FIPR reports that the ID card scheme will be an expensive failure for its stated purposes such as preventing terrorism.
In Iraq, "we"
(meaning the Bush forces) are the barbarians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I disagree partly with one point in this article: it criticizes American Liberals for a point of view that I have not seen anyone actually endorse. Speaking as a Liberal, I don't think the Liberals I know would consider the mutilation of a few dead bodies more important than the killing of thousands of civilians.
Canadian police appear to be using foreign
governments to arrest traveling Canadian citizens, and bypass
their human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Flooding caused by global climate change could cause $40 billion damage annually in the UK by the end of this century (and proportionally more in the rest of the world). Even with the greatest possible efforts to hold back global warming, the damage will increase. Without great efforts, it will increase more.
Global warming is far more dangerous than terrorism. A hot spell killed over ten thousand people in France last summer--more than all the non-state-sponsored terrorism since 2000.
The UN launched an independent investigation into charges that the
Iraq oil-for-food program was corrupted by Saddam Hussein.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
There are rumors that the investigation might be given up to buy support from various countries for a UN legitimization of Bush control in Iraq.
Many problems with vote counting are expected in the 2004 US election, as Republicans walk out of the US Civil Rights Commission which is trying to address them.
Sibel Edmonds was blocked from testifying about Bush administration lies, but will have another hearing on June 14. Public support is needed.
The Bush forces
threatened to enter Najaf, demanding that Al-Sadr
"fight with ideas not guns". How strange, because he was doing
exactly that until the Bush forces closed his newspaper. It looks
like they condemn all opposition whether it is peaceful or violent.
That's "democracy" for you, Bush style.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Meanwhile, the Bush forces in Baghdad started firing randomly after they were attacked, and killed four Iraqi children. Bush continues to insist that only supporters of Saddam Hussein, or foreigners, would fight back after that kind of treatment.
Here is the letter that 50 former British diplomats signed, criticizing Blair's mideast policy.
Afghan women burn themselves to death in despair because they are mistreated by their husbands and in-laws.
Future Iraqi Security Forces Are Already Unraveling.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Two ways to terrorize the public: with real
attacks, or with false warnings.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Drug companies have killed hundreds of thousands by manipulating medical research. One method they use is to publish only the studies that give favorable results, hiding other studies that don't. (Parapsychologists use the same technique to fabricate evidence for psychic powers.)
Drug companies also influence studies by funding them. University researchers are afraid to publish unfavorable results because they might not get corporate funding for another study. But even those who have the courage to publish the results whatever they may be still face an obstacle: the drug companies sometimes put censorship power into their contract with the university.
The European Parliament voted to go to court against the EU's surrender to US demands for lots of personal information about air travelers.
When Christ Patten says that Europeans would want their governments to do "everything possible" to stop terrorism, "everything possible" implicitly means complete abolition of restraints on police power and the rights of the accused, and total surveillance. (To stop short of that point is not doing "everything".) He wants Europeans to hand over their rights quietly to the Bush regime, as it tries to do "everything possible" to Europeans as well as Americans.
What the 9/11 commission hearings revealed about what the Bush administration knew before 9/11. And contradictions it did not investigate.
Over 50 former British diplomats have signed a letter to Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy.
Bush is telling more lies, this time about
the USA PAT RIOT act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Shulamit Aloni: "Like The Germans, We Don't Want To Know"
After reading this, I have to ask myself whether most Americans likewise don't want to know what the Bush forces are doing in Iraq.
Tampa police arrested Food not Bombs activists for sharing food with
homeless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
The cruelty and injustice of a law against distributing food to the homeless is evident. Many US cities try to make it impossible for homeless people to live, because they are considered ugly and may drive customers away from businesses. These businesses think the place for homeless people is in the cemetary.
Food aid to Gaza has been resumed after Israel gave way to
international pressure. However, new Israeli demands threaten to halt
it again.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The US government focus on foreign terrorists may be
helping right-wing US terrorists regroup.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The right-wing ideology of the Bush regime might also be contributing to it.
Diebold was aware early on that its voting machines had gross flaws. The state of California is now considering decertifying them for the coming election.
The Chinese government criticizes the US human rights record.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The US Commission on Ocean Policy proposes a trust fund filled from
oceanic oil and gas revenues, to protect the health of the oceans.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
What is the terrible secret Vanunu could talk about?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
250 French doctors have accused the right-wing governing party of
trying to destroy the national health system.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces and the US government
use contract armies to evade legal restrictions. The result is
that other laws are thrown by the wayside.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Pro-government militias in Sudan killed over a hundred men from a minority group. The UN is proving to be weak in its criticism of this, and Human Rights Watch says the Sudanese government has blocked UN investigation.
The US-supported leaders in Haiti, many of whom are gangsters and
murderers, are arresting and
murdering supporters of President Aristide.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's "ambassador" to Iraq is not a real
embassador, but he has lots of experience with terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The electric power, and the security cameras, were turned off
in the World Trade Center for much of September 9, 2001. This had
never happened before.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
There were protests at the Coca Cola annual shareholders meeting.
The attacks on the union in Colombia continue; a recent note describes how relatives of a union leader were killed in their home a few weeks ago.
Life in Iraq today, where the war isn't flaring up: occasional
violence, alongside shopping--while the Bushmen live in the gated
communities where Baath party leaders used to live, and try never to
go outside.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Bush officials lied to Congress
about the consequences of a change in air quality rules .
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
9/11: Gross Negligence or Treason?
What triggered the Shia insurrection? It was the March 25 announcement of Bush plans to turn Iraq into a permanent colony.
The Bush forces, operating on Sharon's advice, are traveling the same road that Sharon's invasion of Lebanon traveled, turning the Shi'ite population into persistent enemies.
Right-wing Christian fanatics that support Bush demand a middle-east policy of encouraging Israeli aggression, because they hope this will bring about their prophecies of armageddon .
NORAD held drills based on the idea of airliners used to attack
buildings, in the
years and months before the 9/11 attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Invading Iraq was a no-brainer after Bush's lobotomy.
Recent US "free trade" treaties have phony "protections" for labor rights and the environment, but they are too vague to do any good.
Other countries should cancel these treaties.
Kerry is now talking about giving the UN real control over Iraq, which is borrowing some of Kucinich's program. Maybe that will satisfy Iraqis that it isn't a plan to turn their country into a colony. If so, maybe it will mean peace there.
However, Kerry is still saying things like "We can't fail", which really means "We can't ever admit a mistake, we can't ever cut our losses". That attitude makes all mistakes bigger.
I agree with the people polled who say that Kerry says what he thinks people want to hear. However, it is a mistake to think that Bush says what he really believes. Bush says what he wants Americans to believe--paying no attention to them. Kerry at least pays some attention.
I think that a lot of Americans are hoping now that Kerry won't stick to his position about keeping troops in Iraq "for as long as necessary". I too hope he doesn't really mean it.
Bush Says
World Owes Israel's Sharon a 'Thank You'
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
The planned elimination of Israeli settlements from Gaza will be a good thing, if Sharon ever really does it. But we can't thank Sharon for this while ignoring the rest of what he orders the Israeli forces to do to the Palestinians.
An Internet TV station in Belgium was shut down by the police, who accused it of supporting terrorism. It is associated with an opposition group in Turkey, whose government mistreats human rights workers. (Many governments do that nowadays.)
The Israeli border police beat up a Palestinian child then used him as a human shield. When witnesses complained about this, they too were arrested and used as human shields.
Sharon's Banana Republics
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Is Bush really supporting his troops?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I regret the use of the term "our troops" in that article; Americans, British, Italians, and citizens of the various countries whose troops Bush has made use of should resist the pressure to identify with Bush's war.
The propaganda used to justify the Bush invasion of Iraq
has been used many times before...to justify crushing
uprisings against various colonial regimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Washington is proposing a new agency to spy on Americans, when there
are already too many intelligence agencies stumbling over each other.
This is a distraction from the questions the US government really
ought to focus on.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
A surgeon heads for Falluja, where he will support the resistance by
operating on the wounded (mostly civilians). He reports on the
civilians that the Bush forces have killed, and how they did it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
An imprisoned Palestinian leader proposes peace in Gaza in exchange
for effective Palestinian sovereignty within Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces have declared main highways of Iraq off limits,
essentially cutting the country in pieces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This is the classic way for an occupying army to lose a guerrilla war: to stay in power, they must turn to increasingly oppressive security measures. These sometimes achieve their short-term goals, but they increase the occupied population's determination to win independence.
This article gives the history of the recent fighting in Iraq (through
April 16), and the history that led up to it--forgotten or never
learned by Americans, but remembered by Iraqis.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
On the occasion of Mordechai Vanunu's non-release,
here is information on Israel's weapons of mass destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration backed down from a demand to prohibit US
publishers from editing scholarly articles published in Iran, Cuba,
etc.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
However, as far as I can tell, the ban on subscribing to journals from those countries remains in effect.
A human rights activist in Thailand, who is married to a member of a
minority group, is about to be deported--
because he complained to the public and the UN about how the minority
is treated in Thailand.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
See also www.akha.org.
Mordechai Vanunu is about to be "released" from one prison into another kind of prison.
He has been forbidden to speak about how he was abducted by Israeli agents. What kind of excuse can there be for that?
A Colombian whose family members had been killed by right-wing gangs
sought asylum in the UK,
but the UK sent him home; they did not believe he was in danger. Two
months later, he has been shot (fortunately not fatally).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Colombian government supports these gangs, and the US government supports the Colombian government.
Why
Weinstein would be suspect as US National Archivist, and how his
appointment could be harmful.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Indian police have charged policemen and members of the Hindu
nationalist party in the massacre
of thousands of muslims in Gujarat two years ago.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi insurgents
are taking control of roads. The recent Bush forces road curfews
may be a response to that--but it won't work, for reasons previously
explained.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Some Iraqi insurgents are capturing various foreigners who work in Iraq and holding them as hostages. They killed one Italian "security guard" who was working for a US company, and appears to have really been a mercenary quasi-soldier, guarding convoys of supplies.
For insurgents to have shot him while he was on duty would have been ordinary war. Killing him after capturing him is probably a war crime. However, wrong as that is, we should not let it distract us from the much larger war crimes being committed every day by the Bush forces.
Bush seeks to replace the Archivist of the US with a partisan supporter who will block the release of papers from the presidency of Bush I. (The office of Archivist was supposed to be non-political.)
What did not occur in Iraq really
happened in Lebanon:
in 1982, the
Shi'ites of Lebanon welcomed invading Israeli forces as liberators.
But when liberation turned into occupation, they threw the occupiers
out. Bush, and everyone he asks for support, should pay attention.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration allowed a Guantanamo interrogator to
talk about
an Australian prisoner, while trying to gag the prisoner's lawyer.
The statement might be the truth, or it might be a disinformation
campaign designed to influence a court hearing.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces told noncombatants to flee from Falluja
to Baghdad, then attacked them in the desert on the way,
say witnesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Scientists have projected that the Greenland ice cap will begin to melt before 2100, and this could flood many coastal cities.
The Bush forces in Falluja have orders to shoot at anyone who moves during the night, without trying to determine whether the person is a combatant. That is a recipe for a massacre, so it's no surprise that one is occurring.
Iraqis in Falluja are saying that the Bush forces make them
nostalgic
for Saddam's secret police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Setting the Record Wrong on "News Hour".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
US taxpayers:
1/4 of your taxes are going to pay for
crushing Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Kerry supports the war in Iraq, and his economic program is that of
Clinton--which means, make life harder for everyone but the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
It looks like Kerry will continue Dubya's policy of war crimes in Iraq, and destroying social programs for the sake of the rich in the US.
Whatever question you ask,
Bush has the same answer: "Iraq is a better
place now, and Saddam was bad."
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
General Kimmitt: if seeing children being killed by the Bush forces bothers you, change the channel. Pay no attention to the killers behind the curtain!
His statement has a kind of logic behind it, which this article
exposes and then refutes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush forces are heating up the fighting across Iraq. They say
that about 80 of their numbers have been killed in April.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Those official casualty figures are
less than half the true amount.
According to Robert Fisk, at least 80 mercenaries were killed in the
past week, but the Bush forces don't count them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Jo Wilding reports on being inside an ambulance in Falluja
with the Bush forces shooting at her.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
She was helping to pick up wounded, because the Bush forces won't allow anyone Arab-looking to do it. People who try, just get shot in turn. Would you like your country to be "liberated" like this?
Bush and Cheney saw a whole stream of warnings about Al Qa'ida in 2001.
After the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, the ruling Hindu Nationalist party (BJP) interfered with the trials of some of the killers. India's Supreme Court has ordered a retrial in a different state.
Japanese revisionists are trying to rewrite the history of WWII, presenting Japan as the good guy, and treating the emperor once again as a god. School textbooks are being rewritten, and teachers are punished if they do not endorse the lies.
I wish the US had put itself in a position to criticize Japan about this.
50+ U.S. CITIES HOLDING EMERGENCY
IRAQ PROTESTS & new cities are announcing their plans by the hour!
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Many endangered species are not protected by any of the existing wildlife reserves.
Even if they were protected, after global warming the reserves might be in the wrong places for the job.
What the Bush forces did in Sadr City, Baghdad. (Shooting an ambulance driver is just the beginning.)
This may be a partial answer to why no
fighters met the hijacked planes on 9/11: only 14 fighters were
kept on standby to do the job. And Rumsfeld was trying to reduce it
even more.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Keeping fighters on standby is expensive, but if you plan to launch an expensive war, you need to save money somewhere.
Even some members of Bush's puppet Iraqi Governing Council have condemned the Bush forces' violent attacks of recent days.
If Bush can't find anyone to "hand control of Iraq to" on June 30, that will be good, because the "handover" would mean no benefit to Iraqis, and would help validate whatever laws or give-aways he wants to impose on Iraq.
A
Russian academic was convicted of spying, after he collected
information published in newspapers and books and sent it to a UK
company. His trial was rigged. The case is part of a pattern of cases
apparently intended to punish Russians for talking to foreigners in
ways that the Russian government does not like.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I wish the US were conducting itself in better fashion, but the Bush plans for "military tribunals", and the practice of imprisonment without trial, are worse.
Conditions in the Veteran's Administration hospitals are
outrageous.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
One contributing factor is that the system is overloaded. With all the casualties Bush has caused, the system needs a lot more staff, or else they have to cut corners.
I was in Mass General Hospital last weekend; my arm was infected. A nurse there told me that Mass General, unlike most hospitals, did not overload their nursing staff. Still, there were times when nobody responded to my request for assistance for an hour. I'm sure they were busy with someone else who needed help more urgently, and the consequence for me was nothing serious. However, if this happens in a place with adequate staff like Mass General, I'm sure the staff in a VA hospital must be struggling to cope, struggling to do the most essential jobs. I would not blame them for trying to use the fastest possible method when a patient needs to move his bowels. They did not decide to hire too few nurses.
A friend who left nursing ten years ago told me she was required, as a condition of employment, to take legal responsibility for the actions of a number of nurse's aides who were doing things they were not licensed to do without supervision. It was her job to supervise them--but there were so many of them that she could not possibly do the job properly.
She had another field to go into, so she quit. Other nurses, who don't have any alternative except destitution, do sign, even though they must feel bad about it. They're doing something wrong, but they have been pressured into it and not everyone has the strength to resist such pressure. I would put the blame on the management, not on these nurses.
As a Bush forces commander was telling Al Jazeera that the Bush forces
had declared a unilateral cease fire in Falluja, Al Jazeera was
broadcasting live video of F-16s attacking residential areas of
Falluja, and women and children killed by their missiles. The
commander later said Al Jazeera's coverage was a "series of lies".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
No wonder the Bush forces forced Al Jazeera out of Falluja. Honest journalism might show the truth.
I suppose the people refer to Al Jazeera as "the CNN of the Arab world" are unaware of what CNN is like. They probably just mean it is much more popular than anything else.
The Bush forces have been faking their public
support in Iraq ever since the beginning, while using a series of
ever-changing lies to keep denying the truth. The lies continue now,
but more people see through them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Just a couple of victims of America's War on Drugs.
When a war is on drugs, it forgets who the enemy was supposed to be and starts hurting whoever it can get its hands on.
Remote
Control Warriors
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
I wish that our army could fight without putting its soldiers in danger. I also wish I could identify which army is "ours".
The Bush forces have
killed over 450 Iraqis in Falluja and wounded over 1000 in a week
of fighting, reports the head of the city's main hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Al Jazeera news team is the only one in Falluja. The Bush forces are demanding that it leave, as a condition of estblishing a temporary cease-fire. We know that they have been studying Israeli tactics, and Israel has used various policies to prevent outside witnesses to what their forces do in Gaza. I think Bush wants to make sure there are no witnesses to report on the next thousand casualties, or the thousand after that.
Defying
Stereotypes About Death Row
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
This illustrates how it is easy to convict a person of some crime or other if the majority of the community starts out prejudiced against him. That lowers the threshold of evidence necessary for a conviction to the point where it's not hard to fabricate.
I think it is instructive to compare this with the recent case where several American Muslims were sentenced to 50 years in prison under guilt by association.
Coleen Rowley is an FBI agent who in May 2002 wrote to the director
accusing the FBI top brass of
hampering the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui. This letter
was published.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
In a recent interview she reveals that the FBI is gagging her from telling the public any more about what the FBI did wrong.
Putin won the
Russian election by controlling the media, but the vote counting
was fishy too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
NJ policemen have been sentenced to prison for beating a handcuffed
man to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
It's common for police to savage those who have been detained, and not too rare for this to be fatal. It feels good to see them, for once, punished under the same laws that they claim to enforce.
The Iraqi intelligence source who reported mobile bioweapons labs was
already
known as a habitual liar.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
It has been documented that Bush and Blair agreed to attack Iraq just days after the 9/11 attacks, and that they used various more or less dishonest means to come up with excuses for it. Treating false or unreliable information as valid is a pattern commonly repeated.
Ocean "dead zones" caused by excess fertilizer runoff
are growing.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
High demand for beef speeds destruction of Amazon forest.
Around 1/4 million seabirds were
killed by the oil spilled from the tanker Prestige, which sank
near Spain.
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
The Bush administration refuses to show the
9/11 investigation the speech that Rice was supposed to give on
9/11, but nonetheless claims it is cooperating with the
investigation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
Saying and doing opposite things is common for politicians; only a few, the truly honest ones, don't do it. But Bush seems to do this everywhere, every time.
Neither
Fallujah nor the Iraqi Shi'ites supported Saddam before the war.
The Bush forces created the armed opposition that they face now. In
each case they started with violence against nonviolent opposition.
After the opposition took up violence too, the Bush forces escalated
it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
(The "contractors" working for Blackwater Security would be more accurately described as mercenary soldiers in the Bush forces.)
Al-Sadr claims that the Iraqi Ministry of Justice says it has no evidence to suspect him of involvement in the murder of another Shi'ite cleric in Apil 2003. Perhaps this is why the Bush forces were unable to cite any such evidence when asked by the press.
Bush has taught the Iraqis something about freedom and democracy, and justice as well. They now ridicule the idea that he supports those ideals. If only Americans would learn this.
Sibel Edmonds says that before 9/11
she saw specific warnings that terrorists might use airplanes
to attack skyscrapers in the US.
The Bush administration wants Americans to say "Support our troops"
but its own idea of supporting the troops is more like
cheating them and endangering them. Here's a compendium of different
ways.
I don't agree 100% with all of the points made there. I disagree that
the US should have a larger army--if it avoids unjust war, the current
army is quite adequate.
I think that it is right to explain to reservists that they may
someday be called up--people joining the reserves should understand
that the reserves exist because they may be needed in war. What was
wrong was to get people to join by encouraging them to imagine they'd
never have to fight.
Today in America - Conservative
Fascism and Environmental Decline . Key American Ideals Are in
Conflict with the Earth and Other Nations.
Walter Cronkite describes several instances where Bush
has used secrecy to support lies. And sometimes used lies to
support the secrecy.
Copyright will prevent thousands of Canadian boaters from
updating their computerized navigational charts this year. The
result could be dangerous.
The Canadian government should not allow any monopolies or limitations
on the use of navigational charts, or other maps. Everyone should be
free to redistribute them, and to publish changed versions too, as
long as they label them as changed. The GNU GPL would be a
good license to use.
China announced a
bizarrely twisted interpretation of Hong Kong's basic law,
intended to prevent direct elections in Hong Kong.
Another article, for which I can't find a good URL, said that Hong
Kong's democracy campaigners are not giving up. They may try to
pressure Hong Kong's nondemocratic government into adopting democracy
even though Beijing does not like it.
How the closure of
Al-Sadr's newspaper led to widespread fighting in Iraq. The fighting was
not inevitable, at least not now. But the Bush forces repeatedly
acted to make things worse: first closing the paper, then arresting
Al-Sadr's aide, then saying they would arrest Al-Sadr himself.
The Bush forces are
meeting heavier fighting in Fallujah now than anything they
encountered a year ago. Officers are comparing this with Vietnam.
The fighting in most Iraqi cities has shut down normal life around the
country.
People are afraid to go out on the street, afraid in particular to
get near a Bush forces convoy.
A few Iraqis talk about how the blind killing of their relatives, and
the arrest of others, and a year of humiliation and fear, have brought
them to the point where all they want is to
kick the Bush forces (they say "America") out of their country.
I don't know if they will ever see a distinction between America
itself and the perversion of America that is George Bush.
Here's an article that argues that the Bush forces cannot transfer
control of Iraq to a provisional government, because they don't
have control of Iraq.
The article proceeds to say that the Bush forces should make sure
someone or something is in control in Iraq before leaving. Some
Democratic presidential candidates took similar positions. However,
the article doesn't suggest how to do this, and neither did most of
those presidential candidates.
I doubt that the Bush forces have the ability to put anyone "in
control" in Iraq. Whoever they try to put in charge will be seen as
an illegitimate foreign puppet. As they did in Vietnam, maybe large
military forces could keep the puppet in power officially, at the cost
of permanent war, but pull them out and he will fall.
Kucinich suggested the UN might be able to take control, if the US
allowed the UN to make clear that it would not let Bush steal Iraqi
oil or impose privatization schemes, etc. I am not sure that any
international organization commands enough trust among Iraqis to be
able to do this now.
If the common hatred for Bush can unite Shi'ites and Sunnis, maybe
they can establish some sort of government together without the need
for a bloodbath. I am not sure whether it will be better than
Saddam's regime, but it would be better than the present permanent war
of occupation. There would still be the problem of how they would
deal with the Kurds, who mostly want to be independant. Perhaps if
they peacefully recognize indepedence for the Kurds, at least in a
quiet de-facto way, a civil war can be avoided.
Nonviolent protestors (Palestinian, Israeli, and foreigners together)
blocked construction of the land-grab wall through the Palestinian
village of Biddu. But they paid a high price, since the Israeli
soldiers tried violence before they gave up and went away.
Nonviolent resistance is growing in Palestine, and it is even becoming
a point of solidarity for some Israelis with Palestinians. It is like
a dream starting to come true. But this dream could still be forcibly
crushed. Sharon wants Palestinians to commit terrorist acts which
could be an excuse for even more deadly Israeli terrorist acts. If
nonviolent resistance starts to succeed, Palestinians might head in
that direction instead and away from terror. Then what excuse will
Sharon use?
I expect Sharon will respond to nonviolent resistance with constantly
increasing violence.
A doctor testified in support of the law prohibiting the "dilation
and extraction" abortion technique, claiming that a 20-week fetus can
feel pain, and that it is conscious.
He surely is exaggerating about the latter. A fetus at that stage of
development cannot be conscious the way a dog or a cow is conscious,
since its brain cells are mostly not wired up to each other. (That
happens arond the 7th month, I think I recall.) It can't even have
the consciousness of a lobster. The most it can be capable of is
reflexes, and that does not confer rights. A fetus after 20 weeks of
development qualifies as a kind of animal, but it is not a person.
We generally condemn causing animals unnecessary suffering, but most
people do not condemn killing animals. Even most vegetarians will
support the killing of animals for stronger reasons, such as when a
particular animal is causing great trouble for people.
If fetuses can feel some kind of pain, perhaps we should anesthetize
the fetus during an abortion, so it doesn't feel any pain. But that
doesn't translate into an obligation to keep it alive until it turns
into a person. It doesn't merit the right to life until it is a
person.
Unlike most supporters of abortion rights, I do not oppose the recent
law that makes it a crime to injure a fetus (abortion excluded). If
you do something to a fetus so that *when* it becomes a person it is
seriously injured or impaired, at that point a person has indeed been
harmed.
I doubt there is any need for a law against this as regards
individuals, since I doubt many people intentionally injure fetuses.
When they do, it is probably a crime for some other reasons already.
Corporations, however, have sometimes willfully followed practices
that they knew would subject fetuses to the danger of being deformed
or impaired after they become persons--through toxic products, and
toxic environmental pollution. And the biggest culprit is the US
Army, with its uranium munitions. The uranium can cause birth
defects.
If such a law is to be effective, it has to be aimed primarily at
corporations and government agencies, rather than at individuals.
Many stores are cheating workers by falsifying their working hours.
It is illegal to do this, and some workers are beginning to sue.
However, with both management and workers terrified of losing their
jobs, often nobody says "Stop!" What we see here is that the shortage
of living-wage jobs in the US creates a situation where it is easy for
businesses to cut everyone's pay. It is hard to hold back so much
pressure.
It would be useful for some state officials to start investigating
this and prosecuting the lying managers. They could send in
undercover agents to take jobs and carefully record their hours, and
check whether the store reduces them. That might scare the crooked
managers enough that they stop.
Meanwhile, I think that the size of the chains that these stores are
part of plays a role too. The chain can put pressure on managers to
cheat or else be replaced, without officially ordering them to cheat;
and thus they can deny responsibility for the consequences of their
actions.
A publication by the human rights group Liberty demolishes the case
for national ID cards in the UK.
Condoleezza Rice's testimony in the 9/11 investigation is part of a
deal that enables her to get away with lies, because the investigation
will be unable to summon further testimony from anyone else who worked
with or for her.
Iraq is falling into chaos as the insurrection spreads to most major
cities.
The Bush forces are treating nearly all Iraqis as enemies now, and
learning from the Israeli Army how to do it. Can anyone still believe
the fiction that they are trying to "liberate" these selfsame Iraqis?
Rumsfeld said recently that this is a "contest of wills". The contest
is now between the Bush administration and the people of Iraq.
The Bush forces say they want to arrest Al-Sadr for a murder committed
months ago, but refuse to disclose any evidence connecting him to the
crime. We have to suspect that there isn't any evidence, and that
this accusation was fabricated as a response to the protests he
launched about the closure of his movement's newspaper. This
backfired, and Bush got what he deserved.
I don't think that the many (Americans, Iraqis, and others) who were
killed or wounded in the process deserved what they got. This
fighting is pointless and unnecessary. We have to ask, is it virtuous
to be stubborn and never admit a mistake? Is there any reason for
this contest of wills against Iraqis who want independence for their
country?
The right thing to do in Iraq is to let the Iraqis win soon. They will
win in the end, but the longer it takes, the more people will suffer
or die along the way.
Blair is citing a thwarted bomb plot in the UK, as well as the actual
bombings in Spain, as
a new excuse for imposing compulsory ID cards.
These are completely irrational grounds. The UK government's success
in thwarting this plot shows there is little need for compulsory ID cards.
The success of the bombs in Spain, which already has
compulsory ID cards (a hold-over from Franco's tyranny, I'd guess),
shows they are not necessarily effective.
This article
explains how terrorists will be able to get official ID cards
using false identification. These ID cards won't be labeled "terrorist".
Whether or not they are useful for preventing terrorism, ID cards may
be useful for Blair's unadmitted goal, which is
to crush dissent. The UK's "anti-terrorism" laws have been
repeatedly applied to
nonviolent protestors, and ID cards will surely be no exception.
Former professor Al-Arian is to be
tried for financing terrorism. The US government has refused to
give the court the recordings of his phone taps.
They say this is because "he already knows what's in them", which is
completely absurd. The point is not what he knows, but what he can
demonstrate in court. If this is evidence that would clear him, he
has the right to get it and present it; to deny him evidence that is
available to the government prosecuting him would make the trial
manifestly unfair.
Republicans in Bush's Office of Strategic Communications in Iraq are
sending out press releases about the "progress" of the war designed to
help re-elect Bush.
Only some of the soldiers in the Bush forces in Iraq come from armies
of various countries. Many are
"civilian" mercenaries. The four "civilians" recently killed in
Fallujah were mercenaries, not real civilians at all. This is a tactic
designed to underestimate the casualty figures.
The stupid war in Iraq is putting such strain on the Bush forces that
they are
sending injured soldiers back into combat against medical orders.
Often the result is to exacerbate the injury that didn't have time to
heal.
Ten years of mergers have made the US oil industry highly concentrated
at all levels. The result is a lack of real competition. Public
Citizen points out how the Bush energy bill would do nothing to help,
and would
actually make this worse.
I support all of Public Citizen's recommendations, but I think they
don't go far enough. Today's 5 big oil companies should be split up
into at least 15 companies. It is dangerous to let companies become
too big, in any field, because that gives them power no company should
have.
Meanwhile, we had better increase the gasoline tax so that people
start to conserve, as they do in Europe.
The Republican Party is trying to shut down various Democratic
political activist groups before the election.
When Jeb Bush blocked tens of thousands of eligible black voters from
voting in Florida, thus stealing the election for Dubya, it took two
years to reach a settlement that Florida wouldn't do this any more.
That was long enough for Jeb Bush to get himself reelected before
giving them back their voting rights. Dubya apparently believes that
he deserves fast service while Democrats do not.
9 days after September 11, Bush got Blair to promise to support an
attack on Iraq. When Blair subsequently claimed that he had made
no final decision, he was lying.
Some soldiers returning from the Bush forces are suffering
from poisoning from the uranium used in munitions --and in tank
armor in US tanks, too.
While it may be a good idea to test more soldiers for this problem,
that is not much of a solution, since there is no treatment for
uranium poisoing. The only constructive action we can take is to stop
using uranium in supposedly non-nuclear weapons.
Iraqi insurgents mounted
several large attacks on the Bush forces, causing substantial
casualties.
The quotes from the Bush forces claim signs of success which really
don't mean anything. Killing some of the insurgent fighters means
nothing, and even capturing their leaders means little, since they can
always recruit more. The strength of a guerrilla campaign is limited
either by available arms or by public support. Arms being plentiful
in Iraq, public support is the limiting factor. The Bush forces may
"retake" Fallujah in some sense, but what they do to achieve this
will increase public support for the insurgents. I saw some news
about helicopters shooting at a mosque and killing people. That's not
likely to win any hearts and minds.
One other point: the arrest warrant against Al-Sadr is based on the
killing of a rival cleric by a mob. I wonder what evidence there
is to connect the killing with Al-Sadr in particular. While I would
surely be strongly against his religious views, I still have to wonder
if he is being framed. I wish the US had the sort of leadership I
could count on not to do such a thing.
I've also read claims that the arrest warrant for Al-Sadr was in
response to predominantly peaceful protests about the closure of a
newspaper (previously reported below).
It sounds like the current increased violence was
instigated by the Bush forces.
Bush may try to delay the 9/11 commission report until after the
election.
The Taliban were seriously
considering turning over Osama bin Laden to the US in early 2001.
I hoped for liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban for other reasons
(which is why I supported the US invasion there). Unfortunately things
are not going very well, partly because the aid that would have been needed
to get Afghanistan on its feet has been spent instead on war in Iraq.
A 15-year-old female, was accused of "child abuse" as well as "child
pornography", for taking nude photos of herself and posting them
on the Internet. They are taking the prudish term "self abuse"
seriously to the point of cruelty.
I have not seen these photos, but 15 years is several years past the
average age of puberty in the US. Calling her a "child" is an
exaggeration almost as dishonest as accusing her of "abusing" herself.
The prohibition of "child pornography" is based on the premise that a
child has been abused in producing it. In some cases, that may be
true. But this case proves it is sometimes false. I wish I knew how
to contact her, so I could tell her, "Don't ever admit that there was
any wrong in what you did!"
Rice was preparing a speech for Sep 11 on national security, which
focused on missile defense and
paid no attention to terrorism as a threat.
To speak about missile defense is not itself a bad thing, since
missile defense might be a good idea if it worked and were affordable.
(The actual plans for missile defense plans are an absurd waste and
would not work.) But this reinforces other evidence that the Bush
administration was ignoring Al Qa'ida until Sep 11.
After Sep 11, Al Qa'ida became the favorite excuse to attack "enemies"
such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and civil liberties and justice in the
US, which had no real connection with Al Qa'ida.
A New Zealand advocate of the right to
die has been convicted of murder because she granted the request
of her terminally ill mother for a quick death.
There is no justice in forcing suffering people to live to the bitter end.
The purpose of jury trials is so that juries can prevent governments
from imprisoning people for reasons that their peers consider unjust.
The jurors should have disregarded the judge and voted "not guilty".
Camilo Mejia, a soldier in the Bush forces, ran
away rather than return to Iraq. His experiences convinced him
that he was fighting on the side of injustice.
His commander accused Mejia of cowardice. I am sure it was frightening
to be in Iraq; but is obeying orders and not thinking true courage?
The corporations that are helping to shift Americans' eating habits in
the direction of obesity are pushing a bill to exempt
themselves from liability for the results.
Individuals have part of the responsibility for what they eat, but
other actors in society share the responsibility. Individuals pay
most of the price of their own obesity, and will continue to do so.
It makes sense to ensure that the other actors that share the
responsibility also pay part of the price; then they may change
their actions.
A high school student in Arizona was arrested for wearing his
cap turned sideways.
The authorities said this was a "symbol of defiance". There's some
doubt about whether that's true, so let's imagine he had worn a
completely explicit and indisputable symbol, like the anarchist shirt
that Katie Sierra
wore. Would that justify arresting someone, in the land of the free
and the home of the brave?
If the people who run the school district think this conduct is even
remotely close to legitimate, they deserve to be fired. They are
running their school system to teach Americans to obey tyrants.
Not just real defiance, but even its symbols, are forbidden.
Three cheers for the students who protested this arrest!
Note also how the "crime" of failing to obey an arbitrary demand was
disguised under other names. This is standard practice for stretching
laws into injustice.
Iraqi resistance forces in Fallujah killed
nine of the Bush forces, then burned and hung some of the corpses,
as crowds cheered. (This article mentions four contractors, but five
official soldiers were killed in a separate attack. The Bush forces use lots
of contractors alongside official soldiers, as an excuse to understate
casualty figures.)
Those who describe this attack as an "atrocity" and "barbaric" are
exaggerating. There have been real atrocities in Iraq--for instance,
killing unarmed religious pilgrims, and dropping tons of depleted
uranium dirty bombs. The car bomb recently set off in a market is the
kind of act that qualifies as an atrocity, though perhaps it was not
big enough to deserve the term. But this attack, which was directed
at members of the occupying forces and hit no one else, was simply
war. We should not weaken the word "atrocity" by applying it to
attacks against occupying armies.
Perhaps those who use these words are expressing horror at the
mutilation of the corpses. Since they claim to be devout Christians,
they should remember that according to their own religion a corpse is
just an empty husk. Damaging a corpse is not hurting the person who
died, who is beyond all harm; it merely expresses anger. The cheering
crowds showed that the anger was general, not limited to the few who
were actually holding the corpses.
How should we respond to this anger? We could, like the Bush
administration, use it as an excuse to attack all the Iraqis in
Fallujah. (This could mean committing a real atrocity.) But it would
be more intelligent to reflect on what the Bush forces have done to
arouse this anger, and whether it is justified.
The US Senate is considering a bill to censor
university education in departments that teach foreign languages.
The House already passed it.
The International Federation of Journalists criticized Belgium Bfor laws that
inadequately protect the freedom of the press, and said this made
Brussels a bad place to locate EU institutions.
This problem was illustrated by the arrest of investigative
journalist Hans-Martin Tillack
The US vetoed a UN resolution condemning the Israeli murder
of Sheikh Yassin and bystanders. The resolution condemned
"all attacks against civillians". The only state that opposed
it was the US.
Why does the US support attacks on civilians? The article explains
that the US also engages in such assassinations. The US may at
present to be limiting this policy to armed adversaries that it cannot
arrest, much as Israel did until recent years, but they do kill
bystanders.
As explained in that article, we cannot expect Democrats
to criticize assassination any more than Bush does.
There is more opposition to this assassination policy within
Israel than in the US.
The president of Uzbekistan, with US support, has
banned opposition parties.
This illustrates how Bush supports democracy around the world.
Israeli forces attacked and arrested Israeli peace activists who
were nonviolently blocking the demolition of Arab homes.
They also attacked and arrested settlers who were blocking the
demolition of a new settlement attempt.
If looked at superficially, those two attacks seem symmetrical, but
the situation is not really balanced. The settlers are taking the
Palestinians' land, and are only rarely impeded in doing so. The
Palestinians are using their own land, and are subject to a barrage of
demolitions.
The UNWRA, which provides food to much of the population of Gaza,
says that Israeli checkpoint restrictions have forced it to stop.
It can no longer bring enough food in. The problem has continued
so long that its warehouses in Gaza have run empty.
If Israel does not relent, this could mean mass starvation.
Bayer gave up on trying to grow genetically modified corn in the UK.
Bayer said the conditions made it uneconomical.
One of the tough conditions that Bayer surely did not like was that if
Bayer's modified genes polluted the crops of other farmers, Bayer
would be liable for the damages. This illustrates that much of global
business only appears to be "economically viable" because the
corporations dump part of the costs on other people.
A fairly hawkish Israeli commentator says that the murder of
Sheikh Yassin shows that Sharon has no strategy for peace.
As Bush continually asks for more government power "to fight terrorism",
he doesn't fund the full use of the government's existing powers
for this purpose.
This is more evidence that terrorism is just an excuse for an
agenda based on ulterior motives.
A researcher who published information on flaws he discovered in an
anti-virus program is being
prosecuted in France for "counterfeiting".
Dennis Kucinich says he regards uranium munitions as illegal
under the existing treaties about war, and would order the
cessation of their use.
Many US businesses impose drug tests on their employees.
The employees respond by trying to fool the tests.
There might be a legitimate reason to test whether employees
are incapacitated (due to drugs or other reasons) while on the job,
but these tests detect drug use while off the job, and that is none
of the employer's business. I think it is justified for employees
to lie about such things.
This article analyzes the evidence about the September 11 attack on
the Pentagon, in an attempt to determine what actually happened. It
ends up with a peculiar conclusion, which in my view suggests that the
evidence is simply hard to reconcile.
I still think it is unlikely that the US government organized the
September 11 attacks (though Bush seems to have played a big role in
failing to stop them). However, the fact that much of the important
evidence has been withheld from the public is suspicious.
If the official investigations are to command respect, they need to
investigate the evidence--all of it, including the Pentagon security
tapes and the recorders of the airplanes--and establish for us, not
just assume, that the buildings were hit by jetliners, that the
jetliners were being flown by hijackers, and who the hijackers were.
Bremer closes hardline newspaper and Iraqis ask: Is this democracy US-style?
Sharks around the world are in danger from fishers who cut off their
fins for shark fin soup, and let the rest of the shark rot.
A friend who studies sharks in Tahiti says that the sharks she has
studied for years have recently all been killed for their fins.
(These sharks do not hurt people--they are too small for that.) If
all the mature females are killed, the species cannot reproduce. It
may soon be wiped out in the Tahiti area. And perhaps everywhere else
too, since the finning is going on world-wide.
The Afghan government
postponed first elections, to gain time
to disarm warlords and register voters.
This may be necessary; I am sure they wouldn't accept the humiliation
of this delay if they did not have to. But will it be sufficient?
Uri Avnery explains how Hamas, including the recently murdered
Sheikh Yassin, has been willing to accept peace in the past -- and how his
killing is helping to unite Palestinian combat organizations even as it
helps convert pragmatic supporters of Hamas into hard-core religious fanatics.
Comparisons with events in Israel's own liberation struggle add to the
interest of the article.
Assassination was formerly an Israeli tactic applied, very rarely,
against fighters living in hostile foreign countries--in effect, a
tactic of war.
Assassinating people in territories where the Israeli army
moves at will is a different matter. And that's not
even to mention the regular killing of bystanders.
Condoleezza Rice is
contradicting herself and other administration
officials, as the tissue of lies falls apart.
The US has started making threats against Jamaica over its
plans to host Haitian President Aristide.
The Caribbean nations have
refused to recognize the Haitian government
that the US installed.
How global corporations move their profits and losses around
artificially, so as to avoid taxes and bilk the public. And how the
US government encouraged dictators to stash their funds in dollars.
Prohibiting related businesses from operating in multiple countries
might help with the problem of phony transfer pricing. If country X
says that its businesses must deal with those of other countries
through short-term contracts only, and makes sure they get negotiated
in a competitive situation, that trick could not be played. (That
solution might be appropriate for some fields and not others.)
A little known international organization is being allowed to impose
biometric passports in many countries.
More information
In Europe, the recent medium-sized terrorist attack in Madrid is
already being cited as an excuse to attack civil liberties, including
increased surveillance of travel.
A
US investigation found Bush acted inadequately against Al
Qa'ida. While it's true that we can't demand of any government that it
block all terrorist attacks, the Bush administration had enough information
to block the 9/11 attacks--if only it had tried.
This article lays out why the 9/11 attacks should have been stopped.
Several members of the Bush administration have been telling
demonstrable lies about the 9/11 attacks and about the decision to
invade Iraq.
Amnesty International summarizes how the US is violating both treaties
and the international standards of human rights, imprisoning people
in Guantanamo with no trials or with sham trials.
Three scandals at once about the Bush Medicare law.
The Bush regime used the PAT RIOT act to
seize a lawyer's email from
AOL, and turn off his account as well. This included privileged
communications with his clients. This punishment was imposed without
a trial--if he wants to challenge it, he has to sue the government,
which is impractical for a mere individual even when he is a lawyer.
Punishment without trial has been a feature of US law for 20 years.
Using the procedure called "civil forfeiture", state or federal
governments can seize your assets (including your car, your house, or
your money) on suspicion it was used in connection with buying drugs.
Then you have to sue to get it back, and if you ever do, it may be
trashed completely.
Springmann could have prevented part of this disaster by not keeping
any important information in his ISP's machine. Don't use the
services that offer to keep your mail and your address book! Keep
them on your own computer. The police can't seize your own computer
without at least informing you, and you may get a chance to argue
about it. If you keep backups, they won't be able to present much of
an argument for seizing those. Meanwhile, use encrypted mail for
anything sensitive.
Springmann's failure to do these things was a mistake in that it made
him more vulnterable, but such mistakes do not excuse wrongdoing. If
you walk into a dangerous part of town, that may be a mistake, but it
doesn't excuse someone else for robbing or raping you there. The
issue is the same here.
Three Americans have been sentenced to 50 years in prison
for
association with an organization that was subsequently
declared terrorist.
These men had neither committed nor planned any act that would
normally be called a crime. In the tyranny of today's US, playing
paintball with the wrong people is considered a crime.
The article raises the possibility that these people's religion was
part of the motive for this abortion of justice. I think that doesn't
change anything. Guilt by association is so unjust that nothing can
make it worse.
The 9/11 investigation commission got testimony from Rumsfeld, but
omitted to ask him several crucial questions about the lack of the
standard military response to the hijackings.
An investigation cannot be adequate unless it gets to the bottom of
why fighter planes were not immediately dispatched, as usual, to the
hijacked jets. If there was some sort of hijacking training
exercise on 9/11, the investigation needs to figure out how it
happened that the real hijackings occurred on the same day.
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds says she was told, after 9/11,
to change her translations of some intercepted messages in order to
support Bush priorities. Then she was both bribed and threatened
not to tell the public about these orders.
The European Union
had a prominent journalist arrested.
He was investigating corruption; perhaps he made some corrupt
officials feel uncomfortable.
As the president of South Africa was celebrating Human Rights Day and
inaugurating the Constitutional Court, the police were
attacking and arresting peaceful protestors trying to march there.
Just ten years ago, South Africa held its first democratic elections.
How quickly those who fight for liberty can become the oppressors.
The BBC is
cracking down harshly on people who were involved in
broadcasting the slightly flawed report based on Dr Kelly's
information. Their colleagues are standing up for them.
Mordecai Vanunu is still wondering whether he will
be subject to some form of prison-after-prison when
his sentence for whistle-blowing ends.
"Administrative detention" is what Bush has done with
two supposed terrorist suspects. It's another word for
"nobody has any rights".
How is the Gaza Strip different from a prison?
New Israeli restrictions keep most foreigners out of Gaza, so that
they can't observe the atrocities committed there, or participate in
non-violent resistance.
Exxon has
delayed for 15 years the payment of compensation for the
Exxon Valdez oil spill. This is ruining people's lives.
The atmospheric carbon dioxide level increased even more in 2003
than in recent years.
Israelis have joined their Palestinian neighbors in petitioning to
reroute the separation wall to prevent the wall from cutting those neighbors off from their
land.
Scientists have projected the
extinction of up to 50% of all species of
life in the coming century, but this is a rough estimate. Perhaps
only 40% of species will be wiped out. This isn't reliable enough
to satisfy Bush, who has relaxed the requirements for protecting endangered
species in some US forests.
Protecting a species in small areas may work while the climate is
stable and that can keep living where they live now. But we know
the climate is going to change.
It is ironic that Israel is now assassinating HAMAS leaders (along
with whoever is in the area at the time), because Israel secretly
supported HAMAS in the 80s to weaken the position of Arafat. (The
history parallels that of the US with Osama bin Laden, and also with
Saddam Hussein.)
In recent years, HAMAS has given Israel an excuse to destroy the
Palestinian police force--on the grounds that it could not control
HAMAS terrorism. Now Israel can
forever demand that Arafat stop
terrorism, confident he is in no position even to try.
I have to ask: when civilians are killed by a bomb, does the fact that
it was dropped by a pilot in total safety, rather than carried by a
person expecting to die, mean this is not terrorism?
Israel's defense is that these killings are "targeted". Not all the
victims are random, since one person has been singled out for attack.
But does the fact that one of the victims was specifically intended
mean that the inevitable killing of unknown others is not terrorism?
For instance, if a suicide bomber were to detonate a bomb at a street
corner where a specific government employee is thought to be passing
by, would this mean that the deaths of others who were passing by at
the time was not terrorism?
Civilized countries are supposed to arrest those who are accused of
wrongdoing, or at least offer them the chance to surrender. Shooting
without warning, even if it were done with weapons that usually did
not kill bystanders, is barbarism. But its sneaky purpose is to make
sure the cycle of revenge continues.
The Bush forces
imprisoned Al Jazeera reporters for 6 weeks,
torturing them, based on false accusations while refusing to
check the facts. This is part of a systematic campaign to suppress
independent Arabic reporting from Iraq.
The campaign also includes European journalists.
Robert Fisk reports on the visit he received.
I like the way he has identified the practice of insulting people, and
tacking on "Sir" as an excuse to claim to have been polite. The
resulting message is an insult disguised transparently as respectful
treatment.
We also see, in these reports, examples of the standard practice of
excusing outrageous acts with outrageous lies. This pattern is widely
repeated. During the capture of Baghdad, when a Bush forces tank
killed Al Jazeera staff in the hotel that all the foreign journalists
used, they said "We were being fired at from that room". This was provably false.
To tell a blatant lie, one that everyone knows is a lie, conveys the
message: "We won't hesitate to lie any time. The truth won't protect
you, because we spit on the truth."
Which is more serious--broadcasting "indecent" material,
or killing an employee?
It is interesting to view the Israeli assassination
of Sheikh Yassin in the light of this article by Lev Grinburg of Ben Gurion University.
Increasing carbon dioxide in the air is
changing the ecology of the
Amazon rainforest, helping some species and hurting others.
This is an additional threat to the survival of whatever species make it
past habitat destruction and global warming. It may also contribute
to global warming, because it favors trees that absorb less carbon
dioxide.
The Vancouver police department defended its violent attacks on
activists--thus placing the moral onus for the act directly on the
department's leadership.
The "interim" Iraqi constitution is designed so that the
Bush-appointed governing council can make decisions that elected
Iraqis will be unable to undo.
This must be how Bush plans to steal the oil and force the doors
open for Halliburton and Bechtel to privatize the government.
The assassination of the leader of HAMAS
illustrates how Sharon ensures the continuation
of sufficient terrorism to serve as an excuse
for his policies.
Israeli soldiers shot at nonviolent protestors,
both Israeli and Palestinian, who were jointly opposing the construction of the
land-grab wall.
They used rubber bullets, but used them in a way forbidden by Army
regulations because it is too likely to kill or seriously injure
people. And--isn't this amazing--they were building the wall in
violation of a court order to stop.
It's not news that the Israeli forces act like an occupying army.
What's noteworthy is that they act that way towards Israelis and their
civil institutions, as well as towards Palestinians and theirs.
Bush
proposes a constitutional amendment to "protect democracy".
Richard Clarke, who was Bush's chief counterterrorism
advisor, says he was pressured to blame the 9/11 attacks
on Iraq.
He also says that Bush paid very little attention to terrorism
as a threat prior to 9/11.
Rep. Waxman has made a report analyzing the pattern of
statements made about Iraq by Bush and his main lieutenants.
A million protestors opposed the occupation of Iraq.
In Kosovo, Albanian gangs are rampaging against the few remaining
Serbs, driving them out. Although the official leaders of the
Albanians say they disapprove, they can't or won't stop this.
I'm not surprised by this; in fact, I was surprised to learn that so
many Serbs were still in Kosovo. I supported the NATO intervention in
Kosovo, but I did not think it had any chance of leading to ethnic tolerance.
NATO prevented Serbia from permanently oppressing, or
driving out, or killing, large numbers of Albanians; shortly
thereafter, the KLA (which was effectively a gang) drove most of the
Serb minority out of Kosovo. The expulsion of the remaining Serbs is
evil, but at least it's a smaller evil.
Kerry supported Bush in asking the newly elected leader of Spain to
continue supporting the Bush forces in Iraq. Fortunately he seems to
be courageous enough to stand up to both of them.
Kerry is only a little better than Bush. Kerry voted for the USA PAT
RIOT Act. Kerry voted to invade Iraq. Kerry supports the
Reagan/Clinton policies of globalizing the power of corporations. I'm
not sure if I will vote for him, but I can't possibly endorse him.
Haitian President Aristide is now visiting Jamaica at the request of a
group of caribean nations. The US ambassador said
that allowing Aristide to come so near Haiti is "promoting violence".
The Jamaican government took that as a threat.
Standing up to a bully may increase the probability that he will be violent.
In that sense only, this visit may be "promoting violence".
However, the moral responsibility falls on the bully, which in this
case is the US government.
The UK's principal judge rebuked Blair's proposals to eliminate
appeals for refusal of asylum, saying that moves in the direction
of arbitrary rule.
Blair's policy on all fronts has been to abolish rights
and move in the direction of arbitrary rule.
Jay Garner, the first man chosen by Bush to run Iraq, now says that
Bush fired him because he wanted early elections in Iraq and opposed
forced privatization.
The Bush campaign is selling clothing made in Burma.
In Spain, and in Israel, a leader whose unjust policies sparked terrorist
retaliation used the terrorism as an excuse to continue.
In Spain, the voters threw him out. When will Israel learn?
Rich countries have failed to take action against the companies whose
greed for gold and other minerals fueled the civil war in the Congo.
Many African civil wars are likewise driven by the profit of exporting
what can be dug from the ground.
Guantanamo prisoners describe how they were tortured by the US
officials who justified imprisoning them by false claims.
To imprison people based on the mere word of Bush, or a "tribunal" of
army officers that work for Bush, is a systematic recipe for
injustice.
A poll conducted in Iraq reports that many Iraqis now approve of the
invasion (though many do not), but none support the people Bush wants
to put in power there.
A year ago I wrote that invading a country to remove a dictator is
right when (1) the people of the country want to be liberated in this
way, and (2) we can be confident that the new regime installed by the
invaders will really be better. It's possible that Iraqis are coming
around to fulfill condition 1--if we can believe this poll--but Bush
will fight like the devil to steal Iraq's oil and privatize its
government, so he will never establish a regime that represents the
interests of the Iraqi public.
PBS newshour was embarrassed when guest Jim Parenti cited the failure
to reconstruct water and electricity and the corruption of Halliburton
as causes for instability in Iraq. So embarrassed, in fact, that it
made an apology that this report was not "balanced".
In the deceptive terminology of the mainstream media, "balanced" is
the way to say "not too far from the official line".
The Vancouver police found eight political activists walking home on
the street from a party, not doing anything political or criminal at
the time, and attacked them.
This illustrates the reason why even those who have "not done anything
wrong" have a reason to be concerned with whether the police are
allowed to track everyone and find out everything.
While Bush was planning to invade Iraq and using false claims about
nuclear weapons and ties to Al-Qa'ida as excuses, he was cozying up to
Pakistan, whose government was the center of nuclear weapons
proliferation as well as truly connected with the Taliban and
Al-Qa'ida. What was going on here?
The president of Poland said that someone had misled Poland about the
threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He didn't say that the
someone was Bush, but that's who it must have been.
Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to question the policy of
keeping Polish troops there. Perhaps the Polish voters will help him
see more alternatives.
The recently released Guantanamo prisoners describe the physical and
mental torture that they were subject to. One of them is maimed.
Before they're released they were pressured to sign false confessions.
The US government denies these accusations, but since the US
government is responsible for blocking independent observation of the
prison conditions, we must presume they are true until the US starts
permitting people to check them.
Aznar's party lost the election in Spain after it tried to use the
terrorist bombing for its political ends, says this commentator, who
explains the situation and its implications with care.
Iraqi insurgents operate false police checkpoints apparently staffed by the Bush-organized Iraqi police. They could be real members of the
Bush police force, operating at night against Bush.
Bush
gagged a US official who wanted to tell Congress and the public
what the administration really expected the Medicare bill to cost.
This just goes to show that you should never rely on what the Bush regime
says it is doing.
One of those convicted of planting the terrorist bombs in Bali is
appealing his conviction on the grounds that he was convicted under an
ex-post-facto law.
Given those facts, I support this decision. I would hope that the
perpetrators of the bombing will be imprisoned, but ex-post-facto laws
are more dangerous than terrorism. The court acted courageously in
refusing to allow a sensational crime to excuse such an attack on all
citizens' freedom.
I wonder why the prosecutors used the new law instead of prosecuting
the bombers for murder. I have a suspicion that the new law either
eliminates some safeguards against false convictions, or permits the
death penalty. If someone can check whether either of these is true,
and inform me, I would appreciate it.
The US government
published phoney interviews of Bush, with actors
posing as journalists, and phoney applause for phoney Bush speeches.
This seems to follow a pattern. I read that someone is touring the US
presenting the "burning Bush", whose pants are on fire.
Coca Cola's plants in Colombia have
forcibly locked workers inside the
plant, and threatened to fire them, to pressure them to give up their
contract. This conduct continues despite a court ruling against it.
This illustrates how corporations trample people's rights, when
governments become too friendly or close to the corporations and cease
to support the people against them. It is dangerous for government officials
to have a friendly attitude toward corporations.
A UN report says that ETA suspects are frequently tortured in Spain,
due to laws that make it easy for the police to cover up their actions.
The Spanish government tried to blame ETA for the recent bombings
in Madrid, but then it became clear ETA was not involved.
Microsoft supplied software to China which has been used for
identifying and imprisoning dissidents.
Microsoft software also tramples the freedom of its users. The
license says you can't share it, and you don't get the source code, so
you can't change it. Stay away from it, and use Free Software instead.
An Israeli youth who left Israel to refuse to participate
in the occupation wonders whether he ought to return to
Israel and spend years in prison.
Refusing to participate in oppression is not wrong, so he does not
deserve punishment for escaping. Just to leave home at age 18 like
this takes plenty of courage. So I do not believe he is obligated
to refuse only in the most heroic imaginable way, which is by staying
and being imprisoned.
However, if he is filled with the courage to go back and say "imprison
me" in order to achieve more for his cause, I will admire him even
more.
Prisoners released from Guantanamo describe torture and humiliation,
of which many prisoners bear permanent scars.
Alongside the major acts of cruelty are small cruelties with
disproportionate consequences. Denying prisoners toothpaste, if
continued for more than a short period, can cause mouth disease and
permanent loss of teeth.
A recently retired Air Force colonel reports how she saw
the Bush men distort the facts to justify attacking Iraq.
Israeli women report on how a fun holiday for children
casts a reflection of capricious cruelty in Palestine.
MoveOn is calling on Congress to censure of Bush for
embarking on a war based on lies that are now documented.
Gorillas in Congo are facing extinction due to mining of tantalum
to make capacitors for cell phones and computers.
The former Finnish prime minister is on trial for publishing information
about the Finnish president's dealings with Bush. (He was talking with
Bush about sending troops to Iraq.)
Rulers frequently use secrecy laws to shield their dirty dealings, and
often seek to punish those who expose them. Katharine Gun is a recent example.
But it is amazing to see that a whistle-blower in such a
high office is being put on trial for leaking information.
The implications of Dr. Khan's sale of nuclear secrets.
How the US destabilized the government of Haitian president Aristide.
We speak loosely of "armies" in connection with organized crime, but
in Israel the bank robbers can be the army.
20,000 Nicaraguan banana farm workers and relatives sued US
agribusiness companies for poisoning them with pesticides already
banned in the US. They won. But the companies ignored the decision
and sued the workers.
No court system can provide justice if rich businesses
can make a monkey of it.
A mother's show of nude photographs of her daughter was shut down by
the police in the UK.
This illustrates the level of paranoia now found in many western
countries about anything that connects children and sex. This, and
terrorism are the primary excuse for attacking civil liberties.
China may soon have difficulty feeding its population.
China is likely to buy grain from the US, driving up the price
of food for Americans who already have to pay a larger fraction
of their income than ever before for housing.
Due to the feebleness of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1980,
many areas are dominated by a few companies. Often they take advantage
of this to mistreat the small businesses they deal with. Cattle ranchers
just won a victory in court against the big 4 meat packing companies.
However, this victory results from a law that applies only to cattle.
So it won't translate into other areas of business unless we get
congressional representatives that are not on the side of big
business.
People are calling for a boycott of Nike for an ad
which depicts the aftermath of a suicide bombing.
I agree that it's not a good thing to use murder as
background for an ad--but aren't the sweatshops
enough reason not to buy from Nike?
Reportedly the
ad is a fake. Nonetheless, I hope you would not be attracted to
wearing clothing that advertises Nike.
The US and Pakistani governments are rushing to close the
case on Pakistan's contribution to nuclear proliferation.
Isn't that strange for a regime that is willing to use
fears of nuclear prolifieration as the basis for a war?
12% of bird species are threatened with extinction due to habitat
destruction.
Many species are protected in small refuges. Global warming may make
those refuges uninhabitable; some may be under water.
Insurance companies are preparing for claims due to natural disasters to increase exponentially as a result of global warming and increased
population.
Australia's attacks on civil liberties have gone on for a long time.
Albert Langer was imprisoned in 1997 for urging Australians to vote
refusing to express any preference between the two major parties.
(This way, one's ballot could not be counted towards either of them.)
This article praises the Australian political system as highly
democratic, but the truth is that the two major parties both kowtow to
the US and both are ready to abolish civil liberties. Democracy in
Australia is as sick as it is elsewhere in the world. The only
cure I can imagine is to eliminate the power of the corporations.
The Bliar government ordered the UK's chief scientist to keep silent
about global warming, to prevent embarrasment for Bush.
Blair gives higher priority to the danger of an unhappy Bush than
to the danger of global warning. What does that say about Bush?
There is International condemnation of the kidnaping of Aristide by Bush and his men.
Companies in the UK are using a law intended to prevent stalking to keep protestors miles away.
The injunctions prohibit not only protests, but reporting about them.
New information about the death of Dr. Kelly.
Hans Blix speaks at length about how the US impeded and distorted
the facts about Iraqi weapons.
A conviction for planning the 9/11 attacks has been overturned,
because the court ruled he had not received a fair trial. The US
government blocked a prisoner (himself held without trial) from
testifying as a witness.
A soldier has been punished for telling the press how bad the medical care is for soldiers injured while fighting in the Bush forces in Iraq.
The UK government plans a database listing all children in England
and their addresses, as well as other information. In the name of
protecting children, of course. This is one of several parallel plans
to impose a mandatory national ID card on everyone in the UK.
UK citizens should not accept any excuse to move in that direction.
Ashcroft's last (failed) election campaign raised funds illegally and
was fined. Now his campaign is using illegal methods to raise money
to pay the fine.
The Bush privatization arrangements in Iraq violate international law,
and the next Iraqi government could repudiate them. Only a sovereign
Iraqi government could give away Iraq's assets and make it "legal".
This is why Bush is hurrying to establish a nondemocratic provisional
puppet government in Iraq: so he can claim that an "Iraqi" government
agreed to give away the store.
How different is Kerry from Bush? Not very different in regard to
launching wars, it seems.
The author appears not to know about Congressman Kucinich
and his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but that doesn't
make the conclusions inaccurate about Kerry.
It is natural that people should try see in Kerry the hope to
escape from the harmful Bush policies. But it is wishful thinking.
Hans Blix says that the invasion of Iraq violated international law.
Conservatives won the Iranian election, in which reformists were not
allowed to run. However, many voters boycotted the election.
Words fail to express what the Israeli occupation is doing to
Palestine--but killing over a thousand Palestinians in half a year
is just the beginning of it.
Three Palestinians were shot at a nonviolent protest against the land
division wall. One man tried to evacuate his dying brother in a car.
The car was shot with many bullets.
We don't know who set the bombs to kill Shi'ite worshipers in
Iraq, but Bush shares the responsibility for their deaths.
The Bush forces, having invaded Iraq, are morally responsible for the
violence that the invasion has produced, as well as legally
responsible for the safety of its citizens. It is fortunate that Sunnis and
Shi'ites have refused to be led into a civil war, and instead joined
in blaming Bush.
The US government has attacked freedom of the press, by threatening to
imprison publishers that edit and publish anything written in Iran,
Cuba, etc.
Australia faces the abolition of freedom of assembly,
as the Labor party gave its support to a law that would allow
the government to ban any organization by fiat.
This law could be used to abolish activist organizations, labor
unions, and even political parties. I've read elsewhere that the law
would also allow imprisonment of anyone who was a member of the banned
organization, or even raises money for its legal defense against this law.
Thus, freedom of the press and due process of law are being
attacked as well.
Blair announced plans to push people with disability pensions to
return to work.
What does this mean when there are not enough jobs already, and most
of them don't pay enough? It sounds like simply part of the
persistent world-wide campaign to concentrate wealth--to make life
harder and poorer for most people.
The Bliar regime threatened prosecution against former cabinet
minister Clare Short, after she informed the public of secrets
embarrassing to Tony Bliar.
The Transportation Security Administration is tyrannizing airline
passengers in the name of security.
If the TSA focused on security and respect for passengers, instead of
suppressing criticism, it might do a better job.
I've seen air security personnel manifest the spirit of a tyrant.
When confronted with disapproval of their actions, or even with a
practical demand such as "I can't hear you, would you please speak
louder?", they have a tendency to respond with a false accusation that
says, by implication, "I'll lie and call you a troublemaker, so you
won't be able to fly."
Such experiences tend to teach people to be subservient to petty
tyrants. I don't want to learn this, so I intentionally practice
expressing disapproval of foolish or unnecessarily annoying security
practices.
For future trips, I think I will print copies of that article so I can
hand them out while waiting in the line at the checkpoint.
Guy Philippe, perhaps the main leader of the Haitian rebels that
conquered Haiti with Bush's help, is an admirer of former dictator
Pinochet of Chile.
It is natural that Philippe would feel a kinship with Pinochet, who
also took power in a US-sponsored coup. Pinochet's men murdered large
numbers of people who opposed them politically. There is already some
indication that Mr Philippe wants to do likewise. If so, their deaths
will be on Bush's head.
The evidence that Dr. Kelly was killed is being
mostly ignored, but there's one last chance to talk
about it in court.
After Aristide was kidnaped by US troops, he phoned Randall Robinson
with a phone that someone provided to him on the sly. Here is Randall
Robinson's report of what Aristide said to him.
FBI misconduct in the Oklahoma City bombing case led to ignoring some
of the bomb plot participants.
The ANC, a businessman, and Saddam Hussein's regime have been accused
of participating together in a corrupt oil deal.
The deal is not proved, but merely letting an oil magnate pay
for a fancy dinner is already going too far.
Who would want to bomb Shi'ite civilians in Iraq, and why?
A Colombian opposes US demands for a US-Colombia free trade agreement.
US marines captured Haitian President Aristide and forced him onto a
plane; then Bush said Aristide had resigned his office voluntarily.
But Aristide manage to expose the lie. Meanwhile, former mass
murderers have taken control of Haiti, while Bush has sent forces to
help them take power.
Here is clarification of some of the false US media accusations
against Aristide.
There is one accusation I would like to get more info about. What
happened with the elections that were supposed to happen in Haiti this
year?
The US-supported opposition continues against Chavez, but he continues
to have strong popular support.
The US government has a pattern of engaging in economic warfare
against a country, and then accusing its leaders of "causing" economic
ruin. In a sense, they did--just as Winston Churchill "caused" the
aereal bombardment of London by not surrendering to the Nazis.
The culpability for the harm done by acts of aggression falls on the
aggressor, not on those who resist.
When Dubya's Secretary of Education called the National Education
Association "terrorist", he illustrated how loose and unjust official
US government definition of "terrorist" is now. All sorts of
opposition to government policy are defined as "terrorism", and Bush
is starting to threaten to prosecute traditional forms of democratic opposition. Follow this link, so you too can be a "terrorist".
Rumsfeld and Bush claim powers formerly reserved only for kings:
arbitrary imprisonment at their will.
The purpose of a trial is to protect the accused person from being
imprisoned without proof of charges. If the defendant is found
innocent, he will go free. The military tribunals that some
Guantanamo prisoners will get, instead of real trials, don't do this.
So the problem with these tribunals is not only that their rules are
unjust (which I've written about before). It's also that being found
innocent in a tribunal is meaningless. Even if some accused prisoner
is not convicted, that doesn't mean he will be released from prison.
If someone is convicted and sentenced, and serves out his "sentence",
that doesn't mean he will be released. The tribunal is a sham, and
the sentence is also a sham.
These tribunals are really show trials, intended (like Stalin's show
trials) to disguise imprisonment-at-will as something else. They may
be less numerous than the show trials of Stalinist Russia, but they
are no less tyranny.
The Israeli High Court
agreed to consider a petition to block the
construction of the separation wall around the village of Bidu after
Israelis joined Palestinians to protest it. The fence would
effectively turn the village into a prison, as it has already
done to other Palestinian villages.
A poor, aged woman in the UK has become a tax protestor because the
recent tax increases are more than she can afford on her fixed
pension. A cabinet minister lectured her about how everyone has a
duty to "obey the law".
However, there is no automatic ethical duty to obey laws, however
harmful or unjust they might be. Moral authority for a law, or for
the government that establishes the law, is not automatic; both must
earn it. The Blair government, by making a habit of twisting laws,
has squandered its moral authority, and is no longer in a position to
lecture anyone about moral duty.
I am not sure precisely how council taxes are computed, but it is
clear that one way or another this tax increase goes back to Blair
policies that favor concentration of wealth.
The Colombian government has
arrested a human rights organization's
leader.
The Haiti Action Committee says that Haiti's president Aristide is the
victim of a
protracted US-orchestrated campaign, like that aimed
against Venezuela.
Another article says that
both the US and France are targeting
President Aristide for removal.
The main accusation I have heard levied against Aristide
is that he held an unfair election for the legislature.
I'm interested in hearing the facts about what happened
in that election.
Former UK cabinet minister Clare Short says that charges against
Katharine Gun were dropped because she was going to make people in the
Blair administration
come into court and testify about how they
decided to launch the war.
She also reveals that the UK spied on UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan.
Now the UK government proposes to
change the Official Secrets Act,
probably to make it harder for heroes like Katharine Gun to
escape punishment in the future.
Canada has
proposed a law to imprison people for watching foreign
TV stations. That's the sort of law you'd expect in China or Iran.
(I have ethical misgivings about the existing legal system that
applies to these encrypted satellite channels.)
Transcript of the interview in which Michael Shrimpton, a lawyer with
close relations with the UK and US governments and intelligence
agencies, says he believes Dr Kelly was murdered--and why.
If Clinton was required to testify under oath about whether he had
sex, why should Bush not be required to testify under oath about 9/11?
Bush is now starting to talk about reducing social security benefits.
In the long run, we will need to either reduce benefits
or else put additional funds into the system. I might prefer
the latter option. In any case, it is dishonest for politicians
to get themselves elected by promising to maintain these benefits
if they are not going to keep the promise.
Bush plans to classify fast-food jobs as "manufacturing jobs"
to misrepresent the results of his economic policy.
This seems to be a Republican tradition. Remember when Reagan decided
that ketchup is a vegetable? That was so he could pretend that school
lunches included enough vegetables.
Jewish Voices for Peace found no antisemitism at the World Social
Forum, and says that accusations of this are smears.
40,000 French lawyers, and some judges, went on strike earlier this
month to protest a law that increases police powers.
Chomsky comments on the wall that divides Palestine.
Although the Total Information Awareness program was canceled,
much of its research work is still going on.
The World Health Organization suppressed a report on the danger
of depleted uranium ammunition, says the scientist who wrote the
report.
Halliburton, which continues to pay Vice President Cheney a regular
extra income, now faces a criminal investigation for defrauding the US
government. In a previous case, the company paid a fine instead of
admitting guilt. The company also admits paying large bribes in other
countries.
Five Questions About Haiti and the Coup Attempt
New evidence that David Kelly was murdered.
The Palestinian town of Budrus faces being turned into a prison by the
Israeli wall, which has been sited so as to destroy their lives rather
than for security. They are opposing the construction with nonviolent
resistance.
Israeli forces have crushed nonviolent resistance before, as described
in this article by Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the ISM.
Shortly after writing that article, Huwaida Arraf was beaten and
arrested in a nonviolent protest against wall construction at Beit
Surik.
There are indications that Israel will try to keep nuclear weapons
whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu under some sort of permanent arrest
after the end of his prison sentence.
Vanunu was imprisoned for telling the press about Israel's nuclear
weapons program.
A group of doctors have said that the medical report on Dr. Kelly's
death looks like murder, not suicide.
Here is further discussion between them and a government pathologist.
The Haitian uprising is being used by former military gangsters
to restore old-style Haitian dictatorship.
5 Britons held prisoner in Guantanamo are being released. After more
than two years, Bush finally recognized that there was no reason to
imprison them. However, 4 others will remain in prison.
Many in the UK are not satisfied with ending only part of the injustice.
I was amazed to note that many of these people were arrested in
Pakistan and handed over to the US for imprisonment without trial.
Pakistan should have refused to extradite them to any other country
unless it was assured they would get a fair trial there.
An American soldier has sought asylum in Canada
because he refuses to fight with the Bush forces in Iraq.
The Bush administration is adopting part of Kucinich's platform, by
turning to the UN as a path out of the Iraqi quagmire.
Unlike Kucinich, Bush is unlikely to be willing to approach this
honestly. That would require taking his hands off Iraqi oil and Iraqi
domestic policies. So he will not create the conditions where the UN
would have even a chance of success.
While Bush and his oil-company friends pretend there is no global
warming, the Pentagon is making plans to deal with the political and
military consequences.
How governments engineer investigations that will whitewash their
actions--and why independent investigations are essential.
Also, how David Kay has helped Bush make the CIA a scapegoat.
Why have former death-squad leaders joined the uprising against
Aristide? One explanation is that this is a US destabilization
campaign, meant to force Haiti into the US-promoted system of
corporate domination.
At the same time, this article reports that many progressive
organizations in Haiti are calling for Aristide to step down.
One of the opposition organizations, the Group of 184, makes a point
about "stimulating investments" in its platform. That is the same
platform that is used in many countries to justify surrender to
corporate domination, so I get a bad feeling about it.
Although Sharon spoke of withdrawing from settlements in Gaza, it
looks like this was just a trial balloon, since he won't discuss the
details of how to actually do it.
The UK police acted illegally when they forcibly drove protestors back
to London, said a court, which rebuked the police for labeling harmless
items as weapons.
However, the decision was only a partial victory for democratic
freedoms, since the court ruled that the police were allowed to block
people from going to the demonstrations. The right to protest is
meaningless if people do not have the right to travel to the protest.
The UK goverment, following its standard policy of corporaions uber
alles, is trying to prevent US lawsuits against UK companies that
supported murder and racism around the world.
Israel says it may change the route of the separation wall
to cut off less of the occupied territories.
This is a step in the right direction, but it does not mean everything
is OK. So let's keep the pressure up. This wall should run along the
border between Israel and Palestine.
The South Dakota legislature passed a law making abortion a crime.
Their statements reveal the dogmatic insistance on treating an embryo
with no brain just like a person.
UK residents are mounting a direct action campaign against genetically
modified crops.
There is nothing wrong on principle about genetic engineering of
crops. Farmers have reshaped many food plants drastically over a
period of ten millenia, and if genetic engineering done that way is
acceptable, some other method cannot be inherently wrong. But genetic
engineering under corporate control, without sufficient testing of its
effects on human eaters, wildlife, and on other farms, is not
acceptable.
The Governor of Rhode Island proposed a bill to make the teaching of
anarchism a crime. Involvement in an anarchist organization would
also be a crime. In other words, expressing certain political views
would be illegal.
One would hope that this law would be overturned due to the First
Amendment, but it is hard to be confident of that.
Bush forces casualties are increasing, but nowadays many of them are
Iraqis, not Americans. Bush uses this to pretend that the strength of
the resistance is decreasing.
There are specific reports that Bush, as governor of Texas, had
state officials remove information from the records about what Bush
did while "serving" in the Texas National Guard.
President Chavez of Venezuela says that US is funding the opposition.
Should it be legal for a foreign government to meddle in politics by
supporting such organizations? The US does not allow foreigners
to contribute to election campaigns.
The National Farmers Union of Canada has taken a position strongly
criticizing the way genetically modified crops are handled legally.
Increasing the threat to freedom of publication on the Internet,
a court in Canada has tried to apply its laws to web sites
outside Canada.
A statement against the overthrow of President Aristide of Haiti.
The Union of Concerned Scientists accused Bush of distorting science
to support his political agenda.
Iraqi resistance fighters who attacked the Bush puppet police were Iraqi, not foreign as was originally claimed.
Conservatives want to put opponents of the war, including perhaps
candidate Kucinich, on trial for treason. They do not believe
in the right to publicly oppose government policy.
The resemblance to Orwell's 1984 constantly increases. We have a
state of "war" that is guaranteed to never end, used as the excuse to
abolish human rights, and -- if they get their way -- opposition will
be a crime.
UK police have apologized for arresting protestors with no legal
grounds.
This seems to be the text of the apology.
Blair's approach to solving the problem of unjustified arrests is to
give the police increased power--that way, no arrest will ever be
unjustified.
9/11 victims' families have a list of questions
that they want Bush to answer under oath.
Bush has a record of assaults on the US reputation, people, and
freedom, which no other president can match.
Bush's own evidence, far from exonerating him, proves he was AWOL.
I would not blame a person for deserting from the US armed forces
during the Vietnam War, as long as he did it honestly and agreed that
the war was morally unjustified. But Bush hypocritically pretended to
serve in the armed forces while not criticizing the war.
In the event of a real or apparent crisis, FEMA has contingency plans
to suspend the Constitution and imprison millions of Americans.
A British covert operation wrecked UN negotiations to avert
the attack on Iraq.
The National Lawyers Guild, which provides legal advice and help to
protestors, was attacked by the Bush administration with subpoenas,
issued by the FBI's terrorism task force.
Israeli troops carry out frequent killings in the Gaza strip; they
even have free-fire zones. And they knock down houses by the dozens.
They can get away with this because there are few foreign witnesses.
The "intelligence failures" about Iraqi weapons
were a matter of ceding to pressure from political leaders.
How does this work?
The Israeli soldier who shot British activist Tom Hearndall
has been
accused of manslaughter and false testimony.
Manslaughter isn't enough for intentionally shooting someone, but at
least it is a serious charge. There is no plan to prosecute
the soldier who killed another activist later in the year.
The FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force
subpoenaed students
in an anti-war protest, based on no grounds.
The corporation is legally treated like a person,
but it is actually a machine whose design assures
it will behave like a
psychopathic person.
Kerry is
getting money from Sony and the MPAA. If he is elected, we
can expect further attacks on our freedom to use computers.
Israel refused to attend the world court hearings on the separation
fence. However, there is talk of changing the route of the fence,
so as to reduce the amount of Palestinian territory that would
be effectively annexed.
This pull-back from annexation is a sign that pressure is working.
That means we must keep it up! If the fence is built along the Green
Line then it will protect Israel without directly oppressing
Palestinians. That won't necessarily end to other forms of
oppression, but it would facilitate the possibility of peace and
an end to the occupation.
A yoga company in the US claims to have copyrighted a way of practicing
Yoga and is trying to force smaller yoga schools
out of business.
Based on my understanding of copyright law, I think they have not got
a leg to stand on. Copyright law explicitly excludes any idea,
principle, method of operation, or system. Thus, a book on yoga can
be copyrighted, but that copyright only covers the text of the book,
not actual practice of the yoga positions described in the book.
However, the managers of small yoga schools do not understand
copyright very well; they may not realize that this case is so
absurd. And they may not be able to afford to resist.
The article makes the mistake of using the propaganda term
"intellectual property".
Using that term instead of the more specific "copyright" promotes a
vague view of the situation, and that vague thinking hampers the
ability to distinguish legally valid accusations from invalid ones.
So it contributes to the vulnerability to campaigns of distortion.
An Uzbek woman has been sentenced to prison
for telling the public how
the police tortured and killed her son.
The Pentagon has backed off from an electronic absentee voting system for
soldiers, recognizing concerns that it is vulnerable to fraud.
The bloody price of occupation.
It is nothing unusual that people who collaborate with the occupying
forces are treated as traitors, both during and after an occupation.
How the Bush "intelligence failures" investigation is designed
to be a whitewash.
Senator Schumer says that the White House is blocking the probe
into who leaked the information about Valerie Plame.
The Bush regime claimed, in court, that there is no such thing
as doctor-patient confidentiality.
Bush is intervening to prevent the FDA from following its medical
advice, which was to make emergency contraception available without
restriction. This is part of the religious extremists' agenda.
Toronto police arrested and brutalized Jama Jama after he obeyed their
instructions, and then tried to frame him.
Jama Jama may defeat the accussations against him with the help of a
video that proves the police are lying. That doesn't mean everything
is ok, because police who are willing to lie to punish people will
probably lie more than once. Their next victim may not have a video
to prove that the police lied; the Canadian and Ontario governments
must be replaced with ones that will make civil liberties and justice
a priority.
In the northern province of Santiago de Estero, Argentina, the
local government has banned all types of public meetings that
don't have prior consent. Anyone not complying is subject to
imprisonment between 1- 30 days or a fine of between 10-20 days
pay.
The new law comes in response to demonstrations (all of which have
been peaceful) and a memorial service to mark the first
anniversary of the brutal torturing and murder of two young girls
by an ex-policeman. Witnesses in the case have received death
threats from the governor of the province.
Kevin Cooper, convicted of murder and sentenced to death,
has had to struggle to get state officials to perform
DNA testing on evidence that he says will clear him.
It appears that police are tampering with the evidence.
This is something to keep in mind when Bush asks you to accept
inadequate standards for trials: even with high standards, justice
must struggle to overcome lying police.
180 million years ago the Earth had a bout of global warming, due to
release of trapped methane from the sea bed. Earth recovered in
140,000 years by natural process that have been identified.
This result should hardly be comforting. 140,000 is a long
time by human standards.
Rebels against Haiti's president Aristide are advancing.
Aristide came to power as the people's leader against corrupt
dictators. Since he has been tested by years of adversity, I am
surprised that he has turned into a corrupt ruler and effectively
spiked the election. Can anyone explain to me what's behind
this news?
Still persecuted by upper-caste Hindus, indian untouchables are
converting to Buddhism by the thousands. But Hindu nationalist
politicians amazingly tried to prevent the ceremony, and kept
50,000 participants away.
Canada's anti-terrorism laws amount to the abolition of legal rights
whenever the government wishes. It can imprison you without trial for
repeated 72-hour periods that can be extended without limit; it can
order you not to engage in protests and punish you if you later do;
evidence used against you can be kept secret from you, meaning that if
you do get a trial it may be a show trial. Soldiers can disperse
protests by giving secret orders that people are required to obey but
are forbidden to discuss with others. Even boycotts fall within
the definition of terrorism.
The Canadian government can now use a wide range of Gestapo tactics
against political opposition, and it will be entirely "legal". But
when it becomes legal to trample human rights, this does not make it
legitimate. Rather, this makes the law and the regime that exercises it
illegitimate.
But is the Canadian government already doing so? Due to the secrecy
required in many of these provisions, it may be hard to tell.
Canadians must assume their government is behaving tyrannically until
it provides them with enough transparency to be sure it is not.
The proposed Bush budget doesn't include money for the costs of fighting
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Does this mean he is planning to pull the
troops out?
David Kay says there is no point continuing to search for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in "every possible place"
because there is already conclusive evidence there were none.
UK officials are systematically refusing justified requests for
asylum, by stubbornly closing their eyes to the danger that refugees
face.
Judge Silberman, nominated by Bush for the new whitewash Iraq
intelligence inquiry, participated in letting Oliver North off the
hook for lying to Congress, and may have helped Reagan negotiate
for Iranian support in defeating Carter's bid for re-election.
But let's not forget that the biggest problem with this investigation
is that it is only supposed to put the blame on the intelligence
agencies, and is by definition not allowed to consider whether Bush is
to blame. Whatever the details, we should reject the committee
as a whitewash by design.
Oxfam reports on how globalization of the power of business
is leading to cruel working conditions all around the world.
A committee of UK MPs reported that Palestinians face extreme starvation,
and recommended trade sanctions against Israel.
Here is the report itself. Points 38 and 39 refer to malnutrition.
In a Democratic Party debate, I heard Howard Dean say that the capture
of Saddam Hussein would not make the US any safer. I heard another
candidate (I don't remember who--perhaps it was Lieberman) attack him
for saying this, using arguments that completely missed the point (he
argued that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy). Yes, Saddam was a bad guy, but he
no longer held power in Iraq, so capturing him made no difference to
the situation in Iraq. We have since seen that the resistance to
Bush occupation continues there.
NPR replayed that exchange frequently without ever commenting on how
illogical the response was. The Independent recently cited it to
criticize Dean, taking the attitude that it makes no difference
whether he was right but only what political effect it had. Both
organizations were wrong to do this.
(I support Kucinich, not Dean.)
Kerry seems to be the sort of candidate who carefully calibrates his
position so as to win. Maybe he will win. If he does, it may blunt Bush's
religious extremist plans. But I don't see that it is likely to have
much effect on the economic policies of business-dominated
globalization that are relentlessly impoverishing working people all
around the world, or on the War on Freedom embodied by the USA PAT
RIOT act.
I will vote for Kucinich in the Massachusetts primary. If Kerry wins
the nomination, I am not sure whether I will vote for him.
The Australian Labor Party's new leader, Mark Latham, obtained the
leadership position in his party by criticizing Bush policies. But
then he met with the US ambassador and turned into a loyal pet.
Now Australia is looking at signing a "free trade" treaty with the US.
These treaties make it easy for companies to move production from one
country to another, so they can force various countries to compete for
who can offer the worst working conditions and the least environmental
protections. Any new free trade treaty is a step in the wrong
direction.
Following its usual practice, the US government is pandering to
Microsoft and Hollywood by trying to impose software patents and the
DMCA on Australia. This would mean imposing restrictions on all
computer users there.
Since the Bush regime doesn't give clear figures for deaths
or other casualties among the Bush forces, a private effort
is being made to sum up the best available information.
The US DEA attempted to ban all foods made from hemp
on the grounds that they contain trace amounts of THC.
However, an appeals court rejected this.
Tony Blair has bowed to the facts--an absence of real weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq--and will launch an inquiry into "intelligence failures".
In other words, this inquiry, like the one Bush wants in the US, is
designed to distract public attention from the real scandal: the way
Bliar and Dubya distorted and misused the intelligence that was
available to justify a war they had already decided on.
A new internet-based political party in Australia
has positions I would support if I were Australian.
As India produces a surplus of food, millions in India can't have any
of it to eat.
Afghan President Karzai warns Afghanistan is "becoming a narco-state".
Do you want to make the deal of a lifetime? Go to Gaza!
Activists protesting Bush at the World Trade Center site
were arrested for carrying signs.
Bush's budget is bogus--meant to distract the public,
not meant to be passed.
The Bush forces like the Ba'ath party so much that they are forcibly
keeping Ba'athists in power in Iraqi oilfields even though the workers
want them out. They are also against unionization of Iraqi workers.
Colonel Rokke, who was in charge of depleted uranium cleanup after the
1991 gulf war, describes depleted uranium use as a war crime.
The mad cow found in the US was not a "down cow".
Remember the anthrax letters of 2001? A timeline of related events
suggests they may have been used to clear away objections to passage
of the USA PAT RIOT act.
What secret is Cheney's energy task force keeping?
This article suggests it's a big one.
Fraudulent terror alerts, such as we saw in December, could be
preparing the US for martial law. High officials are already talking
about the possibility.
I've decided to spend next October outside the US.
When people recognize that they are part of an oppressive system, they
often argue against refusing to participate, saying that "By staying
on the inside, I will be able to make it better."
This is not totally absurd. On occasion it really is possible to do
this. However, the idea that you are protecting the victims this way
can easily be a pleasant self-delusion rather than the truth. To
retain your position, you must participate in the harm. So you can
excuse active wrongdoing on the grounds that "It's the only way to
stay in a position to make a difference." It is easy to overestimate
the harm you think you have prevented, while overlooking the harm that
you are doing.
Here are some good examples.
Comparing Iraq with Vietnam, and the lessons we can draw from what
Robert McNamara learned and what he did not learn.
I disagree with one point in this article, however: while the South
Vietnamese government that the US supported was a corrupt
dictatorship, that doesn't mean its North Vietnamese enemies were
good. That was a dictatorship too, systematic rather than corrupt in
its cruelty. Many South Vietnamese fought to kick out the Americans
because they wanted independence for their country, not realizing that
victory would mean tyranny.
The record companies are starting a series of raids in Australia.
These record companies that pay just 4% of their gross sales to
musicians--and nearly all of that goes to a few superstars who don't
need it. Then, in the name of the same musicians that they exploit,
they put people in prison for sharing.
The Kazaa program is unethical because it is non-free software, but
sharing music is not wrong, and the laws against it should be
repealed. In the mean time, they have no moral validity. The record
company goons are the ones who ought to go to prison.
There's nothing wrong with selling records, in and of itself, but
these record companies do not deserve to continue to exist.
Are you on the secret US list of people not allowed to fly?
A Texas high school student was arrested for lending his asthma
inhaler to his girlfriend, who had left hers at home that day.
His mother says the school expelled him. The school's principal, Dr
Poole, says that never happened--but I don't believe him, because he
makes arguments that are obviously absurd. I don't think he would say
them if he were honest.
For instance, Poole says the inhaler "is a dangerous drug" and asks
"What if she had used it and died?" She had been prescribed the very
same drug and was already using it. It is bogus to raise this
objection when she gets the drug from her boyfriend's inhaler, but not
raise it when she gets it from her own inhaler. And Dr Poole says,
"If we get rid of this mindlessly rigid policy, what could we possibly
replace it with?" He is claiming that it is hard to imagine any
alternative to cruel rigidity.
Maybe the school should replace Dr Poole with someone whose
imagination is less limited.
The 9-11 investigation has treated the Bush administration with kid
gloves, and as a result it can't tell us the answers to the questions
that must be answered.
Recently at MIT there was a talk about the development of software
to identify individuals by their appearance and motion patterns.
The use of such software on images collected from public spaces
should be prohibited without specific court orders, or else
it leads to dangers of totalitarian surveillance.
Sharon says he will remove all Jewish settlements from Gaza. This is
the right thing to do in Gaza, but this should not distract us from
Sharon's apparent intention to annex large Arab-inhabited areas of the
West Bank.
After all the Palestinian olive trees that Israelis have cut down,
giving the Israeli agricultural facilities of Gaza to some of the
Palestinians who were thus victimized would be appropriate
compensation.
The world's expert on smallpox says it would be a mistake
to vaccinate millions of Americans, because that would mean
dozens of people would get serious side effects, including death.
He proposes a more thoughtful plan for dealing with smallpox
outbreaks.
This article also explains why smallpox would not be an effective
weapon. Despite this, the US government is forcing soldiers
to undergo vaccinations which are occasionally dangerous,
and have killed at least one soldier.
I was vaccinated for smallpox when I was young. When smallpox was
common, the dangers of vaccination were much less than the danger from
smallpox itself, a danger that everyone faced. However, if the modern
public health system can easily find and isolate anyone who may get
smallpox, so that it can't spread, that could be better than
vaccination.
Intelligence analysts in UK fear Blair will use them as scapegoats
to distract attention from his lies.
Whatever the intelligence agencies may have known or believed, the
claim that hypothetical Iraqi weapons were the reason for the war is
absurd. One year ago the UN weapons inspectors were getting full
cooperation in their investigation, and finding nothing dangerous. If
weapons had been Bush's real reason for proposing a war, he could have
let the inspectors solve the problem, without spending 100 billion
dollars or killing thousands. But (as we know) Bush was looking for
an excuse to start this war since 2001 if not before. He did not want
the UN inspectors to peacefully eliminate his excuse.
The Bush forces are disguising combat deaths, as well as numbers
of wounded.
Blunkett has been condemned strongly for his proposal to establish
Guantanamo-style kangaroo courts for terrorist suspects in the UK.
Blair is launching an inquiry into the "intelligence failure" about Iraq,
but the inquiry does not cover how Blair distorted the intelligence,
so it is designed as a whitewash.
Note that the Hutton committee did do what some in the US are claiming;
it did not vindicate Blair from charges of distorting the intelligence
reports. Its report did not cover that question.
Australian ruler John Howard is in trouble now over Iraq,
and seems headed to lose the election to the Labor Party,
whose new leader has condemned Bush.
However, the Australian Labor Party has in general not been
very firm in defending civil liberties.
When Clinton "weaseled" about whether he had sex, Republicans
impeached him. Now Bush is weaseling in the same way about whether
there was a reason to invade Iraq.
However, the writer should be more careful about suggesting new wars.
Bush appears to be in the market for one, sometime around October.
The 10 worst corporations of 2003 (counting only the US)
At year's end, signs of movement towards tyranny abound in Washington.
A film shows what Pol Pot's murderous government was like, but says nothing about the murders that paved the way for it.
There is pressure to censor pornography that includes violence, because it might inspire people to commit violence.
By this reasoning, all writing about crime--whether fact or fiction--should be prohibited. Any of it could inspire someone's imagination. And commercials for sumptuous luxury goods really need to be prohibited, because they could excite the avarice of management in companies like Enron and Nike.
We do not know whether violent porn makes violent acts more likely or less likely. There is no way to determine who might have been violent in an alternate universe where he did not have access to this material. What we do know is that violence against women was not rare in the past, even when porn whether violent or not was strongly suppressed.
Critical mass bike riders support supermarket strike in LA.
Katharine Gun, who worked for UKs electronic snooping agency, told the public about a campaign of spying on UN delegations from various countries--not because those countries were planning to attack the UK, but in order to pressure them into giving UN backing to the invasion of Iraq. Ms Gun has been threatened with prison for informing the public of Blair's dirty trick.
A UK court just ruled that she is not allowed to tell her lawyers anything about her work. That would make the trial evidently absurd.
The Bush forces refuse to give clear figures about casualties in Iraq, and have misclassified injuries in order to reduce casualty figures.
US Vice President Cheney faces indictment in a bribery scandal involving Halliburton.
Other Halliburton employees are in trouble for taking bribes in connection with its business in Iraq.
An anti-Nazi protestor was sentenced to prison in Pennsylvania.
Were the September 11 attacks aided by the US government?
These arguments are strong enough to convince me that there's something fishy that must be thoroughly investigated. However, I can't reach a firm conclusion that the US government was involved, because I know that arguments such as these can have flaws that I would not recognize, even when they seem correct. So even if I don't see a specific flaw, I know that there might be one. I can find such arguments convincing enough to indict the government, but not convincing enough to convict it. That would require an investigation to determine for certain what happened.
A full investigation of 9/11 must address the questions that these arguments raise.
Kerry Leads in Lobby Money.
Bush, looking for an excuse for war, carefully selected from
intelligence reports those aspects that would serve his purpose,
disregarding the doubts. Now his plan is to distract attention from
his own role with a Warren-style investigation under his own control.
Its real purpose will be to put the blame on someone else.
Enron, along with GE and Bechtel, set up a sleazy
deal in India as well as in the US. They went as far
as attacking protestors. Indian governments are trying
to cancel the deal, but the US government is trying to
force them to continue.
The US demands for personal information about air travelers violate
the EU's privacy law, but European countries quietly caved in.
Citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, are protesting a series
of shootings by police.
The UK government announced a plan to try terrorist suspects
in secret, without a jury, and use lower standards for conviction.
Their lawyers would require special security clearance.
In effect, Blair is proposing to institute Guantanamo-style military
tribunals in the UK.
Another article reveals that the defendants would not be allowed to
see the evidence against them.
This means the government could pay a stool pigeon to testify to
whatever is demanded (the pay would be getting out of prison early),
and the defendant could not even deny this testimony, which he would
not have heard. In effect, it means the government could imprison
anyone at any time.
A government that tries to do this is the enemy of human rights.
Peru under Fujimori held such phony trials for suspected participants
in the Shining Path. After Fujimori was ousted, Peru gave them new
trials, and many were acquitted.
The UK should oust Tony Blair and his crew of would-be Stalins before
they can finish imposing their flavor of dictatorship on the UK.
If Polar Bears Were Sousaphones
I think the figure of 50% extinction refers to 25% due
to habitat destruction and 25% due to the effects of global warming.
I have not read specifically about reasons to expect
extinction of songbirds or butterflies.
Justice Scalia is being accused of favoritism towards Cheney, in a
case about disclosing the identity of Cheney's energy task force.
It is amazing that Cheney won't even admit to the public who it was he
made plans with. If the list is made up of owners of oil companies,
it could be embarrassing, but no more--it would not prove any specific
serious wrongdoing. The proof of wrongdoing is already available: we
just have to look at the administration policy decisions.
Mainstream journalists don't like to cover Bush's hypocritical evasion of the Vietnam War, but Michael Moore dares to talk about it.
I wouldn't criticize anyone for trying to escape from being sent to Vietnam to fight for one dictator against another, if he condemned the war. However, there can be no excuse for supporting the war but making someone else do the fighting.
Bush administration officials are starting to criticize the lack of real democracy in Russia, where President Putin's control of the mass media has made serious opposition impossible.
The situation in the US is heading in the same direction, but has not yet become total.
The US government has a history of breaking treaties with indigenous peoples. Leonard Peltier warns Americans that the US government is now doing the same thing to the citizens of the US.
The City of Tacoma is trying to prevent a march in support of Leonard Peltier, by imposing unusual and impossible conditions on the participants.
To make freedom of assembly infeasible to exercise is equivalent to abolishing it.
The history of past scientific wisdom about human sexuality helps spotlight skepticism on overblown claims of sociobiology.
It is surely possible to study how human biology constrains human societies. But the conclusions must not be oversimplified if they are to be scientifically valid. The book Vaulting Ambition, published by MIT Press, shows precisely where the oversimplifications are made in certain cases, and how far away pop sociobiology is from scientific validity.
The EPA has been sued for letting pesticide companies determine the regulation of pesticides.
Meanwhile, peticide and biotech companies have repeatedly tried to attack the careers and stifle the research of scientists who publish results that cast doubt on the safety of those products.
72 union organizers were murdered in Colombia in 2003, and the assassination continues.
Airline surveillance policies compared to laws restricting slaves from travelling.
Anti-war activist Kathy Kelly has been sentenced to three months
in prison for a peaceful protest.
Will Bush's next war (perhaps scheduled for October) be against Cuba?
Or perhaps Venezuela?
Three of the "enemy combatants" held in Guantanamo, who had been
imprisoned for hardly any reason in the first place, have been
released after almost two years. They were under 16 years old.
(I think it is an exaggeration to call 15-year-olds "children",
but it makes no sense to keep them in a prisoner-of-war camp.)
Bush claims about Iraqi weapons are now being criticized by some
politicians in the US.
The government of France offered a "strategic alliance" to the Chinese
government--including support for its demands to extend its
dictatorship over democratic Taiwan.
I can well understand the desire to put a check on the power of the
US, but the Chinese government is trying hard to do the same sort of
bad things as the US government, only more so. The only way China is
less harmful than the US is that its power is smaller, so it cannot
bully other nations globally, only its neighbors. But as China gets
more powerful, this will change.
The way Chirac says that he "raised the issue of China's human rights
record" reminds me of the way US officials used to do so--before they
stopped pretending to care. I can imagine Chirac saying, "I have to
mention the issue of China's human rights record, so I can tell people
I did so." And the response? "Ok, you mentioned it."
Daniel Ellsberg calls on civil servants to release
the papers that will show how Bush and Blair's lies
were calculated.
Chomsky explained how the news media "engineer consent", but define
the range of possible disagreement that most people get to look at.
Now the New York Times is going one further--by trying to specify
which presidential candidates ought to be heard in debates.
The US deportation of Maher Arer, Canadian citizen, to Syria, where he
was tortured, violated US law. But what is most frightening is the
possibility that he was sent to Syria to be tortured on behalf of the
US.
What life is like for the people who make parts for our computers.
The WTO has led countries to race to eliminate or undermine
the laws that used to prevent such exploitation.
BBC reporter Gilligan has resigned, as have the BBC's directors.
The danger is now that Blair will impose controls on the BBC's
independence.
The National Union of Journalists says Gilligan was unfairly criticized
by Hutton's report.
Hutton has a history of previous whitewashes.
I've seen other articles saying that the public have mostly dismissed
the report as a whitewash. However, Blair has learned to evade
public opinion by simply preteding it isn't there.
There is much to be said for the UK's tradition that anyone
in charge of a major mistake should resign. But this tradition
used to apply to government ministers as Blair has made
nonsense of it by adopting a policy of never admitting a mistake.
Here is the Human Rights Watch report that demolishes the case
that the invasion of Iraq is justified on humanitarian grounds.
The Afghan asylum seekers in Nauru ended their hunger strike when the
Australian government promised to allow them an independent medical
assessment. But no sooner did they accept this promise than the
Australian government began trying to cheat on the deal and block
the independent visit.
Search for "With the hunger strike suspended" to find this particular
part of the article.
A former US intelligence analyst tries to explain how the US intelligence
agencies overestimated Iraqi weapons capability, and how Bush selectively
picked parts of these estimates to present a false picture of them.
On certain points the author is too forgiving to Bush. We know that
Bush had been planning this war since 2001, and that all the reasons
he offered were just excuses. And Human Rights Watch has demolished
the claim that the war was justified for the sake of Iraqis. Iraq
under Saddam was a source of instability, yes, but there is no reason
to think Iraq today is less so.
Utah has refused to cooperate with the Department of Homeland
Security's "MATRIX" surveillance system. So have many other states.
An interview with Dennis Kucinich
The Groping Governor broke campaign finance laws, and may have to pay a fine. He also broke his campaign pledge to make the system more
honest.
[Reference updated on 2022-08-06 because the old link was broken.]
I think this punishment is too weak to discourage similar crimes in
the future. He will not worry about a few million.
The 9/11 investigation wants more time, till July,
to issue its report. Bush opposes this. That's natural,
because one reason the investigation wants more time
is that Bush has been refusing to hand over the documents it wants.
We can only speculate about what Bush is hiding, but we have reason
enough to conclude it is bad.
The Hutton Report whitewashed Blair and blamed the BBC,
and Blair is trying to use this to impose control over
BBC news reporting. But the whitewash is so obvious that
people will not believe the report.
Bush calls for Preemptive Attack on Mars & Moon; Cites
Evidence of WMD
Seriously, I support manned exploration and then settlement
of whichever locations off the Earth are most feasible.
This may be the only way humanity and many other species
can survive. But I won't excuse Dubya's crimes merely
because of this.
Global warming may paradoxically throw Britain and Scandinavia
into frozen conditions, making them nearly uninhabitable.
This may happen within decades, because the effects have
already been observed.
Ami Isserof writes that the Palestinian territories have fallen into a
chaotic gang warfare that nobody can straightforwardly end. When the
Palestinian Authority lost the possibility of offering Palestinians
anything meaningful through peace with Israel, it also lost the
ability to enforce decisions or order.
Reading carefully, it sounds like these gangs are not as narrowly
greedy as gangs in most places. They have goals beyond
self-enrichment, such as resistance to the occupation.
Los Angeles has taken a stand against the PAT RIOT act.
Greeks are protesting the security powers and restrictions
that are being set up for the Olympic Games in Athens.
They fear these powers may continue long after the games
are over.
Bush seems to be trying to deny his claims
about Iraqi weapons--the claims that provided the
main excuse for the war.
Starting a war based on lies--isn't that enough
reason to impeach both Bush and Cheney?
Bush is now trying to justify the war as
a plan to liberate the Iraqi people from a dictator.
That can be a legitimate reason for a war, in
some cases, but not in this case.
Human Rights Watch has carefully studied this
question and its report shows conclusively
why that justification is not available to Bush now.
It was always absurd to think that Bush would support democracy or
human rights in Iraq after trampling them in his own country.
There are also some who are saying this was "an honest mistake." But
we know it was no mistake, because we know Bush has been planning this
war since 2000.
The boycott of Coca Cola is spreading in the US and Canada.
A western journalist in Iraq was arrested for "looking like an
Israeli", which meant having a beard. When they found out he
was not an Israeli, they decided to hold him anyway, saying
"We'll figure out some charges later."
In other words, Bush government shows the same disregard
for the rights of the accused in Iraq as in the US.
Agent Orange, used as a defoliant in Vietnam, has been shown to cause
cancer in US soldiers who were in Vietnam at the time.
It might be much more dangerous for Vietnamese.
100,000 Iraqis protest in Baghdad, demanding elections
and denouncing the occupation.
I'd like to see such a strong demand for democracy in the US.
The Knife- stupid airport security tricks.
A Briton who exposed crimes of Guatemalan adoption rings faces
the threat of imprisonment in Guatemala for doing so.
It seems that lawsuits for defamation are a standard tool for bullying there.
If the government of Guatemala wants to change its image while
respecting the independence of the judiciary, it should pass a law
affirming that freedom of speech is not limited to journalists, making
defamation a matter of civil rather than criminal law, and making
proof of the truth of the statement a defense in such cases.
For more information, click here.
In Iraq, Bush and his troops are called "Ali Babas"--which means,
thieves. But Dubya's career of thievery began in the US, and he has
stolen more than just our money.
Perhaps we too should call him "Ali Baba".
The revolution in Georgia was not entirely spontaneous--George Soros
funded organizations that were central in the activity.
While some people are criticizing this, I do not necessarily agree.
Shevardnadze's election really was crooked, and funding people to
expose and reject such crookedness is not a bad thing. If only Soros
had helped the US reject its crooked 2000 presidential election.
But there are also charges that the US government was involved in
Georgia--and that the motive, as usual for Dubya, was the interests of
his oil buddies.
The Bush forces supposedly compensate Iraqis that they injure,
but in practice the procedures make it impossible to get
compensation.
A formerly secret 1962 US government document contains proposals to
create false pretexts for a US attack on Cuba. Proposals include
destroying a US ship and blaming it on Cuba, a fake terror campaign in
Miami, and the fake destruction of a US airliner. These details start
on page 10 in the file.
This was not far away in time from the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident, in
which a false report of a Vietnamese attack on a US vessel provided
the excuse for expanding US forces in Vietnam.
A recent Israeli terrorist attack in Nablus killed 19 Palestinians and
wounded 200.
Should we believe the conspiracy theory explanation of the 9/11
attacks, which says that they were carried out by hijackers working
for Al Qa'ida? Is there really evidence to substantiate this theory?
CIA officers in Iraq are warning that it is on the verge of exploding
in a civil war.
As some have pointed out, the fact that they are saying this to the
press suggests that the president is not listening to them.
In Sweden, when Nazis throw bombs, the police don't care.
But they attack anti-fascist protests.
US military bases around the world support the rule of the capricious and corrupt.
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben explains why he canceled
his visit to the US: "bio-political tattooing" of visitors.
An Israeli pilot who refused to carry out attacks that would kill
civilian bystanders identifies the organization whose principles
inspired his courageous stand.
David Kay, who recently resigned as head of Bush's search for weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq, says he believes Iraq did not have them.
Here's a review of statements made about Iraqi weapons
by various US and UK officials.
A Texas woman faces the threat of prison sentence for selling sex toys
to guests in her home.
A WTC manager says on TV that he and the fire department decided to
deliberately demolish WTC building 7, then burning, as a measure to
prevent spread of the fire.
Such a decision may have been a wise one. But why did previous
reports say that the building collapsed on its own?
Congressional Republicans were spying on Congressional Democrats' computers.
The real state of the union (to compare with Dubya's fantasy land).
Dubya's state of the union address describes a completely
fantastic world--a collection of lies justifying other lies.
Thousands of people in India have been put in prison without trial or
charges, using a Bush-style "anti-terrorism" law.
The Canadian Supreme Court will consider the case of Percy Schmeiser,
who was
sued by Monsanto for patent infringement after his corn field
was polluted by patented genes in pollen blowing in from another
field.
After a murder in 1997 by Northern Ireland loyalists,
the police investigation was so incompetent that it
must have been an intentional whitewash.
The FBI kept a man
prisoner for over two years after concluding
that he had no connection with terrorism. He is still in prison.
He has asked for political asylum in the US.
Perhaps he thinks the US is still the land of liberty.
Just before September 11, US officials and legislators
met with Mahmoud Ahmad who two weeks later was accused
of sending funds to the hijackers. This, together with
CIA ties to Osama bin Laden, raises the question:
was it a coincidence?
I hope the 9/11 investigation covers this area thoroughly.
Coca Cola in India has been selling soda with dangerous levels
of toxic chemicals.
This is in addition to its practice of using thugs to kill union
organizers and attack protestors, which is the reason for the
world-wide boycott of Coca Cola company.
Israeli soldiers
bulldozed 30 houses in Rafah, disregarding the
inhabitants who were frantically trying to save their belongings.
They are not dead, merely homeless and destitute, but the callous
cruelty of this is no different from that of a suicide bomber.
Senator Kerry, who won in the Iowa caucuses for the democratic
candidacy, voted for the PAT RIOT act and still defends it. Our
freedom, in his hands, would be little or no safer than in the hands
of Bush. In the debate which I heard, he evaded the issues.
20,000 shiites protest in Iraq, demanding elections and the exit of
the Bush forces.
Bush ignored hundreds of thousands who protested in the US,
so I expect he will ignore these protestors too. The result
may be deadly.
Wal-mart locks employees in the store overnight. Unless there is a
fire, they are threatened with being fired if they leave through the
emergency door.
Israeli police tried to unofficially deport activist Radhika Sainath
to prevent her from testifying in court.
CBS agreed to run an ad from the White House, but rejected an
opposition ad as "advocacy". It is not the first time.
Human Rights Watch has accused the Bush forces of violating the Geneva
Convention by using collective punishment: specifically, by arresting
the families of people who were suspected of participating in the
resistance, and demolishing their houses.
Amnesty International accuses German police of repeated brutality to
foreign prisoners. 20 detained foreigners were badly hurt in the past
2 years. One died from the beating he got.
A Bangladeshi journalist was killed by bomb attack; other journalists
protest.
There is a lot of danger for journalists and writers in Bangladesh.
Another Bangladeshi journalist who was promoting friendship between
Jews and Muslims is in prison in Bangladesh, accused of spying for
Israel.
In the 90s, writer Taslima Nasrin was driven into exile for her book
"Shame" that describes persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh. She is
now facing threats in Calcutta, India, as she continues to publish
books that criticize the conduct of some Muslims. (Her last book was
banned there.)
Freedom of the press means there is no idea so sacred
that one is not allowed to criticize it.
Letter bombs have been sent to various EU officials, and an "anarchist
group" took responsibility. It seems the bombs were designed not to
cause much damage, and nobody has ever heard of this supposed
anarchist group before. Is this a fake, intended to discredit real
anarchists?
Dubya's own top advisors have built the case
that he started a war based on lies.
Now we have to be prepared for him to do it again in October.
The Italian supreme court invalidated the law that Berlusconi
passed to shield himself from bribery charges.
Maybe Il Ducino will end up in prison for this.
In Wormwood Scrubs prison, in the UK, the guards have attacked
prisoners repeatedly and even threatened to kill them.
A conference on new diseases predicted 30 new diseases will emerge in
the next 30 years, just as in the past 30 years. The main expected
cause is human overpopulation, which leads humans to invade wild
habitats and come in close contact with different animals. This gives
pathogens a chance to jump from those animals to humans.
An article suggests that the World Social Forum faces challenges as
corporocratic governments ignore opposition.
I see the point, but at the same time I wonder if having a series
of World Social Forums in Brazil helped Lula get elected there.
More about the incursion into Tulkarem.
Thousands of Boston city employees protested the mayor's
principal annual speech, because the mayor has refused
to negotiate contracts with them.
In Tulkarem, unarmed Palestinian women were arrested and kept prisoner
outside in the rain all day. 200 men were taken away blindfolded.
Is Bush planning to launch another war in October? Reported Pentagon
plans involve sending large numbers of reservists to Iraq and bringing
the active duty units home in time to get them ready in October.
Perhaps they will be sent back to Iraq to replace the reservists,
who may need replacement then. But that would not help Bush's
campaign. Another war would, or so he might think.
A leaked UK medical report says that gulf war syndrome was
a response to compulsory vaccines administered to the troops.
All vaccines causes adverse reactions in some people. The idea is
that these should be rare, and amount to a much smaller problem than
the disease which the vaccine prevents. The vaccines are supposed to
be safety-tested to assure that their adverse reactions are rare
enough that this is true. I wonder if the military have failed to
test their vaccines according to the usual medical standards.
Other people have suspected that gulf war syndrome is due to
depleted uranium, but this report provides evidence it isn't.
However, it's clear that depleted uranium is killing
Iraqis, and may do so for thousands of years to come.
US officials like to warn Americans about the danger of a "dirty bomb".
The depleted uranium used by the Bush forces in Iraq is, in
effect, like thousands of dirty bombs.
There is a general strike against Haitian President Aristide. The US
government accused some Haitian police of attacking protestors.
The last I heard, Aristide was tremendously popular among the poor and
was kicked out by the military, then the US helped him get back in power.
Can anyone tell me how the opposition to him developed?
Did he go bad, or has the opposition been stirred up by the US?
How corporations allow executives to escape and shift responsibility,
even for crimes such as fraud.
There is a new scandal that a number of UK officials falsely claimed
that they had provided the necessary equipment for the troops
sent to Iraq.
I enjoy having new reasons to criticize Blair and his co-poodles, but
we should keep in mind that the really bad thing was not that they
sent troops to war with inadequate equipment, but that they launched
an unnecessary and unjustified war based on lies.
Israel is now restricting
all visitors to the Palestinian territories.
It looks like a plan to prevent people from witnessing or protesting
the many acts of brutality and cruelty.
Another former Bush official
confirms O'Neill's charges
that Bush was planning to attack Iraq before 9/11.
However, O'Neill is trying to
retract the charges he made in the book,
claiming the statements don't mean what they say.
I wonder if he is reacting to the threat to prosecute him
for revealing secrets if he doesn't retract his words.
Tom Hurndall, shot in the head by Israeli troops while opposing house
demolitions in Rafah last year,
is now officially dead. I'd say he
was dead ever since the shooting, since it destroyed his brain. The
soldier who shot him will be prosecuted.
This prosecution could send a message to Israeli soldiers not to kill
protestors. However, the decision not to prosecute another soldier,
who more recently shot someone protesting against the separation wall,
will erase that message.
More than half of life in the ocean depends on nutrients
brought up from the depths by a
peculiar water circulation
phenomenon.
Scientists now fear that global warming could change it
and cut ocean life by 75%. When you consider that humans
are overfishing the ocean already, this is not safe.
It could cause a mass extincion in the sea, along with the one
on the land.
A specific Bush lie: while secretly planning war against Iraq,
he was telling the public that he was planning "smart sanctions".
Over
4 million CCTV cameras in the UK--one for every 14
inhabitants--make the UK the world leader in surveillance.
It is supposedly justified for prevention of crime,
but it is doubtful that it really works.
The
UK increases police "emergency" power, not quite as much
as was first proposed.
Since it has been established that the UK police use "antiterrorist"
laws against legitimate protestors, police power ought to be
reduced, not increased.
Iran's
religious leader advises allowing the reformist candidates
to run for parliament. However, the sit-in by MPs continues.
US unemployment figures dropped in December--not because the
unemployed found work, but because they gave up looking.
An Israeli court sentenced
several young men who refused
to serve in the occupation to a year in prison
in addition to 14 months they have already been in prison.
The judge said that their refusal was a more severe crime
because it was based on principles.
What are these principles? One is not to shoot protestors. The
Israeli army recently ordered troops to shoot protestors who attack
the separation wall.
Those who shoot protestors are not punished.
Those who refuse to do such things are punished.
Bush has
officially pulled out the team that was supposed to find
Saddam's supposed weapons. Of course, they say "We will keep
looking".
Meanwhile,
Blair finally admits he no longer counts
on finding any of these fictitious weapons.
A recent book reports that
Winston Churchill proposed using anthrax against Germany,
and was also a champion of massive bombing raids
against cities. Interestingly, some US generals opposed them on
principle. He is also quoted saying things that are extremely racist.
I reject the racist views that are quoted, but I don't condemn
Churchill for them the way I would condemn someone who expressed such
views today. He was a man of his time, and at that time civilization
had not yet learned that racism was wrong. We today have the benefit
of having learned that.
Hundreds demonstrate in Israel to support the refuseniks,
near the prison where they are being held.
A research team that modeled the effect of global warming on the
survival of species reports that it could wipe out 1/4 of all species,
if the temperature increase reaches the higher estimates.
This would be on top of the extinction due to habitat destruction.
Journalist John Buchanan, who exposed the wartime Nazi business dealings of Prescott Bush (grandfather of Dubya), is running against Bush in the New Hampshire primary as a way of focusing attention and opposition on Dubya's assault on US freedom and security.
The Bush administration is
trying to punish former
treasury secretary O'Neill for leaking secrets.
Since the secrets just show us how Bush has been lying,
this is only an attempt to distract attention from
real threats to national security.
In Iran, the mullahs have
rejected over 2000 candidates for
parliamentary elections, because they are reformist (like most of the
voters). This includes many current members of parliament. Some of
them are holding a sit-in strike in parliament, and the officials in
charge of running the election are threatening to resign.
The US Supreme Court has
agreed to hear the case
of Yaser Hamdi, who has been imprisoned without charges
for 2 years by Bush.
US investigators have foiled a terrorist bombing plot by right-wing
fanatics. You'd expect the government to boast of this success,
so why doesn't Bush mention it?
One possible reason is that he wants Americans' fear to be directed at
foreigners, not at people whose political views are just a little more
extreme than those professed by Bush and his men.
The CIA produced the film versions of both Animal Farm and 1984, and
distorted both of them for
propaganda purposes. For instance, the
book Animal Farm ended saying that the oppressive communist pigs were
just like the oppressive capitalist farmers--but the movie's ending
criticized only the communists.
The UK chief scientific advisor warns that global warming is more
dangerous than terrorism.
Bush has
abandoned the cleanup of polluted ground sites in the US
and abandoned the idea of making polluters pay to clean them up.
The Pentagon's auditors
doctored papers to cover up
irregularities in accounting.
Former Bush cabinet member confirms that the planning for an invasion
of Iraq began
before 11 September 2001.
This provides clear proof for what we already had plenty of reason
to suspect: that both weapons of mass destruction and claims
that Saddam as connected with Al Qa'ida were just excuses.
Colin Powell recently admitted that there was no real evidence
of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qa'ida.
This is no surprise. Saddam was a secular Arab leader,
installed originally with US help. Al Qa'ida considered him
part of the enemy.
The IMF says that Bush economic policies are "endangering the world's
economy."
The colleagues and family of camerman Jose Couso, killed in Baghdad by
a Bush forces tank that fired at a hotel full of foreign journalists,
refuse to accept the pretense that the attack was accidental--they
call it a deliberate war crime.
Although the Aznar government in Spain stubbornly insists on
believing the Bush "accident" story, a Spanish court recently
agreed to investigate the case.
Afghanistan's assembly has accepted a Constitution. However, the
contrast between the strong presidential powers in the constitution,
and the actual lack of power of the central government in most of
Afghanistan, mean there is such a gulf between the constitution and
reality that it may not become more than empty words.
Human Rights Watch says that the constitution includes provisions
for civil liberties, but is weak in terms of institutions to
uphold them.
The Russian government is prosecuting a museum director and artists
for art that criticized Christianity. It is part of a general
trend towards giving the orthodox church special power.
This might give us a picture of what Bush would like to do in the US.
I wonder if I would be prosecuted for wearing my "impeach god" button.
Bush proposed a system for "guest workers" in the US.
Under the proposal, a worker would lose his visa if he
were fired; thus, workers would be afraid to complain
about bad working conditions and could be exploited
even in illegal ways.
It would be great for business, but not for immigrants or
other workers in the US who have to compete with them.
The Republican National Committee has launched a dishonest campaign
against MoveOn, accusing it of sponsoring ads comparing Bush with Hitler.
It turns out that the ads were submissions from the public as part of
a contest. MoveOn members considered them and voted on which ones to
use. They mostly voted against these ads. However, I've seen a few
articles that argue it is legitimate to compare Bush to Hitler,
pointing at similarities in their careers and methods.
Is it legitimate to compare Bush with Hitler? The complication is that
Hitler did several things we generally condemn:
Bush has done something like #1, using the September 11 attacks as an
excuse to curtail civil liberties in America. However, there is an
important difference. Hitler arranged the Reichstag fire, which he
then blamed on the opposition. In the case of Bush, there is plenty
of evidence that he was at least negligent in preventing the September
11 attacks, but I am skeptical of the accusations that he helped plot
them.
The Bush administration has done #2, by claiming the power to imprison
people for years on his mere say-so, by exposing anti-terrorist CIA
agent Valerie Plame to punish her husband, by blatantly killing
journalists in Baghdad, by putting activists on "no fly" lists, and
much more.
Bush has done #3 to some extent. Internet dissent is still permitted,
but does not appear in the mainstream media.
But this is not enough to make Bush as bad as Hitler. Bush has not
really done #4; I don't think that the attack on Iraq is comparable to
Hitler's attempt to conquer all of Europe.
Worst of all Hitler's deeds was #5, his persistent campaign to
exterminate Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and others he hated. This has
no equivalent in Bush. Though Bush pursues policies that make life
precarious for poor people, and promotes global warming that will
endanger both civilization and nature after a few more decades, he has
never shown any sign of wanting or trying specifically to exterminate
large numbers of people. So I conclude that comparing Bush with
Hitler is an unjustified exaggeration.
There is room in the scale of evil to be quite a monster without being
as bad as Hitler. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to compare
Bush with Mussolini.
The current "economic recovery" in the US
reaches a historic low in
terms of the percentage of increased business income that goes to
wages.
John Pilger:
What They Don't Want You To Know.
A satirist in Morocco, who had been imprisoned for criticizing the government,
has been pardoned.
But freedom of speech as a principle has not been adopted there.
Bush is
offering reinlistment bonuses--even while he tries
to cut the pay for the troops.
A Nigerian man has been
sentenced to death by stoning for illicit sex,
and the woman has been sentenced to 100 lashes.
It is not clear whether the sex was voluntary or not.
Nigeria has to confront the savagery of Islamic law, and
put a definitive end to the practice.
George Will devoted a column to presenting the views of
newspaper mogul Conrad Black...who was
paying Will
lots of money a couple of years ago.
A consumer group, representing music listeners, is
suing the record
companies in Europe for making fake CDs that don't follow the CD
standards and cannot be read into a computer as a WAV file.
Some European countries have already ruled that these Corrupt Disks
cannot carry the "CD" logo.
I think it is legitimate to restrict the commercial use of music
recordings to those who pay the artists. But any attempt to stop
individuals from sharing the music is an outrage, and the companies
that do it deserve to go out of business.
Ambassador Wilson is
determined to pursue the Bush administration
for having sabotaged his wife's CIA work against terrorism.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has
accused
the Bush administration of deliberately misleading the public
about Iraq's weapons capabilities.
We already know Bush was lying; it is good to see more
recognition of this. Perhaps eventually a Democratic
candidate will dare to make the accusation out loud.
The Bush forces have
discharged some soldiers for cruelly attacking
helpless prisoners.
Soldiers in any war tend to express their anger at the enemy by
brutalizing people associated with the enemy. So it is incumbent
on the army's leaders to show clearly that this is not to be
tolerated. These punishments show that the Bush forces' leaders
are doing this part of their job, at least to some extent. But is dismissal
from the army a strong enough punishment to deter this crime?
The increased demand for herbal remedies is
threatening the survival
of many of the herbs that are used.
Ultimately this problem, like so many others, is the consequence of
human overpopulation. It may be possible with care and effort to
prevent this problem, and many of the others, but overpopulation
makes such care and effort necessary in more and more areas of life.
British writer faces deportation from Zambia for satirizing leaders.
Groping Arnold's fiscal plan for California resembles Bush's plan
for the US: cut taxes and borrow lots of money.
Refugees in Nauru have suspended their hunger strike temporarily
after the Australian governmnt agreed to reconsider their requests
for asylum, which had previously been rejected out of hand.
Kofi Annan warns that violence in Afghanistan will interfere with the
elections planned for next June.
The religious fanatic rulers of Iran have censored a web site
that advocates reform.
Bush was served a lawsuit last Friday by Ellen Mariani, who accuses
Bush of negligently failing to carry out normal security procedures
and thus allowing the 9/11 attacks that killed her husband.
Many other victim families see the government's 9/11 compensation
fund as an attempt to buy their cooperation with the coverup.
Just what is being covered up, I will not try to say.
We know that a cover-up is occurring because important
evidence that ought to be available has been concealed.
The cover-up has been sufficiently successful, thus far,
that we cannot tell what's being hidden.
The US "economy" is "recovering", but only in terms that measure
the fortunes of the wealthiest. For most Americans, there is
no improvement, because the jobs they lost are permanently gone.
These lost jobs, and the consequent surplus of labor, are holding
down wages, so that Americans who are still employed are also
gaining nothing.
These "structural changes" are not a natural phenomenon. They result
from government policies designed to give corporations more power,
which they use to make countries compete for allowing bad
treatment for workers and low pay.
Thomas Kean, head of the 9/11 investigation committee,
says the committee will consider some of the skeptics'
theories about what happened.
Blair continues to say Saddam had biological and chemical weapons
while even Paul Bremer admits there were none.
A war is a dire undertaking, and can only be justified by the
strongest of reasons. A politician who leads a country into war, even
honestly, for a reason that proves to be false has committed the most
grave error imaginable. In the British system, that politician should
resign from office.
Evidence suggests that Bush may be smuggling Iraqi oil via Kuwait.
Shipping oil is not necessarily smuggling. This could be
some legitimate kind of oil export. But it is up to Bush
to account for the pipeline and for the export.
Israeli police shut down Indymedia Israel
on the basis of a cartoon, posted by some unknown member
of the public, relating Prime Minister Sharon with Nazism.
See the article here; it is now redirected to
another site, which has an article about this, first in
Hebrew then in English.
The "Visit USA" system is described officially as a plan to collect
photos and fingerprints from foreign criminals. Today Asa Hutchinson,
a US official, revealed in an interview that the real aim is to
collect a fingerprint data base of most US citizens.
When the US government wants to do something unpalatable to Americans,
it often does this indirectly: first bullying other countries into
doing it, then reimporting it as an international requirement. That's
what's happening here. By demanding that other countries encode
fingerprints in passports, the US government hopes to create an excuse
to do likewise, thus treating US citizens who travel like criminals.
Bush's negligence (if it wasn't worse) in preventing the 9/11 attacks
is becoming an unmentionable in the presidential campaign.
The Israeli blockade of refugee camps near Nablus is causing starvation.
Israeli journalism has ceased using the words "our forces" in
describing actions of the Israeli army, as a way of dissociating
itself from what the army is doing in Palestine. This article argues
that this change helps Israelis evade responsibility for those
actions.
I decided when Bush invaded Iraq to refer to the army that did the
invading as the "Bush forces", rather than the "US army", specifically
to avoid contributing to an attempt to manipulate us through our
patriotism. In effect, I decided to do exactly what this article
criticizes. Nonetheless, I think the article has a valid point, for
Israel, because I see a difference between the situations in the US
and Israel. In Israel, the atrocities of the army are well reported;
people could take responsibility for them. In the US, they are so
thoroughly hidden or disguised in the mainstream media that calling
the Bush forces "ours" would only help Bush manipulate us.
Why Bush Must Be Captured And Tried With Saddam.
I don't agree 100% with that viewpoint, because I don't think that
laws (national or international) entirely define right and wrong.
The UK frequently applies "anti-terrorist" powers to nonviolent
protestors.
I am sure Blair said "trust me, I wouldn't do that" when asked,
before passage of the law, whether this would happen.
Bush used the arrest of Saddam as a distraction
from a law that implements part of the planned "son of pat-riot" act,
greatly expanding FBI search powers without search warrants.
According to a former presidential science advisor,
the threat to democracy is at "code red" level.
9/11: What don't we know, and why don't we know it?
The US government was given the right to censor evidence
given in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Seattle protestors won a victory against the police,
as a judge rules their arrest was illegal.
But a class-action suit against the police may still lose.
What the US could do to promote democracy in Iraq and the Middle
East, if Bush really wanted to do that.
The FBI labels
possession of an almanac as grounds to suspect someone
of terrorism.
This suggests to me that they don't generally know what they're doing.
Comcast Cable has refused to show
paid ads for medical marijuana.
The Israeli government
shut down the Indymedia Israel web site,
because of a cartoon posted by some unknown member of the public.
I have to correct a statement I made a few weeks ago: whoever set off
a bomb next to a restaurant in Baghdad on New Years Eve does qualify
as a terrorist. If the Iraqi insurgents fall into a practice that is
likely to make Iraqis hate them, it could hand Bush a victory he could
never win on his own.
We don't actually know that the bomb was set by insurgents. It could
also have been set by someone working to discredit them. I would not
dismiss either possibility as absurd; I would not put such an act
past either side.
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[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-08-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-09-02 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-03 because the old link was broken.]
How does Bush compare with that?
If it was voluntary, punishing it at all is an outrage.
If it was rape, then punishing the victim is an outrage.
In either case, the death sentence is an outrage.
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