed
with the arrest of the dissidents.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli police tortured a 15-year-old Palestinian, and threatened to rape him, until he signed a confession he could not read.
Israel often tortures Palestinian prisoners.
Arabs who are Israeli citizens are not treated very well either. Israel now plans to destroy the homes of Bedouin who live in the Negev desert.
The resistance took control of the Iraqi town of Siniya, which is now besieged by the Bush forces. It looks like they are trying to starve and freeze the town into submission.
Was Rumsfeld's "leaked" memo a plan to falsify his image for the future?
The Bush forces have at least 100,000 contract workers in Iraq. Many of them are mercenaries.
Global inequality: half the world's wealth belongs to the richest 2%, while the poorest half own just 1%.
In India, thousands of Dalit women are forced into the "career" of scavaging excrement from toilets. This is not just disgusting, it is dangerous.
A team of engineers has tried to design a safer way to do this job.
However, despite its technical success, convincing India to invest in switching to this new technology will be very difficult. And making the job safer is not a substitute for ending the bigotry of the caste system.
UCLA police attacked a student with a tazer as he was leaving the library.
(He had been ordered to leave because he did not have his university
ID card with him.) They kept attacking him while he was lying on the
floor, because he didn't get up when they ordered him to. (A tazer
can stun a person so much he cannot stand up.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
When a witness asked for a policeman's badge number, the policeman threatened to attack the witness.
I sent this letter to the editor, but I don't think they printed it.
Dear Editor
Americans' safety is endangered by a cocky and lawless gang that will
threaten nearly anyone. The riot in the library gave UCLA students a
taste of their violence, but a glance at
www.copwatchla.org shows that
it's not unusual in your city. What is special about this instance is
that they made a slip.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The library rioters threatened a student who asked them to identify themselves. Intimidating witnesses is standard practice for this gang, and it is usually impossible to prosecute them because they lie to protect each other. But this time they were caught red-handed. The student who was threatened now has an opportunity to deal the gang a sharp defeat--by pressing charges and insisting that justice be done.
The real message of this letter is addressed to that student. Please, I beg you, insist on justice. No matter who asks you to let these gangsters off the hook, stand firm! None of us will be safe until we rein them in, and we now depend on your courage. If you can put a few of the hooligans behind bars, or even just take away their badges and weapons, the rest of them will not be so eager to attack again.
Sincerely,
Richard Stallman
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Traces of radiation in airplanes is evidence that Litvinenko's
poisoning was done by Russian agents.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The leader of SCIRI wants the Bush forces to remain in Iraq and let the "Iraqi security forces" have more control.
SCIRI's Badr Brigades operate death squads that are part of those same "security forces". They are now paying doctors to tell them about Sunnis in hospitals (scroll down to May 04) in order to kill them.
I think SCIRI wants to use the Bush forces' heavy weapons and air power as backing to commit genocide.
Torture at Abu Ghraib followed the methods that the CIA developed and that the US has taught to many governments. The US Congress recently legalized the use of these torture methods.
The War on Integrity continues: Bobby Maxwell was a US government auditor that
collected millions of dollars that oil companies had shortchanged the
government. The Bush regime works for the oil companies, which
considered his effectiveness a problem. So it eliminated his job.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces in Falluja deliberately set fire to the Red Crescent
headquarters,
then stopped people from putting out the fire. It was
totally destroyed. Meanwhile, in Samarra they took a resistance
fighter's children (ages 7 and 10) hostage.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Olmert offered peace and an independent state to the Palestinians. I
worry, however, that this offer implicitly demands acceptance of the
annexation wall, and the annexation of large parts of the West Bank's
land and water resources.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The
propaganda campaign for biometrics and the total surveillance society.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
FEMA bureaucrats have been very effective in shutting out Katrina victims from federal aid.
The insurrection in Oaxaca has been crushed, and
the police are going around
disappearing and killing people.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
President Chavez was reelected in Venezuela with a large majority.
Battlestar Galactica shows Americans Iraq from the Iraqis' side.
This sort of allegory is necessary because such ideas can't penetrate the bias of mass media "news".
GI Special responds to a soldier's criticism of its opposition to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another soldier says he is being sent to Iraq and has concluded that it is only for Bush cronies' profits. Meanwhile, a conscientious objector was sent to Iraq based on spurious requirements, in violation of military regulations.
Hezbollah and various allies mounted massive peaceful demonstrations
against the US-backed Lebanese government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Heroic activist Zackie Achmat
risked his life to force South African
President Mbeki to back down from his insane policy on HIV.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The War on Integrity continues: a State Department analyst who told
the truth about B'liar's "special relationship" with the US faces
pressure to lie or be punished.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Chanu Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 6 years to protest
killings of civilians by Indian soldiers. For 6 years she has been
force-fed. Thangjam Manorama Devi had it even worse: the soldiers
that raped her then machine-gunned her body to shreds, to destroy the
evidence.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Why did Maliki cancel his meeting with Bush?
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Was this because of the US memo which said that he either can't or won't do the job that Bush assigned to him? (Of course he can't; nobody can do it.) Or was this because al Sadr threatened to scuttle the "Iraqi" government if he had the meeting?
Like many other rulers before him, Bush refuses to recognize the reality of defeat.
However, Bush's defeat is not in his homeland, His policy in Iraq is dead in substance, but he can keep the dead body propped up for as long as he can make others pay the price.
Hilary Benn, who wants to be deputy leader of the Labour Party, is
trying to avoid government measures to prevent global warming. His
alternative: "Let's just ask individuals to conserve".
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Conservation by individuals can make a difference, but does he want to bet the survival of London on their making enough difference?
The Bush forces now openly talk of using
death squads to kill the leaders of the Iraqi resistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The joke here is that they have already done just this, by allowing the Iraq police to be infiltrated by Shi'ite death squads. These death squads kill lots of Sunni civilians, but they don't have as much success against fighters. However, if they commit genocide against the entire Sunni population, that would extinguish the Sunni parts of the resistance along with the population from which it comes.
Iraqi militias are trying to provide law and order in Iraqi
neighborhoods.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
In effect this is use of the solution I have proposed.
Al Sadr is trying to convince the "Iraqi" parliament to demand
withdrawal of the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The "Iraqi" government will be truly Iraqi only when it does this.
Meanwhile, Al Sadr's followers have ordered Iraqi Christians to follow their extreme Muslim rules.
The potential for this sort of tyranny is always to be found lurking in the heart of a mostly Muslim society.
A Dalit who was raped was then burned alive for testifying.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Injustice, even brutal crime against Dalits is not rare.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Cattle contribute more to global warming than cars.
Cattle raising also causes deforestation. This means people need to eat less meat. Individuals can do this, but I don't think individual activism will be enough to deal with the problem. I think we need to tax meat just as we tax gasoline: to discourage consumption. Cattle raising also causes deforestation. This means people need to eat less meat. Individuals can do this, but I don't think individual activism will be enough to deal with the problem. I think we need to tax meat just as we tax gasoline: to discourage consumption.
As part of the War on Integrity,
Bush continues appointing people to
run Federal offices whose mission is to protect the public or the
environment who oppose the mission they are supposed to do.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces want to send more troops to Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This won't really change anything, because a few more troops won't defeat a whole occupied country whose populace hates them. But it will at least buy time against the pressure to end their crime.
Newt Gingrich wants to abolish political freedom of speech, officially, to "protect" us from Al Qa'ida.
If we were going to censor some political opinions, the highest priority should be opinions like Gingrich's which attack the constitution. But even that much censorship would be too much.
NIST is planning to condemn all electronic voting machines that directly count the votes.
I wonder if Bush will intervene to stop or change this report. He has to, if he intends to defend the gains of the War on Integrity.
Berlusconi is accused of trying to
rig his last election.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Hans Blix says B'liar's government's nuclear weapons program makes it
harder to discourage countries such sa Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, and generally undermines the nonproliferation treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Patti Santangelo's
attempt to resist RIAA bullying was sabotaged
by a sleazy lawyer.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Nir Rosen, who recently saw al Sadr speak in Iraq.
He talks about the power of various militias including the Bush
forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are considering more or less pulling out of al Anbar province. They would send "Iraqi" (Shi'ite and Kurdish) troops to occupy the area.
Shi'ite troops could easily take it into their heads to commit genocide there, spreading the butchery of Baghdad. However, they are not as well armed as the Americans in the Bush forces, so in al Anbar they might end up retreating from the resistance.
Bush's Iraq Study Group is preprogrammed not to reconsider anything important.
The National Science-Teachers Association rejected a gift
of 50,000 copies of "An Inconvenient Truth". Telling
the truth about global warming would be
inconvenient for
their funding from Exxon.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The corruption of civil institutions (both governmental and nongovernmental) by corporate money debilitates civic life and gives the corporate donors control over politics. An association of science teachers ought to have noble social goals, and maybe this did at one time, but now it seems to have has become primarily a scheme to help business brainwash kids. (It probably still does some useful work, which it uses as an excuse to pretend that the organization has noble social goals.)
It is possible for an organization to accept a certain amount of donations from companies while refusing to let them set the agenda. The Free Software Foundation (fsf.org) does this. To avoid being corrupted by these donations, I as president must be prepared to say "no thanks" to some or all of those funds, if and when they try to distort our goals.
This requires a clear awareness of the kind of corruption that could happen, and the firm will to avoid it. The prevalence of such corruption of institutions in our society makes such awareness and firm will rare. People get used to corruption and tolerate it, and that makes it easy for institutional leaders to excuse their corruption in their own minds. The leaders of the NSTA probably have convinced themselves that being Exxon's tool on global warming is worth while because it gets them funds to do some small usefu thing.
Remember that "xx" in "Exxon" is pronounced like the "ch" in German "ach" ;-). Can you say "Yech-on"?
A flood of exotic pets
threatens to bring viruses along.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
For many kinds of animals, their capture in the wild is also likely to be horribly traumatic, which is another good reason to discourage import of pets caught in the wild.
Under elected president Preval, violence in Haiti is decreasing slowly, but the poor are just as poor.
It is noteworthy that Clinton imposed cruel neoliberal economic policies on President Aristide in exchange for helping him regain power. Maybe that had something to do with why he was unable to make things much better. And maybe similar external opposition is why Preval can't help the poor.
Israeli troops occupied a Palestinian house and
took 15 members of the family hostage in their home.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I've heard that this is standard practice.
NATO's resolve to continue the war in Afghanistan is wearing thin.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I supported this war, but I don't think it can be won any more unless the conditions that now give the Taliban its support are changed.
Charges of war crimes including torture have been filed in a German court against Rumsfeld and others.
Sunni Iraqi leader Al Dhari condemns Al Qa'ida for the killing of Iraqi civilians, but says it is ok to fight militias that support the "Iraqi" government against the resistance.
I don't think it is really clear that al Sadr's militia supports that government. In some ways it does, in some ways it doesn't.
The Bush forces continue heavy aerial bombing in Iraq. This kills
a lot of
civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Artillery fire does too.
Many EU nations 'knew about CIA jails', and officials are still covering up their cooperation.
Bush continues to deny that the prisoners were tortured. Where Clinton tried to squeeze the meaning of "sex", Bush tries to squeeze the meaning of "torture".
Cheney has a long career of
trying to expand presidential power
at the expense of all kinds of checks and balances.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This is what conservatives used to be against.
Israel and Palestinians have agreed to end the fighting in Gaza.
US oil companies are accused of
contracting the gasoline supply so as to boost prices.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
If they are doing so, it has an important beneficial effect: to reduce gasoline consumption. (In Europe, taxes have been used to keep gasoline prices much higher than in the US, ever since the 70s.)
The US should do this with taxes too, so that the windfall goes to the treasury instead of to the people that own the oil companies. But low gasoline prices are a suicidal goal.
The UK now has privately-owned police-- constables who are paid by
(and perhaps loyal to) specific businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
While US media accuse Syria of the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, the Arab world generally holds the US and/or Israel responsible. Hezbollah is showing respect for the murdered minister and his family and faction, in an attempt to build unity.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, Baghdad descends into civil war.
That Baghdad is mostly divided into Sunni and Shi'ite by the Tigris river could facilitate peace through partition.
Former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in
London using radioactive polonium, production of which requires
expensive facilities. No one knows which side killed him,
but he had said he was about to identify Anna Politkovskaya's killer.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Too bad he didn't also say he had put the information in a letter to be opened in the event of his death.
Robert Fisk: Gemayel's mourners know that in Lebanon nothing is what it seems.
Despite the ouster of the Taliban, Afghan women are still treated as
chattels, while women MPs have to hide from assassins.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Police entered the university in Oaxaca and threatened to attack its radio station, which supports the protests.
Ecuador has elected a new president,
Rafael Correa Delgado, who opposes the "free trade" treaty with the US and
will expel US troops from Ecuador.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops regularly take Palestinians hostage.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Human Rights Watch says that Saddam Hussein's trial was not fair
and the verdict was "questionable".
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The full report.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Reportedly
the Bush forces shelled houses in Ramadi, then prevented
anyone from rescuing the people who were bleeding to death in the
rubble. 35 people died, all civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Iraq's simmering civil war is moving rapidly to overt civil war. Al Sadr's militia took over a state TV station and denounced the "Iraqi" government, while the chief Sunni cleric (whom the government tried recently to arrest) was in Egypt asking other Arab countries to de-recognize that government.
The Bush forces are to blame for this civil war, but they cannot possibly end it, being a hated occupying force. They can give Iraq the peace of the grave, which they have given to many Iraqis already. But the only way to achieve peace for the living is to strengthen various militias into governments that can control and defend territories from each other, and eventually make peace with each other.
General Karpinski says that Rumsfeld personally told civilian interrogators to practice specific torture methods in Abu Ghraib.
NYC police killed an unarmed man leaving his bachelor party. His friends were merely wounded.
He was driving very badly, and perhaps was drunk. But that shouldn't be a reason to shoot him.
Six Iraqis tell about life in the violent mess that Bush has made of
Iraq. They wish for the days of Saddam Hussein.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Iraq's Palestinians are targeted by kidnapers and find it hard to flee anywhere else.
A commission in Nepal ruled that the king, formerly an absolute
monarch,
should be punished for his troops' violent attacks that
killed or injured some 5,000 protesting citizens.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians 'own 40%' of Israeli West Bank settlements, says Peace Now.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Bush has made the US government more vindictive towards government employee whistleblowers.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the same court that gave us software patents. It seems to be biased against the public interest in every area it touches. This suggests it should be abolished.
In Russia, the government will soon control 90% of the mass media.
In the US, the megacorporations own the media and control the government.
Paul Roberts, a prominent conservative, calls for the impeachment of Bush for attacking the constitution.
Iraq's Al-Shariqiya TV station says its staff are being systematically attacked by militias.
Three CIA agents were in the room when Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There is no obvious explanation for their presence there, and they worked far away from LA.
Robert Gates, now appointed as the Secretary of Defense, appears to have distorted intelligence reports about Iran in the 1980s in order to help Reagan justify selling missiles to Iran. These missiles were provided as ransom for hostages kidnaped by Iranian-supported groups, but the CIA said, apparently with no new information, that Iran was no longer supporting terrorists.
When Reagan ransomed hostages with weapons, he betrayed his country. His name should be remembered in shame.
B'liar aims to impose close surveillance on everyone in the UK, starting with children, in the name of "protecting" them. But the system is likely to undermine protection of children who are seriously at risk, even as it attacks their privacy.
Sunni car bombs killed over 200 Shi'ites in one day in Baghdad. (This article has an earlier, lower figure.) And the health ministry was attacked.
The next day,
Shi'ites retaliated by burning Sunnis to death while
"Iraqi" troops looked on passively.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It is interesting that the al Sadr militia demands that Maliki not meet with Bush. Maliki cannot disobey Bush, but he depends on the support of that militia. So it seems to me that this is a deliberate attempt to put Maliki in an impossible situation and bring down the "Iraqi" government.
The occupation is destroying Iraq's medical system, which is under the
control of
religious fanatics that know nothing about medicine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Australia knew a year in advance that the invasion of Iraq was already decided.
B'liar talks big about aid for Afghanistan, but since he exaggerates
the achievements of past aid, it looks like this is just talk.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Rumsfeld and Bush were personally involved in directing the
interrogation (i.e., torture) of an al-Qa'ida suspect in 2002. They
must be glad that Congress voted to exempt torturers from prosecution.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
CACI, a torture-for-hire military contractor, has repeatedly
sued
and threatened journalists that expose its activities.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Environmentalists are suing the Bush regime for failing to produce a legally required report on climate change.
As Bush collides with Americans' increasing desire to end the occupation of Iraq, this may force Americans to confront the truth about the war, and about US power and aggression in general.
Ministers in Bush's Iraqi government are
staying away from work
because they might be assassinated. One minister has gone traveling
for a month, and the ministry does not know where he is.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Bush's project of training Iraqis to fight for him was planned so badly that it is a joke.
At the same time, it encountered problems which come inevitably out of the nature of the situation: the Bush forces are hated by all patriotic Iraqis, and they and their collaborators face unremitting attacks from the resistance.
Chertoff's "Chilling Vision" of the future -- rule of law, with respect for human rights, is what he fears.
Indonesian protesters told Bush: You are the terrorist.
Bush's response, that protest shows a healthy democracy, is hypocritical lip-service coming from him, but it is true, and it presents a good yardstick for judging the US. Protest in the US is compressed into "free speech zones", and our democracy is sick.
Was Pierre Gemayel killed by Syria, or by Israel?
I don't have an opinion. Either one might have done it.
October was the deadliest month of the occupation of Iraq, with almost 4,000 civilians known to have been killed. But the record probably won't last long.
Israeli troops stood by and watched while
settlers attacked and
injured a Swedish visitor who had come to escort Palestinian children
to school. Then they arrested the attackers, but let them go without
even taking their names.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The visitor was there because the settlers frequently attack these children on their way to school.
My mother told me that, when she was young, at Easter time the Catholic children used to call her "Christ killer". The Catholic Church dropped this calumny decades ago, but now the settlers are resurrecting it and throwing it in Christians' faces. Are they nuts? Or do they want a resurgence of anti-semitism?
Perhaps that will facilitate their standard lie, which consists mislabeling all condemnation of their violence (and their theft of Palestinian land and water) as "anti-semitism".
Dishonest slaughterhouses open a
door to BSE to spread in the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces have declared total curfew on some Iraqi cities. Telephone and internet use are banned as well. It is worse than being in prison.
Perhaps they hope Iraqis will come to regard a mere murderous military occupation as a step up.
Former UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi says that the US and UK are
failing to recognize the reality of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
However, when he opposes partition, he too does not recognize the reality of Iraq. Iraq is already partitioning itself, as a result of the conflicts that Bush helped to stir up.
I sympathize with the wishes of Iraqis that continue to support a unified Iraq just as I do with the wishes of secular Iraqis that do not want Islamic rule (i.e., injustice).
The reason I support allowing militias to set up an effective de facto partition of Iraq is not that I think partition is good, but rather that I think it is the only way to end the mass murder, except for genocide or unbearable tyranny.
The Democratic Party is already making an accommodation with Bush to extend the occupation of Iraq.
It did not take them long to let down the hopes of the people who voted for them. I am not surprised, though, because few of the Democratic candidates said that the occupation was wrong. That is why I did not support them.
The Bush forces are
cheating disabled veterans out of their benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
But they have to cut costs somewhere to pay the high fees that mercenary companies charge.
Sudan "agreed in principle" to a stronger foreign military
force in Darfur, after its militias massacred civilians in Chad.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Reportedly Syria will demand the
return of the Golan heights as the price for cooperating with Bush on
Iraq -- as well as a timetable for withdrawal of the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It would be bad if Assad and Bush, neither of whom respects human rights, get together on a plan to keep Iraq in subjection.
The US and Israel are planning an international conference to boost Fatah over HAMAS. This is meant to forward Israeli plans for annexation of parts of the West Bank.
At the same time,
Israel is threatening to assassinate the elected
leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which comes from HAMAS.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
Israel formed the Islamist organization HAMAS in the 80s so as to weaken the power base of secular Fatah. This has sometimes backfired, but the rivalry between them is sure useful for Israeli plans.
Bush mercenaries in Iraq were fired after they reported that their boss murdered Iraqis for fun.
Their employer doesn't deny the shootings, but defends firing the mercenaries that reported them. This rules out all explanations except that their are monsters.
The use of privately employed mercenaries by the US government should be prohibited by law for this reason as well as many others.
Protestors in Wales have blocked construction of a monster natural gas
pipeline through land that is prone to landslides.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The deputy health minister of the "Iraqi" government was kidnapped.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It's peculiar that the kidnapers included police (Shi'ite) while he is a Shi'ite too. I wonder if two Shi'ite militias are fighting.
A list of
Bush quotations.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The list of Bush quotes is a hoax. See snopes.com for details.
A conscientious object in Turkey faces repeated trials and
imprisonments for his refusal to enter the army.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Iran, 26 years of religion in power, has made young people secular.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
It should be noted that the position of Ayatollah Montazeri is not really "reformist" except in a short term sense. Khomeni broke a centuries-old Shi'a tradition that clerics should not have secular power. Montazeri holds to that tradition.
Gordon Brown's vision for the UK's future is one of
surrender to the megacorporations: competing economically with other
countries to attract the favor of business.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Dumping toxic waste from rich countries in poor countries is
not unusual, but now
a company is getting sued for it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
AIDS and tyranny have reduced women's life expectancy in Zimbabwe to
34 years or less.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
If Dubya's pretended concern about the evils of Saddam Hussein's regime were real, he would be far more concerned about rescuing Zimbabwe (and various other countries) from tyranny. However, as events in Haiti show, Bush is quite ready to introduce tyranny.
Israel plans to build a wall around Azun Atme, turning the village into a prison. It has become a new site for the Palestinian nonviolent protest movement.
Americans hoped that electing Democrats would end the war, but instead they will get a plan for conscription.
As part of the War on Integrity, Bush appointed a new head for family-planning services -- who also works for a group of Christian fanatics that opposes birth control.
The B'liar regime has systematically blamed the Human Rights Act for its administrative failings. This appears to be part of their systematic campaign to abolish the Rights of Englishmen.
President Musharraf of Pakistan has commuted the death sentence that was given to Mirza Hussain by an Islamic court. He may soon be freed after 18 years of imprisonment for a crime that he probably did not commit.
While it is good for a single injustice to end, the Islamic courts of Pakistan remain as unjust as ever.
Uri Avnery contrasts two approaches to peace between Israel and Palestine.
The US government has a systematic policy of witch-hunts against Islamic charities and Muslims who try to help the sick and hungry in Muslim countries. US laws prohibiting any kind of cooperation with groups that have been labeled (sometimes arbitrarily) as "terrorist" are so broad that they amount to guilt by association.
The Israeli air force planned to demolish a house in a refugee camp by bombing it. 50 Palestinians climbed on the house and discouraged the bombing.
Refugee camps are typically densely built. To bomb a house in a refugee camp, even if it is empty, has a substantial chance of killing people in other nearby houses.
The attendance rate in Iraq's schools are at a record low. Universities are now controlled by religious fanatics who are often corrupt.
GI resistance to the occupation of Iraq is growing.
Biometric passports are being imposed in the name of security, but they are totally insecure, and actually make it easier to produce fake passports. The insane decision to use RFIDs makes it possible to read the data off someone else's passport while it is in his pocket without his knowledge. Security measures which are supposed to prevent that are feasible to overcome.
A Cuban boy who won a UN contest was denied his prize, a camera,
because it had parts made in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
I think the UN agency was being too subservient to the US. The UN is not under US jurisdiction, though all too often it acts that way. People who are not US citizens and buy a product outside the US are not under the jurisdiction of US export control or boycotts. The UN should have asked its staff to do that and told the US where to get off.
The "Iraqi government" is disintegrating, as the main association of Sunni clerics called on Sunnis to leave the government after it called for the arrest of their leader.
Blind mice were given sight with transplants of cells cultured from stem cells.
Soon the song "three blind mice" may be obsolete -- but in order to help blind humans, we must first defeat the Christian fanatics that believe that a zygote is a person.
Interpreters used by British Bush forces are being systematically killed by the resistance, as collaborators.
Murat Kurnaz, former Guantanamo prisoner, talks about how they tortured him, including electric shocks, starvation, and being shackled for days. Doctors rule on whether the prisoner can stand more torture without dying, but occasionally they make a mistake.
Without a real trial, it took years, to determine that he was not guilty of anything. Kurnaz accuses the German government of complicity in his arrest.
Spain and France have proposed a peace plan for Palestine. It is inadequate, but at least shows some recognition for the mistreatment of Palestine. It's good they had the guts to sideline the UK; they must have known that B'liar would only try to sabotage the plan on behalf of the US.
Robert Fisk: in the strange world of South Lebanon Hezbollah defends a NATO army from possible al Qa'ida suicide bombers.
After Israeli fighters killed some 70 Palestinians,
other Palestinians demanded revenge.
They fired Qassam missiles which scored a rare hit and killed one Israeli.
(That happens about once a year.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Now Israelis are calling out for revenge. Who has more to get revenge for?
B'liar's probable successor, Gordon Brown,
plans to continue the assault on human rights. He wants the same 90-day
imprisonment without trial that B'liar couldn't get last year.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar shows his true position on global warming by trying to protect
business from strict annual CO2 reduction targets.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
Strict annual targets could really compel reductions. B'liar prefers a 5-year plan, which would allow business 5 years of pretending before being caught doing nothing. And when it is caught, another 5-year plan would give it another chance to do nothing (except move the factories to higher ground).
Human Rights Watch accused Russia of systematically torturing
Chechens, US-style, to make them confess to crimes they did not
commit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The UK plans to ban TV advertising of junk food in an
attempt to reduce obesity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
The goal is important; I am not sure whether the method will work, but it is worth a try.
A Bush forces soldier said in court that he raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl because he hates Iraqis.
It's natural that many Bush forces troops come to hate all Iraqis. They know nearly all Iraqis hate the troops for what they have done to Iraq. This mutual hatred is the natural consequence of a war of aggression and conquest followed by subjugation of the conquered people. He who decides to launch a war of conquest is responsible for its natural consequence.
US media are spinning wildly to discourage withdrawal of the Bush forces from Iraq. They use the argument that the Bush forces paradoxically prevent the instersectarian violence which in fact they have caused.
It's true that the Bush forces put some limits on the violence that the militias can use. But they also keep the violence going by preventing any side from making its territory secure. While the Bush forces remain, the only way Iraq's violence can end is if the Iraqis are all dead.
The Palestinian town of Zaytoun asked international volunteers to come and deter attacks by Israelis as they harvested their olives. Ed Hill from the UK went there, and now reports on what he saw.
An excerpt from Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction.
The solution to these problems can also help against global warming: tax oil enough to substantially discourage its use.
The UN Environment Program proposes to combat global warming by inviting people to plant trees. They hope to count a billion newly planted trees.
Unless they do something more organized, and with funding behind it, I doubt that this program will lead to the planting of very many additional trees. More likely they will count lots of trees that people would have planted anyway, and call it a great success, without really having changed much.
A leading Iraqi lawyer has accused the Bush forces of throwing 211 families, including his, out of their homes. And they have shot Iraqis trying to get into their homes to retrieve their property.
An officer testifying in the trial of British Bush forces soldiers accused the high command of ordering the abuse of prisoners.
Dutch interrogators in the Bush forces
tortured prisoners too.
The hearings that Guantanamo prisoners get instead of trials are
travesties of justice.
The US has defined non-violent animal rights
protests as "terrorism" if they are perceived as threatening by
the targets of the protests. That essentially leaves it up to those targets
to declare protest as "terrorism".
I am not particularly an advocate of animal rights, but any threat to
democratic political freedom is unamerican. Even worse, this law is
based on a lie. Since people condemn "terrorism", they figure they
can manipulate people by labeling other things as "terrorism". (A
similar kind of dishonesty can be found in the term "statutory rape":
it isn't rape, but a law decrees the lie that it is rape.) Next thing
you know, they will be asking a jury to consider protest as evil
because "it is terrorism, and you hate terrorism".
Jurors should never convict anyone of violating a law which is itself
a lie.
Unregulated deep-sea trawling is
destroying entire ecosystems.
Shi'ite militia gunmen wearing police uniforms kidnaped large numbers
of people (some say 150) from an Iraqi government research agency
office. The agency is under the control of a Sunni minister.
Some of the prisoners were released, but
others were tortured and killed.
The reason the attackers were wearing police uniforms is probably that
they are police. Here's
more information on the police death squads.
The end of the inter-sectarian killings in Iraq can only occur if
Sunnis can defend their own cities and neighborhoods, to keep these
murderous police out. And that requires ending the occupation and the
"Iraqi government" which works for Bush and employs these police.
Palestinian girl Ayesha was just released from an Israeli prison where
she has spent her entire life. Her mother is imprisoned without trial
for no stated reason. Both of her parents have spent many years in
prison for political activity. Ayesha cannot meet her brothers, who
live in Jordan, since they cannot go to Palestine and her father
would not be allowed to return if he ever leaves.
This is nothing unusual in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The
"defense" of Israel, while a legitimate goal as such, cannot justify
the evil being committed in its name.
Please read the
Consumers for Peace report on Bush war crimes in Iraq.
This report does not include the crime of launching a war of
aggression, a crime for which German leaders were sentenced to death.
One point noted is that the Geneva Conventions forbid the punishment
of civilians for helping wounded combatants. The Bush forces just
recently arrested Iraqi doctors and medics, accusing them of giving
treatment to wounded Iraqi resistance fighters.
Bush is unabashed, and now wants to "win" the occupation of Iraq by
increasing the size of the occupation forces.
It is absurd to think that 20,000 more troops could give Bush victory
over the population of Iraq. But
Bush doesn't care about reality,
only the appearance presented in the media; so he doesn't need to win,
he only needs to avoid an appearance of defeat. Any excuse will
serve for that, if the media support it.
Bechtel, having taken billions from the willingly complicit Bush regime to
"rebuild Iraq", has given up operations in Iraq,
leaving Iraq with essentially nothing to show for all the money.
B'liar is not satisfied with keeping people in prison for 28
days without charges;
he wants 90 days. Last year Parliament agreed to
28 days as a compromise, which he now wants to change.
He seems to be playing a game of "meet me half way, then meet me half
way again," which eventually takes 100% from anyone fool enough to
play it.
Report from Oaxaca: protestors hold many of the streets,
but police grab people for no apparent reason.
The B'liar regime
wants to censor films that show sex combined with
violence -- a further attack on human rights in the UK.
Bush has been
forced to give some political ground on Iraq, but he
continues the pretense that the puppet government there is somehow
helping the situation.
It is vital to reject that pretense, because many Americans who
opposed the invasion have let themselves use that excuse to justify
the occupation. They say it must be continued so as to prevent the
evils it has unleashed from getting worse. But this is a delusion:
the "Iraqi government" cannot make Iraq safe or peaceful, because
Iraqis know it isn't really Iraqi.
Israeli jets threatened French troops in Lebanon, and almost received
real anti-aircraft missiles in return. (Robert Fisk says that these
missiles are automated.)
France now demands that Israel stop flying
planes over Lebanon.
A statement from al-Muhajir, who claims to be the head of al Qa'ida in
Iraq, looks custom-made to support Bush. (It's not the first time.)
A proposal to help Africans by
letting companies buy and sell them was
warmly received by an audience of neoliberal government officials.
I think this speech was given by a representative of the Yes Men,
who show the evil of neoliberalism by proposing small extensions
that take it into the territory of absolute evil, and getting positive
responses.
An open letter to Robert Gates, new US Secretary of "Defense".
The Bush forces reportedly killed 30 civilians in Ramadi
by shelling a residential area.
A Bush forces soldier pled guilty to
raping an Iraqi teenager.
The occupation of a hostile population creates a hostility between the
occupying forces and the civilians which leads to crimes like this.
(In Iraq, killing of civilians is much more frequent than rape.) It's
a good thing that soldiers are punished when caught committing such
crimes, it is inevitable that only a small fraction of them will be
convicted.
Thanks to the ACLU, the CIA has admitted that Bush
gave orders to operate secret prisons and specifying
"interrogation methods" (i.e., torture techniques) for
them to use.
Some additional information.
Kyle Snider, Bush forces resister, says that the army made a deal to
discharge him, and then cheated on it.
When it comes to Israel and Palestine,
Pelosi is just as biased as Bush.
Leaders of a right-wing party in the UK were acquitted of the crime of
"inciting religious hatred" for the criticisms they made of Islam and
Muslims. In response,
the B'liar regime proposes to increase censorship so that no one can
express opinions that would "offend mainstream opinion".
The B'liar regime seems to believe that it can compensate for police
mistreatment of innocent Muslims (such as shooting them in their
homes) by censoring criticism of their religion. Two wrongs don't
make a right.
China will pass the US in greenhouse gas emissions by 2010.
If rising CO2 emissions melt a substantial part of the Greenland
icecap, the sea will submerge Shanghai and Shenzhen. That will trim
China's economic growth.
Nancy Pelosi rejected impeachment of Bush.
This is why I do not in general support the Democratic Party. If
Bush's crimes are not punished, the effect is to legitimize them,
present and future.
150 people were kidnapped together from a research institute in Baghdad
by 80 militia gunmen dressed as police.
The idea that the puppet government could provide security against the
militias is absurd. When militia gunmen dress as police, usually it's
because they really are the police.
Kremlin 'was complicit in Chechen murders', says a European court.
A news report says that Bush forces troops murdered 6 defenseless civilians as revenge for killing of 6 Bush forces soldiers in battle.
There are accusations that
Saddam Hussein's trial was unfair.
The chief judge of Saddam Hussein's revolutionary court has been
sentenced to death along with Hussein... for sentencing
people to death after unfair trials. One must wonder when the judges of
this court will in turn be sentenced to death for the same crime.
The death penalty is wrong, but sentencing its perpetrators to death
is not the way to take action against it.
Berlusconi used Italians' voluntary contributions, meant for cultural
activities, to pay for the occupation of Iraq.
Militias in Iraq are killing high police officials.
A peace deal could end the civil war in Nepal and lead to a
constitutional monarchy.
As Iraqi resistance snipers shoot at the Bush forces, Bush forces
snipers shoot anyone that uses a cell phone.
The US Army withdrew some specific
charges against Lt. Watada and will
proceed to a court-martial on the vaguer charges. Lt. Watada has
refused to go to Iraq on the grounds that the order is illegal.
Uri Avnery discusses Israel's moral responsibility for the shelling
that killed 18 Palestinians in their beds.
Boy Scouts are actively expelling Atheists.
An Israeli minister quit the cabinet in protest against including
Lieberman's party in the government.
Lieberman is a right-wing extremist.
Here is more information about what he stands for.
UK diplomats warned B'liar and Bush that "regime change" in Iraq would
lead to chaos...until the ever-obedient B'liar ordered them to shut up.
Rumsfeld has resigned, and
may perhaps face charges in Germany for the torture of prisoners.
Many Americans criticized Rumsfeld for "mismanaging" the occupation of
Iraq, and demanded his resignation. However, the question of whether
the war was badly managed is a side issue; the real point is that it
was fundamentally unjustified, and Bush should not be allowed to place
the responsibility for this crime on his henchmen.
MoveOn offers a reward for evidence of organized voter suppresion or
fraud.
When the manager of a McDonald's in New York attacked Christina
Sforza, one of her friends called the police. The manager told them
she had attacked him, and
the police didn't want to see the evidence.
In fact, the police have persistently
refused to allow Sforza to file a complain for the attack.
I can see how police might not know who to believe when two people
accuse each other. But in this case they only had to look at who was
injured -- precisely what they did not allow paramedics to check.
That alone calls out for the police to be punished. And denying a
diabetic access to medicine can cause permanent injury. Even real
criminals have the right not to be mutilated by their jailors.
The death sentence for Saddam Hussein is being
widely condemned in Europe.
Republicans made dishonest, even threatening phone calls to intimidate
and confuse likely Democratic voters.
The Republican Party has no respect for democracy or the rights of those
who disagree with them. In effect, they are traitors.
Turkish historian Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, who studies ancient Sumer, was
prosecuted for "inciting religious hatred" after she wrote that the
headscarf that Islamists wish to force women to wear started out in
ancient times as the insignia of a temple prostitute.
To "prevent" Qassam missile attacks from Gaza that hardly ever hit
anyone,
Israel killed 56 Palestinians (most of them civilians) and
ruined 200 houses.
Then killed a sleeping family with tank artillery.
Muslim police officers in the UK have been suspended from various
duties because of indirect family associations, based on rumors
instead of evidence.
These policemen could hardly be more dangerous than the ones
who shot innocent people, but B'liar gives them "101% support".
Bush representative Khalilzad has failed in his mission to
conciliate Iraqi Sunnis.
The only way Bush can have Iraqi's hearts and brains
is to collect them from cadavers.
A nature reserve in the Pacific Ocean is heavily polluted with
trash drifting in from remote lands.
Human activity now generates so much waste of all kinds that it can
pollute the whole ocean. We cannot treat the ocean as a boundless
dump any more.
10,000 women marched in Oaxaca to support the protestors
and condemn the federal police.
The
Israeli army killed a sleeping family in Gaza with tank fire.
(10 of the 18 killed were children.)
And two paramedics. That was on top of 56 other killings,
mostly of civilians.
Republicans made
harrassment calls to voters, which pretended to
come from the Democratic Party unless you listened to the very end.
Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's
secret uranium bomb.
The UK has DNA records of almost 4 million people, including half a
million people aged under 16. This leads to
all sorts of abuses.
B'liar wants to get DNA records of everyone, and makes the usual
excuse that "You have no reason to be afraid of being watched if
you're not doing something wrong." It takes just one word
to refute that absurd argument: "Menezes".
1/6 of all children have
some sort of brain disorder.
Is this due to poisonous chemicals?
The
Bush regime has made phony accusations against Venezuela
of refusing to cooperate in the absurd US "War on Drugs".
A dalit family resisting
oppression by its upper-caste neighbors was
treated to gang rape and murder.
When the US removed Aristide from power in Haiti, his party's peaceful
protests were crushed by gunfire.
A journalist caught the attack on
film. It looks like the US forces prepared it.
Bush's
Iraqi government closed TV stations and newspapers
for reporting on protests against Saddam Hussein's death sentence.
Hussein is probably guilty of these charges, and of many more, that
were not brought because in his defense he would have embarrassingly
cited the US support he received at the time. However, the death
penalty is itself wrong, even for mass murderers such as Hussein and
Bush.
They should be sentenced to life imprisonment in the same cell.
palast@gregpalast.com:
How They Stole The Mid-Term Election.
It appears that these methods weren't enough to give Republicans
victory, but they may have retained several congressional seats
that the Republicans would have lost in a fair election.
Africa will suffer massive crop failures due to global warming,
and 70 million people will have to flee rising seas. And that's even
supposing Greenland does not melt.
Iraqi Shia leaders fear the Bush regime favors a Sunni alliance.
Such an alliance seems unlikely to me, considering that the Sunnis are
the most active in the resistance, and the most hostile to Bush.
However, the fears show how impossible it is for Bush to control Iraq.
A
minister in the B'liar regime said that terrorism is a worse
threat than the cold war.
Is he nuts, or does he think the public is stupid?
The Soviet Union had the power to sterilize the world.
By comparison, non-state-sponsored terrorists are pipsqueaks.
Nearly all those killed and wounded by cluster bombs over the years
are civilians. Many of them are children.
ASBOs, the UK government
measures that put people in prison for
actions that are not against the law, are now a badge of honor for
teens. They are so often violated that the state can't afford to
enforce them.
An anti-gay US Christian leader quit after a
male prostitute
identified him as a client.
The wrong that this leader did was not that he used a prostitute's
services, or even that he had sex for pleasure. What he did wrong was
to condemn sex for pleasure.
China pressured North Korea to rejoin negotiations about its nuclear
weapons program.
If China is willing to keep the pressure up, while assuring North
Korea of protection from a possible US invasion, North Korea might be
willing to forego nuclear weapons.
Big Brother Britain 2006: 'We are waking up to a surveillance
society all around us'.
Developing events in Oaxaca.
How Lieberman affects Israel's already-deteriorating democracy.
The
US government claims Syria and Iran are planning a Lebanon coup.
I would not put it past Assad to do this, or put it past Bush to fabricate
the accusation, but it seems implausible that Iran would go to any lengths
to bring about such a coup.
Sunni militias are
trying to encircle Baghdad and cut it off from the
rest of Iraq.
Citizens of Oaxaca protected the university from Mexican troops.
The Bush regime let Chevron get away with underpaying for the natural
gas it pumps out of Federal land. This will enrich Bush's oil
buddies, while promoting global warming.
The article errs when it says the gas is "produced" in the Gulf of
Mexico. It was produced long ago; today we only extract it.
Women's lives are "no better" in Afghanistan after the Taliban were
kicked out.
However, this is partly due to the operation of the Taliban,
which threaten schools that teach girls.
For more information, see http://www.rawa.org/.
Greg Palast analyzes US war propaganda. It leads readers to identify
with Bush soldiers while dehumanizing the Iraqi civilians they kill.
Senator Allen's staff attacked and choked a man who was asking
annoying questions. The staff claim he attacked first, but the video
recording shows they are lying and he plans to press charges.
I don't think it matters whether Senator Allen ever spit at his wife
or not, just as it didn't matter whether President Clinton had sex
with Ms Lewinski. Attacking people who ask questions is much more
serious than either of those things.
Overseas U.S. soldiers' votes are being sent by faxes and emails,
and processed by a company that supports the Republican Party.
They also have to worry that commanders will punish them if they
didn't vote Republican.
The Bush regime wants to require US citizens to get "clearance"
to enter or leave the US by air.
UN investigators are studying possible evidence that Israel used
depleted uranium dirty bombs in Lebanon. The Israel response that
"these are the same weapons used by Western countries" seems to me
like an admissiuon of guilt--and this is no less wrong for Israel than
it is for any other country.
The
Green Party senate candidate was arrested in Seattle for trying to
enter a TV studio, where a debate was being held among other
candidates for his senate race. The debate was limited to
millionaires.
Proposal:
set the target for limiting CO2 emissions at the level
where Greenland won't melt. But what level is that?
Given the dishonesty of some governments and the greed of
corporations, we can be sure that in order to reach any given target,
we have to set a more ambitious target.
With global warming,
African birds are moving to Europe.
African parasites will surely come along.
Halliburton is being investigated for
fraud and corruption under Cheney's tenure. He could go to prison for this.
Having him in prison for corruption won't be as good as having him in
prison for the crime of launching a war of aggression, but it would
do. However, I don't think it will happen. If Bush can't get
Halliburton off the hook, he will probably pardon all his cronies
before leaving office.
Mexican police are attacking a university in Oaxaca.
The university's radio station is broadcasting a report
of the attack;
translations are posted here.
Progressive democrats are trying to organize to prevent the theft of
the coming US election.
It is "almost too late" to avoid a
global catastrophe due to global
warming -- but still possible, if governments can muster the political
will to overcome the short-sighted greed of business.
B'liar is "withdrawing troops"
only to replace them with mercenaries.
William Fisher:
what is the effect of dishonest political
campaign ads?
In order for them to backfire, the press has to function well enough to
enable the public to learn the truth.
An article about veterans of a single unit in the Bush forces returning home
to find they don't fit in. Meanwhile
they desperately cling to the idea
that their war was justified, rather than the war of conquest which
it clearly is.
Climate change can have
worse results than death of millions of people
and extinction of thousands of species. It can hurt business, too!
So now politicians are impressed.
The Republican Party pins its hopes on a massive campaign to prevent
voters who oppose them from voting
(or
preventing their votes from
being counted).
Swans that normally migrate from Russia to the UK for winter are
showing up in small numbers. It seems
Russia is so warm that they
have not bothered to leave.
Government officials in Oaxaca shot at protestors and journalists.
Fox, in a move so dishonest that it resembles Bush, used this violence
against protestors as
an excuse to send in troops to commit more.
Fashionable microlending has become a band-aid on the open sore
of neoliberalism.
I think the article is too harsh towards Mohammed Yunus. His
pioneering microlending program was effective (or so I've read) at
helping poor people in specific circumstances escape from permanent
bondage to moneylenders. But those are limited circumstances, and the
article is right that microlending is no substitute for the other
programs that aid the poor in general. (This must, in the long term,
include birth control and abortion aid.)
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
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Pakistan bombed a religious school accused of harboring Taliban.
I do not know whether that accusation was valid, but if the people in the school at the time included many Taliban, I do not criticize the attack. However, it is unlikely that attacks like this can defeat the Taliban if they have public support in Afghanistan.
Lula has won reelection as president of Brazil.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
His policies have not been as firm against the business empire as I would have wished; nonetheless, he blocked the FTAA and has helped Brazil's poor. In addition, he recently announced a strengthened commitment to free software.
Famine in North Korea has sent thousands fleeing, and the numbers
could increase.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
German government agencies knew about torture in secret CIA prisons
many years ago.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-26 because the old link was broken.]
US Customs arbitrarily and randomly seizes laptops of travelers
entering the US, without giving a reason; the result is that travel to the US
is a risk.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-28 because the old link was broken.]
This article reflects the media's general bias by giving priority to the effects on business and in particular business secrecy. If we set that bias aside, we see that this is equally unjust for individuals.
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